Business secretary says she agrees with prime minister’s policy intentions but believes in ‘equality under the law’

At 12.30pm a transport minister will respond to an urgent question in the Commons tabled by Labour on job losses in the rail industry. That means the debate on the smoking ban will will not start until about 1.15pm.

Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, is one of the Britons speaking at the National Conservatism conference in Brussels starting today. The conference, which features hardline rightwingers from around the world committed to the NatCons’ ‘faith, flag and family’ brand of conservatism, is going ahead despite two venues refusing to host them at relatively short notice.

The current UK government doesn’t have the political will to take on the ECHR and hasn’t laid the ground work for doing so.

And so it’s no surprise that recent noises in this direction are easily dismissed as inauthentic.

Any attempt to include a plan for ECHR withdrawal in a losing Conservative election manifesto risks setting the cause back a generation.

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Emir Kir ordered police to close down radical rightwing conference attended by Suella Braverman and Nigel Farage

• UK politics – latest updates

The UK prime minister has rounded on Belgian authorities for closing down a radical rightwing conference in Brussels that was addressed by British politicians including Nigel Farage and Suella Braverman.

After a day of chaos, claims and recriminations, the decision by a local Belgian mayor to stop the National Conservatives (NatCon) event was also condemned as “unacceptable” by Belgium’s prime minister, Alexander De Croo.

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The case for removing the two-child and overall benefit caps grows stronger all the time

When the biggest shake-up of the welfare system in decades was introduced, there were bound to be teething troubles. But the welter of problems after the launch of universal credit – especially the five-week wait for initial payments and the harshness of the sanctions regime – led to persistent questions over whether it should be abolished. Ministerial ambition appeared to have outstripped Whitehall’s capacity for delivery.

But the relatively smooth operation of the system during the pandemic, including the administration of the GBP20 weekly uplift, improved its reputation. Seven million people are expected to be on UC by the end of the next parliament, and plans for the remainder of the managed migration from the old system are in place. The aim of streamlining three separate bureaucracies into one has been met, and the greater simplicity of this arrangement has brought some advantages.

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Business secretary speaks out as Penny Mordaunt and other ministers waver over support

• UK politics – latest updates

Kemi Badenoch has announced she is opposing Rishi Sunak’s smoking ban because it will mean “people born a day apart will have permanently different rights”.

In a blow to the prime minister’s authority, Badenoch published a statement before the vote saying she had “significant concerns” about the legislation.

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Separate report suggests number of people living in poverty aged between 60 and pension age has tripled under Tories

Nearly 1 million people aged over 66 in the UK are living in deprivation, according to government statistics, the highest number since comparable records began.

Labour, which analysed figures from Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) records, has vowed to be the party for pensioners, with plans to insulate millions of homes and reduce energy bills. It has also “committed to retaining” the triple lock which guarantees annual rises to the state pension.

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Pouria Zeraati, who was stabbed outside his home, says IRGC should be proscribed as a terrorist group

An Iranian journalist who was stabbed outside his home in London has joined calls for the UK to proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation.

Pouria Zeraati, who works for the London-based broadcaster Iran International, was stabbed in the leg by three unknown individuals in Wimbledon on 29 March. Police believe the three attackers have fled the country.

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Health leaders have welcomed plan to create smoke-free generation – but PM is facing trouble from some Tory MPs

• UK politics – latest updates

Rishi Sunak’s tobacco and vapes bill aims to create the UK’s first smoke-free generation, in a landmark public health intervention.

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Alison McGovern says UK would ‘grind to a halt’ without unpaid carers and confirms party will review system if it wins power

• UK politics – latest updates

Labour will review the system of carer’s allowance if it wins the general election, the party has confirmed, after the Guardian revealed that scores of unpaid carers were being forced to pay back thousands of pounds for minor breaches of benefit rules.

Thousands of carers have run up huge debts, been given criminal records and been forced to sell their homes when chased by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) over “honest mistakes” that officials could have spotted years earlier.

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We’d like to hear how people under 30 in Britain feel about voting in political elections, and whether they are planning to go to the polls this year

We’re interested to hear from young people in the UK about how they feel about voting.

If you are under 30 and live in the UK, tell us whether you’re planning to vote in upcoming political elections, and if not why not. Are you registered to vote? Do you believe your vote can make a difference? Have you voted in the past or are you a potential first time voter?

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Why the hell would anyone go out and campaign for Reclaim? Now I’ll never have the chance to find out

While I was out, a canvasser came to the door and asked Mr Z to sign a nomination form for Laurence Fox to get on to the ballot for the London mayoral election. Mr Z said no, and the guy said: “You don’t have to vote for him! It’s just to get him on the ballot.” Mr Z said he didn’t want Laurence Fox on the ballot, and the Reclaim party supporter went elsewhere for a signature – needlessly, as it turned out, because Fox filled in the form incorrectly and his candidacy was rejected. Fox has blamed “political corruption” and intends to appeal. While I, quite emphatically, don’t want Laurence Fox on the ballot either, I am sad that this makes it unlikely I’ll meet any more Reclaim canvassers, as I would invite them in, entice them even with a Jammie Dodger, and try to get to the bottom of what the hell they think they’re playing at.

As local and mayoral elections approach, the doorstep once again becomes the crucible of political possibility. You might luck out and get an actual big beast of Westminster ringing your bell; it’s never happened to me, but it must have happened to someone. How else would politicians hear all those things they say they do “on the doorstep”? More likely, it’ll be a local activist, and if you’re over 40, you’ll know exactly what to do: shoo them away if they’re not from your preferred party, and shoo them away nicely, but faster, if they are. There’s a time and a place for having an anodyne, general conversation about politics with a stranger you mainly agree with. That time is never, and the place is definitely not your doorstep.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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Can you guess which things Liz Truss actually claimed in her book and which are our fantastic inventions?

Cometh the hour, cometh the memoir, and from Tuesday people can enjoy in full the apocalyptically titled Liz Truss book Ten Years to Save the West. She says she wants people to read it to “learn the lessons of the battle I lost”. That battle apparently being staying in Downing Street for more than 49 days. But how much have you picked up from the published snippets and Truss’s interviews about her book? Can you spot what she actually said from our ridiculous inventions? And did she really think that about the Queen dying? Find out with our Liz Truss quiz!

The Guardian’s Liz Truss quiz

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By voting for the tobacco and vapes bill, MPs have a historic opportunity to prevent disease and reduce inequality

• Prof Chris Whitty is the chief medical officer for England

Addiction to smoking traps then slowly disables and kills thousands of our fellow citizens, especially the most vulnerable. The great majority of smokers wish they had never started, but their choice was taken away at a young age by marketing that deliberately promoted addiction to nicotine.

About 80,000 people a year die in the UK as a result and many more are harmed. The burden of smoking-related diseases is very heavily weighted towards people living in areas of deprivation, with about one-third of smokers in England living in the most deprived two deciles. Smoking is one of the most important modifiable drivers of the substantial inequalities in health we see across the country.

Prof Chris Whitty is the chief medical officer for England

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Exclusive: England’s chief medical officer says tobacco industry is the ‘one gainer from the death and disease’ caused by its products

• Read Chris Whitty’s comment piece in full

Chris Whitty has said lobbying by big tobacco “needs to be addressed head on”, as email evidence emerged of campaigning tactics being used to put pressure on MPs to sink Rishi Sunak’s smoking ban bill.

The landmark legislation, which would bar anyone born after 2009 from buying cigarettes, is due to be debated in parliament for the first time on Tuesday.

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Firms such as Serco and Virgin Active pull facial recognition and fingerprint scan systems used to monitor staff attendance

Dozens of companies including national leisure centre chains are reviewing or pulling facial recognition technology and fingerprint scanning used to monitor staff attendance after a clampdown by the UK’s data watchdog.

In February, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) ordered a Serco subsidiary to stop using biometrics to monitor the attendance of staff at leisure centres it operates and also issued more stringent guidance on the use of facial recognition and fingerprint scanning.

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The former PM’s book claims she was undermined by ‘establishment’ enemies. It instead shows exactly why her friends deserted her

So it wasn’t just a bad dream, then. Liz Truss really did become prime minister, and that brief ensuing moment of madness really did happen. It must have done because she’s written a book about it, though given the brevity of her stay at No 10 it’s arguably less a memoir of her time there than a kind of extended Tripadvisor review. (Great location for central London; shame about the fleas.) And while calling it Ten Years to Save the West may suggest faintly deluded levels of self-belief, given Britain had to be saved from the author after less than seven weeks, it’s accidentally very revealing about the deeper reasons for that overconfidence and what they mean for the country.

Truss entered parliament in the golden Tory era of 2010, and prospered despite bosses who clearly grasped her faults. (Theresa May, she writes, wanted to sack her but didn’t feel strong enough; Boris Johnson’s allies have long suspected he promoted her to crowd the pitch for others he considered more of a serious threat.) In comparison with Labour politicians of the time, she was therefore playing politics mostly on the easy setting: one where the biggest newspapers bend over backwards to be kind, the City broadly shares your view of wealth creation, and a lack of serious challenge from the opposition makes it possible to believe that the facts of life will remain Conservative, regardless of what Conservatism itself actually morphs into.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

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The former prime minister spent just 49 days in office but wants to stay on the world stage. Her attacks on Biden and praise for Trump are aimed at the populist right

In her new book, the former British prime minister Liz Truss directs scathing attacks and mockery at Joe Biden, president of her country’s closest ally. Biden was guilty of “utter hypocrisy and ignorance”, Truss writes, when the US leader said he “disagree[d] with the policy” of “cutting taxes on the super wealthy” in the mini-budget Truss introduced in September 2022, shortly after taking power.

“I was shocked and astounded that Biden would breach protocol by commenting on UK domestic policy,” Truss adds. “We had been the United States’ staunchest allies through thick and thin.”

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Blamed for almost everything else these days, for Sunak the focus on foreign affairs was a blessed relief

It goes without saying that Rishi Sunak would have preferred the Easter recess to go on indefinitely. The more that people see of him these days, the further he drops in the polls. So loitering in Downing Street, online shopping for Adidas trainers or taking the dog for a walk is about as good as it gets for the prime minister these days. At least that ensures the level of public contempt rises at a more or less manageable rate.

But if recess did have to end then the first day back in parliament was pretty much ideal for Rish!. OK, so the escalation of hostilities in the Middle East and the prospect of world war III might be a major concern for the rest of us, but for Sunak it is a blessed relief.

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The former prime minister is teaching us a lot about narcissism in her new memoir, and it’s hard to tear your eyes away

Liz Truss’s memoir, Ten Years to Save the West, first penetrated the nation’s consciousness with her reflections on the death of Queen Elizabeth II. “Why me?” the former prime minister wrote. “Why now?” It was actually pretty funny, the depth and shamelessness of her narcissism; so funny, in fact, that I felt that, somewhere along the line, she had been stitched up by an editor. Fair play; I too would stitch her up in that job. It’s hard to be your best, most generous self towards a person you hold personally responsible for the fact that your mortgage is now 100% higher than it used to be.

But a kinder, more mature person would have at least scribbled in the margin: “Are you absolutely sure you want to connect yourself, who served for 49 days, with the death of a monarch who served the nation for 70 years?”

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Residents say they are not nimbys but village lacks infrastructure for new homes most cannot afford

If the age-old story is correct, the Hampshire village of Little London gets its evocative name from the flight of fearful residents from the capital during the Great Plague of 1665-1666.

But today’s inhabitants are up in arms at the prospect of a 21st-century exodus from London to their tucked away settlement.

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The government sold the service on the cheap to leaders whose principal focus was on its profits. This is the sorry result

If the Horizon inquiry has one consistent theme, it’s ignorance. Alan Cook (managing director, 2006-2010) wasn’t even aware that the Post Office oversaw prosecutions of subpostmasters, he told the inquiry last week. Sir Michael Hodgkinson (chair, 2003-2007) knew nothing of the problems with Horizon (and seems to have done nothing to find out). David Smith (managing director, 2010) believed his junior colleagues when they told him Horizon was “robust”.

That Post Office leaders would be so clueless may strain credulity. Almost every senior witness, however, has told the inquiry (in one way or another) that they didn’t pay proper attention to the Horizon scandal because they were focused on making a profit. Before we put this down to greedy businessmen being greedy, it might be worth actually listening to one of the victims of the scandal: Alan Bates. Since being catapulted to household-name status by the eponymous ITV programme, Bates has offered some of the most nuanced and insightful analysis of the scandal. Last week, giving his own evidence to the inquiry, Bates argued that the Post Office itself is institutionally flawed.

Sam Fowles is a barrister, author and broadcaster

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Karina Moon, who is sole carer for her daughter most of the week, was told she needed to repay GBP11,292.75 or be prosecuted for fraud

• Ex-ministers press Sunak on ‘persecution’ of carers who broke earnings rules
• Carers in the UK: have you been threatened with prosecution for benefit fraud?

Karina Moon vividly recalls the telephone call that brought her to tears. She was stood, frozen, in the living room of her home in north Wales as a government official told her she needed to repay GBP11,292.75 or be prosecuted for fraud.

“I broke down, I was crying,” she said. “I was gobsmacked. I was absolutely distraught because I live within the law. They made me feel like I was defrauding it.”

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Across Europe, the mainstream right is being eclipsed by more extreme rivals. The same fate could await the Tories

A recent YouGov poll marked a pivotal moment in British politics. For the first time, Reform UK was shown to have edged ahead of the Conservatives among male voters. As Labour solidifies its base, the rise of Reform is clearly to the detriment of the Conservative party. Overall, Tory support has dwindled to levels not witnessed since Liz Truss’s tenure, with fewer than one in five voters inclined to vote for them.

This shift, while unique in the UK, mirrors trends across the Channel. It could join a growing number of European countries in which the far right has eclipsed the mainstream right, including France, Italy and Sweden. But for Conservative politicians and advisers hoping to win back support from Reform by moving further to the right, one country emerges as a cautionary tale: the Netherlands.

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Party is awaiting steer on what would be an expensive overhaul and is also keen to show commitment to fiscal restraint

• Childcare in England failing and falling behind much of world, charity says

In a report, the Fawcett Society has drawn a conclusion that young parents are already familiar with: childcare in England is not working.

Compared with systems in Ireland, Estonia, France, Canada and Australia – all countries that have recently carried out or initiated major reforms – the English system is expensive, underfunded and unambitious.

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Democracy’s link to the places that matter to people is being eroded, a concern given next month’s elections

The phrase “ all politics is local” is most often associated with Tip O’Neill, former speaker of the US House of Representatives. But such sentiments come to die in England, where decision-making is concentrated in Whitehall ministries. With English council and mayoral elections in May, local government is increasingly that in name alone. Westminster’s creeping preference for single-tier authorities and austerity has seen bigger councils and smaller budgets. Crucially, local government is losing its link to places that matter to local people. Fifty years ago, a more grassroots approach meant people would know their councillor. Now most voters couldn’t name them.

With budgets set by central government, local authorities are being drained of resources to safeguard and improve their area’s social, economic and environmental wellbeing. Years of shrinking finances have closed care homes, creches, youth clubs and libraries. Bin collections, bus routes and school crossing patrols have gone too. Councils are viewed in Whitehall as local service delivery agencies and expected to clean up any mess made in SW1.

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Standing firm on our amendments would mean the Commons backs down or loses its legislation. It’s the only option left

So far this year, the House of Lords has debated the safety of Rwanda bill for more than 40 hours. Immediately before Easter, the Lords passed a second set of seven amendments and returned the bill to the Commons (which had earlier rejected the first set of 10 amendments). The Commons will consider those amendments when parliament returns from its Easter recess tomorrow.

The debate in the Lords has highlighted the fundamental flaws of the legislation, legally and constitutionally. But the government believes that “ stopping the boats” is important enough to override the UK’s traditional respect for human rights; it argues that the scheme will have such a powerful deterrent effect that potential asylum seekers won’t cross the Channel.

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Sir Keir’s team will inherit a poisoned chalice from the Tories, but progress needn’t depend on the state opening its wallet

Talking about the prospect of a Labour government, some people sound like they are preparing the obituary before they have witnessed the birth. Sir Keir Starmer has yet to set foot in Downing Street and the air is thick with doomsters on the right and gloomsters from the left who have already decided that a Labour government will be an awful let down. The baleful chorus wails that, even were Sir Keir to win by the stonking margin suggested by recent opinion polls, he will struggle to get much done. Before Team Starmer have got their hands on a single red box, the most miserabilist voices declare that failure is inevitable.

Depressive thoughts about what a Labour government will be able to achieve is partly of the leadership’s own making. Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, never passes up an opportunity to look on the cloudy side of the street by emphasising the direness of the inheritance that will be bequeathed by the Conservatives. Sir Keir spends less time trying to enthuse voters with the possibilities of change than he does warning them of how terribly difficult everything is going to be. Rather than promise the sunny uplands, he cautions that there is a “hard road ahead”, making a government led by him sound like an invitation to participate in a gruelling hill marathon.

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Privatised water companies, bankrupt councils, Reform UK: wakey, wakey, prime minister!

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