Starmer condemns Diane Abbott comments, saying they were antisemitic and ‘hierarchy of racism’ never acceptable – as it happened

6.00pm BST

Early evening summary

• Keir Starmer has condemned comments about racism by Diane Abbott as “antisemitic” but said any decision about whether she could stand again as a Labour MP would be made after a formal investigation.

• Rishi Sunak’s flagship asylum legislation risks breaching international obligations to protect human rights and could expose vulnerable people to serious harm, the UK’s equality watchdog has said.

• The chair of Burberry has called Brexit a “drag on growth” and asked Rishi Sunak to reverse a decision to remove tax-free shopping for tourists that has left Britain nursing the “weakest” Covid recovery among its big markets.

• An RAF plane has landed at a port city in the north-east of Sudan as a British minister said that the UK was evaluating further military options for rescuing non-diplomats from the country by land, sea and air.

Keir Starmer speaking to the mediain Camberwell, south London.
Photograph: Aaron Chown/PA

Updated at 6.03pm BST

5.53pm BST

What Humza Yousaf hopes to achieve from his meeting with Rishi Sunak

Humza Yousaf will be challenging Rishi Sunak over his government’s apparently hostile attitude to the Scottish government’s policies, particularly on bottle recycling and its lobbying with foreign governments, when the pair meet in the prime minister’s Commons office this evening.

It is something of an historic meeting: the UK’s first prime minister of south Asian heritage meeting the first Scottish first minister of south Asian descent, but that may be the only thing the pair have in common. Yousaf is a centre-left and republican Scottish nationalist; Sunak a right-leaning fiscal conservative.

Scottish officials say Yousaf has three major topics to press the prime minister on. Firstly is what the Scottish government sees as Westminster’s “ludicrous” obstruction of Holyrood’s troubled deposit return scheme after the UK government refused to lift cross-border sales restrictions on Scottish bottles and cans. Westminster has already blocked Holyrood’s proposed gender recognition reforms, a decision Yousaf is now challenging in court.

The first minister is meanwhile deeply irritated by a “bizarre” instruction from James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, to Britain’s ambassadors overseas to closely watch, and ideally sit in on, any meetings between Scottish ministers and foreign ministers.

According to Yousaf’s team, this mandate is based on Cleverly’s mistaken assumption that Scottish ministers use foreign lobbying trips as a Trojan horse to push independence. Not so, they say. These trips are far more mundane inward investment and cultural expeditions.

They also insist that foreign diplomats are disregarding the implication in Cleverly’s stance that Scotland ought to be ignored; Yousaf has been invited by the German ambassador, Miguel Berger, to dinner with other senior diplomats on Tuesday evening.

Last on Yousaf’s list is a plea for the Treasury to reverse its 10.1% tax rise on whisky – a levy increase that worsens the damaging impact on distillers of the steep increases in energy prices on which the whisky industry had no government help.

It is unlikely Yousaf will get much succour from Sunak; UK government officials say the prime minister regards tonight’s meeting as a getting-to-know you introduction, and not a policy summit. Sunak, they say, is comfortable with the policy stances taken by his cabinet colleagues. Yousaf is likely to return home unsatisfied.

Humza Yousaf at Holyrood last week. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Updated at 5.59pm BST