Rishi Sunak has been criticised by his own net zero tsar, who says the UK risks missing its green targets due to inconsistent policies and lack of commitment to pledges, my colleagues Helena Horton and Fiona Harvey report.

The RMT rail union says it is “working jointly towards a revised offer” with the Rail Delivery Group following its talks today about resolving the train strikes.

Andrew Bridgen, who had the Tory whip removed yesterday after he posted a message on Twitter saying that a consultant cardiologist had told him the use of Covid vaccines was “the biggest crime against humanity since the holocaust”, has issued a statement insisting that this comment was “in no way antisemitic”. He says:

My tweet of 11th of January was in no way antisemitic.

Indeed, it alluded to the Holocaust being the most heinous crime against humanity in living memory.

Of course, if anyone is genuinely offended by my use of such imagery, then I apologise for any offence caused.

I wholeheartedly refute any suggestion that I am racist and currently I am speaking to a legal team who will commence action against those who have led the call suggesting that I am.

But in his statement Bridgen defends his right to raise concerns about mRNA vaccines – even though these unfounded conspiracy theories are widely seen as dangerous to public health. In a sign that he does not expect to be allowed to stand as a Tory candidate again, he says:

If I cannot [continue to ask questions about the safety of mRNA vaccines] as a Conservative member of parliament, then so be it.

Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, has released more extracts from the speech he will deliver tonight at the Mansion House in the City. As reported earlier (see 9.17am), he will criticise politicians for not being willing to talk about the damage done by Brexit and call for a “pragmatic debate” about the case for rejoining the single market and the customs union.

According to the new extracts, Khan will call for creation of regional occupational shortages lists (lists of jobs where foreign workers can get visas easily, because there are not enough Britons to fill them). This would allow the London mayor to draw up a shortage list for London, he will say.

The number of businesses in our city experiencing at least one skills shortage has now risen to almost seven in 10. Meanwhile, the number of jobs in our city held by EU-born workers has fallen by over 80,000 – putting huge strain on crucial sectors such as hospitality and construction.

Devolving powers to London and allowing us to create a regional shortage occupation list would be one way to give businesses the ability to attract and retain talent in the areas they need it most.

Khan will also say that, as mayor of London, it would be a “dereliction of duty” for him not to speak out about Brexit. He will say:

No one wants to see a return to the division and deadlock that dominated our body politic for five long years. However, the inescapable truth is that this unnecessarily hardline version of Brexit is having a detrimental effect on our capital and country – at a time when we can least afford it.

We can’t – in all good conscience – pretend that it isn’t hurting our people and harming our businesses. As mayor of this great city, choosing not to say anything would be a dereliction of duty …

We’re gathered in one of the great financial districts in the world – supporting millions of jobs and generating billions in tax revenue – but the reality is that the City of London is being hit hard by the loss of trade and talent to our competitors because of Brexit. London cannot afford to fall behind any of our international competitors.

The NASUWT teaching union has said its members in England and Wales voted overwhelmingly for strike action – but that the strike will not go ahead because turnout in the ballot was less than 50%.

Under employment laws, unions can only go ahead with a strike if more than 50% of workers take part in the strike ballot and there’s a majority in favour.

But in what are deemed important public services (fire, health, education, transport, border security and nuclear decommissioning – the six categories also covered by the government’s new anti-strike bill), a second threshold applies, and strike votes are only valid if 40% of those entitled to vote actually vote in favour.

The NASUWT said the vote demonstrated “the anger of the profession” and the need for the government to address their concerns.

The NEU teaching union is also balloting its members on strike action, and the results of the vote are due to be announced on Monday.

The PCS union has described a meeting it had today with the Cabinet Office minister Jeremy Quin a “total farce”.

The PCS represents civil servants and yesterday it announced that it it expected more than 100,000 people, working across 124 government departments, to go on strike over pay on Wednesday 1 February.

After the meeting with Quin, Mark Serwotka, the PCS general secretary, said in a statement:

This meeting was a total farce. Despite being well-trailed by the government as a chance to resolve the crisis, it was nothing of the sort because the minister had nothing to offer.

He didn’t deny our members were being offered less than anyone else, he didn’t deny tens of thousands of our members only get a pay rise because of the rise in the national minimum wage but he refused to give us a pay rise now.

Despite all we told him, despite knowing the alternative would be sustained industrial action, he still refused to budge, saying he could only talk about 2023-24.

Serwotka also said the 1 February strike could be followed by others.

Prospect, another union representing civil servants, was also at the meeting and afterwards its general secretary, Mike Clancy, said it would continue with its plans to ballot its members on strike action because Quin had nothing to offer. Clancy said:

At the meeting I asked the minister if the government planned to continue with real-terms pay cuts for civil servants as it has done for the last decade or more. In his answers the minister refused to offer any more money for 2022-23 and gave no grounds for optimism that the position would be any different in the coming pay year.

It is clear that civil servants remain at the back of the queue for public sector pay. We see no alternative at this point than to continue to pursue our formal ballot for industrial action.

Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, says the current NHS crisis is the worst ever. Commenting on today’s ambulance and A&E waiting time figures, he said:

The NHS is in the biggest crisis in its history. The terrifying truth is that patients in an emergency can no longer be sure the NHS will be there for them.

Heart attack and stroke victims are routinely waiting over three hours for an ambulance, when every second counts. 24 hours in A&E is not just a TV programme, it is the grim reality for too many patients. Too many lives are being lost as a result.

After 13 years of Conservative mismanagement of the NHS, expecting them to fix this crisis is like asking the arsonist to put out the fire they started - it is not going to happen.

Longer waits in A&E departments will mean more patient deaths, Prof Ian Higginson, the vice-president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told Radio 4’s the World at One. He said:

For every 82 patients who wait more than six hours in an emergency department, there is one associated death. So, if more patients are waiting longer in emergency departments there will be more associated deaths.

Higginson also said that tackling the issue would require sustained long-term investment. He said:

There are no easy, quick fixes to what we are seeing now. We need to acknowledge there is a problem, we need to acknowledge the scale of it.

This is going to take long-term investment, long-term solutions. We can’t short-term our way out of this particular problem.

Mick Lynch, the RMT general secretary, said that he was expecting to hear a revised pay proposal when he arrived for talks with the Rail Delivery Group. He told reporters:

We’ve been advised that there is a new proposal available – whether it’s mature enough for it to just be: ‘Here it is’, or we have to talk through a few bits and pieces, we will see when we read it.

Lynch said he did not expect the new offer to be generous. He explained:

It will be a very tight proposal. It will not be generous. It will be way below inflation and it will have very onerous conditions on it.

We will definitely not get a clean pay proposal which just says: ‘Here’s the pay’. They’re not in a position to do that and they’ve been instructed directly by the government that they’re not allowed to do that.

So, it will be a big document that we’ve got to consider and we’ll have to put it to our people, let them see it and then ask them what they think of it – if we get it, there’s a big if there.

Lynch also said that when the offer was “in a position to vote on”, there would be a ballot of members about whether to accept it.

The GMB union is considering holding up to six more ambulance strikes. Its union representatives in the ambulance service are meeting on Monday to discuss future action. A union source told HuffPost UK:

The GMB is meeting ambulance reps on Monday and is likely to announce a load more strike dates, possibly up to six.

Nicola Sturgeon has told MSPs that she plans to challenge the prime minister on his government’s anti-strike bill when she meets him later today.

Downing Street confirmed that Rishi Sunak is travelling to Scotland for talks with Sturgeon, including a private dinner, in his first visit to the country as prime minister.

Asked about the bill at the first FMQs session of the year, Sturgeon said it was a “very important issue”. She went on:

The UK government already has the most anti trade union laws in western Europe, but this bill threatens to undermine and weaken the rights of workers even further. We strongly, strongly oppose any bill that undermines legitimate trade union activity and doesn’t respect fair work principles.

As governments, we should be working with the public sector and with trade unions to reach fair and reasonable settlements, respecting the legitimate interests of workers, and not trying to pour fuel on fires or take away workers’ democratic rights. And these will be points I will make very strongly when I see the prime minister later this evening.

The UK government has still not decided whether or not to use a power it has in the Scotland Act to block Scotland’s gender recognition bill, No 10 said this morning.

The topic is likely to come up when Rishi Sunak meets Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, on his trip to Scotland starting later today.

After the bill was passed before Christmas, the UK government said it might use a section 35 order under the Scotland Act – a procedure that has never been used since devolution started more than 23 years ago – to block the legislation.

Today the PM’s spokesperson said no decision has yet been made on this. He said it was still being considered, ahead of a deadline next week. He said:

There is a process to consider it and then [the PM] will be given advice to make a decision, that’s still taking place.

Downing Street admitted this morning that ambulance response times in England are “obviously unacceptable”.

Asked about the latest figures at the lobby briefing, the PM’s spokesperson said:

Obviously people will rightly be concerned by the performance statistics out today.

The NHS is under huge pressure following the pandemic. There are very high numbers of patients in hospital with Covid and flu which is a big driver of that.

It’s obviously not acceptable and we are very focused. You heard from the prime minister just last week that it is one of his top priorities to further improve the performance of the NHS.

There is some progress being made, as I say, in tackling the longest waits. We are at record numbers when it comes to treating patients on things like cancer, but there is much more to do.

Asked why the government was refusing to use the word “crisis” to describe the situation in A&E departments, the spokesperson replied: “I think the public would want us to take action on this rather than focus on the definitions.”

The SNP’s longest-serving MP has warned that Nicola Sturgeon’s plan to run the next general election as a de facto referendum on independence is a “massive gamble” that could kill off the prospect for a generation.

Writing in the National, Pete Wishart, who is chair of the Scottish affairs committee at Westminster, said that he supported the first minister’s plan in response to the supreme court’s ruling that Holyrood does not have the powers to hold another referendum without the consent of the UK government, but added it was “just about the worst possible way to settle the constitutional future of Scotland”.

Wishart said:

If we fail to pull it off, we may surrender our leading position in Scotland and could possibly kill off any hope of independence being secured in a ‘real’ generation. It is a massive gamble – with the emphasis on massive. But what else can we do?

Last month, Sturgeon announced the SNP would hold a special conference to discuss the plan in March, and the party’s national executive committee meets this weekend to discuss how the debate should be framed. A number of senior nationalists have raised concerns about the idea, in particular MPs who see themselves on the front line of any general election strategy.

The British Medical Association said its meeting this morning with Steve Barclay, the health secretary, ahead of a planned strike in March was “constructive”, but without any fresh offer being made.

Prof Philip Banfield, chair of council at the British Medical Association (BMA), told reporters that Barclay was “in listening mode” and that Barclay was “collaborative”, not confrontational.

Junior doctors in England are planning a 72-hour strike in March. They say their pay has been cut by 26% in real terms since 2008, and they want to see that restored.

Speaking about the meeting, Banfield said:

It went as we expected. We went into the meeting to discuss the pay review body and we came out of the meeting having laid out our stall and making it very clear the state of the NHS and that, really, the pay dispute with the junior doctors has to include some form of addressing full pay restoration.

Banfield said that details of a potential alternative pay offer were not discussed and, when asked if there was any mention of one-off payments (being considered as a potential compromise to end the NHS strikes), he replied:

No, we’re not getting into the detail of money and numbers at this point in time, and I wouldn’t have expected that.

Asked if a 26% pay rise was realistic, he said:

Twenty-six per cent is a lot to lose from your salary, so although it’s a lot of money, it’s a lot of money to lose as well. We’ve got junior doctors who are really struggling financially now because they are qualifying with £100,000 of debt.

What was constructive today was the willingness to listen and to get into the room and discuss what pay restoration may or may not look like.

Asked if there was time to avert the strike planned for March, he said:

We’ve got about six weeks, haven’t we, to sit down and try and resolve the situation. None of our doctors want to strike, they would prefer that this was resolved before we got into that situation.

Suella Braverman, the home secretary, has admitted that “a small minority” of foreigners allowed to stay in the UK under a so-called “golden visa” scheme for the super-rich were likely to be criminal or corrupt.

She also said the scheme attracted “a disproportionate number of applicants” from countries where there was a high money-laundering risk.

Braverman made the disclosures in a Commons written statement summarising the findings of a review of the “golden visa” system, which was originally launched in 2008 and finally axed in February last year, when Russia was poised to launch its fresh invasion of Ukraine. Russians were some of the principal beneficiaries of “golden visas”.

Under the scheme, foreigners with a substantial sum (originally £1m, later £2m) available to invest in the UK could get a tier 1 (investor) visa. After the Salisbury poisonings in 2018, Amber Rudd, the then home secretary, announced a review of who had got visas under the scheme up until 2015, when the rules were tightened.

Braverman said 6,312 investors and their dependents got visas under the scheme between 2008 and 2015. She went on:

The review of cases identified a small minority of individuals connected to the tier 1 (investor) visa route that were potentially at high risk of having obtained wealth through corruption or other illicit financial activity, and/or being engaged in serious and organised crime.

I should stress that the work carried out only implies that a particular individual potentially poses a risk of having connections to criminality; it does not mean guilt has been proven.

Braverman said the information was being shared with law enforcement authorities, and that 10 oligarchs who had received visas throught this route had been sanctioned over the war in Ukraine.

She also said the review showed “a disproportionate number of applicants” for these visas came from countries where there was a high risk of cross-border money laundering, and there was evidence of some “golden visa” applicants “seeking out and exploiting financial institutions that had the weakest customer due diligence controls”.

In future, visas will not be offered just on the basis of wealth, she said.

The Home Office has found that there are inherent difficulties in an investment-based immigration route based on passive wealth, both in terms of security and economic value. I am determined this government will ensure such mistakes are not repeated.

PA Media has more on what the NHS England figures say about ambulance response times in December.

• The average response time in December for ambulances in England dealing with the most urgent incidents, defined as calls from people with life-threatening illnesses or injuries, was 10 minutes and 57 seconds, NHS England figures show. PA says:

This is the longest on record.

The target standard response time for urgent incidents is seven minutes.

• Ambulances in England took an average of one hour, 32 minutes and 54 seconds in December to respond to emergency calls such as burns, epilepsy and strokes. PA says: “This is the longest on record and well above the target of 18 minutes.”

• Response times for urgent calls, such as late stages of labour, non-severe burns and diabetes, averaged four hours, 19 minutes and 10 seconds – again, the longest on record.

But there is a very modest reduction in the number of people waiting for non-urgent hospital treatments, the NHS England figures shows.

This is convenient for Rishi Sunak, because he made getting NHS waiting lists down one of his five promises to the nation in his speech last week. But the fact that the corner has been turned so quickly also highlights how unambitious the promise was. Waiting lists were expected to start falling this year. Sunak did not make any specific pledges about A&E, where the situation is more grim. (See 10.01am.)

PA Media has some of the top lines.

• The number of people in England waiting to start routine hospital treatment has fallen slightly from a record high, PA reports. It says:

An estimated 7.19 million people were waiting to start treatment at the end of November, NHS England said.

This is down from 7.21 million in October, which was the highest number since records began in August 2007.

last month the same figures showed numbers still going up.

• An estimated 406,575 people in England had been waiting more than 52 weeks to start routine hospital treatment at the end of November, PA reports. It says:

This is down from 410,983 at the end of October and is the first month-on-month fall since February last year.

The government and NHS England have set the ambition of eliminating all waits of more than a year by March 2025.

• Some 1,423 people in England are estimated to have been waiting more than two years to start routine hospital treatment at the end of November, PA reports. It goes on:

This is down slightly from 1,907 at the end of October and is well below the peak of 23,778 in January 2022.

The government and NHS England set the ambition to eliminate all waits of more than two years by July 2022, except when it is the patient’s choice or for complex cases requiring specialist treatment.

The lastest NHS England performance data is out, and the figures show A&E waits at a record high, PA Media reports. It says:

• The proportion of patients seen within four hours in England’s A&Es fell to a record low of 65% in December, the NHS said.

• A record 54,532 people waited more than 12 hours in A&E departments in England last month from a decision to admit to actually being admitted, the NHS said.

On Tuesday Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow work and pensions secretary, gave a speech announcing plans to get more sick or long-term unemployed people into the labour market. One of his proposals was for people who return to work to be able to return to the benefits they were on, if the job does not work out, without having to go through the complicated benefits assessment process all over again. This would remove a concern that discourages people from applying for work in the first place.

Our report of the speech is here, and the text of the speech is here.

This morning the Times has splashed on a story saying Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, is planning something similar. It says details will be set out in a health and disability white paper before the spring budget, but someone has been keen to give a detailed briefing on the plans.

In their story Chris Smyth and Steven Swinford report:

People will be allowed to keep claiming sickness benefits after returning to work and will be offered tax breaks for getting jobs, under plans to boost employment.

A reform of disability benefits is likely to scrap a “perverse” assessment system, which ministers think encourages people to prove they are too ill to work, in an effort to reverse a rise in the number of people not looking for jobs …

People claiming employment and support allowance and universal credit who are judged as having limited capability for work are reluctant to look for a job for fear they will lose the payments, and officials are trying to design a system that does not leave claimants concerned about being judged capable of any employment. It has yet to be decided when benefits might be withdrawn once a claimant has found work. A system similar to the tapering of universal credit as people earn more is being considered.

The two plans are not identical (the government’s sounds more generous, although without the detail is it impossible to tell), but Ashworth has accused Stride of “stealing” his policy.

In truth, the government has been looking at this issue for some time and it is not likely that Stride only started work on this after Ashworth gave his speech. But, equally, it is hard to believe the policy would have been on the front page of the Times this morning if Ashworth published his ideas earlier this week.

Opposition parties get criticised when they do have policies. But if they announce a policy that is sensible and popular, there is a risk it will get pinched.

Good morning. Britain has now been legally out of the EU for almost three years, and practically out of the EU (following the end of the transition period) for two years. Increasingly, people view this as a mistake. Here is a graph from the What UK Thinks website showing what has happened to the polling since 2016 on the question was Britain right or wrong to leave. The green line represents wrong.

If you look at the graph on the What UK Thinks website, you can read the results of all 241 polls on this it has tracked.

This is not something that the leaders of both main parties are keen to talk about. Rishi Sunak voted for Brexit not primarily because he wanted to end free movement, a logical reason for voting leave, but because he thought Brexit would in time be good for trade and economic growth, which is increasingly looking like a colossal misjudgment. It is obvious why he is keen to avoid the subject. Keir Starmer fought against Brexit tenaciously, but he is not particularly keen on discussing the subject either. Labour got hammered in 2019 by being seen as on the wrong side of public opinion on Brexit, and the party has (probably quite rightly) concluded that there is nothing voters hate more than being told they got it wrong.

But tonight Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, is going to step into this argument in a speech at the Mansion House in London, some extracts from which have been released in advance. London voted remain, and so, unlike Starmer, can speak out on this without worrying about alienating his electoral base. But he is going to make two arguments that will stir things up a bit in the party.

• Khan will argue that politicians “can’t keep quiet” about the damage that Brexit is doing. He will say:

I simply can’t keep quiet about the immense damage Brexit is doing.

Ministers seem to have developed selective amnesia when it comes to one of the root causes of our problems.

Brexit can’t be airbrushed out of history or the consequences wished away.

In this quote he refers to “ministers”, but his comment clearly applies to Labour too. Last month Starmer was criticised for telling the Today programme that rejoining the single market would not boost growth. (Economists are almost unanimous in saying it would boost growth, but in the interview Starmer elaborated on his initial unequivocal answer and said the UK could only rejoin the single market after “years of wrangling”, which would create uncertainty.)

• Khan will call for a “pragmatic debate” about the case for rejoining the single market and the customs union. Starmer has firmly rejected both these options. But Khan will say:

After two years of denial and avoidance, we must now confront the hard truth: Brexit isn’t working.

It’s weakened our economy, fractured our union and diminished our reputation. But, crucially, not beyond repair.

We need greater alignment with our European neighbours – a shift from this extreme, hard Brexit we have now to a workable version that serves our economy and people.

That includes having a pragmatic debate about the benefits of being a part of the customs union and the single market.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9am: Steve Barclay, the health secretary, holds a meeting with the BMA about the proposed strike by doctors.

9.30am: NHS England publishes its latest monthly performance figures.

11am: Keir Starmer visits Stormont for talks with the political parties in Northern Ireland. Leo Varadkar, the taoiseach (Irish PM) is also visiting Belfast today.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

At some point today the RMT and TSSA rail unions are also holding talks with the rail companies about a possible solution to the rail strikes.

And at some point later in the day Rishi Sunak is travelling to Scotland, where he has also got engagements tomorrow. He will be meeting Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, while he is there.

I’ll try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com