Parliament’s intelligence and security committee (ISC), which is chaired by the Tory MP Julian Lewis, has issued a statement criticising the government in relation to the release – or non-release, to be more accurate – of information relating to Evgeny Lebedev’s peerage. (See 5pm.)

It says Michael Ellis, the Cabinet Office minister, disclosed classified information when he told parliament in a written ministerial statement that the ISC had asked for information about Lebedev’s peerage. The committee says:

The committee is surprised by the statement by the minister for the Cabinet Office today which links the classified provision of information to the committee with the entirely separate parliamentary process of the government’s response to the resolution of the House of Commons. So far as the ISC is concerned, at this stage our request for information should have remained a private – and classified – matter of oversight.

The committee also says that the information it requested about Lebedev arrived late – and that it has not yet determined whether it is sufficient.

The information requested was not provided to us by the 28 April deadline mandated by the committee (so as to align with the parliamentary deadline). It was received only yesterday and the committee is therefore not yet in a position to determine whether the information provided is sufficient, whether the response meets the statutory provisions which govern the intelligence community’s obligations to the committee, and whether the committee will have further questions arising.

Boris Johnson has been accused of a “cover-up” after the government largely ignored a Commons vote ordering it to release material relating to the decision to award a peerage to the Evening Standard owner and Russian oligarch Evgeny Lebedev.

The motion was passed in March following claims that the security services raised concerns about giving a peerage to Lebedev, whose father, Alexander, was a KGB officer who subsequently became a billionaire, but that his peerage was approved after Johnson demanded a reassessment. Johnson and Lebedev are friends.

In March Labour tabled a “humble address” – a Commons motion compelling the government to release confidential papers – calling for the release of information given to the House of Lords appointments commission about the Lebedev nomination. The motion also said minutes of any meetings about the appointment should be published, with information only redacted “for the purposes of national security”.

After some Tories indicated that they would not support an attempt to block the Labour motion, Johnson told his MPs to abstain, and the motion was passed unopposed.

Today the government responded to the motion by publishing a handful of anodyne documents relating to the appointment, mostly already in the public domain, alongside a lengthy statement explaining why it was ignoring the spirit of what parliament was demanding.

In the written ministerial statement, Michael Ellis, the Cabinet Office minister, said the government was holding material back because it was taking into account “the need to protect national security, to maintain integrity in the system for the awarding of honours and dignities by the Crown, the vetting of nominees for probity and the data protection rights of individuals”.

He said that although the government was committed to transparency, in some cases “a competing public interest in favour of non-disclosure of certain information” was more important.

He said the government was disclosing more information about this case in confidence to parliament’s intelligence and security committee.

And he defended the Lebedev appointment:

Lord Lebedev is a man of good standing. His public and personal works are reflected in the citation deposited in the house today as part of the humble address. No complaint has been made about his personal conduct. He has been vocal in his criticism of the Putin regime. Indeed, it was the leader of the opposition who personally congratulated him on his appointment as a peer.

As PA Media reports, the documents that were released were: the blank form Lord Lebedev was required to fill in by the House of Lords appointments commission, the public citation announcing his appointment, a list of the other peerages awarded at the same time, and a letter congratulating him on the news. My colleague Peter Walker has posted the latter on Twitter.

In reponse, Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, said:

This looks like a cover-up and smells like a cover-up because it is a cover-up. If the prime minister is claiming he was not involved in forcing through the award of a peerage to an individual of concern to our intelligence services, he should come clean and publish the documents as parliament instructed.

The government has not provided a single piece of information in these heavily redacted documents, failing to comply with a direct instruction from parliament. The government is once again seeking to hide in the shadows from the sunlight of scrutiny. We will take steps to rectify this contempt of parliament.

The public have a right to know the truth about Boris Johnson’s interference in the appointment of his friend Lord Lebedev, the son and business partner of an ex-KGB agent, to a seat in the heart of our parliament. It is time to get to the bottom of this whole murky business.

Downing Street defended the decision to withhold so much information about the appointment. A No 10 spokesperson said:

It’s our responsibility to protect the integrity of the vetting process, which is voluntarily entered into on a confidential basis. We are committed to transparency but the disclosure we’ve made reflects the need to maintain the integrity of the system.

Lord Bew, chair of the House of Lords appointments commission, told a Commons committee last month that the Lebedev appointment was originally paused after advice from M15, but that it eventually went through, and that no pressure was applied by No 10.

The EU’s top official in charge of post-Brexit relations, Maroš Sefčovič, said that honesty was needed from the UK over the Northern Ireland protocol, as he accused the government of failing to engage with EU proposals to make the agreement work.

Speaking to British and European parliamentarians in Brussels, Sefčovič struck a more strident note than an earlier statement on Thursday about a phone call with the UK foreign secretary, Liz Truss. He said:

Honesty about what the UK signed up to is needed.

Honesty about the fact that the EU cannot solve all the problems created by Brexit and the type of Brexit that the UK government chose. That is the reason for which the position of the EU has been consistent. We will not renegotiate the protocol.

In recent days, tensions have soared over the Northern Ireland protocol, the Brexit agreement that keeps the region in the EU single market, customs union and under the jurisdiction of the European court of justice.

Boris Johnson signed the agreement with the EU in 2019, but his government has since sought to renegotiate the deal, leading to proposals from the European Commission to lighten customs checks last October.

Sefčovič said the EU proposed “an ambitious calendar” in February to accelerate these talks, but that there had “been no engagement at all on these issues from the UK the last couple of months”.

Discussions on the Northern Ireland protocol slowed down before the Stormont assembly elections on 5 May.

Responding to Sefčovič, the Cabinet Office minister, Michael Ellis, said the government had no intention of scrapping the Northern Ireland protocol, but that the UK did require “significant changes”, which he said were necessary to protect the Belfast/Good Friday agreement and Northern Ireland’s place in the UK internal market.

In a statement bound to raise hackles in Brussels, Ellis repeated Truss’s claim that the Commission’s proposed changes to the protocol “would take us backwards”. He criticised the “narrow mandate” Sefčovič had been given by the EU’s 27 member states, saying: “The EU have confirmed that they will never change their mandate and because of that the situation is now very serious.”

Ellis also accused the EU of politicising the UK’s membership of the Horizon research programme. While Kosovo and Israel had associated themselves with the €95.5 bn (£81.3bn) EU research programme, the UK remained outside. He said:

And this is purely political. The EU has drawn links to the Northern Ireland protocol, an entirely separate issue.”

The exchanges made for a testy start for the inaugural meeting of the ‘EU-UK parliamentary partnership assembly”, a group of MPs, Lords and MEPs that will hold regular meetings to boost cooperation.

Ahead of the meeting, Nathalie Loiseau, a French centrist MEP and former Europe minister, who is co-chairing the group, warned the UK against reneging on the protocol. She said:

Now is not the time to create divisions to create artificial crises. These divisions and crises would be welcomed by those in third countries who are hostile to our values and our democracies.”

The British co-chair, Conservative MP Sir Oliver Heald said there was a “particular situation in Northern Ireland” and “both sides needed to go that “extra, extra mile”.

Boris Johnson is being grilled by broadcasters during his visit to Stoke-on-Trent.

Here are the main points:

• Johnson confirmed that neither he nor his wife, Carrie Johnson, received another fine as part of the Partygate police investigation.
  
• He wouldn’t comment on further measures to ease the cost of living crisis, but said short term measures included council tax cuts and a national insurance cut for 70% of people worth £330.
• He said the institutions of democracy and political governance of Northern Ireland have “collapsed” because one community won’t accept the way the protocol works at present – “we’ve got to fix that”, he said.
• He refused to be drawn into questions on whether his previous statements could be true about not knowing rules were broken in Downing Street given the Met police fines, as well as whether Labour leader Keir Starmer had acted honourably by saying he would resign if he were issued a fine.
• He talked about the need to tackle the cost of living crisis, energy bills and supply chain issues.
• Asked what his response was to allegations in the New York Times that the Conservative party took money from a donor with links to Russia, the prime minister said: “All our donations are registered in the normal way. To give donations to a political party in this country, you’ve got to be from the UK.”

Here’s a bit more detail from PA on the news that Boris Johnson was not among those to be fined in the latest tranche of penalties issued by the Metropolitan police over Partygate.

PA reports:

Johnson’s official spokesman confirmed following the Met’s update that neither the PM nor cabinet secretary Simon Case were among those fined in the latest tranche.

“With regards to the cabinet secretary and the prime minister, I don’t have any update ... the position [is] we will update you if that were to change,” he said.

Pressed on whether it was his understanding that the PM and Case were not among those hit with the most recent set of penalties, the spokesman said: “That’s correct, yeah.”

He added: “You’ll know that the prime minister has on a number of occasions apologised and made clear that there were things we simply did not get right, and that he is sorry for how this matter has been handled.

“Obviously that remains the case. And like I say, he will have more to say at the conclusion ... and when the Sue Gray report is published.”

The prime minister said he was “sure we’ll have plenty to say about that when the thing’s finished” when asked about the extent of law-breaking in Downing Street as he arrived for a cabinet meeting in Staffordshire on Thursday.

Ministers dodged questions on whether they still had faith in the PM when asked about the latest development at the same event.

Johnson is alleged to have been at six of the 12 events being examined by the force, meaning he could be fined again.

Asked in an interview broadcast on Thursday if he too should resign in the event the Labour leader steps down, Johnson told LBC: “What matters to me and the thing that gets me out of bed in the morning is not stuff that, I think, is, however fascinating [it] is to people, I don’t think is material to the cost of living.”

The Culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, and education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, also said they still had faith in their leader when asked about the fines as they attended the Staffordshire meeting.

The excerpt has been edited for length.

Simon Coveney, the Irish foreign minister, told the Dáil (Irish parliament) that Liz Truss’s threat this morning to unilaterally suspend the Northern Ireland protocol (see 10.39am) has gone done “very badly’ across the EU. He said:

Clearly, what the British government has said is that they intend to move ahead with domestic legislation of their own if they don’t see the compromises they are demanding.

That is deeply unhelpful and has gone down very badly across the European Union.

It has ratcheted up tension between the UK and the EU at a time when we don’t need it.

The beergate controversy has had no negative impact on Keir Starmer’s approval ratings, YouGov polling suggests.

In fact over the last month Starmer’s positive ratings have gone up on “likeable”, on “competent”, on “strong” and (most of all) on “decisive”.

Starmer has higher positive ratings than Boris Johnson on “competent” and “decisive”.

Johnson has higher positive ratings than Starmer on “likeable” and “strong”. But on both these measures Starmer has a better net score because Johnson also outperforms Starmer on people saying he is “dislikeable” or “weak”.

Starmer’s lead over Johnson on best PM has fallen a bit over the past month, but over the last week it has started to nudge up again, the poll suggests

Maroš Šefčovič, the European Commission vice-president who is in charge of Brexit talks with the UK on behalf of the EU, released a statement this morning after his conversation with Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, on the Northern Ireland protocol. He says it is a matter of “serious concern that the UK government intends to embark on the path of unilateral action”. He added:

Unilateral action, effectively disapplying an international agreement such as the protocol, is simply not acceptable. This would undermine trust between the EU and UK as well as compromise our ultimate objective – to protect the Good Friday (Belfast) agreement in all its dimensions, while ensuring legal certainty and predictability for the people and businesses in Northern Ireland. Such unilateral action will also undermine the conditions which are essential for Northern Ireland to continue to have access to the EU single market for goods.

My colleague, Jennifer Rankin, the Guardian’s Brussels correspondent, says the EU feels “total exasperation” with the British.

Boris Johnson is chairing cabinet in Stoke-on-Trent today. In a briefing sent out ahead of the meeting, No 10 said ministers would “discuss how the Queen’s speech will deliver for people by boosting our economic growth and recovery, improve living standards and level up opportunities across the country – with Stoke-on-Trent being a prime example of levelling up in action”.

But it’s not – at least according to an exceptionally thorough analysis of progress on levelling up since 2019 carried out by Bloomberg.

The full details are here. Bloomberg’s Joe Mayes has a good Twitter thread explaining the findings that starts here:

Bloomberg reports:

Johnson’s rise was driven by his successful campaign to pull Britain out of the European Union. The so-called “levelling up” agenda was designed to turn that into tangible benefits by 2030, especially for the working class Brexit voters who abandoned the opposition Labour party to hand Johnson his party’s biggest majority since the 1980s.

More than two years on, in a period dominated by the coronavirus pandemic, most of the places that lagged behind London and the south-east of England when Johnson came to power have seen little sign of better times. In fact, as a new Bloomberg News analysis shows, they’re more likely to be falling further behind.

Bloomberg has studied data relating to 12 metrics, which broadly match the 12 performance targets, or missions, included in the government’s levelling up white paper. For each constituency in the UK, it has looked at how they were doing on each metric in 2019 (whether they were doing better or worse than London and the south-east) and it has also looked at the latest data (to see whether they are pulling ahead or falling behind).

Bloomberg says:

Our analysis shows that the salary gap is widening in nine out of 10 constituencies, that home affordability is getting worse nearly everywhere, and that public spending per head has fallen behind the capital in every region of England.

In 9 out of 12 metrics, the performance of most constituencies relative to London and the south-east is now worse or unchanged compared to 2019.

Only on a few metrics has the gap narrowed for much of the UK – including life expectancy and the share of people receiving universal credit benefits – and in both those cases it’s because the situation in London and the south-east has worsened.

Stoke-on-Trent is in the West Midlands and the Bloomberg analysis shows that, overall, there has been no levelling up in the West Midlands.

If you look at the data for the Stoke-on-Trent Central constituency, it is only levelling up on four of the 12 metrics: proportion of people on universal credit; civil service employment; broadband coverage; and wellbeing.

But on eight other metrics, the constituency is falling behind – sometimes by a little (crime; foreign investment), but mostly by a lot (salaries; home affordability; total government spending; government spending on transport; productivity; and life expectancy).

Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, has given a revealing interview to the BBC’s economics editor, Faisal Islam. Here are the key points.

• Sunak said he was not firmly opposed to imposing a windfall tax on energy companies, and that he saw it as a possible option. He said:

I’m not naturally attracted to windfall taxes in general.

I find there are two camps of people actually. There are some people who think windfall taxes can never be the answer. And then there are other people who think windfall taxes are an easy, quick, simple answer to solve every problem. I’m not in either of those schools of thought. I’m pragmatic about it.

As I said, I’m not naturally attracted to the idea of them. But what I do know is that these companies are making a significant amount of profit at the moment because of these very elevated prices.

What I want to see is significant investment back into the UK economy to support jobs, to support energy security, and I want to see that investment soon.

But if that doesn’t happen, then no options are off the table.

This is significant because in the past Sunak sounded very much as if he was in the first camp, and was opposed to the idea of a windfall tax in princple. This is what he told the Commons in February when he explained why he was rejecting Labour’s call for a windfall tax.

[A windfall tax] sounds superficially appealing, but we on the government benches deal with complex problems in a responsible way. The obvious impact of a windfall tax would be to deter investment—it is as simple as that. At this moment I want to see more investment in the North sea, not less.

• He said the Treasury was “ready to do more” to help people with the cost of living crisis. He said:

I’ve always said I stand ready to do more as we learn more about the situation.

I’m out every single week talking to people across the country ... hearing what people are facing to figure out what the right way for us to help them is. That’s something we’re spending a lot of time thinking about.

And as I said, we continue to learn more and that will help us get the decisions right.

• He did not challenge claims that the UK is heading for recession.

• He defended the government’s right to take action over the Northern Ireland protocol - despite fears that unilaterally suspending it would lead to a trade war with the EU, which would make the country’s economic plight even worse.

Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, has issued a readout from her conversation with Maroš Šefčovič, the European Commission vice-president in charge of Brexit, about the Northern Ireland protocol this morning. It confirms that the two sides are deadlocked, and that the government is now preparing to take unilateral action.

Truss does not spell out exactly what this would involved, but it has been widely reported that she is planning to announce legislation that would allow businesses in Northern Ireland to ignore EU regulations.

Here is the readout in full. And here is the key extract.

The foreign secretary reiterated that the UK’s proposals to fix the protocol, including green and red channel arrangements, backed up by a bespoke data-sharing system, would ensure the removal of trade barriers between Great Britain and Northern Ireland while protecting the EU single market.

The foreign secretary outlined why EU proposals would take us backwards, by creating more checks and paperwork. Vice President Šefčovič confirmed that there was no room to expand the EU negotiating mandate or introduce new proposals to reduce the overall level of trade friction.

The foreign secretary noted this with regret and said the situation in Northern Ireland is a matter of internal peace and security for the United Kingdom, and if the EU would not show the requisite flexibility to help solve those issues, then as a responsible government we would have no choice but to act.

And here is the last update from the Met police on Partygate fines, issued a month ago today. At that point more than 50 referrals for fines had been made.

The latest announcement shows that the number of Partygate fines has more than doubled, with a further 50 fines being issued over the past month.

Previously the Met were issuing updates every fortnight, but last month the Met said they would delay their next bulletin on the number of fines issued until after the local elections. But fines continued to be issued during the election period.

No 10 said reporters would be told if Boris Johnson received a further fine during this period. At yesterday’s briefings, No 10 were saying he had not received a second fine.

Here is the full statement from the Met police.

As of Thursday 12 May, Operation Hillman, the investigation into breaches of Covid-19 regulations in Whitehall and Downing Street, has made more than 100 referrals for fixed penalty notices (FPNs) to the ACRO Criminal Records Office.

These referrals have continued to be made throughout the period since our last update on Tuesday 12 April and the investigation remains live.

PA Media has snapped this.

The Metropolitan Police has said more than 100 fines have now been issued over breaches of coronavirus regulations in Whitehall and Downing Street.

At the last update, in April, the Met just said more than 50 fines had been issued.

Victoria Atkins, the prisons minister, was the government’s representative on the airwaves this morning. She told Sky News that she thought her Tory MP colleague Lee Anderson was wrong when he told the Commons yesterday that there was no great need for food banks in Britain and that the real problem was people not being able to cook properly. She said:

This is not the view of me or anyone else in government. We want to give not just immediate help but longer-term support as well.

She also claimed that Anderson’s comments may have been misinterpreted, because he was specifically referring to the situation with his local food bank.

(Anderson’s comments were not misinterpreted. He was referring to his local food bank, but he was making a general point. “There’s not this massive use for food banks in this country,” he said.)

Simon Coveney, the Irish foreign minister, said this morning that the UK’s government’s threat to abandon parts of the Northern Ireland protocol would be counterproductive. The UK and the EU could still agree a solution to some of the problems caused by the protocol, he said. But, in an interview with RTE radio, he went on:

We’re not going to do it under the threat of British government’s language and briefing of the media which says if the EU doesn’t give us everything we want, well, then we’re going to legislate ourselves to override international law.

Asked about the possibility of a trade war if the UK did unilaterally abandon the protocol, Coveney said he did not want to “ratchet up language”. But he added:

Clearly, if the UK breaches international law, if it undermines a protocol that is about protecting the integrity of the EU single market, then the EU can’t ignore that.

Britain’s economy contracted in March as consumers cut back on spending in the face of the rising cost of living, the latest official figures show. My colleague Larry Elliott has the story here.

And Graeme Wearden has reaction and analysis on his business live blog.

Good morning. Boris Johnson is chairing an awayday meeting of cabinet in Stoke-on-Trent later and the cost of living crisis is likely to be high on the agenda. Ministers have always been clear that further significant financial measures to help people are planned for later this year but, with all wings of the Conservative party demanding action sooner, some sort of ‘big bazooka’ intervention may be more immediate.

This morning the Daily Mail reports that the Treasury has started looking at options for a windfall tax on energy companies – something Labour and other opposition parties have been demanding for months. In their story Jason Groves and Mark Shapland write:

Multiple sources said the idea of a tax grab was ‘back on the table’ to help families with the cost of living crisis without pushing public borrowing even higher.

One insider said that a one-off levy was a ‘no-brainer if the chief executives themselves are saying they have no problem with it’.

Both Mr Sunak and Boris Johnson are understood to be anxious to give the oil and gas firms the opportunity to set out more ambitious plans, with further talks expected soon.

But a Treasury source said that if they failed to bring forward significant extra investment then ‘nothing is off the table’.

For the government to impose a windfall tax would be quite a U-turn. But this morning LBC broadcast an interview with Boris Johnson, recorded yesterday, in which he repeatedly refused to rule out the proposal. He said that he did not like windfall taxes, and did not think they were “the right way forward”. He explained:

The disadvantage with those sorts of taxes is that they deter investment in the very things that we [need] ... they need to be investing in new technology, in new energy supply.

But when it was put to him that energy companies say a windfall tax would not deter investment, he replied: “Well, you know, then we’ll have to look it.”

In a separate report, Sam Coates from Sky News says he understands it is now possible that tax cuts could be announced before the summer recess.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Early morning: Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, speaks to Maroš Šefčovič, the European Commission vice-president in charge of Brexit, about the Northern Ireland protocol.

9.30am: Mark Spencer, the leader of the Commons, makes a statement to MPs about next week’s business. After that the Queen’s speech debate resumes, covering fairness at work and communities.

12pm: Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, takes questions from MSPs.

12.45pm: Boris Johnson chairs a meeting of the cabinet in Stoke-on-Trent.

Afternoon: Johnson is due to do a post-cabinet visit.

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