Ian Murray was sacked as Scottish secretary in the reshuffle in September – but returned to government just a day later as a minister of state covering creative industries and digital government, based in the culture department and the science department.

You might assume he was not happy with his demotion. But, according to an interview with Holyrood magazine, the person who was really furious was his wife. Murray told the magazine:

It’s fair to say that Mariam was absolutely fucking furious … She thought I was massively underappreciated, because she’s seen it from her side about how much I was balancing family life, parliament, being one of the new 37 Scottish MPs, being in government, the travelling up and down, not just in the constituency, but also around Scotland, and all the rest of it. But she was most angry about the fact that the prime minister didn’t have an explanation.

Murray said he had still not been told why he was sacked. And, if Keir Starmer planned to offer him the replacement job, he said he did not know why he was not told that at the time.

My big questions about coming back into government were, why was it not offered to me at the time – and it wasn’t – why has the decision now been made and why? If I’m not good enough for the Scotland Office, why am I now number two in two major UK departments?

Murray was replaced as Scottish secretary by Douglas Alexander, who did the job before as one of several cabinet jobs he held under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

The Green party has released statements from the five Brent councillors explaining why they have defected from Labour. (See 5.16pm.) Here are extracts from them.

From Harbi Farah, a fromer cabinet member for safer communities

For many years, the Labour party was my political home … Over recent years, however, an overwhelming and accumulating sense of disappointment has taken hold …

My primary disillusionment stems from what feels like a consistent pattern of broken manifesto promises. We were offered a transformative agenda, a genuine shift in power dynamics, but time and again, when faced with political headwinds or internal pressures, those commitments seemed to vanish such as welfare reform, scapegoating immigrant, race to the far right, scrapping jury trials and silencing internal debate dissent.

From Tony Ethapemi

I left the Labour party because the party is no longer the party I joined over 25 years ago. Over time it has let me down in the values we shared – fairness, social justice, humanity and democracy. These principles guided my involvement and inspired my commitment, but I no longer feel they are upheld in the way I had hoped. The party I thought was broad and inclusive is no longer, it has lurched to the far right.

From Iman Ahmadi-Moghaddam, a former Labour whip

I joined Labour to build a fairer society, but Starmer’s government has abandoned any ambition to change the system. This government has doubled down on austerity whilst the cost of living devastates families, sides with big developers instead of fixing Brent’s housing crisis, and scapegoats migrants to distract from its own failures. And whilst Israel commits genocide in Gaza, this government arms the perpetrators and criminalises peaceful protest.

From Mary Mitchell

I’ve been a Labour party member for a decade, and a Labour councillor for four years. I have always believed that a Labour party in power was worth fighting for.

Instead the Labour Pprty has left the values that I stand for, and what the party historically has stood for and achieved.

In copying far-right policy and rhetoric on migration, scrapping jury trials and the draconian policing of protest, we have seen the Labour party move to the right.

From Erica Gbajumo

After nearly 20 years of membership, I have taken the difficult decision to resign from the Labour party. Over time, I have felt that the party I joined has changed in both tone and direction, moving away from the values and principles that originally inspired my involvement.

I have also grown increasingly concerned about the internal culture of the party, which in my experience has become more centralised and restrictive, leaving less space for open debate and genuine representation.

The Green party has announced that five councillors in Brent have defected to it from Labour. It describes this as the biggest block defection yet to the Green party.

The defections follow seven others to the Green in London since September, when Zack Polanski took over as leader and party membership started to soar.

Announcing the switches, Polanski said:

The Green surge has just widened in London. What we’re witnessing in Brent mirrors what we’re hearing across the country on doorsteps and in polls. Good Labour councillors can see Labour has abandoned any sense of progressive politics and is showing absolute cowardice in its doomed attempt to out Reform, Reform with the politics of division and scapegoating.

Increasingly, people are finding the alternative they need by joining the Green party and working for a better world shaped by hope rather than fear.

In the elections in May, it is the Greens who will be taking the fight to Reform and we show our intent today in Brent. This is just the start.

Even with the defections, Labour will remain the governing part in Brent, where it won 45 of the 57 seats at the 2022 election, with just over 50% of the vote. The Green party got only 4% of the vote at the time.

The five councillors joining the Greens are: Harbi Farah, a former cabinet member; Iman Ahmadi-Moghaddam, a former Labour whip; Mary Mitchell; Tony Ethapemi; and Erica Gbajumo.

Eugene McCarthy, chair of the London Green party federation, said:

This huge defection reflects what we are hearing on the doorstep. Labour aren’t prepared for what’s coming in May’s local elections.

Stuart Andrew, the shadow health secretary, has said the decision by the BMA to go ahead strike action this week shows why the Conservatives are right to proposing banning doctors from going on strike.

Speaking in the Commons during the urgent question on the strike, Andrew said

Delayed discharges are worsening – 19,000 more bed days have been lost this year.

Still there is no winter discharge plan, no new funding and no clarity, and today, yes, resident doctors confirmed further strike action next week that will add pressure to the system already under significant strain.

And that is why we would ban strike action.

At the same time, this government is literally making it easier for unions through their employment rights bill. When the NHS is under this level of pressure, families deserve the reassurance that care will be there when they need it.

In response, Wes Streeting, the health secretary, described talk of banning strikes as “political nonsense”.

Wes Streeting, the health secretary, has urged resident doctors to ignore the British Medical Association and to work though the five-day strike due to start at 7am on Wednesday.

He made the appeal in the Commons, where he has been responding to an urgent question tabled by the Tories about the BMA’s decision to go ahead with the strike after resident doctors clearly voted in favour.

Streeting said:

Since this strike represents a different magnitude of risk to previous industrial action, I am appealing to ordinary resident doctors to ignore the BMA strike and go to work this week.

Abandoning patients in their hour of greatest need goes against everything a career in medicine is meant to be about. The entire focus of my department and the NHS team is now on getting the health service through the double whammy of flu and strikes.

He said that, even where resident doctors were on strike, the NHS would recall them to work in emergency situations and would not tolerate “the dangerous attempts to block these requests that we have seen from the BMA in the past”.

He also accused the BMA of pursuing a fantasy pay demand.

It is clear from both the NHS and UKHSA [UK Health Security Agency] data that there is a real risk for the NHS and for patients, and it is at this moment of maximum danger that the BMA has chosen to go ahead with Christmas strikes, when it will inflict the greatest level of damage on the NHS.

The BMA said this dispute was about pay, but we gave them a 28.9% pay rise. Then they said it was also about jobs, so I offered a deal to halve the competition for jobs to less than two applicants per post.

It is now clear what these strikes are really about. The BMA fantasy demand for another 26% pay rise on top of the 28.9% they have already received.

Jessica Elgot is the Guardian’s deputy political editor.

Major business groups have written to the business secretary, Peter Kyle, calling on the Lords to pass the employment rights bill, saying they stood by their deal with unions.

Conservative and cross-bench peers voted down the bill again last week, protesting against the lifting of the compensation cap for unfair dismissal. That measure came in exchange for the government and trade unions agreeing to remove day one rights to claim unfair dismissal – a Labour manifesto pledge. Instead the bill will reduce the qualifying period from two years to six months.

Business lobby groups said the time had now come for the bill to be passed to give certainty to businesses.

In a joint letter, six business organisations said that despite their remaining concerns they wanted to move forward with the agreement, or risk losing the concession on day one rights.

The letter has been signed by: the Confederation of Britsh Industry, British Chambers of Commerce, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the Federation of Small Business, the Recruitment and Employment Confederation and Small Business Britain.

In it, they say:

On the bill more broadly, we believe that the best way forward is to keep working with the government and trade unions to find balanced solutions through secondary legislation. To avoid losing the 6 months qualifying period, we therefore believe that now is the time for parliament to pass the bill.

The Institute of Directors is the only major business group not to have signed.

Q: Can you give an update on the situation with regard to Ukraine?

Starmer says this is critical period for Ukraine, and for Europe as a whole.

European history is full of peace agreements that have failed, he says.

Putin will “keep coming back for more” if he has the chance, Starmer says.

He says 5,000 Russian soldiers are being killed every week.

There is a text in play “that may take us forward”, he says.

He says decisions on the most sensitive issues, such as territory, are for Ukraine to decide.

He says there must be security guarantees.

And Nato, Europe and the EU must be involved in decisions that affect them.

In the meantime, “we must keep Ukraine in the fight”, he says.

He says he hopes they can make further progress in Berlin tonight.

The route to peace is not a straight road,

Q: Would the security guarantees means British troops on the ground?

Starmer says, if necessary, this might involve a ground deployment.

But the first concern is to get a just and lasting peace, he says.

Hillier asks Dhesi if he has a final question on this, but Dhesi says he does not want to delay Starmer’s departure for Berlin.

And that’s the end of the session.

Ruth Cadbury (Lab), chair of the transport committee, goes next.

Q: What has been hardest delivering the Plan for Change?

Starmer says it is the time it takes to deliver.

Q: In Switzerland they set the rail timetable 10 years in advance, then they build the infrastructure. Would you consider that here?

Starmer says he is not sure he would “go the full Swiss”. In general, he is in favour of long-term planning, he says. But he says things do change over 10 years.+

Simon Hoare (Con) asks how gutted the PM is by the BMA’s decision to go ahead with the resident doctors strike.

Starmer says he’s very disappointed.

Q: Haven’t they got you over a barrel?

Starmer does not accept that. He says the government is making progress on modernisation in the NHS.

He says the NHS has not “move enough in the right direction yet”.

Q: Will you tell the BMA there is no additional money on the table? What do you expect them to do next?

Starmer says he wants them to reflect on what they are doing.

They are losing the support of the public, and losing support of colleagues in the NHS.

I think they’ve lost the sympathy of the public, frankly, and I think they’ve lost the sympathy of their colleagues, their non-doctor colleagues in the health service, who are getting on with their jobs, many of them on a much lesser rate of pay increase than the BMA, than the doctors got.

I’d appeal to the doctors themselves to push back against the BMA. In relation to this, they are losing ground in terms of the sympathy they might otherwise have had for the difficult job that they do.

UPDATE: Asked, “on a scale of 1 to 10”, how “gutted” he was by the vote to strike, Starmer replied:

Very gutted.

Asked if that was 10 out of 10, he replied:

It’s 10 out of 10. It’s irresponsible at any time, particularly at the moment.

“It comes on the back of a very substantial pay increase in the last year or so.

There’s a deal that we’ve put on the table that could have been taken forward, and so I think it’s irresponsible action by the BMA, and not for the first time.

Patricia Ferguson (Lab), chair of the Scottish affairs committee, is asking the questions now, and she raises the transition away from North Sea oil and gas.

Starmer says the government is committed to managing the transition responsibly.

Q: Why is it taking so long to deliver alternative jobs for Grangemouth, following the closure of the refinery there?

Starmer says funding is in place to support alternative projects there. The government is trying to work out what plans are viable.

He says he thinks “the potential for Grangemouth is huge”, with projects like carbon capture.

Q: Will there be new jobs there soon?

I hope so, says Starmer.

Cat Smith (Lab), chair of the procedure committee, goes next.

Q: Do you regard farmers as working people?

Yes, says Starmer.

Q: Are you aware of some farmers with terminal illnesses who think they should kill themselves before next April to stop their children losing out from the inheritance tax reforms?

Starmer says he has had discussions with a number of people who have drawn things to his attention.

Q: The police white paper is coming soon. Do you think there are too many police forces in England and Wales?

Starmer says he does not want to discuss that yet.

Q: But you were DPP. You must have a view.

Starmer says, as DPP, he reduced the number of CPS areas from 42 to 13.

He claims that final decisions have not been taken.

He says he thinks there are some functions that might be better delivered across all forces.

And he says procurement for uniforms, police cars etc might work better on a larger scale.

He implies that, rather than just merging forces, he is more interested in how they can cooperate more function by function.

Rather than just a structural reset in terms of numbers, I think the answer to this is probably looking at the functions, and where those functions serve.

Andy Slaughter (Lab), chair of the justice committee, is asking questions now. He says the plans to limit jury trials would affect half or more of all cases. He urges the government to reconsider.

Starmer accepts that, on its own, restricting access to jury trials won’t cut the courts backlog.

But it would help, he says.

He says 60% of victims of violence against women and girls drop out from giving evidence at some point.

That is not acceptable, he says.

He says this is not a recent problem. He has been looking at this for 20 years.

Q: Magistrates used to only deal with cases with a maximum sentence of six months. That will go up to three years. Won’t this plan lead to more people going to jail?

Starmer says the most serious cases will still go before juries.

Cases are still taking too long to go to court.

He says he is not prepared to walk past what has been “a stain on our criminal justice system” for far too long.

The committee has finished the standards in public life part of the hearing, and the rest of the questions will be about the “Plan for Change”.

Helen Hayes (Lab), chair of the education committee, goes next.

In response to her first question, Starmer agrees to speak to the Treasury about rule that stops FE colleges claiming back VAT on expenditure.

Starmer says he will do that.

Costa turns to cronyism.

He says Starmer regularly criticised this when he was in opposition.

Q: You admitted that you should not have been involved in the appointment of David Kogan as football regulator. What is happening to the internal inquiry that you said you were setting up in the light of this?

Starmer says Kogan was originally approached for the job by the last government. He says he does not accept this was a case of cronyism.

He says he was not the decision maker in this case.

Kogan has been a Labour donor.

Starmer is now being asked about leaks. Meg Hillier, the committee chair, asks about the leak to the FT saying the government had abandoned plans to put up income tax.

Q: Could that have come from No 10?

Starmer says a leak inquiry is under way.

He says he has no reason to believe there was a leak from No 10.

In the past, he has taken action, “which has led to the removal of individuals”, over leaks.

He says he will get to the bottom of leaks. In any organisation, they are “intolerable”.

Q: So you will be ruthless?

Starmer says: “I want to stop these leaks.”

Costa is now asking about a Full Fact factcheck saying that one of Starmer’s replies during PMQs last week about teacher numbers was inaccurate.

Starmer defends what he said, saying:

What I was putting before the House is the fact that we are committed to recruiting an additional 6,500 new teachers. And we’ve got record numbers of trainees coming into the system, and therefore that number is going up.

If you look at secondary schools, further education colleges, the number of teachers has gone up. That’s absolutely clear.

Referring to primary schools, Starmer says pupil numbers have gone down, so fewer teachers are needed.

Costa asks about announcements being made outside the House of Commons. He claims this is another standards issue, because the ministrial code says ministers should make announcements to the Commons too.

Starmer says he regularly discusses this with the speaker.

Q: On Thursday you will publish a progress report on the Grenfell inquiry. That is the last day of the session. Why is this important progress report being made then?

Starmer says he will discuss this with the speaker.

The hearing is starting.

Keir Starmer begins by condemning the Bondi beach attack as an “appalling antisemitic” terrorist attack.

He says he knows that Jewish communties in the UK will feel more insecure.

This is not an isolated incident, he says. And he says these incidents are focused on some of the holiest days in the Jewish calender. He cites the Heaton Park attack in Manchester as an example.

Keir Starmer is appearing before the Commons liaison committee, which comprises the chairs of all the select committee, at 2pm. He will take questions for 90 minutes.

Here is the list of topics being covered, and the MPs who are down to get a question.

Meg Hiller, the committee chair, will also get some questions.

Standards in Public Life

Alberto Costa MP, Standards

Simon Hoare MP, Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs

Cat Smith MP, Procedure

The Plan for Change: one year on

Dame Karen Bradley MP, Home Affairs

Alistair Carmichael MP, Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Ruth Cadbury MP, Transport

Tan Dhesi MP, Defence

Bill Esterson MP, Energy Security and Net Zero

Patricia Ferguson MP, Scottish Affairs

Helen Hayes MP, Education

Simon Hoare MP, Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs

Andy Slaughter MP, Justice

Cat Smith MP, Procedure

Kemi Badenoch has urged Keir Starmer to condemn a Labour donor who said that Benjamin Netanhayu, the Israeli prime minister, “wants antisemitism to be a thing” because it validates what his government is doing.

In a post on social media last night, Dale Vince, the green entrepreneur who has been called Labour’s biggest corporate donor, said:

Commenting on the shootings in Australia today Netanyahu said - Antisemitism spreads when leaders stay silent. Nothing to do with Isreal committing Genocide in Palestine then. Netanyahu wants antisemitism to be a thing, it validates him - he acts to make it so.

In response, Badenoch said:

Hours after the biggest massacre of Jews since Oct 7th, the Labour Party’s largest donor tweeted “Netanyahu wants antisemitism to be a thing”. A morally repugnant statement.

Will Keir Starmer condemn his big financial backer? Staying silent implies he sees nothing wrong.

Starmer will be giving evidence to the Commons liaison committee shortly, where some of the questions will cover standards in public life, so there might be a chance for an MP to bring this up.

Vince subsequently posted this statement clarifying what he meant.

My words on this subject were not intended to excuse or legitimise terrorism, or any form of racism - what happened at Bondi beach is an atrocity. My words are aimed at the intervention of Netanyahu who in my opinion overlooks the impacts of his own terrorism. If anti semitism is rising in the world today then surely on any rational analysis, the biggest single cause of that will be the genocide in Palestine. I condemn all acts of violence and all forms of racism.

Labour says that it is “staggering” that Reform UK is refusing to do anything about racist comments from a mayoral candidate.

Responding to what Danny Kruger said when was asked at his press conference about Chris Parry, Reform’s candidate for mayor of Hampshire and the Solent (see 1.13pm), Anna Turley, the Labour chair, said:

It’s staggering that 10 days after these racist comments were first reported, Nigel Farage is still refusing to take action.

No matter what Reform’s senior leadership say, telling a black British man from London to ‘go home to the Caribbean’ is racist, and no ‘context’ can excuse it. Nigel Farage should stop turning a blind eye to racism in his party and sack his candidate immediately.

Reform want to drag our politics to a dark place and this inaction shows why they are not fit for high office.

Parry’s comment was originally reported by the Daily Telegraph. Parry did not respond to the paper’s requests for a comment, and Reform UK has ignored calls from Labour for Parry to be sacked as a candidate.

When Kruger was initially asked about Parry at the press conference, he said that he did not know the details of this case but that the party condemned “any expression of racism” and that the party had taken action against the “small” number of members who had “disgraced” the party in these cases.

Asked about this again by a Telegraph reporter, who said the party had refused to say if Parry was being kept on as a candidate, Kruger said that this was a matter for Farage, but that Parry was “a very distinguished public servant” and that it was good to have his support.

Kruger also pointed out that Hampshire and the Solent is one of the four areas where mayoral elections have been delayed for two years.

The Tories have claimed that the BMA’s decision to go ahead with the resident doctors strike in England is a result of the government being “weak” with unions.

Commenting on the announcement (see 1.18am), Stuart Andrew, the shadow health secretary, said:

The BMA rejecting Labour’s offer just shows how weak this government is in the face of militant unions.

We Conservatives repeatedly warned Labour that by giving inflation busting pay rises last year they would set a dangerous precedent. And now we see the consequences of their capitulation, with more disruption, more demands and no end in sight.

Resident doctors in England will strike as planned this week after they voted to reject the government’s latest offer to end the long-running pay and jobs dispute, Denis Campbell reports.

In his Q&A, Danny Kruger was also asked whether he was concerned whether the Guardian reports about people at school with Nigel Farage saying they recall him being racist as a pupil, which have been widely followed up, and the party’s response to them, which has alternated between outright denial and suggestions that any comments were banter, or taken out of context, or misremembered, have damaged the party’s poll ratings. Support for the party has flatlined, or fallen, since the stories started appearing.

In response, Kruger rejected suggestions this was a problem. He explained:

The polling remains very, very positive for Reform. We are clearly well ahead of every other party. And that is sustained and consistent in every single poll that you see.

And I’m confident that that will continue.

But this is a battle we’re in. The right in politics is split. And I’ve said consistently, and I think the evidence is overwhelming, that the Conservative party remains a blocker to a centre-right government in this country. And the right thing for every Conservative voter or activist or member to do is to join Reform if you want to see change and get rid of this failing Labour government.

The Politico poll of polls shows the recent drop in Reform’s polling started on 21 November, three days after the first Guardian report was published. That implies there is a link.

But polling experts are not convinced. This is what Luke Tryl, the pollster from More in Common, said on this topic on social media at the start of December.

Reform % was down across most polls last week. What is driving it? Farage school comments, Gill & Russia, Mahmood asylum reform? I suspect answer is simpler: Reform do best when its issues are in focus (migration,crime,lack of faith in politics) & less so when it’s the economy

Here is the clip from the Q&A.

Danny Kruger was the Reform UK MP speaking at the party’s press conference this morning. An evangelical Christian, Kruger was an unexpected recruit when he defected to Nigel Farage’s party from the Tories in September. In his book Covenant in 2023, setting out his personal, political philosophy, Kruger argued: “The purpose of politics is the cultivation of the conditions of virtue, of the moral impulses that make good conduct, and that these conditions are the normative dispositions of a conservative society.”

So it was perfectly reasonable for someone to ask, at his Q&A this morning, how Kruger felt when he learned last week that Reform has been endorsed by the celebrity sex worker Bonnie Blue. As she explained in an article for the Spectator, she is impressed by the party’s policies on immigration and inheritance tax.

Kruger said he was happy to welcome the Bonnie Blue endorsement. He explained:

On Bonnie Blue I mean, listen, we’ll take votes wherever we can get them.

We know we want all the support we can get, quite like Bonnie Blue.

But we, you know, we’re not going to be fussy about that.

But listen, I mean, you know I’m not going to be judgmental about people who want to vote Reform.

In response to questions about Reform and racism, Kruger was also reluctant to moralise. Asked by my colleague Peter Walker about the more than 20 contemporaries who have come forward to say they remember Nigel Farage making racist comments as a pupil at Dulwich college, and whether he agreed with Richard Tice, who said the accusers were all lying, or whether he agreed with Farage, who at time has claimed people misremembered what happened, Kruger said that he and colleagues repeatedly answered questions about this and that he had “nothing more to say”.

And asked about a report saying that Chris Parry, Reform’s candidate for mayor of Hampshire and the Solent, posted a message on social media in February saying that David Lammy should “go home to the Caribbean” and whether this was racist, Kruger said that he was not aware of the details of this case and that this was not a matter for him. But he claimed that Farage has taken action to deal with racism in the party. And he described Parry, a former navy officer, as “a distinguished public servant” and said it was good to have his support.

UPDATE: Here is the clip.

Reform UK has now released a short document about what it describes at phase one of its plan to reform the civil service. It claims the civil service “has become bloated, overstaffed, and has failed to deliver what is expected by the British people”. It says that its plans would remove the equivalent of 68,500 jobs, saving £5.2bn a year once the cuts are in place.

This chart shows where the jobs would go. In HR and communications, Reform want to get rid of more than half existing posts.

Reform also says it would increase the bonus pool for civil servants by 400% to attract “the finest talent” and to incentivise high performers.

Blaise Metreweli, the new head of MI6, is not the only defence and security figure giving a big speech today.

Sir Richard Knighton, who as chief of the defence staff is head of the armed forces, is also giving a speech, to the Royal United Services Institute this evening, and he will say the threat from Russia is so serious that the whole nation, and not just the military, needs to step up to increase Britain’s resilience.

According to extracts released in advance, he will say:

The situation is more dangerous than I have known during my career and the response requires more than simply strengthening our armed forces. A new era for defence doesn’t just mean our military and government stepping up – as we are – it means our whole nation stepping up …

Our armed forces always need to be ready to fight and win – that’s why readiness is such a priority.

But deterrence is also about our resilience to these threats, it’s about how we harness all our national power, from universities, to industry, the rail network to the NHS. It’s about our defence and resilience being a higher national priority for all of us. An ‘all-in’ mentality.

And that will require people who are not soldiers, sailors or aviators to nevertheless invest their skills – and money – in innovation and problem solving on the nation’s behalf.

As an example of what he means by the whole nation stepping up, Knighton will announce that £50m is being set aside to establish defence technical excellence colleges. They will provide courses needed to train staff for defence employers quickly. He will explain:

Five colleges in England, and others across the UK, will gain specialist status and major new funding to train people in the skills needed to secure new defence jobs, and help deliver on the ambitions set out in the SDR.

In addition to training young people for the new jobs of the future, this funding will also support thousands of short courses so defence employers can upskill existing staff quickly, providing the versatility that they – and we – need.

Knighton will say that the war in Ukraine has shown Vladimir Putin’s willingness to target neighbouring states, including their civilian populations, and he will say Russia has made it clear it wants to destroy Nato.

The Russian leadership has made clear that it wishes to challenge, limit, divide and ultimately destroy Nato, in former President Medvedev’s words, aspiring to “the disappearance of Ukraine and the disappearance of Nato – preferably both”.

The Ministry of Defence is describing Knighton’s speech as “rallying cry to the nation”.

Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, has issued a statement calling for the immediate release of Jimmy Lai after the media tycoon and pro-democracy campaigner was convicted in Hong Kong of national security and sedition offences.

Rishi Sunak is giving evidence to the Covid inquiry this morning. The inquiry has moved on to the module looking at the economic response to the pandemic, and Sunak, who was chancellor at the time, is giving evidence all today, and tomorrow morning.

Yohannes Lowe is covering it in a separate live blog.

Later today Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, is due to announce some councillor defections. He will do so buoyed up by some polling from Opinium suggesting he is the most popular of the UK party leaders. It says:

The Greens’ leader, Zack Polanski, is currently the most popular party leader with voters at net -1, with the Lib Dems’ Ed Davey close behind on net -4.

No political leader is in net positive territory with voters, with Keir Starmer most unpopular at net -43 (+2), while Kemi Badenoch is up four points at net -10 and Nigel Farage stands at net -12 (+2). [Changes from Opinium polling three weeks ago.]

Opinium also found that the Green party outperforms Labour and the Conservatives when voters are asked to rate the parties according to a series of positive indicators.

The only indicator where Labour and the Tories beat the Greens is “ready for government”, although the Greens are only one point ahead of the Tories on “can be trusted to take big decisions”.

Good morning. The news will be dominated by two foreign stories today: the ongoing response to the Hanukah killings at Bondi beach, which we are covering on a live blog here, and the latest talks in Berlin tonight on peace proposals for Ukraine. Keir Starmer is a key partner in this process, and he will be flying to Germany to attend.

But first he will have to spend 90 minutes at the Commons liaison committee taking questions, not on foreign policy, but instead mostly on “the Plan for Change: one year on”. These hearings normally don’t reveal as much as a lengthy interrogation of the PM on policy probably should, but there is shortage of complaints about the government’s record over the past year and there are plenty of interesting questions that could be asked.

Part of Labour’s plan for change is to halve violence against women and girls over a decade and this week we are getting a series of announcements about that. As Geraldine McElvie reported at the weekend, all police forces in England and Wales are going to get a dedicated rape and sexual offences teams by 2029.

There is more today. The government is announcing that councils will receive a further £19m aimed at providing safe housing for domestic abuse survivors as part of the violence against women and girls (VAWG) strategy.

PA Media has more details. It says:

Ministers said the funding would help local authorities offer victims access to a “fresh start” on top of £480m already pledged over the next three years for support including refuges and sanctuary schemes.

Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, is set to unveil sweeping reforms to the criminal justice system this week as part of government plans to halve Vawg, which it has declared a “national emergency”, within a decade.

Around £500m will go towards the domestic abuse safe accommodation duty, which places a statutory requirement on local authorities to provide support to survivors and children in safe accommodation.

Measures can include access to housing in refuges or confidential locations, or security upgrades such as lock changes and alarms for people staying in their own home.

Homelessness minister Alison McGovern said: “This funding will help local authorities provide safe accommodation and tailored support, including refuges and sanctuary schemes, so every survivor can access safety, stability and a fresh start.”

Mahmood will unveil the VAWG strategy on Thursday, the last day the Commons is sitting before the Christmas recess.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10.30am: Rishi Sunak, the former PM and former chancellor, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry about the economic response to the pandemic.

Morning: Kemi Badenoch is on a visit to promote the Conservative party’s call for an end the 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel cars.

11am: Danny Kruger, who is in charge of Reform UK’s planning for government, holds a press conference.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

2pm: Keir Starmer gives evidence to the Commons liaison committee.

2.30pm: John Healey, the defence secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

Afternoon: Blaise Metreweli gives her first speech at the new head of MI6. As Dan Sabbagh reports, she will warn that assassination plots, sabotage, cyber-attacks and the manipulation of information by Russia and other hostile states mean that “the frontline is everywhere”.

After 3.30pm: MPs vote to overturn last week’s Lords defeat on the employment rights bill.

Afternoon: Starmer flies to Berlin for talks about Ukraine.

5pm: Zack Polanski, the Green party, speaks at a press conference to announce councillor defections to his party.

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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.

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