Wes Streeting, the former health secretary and Labour leadership hopeful, is today calling for new laws to speed up the construction of critical infrastructure projects.

In a speech this morning, he is saying:

We used to be a country that could do great things. With the promise that the next generation can have it better than the last. We still can. And I want to give people reason to believe again.

If parliament can act in days to save British Steel, it can act with urgency to save Britain’s future prosperity.

Successive governments have been sleeping, while Britain’s crying out for action. I will pass emergency laws to build data centres, nuclear power generation, transport infrastructure connecting people with jobs, and more. We still can build the infrastructure to grow our economy, we have to, and - if I become prime minister – we will.

According to a preview, Streeting is making these comments in a speech on “progressive capitalism”. He is running what is in effect a leadership campaign, although when he resigned as a cabinet he said he did not want to launch a formal bid to replace Keir Starmer until Andy Burnham was back in parliament and able to stand as a candidate himself.

Streeting’s decision to focus on the need for laws to speed up infrastructure building is surprising because in the first session of parliament Labour passed a Planning and Infrastructure Act that was specifically intended to speed up the process leading to the construction of what are designated as nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIPs). Streeting’s speech suggests he does not think this law goes far enough.

In the speech, Streeting is also calling for the government to allow more drilling to go ahead in the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields in the North Sea.

And he has called for a national “global talent programme” with the aim of recruiting 20,000 world-leading scientists, AI experts and engineers to the UK over the next three years. He says £250m should be set aside to fund this.

In an article for the Financial Times published at the weekend, Streeting explained what he meant by progressive capitalism. He said:

I am putting forward an agenda for progressive capitalism, that backs enterprise, rewards work, takes on vested interests and makes markets serve our shared goals of growth, fairness and a better future for the next generation.

That means doing three things. First, push the frontier of innovation. Create the conditions where highly productive firms can scale.

Second, take the best to the rest. Spread new practices to the tail of the economy, where competitive forces will incentivise adoption. It may be counterintuitive for a politician on the left to say, but British capitalism suffers from a lack of competition.

Third, we need to invest in the resilience of our core strategic industries. Britain will remain an open economy reliant on global supply chains, but we can no longer assume that critical capabilities will always be available. Energy, defence, and data infrastructure offer opportunities for re-industrialisation. They have both economic and national security importance.

Anyone can make the pro-growth choice when there are no downsides. This country needs a government unafraid of taking on vested interests and doing controversial things in the national interest.

Emma Reynolds, the environment secretary has objected to a £10bn rescue proposal for Thames Water because it would place an “undue burden” on consumers, pushing the troubled utilities firm closer towards public ownership. Julia Kollewe has the story.

Elon Musk, the pro-far right trillionaire X owner, has been using his platform to attack the UK government’s plan for a social media ban for under-16s.

He reposted a tweet saying:

JUST IN: UK Government clarifies adults will still be able to use social media by verifying their identities with digital IDs, facial recognition, passports and credit cards.

And he added the comment: “UK is a police state.”

He reposted another saying:

the purpose is not to remove young people from the internet. the purpose is to remove anonymity from the internet in a country where the government routinely punishes dissent with jail. the british caliphate is no longer free.

And he added the comment: “Exactly.”

And, without adding a comment, he reposted this from Laila Cunningham, the Reform UK candidate for London mayor.

My 17-year-old daughter: “I’m confused. We’ve always been taught not to share personal information or anything that identifies us online because it isn’t safe. Now they want us to do exactly that to access social media.”

Ministers have embarked on a concerted lobbying operation to prevent a backlash from the Trump administration to the under-16s social media ban announced by Keir Starmer, Kiran Stacey, Dan Milmoa and Aisha Down report.

Keir Starmer has vowed to “choke off” Russian revenue with further sanctions and to provide hundreds of millions of pounds worth of energy support for Ukraine, as he met world leaders in France for the G7. Alexandra Topping, who is covering the summit at Évian-les-Bains in France, has the story.

Good morning. Andy Burnham seems to be on course to win the Makerfield byelection on Thursday. But, if he does win, it will be despite a huge increase in the amount of hostile, fake news about him circulating on local Facebook groups. This has been documented in a report out today by the Social Market Foundation thinktank that has important implications not just for Makerfield, but for how politics functions today in a social media environment awash with lies.

In its report, the SMF says:

Nearly 1 in 6 pieces of news shared in local Facebook groups during the campaign is false, with misinformation heavily targeting Labour and its candidate Andy Burnham, a new study has found.

The Social Market Foundation analysed over 1,800 posts across four local Facebook groups – representing different towns and settlements within the constituency with 66,000 members across them in total – and found that the share of news posts classified as misinformation jumped from 4% before the by-election was called to 16% during the campaign, a four-fold increase.

These findings come just days ahead of what has been billed as the most consequential by-election for a century. Nearly half of Britons (46%) now seek out local news through social media, second only to television and ahead of every other source. Over a third (34%) make use of local social media groups for this purpose – despite the fact these online sources do not come with fact-checking and editorial guidelines associated with the press …

The shift towards engagement driven rather than recency driven feeds can raise the prominence of misinformation. We can see the implication of this in Makerfield’s local Facebook groups. In one of them, 5 of the top 10 posts were misinformation. In another, 8 of the top 25 were misinformation. If people engaged with the post – whether agreeing or challenging them – it meant the misinformation would get boosted by the platform’s algorithm.

This chart from the report illustrates the extent of the problem.

The SMF has published this study as part of a larger study into the impact social media is having on politics. Earlier this month it published a report saying fake news is three times as common in places without proper local journalism.

Today the Reuters Institute has published its annual study of global digital news and it says “for the first time, social media and video networks are, on average across the markets covered, more popular than both TV and owned news websites and apps as sources of news.”

Theo Bertram, director of the SMF, says his Makerfield report shows why Ofcom should be doing more to tackle fake news on platforms like Facebook.

Voters in Makerfield are being exposed to harmful misinformation – and at an even greater intensity than we have seen in the rest of the UK. Too often local misinformation goes unchecked by big tech and unchallenged by national media. We need stronger enforcement from the companies and sustained investment in local news and reporting.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9am: Liz Kendall, the technology secretary, takes part in an LBC phone-in.

9.30am: The Department for Work and Pensions releases figures about personal independence payment (Pip) claims.

10am: Wes Streeting, the former health secretary and Labour leadership hopeful, gives a speech on “progressive capitalism”.

Morning: Keir Starmer speaks to broadcasters in Evian, where he is attending the G7 summit. He will also do a “huddle” (off-camera briefing) with lobby correspondents covering the trip.

11.30am: Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

Noon: Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, gives a speech on proposals to restrict judges from intervening in deportation cases.

Noon: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

Afternoon: Kemi Badenoch is campaigning in Aberdeen South, where there is a byelection on Thursday and the Tories are hoping to take the seat from the SNP.

Afternoon: John Healey, the former defence secretary, is expected to make a statement in the Commons about his resignation last week.

2pm: Angela Rayner, the former deputy PM, speaks at the Unison conference.

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