Uk politics: Streeting defends asylum policy, but says he’s not ‘comfortable’ with forced removal of children – as it happened

Wes Streeting, pictured earlier this week Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

5.31pm GMT

Afternoon summary

• Wes Streeting, the health secretary, has defended the government’s new asylum policy – while admitting that he would not be “comfortable” about seeing families with small children deported. (See 4.16pm.)

• Shabana Mahmood has been accused of “ethnic stereotyping” and “indecent demagoguery” by Albania’s prime minister after the home secretary singled out Albanian families and children for refusing to return to their homeland.

• A Russian spy ship has entered British waters and shone lasers at military pilots, the defence secretary has said, as he warned the UK was facing a “new era of threat” from hostile countries.

• Keir Starmer has called on Nigel Farage to urgently explain himself after the Reform leader wholesale denied numerous detailed allegations of racist behaviour during his teenage years.

• A Reform UK councillor has been suspended for participating in a WhatsApp group where members allegedly called for a “mass Islam genocide”.

• The UK has sanctioned a Russian crime syndicate behind cyber-attacks on British businesses. As PA Media says, the crackdown targets Media Land, which operates hosting services that enable cybercriminals to conduct ransomware and phishing attacks. The Foreign Office has more details here.

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.

5.21pm GMT

Starmer will have to resign as PM if SNP wins majority at next year's Holyrood election, John Swinney claims

John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, has said that he thinks Keir Starmer will stand down if the SNP wins an overall majority at next year’s Holyrood election.

Holyrood uses a PR system that makes it hard for a single party to win an overall majority, and it has only happened once, in 2011, when Alex Salmond was leading the SNP. At the last election, in 2021, the SNP was one seat short of a majority.

Speaking to the Institute for Government thintank in London, Swinney said that his target in May next year was to win outright majority again.

He went on:

If that was to happen in May of next year, then I have no doubt that the prime minister would not survive in office.

Swinney also said, with an outright majority, it would be easier for the SNP to demand another independence referendum. Asked why that would be better than just having a majority of pro-independence MSPs in the parliament (as there are now), he explained:

The difference is that the SNP-only majority [after 2011] was not ignored. That’s the big difference, and that’s what sets the precedence.

Recent polling suggests that the SNP will easily be the biggest party at Holyrood after the next election, but that Swinney will be a few seats short of a majority.