Summary of the day …
Labour would immediately cancel deportation flights to Rwanda if it entered government, Keir Starmer has pledged. After a speech in which he announced his plans to tackle illegal immigration, Starmer committed to scrapping the Rwanda scheme “absolutely, flights and all”.
Starmer welcomed Labour’s newest MP, Natalie Elphicke, at a speech in Dover and said her defection was proof that the party was building a broad range of support. The Labour party should be “less tribal” and be open to “reasonably minded people, whichever way they voted in the past”, he said. Elphicke said “Under Keir Starmer, Labour occupies the centre ground”.
The UK is officially out of recession after figures showed the economy grew by 0.6% in the first three months of the year. Prime minister Rishi Sunak said “things are starting to feel better”. Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said a government “victory lap” over 0.6% growth shows “how out of touch they are”.
John Swinney has chaired his first cabinet meeting as first minister of Scotland. He said “Today, my colleagues and I embark on a new chapter as we collectively work to build a better, brighter future for the people of Scotland.”
First minister of Wales, Vaughan Gething, has appealed to Tata Steel not to close its blast furnaces at Port Talbot until it has had a chance to speak to any new Labour government in Westminster.
Mark Harper, the Conservative transport secretary, is examining whether there should be a ban on the use of what are known as floating bus stops, where a segregated bike lane is routed behind a bus stop and passengers cross the cycle lane to reach it.
Education secretary Gillian Keegan has told the Times that parents working from home have contributed to a rise in students missing school days.
Judges on a freedom of information tribunal have ruled that the cost of protecting members of the royal family cannot be revealed to the public.
Thank you so much for your comments and emails today. I hope you have as good a weekend as you are able to, and I will see you on the Guardian website again somewhere soon.
A three-year political impasse and ongoing budget uncertainty left the health system in Northern Ireland less well equipped to deal with a pandemic in 2020 than it had been a decade earlier, the region’s chief medical officer (CMO) has said.
PA Media reports that Sir Michael McBride told the Covid-19 Inquiry that services were existing on a “hand-to-mouth” basis in the years leading up to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic at the outset of 2020.
Giving evidence in Belfast he said:
I think that it is absolutely preferable to have a government in Northern Ireland, to have ministers in place. I think we were fortunate during the pandemic that we did have ministers in place and a government in place.
I think that that period between 2017 for three years until three weeks before the pandemic started was a difficult period. We headed into this pandemic with a less resilient health and social care system, budgetary uncertainty, significant workforce challenges and vacancies, (and) a system that was long overdue for change.
The Northern Ireland assembly held elections in March 2017, but did not formally convene after voting until January 2020.
