Closing summary
This live blog will be closing shortly. Thank you for reading the updates and commenting below the line. You can read our story on the Epping Hotel court case here:
You can keep up to date with the Guardian’s UK politics coverage here.
Here is a summary from today’s blog:
Three senior judges will rule on whether to overturn a temporary
injunction which is set to block asylum seekers from being housed at the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, at 2pm on Friday. The Home Office and Somani Hotels, which owns the site, are attempting to challenge a High Court judge’s decision last week to issue an interim injunction to Epping Forest District Council that will stop dozens of asylum seekers from being housed at the Bell Hotel beyond 12 September.The UK, France and Germany have formally notified the UN that they have triggered the restoration of sweeping UN sanctions against Iran, giving Tehran 30 days to make concessions on access to its nuclear sites, or face deeper worldwide economic isolation. UK officials said the decision had not been taken lightly and there had been very intensive diplomacy to try to avert this step.
In a joint statement with the foreign ministers of France and Germany, David Lammy said that Iran’s non-compliance with a 2015 agreement to limit its nuclear programme was “clear and deliberate”. The statement said that Iran has exceeded limits on enriched uranium imposed by the deal, and restricted the ability of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to monitor its nuclear programme.
A member of the House of Lords asked a senior British diplomat to help a Ghanaian goldmining venture in which he held shares, claiming that it was “in the UK national interest”, the Guardian can disclose. The revelation will add to concerns about apparent breaches of parliamentary lobbying rules by Richard Dannatt, a former head of the British army. The peer is already under scrutiny over his lobbying for several companies, leading in two cases to investigations by the Lords’ standards body.
The first session of parliament will run until Spring 2026, the government has announced. The session, which began in July last year after Labour won the election, could run to nearly two years long as a result of the announcement. Sessions of parliament usually last for around a year, but ministers are hoping to progress as many pieces of legislation into law before the current one ends.
Chemical firms are lobbying MPs not to ban “forever chemicals” in the same way as proposed in the EU, using arguments disputed by scientists and described as “Big Tobacco playbook” tactics, it can be revealed. Pfas, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances and commonly known as forever chemicals owing to their persistence in the environment, are a family of about 10,000 chemicals, some of which have been linked to a wide range of serious illnesses, including certain cancers.
The Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, will boycott King Charles’s state banquet held in honour of Donald Trump to protest against the US president’s failure to intervene decisively to end the war in Gaza. Davey, who is invited to the dinner for Trump’s state visit to the UK, said to turn down an invitation from the king went against all his instincts and that it was a deeply serious move to refuse to attend.
The Reform MSP who defected from the Tories this week should stand down, first minister John Swinney has said, reports the PA news agency. Graham Simpson announced the move at a press conference alongside Reform UK leader Nigel Farage on Wednesday.
A former Labour councillor in Glasgow who quit the party after being accused of making racist remarks has joined Reform UK, making her the seventeenth Scottish councillor to defect to them. Reform UK announced on Thursday morning that Audrey Dempsey, who now sits as an independent on Glasgow city council, had become its latest elected member.
A Reform council leader’s decision to ban his councillors from engaging with a prominent local newspaper is a “massive attack on local democracy” and a sign of things to come should the party form the next government, the outlet’s editor has warned. In an unprecedented move, Nottinghamshire county council’s four-month-old Reform administration has said it will no longer deal with the Nottingham Post, its online edition and a team of BBC-funded local democracy journalists that it manages.
Children and young people are being overdiagnosed with mental health conditions in a society that has lost sight of the reality that child development is “messy and uneven”, the former health secretary Jeremy Hunt has said. He is the latest senior figure to add his voice to calls for a radical overhaul of the special educational needs and disabilities (Send) system in England.
Keir Starmer has begun a shake-up of No 10, including replacing an aide whose appointment had been a key battleground amid the departure of Sue Gray last autumn. Nin Pandit, the prime minister’s top civil service aide, is to leave her role after less than 10 months. Sources at No 10 denied she had quit and said she would step into a new policy delivery role and the prime minister would now take more direct control of delivery.
Keir Starmer has appointed the outspoken founder of Octopus Energy as an adviser, with a remit to challenge government thinking. Greg Jackson has joined the Cabinet Office board, an influential core of government advisers, as a non-executive member.
Trade minister Douglas Alexander will promote the UK as an economic partner during a visit to Japan and South Korea, starting on Thursday. According to the PA news agency, in Japan, Alexander will give a speech at the Pacific Future forum, declaring that the UK is open for business and can be an indispensable partner in upholding global order.
Former prime minister Liz Truss has appeared on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast to give her views on the current economic situation in the UK. Asked whether she would join Reform, she said she was “not really thinking about party politics at the moment because my whole experience of being in government was that the power was not in the hands of the politicians”.
Updated
The Conservatives have accused the government of prioritising illegal migrants over local people with its Epping asylum seeker injunction challenge.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said: “This has been a day of shame for Labour. The Home Office instructed their lawyers to argue that the rights of illegal immigrants claiming asylum are more important than those of local people.
“Given that young girls have reported being sexually assaulted by middle aged immigrants from the hotel, this is appalling. When will this government stand up for our country, instead of prioritising people who entered illegally?”
He claimed that “this border crisis and public safety crisis for women and girls seems set to get worse and worse”.
Data out last week shows that the current government is processing asylum applications much more quickly than the previous administration, with 71,000 cases awaiting approval, relating to 91,000 people, compared with 134,000 two years ago.
While the number of asylum seekers being housed in hotels has risen by 8% to 32,059 in a year, according to Home Office data, that is still below the peak of 56,042 asylum seekers in hotels at the end of September 2023 under the Tories.
