Closing summary
This blog will be closing shortly. Thank you for reading it and for commenting below the line. You can keep up to date with the Guardian’s UK politics reporting here.
Here is a summary of the key posts from today’s live blog:
Labour is “not terrified” of Reform UK, Scottish secretary Ian Murray has said. The minister ridiculed the party’s deputy leader Richard Tice, who on Thursday appeared not to know the names of two council defectors during a visit to Glasgow. Speaking to the PA news agency after a speech in Edinburgh, Murray said: “We’re certainly not terrified of a party (whose deputy leader) doesn’t know the name of his own councillors.”
Downing Street said Donald Trump’s comments on Nato are not any different to what he said in his first term, after the US president suggested his country would not defend allies who do not spend enough on defence. The prime minister’s official spokesperson noted that Trump “reiterated his commitment” to article 5 last week when he met Keir Starmer. Asked about Trump’s comments overnight, health minister Stephen Kinnock told Times Radio on Friday that the comments presented “no issues” for the UK. He also suggested it was “fair enough” for the US to expect Europe to do more on defence.
The defence secretary had “very constructive” talks with his US counterpart in Washington DC, Downing Street has said. John Healey and Pete Hegseth discussed “deepening the UK-US defence relationship” and finding a “lasting peace” for Ukraine, the prime minister’s official spokesperson said.
The “broken social security system is holding our people back”, Number 10 has said, ahead of an anticipated welfare overhaul. Downing Street said on Friday there has been an “unsustainable rise in welfare spending” and it promised reforms in “the coming weeks”.
People in London have been breathing significantly cleaner air since the expansion of the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez), a study has found. Levels of deadly pollutants that are linked to a wide range of health problems – from cancer to impaired lung development, heart attacks to premature births – have dropped, with some of the biggest improvements coming in the capital’s most deprived areas.
The government is “betraying our children and capitulating to big tech” by “gutting” a private member’s bill that would have included a ban on smartphones in school, MPs have heard. Conservative former education secretary Kit Malthouse described the protection of children (digital safety and data protection) bill, as a “hollowed-out gesture” before its consideration was adjourned on Friday. The version of the bill introduced by Labour MP Josh MacAlister, would instruct UK chief medical officers to publish advice for parents on the use of smartphones and social media by children. MacAlister had originally planned for the bill to call for a legal requirement to make all schools in England mobile-free zones. On Friday, he told the House of Commons that there had been a “fundamental rewiring of childhood itself” as a result of increasing smartphone use.
Keir Starmer had a phone call with the leaders of Canada, Norway, Turkey and Iceland as well as European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and European Council president Antonio Costa. It was primarily to update on a meeting EU leaders held yesterday, Downing Street said. In that meeting, EU leaders committed to bolstering the continent’s defences and freeing up hundreds of billions of euros for security.
The Scotland Office has entered a “new era”, Scottish secretary Ian Murray said. Speaking at an event at Edinburgh University, the minister said there had been three eras at the department, the first based on setting up devolution, the second one “mired by division and conflict” and the third was ushered in by the Labour win last summer.
The UK government is making plans to cut the funding for GB Energy, the state-owned company set up by Labour to drive renewable energy and cut household bills, in June’s spending review. Cuts to the £8.3bn of taxpayer money promised over the five-year parliament would be another blow for Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, after he was overruled by the government when the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, backed the expansion of Heathrow’s third runway.
Ministers are dragging their heels on an investigation into the mistreatment of migrant carers, the country’s largest nursing union has said, as it continues to receive complaints about low pay, substandard accommodation and illegal fees. Nicola Ranger, the general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, has written to Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, to urge her to speed up her promised investigation into the abuse of foreign care workers.
The work and pensions secretary, Liz Kendall, has said helping more people back into a job is the best way to cut the benefits bill, as the chancellor looks for savings ahead of the 26 March spring statement. With Rachel Reeves zeroing in on welfare as a source of potential cuts as she prepares to take action to meet her self-imposed fiscal rules, Kendall said the starting point must be getting people back into work – not numbers on a spreadsheet.
Britain will continue to supply intelligence to Ukraine, though the more limited capabilities on offer from London and other European countries will make it difficult to replace the flow halted from the US earlier this week. The UK will also continue to supply its analysis of the raw data, sources said on Thursday, though in line with normal intelligence practice it will not simply pass on US information obtained via long-established sharing arrangements between the two countries.
Tens of thousands of children in migrant and refugee families in the UK are being denied access to government-funded childcare because of benefit restrictions linked to their parents’ immigration status, a report says. Having “no recourse to public funds” (NRPF) means parents are not entitled to 30 hours of free childcare and are having to stay home to look after their young children instead of working. This is pushing families into poverty and denying their children the benefits of the early years education available to their peers, the report finds.
Council tax costs in Scotland will hit record levels next month after local authorities agreed to raise rates by up to 15%, with some planning new levies on tourists and cruise ships. All of Scotland’s 32 local authorities have announced council tax increases from April of at least 6%, with the majority raising them by about 10%, after years of successive cuts to their grant funding.
Scrutiny arrangements for Britain’s spy agencies are “fundamentally flawed” and the existing system “isn’t viable operationally,” the chair of the watchdog intelligence and security committee (ISC) said on Friday in a rare public statement. Insufficient staffing and resources mean that “we cannot provide” the intelligence community “with its licence to operate” warned Labour peer and former MP Lord Beamish – while new parts of the intelligence apparatus are not being scrutinised at all.
Reform UK is facing a split at the top after Nigel Farage called one of his most prominent MPs “utterly completely wrong” for calling him the “messianic” leader of a protest party. Farage hit out at Rupert Lowe after the Great Yarmouth MP and former Southampton FC chair criticised his leadership publicly in an interview.
Here are a couple of images from today on the newswires:
