Keir Starmer on Thursday declined to say whether he supported Andy Burnham standing as an MP should Labour MP Andrew Gwynne stand down as expected.

“It is a very early stage, and the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party will set out the process in the usual way, as it always does for by-elections,” Starmer told broadcasters.

“Andy Burnham is doing an excellent job as mayor of Manchester. We work very closely together. We work very closely together. Last year, we were responding together to the terrible attack on a synagogue in Manchester, more recently, we were working together on Northern Powerhouse Rail.”

He continued: “I think Andy would acknowledge that working with this government has been much better than the experience he had of working with previous governments.”

Reform UK has issued a statement over cancellation of 29 council elections, alleging that “(t)he establishment is running scared”.

Steve Reed, the housing, communities and local government secretary, said that 29 councils will be allowed to cancel local elections planned for May because of reorganisation. The Tories said that the cancellation of so many council elections ‘totally unprecedented, but Reform UK that polling from JL Partners has revealed that 20 councils where elections are set to be cancelled would have been won by Reform UK.

Of the 29 councils, the party affiliations of the council leaders in 21 of the councils are Labour, while five are Tory and one is Liberal Democrat.

“Millions of people’s right to vote has been taken away,” Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, said in a statement on Thursday. “Reform UK are fighting this denial of democracy in the High Court.”

Steve Wright, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, has said it would be a “democratic outrage” if Labour were to block Andy Burnham from standing as a byelection candidate in Andrew Gwynne’s seat.

Amid claims Keir Starmer’s allies on the national executive committee do want to stop Burnham being a candidate, Wright said:

It would be a democratic outrage if Andy Burnham was blocked from seeking selection as Labour’s byelection candidate in this seat.

In the event that a byelection takes place, as an affiliated union, the FBU will not stand by and allow senior Labour politicians like Andy to be carved out of this process.

Our union will fiercely resist any attempts to stitch up the selection.

It’s vital that there is a full and open democratic procedure to choose Labour’s candidate to fight this byelection.

Anything less would be unacceptable.

That is all from me for today. Vivian Ho is taking over now.

Libby Brooks is the Guardian’s Scotland correspondent.

This was a ferocious first minister’s questions, dominated by the revelations this week at the Scottish hospitals inquiry, most significantly the admission from Greater Glasgow and Clyde heath board after years of denial that there was probably a connection between contaminated water at Glasgow’s biggest hospital and infections contracted by patients who were treated there – including two child cancer patients who subsequently died.

Families have been fighting for years for recognition that dirty water and poor ventilation at the flagship Queen Elizabeth university hospital made their relatives – many of whom were already immuno-compromised kids - ill. A public inquiry set up in 2019 is now reaching its final stages and the health board has set out some dramatic final submissions.

These include admitting the hospital was under pressure to open before it was ready – in time for the 2015 general election. Labour leader Anas Sarwar believes this scandal goes all the way to the top of the Scottish government and today demanded John Swinney tell him who applied pressure to the hospital board.

Swinney denied there was any political pressure and also insisted the Scottish government wasn’t made aware of infection control concerns until three years later.

Sarwar, who already is calling for Swinney and others to be included in a corporate manslaughter investigation currently underway, said this amounted to negligence or criminal incompetence on the part of the Scottish government.

Kiran Stacey is the Guardian’s policy editor.

Ministers will be urged to consider a compromise on a social media ban for under-16s after losing a vote on this in the Lords last night.

Peers voted for a ban that the government would have to implement. The government opposed this amendment, saying it wants its consultation on this issue to conclude first.

Fred Thomas, the Labour MP who has been at the centre of lobbying efforts for a ban, said today he would be happy for the government to pass legislation which would “enable” a ban to be implemented - but only after a consultation.

This stops some way short of the position peers voted last night, which was to introduce a ban within 12 months of the children’s wellbeing and schools bill being passed.

Thomas said:

I would welcome a government amendment to the children’s wellbeing and schools bill enabling the UK to remove access to social media for under-16s through secondary legislation, based on consultation.

I am confident that consultation and evidence gathering, including from young people themselves, will show what I believe is crystal clear: there is overwhelming and conclusive evidence that algorithmically addictive social media content is causing a public health crisis, and that parents, educators and children need government to step in and protect children.

The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has thanked Keir Starmer “from the bottom of my heart” for the support given by the UK to her country in the recent Greenland sovereignty dispute.

Speaking a day after Donald Trump dropped his threat to invade the island militarily, a self-governing territory which is part of Denmark, and later withdrew plans to impose extra tariffs on some Nato countries opposing his call for the US to be allowed to buy Greenland, Frederiksen said the UK’s support had been very important.

She said:

From the bottom of my heart, I would like to thank you and the UK for your very strong support to the Kingdom of Denmark.

I think everybody recognises that it has been quite a difficult time for us. And to know that you have good friends, strong allies, and that Europeans stand together, don’t get divided, and stick to our, as you said, our common values, even in a world that is changing rapidly, is extremely important for all of us.

She also praised what she called the “British way of doing things” – echoing comments made by Starmer himself, who has suggested that his calm, measured approach to handling Trump was quintessentially British. (See 10.13am.) She said:

You are very pragmatic. You have a cup of tea and then you think a bit about everything. You get the facts on the table, and then you find a way forward, and that’s exactly what we’re doing now.

Frederiksen ended her public remarks with a Beatles reference.

So just to finalise, I think we’ve got to get by with a little help from our friends, also in this situation.

Starmer said he was welcoming his Danish counterpart to the UK as “a friend and close ally of the United Kingdom for a very, very long time, never closer than now.

The two leaders were meeting in Chequers, the PM’s official country residence. Starmer normally hosts foreign leaders in Downing Street, and a Chequers invitation tends to be reserved for guests viewed as particularly special.

Wes Streeting, the health secretary, has accepted that the government is failing to cope properly with the rise in the number of referrals for autism and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

In an interview with Radio Oxford, asked whether referrals for autism and ADHD was an epidemic the government is failing to cope with, Streeting replied:

Well, in a nutshell, yes.

We’ve got two challenges here.

One is to understand the prevalence of ADHD, autism, and then also separately but related in terms of prevalence, mental health.

We’re trying as a government to understand what’s driving this increase.

Is it simply awareness – and a positive awareness – that means that people who would have just gone unsupported and undiagnosed are now realising that they may well have ADHD?

And then secondly, meeting the demand because we’re really falling short on this in the NHS.

We are looking at this nationally … It’s clearly not a happy situation for people, and it’s one that I’m very worried about.

John Healey, the defence secretary, has announced a £453m investment to fit Typhoon fighter jets with “cutting-edge” radar systems, securing up to 1,300 jobs, PA Media reports. PA says:

Healey was visiting Leonardo UK’s Edinburgh site this morning, where he will confirm the award of a contract to upgrade the RAF’s Typhoon fleet.

Under the new contract, defence firms BAE Systems, Leonardo UK and Parker Meggitt will equip the aircraft with state-of-the-art radar systems over the coming years.

In addition to securing 300 skilled roles in Edinburgh, the work will secure 120 jobs in Lancashire and more than 100 in Luton.

In all, the full Typhoon programme supports more than 20,000 jobs across 330 UK companies.

In the Commons James Cleverly, the shadow housing, communities and local government, said Steve Reed described the elections in two-tier areaa where reorganisation is taking place as “pointless”. But Reed was trying to blame councils for wanting to cancel the elections, Cleverly said.

Cleverly accepted that some council elections have been postponed in the past. But he said the cancellation of elections on this scale was “totally unprecedented”.

He went on:

So I ask him directly; what was it about the Labour party’s collapse in the opinion polls that first attracted him to the cancellation of local elections? Is he as unsurprised as I am that the vast bulk of councils are asking for their elections to be scrapped are Labour-run councils?

Here is the list of councils where elections planned for this May are not going ahead. They are listed accorrding to the party affiliation of the council leader. In most cases, the council will be under majority control, but in some cases a leader affiliated to one party will be heading a minority administration, or will be in coalition with other parties.

Labour – 21

Adur District Council

Basildon Borough Council

Blackburn with Darwen Council

Cannock Chase District Council

Chorley Borough Council

City of Lincoln Council

Crawley Borough Council

Exeter City Council

Hyndburn Borough Council

Ipswich Borough Council

Norwich City Council

Peterborough City Council

Preston City Council

Redditch Borough Council

Rugby Borough Council

Stevenage Borough Council

Tamworth Borough Council

Thurrock Council

Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council

West Lancashire Borough Council

Worthing Borough Council

Liberal Democrat – 1

Cheltenham Borough Council

Conservatives – 5

East Sussex County Council

Harlow District Council

Norfolk County Council

Suffolk County Council

West Sussex County Council

Independent – 1

Burnley Borough Council

Green – 1

Hastings Borough Council

And here is the list of 63 councils that were asked if they wanted to delay elections.

UPDATE: This post originally said Norwich city council was Lib Dem. But it is Labour, and so the list, and the numbers, have been corrected. I’m sorry for the mistake.

Steve Reed, the housing, communities and local government secretary, is making a statement to MPs about council reorganisation.

He started by defending the government’s decision to reorganise local government in areas in England where two-tier councils are operating, with a county council in charg of some services and a smaller, district councils in charge of some other services.

(Other parts of England have unitary councils, which is also the system used in the whole of Scotland and Wales.)

Reed said:

In 2024, councils were on the brink financially, while a third of the country was left paying for the wasteful duplication of two tiers of councils for their area. This cannot be acceptable …

We also need to eliminate the financial waste of two tier councils so we can plough the savings back into the frontline services. Local people care about the most. Today’s announcement is part of that …

In many parts of the country, residents hard-earned council tax is paying for two sets of councillors, two sets of chief executives and two sets of financial directors. And it’s wasting tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers money.

The previous government sat back and ignore this problem. This government will not. And that is why we are committed to the most ambitious local government reorganisation in a generation.

Reed said the government announced at the end of last year that, in places where reorganisation is taking place, it was going to give councils the option of delaying elections if they felt that would allow reorganisation to proceed more quickly. He pointed out that people would be voting for council positions that would “rapidly be abolished”.

Reed said that 63 councils were consulted. He went on:

I have carefully assessed over 350 representations from those councils with elections scheduled in May and from others who are interested in the outcome. I’ve carefully considered arguments made about capacity reorganisation and democracy, and I’m grateful to everyone who took the time to express their views. I can now confirm my decisions to the House. I have decided to bring forward legislation to postpone 29 elections.

Reed said there was one further case he was assessing. And he said that, when the Conservatives were in power, they also delayed some council elections.

Andy Burnham may have a new route to parliament after the MP Andrew Gwynne reached a settlement with the Commons that would allow him to retire and call a byelection, Pippa Crerar, Jessica Elgot and Josh Halliday report.

In an interview on Monday Robert Jenrick, who defected to Reform UK from the Tories, rejected claims that he deliberately mispronounced Kemi Badenoch’s name in his defection speech because he wanted to annoy or demean her. He also denied that this was an example of Reform UK sexism.

But, in an interview with Sky News this morning, Badenoch said that, until last week, she had never heard him mispronounce her name. “I’ve never heard him say BAD-enoch before, so this must be a new thing,” she said.

She also said that she thought his defection was just motivated by self-interest.

[Jenrick] has not been able to say where he disagrees with any of my policy positions. He’s criticising the last government, which he was in the cabinet a lot longer than I was. And I think that that’s interesting. It shows people that this is really about self-interest, not national interest.

The Scottish government is to set up a housebuilding agency to increase the pace of supply, PA Media reports. PA says:

John Swinney, the first minister, said today the new body, More Homes Scotland, will be designed by housing secretary Mairi McAllan, councils and the Scottish National Investment Bank – which will look to bring in private funding.

The agency will focus on large-scale affordable housing proposals, rural and island housing, the acquisition of land and infrastructure work needed for sites that have stalled.

An update will be given to the Scottish Parliament in March, the Scottish government has said, with the hopes of being fully operational by the 2028-29 financial year.

The Home Office has announced that it has started to move asylum seekers into a military barracks in East Sussex as part of its policy of getting them out of hotels.

In a news release in which it refers to them as “illegal migrants”, the Home Office says:

The site accommodates single adult male illegal migrants who are claiming asylum in the UK in basic, safe accommodation while their claims are being assessed.

The first 27 migrants have been moved into the site which will be scaled up to more than 500. They will only be housed there for up to three months while their asylum claim is processed before being removed from the country if their claim is rejected.

Moving to large sites like Crowborough is an important part of the government’s reforms to tackle illegal migration and the pull factors that make the UK an attractive destination while reducing the pressure on communities caused by hotels.

More than 400 hotels were opened under the last government at a cost of £9 million a day. Now just under 200 remain in use, with overall asylum costs down 15%, saving over half a billion in hotel spending last year as we deliver our commitment to close every hotel.

Commenting on the news, Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, said:

Illegal migration has been placing immense pressure on communities.

That is why we are removing the incentives that draw illegal migrants to Britain, closing asylum hotels that are blighting communities.

Crowborough is just the start. I will bring forward site after site until every asylum hotel is closed and returned to local communities.

I will not rest until order and control to our borders is restored.

Keir Starmer has welcomed Donald Trump’s decision to drop his threat to impose tariffs on the UK and some other Nato countries that opposed his plan to buy Greenland, saying “British pragmatism” helped to resolve the crisis.

In his first public remarks since Trump’s climbdown last night, Starmer also said he hoped that the US and its allies would now focus on the “hard yards” of guaranteeing security in the Arctic.

On a visit to Hertfordshire, he said:

I think you will have noticed that the last few days have been incredibly serious in relation to big things happening on the world stage.

And you may have seen but it is a good thing that yesterday the threat of tariffs against the United Kingdom was lifted, and now we can start hard yards and finding a way forward on security in the Arctic, which may seem a long way away, pretty remote, but actually it does matter to all of us in terms of the safety and security of our country.

And we’ve got through the last few days with a mix of British pragmatism, common sense, but also that British sense of sticking to our values and our principles.

Here are more lines from Yvette Cooper’s interviews this morning about Donald Trump and his Greenland U-turn (of sorts).

• Cooper, the foreign secretary, suggested that Trump’s shift was in part related to the “strength” of Britain’s influence in Washington. Asked about this climbdown, she told Sky News:

I think it’s a reflection of the strength of our connections in Washington that we’ve obviously had a very significant shift in the president’s position over the last two weeks, the fact that we’ve been doing very determined diplomacy, not just directly the prime minister talking to the president, but also talking at every level.

I’ve spoken to secretary of state [Marco] Rubio, we’ve also spoken to many people across not just the US administration, but also Congress as well, and we have done so with our allies.

In truth, there were probably various explanations for Trump backing down, including, perhaps, that he was never 100% committed to seizing Greenland in the first place. Yesterday the Economist’s Tom Nuttall summed up the main ones.

If we stipulate that we just witnessed a modest climbdown from Trump on Greenland (no mention of tariffs, ruling out force), what should we credit?

- EU resolve on tariffs/ACI/tripwire force?

- market wobbles?

- GOP senators/admin “sensibles” having a quiet word?

• Cooper said that the UK had told the Americans “how damaging” Trump’s stance had been to US-European relations. She told Sky News:

I think it’s been us being very clear to US colleagues across the board that we are not going to move on those principles, alongside us putting forward very practical arguments about how damaging all of this has been.

• Cooper would not say whether or not she had seen the text of the deal agreed yesterday between Trump and Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, about Greenland.

• She told BBC Breakfast that she was not aware of mineral rights being part of those discussions.

• She said she hoped countries could now focus on an “Arctic sentry” as a collective security framework. She said:

I think this [deal] is about both two things. First of all, some direct discussions between the US and Denmark and Greenland as well – and secondly, about something that I’ve been calling for, that the UK has been calling for, which is a sort of Arctic sentry, which is very similar to the approach that Nato has taken to the Baltic sentry, to the eastern sentry, where countries work together through Nato.

The UK government borrowed less than expected in December, official figures show, after stronger receipts than a year earlier, Tom Knowles reports.

Good morning. In his Guardian article published on Tuesday, Gordon Brown, the former PM, said:

Years from now the history books will tell us that [Donald] Trump could have declared a quick victory in negotiations over Greenland – accepting the Danish offer of virtually unlimited military bases and access to Greenland’s 25 critical minerals.

Trump probably isn’t a regular Guardian reader, and so it unlikely that he has been taking Brown’s advice, but we don’t need to wait for the history books; last night, in line with the strategy proposed by Brown, Trump backed down from talk of invading or buying Greenland, and instead heralded a more limited “deal” as a negotiating victory.

Here is our story, by Lauren Aratani and Andrew Roth.

This ends a four-day crisis that has preoccupied Westminster. It also wiped out the No 10 news grid, which was supposed to be focused on cost of living announcements this week. On a visit this morning Keir Starmer will try to revive interest in one of those initiatives, the warm homes plan announced yesterday.

But he won’t be able to avoid questions about Trump, because the events of the last few days have made it harder than ever for the UK to go on treating the US as a reliable ally.

This morning Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, has been giving interviews. Asked about another tricky dividing line with Trump, she said that the UK would not be one of the initial countries signing up to his “board of peace” – a new body supposed to be taking charge of Gaza reconstruction, but one that Trump seems to view as a potential alternative to the UN.

Asked whether the UK would be joining, Cooper said:

There’s a huge amount of work to do. We won’t be one of the signatories today, because this is about a legal treaty that raises much broader issues, and we do also have concerns about President Putin being part of something which is talking about peace, when we have still not seen any signs from Putin that there will be a commitment to peace in Ukraine.

And to be honest, that is also what we should be talking about.

Trump says Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has joined the board, although Putin himself has not confirmed that.

Aamna Mohdin has more about the board of peace plan in her First Edition briefing.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: John Healey, the defence secretary, is visiting an aerospace site in Edinburgh for an announcement about the Typhoon upgrade.

Morning: Keir Starmer is on a visit in Hertfordshire to promote the government’s warm homes plan announced yesterday.

11am: Eluned Morgan, the Welsh first minister, takes part in a Q&A at the Institute for Government.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

Noon: John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, takes questions from MSPs.

Lunchtime: Starmer hosts Mette Frederiksen, the Danish PM, at Chequers.

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