The public has paid almost £200bn to the shareholders who own key British industries since they were privatised, a report from the Common Wealth thinktank says. Matthew Taylor and Sandra Laville have the story.

The Scottish government has said that it is asking the UK government to increase pressure on Israel to change its policy towards Gaza following the publication of a UN commission of inquiry report saying genocide is occuring there.

John Swinney, the Scottish first minister, said:

Today’s findings by a UN commission of inquiry represent further deeply concerning evidence that a genocide is being committed by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government.

Coupled with the intensification of the Israeli government’s assault on Gaza City, the situation is becoming ever more horrific and the international community cannot ignore our obligations to act in light of what we are seeing. Silence – and inaction – is not an option.

Too many innocent Palestinians have already died, and more will follow unless we see serious and urgent action from the international community to put an end to this horror.

The case for imposing sanctions on the members of the government of Israel who are responsible is now unanswerable.

External affairs secretary Angus Robertson will today write to the UK government to again insist that it shoulders its unique historic responsibility to pressurise the Israeli government to change course and ensure a peaceful resolution.

And this is what the PM’s spokesperson told journalists about Keir Starmer’s comments at cabinet about the Hillsborough law.

The prime minister then turned to the introduction of the Hillsborough Law today. He said he had an emotional meeting with families this morning, including Margaret Aspinall. He said he wanted to meet her at the door to show the people of Liverpool are as important as any international leader. He said he had known her for 15 years and knows first-hand the injustice that the families have carried, both in terms of the grief of their loss and the injustice piled on injustice since. He said the lesson of Hillsborough speaks to the experience of families affected by other scandals from Horizon to Windrush and Grenfell, and that each of these has one thing in common – which is ordinary people not listened to because they were not respected. He said righting that wrong is important to who we are as a government. The cabinet discussed that the bill is as important as any that a government has brought in, and the deputy prime minister [David Lammy] said there were parallels with the women who campaigned for equal pay in Dagenham and those who campaigned for race equality in Bristol, in that it is about tipping the balance back in the favour of working people and the government being insurgents against injustice.

Starmer first met Aspinall, chair of the Hillsborough Families Support Group, when he was director of public prosecutions. “I made a promise to her that I would act so no other parent would suffer like she had,” he says.

The UK faces “the fight of our times” against the division exemplified by the Tommy Robinson-led far-right march in London on Saturday, Keir Starmer has told his cabinet in a robust if arguably belated response to the scenes in the capital, Peter Walker reports.

This is what the PM’s spokesperson told reporters in the cabinet readabout about Starmer’s comments.

The prime minister opened cabinet by saying this government will remain relentlessly focused on what matters to working people around the country. He said that some of the scenes of police officers being attacked on Saturday, and a march led by a convicted criminal, were not just shocking but sent a chill through the spines of people around the country, and particularly many ethnic minority Britons. He said we are in the fight of our times between patriotic national renewal and decline and toxic division. He said the government must heed the patriotic call of national renewal, and that this was a fight that has to be won. He said national renewal means thousands of jobs being delivered across Hartlepool, Nottinghamshire, and Essex with the Civil Nuclear Partnership being announced this week as part of the state visit, and that the visit would deliver further significant investment and jobs to be announced.

David Davis is winding up now.

He says Keir Starmer should apologise to the victims.

And he says he has found it difficult to reconcile what he has been told about the vetting in this case with what he knows about how the process works.

He suggests ministers should have been given an assessment of the risk factors associated with the appointment.

All the documents should be released, he says. There is no security risk, he says.

And he restates his call for ministers and officials to give evidence to the relevant select committees. If necessary, they could even give evidence in private.

He says, if ministers try to cover this up, that will make the situation worse.

Doughty was sent here as the minister without answers, he says.

MPs will return to this matter, he says.

He says, when the Commons debates the public office (accountablity) bill that has been published today, he will push to ensure it covers ministers.

And he ends by suggesting that, once it becomes law, it could be applied in this case.

Doughty says opposition MPs have claimed the full depth of Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein was known he would not have been considered for chancellor of Oxford University. And he would not have been given a slot on Times Radio.

Kemi Badenoch has been trying to intervene, but Doughty is not accepting her intervention.

Desmond Swayne (Con) raises a point of order. He says there is a convention in the Commons that, when the leader of the opposition tries to intervene, it should be accepted.

Doughty does not immediately accept her intervention.

But soon afterwards he does take the intervention. Badenoch says the PM should have been here to speak himself. She asks if the minister will respond to her written questions. And she again demands an apology.

Doughty says he has already expressed the government’s horror at the revelations.

Alec Shelbrooke (Con) intervenes. He says he accepts Doughty’s point about not being able to give details of an individual vetting case. But he asks if being associated with a known paedophile would, in normal circumstances, be enough for someone to fail the process.

Doughty says he cannot say any more about the process because it is confidential.

Doughty is talking about vetting. He says the process is confidential. So he will not disclose information about vetting in this case, he says.

Stephen Doughty, the Foreign Office minister, is winding up for the government now in the Mandleson debate.

He says the government will consider calls from the foreign affairs committee for it to be involved in pre-appointment scrutiny in cases like this.

He says Peter Mandelson talked about the “torture” that Jeffrey Epstein was experiencing.

But the only people who experienced torture were Epstein’s victims, he says.

He says Keir Starmer took “decisive” action when he withdrew Mandelson.

Quoting what Starmer said yesterday, he says Starmer would not have appointed Mandleson if he had known at the time what he knows now.

Luke Evans (Con) asks why the PM is not here to answer these questions.

Doughty says he is minister for north America, and Starmer has important business today.

Turning away from the Mandelson debate, Donald Trump has been speaking to reporters ahead of his departure from Washington for the UK, where he will land tonight at the start of his state visit.

Trump is staying in Windsor Castle, and he told the US media that this was the “ultimate” honour.

He told reporters:

My relationship is very good with the UK, and Charles, as you know, who’s now king, is my friend, and it’s the first time this has ever happened, where somebody was honoured twice, so it’s a great honour.

This one’s at Windsor they’ve never used Windsor Castle for this before they use the Buckingham Palace. I don’t want to say one is better than the other but they say Windsor Castle is the ultimate [one], right, so it’s going to be nice.

Jakub Krupa has more of Trump’s quotes, covering Ukraine, on his Europe live blog.

Alec Shelbrooke (Con) said in his speech that he agreed with Stephen Flynn (see 2.17pm), and that he thought questions on this would not go away.

After Shelbrooke finished, John Whittingdale, another Conservative was called.

That normally means the deputy speaker has run out of government backbenchers willing to speak.

So far there have only been three Labour speakers: Emily Thornberry, who was robust and critical of the govenrment (see 1.32pm), Florence Eshalomi, who gave a short but unobjecionable speech, and John Slinger, who delivered a short ‘whataboutery’ speech focusing on Andy Coulson, which led to Edward Leigh accusing him of just reading out a brief from the Labour whips’ office.

Edward Leigh, the Conservative father of the house, is speaking now.

He says President Trump must think that “we in this country are complete plonkers, frankly, for the way that we have handled all this”.

He says the UK got rid of an ambassador, Karen Pierce, who had a good relationship with Trump.

She was replaced with someone who had been rude about the past. Mandelson managed to build up a good relationship with the president.

But Trump is embarrassed by his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. And now this has been dragged up again, just before a visit that is very important to Trump. And it means there will be “very difficult questions” at the press conference.

Davey says MPs should consider the victims of Epstein.

He asks what they would have felt about Donald Trump, a close friend of Epstein, becoming president of the US.

Referring to his decision to boycott the Trump state banquet, he says even if he had gone he would not have had a chance to speak to Trump about this.

But Keir Starmer will get the chance. Davey says Starmer should ask Trump about his relationship with Epstein.

And he says Starmer should apologise to Epstein’s victims for the Mandelson appoinment.

Badenoch says Keir Starmer has failed to show leadership. She says he has “shrivelled” from leadership.

She claims he has shown “no courage, no judgment, no backbone”.

UPDATE: Badenoch said:

It is now also clear that the prime minister knew that there were major concerns when he came to this house just last Wednesday, but instead of taking action, he expressed confidence in him.

Why on earth did he do so? Was he poorly advised, or was it just his own poor judgment, as in every single one of his government scandals to date?

Far from being the decisive man of conscience he promised to be, he has shrivelled from leadership. He has dodged responsibility. He has hidden behind others, just as he’s doing today, and he has come to this house and hidden behind process and lawyerly phrases.

The prime minister has shown no courage, no judgment, no backbone, and if he can’t see it, if they can’t see it, I can assure them that the British public can.

Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, is speaking now.

It is unusual for an opposition leader to speak in a debate when the PM is not responding. But Badenoch has done this several times in the past, in what might be seen as leading from the front.

She says Keir Starmer need to come clean about what he knew about Mandelson’s Jeffrey Epstein links, and when he found out. She says he must publish all the paperwork about this. And she says he should apologise to the victims of Epstein.

Emily Thornberry, the Labour chair of the foreign affairs committee, is speaking now.

She says if her committee had had a proper chance to question Mandelson after he was nominated to be the ambassador, they could have asked him about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

She mentions the letter recieved from Yvette Cooper (see 12.45pm), which shows that Mandelson was subject to vetting.

She says civil servant appointments are often held up as a result of vetting, sometimes for reasons like someone being born in Belfast.

But in this case the vetting process ignored “the glaring red flag of Lord Mandelson’s relationship with with Epstein”.

Davis ended his speech with a series of questions.

No 10 claims Mandelson was economical with the truth. Mandelson claims he told the whole truth. Both statements cannot be true. So the questions I pose to the minister are:

Will the government rule out Mandelson being brought back into government? Number 10 refused to rule out giving him another job earlier this week or last week.

If Mandelson withheld information during the vetting process, is he going to lose the Labour whip?

Is he going to have to resign from the House of Lords?

Will Lord Mandelson be receiving compensation, as some reports to the media are suggesting?

Will the prime minister, his chief of staff, his chief of staff, his cabinet secretary and the permanent secretary of Foreign Office, appear before the select committees of house to give evidence.

And will the minister provide the house with the documents required to answer our questions as to who knew what and when? That is the propriety and ethics team report, the developed vetting report, if it exists.

Davis quotes a long-standing Labour MP (not named) who said this affair was an example of how “this culture of turning a blind eye to horrendous behaviour is endemic at the top of society”. Davis said he agreed.

Davis is now talking about Mandelson’s links with China.

He says in 2021 Mandelson told the Chinese premier during a lobbying meeting “that the critics of Beijing’s human rights record would be proved wrong”.

And he says that Mandelson was the only Labour peer in the Lords to vote against a proposal saying the government would have to reconsider any trade deal with a country committing genocide. This was aimed at China, he says.

He goes on:

So, frankly, it would appear that Lord Mandelson subcontracted his conscience for money.

Davis says Peter Mandelson was campaigning to get the ambassador’s job whilst also campaigning to be chancellor of Oxford university.

So there was time to vet him before the formal process started, he says.

He says there was a vast amount of material in the public domain.

This process would look at the risk of the candidate being blackmailed, or the risk of the candidate abusing the role.

And it should also look at the risk of the candidate being “too morally flawed to be given a major role in anything”, he says.

Davis says this is relevant.

He says Mandelson was “easily dazzled by wealth and fame and … willing to use his public position to pursue those things”.

There was an example of this early in Mandelson’s career when he took a loan from Geoffrey Robinson to buy a flat. Failure to disclose this led to his first cabinet resignation.

Davis goes on:

That was the first time we saw so publicly the abiding flaws in Lord Mandelson’s character, which, frankly, would normally disqualify any normal person from a job this important.

David Davis, the former Tory Brexit secretary, is opening the emergency debate on Peter Mandelson. He is a backbencher, but he is speaking first because he was the MP who requested an emergency debate.

He started by saying it was ironic that the public office (accountability) bill had just been presented to the Commons (the formal first reading of the Hillsborough bill). He said the bill starts by saying it will “impose a duty on public authorities and public officials to act with candour, transparency and frankness”.

That is appropriate to this debate, he said.

Yvette Cooper has said the Foreign Office was not involved in the decision to approve Peter Mandelson as a suitable candidate to be ambassador to the US before his appointment was announced.

In a letter to the Commons foreign affairs committee, Cooper, the foreign secretary, said the Cabinet Office carried out initial propriety checks.

Responding to a series of questions asked by the committee about the Mandleson vetting process, Cooper said:

Prior to the announcement of Peter Mandelson’s appointment as Ambassador, the Propriety and Ethics team in the Cabinet Office undertook a due diligence process.

After Peter Mandelson’s appointment was announced on 20 December 2024, the FCDO [Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office] started the ambassadorial appointment process, including National Security Vetting. The vetting process was undertaken by UK Security Vetting on behalf of the FCDO and concluded with DV [developed vettin] clearance being granted by the FCDO in advance of Lord Mandelson taking up post in February.

Keir Starmer has payed tribute to the Hillsborough relatives who have been campaigning for years for a law, including a legal duty of candour, saying public officials must not cover up disasters. The government is publishing its bill today.

In an interview with the BBC, Starmer said this was the result of families and campaigners who “never gave up on justice and truth”.

He said that he had hoped to publish the bill by 15 April, the Hillsborough anniversary, but that he needed more time “to get it right”. He said the government was “not going to allow it to be watered down or changed” and that he wanted to see it passed “as quickly as possible”.

Yvette Cooper, the new foreign secretary, has described the new Israeli ground offensive in Gaza City as “utterly reckless and appalling”. In a comment on social media, she said:

The new IDF assault on Gaza is utterly reckless and appalling.

It will only bring more bloodshed, kill more innocent civilians & endanger the remaining hostages.

We need an immediate ceasefire, all hostages released, unrestricted humanitarian aid and a path to lasting peace.

Kemi Badenoch has said there should be “serious consequences” if Keir Starmer did not tell parliament the truth about Peter Mandelson.

In an interview with GB News ahead of the emergency debate on Mandelson later, Badenoch said:

I think that there should be serious consequences if you have lied to parliament.

On his own benchmark, I remember Keir Starmer going after Boris Johnson and setting a standard. All I’m asking is that he meet the very same standard which he was setting for other people.

Has he been honest with the public? And what the public actually think is that this is a man who tells lies. He told lies to get elected.

The Commons privileges committee found that Johnson lied to MPs about parties in No 10 during Covid. There is no evidence at all that Starmer has lied to parliament about Mandelson. Some MPs suspect that, when No 10 said Starmer defended Mandelson on Wednesday last week but sacked him on Thursday because he only learned the full details of the Mandelson/Jeffrey Epstein correspondence on Wednesday night, they might be playing down the extent of what Starmer did know before PMQs.

Deportations to France under the government’s “one in, one out” deal with France will take place “as soon as possible”, a minister has said, after a planned flight on Monday was reportedly cancelled.

According to a report by Charles Hymas for the Telegraph, the first planned deportation was cancelled at the last minute. Hymas says:

The Telegraph understands that one migrant was due to be flown from Heathrow to Paris on an Air France passenger flight on Monday, but the flight was postponed amid protests by charities and threats of legal action.

The Home Office is understood to be planning to put him on another flight on Tuesday, with the French authorities preparing to accommodate him in a hotel in Roissy-en-France, in the north-eastern suburbs of Paris.

In interviews this morning, Alex Davies-Jones, a justice minister, would not confirm or deny the report, saying she would not give a “running commentary” on deportations.

If I was to break down with you exactly a time-by-time, day-by-day movement on our returns policy, then that would be giving these abhorrent people-smugglers exactly what they want.

This would be allowing them to know what the government is doing when, and they would be able to respond to that. We are not going to be doing them any favours.

But she said the deportations would start “as soon as possible”.

A government source told PA Media the first deportation flights under the deal with France are expected to take place this week.

Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, has welcomed the defection of three councillors to the party from Labour on Barking and Dagenham council. He says:

This is huge. 3 more London councillors leave Labour and join @TheGreenParty.

We’re now on more councils than the Lib Dems in London.

Labour - you’re next.

Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, told the Today programme this morning that Danny Kruger was “profoundly wrong” to say the Conservative Party was “over” when he defected to Reform UK.

Asked Kruger’s comments, Stride said:

Well, he’s profoundly wrong, Nick. I’m sorry to see Danny go, but his analysis is wrong.

We don’t have an election now for another four years.

It is certainly the case that we had a devastating defeat about a year ago, that we lost that connection with the electorate, that trust with the electorate, and it is also true that it will take us time to rebuild that.

Stride said his party was now holding the government “ruthlessly” to account, which formed part of rebuilding trust between the Conservatives and the public.

Vikram Dodd is the Guardian’s crime correspondent.

Police expect to arrest 50 more people following Saturday’s large far-right-led march through London, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police said this morning.

Over 100,000 people took part in the event led by the far-right activist known as Tommy Robinson.

So far 24 people were arrested on the day and on Monday police issued appeals to find 11 more people in connection with alleged violent disorder, after officers were attacked and attempts made to break through barriers.

This morning Sir Mark Rowley, commissioner of the Met, said: “I anticipate we will be arresting about 50 more people for violent disorder.”

Rowley told a meeting of the London policing board, which oversees the Met, that detectives are working through CCTV to find further suspects alleged to have been behind violence.

Maria Caulfield, a former Tory health minister, has joined Reform UK, GB News reports. They say she is the 13th former Tory MP to switch, GB News says.

Caulfield told the broadcaster:

If you are Conservative right-minded, then the future is Reform. The country is going to change a lot. The same people who thought that Brexit would not happen think that Reform will not happen. They are in for a shock.

GB News says the other former Tory MPs who are now Reform UK members are: Lee Anderson, Nadine Dorries, Sir Jake Berry, Adam Holloway, Anne Marie Morris, David Jones, Marco Longhi, Ross Thomson, Andrea Jenkyns, Aidan Burley, Alan Amos and Henry Smith. Their list does not include Danny Kruger, the only MP elected as a Tory at the last election to defect. He signed up with Nigel Farage yesterday.

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s new political party will hold its founding conference in November, with delegates chosen by lottery, PA Media reports. PA says:

In an email to supporters, the party said it would open membership applications by the end of September, ahead of the conference two months later.

But it did not give precise dates for the conference, saying only that it would see “thousands” of delegates “chosen by lottery to ensure a fair balance of gender, region and background”.

Ahead of that conference, the party said it would hold “regional assemblies” where members can “listen to each other, break bread and debate” founding documents.

It will also hold a vote on the party’s name in October, replacing its current temporary title of “Your Party”.

The announcement represents a step forward in what has been at times a confused launch Mr Corbyn’s latest movement.

The launch of a new party was originally announced by Coventry South MP Zarah Sultana, who announced in July she was quitting the Labour party to co-found the new venture with Corbyn.

But Corbyn appeared unready for the announcement, making no public statement on the launch until the next day.

Since then, according to Sultana, 750,000 people have expressed an interest in the new party.

Corbyn and Sultana will appear at The World Transformed in Manchester on October 10 to discuss their new party.

The event previously took place alongside the annual Labour party conference, but has now moved to place discussion of the new party “centre-stage”.

New “eco-populist” Green Party leader Zack Polanski will also attend.

The launch process for “Your Party” has not run smoothly. Sienna Rodgers recently published a very good long read on how the new party is being set up, and the factionalism involved.

Google has said it will invest £5bn in the UK in the next two years to help meet growing demand for artificial intelligence services, in a boost for the government, PA Media reports.

Back to the Survation polling of Labour members, and it includes responses to various questions about the Labour deputy leadership. They all suggest Lucy Powell, the former leader of the Commons, should beat Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary.

Asked who they intended to vote for, 47% say Powell, 30% say Phillipson, and 23% are undecided.

Of those members who are undecided, Survation found that, when pressed, 59% said they were leaning towards backing Powell, and 41% Phillipson.

Amongst people likely to vote, with undecided voters squeezed, Powell is on 61%, and Phillipson 39%.

Last week, at a point when there were five candidates running to be Labour’s deputy leader, Phillipson had a clear lead over Powell in favourability rankings when members were asked in a Survation poll if various people would be a good or bad candidate for deputy leader. Survation asked about 19 potential candidates.

Today’s figures are so different that it would be easy to assume one set of results were wrong. But last week there were no confirmed candidates. Now there are two, and the parameters of the contest have been set. Phillipson is the pro-Starmer candidate, and that means Powell (by default, as well as in part by intention) becomes the anti-Starmer candidate. That explains the shift.

In commentary on the poll, Damian Lyons Lowe from Survation quotes the views of one Labour member responding to the poll to explain this dynamic.

Among those members who have a favourable view of Keir Starmer, Phillipson leads Powell 55/21, however among members who have an unfavourable view of Starmer, Powell leads Phillipson 64/14 - and unfortunately for Phillipson - that’s a larger group of members.

One member summed up this sentiment when given the opportunity to comment. He had voted for Starmer in the 2020 contest was now “quite unfavourable” about Keir Starmer and summed it up by saying: ‘The leadership needs to be made aware how unhappy the members are with the direction of government and how it’s functioning. I like Bridget Phillipson and think she would make a great deputy leader. But as she is seen to be the leadership candidate I cannot support her in this contest.’

People on the new full state pension are set for a rise of over £500 a year from next April following the latest official earnings data, PA Media reports. PA says:

Under the triple lock guarantee, the state pension increases every April in line with whichever is the highest of total earnings growth in the year from May to July of the previous year, CPI (Consumer Prices Index) inflation in September of the previous year, or 2.5%.

The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed a rise in total wage growth including bonuses to 4.7% in the quarter to July, up from 4.6% in the three months to June.

While the final piece of the puzzle will not come until inflation figures for September are published in October, it is thought unlikely that the rate of Consumer Prices Index will be higher than 4.7%.

Inflation currently stands at 3.8%, with the latest data for August due out on Wednesday.

The UK’s jobs market has continued to cool, according to official figures, amid a slowdown in annual pay growth and rising redundancies, Richard Partington reports. Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show annual growth in regular earnings, excluding bonuses, slowed to 4.8% in the three months to July, down from 5% in the three months to June, matching the forecasts of City economists.

Here is the full story.

Good morning. Keir Starmer chairs cabinet this morning having lost his deputy PM, his ambassador to Washington and his strategy chief all within less than a fortnight.

The Commons starts a four-week recess this evening, which will provide some respite. (If MPs are out of Westminster, they are less likely to engage in dissident plotting.) But before they head off, MPs will spend three hours in a debate on Peter Mandelson, which is likely to focus on whether Starmer was right to appoint him in the first place and whether he has been fully candid about what he knew about the Mandelson emails to Jeffrey Epstein when he defended the ambassador at PMQs last week.

And there is more bad news for Starmer this morning. Survation has published a poll of Labour party members, in partnership with LabourList, that suggests:

• Only 25% of them think Labour is heading in the right direction.

• Only 26% of them have a favourable opinion of Starmer as leader, against 59% of them who view him unfavourably.

• Lucy Powell, who was sacked by Starmer as leader of the Commons, has a clear lead over Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, in the contest to be deputy leader. Phillipson is viewed as the loyalist, pro-Starmer candidate, while Powell is seen as the choice for members who want to express some dissent.

All polling is potentially fallible, party membership polling is particularly difficult (because the relatively small number of members makes getting a weighted sample much harder than it is with normal polling), and in some respects the views of party members are fairly irrelevant at the moment. The chances of a leadership challenge anytime soon still look very slight, and even if Powell (seen, rightly or wrongly, as an Andy Burnham proxy), were to win the deputy leadership, the post carries almost no formal power within Labour. Just ask Tom Watson.

Still, the polling doesn’t look good.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Keir Starmer chairs cabinet.

Morning: Starmer meets relatives of people killed at Hillsborough to mark the publication today of the public office (accountablity) bill, aka the Hillsborough law.

Morning: Kemi Badenoch is on a visit in London.

11.30am: David Lammy takes questions in the Commons for the first time in his new role as justice secretary.

11.55am: Sarah Jones, the policing minister, gives a speech to the Police Superintendents’ Association.

Noon: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

Lunchtime: Wes Streeting, the health secretary, visits the London Ambulance Service to publicise an NHS winter planning exercise.

After 12.30pm: MPs begin a three-hour emergency debate initiated by the Tory MP David Davis on the “appointment process and the circumstances leading to the dismissal of the former UK ambassador to the US, Lord Mandelson”.

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