Cleverly says Lammy has not apologised, and has not said rapists and paedophiles won’t be released early.

He says Lammy’s plan to limit the use of jury trials is also wrong.

Lammy says he has no plan to scrap trial by jury. Cleverly should “get on the detail”, he says.

He says there is a threshold change.

Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron also changed jury trial policy, he say.

Cleverly says Lammy is also releasing dangerous prioners by accident. Last year Lammy claimed he had got a grip of accidental releases. But there have been more now under Labour than in the entirety of the last parliament.

Lammy says “this is rich” coming from the Tories. They wrecked neighbourhood policing. And they let out prisoners in secret, he says.

Cleverly says Lammy is a “good man” and he must know this policy is wrong.

If he won’t change course, will he at least guarantee that not one rapist or paedophile will be released early this year.

Lammy says Cleverly has not said what the Tories would do. They released 10,000 prisoners early “on the sly”. There was no impact assessment.

He says mitigating factors are in place.

Cleverly says 50,000 prisoners have been released early in two years under Labour.

And he says Lammy refused to apologise to victims.

He quotes a victim saying finding out her attacker is getting out early means she can barely sleep.

Lammy must know the policy is “wrong and dangerous”, Cleverly says.

Lammy says the Tories had their own early release schemes. He says 10,000 people were released early. They kept announcing one after another. And then Rishi Sunak called an early election, apparently because jails were full.

Lammy says all MPs want to see offenders locked up. But for that to happen, the government needs prisoner places.

James Cleverly asks if Lammy will apologise to the victims of rapists and paedophiles who are being released early as a result of Lammy’s policy.

Lammy starts by attacking Cleverly’s record in government.

On prisoners, he says ever decision taken by the government has been influenced by concerns about public safety.

He says the Tories closed 23 prisons.

That is why an early release scheme is needed, he says.

Jeff Smith (Lab) asks Lammy if he welcomes the pledge by Bev Craig, Labour’s candidate in the Greater Manchester mayoral election, to give free bus travel to all 11 to 18-year-olds.

Lammy praises Craig and says Labour MPs will want to support her.

Paul Holmes (Con) asks how Lammy, as a football fan, feels about Keir Starmer being given the red card and replaced with a leftwinger.

Lammy says Holmes should accept the Tories failed in government.

David Lammy starts by saying this week is the anniversary of 7/7. He says his best friend was one of those caught up in the attack.

And he pays tribute to the former MP George Howarth, who has died.

Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question at PMQs.

Lucy Powell, the deputy Labour leader and a former leader of the Commons, told a Politco event yesterday that the Commons investigation into claims that Nigel Farage broke rules by not declaring donations, could take at least a year, Dan Bloom reports. Bloom said another Labour figure told him it could take even longer.

The original investigation into Farage was just focused on the £5m donation he received from Christopher Harborne, the cryptocurrency billionaire.

But, in his speech yesterday, Farage seemed to confirm that this inquiry has now been widened to include donation he received from his friend George Cottrell which were not declared. Farage said:

Now, the standards commissioner investigating me over the gift has now reared its head again as a result of a lot of copy in this week’s Sunday Times – incidentally, written by a journalist who publicly says he despises me. And despite the fact that many of the things that were written in that article were wholly inaccurate or indeed irrelevant, yet another standards investigation is under way. Standards are now being used as a political tool.

Daniel Greenberg, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, is also being asked to investigate claims that Farage broke lobbying rules.

In the Commons, today’s proceedings have just started, with Northern Ireland questions. There was some speculation that Reform UK would move the writ for the Clacton byelection today. That would be a job for Lee Anderson, the party’s chief whip. If that was going to happen, it should have happened at the start of business at 11.30am. But it didn’t.

The writ can’t be moved until Nigel Farage has resigned as an MP. That has not happened. The confirmation of that comes in the form of a press release from the Treasury, like this one (when Josh Simons resigned), and we have not had one of those yet.

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, has written an open letter to Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, urging her not to allow Nigel Farage to resign as an MP.

In a normal parliament, an MP who wanted to resign would just resign. But in Britain, where the political class is beholden to tradition to an extent that other nations might find odd, it is not as simple as that and an MP can only resign by accepting an ancient job that no longer exists from the chancellor. Full details are explained here in a Hansard Society podcast/transcript about the Chiltern Hundreds.

In theory the chancellor could block the resignation by not allowing the appointment. But this has not happened since 1842, when Viscount Chelsea was stopped from resigning as an MP. This was because the chancellor at the time thought Chelsea was giving up his seat in return for a bribe from the person who wanted to succeed him.

Count Binface has also received good wishes from a cabinet minister. Dan Jarvis, the defence secretary, issued this statement today about the Clacton byelection.

This is clearly a stunt from Nigel [Farage] trying to get in front of the concerns that have been expressed about him accepting £5m We’ll see what the standards commissioner rules.

My sense is he understands the strength of feeling, which I’ve actually, interestingly, felt bottom up in my constituency. I think he senses that he is in real trouble and has taken action to try and get in front of that.

I don’t think that has played out particularly well for him. I don’t think it’s been well-received. I’ve had some quite interesting feedback from my constituents that this is just a complete circus and a complete waste of time.

Looks like Count Binface will be sort of stepping forward, and good luck to him.

Jarvis is at the Nato summit in Turkey. For more coverage of the summit, and all the debate about defence, European foreign policy, and Greenland, do follow Jakub Krupa’s coverage on his Europe live blog. There is no Count Binface in that story – although it has got Donald Trump.

For anyone involved in British politics, an invitation to be interviewed on Radio 4’s Today programme is the ultimate badge of seriousness. There are probably hundreds of MPs who have never made it onto the programme because they have not been deemed important enough.

But, as if to prove the point that the Clacton byelection really is a “farce” (see 7.59am), this morning Today had an interview with Count Binface, the serial joke byelection candidate who may turn out to be Nigel Farage’s main opposition in Clacton.

Asked if might win, Binface replied:

Probably not, but then you know my job is to celebrate and defend the wonders of British democracy.

And look at this, eh? The fact that you are interviewing me on the Today Programme, because all the other parties aren’t standing, says more about them than it does about me.

Are they running scared from old Binny, or do they think that Nigel’s running a cunning stunt? And I pronounced that carefully at 8.55 in the morning.

Readers from abroad who are struggling to work out why a serious news programme would interview a man with a dustbin on his head as part of its politics cover need to know that in Britain there is a long tradition of treating election campaigns as part entertainment. There is also a long tradition of people standing as joke candidates. It is relatively cheap to enter a byelection (you have to pay a £500 deposit, which you lose if you don’t secure 5% of the vote), and you are at least guaranteed a slot on TV when all the candidates are on stage as the result is announced. For many years the most prominent joke candidate was Screaming Lord Sutch of the Monster Raving Loony party. Now Count Binface is his best-known successor.

Ever since British politics went mad after Brexit, some might argue that the conventional parties have been fairly good at throwing up joke candidates themselves. But the Monster Raving Loony/Binface tradition lives on.

The Greens were the last of the main parties to say they would not be standing against Nigel Farage and Reform UK in Clacton. A party source said that was because they take their internal democracy particularly seriously, and the local party had to be consulted.

A spokesperson for the Tendring Green party said last night:

We care deeply about the people of Clacton and Tendring, and we have no intention of helping to legitimise a by-election that appears designed not to serve local residents but to serve Nigel Farage’s personal political ambitions.

We will not stand in this political circus of a by-election.

This contest is not about the people of Clacton. It is about one politician placing himself at the centre of a media spectacle and expecting local residents to play supporting roles in a drama of his own making.

Tendring is the council area that covers Clacton.

Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, told the BBC this morning that Nigel Farage had only triggered a byelection to avoid “proper application of the rules”.

She said:

The byelection shouldn’t be happening. It’s Nigel Farage who has chosen, I think, frankly, to disrespect the people of Clacton by just doing this.

This is a stunt that is all about his own interest. It’s not about the people of Clacton. It’s not about the country. He was elected in a general election.

He is only doing this because he wants to somehow distract from what is simply the proper application of the rules and I don’t think that is fair on the people of Clacton.

In his Today interview Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, admitted that Nigel Farage has triggered a byelection in Clacton as a response to the threat of the parliamentary inquiry into his £5m donation leading to a recall byelection.

Yusuf said:

The reason that he has made the decision that he has is because the most serious sanction that parliamentary standards can impose is, of course, a suspension long enough such that a parliamentary byelection would be called if there was a recall petition.

So what he has done is say: ‘Let’s go directly to that ultimate source of truth.’

I know a lot of people in the establishment are uncomfortable with that, because for somebody to do what Nigel has done, whether you like him or not, it takes courage, and that’s obviously a word that can’t be associated with almost anybody in politics these days, sadly.

On the Today programme Nick Robinson, the presenter, asked Zia Yusuf if he accepted that “voters have a right to know if their politicians are given millions of pounds by very wealthy individuals who are lobbying for policies which will make them even more rich?”

Yusuf said he did not accept the premise of the question.

If somebody, anyone rich or not, is giving money to a politician in order to lobby for a cause – which, by the way, happens; sadly, as someone who has only been in politics a couple of years, I’ve seen it in Westminster, all too much – then, yes.

But this is not what has happened.