Last week Gordon Brown, the former prime minister, wrote to the Metropolitan police urging it to open an investigation into Peter Mandelson and evidence that he leaked confidential government documents to Jeffrey Epstein when he was a minister. Later that day the Met confirmed they were starting a criminal investigation.

Brown has not left it at that. He has been looking at the Epstein files in considerable detail and, in a long and powerful article for the New Statesman, he says it has led him to conclude that a much more extensive investigation is required. He says:

What I discovered about the abuse of women by male predators and their enablers – and Britain’s as yet unacknowledged role – has shocked me to the core. It demands an in-depth police investigation, and is by far the biggest scandal of all.

It is time to listen to the proposals long argued for by the UK special envoy for women and girls, Harriet Harman, the minister for safeguarding, Jess Phillips, and the backbench champion of change, Natalie Fleet. They have for decades led the fight to address inequality, exploitation and gender-based violence and they rightly feel that a male culture has for too long failed to accord the priority these realities require.

The Epstein files open our eyes to the sheer scale of the sex trafficking industry: the suffering of at least six million girls and women living in sexual slavery, whose plight has never been adequately addressed. I now see clearly that, despite all the warnings by women, there has been a monumental failure worldwide to execute the law even after the power to do so was set out in the Palermo Protocol 25 years ago, and given effect by Theresa May’s Modern Slavery Act of 2015.

Brown also says there is a specific need to investigate the part that Britain, and Britons, played in Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation.

The Epstein emails, which record the visas issued, payments made and transport organised for girls and women trafficked across the world, suggest a number of British girls were on 90 Epstein flights organised from UK airports on what was called his “Lolita Express”. Among the many aspects that should sicken anyone looking at the emails is that 15 of these flights were given the go-ahead after his 2008 conviction for soliciting sex from a minor. How the flights were allowed to continue should have been fully investigated.

Epstein’s trafficking was a three-decades-long criminal enterprise, a far greater scandal than the Profumo affair. Because of the scale of lawbreaking and the use of dirty money, these revelations far exceed those in various sleaze scandals throughout the 1980s and 1990s …

The emails tell us in graphic detail how Epstein was able to use Stansted Airport – he boasted how cheap the airport charges were compared to Paris – to fly in girls from Latvia, Lithuania and Russia. His messages link at least one to Britain and the former Prince Andrew. One email, headed “the girl”, described her as “just turned 18, 179cm, very cute, speaks English, I saw her in real 3 years ago… i will send you the video in next email”.

Stansted was also where women were transferred from one Epstein plane to another; women arriving on private planes into Britain would not need British visas. It seems the authorities never knew what was happening: evidence the BBC has uncovered shows incomplete flight logs, with unnamed passengers simply labelled as “female”. To this day, the names of many of the male passengers are unknown because their names were withheld. In short, British authorities had little or no idea who was being trafficked through our country, and for whom other than Epstein.

Brown says the police should interview Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, at least about the Stansted link. But he says a wider investigatioin into the Epstein links with the UK is needed.

Rape and sexual abuse in the UK should never become a second-order issue – and never on the pretext of an investigation in another jurisdiction. The evidence suggests some in the UK were complicit in trafficking. This demands a full inquiry.

Lucy Powell, the deputy Labour leader, has claimed that Keir Starmer ends the week in a “much stronger” position than when he started it.

In a phone-in on LBC, discussing the ramifications of a week that saw the surprise resignations of Starmer’s chief of staff and his communications director, and a call for him to stand down from the Scottish Labour leader, Powell said:

I think Keir Starmer ends the week – or we’re nearly towards the end of the week – much stronger than how he started it.

Actually I think what this week has shown … is that the vast majority of the parliamentary Labour party and the entire Cabinet are fully behind him and he has their full confidence.

But Powell also admitted that the government would have to improve the way it operated.

We’ve gone through that particular test, but we need to make sure that we are working in a more inclusive way, a more plural way, bringing all the talents to the government and taking people with us, and also I think for the public, show that we are onside, we are delivering for them, and that we’re really focused on the job in hand and we’re not distracted by ourselves.

Powell is certainly right to say that Starmer’s position is more secure than it looked at lunchtime on Monday. In response to the news that Anas Sarwar was calling for Starmetr to quit, all members of the cabinet, and the former deputy PM Angela Rayner, issued statements backing Starmer, meaning there was no prospect of a senior figure resigning to trigger a leadership contest. That risk has been averted – at least temporarily.

But there are many MPs who believe than any reprieve for the PM is temporary.

Hannay Al-Othman is the Guardian’s North of England correspondent.

Greater Manchester police has concluded its investigation after Reform UK was reported for sending out a letter to voters in the Gorton and Denton byelection without the legally required imprint.

Dozens of voters in the Gorton and Denton constituency reported receiving letters at the end of last week and early this week from a pensioner called Patricia Clegg.

The letters, which were printed in a handwriting-style font, do not include an imprint saying who they have been funded and distributed by, as required by electoral law.

It expressed support for Reform, and contained critiques of the two main contenders in the seat, Labour and the Greens.

A Reform spokesperson said last week that “an error occurred during the printing process” which meant the legal imprint was “inadvertently removed at the point of printing” without the party’s knowledge.

Hardings Print Solutions, in Middlesex, which printed the letter, said it “took full responsibility” for the error.

A spokesperson for GMP confirmed that the investigation into the letters had now concluded. They said:

Following an investigation into alleged imprint offences after a report made in Gorton, we have contacted all interested parties, including the Electoral Commission, to provide advice and guidance about promotional communications going forward.

Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.

Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, has agreed that Keir Starmer can campaign for Labour in the Holyrood elections only days after calling for the prime minister to resign.

In a marked change of position, Sarwar said Starmer and other UK cabinet ministers were welcome to support Scottish Labour’s faltering bid to win the May election but only if they demonstrated how the UK government was improving lives in Scotland.

Two days ago Sarwar caused uproar by calling on Starmer to quit. In early January, Sarwar said he wanted the prime minister to “stay at their desks” in London avoid Scotland during the election campaign because of his deep unpopularity with voters.

He said voters had been left “angry, frustrated and impatient” by the UK government’s repeated policy failures and missteps. Labour sources said Starmer had not been invited to Scottish Labour’s one day pre-election conference later this month.

Pressed by reporters at Holyrood on Wednesday on how he could welcome Starmer and his cabinet allies to Scotland, after demanding he stand down, Sarwar said they were now welcome.

If “the prime minister and other ministers … want to come to Scotland and demonstrate that they’re delivering for Scotland by being a UK Labour government, that’s welcome,” he said. He went on:

But in terms of the campaign, I am leading this campaign, I’m the candidate for first minister. Keir Starmer’s name is not on the ballot paper. My name is on the ballot paper. Scotland will have to choose between me and John Swinney [the Scottish National party leader and current first minister].

At the post-PMQs lobby briefing, No 10 said Starmer would be campaigning in Scotland ahead of the Holyrood elections.

Sarwar’s marked shift of stance only 48 hours after calling for Starmer to quit will fuel suspicions Sarwar is backing down after failing to get any significant shows of support from Labour MPs or any minister.

While a majority of Scottish Labour’s 20 MSPs have openly endorsed Sarwar’s call for Starmer to quit, few Labour MPs have done so. Some Scottish ministers are furious at Sarwar’s intervention. One described it “as incredibly high risk and pretty foolish”, and likely to make things worse for Labour rather than improve it electoral chances.

Douglas Alexander, the Scottish secretary, has urged both men to set aside their differences in a bid to act as peacemaker. Alexander is also a co-chair of Scottish Labour’s election campaign, so is now facing questions inside the party about how he can support Starmer yet work for Sarwar.

Asked whether he still wanted Starmer to resign, Sarwar said he stuck by his remarks on Monday but refused to repeat them. Instead he used more conciliatory words about Starmer’s promises to Labour MPs this week he planned to change his approach. He said:

I stated my view, I stand by that view, I welcome the fact that there is now general acceptance, that things have not been good enough, that there have been far too many mistakes, and things have to change.

I’m the one that’s put myself before the public in three months’ time. And people in Scotland deserve to know what my standards are, what I believe, what I’m willing to tolerate, and what I would do differently if I was elected as first minister.

Jewish activists have heckled Nigel Farage at the launch of a Jewish members’ organisation for Reform UK and accused the party of planning to use the new group as cover for persecuting other minorities, Ben Quinn reports.

Matt Goodwin, the Reform UK candidate in Gorton and Denton, has been criticised for refusing to take part in a hustings organised in the constituency last night. In a statement, he said that he would take part in other hustings, but that he did not think “a fair and level platform” would be offered to all candidates by Local Voices, the group organising last night’s.

As the Daily Mirror reports, Andrew Western, the MP running Labour’s campaign in the constituency, said:

Matthew Goodwin’s dramatic last minute withdrawal from last night’s hustings just shows what we already know. He is a snowflake.

And Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, posted this on social media.

Reform politicians are happy to throw insults from a distance.

But when it comes to debating their ideas? No show.

Richard Tice pulled out.

Farage won’t face me.

Now their candidate in Gorton & Denton has ducked our candidate Hannah Spencer.

Female Labour MPs have told Keir Starmer to appoint a woman as first secretary of state – a de factor deputy PM serving alongside the actual deputy PM, David Lammy – to oversee a “complete culture change” in Downing Street, Alexandra Topping reports.

At the post-PMQs lobby briefing, No 10 ducked questions about whether Matthew Doyle could lose his peerage over allegations that he did not disclose having campaigned for someone charged with sex offences before his peerage was announced.

The government has said it will legislate to allow peerages to be removed in cases of misconduct – something which cannot happen under current rules. The bill is designed to ensure Peter Mandelson’s peerage can be taken away, but it is likely that it will set up a general mechanism to be apply in these cases.

Asked about Doyle possibly losing his peerage, a No 10 spokesperson said they would not comment because they did not want “to get ahead of” the internal Labour investigatiaton into this case.

Asked why the government did not block Doyle’s peerage after the Sunday Times story was published saying he had campaigned for a council candidate accused of possessing indecent images of children (this was after Doyle’s peerage was announced, but before he had taken his seat in the Lords), No 10 said:

There’s no established precedent for withdrawing a peerage nomination after the announcement stage.

That’s why we’re undertaking wider reform to both vetting and appointment processes.

After Keir Starmer’s political near-death experience on Monday, there have been suggestions that, with Morgan McSweeney out of the way, the public might get to see the “real”, more passionate and more persuasive Starmer that has been buried until now beneath a mound of McSweeney-inspired, missions-orientated verbiage. These ‘Let Barlet be Bartlet’ strategies never really work out quite was well as they did on the West Wing, but we did see a bit of that today. Starmer was definitely more angry and combative than he normally is. (You need to read the quotes in full, which is why I’ve fleshed them out – see 1.04pm.) He was a bit more ruthless; normally he is quite cordial with Ed Davey, but today he was in full Labour tribalism mode as he savaged the Lib Dems. (See 12.15pm.) And he a bit more egotistical too. “Only four people have ever led the Labour party to victory in a general election. I am one of them,” he told Badenoch (rightly). He sounded like a man who has spent a bit of time in recent days thinking about whether he is the right man to lead the country (and also someone who has concluded the answer is – yes).

All of this was enough to mean that, for Starmer, this was one of those PMQs where it could have been a lot worse.

At the very start, he was even ahead. He won the first exchange with Kemi Badenoch with his “what’s her great achievement? To make [the Tory party] even smaller” riposte. He was holding his own with the second one. But when Badenoch raised the Matthew Doyle case in her third question, Starmer was thrown fully on to the defensive. After a brief line about Doyle not giving a “full account”, Starmer reverted to distraction mode, which is where he stayed for the rest of these exchanges. As a display of whataboutery, it was fine – in fact, rather good. But Starmer could not conceal the fact that Badenoch was winning the argument; on Doyle, she was making points to which he didn’t have a good answer

She was effective. But Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, and Stephen Flynn, the SNP leader at Westminster, both raised the Doyle case too, and their soundbites (particularly Flynn’s – see 12.18pm) were probably better.

(But the prize for the best put-down of the day probably went to Ayoub Khan. See 12.38pm.)

Munira Wilson (Lib Dem) asks if the government will back mandatory CCTV in nurseries, and mandatory registers for staff.

Starmer says the government is considering whether CCTV should be mandatory in nursery settings.

Stephen Flynn, the SNP leader at Westminster, says Starmer’s line on Doyle not giving a full account of his actions was similar to his line on Mandelson. He says Starmer “appears to be the most gullible former director of public prosecutions in history”. He asks if the government will publish the guidance given to the Lords appointments commission when it vetted Doyle.

Starmer says a former SNP chief executive is going on trial in nine days’ time.

Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker, says MPs should not be discussing live cases.

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, says that to appoint two friends of paedophiles to the Lords shows catastrophic misjudgment.

Starmer says people have been let down because of austerity, which the Lib Dems supported.

Davey says he “touched a raw nerve”.

The Mandelson scandal shows why a duty of candour is needed. He says the Hillsborough law should be placed on the statute book. Will the PM finally pass that now, ‘“even if it is the last thing he does”.

Starmer says he started working on Hillsborough issues in 2012, when the Lib Dems were in power. They did not pass this legislation, he says.

UPDATE: Davey said:

To appoint one paedophile supporter cannot be excused as ‘misfortune’. To appoint two shows a catastrophic lack of judgment.

[Starmer] once told this house that when a prime minister refuses to take responsibility, and I quote, ‘it only serves to convince people that things cannot get better, that governments cannot improve people’s lives, and that progress is not possible because politics does not work’.

Does he still agree with himself and does he share my fear that is exactly what’s happening now?

And Starmer replied:

People in this country, millions of people have been let down for years and years and years.

One of the reasons was austerity, which his party supported. He should take accountability and take responsibility for what he has inflicted on this country.

Badenoch suggest sleaze will be Starmer’s legacy.

Starmer says his legacy will be changing his party.

He kicked his former leader out of the party. But Badenoch has not done that to Liz Truss, who is now floating “bonkers conspiracy theories”. He says he kicked Truss out of parliament. But Badenoch won’t kick her out of her party.

UPDATE: Badenoch said:

Nobody buys it, not even the Labour women, because they know he always puts the Downing Street boys’ club first.

And how dare he criticise us. We weren’t the ones stuffing government with hypocrites and paedophile apologists.

He can’t build a team, he has no plan, he can’t even run his own office let alone the country. He is now dealing with a new scandal of appointing someone who campaigned for a man convicted of having indecent pictures of girls as young as 10, isn’t the prime minister ashamed that that would be his legacy?

And Starmer replied:

My legacy is changing my party and winning a general election.

And I’ll tell you this, I kicked my former leader out of my party. Her former leader, Liz Truss, broke the economy and has descended into bonkers conspiracy theories.

I kicked her out of parliament. She’s too weak to kick her out of their party.

Badenoch says Starmer is deluded if he thinks it is the Tory party that is in trouble.

She asks why Matthew Doyle got a peerage.

Starmer says Doyle “did not give a full account of his actions”. He had the whip withdrawn yesterday.

And he changes the subject, and mentions government policies protecting women.

UPDATE: Badenoch said:

The prime minister is demonstrating stratospheric levels of delusion if he thinks the problem is on this side of the house …

The Mandelson episode was not an isolated incident. A few weeks ago he announced a peerage for one Matthew Doyle, his former director of communications.

Immediately after that, the Sunday Times published on the front page that Doyle campaigned for a man charged with child sex offences, yet despite the prime minister knowing this, he gave Doyle a job for life in the House of Lords anyway. Why?

Starmer said:

Matthew Doyle did not give a full account of his actions. I promised my party and my country there will be change, and yesterday I removed the whip from Matthew Doyle.

I’ll tell you what other actions we’ve taken. Along with the safeguarding minister, I and this government have introduced the most far-reaching violence against women and girls strategy, and I’ll tell you what else we’ve done, this government has introduced a pay rise for millions of working class women. What did the leader of the opposition do? She opposed it.

This government is introducing greater protection for women at work. What did the leader of the opposition do? She opposed it, and I’ll tell you what else she opposes, this government removing the disgusting rape clause that they put in place.

PMQs is starting soon.

Here is the lists of MPs down to ask a question.

In her interviews this morning Georgia Gould, the education minister, was also asked about Peter Mandelson. Her father was Philip Gould, the pollster and strategist who worked for Labour when it was in opposition in the late 1980s and 1990s, and then when it was in government. He was a key figure in the development of New Labour, right at the heart of the Tony Blair inner circle and a close friend and ally of Mandelson.

This is what Gould told Sky News about her response to the latest revelations about the peer.

[Mandelson] was a good friend of my father’s. I’ve known him my whole life. I have been completely shocked by what has come out.

I know that my dad, who’s no longer alive, would have been too.

He is someone who I thought of as a public servant. And I could not believe when I read some of the things that have come out. When the whole government needed to be focussed at that time on the huge challenge that you face, to be passing information in that way, it is deeply painful to see what has emerged.

Gould was referring to emails showing Mandleson leaking confidential government documents to Jeffrey Epstein. These are now being investigated by the police.

Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, has announced a 10-year strategy to modernise and improve school buildings in England. The Department for Education says:

For too long, millions have been poured into sticking-plaster repairs to deteriorating classrooms that fail to meet the needs of pupils learning inside them.

The government will put an end to this cycle of patching and mending buildings that have already deteriorated, as the education secretary unveils today a 10-year plan to transform the education estate so that children and young people across the country have the high-quality classrooms that are fit for purpose and resilient to climate change from flooding and overheating.

As part of the drive to make schools more inclusive by design, the government expects that every secondary school will, in time, have an inclusion base – a dedicated safe space away from busy classrooms where pupils can access targeted support that bridges the gap between mainstream and specialist provision.

The full 52-page educational estates strategy paper is here.

As Alexandra Topping reports, all secondary schools should have specially designed areas for neurodiverse children and pupils with special educational needs under the plans.

The Liberal Democrats have announced a new idea; it’s a rehash of one that has been kicking around for at least 60 years.

As Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem deputy leader, acknowledged in her speech this morning (see 9.37am), people in British politics have been complaining for years about the Treasury having too much power. One prime minister who actually did something about this was Harold Wilson, who created the Department of Economic Affairs in the 1960s as a counterweight to the Treasury. It was supposed to deal with long-term economic planning, leaving the Treasury as more of a simple tax-raising department. It did not last. But prime ministers – particulary those with difficult relationships with their chancellors – have been toying with the same idea ever since.

In an article about this four years ago, George Dibb, at the time a researcher at the IPPR thinktank, now on secondment to the civil service, said:

Ultimately, Harold Wilson, Gordon Brown and Theresa May are not all wrong. A short-termist Treasury with absolute control in Whitehall will always skew policy in a damaging way. Tony Danker, director general of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), made a similar point this month on the role of the Treasury in economic growth: “No CEO would put the finance department in charge of sales.” The Treasury has to be broken up, with long-term economic strategy the responsibility of a new ministry. That way it would be matched by an equal and opposite force with long-term vision and powers to direct the economy towards socially important goals. Whether that goal is decarbonisation or addressing regional inequality, the Treasury’s instinct to pull tight the purse strings will always be a barrier.

Today, as well as adopting these arguments, Cooper was making an argument about growth, claiming that a stand-alone growth department would do better than the Treasury at boosting GDP. Perhaps. But Rachel Reeves claimed she was turning the Treasury into a growth department when she became chancellor. Since then growth has been disappointing, but in large part that is not because of Whitehall machinery; it’s because there are political objections to the pulling the most effective growth levers (joining a customs union or the single market, increasing immigration) that would apply regardless of which department was in charge.

Still, Cooper is likely to find a lot of people agreeing with her central argument. Those who have suggested breaking up the Treasury in the past have included figures as diverse as Will Hutton, Maurice Glasman and Dominic Cummings. If a left-leaning coalition is in power after the next election, the Lib Dems could have considerable clout when this debate is being thrashed out again.

Still, dismantling the Treasuy won’t be easy. In a good New Statesman article on this topic last year, George Eaton quoted Harold Macmillan, the former Tory PM. Macmillan summed it up like this:

To reform the Treasury is like trying to reform the Kremlin or the Vatican. These institutions are apt to have the last laugh.

Families of nurses and carers have said they fear being torn apart under an immigration crackdown condemned as “an act of economic vandalism”, Josh Halliday reports.

Q: You are here being hosted by UK Finance. But the financial services sector does not like your plans for a windfall tax on banks. Have you dropped your support for that?

Cooper says the Lib Dems are still committed to that. She says it is justified because banks have made unexpected profits relating to the QE system. She accepts that banks are not happy about the plans. But the party is talking to them about that, she says. And, although the banks don’t like the plan, they “do like what we’re trying to do with it” (measures to promote growth).

Cooper said the Lib Dems would locate their new growth department in Birmingham.

She said this reflected the fact that the Lib Dems were a party representing seats all over the country.

We Liberal Democrats are the only political party with MPs that span from the Highlands and Islands of Scotland down to the tip of the southwest. So we know we see the differences in economic growth between the southeast and everywhere else.

Cooper says that some people wanted the Treasury’s powers to be tweaked, and others said the PM should have more power over economic policy.

But the Lib Dems were proposing a different plan, she said.

Today I can announce that we Liberal Democrats don’t just want to get rid of this anti-growth chancellor. We want to get rid of this anti-growth Treasury.

And as part of our plan for government, we would break up the Treasury and replace it with a new, powerful, full Department for Growth, with a mandate to boost long-term prosperity, improve living standards and end the cost of living crisis.

The Department for Business and Trade would be merged into this new Growth Department, recognising the central role of British business in driving growth.

And a smaller Department for Public Expenditure would be set up to oversee department spending and ensure value for money.

This new Department for Growth would focus minds on what growth could help us achieve stronger economic growth.

Cooper said having a Department for Growth would force the government to focus properly on growth policies. And it would make parties contemplate pulling “the biggest growth lever”, having a better trading relationship with the EU.

Cooper said one of Labour’s problems was that it had been led by “Treasury brain”.

The winter fuel payment fiasco – a short-term Treasury tax grab driven by the desire for immediate bankable cuts.

The jobs tax – a short-term Treasury tax grab with no regard for the crushing impact on jobs, on growth or investment.

The family farm tax and the attack on family businesses – short-term Treasury tax grabs by the chancellor that could lead to some of the most resilient, long standing British businesses being broken up and sold off.

The list goes on.

But this isn’t a new problem. For too long political parties without a vision for growth have allowed the Treasury tail to wag the political dog. And it must stop.

For decades, everyone has identified this as a problem. The Treasury does too much.

Cooper said parties had recognised this as a problem for decades.

The Treasury does too much: fiscal policy, economic policy, and controlling government spending.

In most other countries, these roles are split up. The Treasury enables governments to go for short-term tax grabs that suit political cycles over the need for long-term growth.

And the Treasury is disconnected from the real economy. Despite holding all the economic power, the Treasury isn’t responsible for policies on business or trade. This leaves British businesses jumping through hoops.

Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem deputy leader and Treasury spokesperson, is holding a press conference now. There is a live feed here.

Georgia Gould, an education minister, has been the government voice on the airwaves this morning.

In an interview with Sky News, she said that when No 10 announced that Matthew Doyle was being made a peer in December, it did not know that he had campaigned for someone who was subsequently convicted of paedophile offences.

Referring to Labour’s decision to remove the whip from Doyle in the Lords yesterday, she said:

There’s an investigation going on. We’ll wait for that to conclude. But the prime minister said on Monday night that we want to ensure the highest standards in public life. He’s gone back and looked at this appointment. He’s taken action to withdraw the whip.

Asked whether the government was taking child abuse seriously enough, she replied:

We’re taking it incredibly seriously.

And Keir Starmer is somebody who has spent his whole career putting people into prison, And this is his lifelong work. It is deeply important to him. And no one is harder on themselves than the prime minister. But he’s clear that things need to change. Vetting has to be better.

Asked if the documents submitted as part of the vetting process for Doyle’s peerage would be published, she referred to the ongoing investigation and said “we’ll have more to say when that’s completed”.

Good morning. At PMQs last week Keir Starmer had to face questions about a Labour peer with a paedophile friend. Today he seems likely to face questions about another peer in this category.

As Peter Walker reports, yesterday Labour said it had removed the whip from Matthew Doyle, who only recently became a Labour peer, having previously served as Starmer’s director of communications.

Doyle had campaigned for a friend who had been charged with possessing indecent images of children. The friend claimed he was innocent at the time, but subsequently pleaded guilty. Yesterday Doyle issued a lengthy statement apologising.

Given that Doyle’s peerage was announced in December, and that he took his seat in early January – after the details of his friendship with Sean Morton had been made public – Labour’s decision to remove the whip yesterday looks like a move timed to minimise the dangers from this issue being raised at PMQs.

But Starmer still faces questions about why Doyle was allowed to take his seat in the Lords in the first place. In a post on social media last night, Kemi Badenoch said she would not let the matter drop.

Keir Starmer handed a peerage to Matthew Doyle despite knowing about his ongoing friendship with a man charged with child sex crimes.

The Prime Minister has now suspended the whip, but he must come clean about what he was told before making this appointment.

We won’t let this go.

Last night Anna Turley, the Labour chair, said she did not think Doyle should be in the Lords at all. That was her “personal view”, she said. But Starmer is likely to be asked if he agrees.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9am: Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem deputy leader and Treasury spokesperson holds a press conference where she is due to make “a major Treasury announcement”.

9.45am: Dan Tomlinson, a Treasury minister, gives evidence to the Commons Treasury committee on business rates.

Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.

1pm: Starmer speaks to the women’s PLP (parliamentary Labour party).

1.30pm: Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, gives evidence to the Commons energy committee.

And today Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, is publishing an education estates plan, including more space for classes for children with special educational needs.

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