Zelenskyy says Europe is a ‘global force’ that can stand against any other power in address to MPs – as it happened

Volodymyr Zelenskyy addresses MPs in the Houses of Parliament. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/AP

6.22pm GMT

Early evening summary

• Rachel Reeves has announced that the Treasury will draw up plans to give regional leaders a share of national tax revenues as part of a radical plan to rebalance the English economy.

• Nigel Farage has sold videos in which he endorsed a neo-Nazi event, repeated extremist slogans and supported a man convicted over his involvement in a far-right riot, a Guardian investigation has revealed.

• The Iranian regime and Vladimir Putin’s Russia are “brothers in hatred”, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has told MPs and peers. As the Press Association reports, the Ukrainian president highlighted co-operation between Tehran and Moscow on Shahed kamikaze drones which had targeted Ukraine and countries across the Gulf. He said Ukraine’s bitter experience had resulted in expertise in combating drone warfare which was now being offered to help countries in the Middle East. Zelenskyy suggested the technology developed in his country could have helped protect RAF Akrotiri from the drone strike which hit it earlier this month. Speaking in a Westminster committee room, Zelenskyy said:

The regimes in Russia and Iran are brothers in hatred and that is why they are brothers in weapons.

And we want regimes built on hatred to never, never win in anything.

And we want no such regime to threaten Europe or our partners.

• Students in Kent are to be offered a targeted vaccination against meningitis B after two more cases in the deadly outbreak were confirmed and pharmacies ran out of vaccine doses.

• The government is to put the BBC’s charter on a permanent footing for the first time, after the corporation said the change was needed to protect it from political interference.

• Religious leaders have said that plans to rip up the UK’s asylum rules by ending the right to permanent refugee status would damage integration and should be rethought.

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.

6.13pm GMT

Cabinet secretary confirms leak inquiry underway into report about national security council's Iran policy debate

Antonia Romeo, the new cabinet secretary, has confirmed that a formal leak inquiry is taking place into how Tim Shipman, the Spectator’s political editor, was able to obtain information from a national security council meeting about the Iran war.

In his report, published days after the war started, Shipman said that, the day before the war actually started, Ed Miliband, Rachel Reeves and Yvette Cooper ganged up to insist that the UK should initially refuse the US permission to use British military bases. Shipman said that Starmer was more keen on allowing the US to use British bases to attack Iranian military bases – a position the UK later adopted, after the war started, after the US submitted a formal request and after Iran started attacking other Gulf states where British citizens are based.

Romeo has disclosed that a leak inquiry is taking place in a letter responding to one sent by Alex Burghart, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, who wanted to know if the leak was being taken seriously.

When Theresa May was PM, she sacked Gavin Williamson as defence secretary after he was accused of leaking from a national security committee meeting – a claim he denied.

In a post on social media, Shipman said holding a leak inquiry was an over-reaction.

That the prime minister is in hock to the soft lefties in his cabinet is hardly a state secret

In all seriousness nothing I was told was remotely sensitive from a security point of view. It was politically embarrassing, that’s all. How pathetic

Updated at 6.13pm GMT