We mentioned in an earlier post that Angela Rayner has urged the government to acknowledge people’s “real concerns” and flagged high levels of deprivation where the worst riots erupted last summer nearly a year on from the disorder.

During the last minute of the cabinet before the summer recess, the deputy prime minister and housing secretary updated fellow ministers on the state of social cohesion across the country and how the government is trying to improve it. A statement from the cabinet meeting, read:

The deputy prime minister said that economic insecurity, the rapid pace of deindustrialisation, immigration and the impacts on local communities and public services, technological change and the amount of time people were spending alone online, and declining trust in institutions was having a profound impact on society.

She said it was incumbent on the government to acknowledge the real concerns people have and to deliver improvements to people’s lives in their communities.

She said seventeen of the eighteen places that saw the worst of the disorder last summer ranked at the top of the most deprived, and while Britain was a successful multi-ethnic, multi-faith country, the government had to show it had a plan to address people’s concerns and provide opportunities for everyone to flourish.

She said as part of this the upcoming plan for neighbourhoods would deliver billions of pounds of investment over ten years in hundreds of the most deprived places, to restore pride in people’s local areas and improve people’s lives.

Policing in Scotland will not be “put in a detrimental position” because of the cost of Donald Trump’s visit, John Swinney has said.

The US president is due to arrive in Scotland later this week and visit both his golf courses in the country, but concerns have been raised about the policing operation required.

The last time Trump visited Scotland - while he was no longer in office - substantial protests sprang up.

He is expected to meet both prime minister Keir Starmer and first minister Swinney during his time in Scotland.

The chancellor Rachel Reeves is currently appearing before the economic affairs committee and taking questions.

She is asked to set out her “diagnosis for the ills of the UK economy” and what the problems are “that continue to plague the UK at the moment”.

Reeves replies that they key problem facing Britain is productivity and says that “investment is the answer”.

The chancellor adds:

I think we’ve got the lowest private investment and lowest total investment as a share of GDP of any country in the G7.

The result of that is our productivity performance has not kept pace with our competitors and similar countries around the world.

That’s why the fiscal rules that I’ve set out do treat investment spending differently.

The BBC is reporting that Kemi Badenoch may not be done with the reshuffle of her top team. The outlet is reporting that, in total, half a dozen changes are expected this afternoon, when a full list of appointments should be published at some point.

Here is an extract of a story filed by my colleagues, Jessica Elgot and Peter Walker, about Kemi Badenoch’s reshuffle, which mentions how James Cleverly has positioned himself ideologically:

In a speech last week, Cleverly warned the Conservatives against pursuing a populist agenda that would try to ape Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

He also discounted the idea that he hoped to replace Badenoch, saying his party had to “get out of this habit of cycling through leaders in the hope that ditching this one and picking a new one will make life easy for us”.

Cleverly had been touted to run as the Tory candidate for mayor of London – and would not be drawn on his future ambitions when he gave the speech last week. He received a knighthood in April last year as part of Rishi Sunak’s resignation honours list.

The health secretary, Wes Streeting, has wished Ed Argar well after his decision to stand down as shadow health secretary.

Argar rose to speak for his “last despatch box appearance for the foreseeable future” on Tuesday and said:

Can I take the opportunity, after seven years almost continuously on the frontbench in government and opposition, to thank you, to say it has been a privilege?

And to the secretary of state – it has been a pleasure to shadow him, and I think he knows it, but I genuinely wish him well.

Argar had earlier raised the case of the St Mary’s Birth Centre in his Melton and Syston constituency, which is temporarily closed, and asked for a meeting with Streeting if it appeared “that ‘temporary’ could risk becoming ‘permanent’” over the summer.

Streeting replied:

Can I absolutely give him that assurance that I’d be happy to meet with him about his constituency issue, or indeed anything else?

Because, for all of the exchanges that we have across these dispatch boxes on issues of disagreement, it is not always readily understood beyond this House the extent to which both sides work extremely constructively together on the enormous number of issues that we have in common in pursuit of the national interest, and that virtues of wisdom and kindness and selfless dedication to public service are not the preserve of one side of the House.

[Argar] has those qualities in abundance and we wish him very well personally and professionally.

Laura Anne Jones said the Conservatives were a party she “no longer recognised” and she could “no longer justify” its policies.

She said her defection was “about the people of Wales” – and that Reform “speaks to me” and “is listening to the people of Great Britain”.

Speaking at the Royal Welsh Show, Jones said:

I’ve just suddenly felt that the Conservative party was unrecognisable to me. It wasn’t the party that I joined over three decades ago.

As we reported in the opening post, Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch is set to reshuffle her shadow cabinet this afternoon.

James Cleverly, the former Conservative home and foreign secretary, is expected to return to the frontbench in a prominent role.

We don’t know who will be replaced but my colleagues Jessica Elgot and Peter Walker are reporting that the shadow chancellor, Mel Stride, will stay in his place.

The BBC is reporting that no one from the 2024 intake of Tory MPs will get a promotion to the shadow cabinet. The bulk of the shadow cabinet reshuffles are expected in the afternoon.

The governor of the Bank of England has said it “would not be sensible” for the government to scrap the bank ring-fencing regime, after Rachel Reeves announced plans to reform the system last week.

Andrew Bailey also stressed that the UK cannot “compromise” on financial stability amid the Treasury’s plans to rip up red tape across the sector, PA reported.

“I do think the ring-fencing regime is an important part of the structure of the banking system,” he told MPs on the Treasury committee.

“It makes the resolution of banks if they’re in trouble much easier, and it benefits, particularly in terms of the UK, consumers, business and households.

“I’m sure there are things that can be improved and we will work constructively to get through that process.”

“I think it has established itself as part of the system and to me it would not be sensible to take it away at this point,” he clarified.

An attempt by three former MPs to force the UK government to hold an inquiry into the impact of Russian disinformation on the Brexit vote and other recent elections has failed at the European court of human rights.

The Strasbourg court ruled on Tuesday that countries had a “wide margin” in determining how to tackle attempts at electoral interference, and ruled against a case brought by Ben Bradshaw, Caroline Lucas and Alyn Smith.

Though the seven judges on the court held “there were undoubtedly shortcomings” in the UK’s initial response to allegations of Russian interference into the 2016 referendum, the deficit was made up for subsequently.

They noted that there had been two inquiries in the UK, including the Russia report by the intelligence and security committee in 2020, and a succession of legislation, including the National Security Act 2023, as a response to the issue.

“While the applicants have criticised these measures as ‘too little, too late’, the measures nevertheless appear to address the points raised by the applicants,” concluded the judges in a ruling released on Tuesday morning.

Russia has been accused repeatedly of trying to influence western elections in the Kremlin’s interest, including the hack of sensitive Democratic party emails in July 2016, before Donald Trump’s first election as president.

Ed Argar has quit as shadow health secretary, citing a “health scare”.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said she was “saddened” that Argar feels “unable to continue” in his position, but agreed “that you must put your health first”.

In a letter to the party leader dated 9 July and shared by Badenoch on X on Tuesday, Argar said: “I had a health scare earlier this summer and remain grateful to the doctors and hospital staff who looked after me.”

He added: “I have been well looked after, but have also listened to what the doctors said to me, and have listened to my family, and have concluded that lightening my frontbench workload over the coming months, in order to complete my recovery and fully restore my health in that period, is the sensible approach.”

The UK foreign secretary has said he is “appalled, sickened” by the “grotesque” targeting of starving Palestinians seeking food by the Israeli military, saying there would be further sanctions if the war did not end soon.

Israel on Monday launched air raids and a ground operation in Gaza, targeting Deir al-Balah, the main hub for humanitarian efforts. Military action over the weekend resulted in the highest death toll in almost two years as Gaza’s civil defence agency said at least 93 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli fire as they were queueing for food.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, David Lammy said he deeply regretted that it was not within the UK’s unilateral power to end the war and insisted, despite criticism from human rights groups, that there were no arms licences issued by the UK that could be used in Gaza and that RAF surveillance flights did not share intelligence with the Israeli military.

The UK has joined 27 other countries, including Australia, Canada and France, in condemning Israel for depriving Palestinians of “human dignity”, and urging the Israeli government to lift restrictions on the flow of aid, arguing that the suffering of civilians had “reached new depths”.

Rights groups including Amnesty International called the statement “empty words” and said all arms exports must be halted whether direct or indirect, including components for F-35 fighter jets.

Asked why there were still more than 300 licences in operation, Lammy said: “We have suspended arms sales that can be used in Gaza. I’m satisfied that we are not in any way complicit in a breach of international humanitarian law. That’s the sober undertaking that I take as foreign secretary.”

The UK government is planning to ban public bodies from paying ransoms to computer hackers, and private companies will be required to inform authorities if they plan to cave into cash demands.

The stance, announced on Tuesday by the Home Office security minister, Dan Jarvis, is intended to send a message to international cybercriminals “that the UK is united in the fight against ransomware”. It follows crippling ransomware attacks on the British Library in 2023 and NHS hospitals in London last summer.

The government said almost three-quarters of responses to a consultation backed the proposal and that “public sector bodies and operators of critical national infrastructure, including the NHS, local councils and schools, would be banned from paying ransom demands to criminals”.

Industry estimates suggest ransomware criminals received more than $1bn (£741m) from their victims globally in 2023. But Alan Woodward, a leading computer security expert at the Surrey Centre for Cyber Security, said UK public authorities are not known to pay ransoms.

He said the latest measures appeared aimed at signalling the refusal to pay more clearly to hackers around the world, which include regular offender networks like LockBit and Evil Corp.

“Some of the criminals may not know this and so communicating this could be valuable in that hackers will read that there is no point in attacking,” Woodward said. “I am not sure it will change anything in practice, but it puts everyone on notice so there can be no confusion.”

David Lammy has been interviewed on Good Morning Britain about Gaza. Here are the main takeaways from what he told Ed Balls:

• Lammy said the “grotesque spectacle of kids holding out their hand for food and being shot and killed as they wait” offends the “public consciousness” of the “global community”, which Israel is now putting itself beyond.

• Lammy said he has sanctioned ministers in the Israeli government, broken off discussions on a new free trade agreement and left the possibility open for further actions and sanctions if Israel does not change its “behaviour”.

• Lammy said much of the responsibility rests with Hamas, but Israel has to accept responsibility for the “loss of life and the lack of human dignity” we are seeing across the Strip because it controls access to Gaza and the humanitarian aid system.

• Lammy said once the Knesset – the Israeli parliament – rises on 28 July then we are more likely to see a US/Qatar/Egypt brokered ceasefire come into effect.