Keir Starmer set out bills to abolish NHS England, overhaul Send provision, limit jury trials and forge ties with EU

Keir Starmer has laid out long-promised changes to education, health and the courts in the king’s speech, which maps out the government’s agenda for the next year.

The speech delivered by King Charles cited bills to abolish NHS England, overhaul the provision of special educational needs teaching, limit trials by jury, introduce digital ID and end the leasehold system in England and Wales. It also included vehicles for closer alignment with the EU, and measures to boost the economy through the nationalisation of British Steel and pilot schemes to boost innovation in areas such as defence technology and AI-controlled ships.

Local, mayoral and parliamentary contests could upend political landscape as Reform, Greens and Lib Dems surge

Polling has opened across England, Scotland and Wales in a series of local, mayoral and parliamentary contests – the biggest electoral test Keir Starmer and the Labour government have faced since the 2024 general election.

As millions of people across Great Britain go to the polls on Thursday, party leaders are poised for a set of results that could fundamentally change the political landscape nationally in Scotland and Wales, and across local authorities in England.

Exclusive: Investigation into campaigning materials for local polls in May challenges tactical voting claims

Election leaflets are providing “grotesque” information about how to vote tactically in the May elections, using national polling data, “dodgy” bar charts and doorstep surveys to support claims about parties’ chances of winning.

Leaflets distributed by local politicians across England are claiming that only their party can win, or that another party “can’t win here”, when there is no good evidence to show this is true, a Full Fact investigation for the Guardian has revealed.

Starmer’s former chief of staff says he does not recognise media’s portrayal of him before evidence hearing with MPs

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Morgan McSweeney has denied claims he bullied civil servants into appointing Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to the UK, before an evidence hearing with MPs next week.

Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff resigned in February over his role in the hiring of Mandelson, but the move failed to end the crisis over the peer’s appointment. On Thursday, McSweeney told a security forum in Kyiv that he did not recognise his “character” as it was portrayed in the media.

Exclusive: Victims’ commissioner makes formal complaint after committee session left one attender ‘shocked, upset and extremely distressed’

Victims of rape and sexual violence have told parliamentarians they felt anxious and distressed during a Westminster evidence session, with one stating that witnessing “pugnacious” questioning had resulted in her “breaking down, sobbing and struggling to breathe”.

The victims’ commissioner has made a formal complaint to the chair of an influential group of MPs after a highly charged evidence session carried out by the public bill committee for the courts and tribunals bill about controversial changes to jury trials.

Vulnerable children placed in caravans, Airbnbs and holiday camps, with children’s commissioner saying practice must stop

Ministers must get to grips with the “national scandal” of England’s shadow child social care system, the children’s commissioner has warned, as a shocking new report reveals the number of children in unregulated settings has increased by more than 370% in five years.

Some of the most vulnerable children in England are being temporarily placed in unregulated caravans, Airbnbs and holiday camps, which risk the “accumulation of increasing levels of harm for children who have already faced enough distress for several lifetimes”, according to a new report.

Exclusive: Health secretary warns of dangers of protest vote as he pitches NHS as key elections battleground

Voters in May’s local and devolved elections risk putting the NHS in jeopardy if they vote for populist parties, Wes Streeting has said, as he sought to make the health service a key battleground.

“The founding principles of the NHS are at greater threat than at any time since the NHS was founded in 1948,” the health secretary said.

Mauritian foreign minister pledges to ‘spare no effort’ to regain control of islands, as US fails to give approval of deal

A senior official in Mauritius’ government has vowed that the Chagos Islands will be “decolonised” after Keir Starmer was forced to shelve legislation to hand the islands back to Mauritius.

On Friday, UK government officials acknowledged that they had run out of time to pass legislation within the current parliamentary session, which ends in the coming weeks, after a lack of support from Donald Trump.

UK’s willingness to consider role in removing mines from strait is seen as distinct from Trump’s blockade proposal

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The UK will not be involved in any blockade of the strait of Hormuz, the Guardian understands, after claims by Donald Trump on Sunday that the US would be blockading the waterway with the assistance of Nato allies.

Speaking to Fox News, Trump said “it won’t take long to clean out the strait” and claimed “numerous countries are going to be helping us”, adding that the UK and other nations were sending minesweepers.

Olivia Bailey says she wants Sure Start-style hubs that will be rolled out in England on Monday to be inclusive for all

Reform UK’s “pro-family” policies are a sham and exclude non-traditional families, the government’s early years minister has said before the rollout of hundreds of new Sure Start-style family centres across England on Monday.

Olivia Bailey said she wanted the hubs to be inclusive for all families and transform communities, after what she called the “criminal” dismantling of Sure Start under the last Conservative government.

Concerns that exchanges about US ambassador appointment may have been lost after theft of McSweeney’s phone

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Peter Mandelson will be asked to supply messages from his personal phone as part of the investigation into his appointment as Keir Starmer’s ambassador to the US.

In February, MPs forced the government to commit to publishing tens of thousands of documents after a controversy erupted over the prime minister’s awareness of the former peer’s links to the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein before he was given the prestigious posting.

‘Problem-solving’, child-focused courts to replace adversarial hearings, with earlier intervention to cut delays

Family courts are “not good enough” and have treated women and children unfairly for decades, a government minister has said.

Announcing a major overhaul of the family justice system in England and Wales that will play a central role in “rebalancing” the family courts, Alison Levitt said often brutal legal showdowns will be replaced with a “problem-solving”, child-focused model.

Figures recorded by Femicide Census in past 12 months indicate highest rate of matricide in 16 years

The names of 19 women believed to have been killed by their sons in the last year were read out in parliament on Thursday, as research showed that almost one in five women killed by men since the last International Women’s Day were suspected victims of matricide.

For the 11th year running, Jess Phillips read out the names of the 108 women killed in the UK by men – or where a man has been charged – in the past 12 months. In keeping with previous years, she had to request special dispensation to speak beyond the time given to each MP in the International Women’s Day parliamentary debate, because reading the names took more than five minutes.

Leaders discuss military cooperation day after US president hit out at PM over lack of immediate backing for attacks

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Keir Starmer sought to repair fractured relations with Donald Trump over the war with Iran on Sunday, as a Labour backlash gathered pace over Tony Blair’s assertion the UK should have supported the US’s initial airstrikes on Iran.

The prime minister spoke to the US president on Sunday afternoon after a barrage of criticism from Trump, who told his UK ally on Saturday that his help was not needed, even as the US continued to use UK bases for strikes against Iran.

After months of rows between factions with ‘fundamentally differing visions’, results of leadership election are at hand

An increasingly bloody battle for the soul of the leftwing Your Party set up by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana will come to a conclusion on Thursday, when the results of its leadership election will be announced.

After almost eight months of public spats, rows over money, accusations of sexism and rifts over policy and direction, Your Party is hoping to turn a page on the manifold misfortunes that have beset it since its launch last year.

Byelection candidate accused of indulging ‘alt right fantasy’ by suggesting women need ‘biological reality’ check

Reform UK’s candidate in the Gorton and Denton byelection has been accused of wanting a “Handmaid’s Tale future” after unearthed YouTube footage revealed he called for “young girls and women” to be given a “biological reality” check.

In a clip posted to his personal YouTube channel in November 2024, Matt Goodwin stated that “many women in Britain are having children much too late in life”.

Harriet Harman leads calls for an appointment that would ‘turbocharge’ a ‘complete culture change’ at No 10

Female Labour MPs have demanded that Keir Starmer appoint a senior woman as his de facto deputy to oversee a “complete culture change” in Downing Street after a series of scandals that they say have exposed a No 10 “boys’ club”.

Harriet Harman, one of the party’s most senior figures, urged Starmer to revive the role of first secretary of state on Wednesday, a post occupied by Peter Mandelson under Gordon Brown.

Manchester mayor takes aim at House of Commons briefing culture and says he will continue to call out liars

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Westminster insiders “do not get a licence to lie”, said Andy Burnham on Thursday, in an angry swipe at the political briefing culture in the House of Commons.

After a week of political antagonism over the Labour party’s national executive committee’s decision to block Burnham from standing in the Gorton and Denton byelection next month, the Manchester mayor said he would call out liars in Westminster in the aftermath of the dispute.

Manchester mayor suggests claims he was told Labour would not give him permission to stand were untrue

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The Labour party’s civil war over the Gorton and Denton byelection has intensified after Andy Burnham accused Downing Street sources of lying about his decision to apply to stand in the Manchester seat.

The Manchester mayor was reacting to suggestions by unnamed Keir Starmer allies that he had been told “in no uncertain terms” that any request to the NEC committee to put his name forward for the byelection would be refused.

Reform leader says he agrees ‘strategically’ with Trump but adds that views of Greenlanders must be respected

The world would be a “better, more secure place” if America took over Greenland, Nigel Farage said at Davos, while insisting that he still believed in the sovereignty of nation states.

During a panel at the World Economic Forum’s “America House” in the Swiss ski resort on Wednesday, the Reform UK leader said he had “no doubt” that the world would be safer if a “strong America” was in Greenland “because of the geopolitics of the high north, because of the retreating ice caps and because of the continued expansionism of Russian icebreakers, of Chinese investment”.