Reform Scotland, the Scottish arm of Reform UK, has described John Swinney’s attack on the party this morning (see 11.52am) as “nonsense”. A Reform Scotland spokesperson said:

Once again John Swinney is trying to deflect from the SNPs awful record in government.

Scottish people are turning to Reform because we represent real change from the status quo in Holyrood that has failed Scotland for far too long.

Wanting sensible, controlled immigration isn’t racist, it’s common sense. John Swinney’s inflammatory comments should be seen for what they are – nonsense.

When it comes to Ukraine, we have been clear. We want Ukraine’s long term security guaranteed in any deal and that Putin is a despicable aggressor.

Kemi Badenoch has posted a message on social media saying the government should rule out using any defence budget money to fund the Chagos Islands deal. She says:

Starmer all but confessed at #PMQs that the cost of surrendering the Chagos Islands will come from the defence budget – just as I’ve warned.

Labour must not give a penny of defence cash to fund this shady deal. National interest first.

No ifs or buts.

Lisa O’Carroll

Lisa O’Carroll is the Guardian’s acting Ireland correspondent

Stormont’s justice minister Naomi Long has described a decision by the UK and Irish governments to appoint an independent figure to examine whether a formal process of engagement with paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland is required to bring about their disbandment as “madness”.

Yesterday Hilary Benn, the Northern Ireland secretary, announced that the two governments are to appoint an expert to carry out “a short scoping and engagement exercise” following a recommendation from the Independent Reporting Commission (IRC) which said the current approach is not working to end paramilitarism.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland told the IRC they cannot “arrest your way out of the situation” with more than 10 organisations active 27 years after the peace accord.

But Long said she had “no confidence” in the new approach, suggesting the paramilitaries could disband today if they wanted. She said:

First of all, despite asking repeatedly, I have not had the IRC or anyone else identify a single credible barrier to these organisations disbanding, or transitioning, if that is what they want to do.

Secondly, I am unclear when people talk about group transition what they see the end product of that being. When I ask that question nobody can define it for me.

Parents of under-fives could be exempted from the government’s two-child benefit limit under a range of options UK ministers are considering as they try to bring down child poverty numbers without removing the rule altogether, Kiran Stacey, Aletha Adu and Phillip Inman report.

The Conservative party has said that it is hoping President Trump blocks the government’s deal to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.

Speaking at a post-PMQs briefing, a spokesperson for Kemi Badenoch said:

There were issues around the status of the Chagos Islands, which is why the previous Conservative government entered into talks about them. But no deal is better than a bad deal and if, as rumoured, this deal is a bad deal.

Asked how long Trump should take to consider the agreement, the spokesperson replied:

I haven’t seen the deal so I don’t know how long, but I assume he has, and hopefully he will stop it.

Keir Starmer wants to get US approval for the deal because it will affect Diego Garcia,a major UK/US airbase based on one of the Chagos Islands.

The spokesperson also indicated that Badenoch has received a security briefing from the government on the Chagos Islands at some point over the last fortnight. Before the half-term recess, Starmer criticised Badenoch for not taking up the option of a confidential briefing on privy council terms.

Investigations will be launched into seven organisations criticised in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry report, with the potential they could be banned from public contracts in future, PA Media reports.

Angela Rayner, the deputy PM and housing secretary, announced the move as she made a statement to MPs about the government’s response to the 58 recommendations in the Grenfell Tower inquiry’s final report. The government says it will act on them all.

Rayner told MPs:

The manufacturing companies including Arconic, Kingspan and Celotex, whose products were used to refurbish the tower, the report found that they acted with systemic dishonesty, and they mis-sold and they marketed them.

Their disgraceful mercenary behaviour put profit before people and exploited the regulatory regime to evade accountability with fatal consequences.

And to my disgust and their shame, some have shown little remorse and have refused to even help fix the building safety crisis that they did so much to create.

Rayner said that companies “must be held to account for their role in Grenfell” and that seven firms are being investigated under the Procurement Act 2023. This could lead to them being banned from public contracts on the grounds of supplier misconduct.

The firms are: Arconic Architectural Products SAS; Saint-Gobain Construction Products UK Limited which previously owned Celotex Limited; Exova (UK) Limited; Harley Facades Limited; Kingspan Insulation Limited; Rydon Maintenance Limited; and Studio E Architects Limited.

Rayner also announced a raft of changes to construction and fire safety laws. In a press notice summarising them, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government says:

Reforms set out today include:

-A new single construction regulator to ensure those responsible for building safety are held to account.

-Tougher oversight of those responsible for testing and certifying, manufacturing and using construction products with serious consequences for those who break the rules.

-A legal duty of candour through a new Hillsborough Law, compelling public authorities to disclose the truth, ensuring transparency in major incidents, and holding those responsible for failures to account.

-Stronger, clearer, and enforceable legal rights for residents, making landlords responsible for acting on safety concerns.

-Empowering social housing residents to challenge landlords and demand safe, high-quality housing, by expanding the Four Million Homes training programme. Make it easier for tenants to report safety concerns and secure landlord action by taking forward the Make Things Right campaign.

-Ensuring lasting transparency and accountability by creating a publicly accessible record of all public inquiry recommendations.

The government’s full response to the inquiry recommendations is here.

For the second week in a row, Kemi Badenoch was flattened at PMQs. She has never been a strong performer in this arena but on current form she is getting worse. She is still not quite in Iain Duncan Smith territory (his PMQs performances were sometimes excruciating), but it is not hard to see why the Westminster commentariat is starting to think about who might be the next Tory leader.

Today Badenoch started with a perfectly good question about Ukraine, but then she made the usual mistake of asking about the wrong thing. Badenoch has a weakness for social media rabbit holes, and perhaps she made the mistake of believing her shadow defence secretary, James Cartlidge, who tweeted this morning about the “urgent” need for clarity because there are different figures coming from government about scale of the increase in defence spending. (See 10.04am.)

But there is no confusion. Keir Starmer used an inflated figure yesterday (£13.4bn), by ignoring budget increases that would have happened anyway, and John Healey focused on a more realistic figure (£6bn) this morning. You can criticise Starmer for hype and spin (the Institute for Fiscal Studies did yesterday – while saying this was just a “minor’” point), but you can’t claim there is any great mystery as to what is going on. Yet Badenoch tried – and she got clobbered.

Here is the exchange.

Badenoch asked:

Turning to the details of the plan he set out yesterday: Over the weekend, I suggested to the prime minister that he cut the aid budget, and I am pleased that he accepted my advice.

It’s the fastest response I’ve ever had from the prime minister. However, he announced £13.4bn in additional defence spending yesterday. This morning, his defence secretary said the uplift is only £6bn. Which is the correct figure?

And Starmer replied:

I’m going to have to let the leader of the opposition down gently. She didn’t feature in my thinking at all.

I was so busy over the weekend I didn’t even see her proposal. I think she’s appointed herself, I think saviour of the western civilisation. It’s a desperate search for relevance.

But, if you take the numbers for this financial year and then the numbers for the financial year 27/28 that’s £13.4bn increase. That is the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War, which will put us in a position to ensure the security and defence of our country and of Europe.

Sometimes at PMQs a put-down is so forceful that the recipient can never come back. Badenoch responded by telling Starmer that “being patronising is not a substitute for answering questions”, but he had answered the question, or at least sort of (in the PMQs arena, a ‘sort of’ answer is sometimes all you need) and Badenoch is hardly the best person to lecture anyone about being patronising.

As the exchanges continued, Badenoch asked about the Chagos Islands deal, and whether this would funded with defence money. She should have focused on this earlier, because Starmer is unwilling to say it will have no impact on defence spending at all. But, by this point, it was too late. Starmer was home and dry.

Yesterday’s announcement seems to have landed quite well and that may explain why Starmer sounded a bit more chipper than usual. This was apparent in the way he was marginally more confident about distancing himself from President Trump. For the last few weeks No 10, and government ministers, have been performing elaborate verbal gymnatistics to avoid saying Trump is wrong about anything. But today, on President Zelenskyy (see 12.24pm) and Canada (see 12.29pm), Starmer sounded a bit more like a normal human being, willing to state the obvious.

Why Swinney thinks Scotland’s mainstream parties could cooperate in ‘locking out Farage’

Libby Brooks

Libby Brooks is the Guardian’s Scotland correspondent

While Reform continues to poll significantly lower in Scotland than elsewhere in the UK, first minster John Swinney was full-throated in his warning this morning that “the threat of the far right is very real” north of the border. (See 11.52am.)

Speaking to media at Bute House, his official residence in Edinburgh, Swinney said that he wanted to work with other political parties to protect the “norms and values we hold dear” and which he believes are “under vigorous threat from the politics of Farage”.

Despite the SNP’s traditional opposition to increased defence spending and continuing opposition to Trident, Swinney said he “understood” Keir Starmer’s moves to increase that spend though criticised aid budget cuts as “short-sighted”.

He said:

There is a very life and active threat to our security from the aggression of Russia and I think Farage is an accomplice to the Russian agenda and an apologist for the Russian agenda.

To anybody in this country who thinks that Farage represents a means of protecting this country from external threats that we face I would say have a good close look at what Farage has been connected with and what his MPs are saying about the Russian threat, their trivialisation of it.

It’s also hard to overstate how delighted Swinney is with the symbolism of passing his minority government’s budget with cross-party support that also bridges Holyrood’s constitutional divide.

I asked him how that partnership might apply to the 2026 Holyrood campaign and potentially as a means to prevent Reform acting as kingmaker – polling suggests that Reform could win up to 15 seats, overtaking the Scottish Lib Dems.

Swinney said he didn’t favour electoral pacts but that parties that shared “the same underpinning civic values” could “work together to marginalise that far-right sentiment and address the issues that might fuel it”.

He said that “locking out Farage” was his basis for appealing to wider Scotland “to come together with me to say we are going to do things in a way that makes sure our country is protected from the bigotry that Farage represents”.

Simon Hoare (Con) says Canada is a much loved member of the Commonwealth. He says the “childish nonsense” from President Trump about it becoming the 51st state of the US should be called out.

Starmer replies:

I thank you for raising this issue. UK and Canada are close allies and have been for a very long time with a partnership based on a shared history and a shared set of values and a determination to be an active force for good in the world.

We work closely with them on issues of the Commonwealth, on Nato and of course, five eyes intelligence sharing, but we will work to strengthen that relationship.

Kieran Mullan (Con) asks Starmer to explicity rule out using money from the defence budget for the Chagos Islands deal.

Starmer says the money announced yesterday was for the UK’s defence capability. He says when the Chagos Islands deal is finalised, he will put the costings to MPs.

Neil Hudson (Con) says President Zelenskyy is a wartime leader who, like Winston Churchill, had to suspend elections. He urges Stamer to invoke the spirit of Churchil when he goes to the US.

Starmer welcomes the question. He says Zelenskyy is “a democratically elected leader, and suspending elections was precisely what we did in this country when we were fighting in the second world war”.

This is an implicit rebuke to President Trump, who recently claimed Zelenskyy was a dictator, and who has backed the Kremlin’s call for Ukraine to hold a presidential election despite the fighting.