Richard Norton-Taylor, the Guardian’s former security editor, says the Ministry of Defence is itself to blame for its funding problems. Here is his article.

And this is how it starts.

George Robertson, Tony Blair’s first defence secretary, a former Nato secretary general and an author last year of the latest in a series of evasive strategic defence reviews, accused Keir Starmer on Tuesday of a “corrosive complacency towards defence”. He said the prime minister was not willing to make the “necessary investment”.

Lord Robertson could have directed his fire elsewhere. He must know that no government department has been so complacent in the face of years of devastating evidence of waste, profligate contracts, and policy decisions that have avoided confronting new but increasingly clear security threats to Britain and other western countries.

Mandarins in the Ministry of Defence and successive defence secretaries have failed to confront the armed forces’ top brass – senior military figures who have a vested interested in preserving the status quo and continuing to fighting the last battles, reluctant to accept new geopolitical realities and new technologies.

The equalities watchdog has updated its guidance on how to implement the supreme court ruling on gender after the government requested changes to the original proposals submitted last year, Peter Walker and Libby Brooks report. The guidance is likely to be published next month.

Here is the written statement from Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary and miniseter for women and equalities, confirmed that the government has received the updated guidance.

Jock Stirrup, head of the armed forces between 2006 and 2010, has said ministers need to lead a national conversation making the case for higher defence spending.

In an interview with LBC’s Tonight with Andrew Marr, Stirrup fully backed what George Robertson is saying in a speech tonight. (See 8.58am.) He said that he accepted that defence spending was cut under the last government, but he said that did not mean current ministers could avoid responsibility.

It was the previous government that began the evisceration of defence, but this government is the one that’s in charge now. This government is the one which says, rightly, that the security of the nation and its people is their first priority.

Well, it’s. It’s all very well to say that, but you need to back that up with deeds, and so far they’re not doing it.

Stirrup said that he would like defence spending to rise to 2.5% of GDP immediately, and 3% by the end of this parliament. The government is not planning to reach 2.5% until next year, and 3% is a target for the end of the next parliament.

Asked about public opposition to this, Stirrup said ministers needed to make the case.

The government keeps saying we need to have a serious and hard conversation with the British people about the need for defence. And of course, I entirely agree with them. Unfortunately, the government says these sorts of things in places like Munich and Bahrain. It doesn’t say it back here.

Referring to Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, and John Healey, the defence secretary, he said: “They are our current leaders, they need to lead.”

What Stirrup is saying dovetails with what the Financial Times’s Stephen Bush said in his Inside Politcs column this morning. He argued that Robertson’s speech is significant because it is evidence of the wider problem of establishment figures losing faith in Starmer’s ability to deliver. He says:

In this case it is George Robertson on defence, but what he is saying is really just the public version of what I hear so often from former New Labour leading lights about their contact with the government – that when it comes to actually matching rhetoric with policy commitment, Starmer never really delivers. (For its part, the government said it is “delivering” on its strategic defence review and increasing defence spending).

Will Robertson going public cause a chain reaction? What helps Starmer is that many people who will nod along to what Robertson says today fear that after him things will get worse, not better.

But one sign that this government is really starting to circle the drain will be if Labour grandees and power brokers who have had a similar journey – seeking constructive engagement before becoming frustrated – take a leaf out of Robertson’s book and say on the record that this is a government that writes cheques it doesn’t even try to cash.

The online “manosphere” – a world of extreme, misogynist content aimed at young men – is making it harder for the armed forces to deal with problem like sexual harassment, the head of the army has told MPs.

General Sir Roly Walker, chief of the general staff, also said that some of the people who join the armed forces do so because they want to become a different behaviour, and so it can take time for them to leave bad behaviours behind.

He was speaking to the Commons defence committee, in a hearing about women in the armed forces.

Asked why sexual harassment in the armed forces was still as prevalent as it was five years ago, Walker said:

My personal view is this gets harder before it gets easier, because of the trends in wider society.

The level of misogyny, the level of rancorous behaviour and belief systems, and the tension in wider society, is something we have to accept as the environment from which we attract.

I’m well aware of what is going on with things like the manosphere and the sense of deepening rifts within young people, all of which is playing and accelerating through social media.

A lot of that generation are coming through into the armed forces.

During the hearing the Labour MP Emma Lewell said that between 2021 and 2024 there had been 122 investigations into sexual offences against under 18-year-olds at the Army Foundation College in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. Of those, 80 were sexual assault.

The college is the sole military training unit for British army recruits aged between 16 and 17 and a half.

Walker said it was not surprising that misogyny and sexual misconduct were a particuar issue with new recruits. He said:

The level of sexualisation in young people in society, the level of exposure to drugs, drink, alcohol, violence in wider society, it is not a surprise to me that when we take 10,000 civilians, generally between the ages of 17 and a half and 20, and train them to be soldiers, that in those early weeks and months of onboarding them into our organisation, we see the greatest correlation of behaviours which are at odds with our values and standards.

People are drawn to the armed services because they want to be something different, and it takes a while to transform them from being civilians, in my case, into being soldiers, and that is a journey.

It is not a cliff edge where you walk in the door and suddenly, you’re a different person.

These have got to be learned behaviours and applied, and the guardrails are there to do that and do the very best for our people, so they can do the best for the nation.

Richard Adams is the Guardian’s education editor.

MPs have been warned that the Department for Education (DfE) will need to overhaul school behaviour guidance and complaints procedures to make a success of its plans to make schools in England more inclusive for children with special needs.

The education select committee hearing on the reforms to special educational needs and disabilities (Send) provision heard that strict “zero tolerance” behaviour policies that punish pupils for minor infractions were incompatible with the DfE’s efforts.

Jane Harris, chief executive of Speech and Language UK, told the committee:

We really need to see the department saying that zero tolerance behaviour policies, by definition, are not inclusive. Because zero tolerance behaviour policies are rigid whereas inclusion is about flexibility. Seventy-eight per cent of teachers telling us that children with speech and language challenges are being unfairly punished in their classrooms, [that] tells us that we really need to change those behavour policies.

If you’ve got children who for whatever reason have a higher cognitive overload during the day, maybe due to speech and language challenges or maybe because of other reasons relating to Send, they cannot not then cope with being told that they have to bring a specific coloured pencil to a classroom or get a detention because of this.

If we really want children to be having all these enrichment activities, we need to make sure they are not spending all their time in detentions because they are getting penalised for these really, really tiny issues.

Harris told the MPs that policies used in some schools required pupils to be visibly attentive during lessons.

Your eyes have to be on the teacher at all times – can you imagine this committee functioning like that? You guys are not looking at us all the time.

We are really putting children into a far too rigid an environment, and we’ve got to get the department to acknowledge that it is trying to run two policies at the same time that are fundamentally incompatible.

Margaret Mulholland, head of Send and inclusion policy at the Association of School and College Leaders, said the proposed new complaints procedures for special needs provision would put further pressure on families and create a new layer of bureaucracy.

This could fundamentally damage the relationship between families and schools … This process of complaints – going through the school and to the governing body, the logistics of that, the bureauracy of that, the time this is going to take – is tremendous.

I think that statutory duty really needs thinking about and the process of support for schools needs reviewing and reframing.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank has published its initial response to the Scottish Green party’s manifesto, published this morning. In his summary, David Phillips, the IFS’s head of devolved and local government finance, calls this “a big manifesto proposing huge changes to policy”. But, as with every IFS assessment of every manifesto published in Scotland and Wales this year, it does not think the document fully explains how the party would fund its pledges.

Phillips says (bold type from IFS):

These tax plans would cement Scotland’s position as the highest-taxed part of the UK. Whether the expansion of the welfare state would make that worthwhile will be in the eye of the beholder. From a purely fiscal perspective, it is welcome to see a party that plans substantial spending increases combine them with a recognition that this would need higher revenues too – something missing from the England and Wales Green Party’s Senedd manifesto, for example. But while the manifesto omits specific revenue estimates, the proposals set out seem unlikely to raise enough revenue to fund all the additional spending that would be required to deliver the Scottish Greens’ plans. To pay for those, increases in taxes would probably have to be even larger than suggested, or cuts made to other day-to-day spending that the Scottish Greens deem lower priority. And big tax increases to fund new, universal free entitlements – to childcare, dental care, domiciliary social care, and bus travel – would make the tax rises that already look likely be needed to maintain existing services in the longer term more difficult.

You can read the IFS’s other initial responses to Scottish election manifestos here.

Turning back to George Robertson’s comments about defence (see 8.58am), the SNP has sort of endorsed what he has said – or at least his criticism of the Labour government’s record. The SNP issued this response from Dave Doogan, their defence spokesperson at Westminster. He said:

The Labour party is threatening the security of Scotland, and the UK, at the worst possible time by repeatedly delaying vital investment in our core defence capabilities while focusing investment on Trident nuclear weapons, which will not keep Scotland safe.

The UK government spent years cutting defence spending – reducing the size of our armed forces to record lows, dismantling our navy, slashing Scottish regiments, and hollowing out investment in essential equipment and training.

In an increasingly uncertain world, it is shocking that the Labour party is putting our safety in jeopardy by failing to deliver the investment needed in conventional forces, while focusing on maintaining weapons of mass destruction on the Clyde.

The fact that senior Labour party figures, including Lord Robertson, feel the need to speak out against Keir Starmer’s ‘corrosive complacency’ speaks volumes.

Keir Starmer must drop the excuses, stop dithering and bring forward necessary investment without further delay.

There should be “absolutely no new oil and gas fields” in the North Sea, the Scottish Greens have said, as the party launched its manifesto. As the Press Association reports, the comments come against the backdrop of rising fuel prices caused by the US-Israeli offensive in Iran and the disruption to the shipping of energy products in the strait of Hormuz. PA says:

John Swinney, the Scottish first minister and SNP leader, has dragged his party away from a scepticism over more drilling in Scotland’s waters, suggesting that the carbon impact of importing energy should be considered in the licensing of new fields.

The two positions could drive further space between the Scottish Greens and the SNP ahead of the 7 May election, further damaging any chances of a deal between the two parties to cement a pro-independence majority in Holyrood, though John Swinney’s party have shied away from any formal deals in recent months.

Addressing party members, co-leader Ross Greer said: “As you would expect, friends, this is a plan to tackle the climate crisis.

“It shouldn’t be the case that we are the only party publishing a manifesto compatible with the scientific reality of the crisis that we face, and yet we are.

“So we’re proud to say, the Scottish Greens are proud to be the only party in this election saying there can be absolutely no new oil and gas fields in the North Sea.”

Polling suggests the Greens are likely to gain seats on 7 May, with the party’s leaders setting their sights on pursuing some quite radical changes, including bringing all of Scotland’s buses back into public ownership and making their use free.

Fellow co-leader Gillian Mackay told members: “It was the Scottish Greens who introduced free bus travel for everyone under 22.

“It was the Scottish Greens who scrapped peak rail fares.

“It was the Scottish Greens who ended school meal debt and increased taxes on the richest.

“And it was the Scottish Greens who took on the landlord lobby and introduced rent controls.

“We’ve done all of that with only seven MSPs – think of what we could do if there are 10 of us? Twelve of us? Fifteen of us? Or maybe even more.

“Every Green MSP, every one of these fantastic candidates joining us today will be a voice for change and for a fairer, greener and independent Scotland.”

The party also pledged improvements in funded childcare, including extending the offer of 1,140 hours per year to all two-year-olds in Scotland and 570 hours from six months to two years old.

At his press conference this morning Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, accused Nigel Farage of copying Donald Trump in his embrace of crypto. (See 11.36am.) One person likely to agree is the Labour MP and former cabinet minister Liam Byrne, who has just published a book, Why Populists are Winning, and How to Beat Them. In it, he writes explicitly about Trump and Farage both being mesmerised by crypto.

Here’s an extract.

All told, at the time of writing, The New Yorker’s comprehensive survey estimates that the president’s family has now amassed a $3.4bn through ventures spanning hospitality, Gulf investments, crypto schemes, NFTs [non-fungible tokens – digitial assets] and Truth Social. The scale of this money-making, Anne Applebaum assured me, may not be unknown in autocracies around the world – but it is unprecedented in a modern democracy with a dangerous new mechanism: creating pseudo-commercial vehicles – especially crypto tokens – that give supporters no real asset or rights, but function as open channels to transfer money to the president’s family …

It will amaze you to learn that Reform UK are as keen on cryptocurrency as President Trump himself. The party has announced it will take donations in bitcoin. In the UK, mega-donor Christopher Harborne was reported to have received $70m in Tether tokens in 2019, shortly before donating around £13m to the Brexit party and other causes. Another £9m had been donated at the time of writing … Announcing plans in Las Vegas of all places, Mr Farage said Reform UK would transform Britain with a ‘crypto revolution’ by slashing capital-gains tax on crypto assets, allowing people to pay their taxes in cryptocurrency, and even establishing a national ‘bitcoin reserve fund’. Yet here is the risk: not only do these techniques leave our democracies wide open to infiltration by bad actors; they leave our politics open to bad states, in particular the Russian state, which is on the hunt for new vectors of influence.

There are plenty of books available about populism, but not many this comprehensive, this concise, this pithy and this readable. And, for anyone opposed to the populists, it contains good advice by the buckload. It is well worth a read.

The International Monetary Fund has cut its forecast for UK growth this year and in 2026, as the Iran war hurts the global economy, Graeme Wearden reports on his business live blog. There is full coverage here.

This Guardian graphic illustrates the figures.

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has described Donald Trump’s decision to go to war against Iran as “folly”.

She used the comment in an interview with the Daily Mirror, ahead of her trip to Washington for IMF meetings where she will discuss the global impact of the war with her counterparts.

Reeves has already said publicly that she is “angry” about the war, but she was blunter speaking to the Mirror. She said:

This is a war that we did not start. It was a war that we did not want. I feel very frustrated and angry that the US went into this war without a clear exit plan, without a clear idea of what they were trying to achieve. And as a result the strait of Hormuz is now blocked.

Asked why she was so angry, she explained:

Because of the impact it’s having on families and businesses in our country. When I presented the spring statement at the beginning of March, it showed that inflation was coming down, interest rates were projected to fall further after having been cut six times since I became chancellor of the exchequer.

Borrowing and debt were falling and the economy was set to grow. It was already the fastest growing G7 economy in Europe last year, and that was projected to continue

Obviously no sensible person is a supporter of the Iranian regime, but to start a conflict without being clear what the objectives are and not being clear about how you are going to get out of it, I do think that is a folly and it is one that is affecting families here in the UK but also families in the US and around the world.

Sometimes politicians make the news when they say things that are unusual or controversial. This is an example of the opposite sort of news; a politician making a statement of the bleeding obvious, but one that is still unexpected because, for reasons of tact or diplomacy, most of her colleagues would never say it in public.

In private, “folly” may be one of the milder things being said by government ministers about Trump’s war. But Reeves’s comment is still stronger than anything anyone else in the government has said openly.

Keir Starmer and his team have spent much of their time in office trying to avoid saying anything at all critical of Trump, for fear of offending him. But increasingly Trump’s conduct, and domestic political considerations too, are making that policy impossible to sustain.

Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Cabinet Office minister, has told MPs that the government will increase the amount of “core compensation” available to victims of the infected blood scandal.

In a statement to the Commons giving the government’s response to a consultation on the compensation scheme, he said:

The community were clear that the scheme must do more to recognise people’s individual experiences and compensate them fairly in a way that minimises the administrative burden placed upon those who have been harmed, minimises the demand for evidence and maintains the delivery of tariff based compensation, and those requirements underpin the changes.

For infected people, the changes will increase the amount of core compensation available and increase the options available for supplementary compensation awards.

For affected people, additional core compensation will be available to those eligible.

Thomas-Symonds said the government would be making “substantive changes” in seven areas. He also said that as of April 7, 3,273 people have received an offer and more than £2 billion has been paid out.

The Cabinet Office has published full details of the changes here.

Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, has accused John Swinney, Scotland’s SNP first minister, of encouraging a “conspiracy theory” about the UK government’s decision to ban a Chinese firm from building a wind turbine factory.

Last month the government announced that it would not allow MingYang, China’s biggest offshore wind company, to supply wind turbines for use in the North Sea. MingYang had been planning to build a factory to make them in the Highlands, creating up to 1,500 jobs.

At the time ministers said the investment was being blocked for reasons of national security. There are fears that the Chinese could somehow retain the capacity to switch off vital infrastracture in a crisis, but the government has not made this argument, or elaborated on what the national security concerns involved in this case were.

In a BBC election debate on Sunday night, Swinney suggested the move was motivated by anti-Scottish bias. He said:

My concern is that Scotland’s renewable industry is being undermined by the actions of a Labour government that’s just turned its back on £1.5 billion worth of investment.

It is welcoming Chinese investment into Hinkley power station south of the border. If that’s not an anti-Scottish move by a Labour government, I don’t know what is.

This morning, speaking to BBC Radio Scotland, Sarwar accused the first minister of peddling a “pretty strange conspiracy theory”. He said:

I can give you a cast-iron guarantee, I will not do crankery or conspiracy theory as first minister.

I will always accept national security advice, because our first duty as a government would be to protect the great citizens of this country.

Asked if it was strange that Chinese investment was allowed in other UK projects, Sarwar said:

All these projects will have national security briefings. A national security briefing was received that said there was a national security risk for investment.

Are we honestly saying that a first minister would reject national security advice? I can tell you quite categorically, if a national security briefing comes to me, I will not ignore it, because I will put the national interest before political interest.

He said the suggestion that the intelligence services would have taken a “deliberate do Scotland down approach” was the “height of conspiracy theory”.

But Swinney has defended his comment, saying he has not had an explanation from the UK government as to why the MingYang bid was blocked. He told the Press Assocation.

I have no more detailed understanding [of the decision] than that simple statement from the UK government.

And I think that is unacceptable because there is Chinese investment, Chinese development being embraced and welcomed in other parts of the United Kingdom – there’s a Chinese super embassy going to be built in the heart of the city of London.

Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, has cleared Axel Springer’s £575m takeover of the Telegraph, paving the way for the end of almost three years of uncertainty over the ownership of the titles. Mark Sweney has the story.

Nandy made the announcement in a Commons written statement.

A Reform UK activist in the Gorton and Denton byelection who was suspended over racist and antisemitic comments has been named as the election agent for three of the party’s candidates in Manchester ahead of polls on 7 May, Ben Quinn and Rob Davies report.

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, was holding his press conference this morning to announce a proposal for housing developers to be required to fund new or expanded GP surgeries for the people who buy their new homes.

Explaining the plan in a news release, the Lib Dems say:

The party would require developers to fund or build new, or expand existing, GP surgeries in time for the arrival of new residents, with developer levies used to pay for them to be staffed while new residents are still moving in. This is part of the Liberal Democrats’ infrastructure-first approach to development, and supports their campaign to rescue General Practice and ensure everyone can get an appointment within 7 days, or 24 hours if urgent.

Developers would be required not only to fund new facilities but also to guarantee the GP surgery contract (or the cost of salaried GPs) while new residents are still moving in. This would ensure new residents don’t have to turn to over-stretched existing GPs, and new practices can be viable from the outset.

Delivery of health services has been found to be integral for public trust, with recent LSE research finding that where GP provision has declined and more surgeries have closed, support for the extreme right has risen.

At the press conference Davey was asked about claims by rival parties that, although the Lib Dems nationally back new housing, at a local level their councillors are adept at blocking developments.

Davey said “the reverse” was true. He claimed Lib Dem councils have a very good record building homes.

We’re the ones who actually build homes. I could take you to Eastleigh, who’ve been building homes over a number of years and have got a very good record. I could take you Cambridgeshire. I can take you to my own area, Kingston, where I have to declare a vested interest; my wife is the housing portfolio holder. She’s overseeing the largest council house building programme for 40 years. I could take you the Vale of White Horse in Oxfordshire. I could take you to South Lakeland. Across the country, actually the Liberal Democrats have a very, very proud record of building homes.

Q: Do you think the chief executive of South East Water should resign? This morning he and colleagues told a committee that some of the problems that let to a water shortage in Tunbridge Wells last year were foreseeable?

Davey said that he has already called for the resignation of David Hinton, the South East Water CEO. He did so at the time of the Tunbridge Wells shortage, he said. He went on:

If he’s now admitting it was foreseeable and predictable, I’m surprised he is not offering his resignation already.

Here is the Press Association report of the evidence given by Hinton and others to the Commons environment committeee this morning.

The chairman of South East Water has admitted the company failed in its primary duty to supply customers with water after recent outages left thousands without drinking water.

Bosses of the company were grilled by the Commons environment, food and rural affairs committee this morning about their response to the multiple supply interruptions in Kent and Sussex.

Tunbridge Wells suffered a sustained outage in November and December, with around 24,000 properties in and around the Kent town left without drinkable water for almost two weeks.

Then thousands of properties in Kent and Sussex saw their supply disrupted for days in January, with South East Water (SEW) blaming the outage on Storm Goretti causing burst pipes and power cuts.

Customers were left with no tap water, unable to shower or bathe and could not flush their toilets, while a number of schools were forced to close.

Chairman Chris Train told MPs that the company “failed on the basic objective of delivering water to customers and therefore that is a failure and we recognise that failure”.

“We failed our customers,” he continued. “We worked very hard to rectify that situation, and since the events and independent review, we have undertaken a lot of actions to improve the resilience of the operations.”

Committee chairman Alistair Carmichael asked Train to score his team’s performance out of 10, arguing that customers deserve that degree of accountability from a non-executive director.

The chairman refused to do so, saying the situation is “complex” but added: “That degree of accountability is that we accept that we failed in our primary duty and we could have done better with all of the factors.”

Chief executive David Hinton was also asked to give a score out of 10 for the company’s response to the January outages after he previously marked it as eight out of 10 for the November incident.

Hinton also refused to do so but admitted that the performance was “disappointing” after many vulnerable customers were left without an alternative supply of water.

“My expectation is that we deliver to all priority service customers and that the bottled water stations are completely resourced the whole time, and customers can get access to alternative water at all times.

“So whenever we do not meet that particular yardstick, then I’m disappointed.”

Q: Are you concerned that the Liberal Democrats are losing support given the rising popularity of the Green party?

Davey did not accept that. He replied:

We got, the best result for over a hundred years at the general election. But we’ve kept on winning since.

At the last May elections a year ago we beat the Conservatives and Labour for the first time ever. And it was our seventh year in a row of wins.

If you look at council by elections across the country, which party won the most in 2025? It was the Liberal Democrats.

And I make this prediction as we look at the council elections between now and the next election … By the time the next election will be one of the two biggest parties in local government. And with politics changing, that will be a massive change across our country.

According to Open Council Data UK, the Lib Dems are currently in third place, in total councillor numbers, in the UK.

Davey seems to be saying the Lib Dems will overtake the Tories, who are on course to lose around 1,000 seat in the local elections, according to at least one forecast. Labour are expected to lose even more, but they are starting from a higher base.

Q: Why are you calling for an inquiry into Nigel Farage’s investment in a bitcoin firm?

Davey said that, in investing in crypto, Farage, the Reform UK leader, seemed to be copying Donald Trump. He said he thought MPs should be banned from promoting financial services or products.

He said:

[Farage is] now promoting this business. The question is, is he persuading people to put money into a risky business?

And the conclusion I draw from this example is that we need to change the rules for MPs. MPs should not be allowed to promote specific financial services or products in the way we’re seeing Nigel Farage doing.

Let’s remember, we saw in America Donald Trump doing exactly the same thing and far, far worse. Donald Trump … is enriching himself, enriching his friends and, frankly, making other people poor. And I don’t think we want that type of leadership here.

Nigel Farage seems to want to copy Donald Trump and I think we should move as a parliament to outlaw that type of behaviour that Nigel Farage seems happy to copy.

Yesterday Stack, a crypto firm chaired by Kwasi Kwarteng, the former Tory chancellor, publicised the fact that Farage, an investor in the company, had “purchased” £2m of bitcoin. Reform UK later clarified that Farage had not bought the bitcoin, but had put through the transaction for the company.

As Rowena Mason has reported in the past, Farage also has a £400,000-a-year promoting a firm that encourages people to invest in gold.

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, is holding a press conference.

During his Q&A, he was asked about defence spending, and the claim by George Robertson that he declined an invitation to a briefing on the strategic defence review.

Davey said the party had searched through emails, and been unable to find the invitation. But he would be happy to take up the offer, he said.

On defence spending generally, he claimed the Lib Dems were leading the way with their proposal for defence bonds (ie, borrowing) to be used to fund a £20bn increase in spending.

He went on:

We need to get together as a country. The defence challenges for our country are so serious, with war on our continent for the first time for a long time, with Russia invading Ukraine, surely that’s been the wake up call that we needed. The government hasn’t gone as fast as it should have given those circumstances.

A funding boost of almost £130m is set to be distributed across cultural venues, museums and libraries in England, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has announced. In a news release, it says:

Venues ranging from The Lowry Centre in Salford, The Hexagon in Reading and the Royal Shakespeare Company in Warwickshire will receive a much needed cash boost to help open up access to facilities, complete much needed building projects and upgrade technology on site.

The 130 organisations receiving funding today mark the first projects receiving cash from the government’s Arts Everywhere Fund. As the cost of living continues to affect families across Britain, funding for these venues will help provide welcoming, affordable spaces for communities to visit, come together and celebrate what makes their local area special.

Downing Street has announced that Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, the French president, will co-chair the next meeting of the group of 40-odd countries exploring options for keeping the strait of Hormuz open after the Iran war ends. The meeting will take place in Paris on Friday.

Keir Starmer will lead a new cabinet committee to deal with the fallout from the Iran conflict, the Press Association reports. PA says:

The group – the Middle East response committee – has its first meeting today focused on efforts to reopen the strait of Hormuz, the shipping route vital for global oil and gas supplies.

The PM established the committee to deal with the domestic and international impacts of the war, which has driven up energy prices, caused stock market turmoil and exposed deep divisions between the US and its traditional European allies.

No 10 insiders compared the new panel to the committees set up under Tory prime ministers to deal with Brexit preparations and the Covid pandemic.

A source said the “new central structure” would focus on “medium-term scenario planning to respond to developments in the region over the coming weeks and months”.

Alongside the ministerial committee – whose full membership has not yet been disclosed – senior officials will meet under the chairmanship of cabinet secretary Dame Antonia Romeo.

The new structure is seen as an acknowledgement that the situation will continue to have an impact on the UK for some time, but meetings of the emergency Cobra committee will still be held to respond to immediate crises.

In her Radio 5 Live interview, Kemi Badenoch also criticised Donald Trump for making “childish” remarks.

The Conservatives regard the US Republicans as a sister party and, for most of her time as Tory leader, Badenoch mostly supportive of Trump. But today she said that the image of Trump as Jesus that he posted on Truth Social was “preposterous”, and she said his decision to share it was “very bizarre”.

She went on:

If [Trump is] saying something that makes sense, we should agree. If he says something that doesn’t make sense, we should disagree. I think he’s right to say we need to do more spending on defence … He’s wrong to make childish remarks. He’s wrong to [make] these empty threats on Greenland and so on. All of that’s wrong. What he said about Iran [the threat to wipe out its civilisation], that’s wrong as well.

This is not the first time Badenoch has used the word “childish” to describe some of Trump’s comments.

Kemi Badenoch has told Radio 5 Live that she “100% agrees” with what George Robertson is saying, as quoted in the FT, about Britain being unable to defend itself properly with an “ever-expanding wefare budget”. (See 8.58am.) Asked about his speech in an interview this morning, she said:

We used to spend one in every seven pounds on welfare. Now it’s one in every three pounds and a lot of that money has basically been swapped for defence.

The world is not as peaceful as it used to be. The peace dividend that existed after the fall of the Berlin Wall is gone, we need to spend more money on defence.

This is a former Labour defence secretary, former [Nato] secretary general, saying what I’ve been saying for the past few weeks.

According to the FT, Robertson will also say in his speech tonight that “depressingly” the leaders of the Liberal Democrat and Reform UK turned down his invitation to a briefing on what the strategic defence review says. Badenoch said this was proof other parties were not taking defence seriously.

Nigel Farage’s spokesperson told the FT that the Reform UK leader was not aware of the invitation. Ed Davey’s spokesperson did not respond to the FT’s request for a comment.

The government has defended its record on defence spending in response to the criticisms made by George Robertson. (See 8.58am.) In response to the FT story, a government spokesperson said:

We are delivering on the strategic defence review to meet the threats we face.

It is backed by the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War, with a total of over £270bn being invested across this parliament.

We are finalising our defence investment plan that we will publish as soon as possible, putting the best kit and technology into the hands of our forces, rebuilding British industry to make defence an engine for growth and doubling down on our own commitment to Nato.

Good morning. When Keir Starmer gave evidence to the Commons liaison committee before the Easter recess, and when he made a statement to MPs yesterday on the first day after it was over, he was repeatedly asked when the government will publish its defence investment plan (DIP). On both occasions, he could not give a timetable and would just say it would be published as soon as it was ready.

His critics are furious because the DIP, a 10-year plan explaining how the government will fund its commitment to get defence spending up to 3% of GDP by the end of the next parliament, with total national security spending reaching 5% of GDP by 2035, was due to be published last autumn.

In particular, the DIP will explain how the government will be able to fulfil the goals set out in the strategic defence review it published last year. The review was led by the Labour peer George Robertson, a former defence secretary and former secretary general of Nato. And he seems to have finally lost patience with the government.

He is giving a speech in Salisbury tonight, but Lucy Fisher from the Financial Times has already written up some extracts and in them Robertson is withering about the Treasury. According to Fisher’s report, Robertson will accuse “non-military experts in the Treasury” of “vandalism”, adding: “We cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget.”

He will criticise Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, for devoting just 40 words to defence in her budget speech last year, and saying nothing about the topic at all in her spring statement last month. He will say:

There is a corrosive complacency today in Britain’s political leadership. Lip service is paid to the risks, the threats, the bright red signals of danger — but even a promised national conversation about defence can’t be started.

He will also say Britain is not safe.

We are underprepared. We are underinsured. We are under attack. We are not safe . . . Britain’s national security and safety is in peril.

Robertson is not a defence loudmouth. He is a quintessential establishment figure who for most of his career has avoided being provocative, or rocking the boat. If he feels minded to speak out like this, it must be serious.

Olivia Lee has a full write-up here.

This morning General Sir Richard Barrons, who along with Robertson was one of the three experts who wrote the defence review (the other was the former White House adviser and Russia expert Fiona Hill), gave an interview to the Today programme. Barrons, a former commander of Joint Forces Command, fully supported what Robertson will be saying in his speech. And he said that Britain’s armed forces are so diminished that he had to accept that Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, was right when he mocked the Royal Navy last month.

“Last time I checked, there was supposed to be a big, bad Royal Navy that could be prepared to do things like [clear the strait of Hormuz] as well,” Hegseth said.

Asked how he felt hearing that, Barrons said:

Like many others I hung my head in sorrow. But I couldn’t argue with him because although the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force and the army are, in their bones, outstanding institutions, they are simply too small and too undernourished to deal with the world that we we now live in. And the review says this.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Keir Starmer chairs cabinet. There will be a political session, as well as the usual government meeting.

10am: South East Water executives give evidence to the environment, food and rural affairs committee, followed by Ofwat chief executive Chris Walters at 11am.

10am: Education experts give evidence to the Commons education committee about the proposed changes to Send (special educational needs and disabilities) provision.

10.30am: Executives from TikTok, Meta, Sky TV and Paramount TV executives give evidence to the culture committee about children’s TV and video content.

Morning: Kemi Badenoch is on a visit in south London.

11am: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, holds a press conference focusing on health.

11.30am: Wes Streeting, the health secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

Noon: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

Afternoon: Starmer meets his Dutch counterpart, Rob Jetten, in Downing Street.

If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (between 10am and 3pm), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.

If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.

I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.