Starmer and Reeves need to find ‘escape route’ from winter fuel payments row, says Ed Balls – as it happened

Keir Starmer, pictured at a wind farm in Lincolnshire, faces his first challenge as MPs are to vote on means-testing winter fuel payments next week. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

5.53pm BST

Early evening summary

• The Labour government has confirmed that there will be a binding vote on whether to axe the winter fuel allowance for all but the poorest pensioners, as the former shadow chancellor Ed Balls said he had grave doubts about the decision.

• Angela Rayner has backed the police to bring criminal prosecutions against those responsible for the Grenfell Tower disaster “as quickly as possible”.

• RAF Scampton, the former home of the Dambusters, will not be used to house asylum seekers because the plan does not represent value for money, the Home Office has said.

• Two of Europe’s biggest oil companies have vowed to fight two legal cases brought by environmental campaigners against their plans to develop new oil and gas projects in the North Sea.

5.29pm BST

Some hereditary peers removed from Lords under Labour bill could end up returning as life peers, minister confirms

Conservative peers have criticised the government’s plan to remove the right of the remaining hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords, following the publication of the bill that will implement this. (See 1.12pm.)

Speaking during a private notice question (the Lords equivalent of a Commons urgent question), Lord Strathclyde, a former leader of the Lords, and a hereditary peer himself, said that what the government was planning was “a high-handed, shoddy, political act” that would remove some of the most experienced peers from the house.

And Lord True, the current Tory leader in the Lords, described the bill as “divisive and partisan legislation”. He said it was best for constitutional reform should go ahead by consensus.

But, generally, Tory criticism was relatively restrained, and Strathclyde and True mostly complained about the bill being published with an announcement being scheduled in the House of Lords. Labour’s Angela Smith, the leader of the Lords, accused them of “faux anger” and pointed out that Labour’s plans were included in its manifesto, and in the king’s speech.

Although the House of Lords has regularly blocked attempts to reform it over the past century, by convention peers do not vote down policies included in a governing party’s manifesto and none of the opposition peers speaking on the topic today argued that the bill should be rejected.

Ironically, one of the peers most critical of the bill was Lord McNally, a Labour No 10 adviser in the 1970s who subsequently defected to the SDP and who was Lib Dem leader of the Lords when the coalition was in power. McNally, who is in favour of an elected Lords, said that when 92 hereditary peers were allowed to stay when Labour passed a bill in 1999 removing all the others, a “solemn promise” was made that they would stay until more extensive Lords reform happened.

McNally said it was wrong to go back on that promise. He told peers:

I’m afraid simply to abandon that deal that was made 25 years ago, without the substantial reform of the Lords, is a sham.

Smith said she did not agree. She said she accepted constitutional reform should be taken “with care and with consideration”, adding “25 years seems a fair amount of care and consideration”.

In response to another question, Smith also confirmed that some of the 92 hereditary peers affected by the government’s bill could end up returning to the Lords as life peers. She told the house:

I can confirm that if members leave this house as hereditary peers, there is no block at all on them coming back as life peers, if their party so wishes to introduce them.