UK politics: ‘All options on table’ for Scunthorpe steelworks, says Starmer, amid calls for nationalisation – as it happened

Keir Starmer at the liaison committee on Tuesday Photograph: House of Commons/PA

6.21pm BST

Early evening summary

• Keir Starmer has said all options should remain on the table for the future of British Steel’s Scunthorpe plant – amid reports that the government is “seriously considering” nationalising the plant. (See 3.34pm.)

• Rachel Reeves has declined to back calls for the UK government to launch a “buy British” campaign in response to Donald Trump’s tariffs, saying it would make Britain too “inward-looking”.

• Reeves stepped in to soothe stock market jitters today amid signs that the punishing global sell-off triggered by US trade tariffs was starting to ease.

• Hundreds of thousands of seriously ill and disabled people will become “invisible” and cut adrift from local support services as a result of the government’s £5bn programme of disability benefit cuts, experts have warned.

Updated at 6.21pm BST

6.16pm BST

Starmer admits digital services tax and Online Safety Act raised in trade talks with US

As Hugo Gye reports for the i, during his evidence to the liaison committee Keir Starmer admitted that the digital services tax and the Online Safety Act were being discussed with the US as part of the trade deal talks.

Starmer told the committee:

In relation to trade talks, obviously there are questions about the appropriate way to tax digital services, etc. There are questions about how technology impacts free speech.

I’ve been very clear in my view that we need to have arrangements for a digital tax of some sort, and equally we need to be pioneers of free speech which we have been for very many years in this country.

But at the same time, we rightly protect under the Online Safety Act – further provisions of which are coming into force pretty quickly – and when it comes to paedophiles and protecting children, I take a pretty strong line that we take the necessary measures in order to do so.

Ministers have played down the likelihood of concessions in these areas, saying the US tech companies will always have to pay a fair rate of tax and that basic protections under the Online Safety Act will not be removed. But they have not ruled any changes or reviews of these policies.

Calum Miller, the Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesperson, said:

Keir Starmer must commit to giving parliament a say over any future Trump trade deal, including any concessions over online safety and the tech tax.

It would be immoral for Trump’s tech bro backers to be given tax breaks while children’s safety online is thrown under the bus.