UK politics: fury from unions as pay rises for civil servants capped at 3% – as it happened

Boris Johnson’s government is facing the threat of industrial action. Photograph: WIktor Szymanowicz/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock

5.01pm BST

Afternoon summary

• The government is facing the threat of industrial action by civil servants after publishing guidance saying they should get average pay rises of 2% - with maximum awards capped at 3%. (See 2.05pm.)

• Keir Starmer has said the public should be told if the prime minister’s wife, Carrie Johnson, receives a fixed-penalty notice for breaking lockdown rules.

• The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, has said refugees in Ukraine are facing “Kafkaesque” bureaucracy as they try to navigate Home Office visa requirements.

• The UK government has expanded its sanctions against Russia to 14 more people and organisations principally involved with information and media, including a prominent TV anchor and the group that controls the RT television channel.

• The Home Office has failed to transform its culture or to become a more compassionate department as it promised to do after the Windrush scandal, a critical inspection report has found.

• Lord Grade, the Conservative peer chosen to oversee regulation of the internet, has said he does not use social media but is aware of how it works thanks to his children.

• The company running the national tutoring programme (NTP) has been axed and funding will go directly to schools instead after the government was forced into a climbdown over its flagship scheme.

Updated at 5.49pm BST

4.53pm BST

Number of people in poverty fell during first year of pandemic, DWP figures show

The number of people in the UK living in poverty fell during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, according to new figures, PA Media reports. PA says:

A total of 13.4 million individuals were estimated to be in relative low income – below 60% of average household income - in the year to March 2021.

This was down from a record high of 14.5 million the previous year, but higher than the equivalent figure of 13 million a decade earlier in 2010-11.

The number of children living in poverty also fell in 2020-21, down year-on-year from 4.3 million to 3.9 million, meaning some 400,000 children were pulled out of poverty.

The figures, published by the Department for Work and Pensions, show that average household income fell during the first year of the pandemic, from £478 a week in 2019-20 to £472 in 2020-21, after housing costs.

But poorer households actually saw their incomes rise, from £192 a week to £200.

Commenting on the figures, Jonathan Cribb and Thomas Wernham from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said:

This is almost certainly driven by the substantial increases in the generosity of universal credit and other benefits that poorer households are particularly reliant upon for their incomes.

This growth comes in stark contrast to the very low income growth for poor households in prior years - which averaged only 0.5% between 2011 and 2019.

However, with the end of the temporary uplift to Universal Credit in autumn of 2021, and rising inflation meaning benefits are not keeping up with inflation currently, the prospects for lower income households in 2021-22 and 2022-23 are much bleaker.

And Alison Garnham, chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group, said:

Today’s figures show that government has the power to protect children from poverty.

But in a week when the chancellor made clear he was comfortable with his choices and the prime minister claimed child poverty had been left out of his plan for the country ‘by accident’ it looks like ministers have turned their backs on low-income families.

Many of the children who were lifted out of poverty by the £20 increase to universal credit have already been forced back over the brink by the government’s actions.

And as millions struggle with spiralling costs, we know the picture will worsen.

Updated at 5.50pm BST