Stormont’s deputy first minister has called on the government to act over the Windsor Framework’s “bureaucracy for bureaucracy sake”, PA Media reports.

The DUP’s Emma Little-Pengelly said some companies will not supply to Northern Ireland because they do not understand the rules put in place following the UK’s exit from the European Union.

The Windsor framework, which was agreed in 2023, requires checks and customs paperwork on goods moving from Great Britain into Northern Ireland. Under the arrangements, which were designed to ensure no hardening of the Irish land border post-Brexit, Northern Ireland continues to follow many EU trade and customs rules.

Little-Pengelly told the Northern Ireland assembly today there is currently “very little regulatory divergence”, but despite that she said there is “unnecessary checking at the behest of the deal”.

As an example, she cited the experience of a man she called Roy from Mid-Ulster who was trying to bring a tractor from Scotland to Northern Ireland.

He was requiring four certificates. He couldn’t give the haulage company a specific date as to when he was to get that, and therefore he missed that window and those tractors were stuck in Scotland for four to six weeks despite being paid in full, despite the fact that Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom.

That is not acceptable. It is bureaucracy for bureaucracy’s sake. We need to tackle that.

The biggest frustration that people have about governments – should it be here, across the United Kingdom or across the globe – is the fact that it’s so difficult to get things sorted because of this unnecessary, disproportionate, non-risk based nonsense that people are putting in place. They need to get rid of it. It doesn’t serve any purpose. Get it sorted.

Dan Jarvis, the security minister, told MPs that it would have been “highly irresponsible” for the government to have ignored expert advice saying Palestine Action should be proscribed.

Responding to the urgent question tabled by Stella Creasy (see 4.34pm), Jarvis said advice given to the Home Office said the group had met tests to be banned under the Terrorism Act 2000. He went on:

These are not the actions of a legitimate protest group. And for a government to ignore expert security assessments, advice and recommendations, would be highly irresponsible.

Were there to be further serious attacks or injuries, there would rightly be questions asked about why action had not been taken.

Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said the Conservatives “fully support, unequivocally, the right to peaceful protest”, but that violence is “never acceptable”.

The Labour MP Markus Campbell-Savours asked why arrests were not stopped – as he said he believed that the convictions for displaying proscribed group’s names were “extremely rare”. Jarvis said decisions were down to police judgments made under pressure.

The long-promised cross-party talks on reforming the adult social care system have started, Wes Streeting, the health secretary, has announced.

In a statement today, he said:

There’s still a long way to go to guarantee dignified care for all. Our ageing society demands fundamental reform in social care which why the prime minister appointed Baroness Louise Casey to lead an independent commission on adult social care and build consensus for a new National Care Service fit for the 21st century.

I thank Baroness Casey for arranging today’s meeting, and to cross-party representatives for putting politics aside to find a way forward. I am determined that this government will build a National Care Service worthy of the name.

The cross-party talks were meant to start in February, but the process was held up after Casey, who is reviewing social care for the government, was asked to carry out an audit of grooming gang investigations.

The Labour MP Stella Creasy has urged the government to get rid of the law making it an offence to “recklessly express support for a proscribed organisation”.

In a Commons urgent question, triggered by the arrest of almost 900 people in London on Saturday for protesting against the decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, she said she thought the current law was flawed.

Under the Terrorism Act, once an organisation is proscribed, it is not just illegal to be a member; just expressing support for it is an offence.

Creasy said she was not speaking as a supporter of Palestine Action, and she said the case to act against them was “strong” because of their use of violence.

But she said the current situation, which has led to hundreds of people being arrested for holding up banners saying the support Palestine Action, was “just not sustainable”. She explained:

There is a difference between people protesting using violence and people protesting the use of proscription.

If we don’t get right the response, if we continue to arrest those in that second category, the seriousness the term terrorism risks losing its meaning, becoming diluted rather than strengthened.

Proscription was supposedly about stopping those inciting direct harm and violence.

Going after somebody with a poster testing the boundaries of liberty – many of whom are clear they don’t support Palestine Action and feel strongly about Palestinian rights or free speech – confuses rather than clarifies the government’s intention ..

Legislation on public order focuses on specific acts. Proscription orders target specific terrorist groups. Nothing sits in between this.

Creasy said the police should be focusing on people who actually are members of Palestine Action. If the government was not willing to abolish the offence of recklessly expressing support for a proscribed group, it should at least give the police guidance on when the offence should be used, she said.

In response, Dan Jarvis, the security minister, cited a recent Observer article by Jonathan Hall KC, the government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, in which he defended the use of the legislation against Palestine Action. Hall said:

There is no way ordinary criminal law would be effective against funding, training and recruitment [by Palestine Action] …

The motives of those who say “I support Palestine Action” are not always easy to discern. Rather than saying “I support Palestine” or “I oppose the proscription of Palestine Action”, a small number of demonstrators have gone out of their way to invite arrest. I am not sure that this makes the law ridiculous or heavy-handed.

Shorn of the power to arrest and prosecute those who display support in public, the police’s role in preventing the growth and operation of Palestine Action would be that much harder.

Jarvis quote an extract from the article and said the government had a duty to ensure public safety.

Earlier today Creasy did not rule out standing to be Labour’s deputy leader. (See 1.50pm.)

Keir Starmer is set to meet Mahmoud Abbas as the government continues steps towards recognising a Palestinian state, PA Media reports. PA says:

The meeting with the president of the Palestinian Authority this evening comes in the wake of Monday’s rush hour terror attack in Jerusalem.

Palestinian attackers opened fire on people at a bus stop, killing six and wounding another 12, according to Israeli officials.

Yvette Cooper, the new foreign secretary, said she was “horrified by the terrorist attack in Jerusalem”.

Abbas’s office issued a statement “condemning any targeting of Palestinian and Israeli civilians”.

Abbas arrived in London on Sunday night for a three-day visit.

He plans to use his talks with Starmer to push for an end to “the aggression, destruction and starvation being inflicted upon the Palestinian people”, his officials said.

Downing Street indicated that the government maintained its intention to recognise a Palestinian state later this month, ahead of the meeting of the United Nations general assembly.

The PM’s spokesperson said: “We continue to intend to recognise the state of Palestine before the UN general assembly, subject to the conditions that we set out. We’ve been very clear that Hamas will play no role in the future governance of Gaza or the West Bank, and must commit to disarmament.”

The Labour MP Stella Creasy has declined to rule out running for deputy leader. In an interview on the World at One, asked if she would be a candidate, Creasy did not say no, and instead said she wanted to see the party have a debate about the future. “I think has happened if we are honest is that we have narrowed rather than broadened our ability to have our debates in a constructive fashion,” she said.

When it was put to her that she was not ruling out being a candidate, she said:

If it was about an individual that would be an easy answer, this is about the ideas and that culture.

I’m someone telling you that the Labour party has a cultural challenge, that if we get right we get the best out of each other. We’ve got to show ourselves over the next couple days that that is possible.

UPDATE: Here is the audio clip.

The Labour party has confirmed that candidates to be deputy leader will have to obtain the required backing of 80 MPs by 5pm on Thursday, when nominations will close. It has issued this timetable, which also says the winner will be announced on Saturday 25 October.

To stand, as well as being nominated by at least 20% of the PLP (ie, by 80 MPs), candidates also need to be nominated by at least 5% of constituency Labour parties (CLPs) or by at least three affiliated organisations (of which two must be trade unions) comprising at least 5% of the affiliated membership.

The resignation of Angela Rayner, and the sacking of Justin Madders as employment rights minister, have raised concerns on the left and in the union movement that the government might water down its employment rights bill.

At the Downing Street lobby briefing this morning, the PM’s spokesperson rejected this claim and said that anti-government amendments to the bill passed by the House of Lords would be reversed when the legislation returns to the Commons next week.

The spokesperson said:

We are absolutely backing the employment rights bill. We are a pro-worker, pro-business government and the workers’ rights legislation is the biggest single upgrade of workers’ rights in a generation.

It’s a manifesto commitment that we remain absolutely committed to and will continue to engage with businesses as the bill progresses through parliament, and that includes overturning the amendments that were passed in the Lords.

Keir Starmer is not expected to publicly endorse a candidate for deputy leader of the Labour party.

In previous internal party elections Starmer has not endorsed candidates, party sources have said, and that is not expected to change in this contest.

Starmer is also operating on the basis that the party rules do not require the deputy leader to be offered a government job.

In response to claims that the party wants to a quick contest to disadvantage leftwing candidates, making it a “stitch-up” (see 8.52am), sources said this was premature because the national executive committee has not set a timetable yet.

(While it may be true that Starmer has not publicly endorsed candidates in internal leadership contests, that does not mean he does not have a view. In the Labour party the leader’s allies normally work overtime trying to help favoured candidates in internal contests. It is rare for the leadership to remain genuinely neutral.)

In a pooled interview with Sam Coates from Sky News, Shabana Mahmood, the new home secretary, offered some clues to her approach to dealing with the small boats problem. Here are the main points.

• Mahmood said she regarded securing the borders as her “top priority” as home secretary.

• She praised the “very strong” policy foundation left by her predecessor, Yvette Cooper, but she said that she wanted to go “further and faster” and that she would would do “whatever it takes” to secure the borders. She said:

I will be looking to go further and faster because I’m very clear I have one top priority in this job and that is to secure the borders. I will do whatever it takes.

Mahmood also said that people who had already worked with her in government knew she was “not the sort of person that hangs around”. (That might be a clue as to why Mahmood got the job; No 10 reportedly felt Cooper was too slow at taking and implementing decisions.)

• Mahmood suggested that countries that refuse to take back refused asylum seekers from the UK could face a cut in the number of visas issued to their citizens. And she said at the Five Eyes meeting today (see 9.35am) she had been discussing how the UK could coordinate action on this front with its partners (the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). She said:

I’ve been talking to our Five Eyes partners about what more we can do to work together to make sure that our borders are secure and that our citizens feel safe.

We think that there is interesting space for collaboration, particularly on how we deal with countries who do not take their citizens back, making sure that we are able to return out of our countries people who have no right to be in our countries and send them back to their home countries.

So, for countries that do not play ball, we’ve been talking about how we can take much more coordinated action between the Five Eyes countries. For us, that means including possibly the cutting of visas in the future.

Shabana Mahmood, the new home secretary, has told Sky News she “will not be running for deputy leader of the Labour party”.

That is no great surprise, given that she has just taken on arguably the most demanding job in the cabinet, but it does mean journalists can remove her name from the runners and riders lists.

Mahmood was speaking in a short interview about small boats. I will post those comments shortly.

Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, also used his speech to the conference to urge the government to be bolder. People did not feel it was delivering change, he said.

Last July the government was elected on a manifesto that promised change. But we have to be honest; for too many people, change still feels like a slogan – not a lived reality. That cannot continue.

Nowak urged the government to show that it was on the side of working people.

My message to the government is simply this – deliver the manifesto on which you won a huge majority last July. Deliver good jobs, decent public services and better living standards in every corner of the country. Deliver the change people voted for and show working-class communities whose side you are on.

He also called for the two-child benefit cap to be lifted, as well as a windfall tax on bank profits and gambling companies and new taxes on wealth.

If billionaires can afford fleets of private yachts, day trips into space, weddings that shut down Venice, they can pay a bit more tax.

And make it clear – a Labour government will never stand aside and watch a child’s potential be wasted because of poverty. Lift the two-child cap and give our kids the future they deserve.

Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, used his speech to conference this morning to say that the TUC expected the government to deliver its workers’ rights bill “in full”. He said employment rights were “overwhelmingly popular with voters across the political spectrum”.

And he condemned Reform UK for its stance on employment rights. After saying that Nigel Farage claimed to represent working class people, he went on:

Here’s the truth – there is a world of difference between what Nigel says and what Nigel does.

Every single Reform MP, including Mr Farage, voted against outlawing fire and rehire, against banning zero hours contracts and against day one rights for millions of workers.

So here’s my challenge to Nigel Farage. Say you stand up for working people? Then ignore your wealthy backers and vote for that employment rights bill.

Say you’re standing up for British industry? Then stop supporting Donald Trump and his destructive tariffs.

And say you believe in the NHS? Then look the British public in the eye and tell them why you support a US-style private healthcare system.

Nigel Farage, it is about time you came clean about whose side you’re really on, because here’s the truth – you are not representing working people, you are selling them out.

Addressing those considering voting Reform, Nowak said he understood why they were frustrated with mainstream politics. But he went on:

Ask yourself this fundamental question. Do you believe in your gut that that Nigel Farage really cares about the people of Clacton when he’s off collecting his speaker’s fees in the United States?

Do you believe that Richard Tice really worries about the people of Skegness while he’s living it up at home in Dubai, or are they just rightwing conmen lining their own pockets?

(Tice does not live in Dubai, but his partner, the journalist Isabel Oakeshott, does, and he says he visits her there every few weeks.)

Nowak devoted much more time in his speech to attacking Reform UK than he did to criticising the Conservatives. He said that the Tory party “loses credibility with every single day” and he did not mention Kemi Badenoch, the party leader. But he did launch a strong attack on Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, who is widely seen as a likely replacement to Badenoch and who is now advocating policies that are even more extreme than Farage’s. Nowak said:

I just have to say this. No amount of TikToks, or ozempic, or expensive haircuts, will ever hide the eager inner ugliness of Robert Jenrick.

The man who ordered murals painted over in a reception centre for children seeking asylum is indeed a xenophobe, an opportunistic xenophobe hoping to create a political climate that ends up with far right folks laying siege to hotels and black and Asian people being threatened and harassed on our streets.

Aside from the need to replace Angela Rayner, it seems the key aim of last week’s cabinet reshuffe was Keir Starmer’s desire to replace Yvette Cooper as home secretary with Shabana Mahmood. Starmer reportedly thinks she will adopt a more muscular approach to addressing the small boats problem.

With this in mind, the Today programme broadcast an interview early this morning with Peter Walsh, a senior researcher at the Migration Observatory, an Oxford University migration thinktank. When asked to explain why the small boat arrival numbers are at a record level, Walsh said Brexit was one factor. He explained:

If we look at the powerful geopolitical push factors, they’re things like regime change. We think Afghanistan, war, civil conflict. And when we look at people crossing in small boats, where do they come from? Well, the top nationalities: Afghan, Eritrea, Iranian, Syrian, Sudanese – just those five nationalities account for almost two thirds of all small boat arrivals, and these individuals are from some of the most chaotic parts of the world.

But there are also some pull factors, and the question is, why not claim asylum in France, why come to the UK? A number of reasons recur there when we speak with asylum seekers. It’s the presence of family members, the English language.

But there’s also increasing evidence of a Brexit effect. We speak with asylum seekers now, and often they’ve claimed asylum in the EU country, sometimes been refused, but they understand that because the UK is no longer a part of the EU, and no longer party to the EU’s fingerprint database for asylum seekers, if they can get to the UK, they have another bite of the cherry and another chance to secure asylum status and remain in Europe.

Walsh said, that for people like this, if the UK was still in the EU their chances of being granted asylum here would be “much diminished”. He said:

In those circumstances, typically, flagged upon the system, the UK government would be able to issue a speedy refuse refusal and try and effect removal.

As it is, people arrive, we don’t have that record, so we don’t know who they are.

And also, even if we were [in that database], we wouldn’t be able to return them, because we’re no longer party to that Dublin system that allowed for the transfer of asylum seekers back to countries of first entry.

Here is a summary of the main points in Louise Haigh’s New Statesman article published today under the heading “The fiscal straighjacket facing Labour must be broken”. (See 8.52am.) Although Haigh includes a line saying Labour should be “shouting from the rooftops” about its achievements, the article is mostly a critique of Rachel Reeves’s fiscal orthodoxy, combined with a general call for more radicalism from the government.

• Haigh criticised the government for failing to offer the “full transformation” Britain needed. She said:

Labour was elected in 2024 to rebuild Britain – not to steady the ship, but to remake it completely.

This is an implicit criticism not just of Keir Starmer’s record, but of his election strategy too. Starmer promised “change”, but he also defined change in terms of economic stability, which he described as an improvement on Tory chaos.

• Haigh said Labour should be more radical, and less deferential to institutions. She said:

One year on, our mission of renewal is under threat. Economic circumstances and excessive deference to independent institutions are frustrating the democratic demand for change …

Yet the damage wasn’t just financial. It was institutional. The Conservatives embedded a model of governance where opaque watchdogs outrank democratic choice. Labour now runs the risk of exacerbating these issues.

Many Labour members would agree. But this also echoes arguments deployed by Reform UK.

• Haigh criticised the “unaccountable orthodoxy” of the Office for Budget Responsibility and its impact on economic decision making. She said:

Originally created to provide an independent check on economic forecasts and help policymaking, [the OBR] has morphed into a gatekeeper of orthodoxy. Its models often underestimate the long-term returns of public investment and ignore the wider benefits of progressive taxation or public ownership.

We now know that Sure Start centres, for example, delivered £2 of savings for every pound spent – yet their closure under Osborne was never flagged as a fiscal risk. Nor does the OBR’s sustainability report warn that childhood poverty today will mean higher costs tomorrow.

Worse, its forecasting cycle entrenches short-termism: two fiscal events a year, judged against a five-year horizon. We plan defence, housing, and climate investment in decades, yet the watchdog looks only five years ahead. In my view, the OBR should publish supplementary long-term assessments so markets can see the real savings from social investment. Without that, governments are forced into short-term fixes even though the bond market itself takes a longer view.

Haigh suggested part of the reason for the failure of the government’s Pip reforms was the inability of the OBR to make allowance for the proposed policies producing savings over the long term. And she also criticised the accuracy of OBR forecasts (a complaint also made regularly by the Tories).

• Haigh said the OBR should revise its growth forecasts only once a year, not twice a year as it is required to do now under law passed by the Tories. She said this would “give ministers the space to design serious, long-term reforms – not scramble for short-term fixes to meet arbitrary fiscal targets”. It is thought that Starmer thinks this too. But the government has been nervous about changing the way the OBR operates in case that gets interpreted as a weakening of fiscal discipline.

• Haigh criticised the “quantitive tightening” policy being followed by the Bank of England. She said this was a result of the way George Osborne introduced quantitive easing when he was chancellor. The IPPR, a leftwing thinktank, has made the same argument.

• Haigh said the Bank of England should stop paying interest on central bank reserves to commercial lenders. She said:

It is beyond comprehension that we have not already reformed our approach to the payment of interest on reserves held in the Bank of England reserves. Commercial banks are earning near-Bank Rate on hundreds of billions in deposits costing the taxpayer roughly £40bn a year.

This is a view shared by various economists, and Reform UK has been making this argument for at least a year. Richard Tice, the party’s deputy leader, is due to discuss the issue with the Bank’s governor, Andrew Bailey, at a meeting soon.

Shabana Mahmood has met counterparts from the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance for talks on international efforts to tackle smuggling gangs, PA Media reports. PA says:

In her first major engagement as home secretary,Mahmood hosted counterparts from the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand in London after the number of small boat crossings reached more than 30,000 in 2025.

Ministers are examining using military bases to house asylum seekers in “temporary but adequate” accommodation as Sir Keir Starmer tries to get a grip on the migrants crisis.

Some 1,097 people arrived in the UK in 17 boats on Saturday, bringing the total in 2025 so far to 30,100 – a record for this point in a year.

The figure is 37% up on this point last year (22,028) and also 37% higher than at this stage in 2023 (21,918), according to PA news agency analysis.

Mahmood said the numbers were “utterly unacceptable” and that she expected migrant returns under a deal agreed last month with France to begin “imminently”.

Ahead of Monday’s meeting, she said the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing pact would “agree new measures to protect our border, hitting people smugglers hard”.

She was joined at the talks by US secretary of homeland security Kristi Noem, Canadian public safety minister Gary Anandasangaree, Australian home affairs minister Tony Burke and New Zealand minister Judith Collins.

The group was also discussing new measures to tackle child sexual abuse online and the spread of deadly synthetic opioids.

Unite’s general secretary, Sharon Graham, has issued a warning to the government, saying it should enact full reforms of workers’ rights in order to fulfil a “promise to the British people”, Jessica Elgot reports.

Harriet Harman, who served as deputy Labour leader under Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband (although Brown never made her deputy PM), has said the party should not let the deputy leadership contest become a debate about the case for a “new direction”. She was speaking in an interview on the Today programme. Here are are main points.

• Harman said Labour should not elect a deputy leader who would become an “oppositional voice”. She said:

An election for the deputy leadership when Labour is in government, just shortly after our first year of government, is very different than a deputy leadership election when you’re trying to set out a new direction for the party, rebuild the party after an election defeat.

And what I think we need is … somebody who is not a counterpoint to the leader, but is complementary to the leader, will broaden the reach of the leader and galvanise the party …

The role of the deputy leader is not to provide an alternative, oppositional voice. It’s to be part of a team. The clue is in the name.

• She said she was in favour of Labour getting on with the contest “rapidly”.

• She said the new deputy leader should definitely be a woman, and probably an MP from outside London. She explained:

I think that, in terms of extending the breadth of the leadership, it probably needs to be somebody from outside London, and it definitely needs to be a woman. But there are 185 Labour women MPs, many very talented …

With a prime minister and a deputy prime minister representing London constituencies, the party might well think that the extending of the reach that the deputy provides should be somebody from outside London, but definitely a woman. I don’t think we can have a male prime minister, a man as deputy prime minister and a male deputy leader of the party.

If Labour MPs agree with Harman, and they want a deputy leader loyal to Keir Starmer, then Shabana Mahmood, the new home secretary, Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, and Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, would all fit the bill. But they have all got quite important jobs already, and so may not be interested.

Non-cabinet ministers who would meet the Harmen criteria include Jess Phillips and Alison McGovern.