YouGov has published polling that helps to explain why Kemi Badenoch did not raise the sanctions on Israeli settlements at PMQs today. (See 1.51pm.) The poll suggests that, by a margin of three to one, people are more likely to approve of the government’s decision (52%) than disapprove of it (17%).

But almost a third of respondents told YouGov they did not have a view.

Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, has signed an information-sharing deal with her Belgian counterpart to help both countries tackle small boats and people smuggling.

According to the Home Office, this is the first law enforcement deal of this kind signed with an EU member state since Brexit.

Explaining what it will do, the Home Office says:

The UK-Belgium Law Enforcement Cooperation Agreement (LECA) will enable police officers in both countries to exchange intelligence autonomously and more quickly, helping identify, disrupt and dismantle organised criminal networks, including those involved in migrant smuggling.

Under previous arrangements, certain information exchanges required judicial approval before intelligence could be shared, creating delays at critical stages of investigations and reducing investigators’ ability to develop a timely and comprehensive picture of criminal networks operating across both countries.

The new agreement removes those barriers, enabling officers to share information autonomously and act more quickly against criminals operating across borders. It will strengthen joint investigations and specialist training to detect and disrupt criminal activity linked to small boat crossings, as well as wider organised crime such as drugs and firearms smuggling.

Belgian officers are now also able to join the UK-France Intelligence Cell in northern France, where National Crime Agency (NCA) officers work alongside French counterparts to identify and dismantle organised migrant-smuggling networks operating across Europe.

Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, has said that a cyber-attack has been ruled out as the cause of the air traffic control disruption that has caused chaos at airports.

Speaking at the start of the debate on the civil aviation bill, Alexander said:

A four-hour air traffic outage yesterday left hundreds of thousands of passengers facing cancellations, diversions, and delays.

I would like to apologise wholeheartedly to passengers for this disruption.

We often take for granted the way in which our aviation system just works, but yesterday that was not the case.

Safety must remain air traffic controllers’ overriding priority, and this morning I have spoken to Nats [formerly National Air Traffic Services] chief executive Martin Rolfe, who informed me this outage was due to a technical issue at their Swanwick site.

So, while my understanding from Nats is that we can rule out a cyber-attack on this occasion, I do not believe this issue was unavoidable.

We also spoke this morning about how Nats responded to resolve and minimise the disruption as quickly as possible, and I am grateful to the airports and airlines who responded straight away.

Tom Ambrose has more on this story on a separate live blog.

Downing Street has ruled out allowing another Scottish independence referendum – even though Andy Burnham implied at PMQs that the Scots could have one if a majority were in favour.

In response to a question from the SNP MP Chris Law, Burnham said the situation in Scotland was “exactly the same” as in Northern Ireland, where the law says a referendum on leaving the UK and joining a united Ireland should take place if that’s what people want.

But later No 10 suggested Burnham mis-spoke. At the post-PMQs briefing, the PM’s press secretary said:

The PM’s been repeatedly clear on this. In his call with the Scottish first minister in his first week, the PM stated upfront that another referendum on independence was off limits and as our election manifesto makes clear, Labour does not support independence or another referendum.

At PMQs Law referred to Burnham telling MPs last week that he would stick to every word of the Good Friday agreement. He went on:

[The PM] will therefore know that the Northern Ireland Act 1998 contains a provision for a referendum on leaving the United Kingdom, but no equivalent provision exists in the law for Scotland. Does he recognise that the people of Scotland have an equal right to choose their own future, and that the conditions for a second independence referendum should be set out in law?

Law was referring to a provision in the Good Friday agreement saying the Northern Ireland secretary has to order a referendum on reunification “if at any time it appears likely to him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland”. Quite how the Northern Ireland secretary would decide this is not specified.

Responding to Law, Burnham said:

[Law] mentions the Good Friday agreement, and I will stick to it 100%.

I remind him, on the question of a border poll, that that is to be considered by the Northern Ireland secretary when there is clear consensus in the country – when public opinion has changed to the point at which the call has to be considered. I would say that it is exactly the same situation in Scotland. I am not aware that there is majority public support for another referendum, and until that changes, there will not be one.

In fact, some recent polls suggest there would be a small majority for independence if a referendum were to take place now.

John Swinney, the SNP leader and Scottish first minister, later claimed that Burnham had made an important concession. He posted on social media:

To go from “off limits” to this is an acceptance of the reality that the people of Scotland will decide their own future – not the UK government.

For the first time since 2014, a British prime minister accepts that majority support for a referendum should mean one takes place.

Yvette Cooper, the health secretary, has announced £1.5bn will be spent to fix urgent problems in crumbling NHS buildings and build resilience to extreme heat, the Press Association reports. PA says:

This money comes from the £6.75bn estate safety fund announced last year, which is set to be distributed over nine years from 2026/27 to 2034/35.

The £1.5bn will cover 950 hospitals and tackle issues like fire safety systems and outdated ventilation, with more than £32m to be spent on cooling and ventilation to prepare for summer heatwaves.

It comes after the UK experienced its hottest summer on record, with five heatwaves and 40 days of temperatures above 30C.

Addressing MPs this afternoon, Cooper said: “In the spending review, we allocated for the first time a multi-year £6.75bn estate safety fund.

“I can announce the first wave of investment from this fund today, covering 950 hospital projects across England, which will receive a share of a £1.5bn investment to fix urgent problems of ageing buildings and facilities.

“Schemes tackling issues including failing fire safety systems, outdated ventilation, ageing electrical equipment that could put patients and staff at risk.

“More than £32m will be spent specifically on projects that include improving cooling and ventilation, helping hospitals cope with extreme heat as well as winter pressures.

“As part of this funding, I can announce 10 major schemes worth £200m: Wycombe hospital in High Wycombe, the Royal Free hospital in north London, the Linden Centre in Essex, the John Howard Centre in London, Lister hospital in Hertfordshire, Southend hospital in Essex, the Stepping Hill hospital in Stockport, St George’s Hospital in Stafford, the Bristol Royal Infirmary, and the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Gateshead.

“I have also asked the NHS to look particularly at extreme weather resilience as part of future waves of capital plans.”

The Department of Health and Social Care has published more details of the projects here.

Reform UK has said it will cooperate fully with the Metropolitan police investigation, the Press Association reports.

A Reform UK spokesperson said:

Reform UK denies any wrongdoing and will fully cooperate with the investigation.

We won’t be commenting further while a live investigation is under way.

Here is the full statement from the Metropolitan police about the new investigation into Reform UK. (See 2.44pm.)

Following a broadcast by Channel 4 News on Thursday, 3 September, the Met received a number of reports relating to donations and polling involving a political party.

Detectives have assessed the information provided and determined that there are potential offences requiring investigation. The potential offences are similar in nature to matters already under investigation by the Met’s Special Enquiry Team relating to donations made to the same political party. As a result, these matters will form part of that ongoing investigation.

All allegations under investigation relate to potential offences under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.

As part of enquiries, detectives are seeking to obtain relevant footage relating to the broadcast on Thursday, 3 September.

Detectives continue to liaise closely with the Electoral Commission and Crown Prosecution Service as enquiries progress.

Darren Jones, who was chief secretary to the PM in Keir Starmer’s government, is calling for a global treaty to regulate AI. He has written an open letter on this to Andy Burnham, the United Nations secretary general António Guterres and the OECD secretary general Mathias Cormann. It is prompted by a safety researcher at Anthropic declaring that the chance that AI could “kill all humans” within a decade is more than 10%.

Jones says:

I’ve never thought we should ban innovation or scientific endeavour but it’s clear we need a new multinational treaty for the safe and regulated development of superintelligence.

I’ve written to @antonioguterres @MathiasCormann and @andyburnham to ask that the UN, OECD and G7/G20 act now

The Met police will investigate allegations that Reform UK broke electoral law relating to overseas donations as part of a wider inquiry, Rowena Mason reports.

The government is putting class at the heart of its equalities agenda by creating a new unit that will make tackling white working-class inequality a priority, Aletha Adu reports.

Andy Burnham is striking a welcome new tone at PMQs. He sounds like a man interested in the questions being asked, instinctively minded to be helpful (particularly to backbenchers) and, when confronted with a political criticism, interested in engaging with the argument. By contrast, when Keir Starmer was doing it, as the questions came his mind just seemed to be whirring towards the default ‘line to take’ discussed in advance. Perhaps it’s just because Burnham is new to the job and he has not been burned yet by making too many rash promises (or quasi-promises, like today’s on the Gravesend-Tilbury ferry – see 12.31pm). But he does seem to have some sort of strong, innate desire to win people round that might persist. During the summer, when Patrick Maguire from the Times put it to him in an interview that he worried too much about being liked, Burnham replied: “Isn’t the job to be popular by making people’s lives better? Isn’t that what you should be doing?”

Getting Kemi Badenoch to like or admire him may be too much to ask, but it was notable that Burnham kept stressing his commitment to working with her on issues like defence spending. Badenoch opened her questions with a reference to Burnham’s mini-gaffe last week, when he told Tan Dehsi that he was fully committed to raising defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2030 when he meant 3.5% by 2035. Badenoch could have made this highly embarrassing for Burnham, but he got out of it fairly well – not actually committing to 3% by 2030 while at the same time implying (as Alex Wickham from Bloomberg explains here) that he will get there in the end.

The most interesting comments were about welfare. For at least a year now, the Conservatives have been arguing that the answer to the defence spending challenge (in fact, the answer to every government spending challenge) is just to cut welfare spending. In response to a challenge on this, Starmer would have just attacked the Tories’ record on defence. But Burnham sounded like someone who has actually read the Tory proposals in detail (which wouldn’t take long) and thought about why that might be a bad idea. And he told Badenoch:

I looked at it and I don’t think myself that taking £4bn out of housing benefit is the right consensus around this issue because that would create levels of homelessness in this country that we wouldn’t have seen before, hundreds of thousands of children in temporary accommodation.

He went on:

We do everything to support our national security, but it can’t come at the expense of social security. Having strong national security also depends upon having resilience in our communities. This side of the house will not be forced to choose between the two, and we will set out a plan to get to 3.5% (of GDP spent on defence) by 2035 at the spending review.

The Conservatives clearly think this is a mistake. Before the end of PMQs, a Tory spokesperson had put out a press release saying:

Britain heard it loud and clear today: Andy Burnham will not cut welfare to fund the defence of our country. The prime minister is prioritising the ballooning benefits bill over our national security. Shameful. This is not leadership, it is surrender.

But, if Labour want to win an argument with the opposition about welfare, they are going to have to explain why benefits matter and what happens when you cut them. Today, Burnham made a start.

The second most interesting comments were the ones that Badenoch did not make; she did not say anything about Israel. Maybe that was just because she decided it was yesterday’s story, but it is also possible that that she realises that she is in the wrong place on this issue. Yesterday she published an article on this issue which did not contain a word of criticism of Israel and which accused Burnham of just caving in to Corbynism and antisemitism. The Tories seemed to be eagerly awaiting Donald Trump to lash out. But the White House said very little, it turned out that those well-known Corbynites Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney were doing exactly the same thing and even the Board of Deputies of British Jews was more critical of settler violence in its response than Badenoch. When a mainstream political leader ends up to the right of Donald Trump and the Board of Deputies on Israel policy, they have probably got it wrong.

Because Badenoch had not raised Israel, Burnham had to save up his global leadership spiel for his final answer. (See 12.19pm.) But it was worth the wait; it was pretty good.

Dave Doogan, the SNP leader at Westminster, says energy bills are going up, some morgages are going up, and petrol prices are rising too. But Burnham remains “fairly well liked”, he says. And he says he personally likes Burnham.

But what will Burnham do to help?

Burnham says he is taking VAT off fuel bills. And he says Doogan should look out for “further measures”.

And he thanks Doogan for his “fake praise”, saying it will “get him everywhere”.

Badenoch says Burnham talks about the last government. But the last government was Keir Starmer’s, and it fails.

She accuses Burnham of being “continuity Keir”.

Burnham replies:

She mentions leadership. Let me tell her and the whole house where Britain is showing leadership.

There have been Conservative politicians at this despatch box, Labour politicians too, for decades, who’ve talked about the importance of the two-state solution between Israel and Palestine.

Words from any politician about a two-state solution will be only words if it’s not backed with action. And leadership is about taking action.

Where there is injustice, where we need to correct unfairness, people being driven out of their homes, losing their homes, being intimidated in their daily lives, I credit the father of the house [Edward Leigh] who yesterday applauded the action that this government is taking in this difficult and dangerous world.

Britain has to stand for something. Britain has to show leadership. Britain has to stand for fairness against injustice.

Where people are being bullied out of their homes, intimidated, we will always stand with the underdog and take what action we can to support them. That is leadership on the world stage, Britain being true to what it’s always been about.

That is what the British people expect of us, and that is what this government will do.

Badenoch claims the government will spend £35bn giving away British territory.

Defence funding fell in real terms last year, she says.

She asks why the government is sending money to Mauritius.

Burnham says Badenoch is not on strong ground on defence.

Under the last Tory government, spending on defence fell as a proportion of GDP.

He says it would be better to work across the house to get a “fully and securely funded path” to raise defence spending to 3.5% of GDP by 2035 backed by all sides.

Badenoch says Burnham’s answer is “unbelievable”. She says he should cut welfare to fund defence.

And she asks if he will approve the Rosebank oil field project.

Burnham goes back to attacking the Tory plans to raise another £10bn for defence.

If you take £4bn out in the next few years, you will make families homeless, you will increase rough sleeping on our streets.

On oil and gas, he says he will be “pragmatic”.

Badenoch says Burnham was in shadow cabinet with Jeremy Corbyn, who did not back the nuclear deterrent. And so she will not take lectures from him on defence.

He asks if Healey is unable or unwilling to raise defence spending to 3% of GDP.

Burnham says Healey will be willing to fund the defence investment plan.

He says he looked at her plan for defence spending. It involves welfare cuts, and that would lead to a big rise in homelessness, he says.

He says:

We will do everything to support our national security, but it can’t come at the expense of social security. Having strong national security also depends upon having resilience in our communities.

Kemi Badenoch says after PMQs last week it was not clear if Burnham would or would not raise defence spending to 3% of GDP by 2030. Was John Healey right to resign as defence secretary over this?

Burnham says he appointed Healey because of his commitment to defence. He says the government will honour the commitment to get it to 3.5% of GDP by 2035, and he says he will set out a timetable to get there.

But he says there should be more problem solving, not point scoring, on this.

Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, has criticised Sir Ephraim Mirvis, the chief rabbi, for his comments about the impact of the government’s UK sanctions. He claimed Mirvis was equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

Polanski told reporters:

Actually, ironically, I think this leads to more antisemitism because it blurs the lines from people who should know better.

What I would say to anyone who represents any religion or any group of people is, we need to be really specific with our language, we need to be really clear and sensitive.

I think in a situation like this, where the Israeli government have to be challenged, to conflate a challenge to the Israeli government and a challenge to the settlers and the ethnic cleansing as an attack on British Jews, actually makes me as a Jewish person feel less safe.

I think everyone needs to be sensitive, including myself, about the language we use and how we talk about the situation.

Andy Burnham is about to take his second PMQs.

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

Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, has challenged Andy Burnham to publish the full, secret advice he has had from intelligence agencies about the threat posed to the UK from potential nature collapse.

In a speech at the Wild Summit this morning, Polanski said:

We’ve already seen how fragile our food systems are this year, with farmers warning that we could see empty shelves as a result of drought and flooding, and the government whispering that we should start stocking up on tinned food and bottled water.

Polanski said that a report from the joint intelligence committee said:

Without significant increases in the UK food system and supply chain resilience, it is unlikely the UK would be able to maintain food security if ecosystem collapse drives geopolitical competition for food.

He said another intelligence report, covered by the Times, said Britain’s food and water supply were “almost certain” to be on a “decline and collapse trajectory” – and our food security was at risk of “catastrophic failure.”

Polanski went on:

Today I have a question for our new prime minister. Will you tell the truth – and release the full unredacted report from the joint intelligence chiefs? Or will you keep hiding the truth from the public?

And will you act on the scale of the threat – and introduce a Nature, Biodiversity and National Security Act to put resilience at the heart of government?

This summer we saw our countryside burn and our city parks turn to dust. It was a bleak preview of what is to come if we continue to allow the greed of corporations to come above the survival of our natural world – and all that relies on it.

This must mark a turning point. Where we say no more loss. No more quieting of birdsong, no more steady trickling of sewage and poison into our waters.

Alex Burghart, the deputy Tory leader, was giving interviews this morning. On Israel, he opened up a new line of attack against the government, accusing it of hypocrisy. This is what he told GB News.

At the same time that Labour were saying all these things about Israel in the House of Commons, they put out a communique.

They put out an account of a conversation that Andy Burnham has had with the Chinese president, and it said how constructive they wanted to be with China, how they wanted to work with China, and what a great relationship we have.

Now, I’m not saying we should put sanctions on China, but I would point out that the Chinese over the past few decades have been guilty of some of the very worst human rights violations that we’ve seen anywhere, and yet Labour’s hypocrisy is capable of allowing it to have these two totally different approaches at the same time. I think that this is madness.

Reform UK has insisted its deal with France’s far-right National Rally to return migrants back across the Channel was fully approved by the party and signed off by its president, Jordan Bardella, amid a furious backlash in France. Rowena Mason and Angelique Chrisafis have the story.

Gideon Saar, the Israeli foreign minister, has thanked Kemi Badenoch for her “firm opposition” to the government’s sanctions against his country. They spoke last night and afterward he posted this on social media.

Great conversation this evening with UK Opposition Leader @KemiBadenoch and Shadow Foreign Secretary @TomTugendhat.

I thanked them for their firm opposition to the hostile Labour Government’s announcement today and its series of anti-Israel policies since taking office.

I welcomed their support for the friendship with Israel and their commitment for the future relations between our countries. We know that we have many friends in the UK, but unfortunately we are faced with the ongoing hostility of the current Labour government.

I also thanked Kemi for her warm wishes ahead of the Jewish New Year.

In his interview on the Today programme, Ed Miliband also said that he was “confident our security cooperation with Israel will continue” despite the sanctions.

The Tories are claiming the government’s move puts that cooperation in jeopardy, and that British lives are at risk as a result.

Asked why he was confident that there would not be a problem, “given how angry [the Israelis] are”, Miliband replied:

I won’t go into the details of this, but we have important intelligence and security relationships with Israel and I’m confident they will continue.

And I was very clear yesterday that we do believe in working with our Israeli partners when it comes to the threats they face from Iran. For example, I announced new sanctions on Iran yesterday.

Emma Graham-Harrison wrote a good explainer for the Guardian yesterday about the potential impact of the sanctions imposed by Ed Miliband.

She explained that, while the most obvious part of the announcement relates to the ban on the import of goods produced in settlements, the measures relating to financial services are potentially much more significant.

She said:

Miliband highlighted that the Israeli settler population in occupied Palestine had almost tripled over the past three decades, from 270,000 in 1993 to 770,000 today.

That expansion is underpinned by large government subsidies. A trade ban alone would be unlikely to have much impact on the viability of construction that is a government priority, or on the broader Israeli economy.

However, plans to place sanctions on any company that finances or facilitates settlement expansion could force Israel’s main banks and insurance companies to choose between their business interests in the UK and those in occupied Palestine.

Miliband has not provided details of the new measures, which he said would take between six and nine months to put in place. But they have the potential to slow or stop construction.

The activist Yehuda Shaul wrote in a social media post about new building projects: “Companies that bid for tenders on government-led projects, including settlement expansion, must have a financial guarantor. Without the backing of Israeli financial institutions, these projects cannot occur.”

Some Israeli commentators have expressed doubts as to whether, in practice, these sanctions really will cover mainstream Israeli banks. But, in his interview on the Today programme this morning, Miliband insisted they could.

He said:

I also make this wider point, because this is about a substantive intervention to make a difference to the facts on the ground.

With our sanctions regime, we are also seeking to cut off the supply of the supply lines of British finance, British construction, for settlement expansion. This is about a clear purpose, which is to draw a line in the sand and to stop this infinite, ever-expanding settlement expansion.

Asked if Israeli banks would be covered too, Miliband replied:

The way this works is that we sanction companies, and we don’t name the companies in advance. We sanction companies that might be engaging in the occupied territories. And then it is about the relationship with British citizens and British companies.

When Justin Webb, the presenter, put it to Miliband that this meant the sanctions would go much wider than just applying to people “selling dates”, and that they would apply to companies in Israel with relationships with settler companies, Miliband replied:

Yes, because this is about seeking to have an impact on the services that are provided to expand the occupation.

And we are very serious about making a substantive difference and using the power of our sanctions regime to make a difference to the facts on the ground.

In his interview with Sky News this morning, Ed Miliband, the foreign secretary, said that he regretted the fact that Israel is ordering the UK to close its consulate in Jerusalem in response to the UK sanctions. But he said the government had weighed up “the costs and benefits” of its move in advance.

He said:

I regret what the Israeli government has announced, but I’m proud of what we did yesterday and it was the right thing to do.

It will be damaging, that’s true, but we weighed up the costs and the benefits in advance of this.

And we did something very important. We talked to the representatives of the Palestinian people, the Palestinian prime minister, the representative here, and they both said to us with a very clear voice, you need to act from our point of view.

He added:

I would prefer that Israel hadn’t announced what it did, but overall, I strongly believe that what we did, along with other international allies, was absolutely the right thing to do.

Good morning. Yesterday Ed Miliband, the foreign secretary, made what may turn out to be one of the most important Commons statements of the year. Here is our overnight report by Pippa Crerar, Jessica Elgot and Kiran Stacey.

Here is an analysis by Patrick Wintour, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor.

And here is the Guardian’s editorial.

It starts: “Rarely in recent years has the Commons felt like the cockpit of history. On Tuesday it did.”

Ministers were worried about a backlash from Donald Trump. So far, that has not happened, and in the US Axios is reporting that, when Andy Burnham spoke to Trump on Monday, “two sources with knowledge of the call said Trump didn’t push back or ask Burnham to change course”. In his report for Axios, Barak Ravid says: “US officials told their British counterparts they shared their concerns about the Netanyahu government’s West Bank policy, even if they disagreed with these specific sanctions, sources say.”

But in the UK some of the leading organisations representing the Jewish community have strongly condemned the decision to ban trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and Sir Ephraim Mirvis, the chief rabbi, described yesterday as “truly a dark day for British Jews”. The rightwing papers are all leading their coverage on his remarks.

Miliband has been giving interviews this morning, and he has said he does not agree.

Asked about the chief rabbi’s statement, Miliband told Sky News:

Well, I’m a proud British Jew, and I don’t agree with the chief rabbi.

I have great respect for the chief rabbi, but I don’t agree with him, and I believe that it must be possible to do what we did yesterday, which is to stand up for British values of the rule of law, of dignity for people, of the prevention of injustice, and do so in a way, as I did yesterday, to say to anyone in our country who holds British Jews responsible for the actions of the Israeli government, that is antisemitism, pure and simple.

We will hear from Andy Burnham on this later at PMQs.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9am: Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, speaks at the Wild Summit in Bristol. Words and video planned

From 9am: David Anderson and Jonathan Hall, the former and current independent reviewer of terror legislation respectively, are among those giving evidence to phase two of the Southport inquiry, looking at Prevent’s role in managing violence-fixated individuals.

10am: Prof Alexis Jay, chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), is among the experts giving evidence to the London assembly’s police and crime committee on grooming gangs.

Noon: Andy Burnham faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.

After 12.30pm: Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, may make a Commons statement on the air traffic control chaos. She is also opening the second reading debate on the civil aviation bill.

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