Watchdog rejects Johnson’s suggestion Sue Gray’s Labour job meant she was not impartial investigating Partygate – as it happened

Sue Gray in a parliamentary committee in 2022. Acoba has recommended a six-month cooling-off period before she starts her new job with Labour. Photograph: PRU/AFP/Getty Images

5.15pm BST

Afternoon summary

• Sue Gray will start work as Keir Starmer’s chief of staff by the autumn after a ruling by the watchdog on post-government jobs, but is facing a rap on the knuckles from the Cabinet Office alleging she broke the civil service code.

• Zac Goldsmith has resigned as a minister, accusing Rishi Sunak of being “uninterested” in the environment – but No 10 claimed he quit after being told to apologise for undermining the parliamentary Partygate inquiry into Boris Johnson.

• Rishi Sunak has unveiled his long-term workforce plan for the NHS, saying it has three features: “train, retain and reform”. (See 11.16am.) Commenting on the reform elements, he told a Downing Street press conference:

It’s not enough just to have more doctors and nurses. We need to change the way they work so that they can deliver better care for patients.

Partly, this is about seizing the opportunities of new technologies like AI.

Or just look at virtual wards, which use technology to allow patients to recover at home, providing a better service at lower cost.

But we’re also going to expand new roles like ‘nurse associates and physician associates’, so that the most qualified staff can focus on patients with the most complex needs.

We’re going to drive the biggest ever expansion of apprenticeships in the NHS so that one fifth of all clinical training will be offered through degree apprenticeships, helping to bring staff into the NHS from a much wider range of backgrounds.

• Keir Starmer has been accused of presiding over a Labour party obsessed with “petty tyranny”, as Neal Lawson, the head of the centre-left pressure group Compass, claimed he faced expulsion as a member after 44 years.

• More than 24,000 asylum seekers from about one-third of the world’s countries could face removal to Rwanda by the UK Home Office in the future, even though the scheme was found to be unlawful in the court of appeal on Thursday. As Diane Taylor reports, Home Office data obtained under a freedom of information request shows that, between January 2021 and March 2023, 24,083 asylum seekers were issued with letters warning them that they were being considered for forcible removal.

• The chief executive of the water company Severn Trent is seeking backing from industry and the Labour party for British utility firms to be reformed as “social purpose” companies that would stay in private hands but give greater weight to the needs of customers, staff and the environment.

Rishi Sunak at his press conference today. Photograph: WPA/Getty Images

Updated at 5.29pm BST

4.58pm BST

Cabinet Office lawyer tells court it would be 'absurd' to let Covid inquiry see all government WhatsApps, even if irrelevant

Government lawyers have told the high court that the challenge over the UK Covid inquiry chair’s request for the former prime minister Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp messages, notebooks and diaries “raises an important point of principle”, PA Media reports. PA says:

Lady Hallett, who is chairing the public inquiry, requested unredacted WhatsApps between Johnson, his then-adviser Henry Cook and 40 named individuals involved in the central government response to the pandemic between January 2020 and February 2022 – including group chats where they were used to communicate about the response to Covid-19.

She also asked for Johnson’s diaries and his 24 notebooks from the same period of time.

The Cabinet Office has launched a judicial review of her request, and her subsequent ruling in May refusing its challenge to her request, which is being heard in London on Friday.

Sir James Eadie KC, representing the Cabinet Office, said in written arguments: “These proceedings raise an important point of principle.”

He added that the power to demand evidence, contained in section 21 of the Inquiries Act 2005, is “expressly limited to documents ‘that relate to a matter in question at the inquiry’”.

Eadie told the court the Cabinet Office brought the challenge with “reluctance” and said in written arguments that it was mounted “on the basis that the inquiry’s powers do not extend to requiring the provision of documents that are irrelevant to the inquiry’s work”.

He said: “It was made clear to the inquiry that, following careful review by solicitors and counsel, there was in fact a significant quantity of irrelevant material purportedly covered by the notice.

“The broad nature of the material so characterised was described by the Cabinet Office in its application – it included ‘references to personal and family information, including illness and disciplinary matters’, ‘comments of a personal nature about identified or identifiable individuals which are unrelated to Covid-19 or that individual’s role in connection with the response to it’ and ‘discussions of entirely separate policy areas with which the inquiry is not concerned’.”

Eadie also said it would be “absurd” if the inquiry was entitled to call for all communications between ministers in the two-year period on the basis the chair may be “interested at some point in seeing whether they were focusing inappropriately on other policy areas”.

He said: “Compelling the provision of every WhatsApp over a two-year period, without any subject matter qualification, is absurd.”

The hearing, before Lord Justice Dingemans and Mr Justice Garnham, is due to conclude on Monday.

Updated at 5.05pm BST