Closing summary
This blog will be closing shortly. You can keep up to date with all the latest on UK politics here until Andrew Sparrow returns tomorrow morning.
Until then, here’s a summary of today’s key developments:
Peter Mandelson has complained about the decision by the police to arrest him yesterday, with a statement issued by his lawyers saying he had already agreed to attend a police interview last month. They claimed he had been arrested on the basis of a “baseless suggestion” he was about to flee the country and take up permanent residence abroad.
Several outlets claimed it was lord speaker Michael Forsyth who passed information on to the Met about Mandelson planning to flee the country. A spokesperson for the lord speaker rejected this claim, describing it as “entirely false”.
MPs have passed a humble address motion from the Lib Dems that calls for papers relating to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor being made trade envoy to be published, meaning the government must comply with the request. Trade minister Chris Bryant also said the government was working “at pace” on legislation to remove Mountbatten-Windsor from the line of succession, describing him as a “rude, arrogant and entitled man”.
Liam Byrne, the Labour chair of the Commons business committee, has said that his committee may launch an inquiry covering Mountbatten-Windsor’s work as a trade envoy when the police inquiry is over. Speaking at the start of an unrelated committee hearing today, he said the committee would “begin gathering information immediately so that we might stand ready to launch an inquiry into the governance regime for trade envoys at the moment the police and criminal justice system action has concluded”.
The Ministry of Justice will ramp up use of artificial intelligence (AI) in courts to cut backlogs, David Lammy, the deputy PM and justice secretary has said. He also said the cap on court sitting days will be lifted.
Richard Tice, Reform UK business spokesperson, announced two proposals relating to pensions, incluing pooling funds in the local government pension scheme and using them to fund a new British sovereign wealth fund, which would manage assets of up to £575bn. He also confirmed that Reform UK wants to end defined benefit pensions for new council staff, replacing them with defined contributions ones, which are considerably less generous.
A high court judge has dismissed an attempt by the independent MP Rupert Lowe to block a parliamentary watchdog from investigating a complaint against him. Lowe, the MP for Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, is taking legal action against the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme (ICGS), which investigates complaints of inappropriate behaviour against MPs, after the body’s decision last July to investigate a complaint made about him.
Danny Kruger, the Reform UK MP in charge of preparing the party for government, has complained that Britain has a “totally unregulated sexual economy”, in an interview highlighting his parties support for families. Kruger, a social conservative and evangelical Christian who defected to Reform from the Tories last year, made the comment in an interview with Politics Home.
A bid by Conservative backbench peers to block a generational smoking ban, championed by Conservative former prime minister Rishi Sunak, failed on Tuesday.
The move, which would instead have raised the age of sale for tobacco products in England and Wales to 21, was heavily defeated in the House of Lords by 246 votes to 78, majority 168.
While most of those backing the change to the Tobacco and Vapes Bill were Conservatives, the voting list also showed two Liberal Democrats supported it.
