Q: If you are opposed to sex offenders being released early, what would you do to solve the prison overcrowding problem?

Badenoch said the last Conservative government had a plan to put British prisoners in foreign prisons. She went on:

And we had a plan to use some spaces in foreign prisons where there was capacity. I would like to see some creativity from Labour in terms of solving this problem. They’ve just given up.

Q: Do you want Andy Burnham to issue a statement about his policy on defence?

Badenoch said Burnham should be addressing parliament on a range of issues. She went on:

[Burnham] needs to come to parliament before recess. It would just be adding an extra day or two.

Labour has set up their [leadership process] so that Andy Burnham or whoever doesn’t get to answer any questions in front of MPs. He’s not answering questions from the media … He wants a summer holiday, and he wants all of us to go away until he’s decided what he’s going to do …

We had a Russian warplane drop sonar devices around British ships. We saw what happened with that warning shot that was fired at a yacht. We can’t just pretend that nothing’s happening. And he’s got absolutely nothing to say about this. I think that’s because he doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what to think.

We have someone who’s coming in as prime minister who’s not having any hustings, not answering questions. And we need to be really worried about that.

Q: Do you think Nigel Farage should have declared the gifts he received from George Cottrell?

Badenoch said Farage should have obeyed the rules, like everyone else.

I have to make declarations day in, day out of people who are giving donations and gifts or whatever so that people can see where the money is coming from.

Why does Nigel Farage want an exception? Why does he think that he is better or more important than the rest of us? And he doesn’t have to follow the rules?

We all need to follow the rules.

So yes, if he did receive benefits and gifts in-kind, then he should declare them.

Badenoch went on to say that Farage was in trouble with this story because he was not being straight with people.

The reason why these scandals keep pursuing [Farage] is because he won’t do what everybody else does – come out and answer the questions properly.

Telling people that it’s none of their business means that the stories will continue. There will continue to be questions asked.

He should just come out and be straight with people. That’s what I do all the time.

Badenoch said she was “sick and tired” of sex offenders being released early.

Referring to reports claiming that Andy Burnham also wants to stop sex offenders being included in the government’s prisoner early release scheme, she challenged him to vote for the Tory opposition day motion on this later.

She said:

What Labour should be doing is stopping this early release. Andy Burnham said he didn’t like it, so I would like to see him voting with us against early release later on today.

If he doesn’t do it after saying that he disagreed with the policy, then I’m afraid his words are not worth the paper they’re written on.

The Tory motion, which will be put to the vote at 7pm tonight, says:

That this house calls on the government to exempt from automatic early release under the provisions of the Sentencing Act 2026 any offender who has been convicted of a sexual offence against an adult or a child, including rape and grooming, or convicted of the attempt, conspiracy, or incitement to commit such offences; further calls on the government to bring forward legislation to enact this change immediately; and regrets that the Conservative amendment to the Sentencing Act 2026 that would have secured these exemptions was not agreed to.

The Tory motion covers all sex offenders. According to a report in the Sunday Times two days ago, Burnham’s particular concern is to ensure child sex offenders are not covered by the early release scheme.

Q: What benefits would you cut?

Badenoch says the Tory plans would stop people with mild mental health conditions getting disability benefits.

And she refers to this story in today’s Times, which she says backs up her case.

In the story, Daisy Eastlake and Oliver Wright say:

More than 100,000 people with ADHD are being paid disability benefits without any requirement to look for work, an increase of 40 per cent since Labour came to power.

Official statistics show that the government has approved an average of 40 personal independence payments (Pip) a day over the past two years in which ADHD is cited as the main condition.

The rise, from 71,528 in July 2024 to 100,207 in April this year, is being driven by a surge in the number of young people claiming the benefit. More than half of claimants for the neurodevelopmental condition are aged between 16 and 24, while nearly two thirds of young people cite ADHD, autism, depression or anxiety as their main disability, up from almost half in 2020.

Of all those claiming Pip for ADHD, about four in ten are receiving the top rate of daily living and mobility allowances worth up to £194 a week. This is paid on top of most other benefits and comes with no requirement to look for work.

Q: Do you think the parliamentary commissioner for standards should investigate Nigel Farage’s gifts from George Cottrell?

Badenoch said that was a matter for the commissioner.

But she said the donations controversy showed “the sort of chaos which we would see under a Farage government”.

And she claimed that Farage’s reference to the Leveson report, when he was doorstepped by Sky News last night (see 9.16am), implied that he was keen on tightening press regulation.

She went on:

[Farage is] hinting at press regulation. For all of the criticism and the attacks, and I would even say abuse that I’ve got from the press, I’ve never once recommended curbing our free press. I think this is one of the amazing things about this country.

I would be very worried about a Reform government using government power to control the press. I don’t think that that would be right.

In her speech on defence, Kemi Badenoch also attacked Andy Burnham, claiming he was not properly committed to the issue.

She said:

Burnham doesn’t appear to have said anything about the threats we face.

Does he not care that on Sunday a Russian jet was intercepted by the RAF dropping sonar devices onto British aircraft carrier?

Or that our undersea cables are already under constant attack and a Russian assault on them could knock out internet across the country?

Defence of this country should be Andy Burnham’s number one priority.

In fact, he says he says he wants to spend less time on foreign affairs.

Richard Tice, the Reform UK deputy leader, has dismissed suggestions that revelations about the party accepting huge donations from very wealthy people are undermining the party’s claim to be acting in the interests of ordinary people.

In a Q&A at the Institute for Government, asked if he was worried about people thinking a Reform government would only act on behalf of the rich, Tice replied: “Candidly, no, I’m not worried about that.”

Tice claimed that people like to see “successful people leading things” and he said there should be more respect for people who have been successful in business and made money.

He also said that Reform did very well in the May elections, which came after the Guardian’s revelation about Nigel Farage accepting £5m from Christopher Harborne, the cryptocurrency billionaire.

Tice said that no party was perfect. But he claimed that eight donors to the Labour party have received public contracts worth £150m over the past two years, and he said there should be more scrutiny of that.

(Tice seemed to be referring to a follow-up to this research.)

In her speech this morning Kemi Badenoch will claim that Keir Starmer will be “completely powerless” at the Nato summit today, and that his defence investment plan is “not fit for purpose”.

According to an extract released in advance, she will say:

Today Keir Starmer heads off to the most important Nato summit in a generation.

Britain has received intelligence that Russia could launch an attack on Nato as soon as 2030.

This development would put Britain in direct conflict with the world’s biggest nuclear armed state.

We could not be facing a more serious situation.

This is a critical moment in our national history, and our politics should be reflecting the gravity of the situation.

Every single party in Westminster should be talking about British national security.

But instead, we have the complete opposite.

Just at a time when Britain needs seriousness, Westminster has never been more of a pantomime.

We are sending an outgoing prime minister who is now completely powerless to that Nato summit.

And he is taking with him a defence investment plan which he knows is not fit for purpose.

With barely half of the additional funding that our armed forces need.

So little that the former defence secretary quit the government because he thought the plans would put British troops in danger.

We’re supposed to just pretend that didn’t happen.

Slideshows that compared student loan repayments with the cost of a mobile phone contract, and YouTube videos that did not mention the fact that loan terms could change amounted to mis-selling by the government, MPs have said.

Here is Hilary Osborne’s story.

And here is the report from the Commons Treasury committee.

Good morning. One of the reasons why Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is relatively popular is because he mostly presents as genial and good-natured. A rather different Farage was on display last night, after he angrily berated a Sky News cameraman who doorstepped him as he arrived back in the UK off a flight from the US. Farage also accused Sky News of harassing his family, which Sky denies. Perhaps Farage had a grim journey next to a noisy passenger in economy, but it is hard not to conclude that the outburst has more to do with Farage fearing that the ongoing controversy about his failure to declare gifts and support he received in the period shortly before he became an MP in 2024 could fatally damage his chances of becoming PM.

The Labour party has posted the clip.

It may come as some consolation to the Reform UK leader to know that Donald Trump is on his side. The US president posted this on his Truth Social platform yesterday.

But there is fresh trouble for Farage this morning. At the weekend the Sunday Times published a long investigation into the gifts and benefits Farage received before he became an MP from George Cottrell, a crypto entrepreneur who has previously been convicted of fraud. The Sunday Times report, and the reaction it generated at the time, focused on claims that Farage broke parliamentary rules by failing to declare these in the register of MPs’ interests.

Now the Electoral Commission is being asked to investigate claims that the failure to declare the gifts was also a breach of electoral law. Anna Turley, the Labour chair, has written to the commission setting out her case. She argues that, on the basis of the Sunday Times reporting, the Cottrell gifts “exceed the £500 threshold for checking permissibility and the £2,230 threshold for reporting donations to the Electoral Commission”.

Here is the key extract from Turley’s letter.

During the period in question (from the second half of 2023 until the 2024 general election), Mr Farage was a member of Reform UK, its honorary president and, with Reform UK being a private limited company at the time, the owner of the majority of its shares.

Mr Farage was highly active as a Reform member and campaigner over this period. For example, he was a speaker at Reform UK’s Conference on 8 October 2023; he posted regularly in support of Reform UK on X (formerly Twitter); and, as The Sunday Times reports, his video output created in conjunction with the staff funded by Mr Cottrell was highly political and strongly supportive of Reform UK:

His daily videos about “an invasion” of illegal migrants crossing the Channel, net zero U-turns from Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government and the “dreadful” Black Lives Matter movement raked in hundreds of thousands of views. He also continued to champion Reform, sharing a video bearing the party’s turquoise logo and encouraging viewers to vote at the October by-elections. “My efforts and my work will be solely behind Richard Tice and Reform UK,” he boasted in a video captioned “Reform is here to stay.”

As you will be aware, Schedule 7 of PPERA says that a regulated donee may be “a member of a registered party”, and that a “controlled donation” “in relation to a member of a registered party means a donation received by that person which is (i) offered to him, or (ii) where it has been accepted, retained by him, for his use or benefit in connection with any of his political activities as a member of the party”.

I believe that Mr Farage’s status within Reform UK, and his use of the resources provided by Mr Cottrell to produce campaigning material in support of Reform UK, and for his security during a period in which he was campaigning for Reform UK, engages this definition, such that Mr Cottrell’s donations are subject to regulation through having been made in connection with Mr Farage’s political activities in his capacity as a regulated donee.

And, in a statement to journalists, Turley said:

Serious allegations of rule breaking are already being assessed by the Parliamentary authorities. It is now abundantly clear that Mr Farage may have not only broken parliamentary rules, he may have broken the law.

Farage can’t brazenly brush this off as being “none of your business” any longer. He needs to own his self-inflicted scandal and prove he’s not been secretly breaking the rules and taking the British public for fools.

Here is the agenda for the day.

8.45am: Richard Tice, the Reform UK deputy leader, takes part in a Q&A at the Institute for Government.

10am: Kemi Badenoch gives a speech on defence.

10am: Wes Streeting, the former health secretary, hosts an LBC phone-in, standing in for James O’Brien.

10am: Lord Robertson and General Sir Richard Barrons, two of the three authors of last year’s strategic defence review, give evidence to the Commons defence committee on the defence investment plan published last week.

11.30am: Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

Noon: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

After 12.30pm: MPs debate two Conservative party opposition day motions. The first urges the government to back the Tory plan to save summer jobs, and the second says the government should legislate to exempt sex offenders from the prisoner early release scheme.

1pm (UK time): Keir Starmer is due to arrive at the Nato summit in Turkey. His engagements in the afternoon include a meeting with the Norwegian PM Jonas Gahr Støre and a dinner with other leaders.

2.20pm: Louise Casey, the official leading a review of adult social care for the government, gives a speech to the Local Government Association.

2.30pm: Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, gives evidence to the Lords justice and home affairs committee.

3.30pm: Badenoch speaks at Politico’s Playbook live event. Lucy Powell, the deputy Labour leader, is speaking at 5.05pm.

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