Starmer says government will introduce digital IDs to ensure Britain’s ‘borders are more secure’ – as it happened

Prime minister confirms the government will introduce digital IDs to ensure Britain’s ‘borders are more secure’ Photograph: Jack Taylor/Reuters

5.15pm BST

Afternoon summary

• Digital ID cards present “an enormous opportunity” for the UK, Keir Starmer has said. Opposition parties have criticised the plans, and some Labour MPs have spoken out against them too. Labour’s Ian Byrne posted a message on social media saying:

Of all the worthy policies Labour could be promoting, they choose this.

Beyond tone deaf.

Deeply unpopular among my constituents and with good reason.

I will not be supporting this & will do all I can to ensure it does not become law.

But, speaking at the Global Progress Action Summit, Darren Jones, the Cabinet Office minister and chief secretary to the PM, said the plan could enable more public service reform. He explained:

If we get this digital ID system working and the public being with us, that will be the bedrock of the modern state and will allow for really quite exciting public service reform in the future.

• Progressive politicians must directly confront the “lies” used by populists and counter their “industrialised infrastructure of grievance”, Keir Starmer has said in a speech that included thinly veiled criticism of Donald Trump’s rhetoric.

• More than 1.1m people have now signed an online parliamentary petition saying the government should scrap the plans for a digital ID scheme. The petition has been live since June, but the number of people signing only started shooting up yesterday, when it was reported that Starmer was about to confirm that plan is going ahead. The petition will be debated in parliament, but is unlikely to have much impact on government thinking.

• Menzies Campbell, the former Liberal Democrat leader who was an MP for nearly three decades, has died aged 84, prompting tributes from across the political spectrum for his decency and sense of principle.

• Morgan McSweeney, the prime minister’s beleaguered chief of staff, will not face another investigation into undeclared donations to the Labour Together thinktank, the elections watchdog has said.

• Treasury policymakers frustrated by the politically damaging timing of a downgrade to UK productivity forecasts by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) are pressing the watchdog to score the benefits of Labour’s pro-growth plans, the Guardian has learned.

• Pupils at state schools in England will face new reading tests in an attempt to tackle under-achievement by white working-class children.

• The former leader of Reform UK in Wales has pleaded guilty to bribery charges relating to statements in favour of Russia in the European parliament. In response, the Labour minister Stephen Kinnock said:

Farage has said Putin is the politician he ‘most admires’. Now the former Reform leader in Wales has admitted taking bribes from the Kremlin to peddle pro-Moscow lies & propaganda.

We simply cannot trust these plastic patriots with our national security.

For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today, do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog.

Updated at 5.21pm BST

5.02pm BST

Here is Stephen Bates’ obituary of Menzies Campbell.

And this is how it starts.

The veteran Liberal Democrat politician Menzies Campbell, who has died aged 84, was briefly the party’s leader for 19 months from March 2006, before falling prey to a whispering campaign by colleagues claiming he was too old, at 66, for the job. Not too old, however, to serve another eight years as an MP.

Even at that age, Campbell could probably have outpaced most of his younger critics, having been a world-class sprinter in his youth and captain of the Great Britain athletics team. Closer to the truth was that he was not particularly happy or comfortable as a party leader: in an earlier era his sagacity and expertise would probably have been revered and respected but Gordon Brown, then the Labour prime minister, was a decade younger than he was, and the Tories had just elected David Cameron, who was a quarter century younger. Campbell gave way gracefully to be succeeded by Nick Clegg, nearly 26 years his junior, who at that time had been in parliament for little more than two years.