30% of Britons think Burnham would do better job than Starmer as prime minister, poll suggests – as it happened

Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham. Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA

5.31pm GMT

Afternoon summary

• Matt Goodwin, the GB News presenter and former academic named today as Reform UK’s candidate in the Gorton and Denton byelection, has refused to disown his claim that UK-born people from minority ethnic backgrounds are not necessarily British. The Green party leader, Zack Polanski, said that, by choosing Goodwin as a candidate, Reform were turning the byelection into “a straight contest between hope and hate”. He went on:

The Green party will be out campaigning every day, to improve the cost of living by taxing the super rich.

We alone will be taking the fight to Reform, whose selection of a man with a track record of anti-Muslim bigotry in a community with a good history of community relations is an insult to the people of Gorton and Denton.

It tells you everything you need to know that Reform are parachuting in this rent-an-extremist; this isn’t about representing the people of Gorton and Genton, it’s about using this place as a platform for their careers.

• The Labour party’s civil war over the byelection has intensified after Andy Burnham accused Downing Street sources of lying about his decision to apply to stand in the Manchester seat.

• The Treasury has unveiled a support package worth more than £80m a year for pubs and live music venues in England, in a climbdown that follows a fierce backlash against plans to overhaul business rates.

• Freeholders may “resort to lawfare” to block the government’s £250 cap on ground rents Angela Rayner has warned, as leasehold experts urged ministers to speed up the “glacial” pace of reform.

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.

5.31pm GMT

John Healey tells MPs he has identified 'military options' that could be used to seize Russian-linked tankers busting sanctions

Dan Sabbagh is the Guardian’s defence and security editor.

Britain has “identified further military options” that the UK could deploy to capture Russia linked oil tankers and is in discussions with Baltic and Nordic countries about possible joint seizures, the defence secretary said.

John Healey told MPs on the defence select committee that the UK would shortly host a meeting of the 10-country Joint Expeditionary Force to examine military and legal options to target sanctions-busting shipping linked to Russia.

Countries belonging to the Joint Expeditionary Force, traditionally chaired by the UK, include Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden as well as the three Baltic states – all the maritime nations nearest Russia’s Baltic and Arctic ports on which oil exports increasingly depend.

Healey told the committee:

I’ve now identified further military options that we can use to target shadow shipping. I’m discussing these with cabinet colleagues.

The UK will host a meeting shortly of JEF Nations, the military legal experts, that allow us to look at the legal basis on which we can act against shadow shipping and sanctioned ships, and the military options that we might use.

Earlier this month, the US military seized the Marinera or Bella 1 oil tanker with help from the RAF and the Royal Navy. The ship was sailing from the Caribbean sea towards Russia, having hastily reflagged itself under Russian jurisdiction.

The tanker had been accused of previously shipping sanctioned Russian and Iranian oil to China, so partly funding Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine. Healey told MPs he would like to see any oil seized “recycled and put into Ukraine in order to fight Putin’s invasion”.