Here is the full text of Kemi Badenoch’s speech this morning on the establishment of the party’s “lawfare commission” – the review that will consider the case for leaving the European convention on human rights.Labour has dismissed it as an attempt to appease Robert Jenrick and Reform UK, who are both unequivocally in favour of leaving the ECHR.During the Tory leadership contest last year Jenrick said the UK should definitely leave, while Badenoch said she was not ruling it out, but thought it was too simplistic to think leaving would just solve the problem.Some Tory leftwingers voted for Badenoch (who in other respects was more rightwing than Jenrick) just because of her stance on this issue.They regarded EHCR withdrawal as an unacceptable red line.

Labour also says leaving the ECHR would put peace in Northern Ireland at risk because the ECHR is one of the foundations of the Good Friday agreement.A Labour spokesperson said:Kemi Badenoch’s review is nothing more than a desperate attempt to appease Robert Jenrick and Nigel Farage’s Reform Party.If she’s so certain in her approach, why didn’t the Conservatives make these changes when they had the chance in government, rather than simply booting them into the long grass.Compliance with international law has helped us strike deals with France and Germany to crack down on criminal smuggling gangs, and underscores the Good Friday agreement, which secures peace in Northern Ireland.Donald Trump-style blanket travel bans on foreign citizens could be “viable” in the UK, Kemi Badenoch has said after giving a speech about law and immigration.

Labour has suggested that Badenoch’s proposal for the UK to leave the European convention on human rights could put peace in Northern Ireland at risk,(See 3,28pm,)Scottish Labour’s surprise byelection win proves “the SNP’s balloon has burst”, a jubilant Anas Sarwar has said, after the popular local candidate, Davy Russell, defied predictions to beat the incumbent Scottish National party and fight off Reform UK’s “racist” campaigning in the central Scotland seat of Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse,Reform UK was right to start a debate on banning the burqa even though it triggered the resignation of its chair, Richard Tice, the party’s deputy leader, has said.

If the decisions the UK government makes in its upcoming spending review are not in line with the net zero climate target it risks being taken to court again, campaigners have said.For a full list of all the stories covered here today, scroll through the key events timeline at the top of the blog.Kemi Badenoch was today quite sceptical about the suggestion from the secretary general of the Council of Europe that the ECHR might be reformed.(See 11.15am and 11.

39am,)But Downing Street welcomed what Alain Berset said in his Times interview,A No 10 spokesperson said:Border security is vital to national security, and we welcome efforts to ensure the European Convention on Human Rights is being applied correctly and allowing countries to protect their borders,It’s important there is discussion on how the ECHR operates to ensure it can safeguard human rights while meeting the needs of democracies,The Prime Minister has been clear on this, it should be parliament that makes the rules on immigration and government that makes the policy.

The Conservative proposal to leave the ECHR has also been condemned by the Refugee Council,This is from its CEO, Enver Solomon,To turn our backs on people seeking sanctuary is to undo a legacy left to us by the wartime generation,The priority must be to fix the asylum system and carry our proud traditions forward into the future,After the horrors of world war two, Britain and its allies agreed that refugees who come to our countries in search of safety should get a fair chance to apply for asylum.

This is just as important now, as we continue to witness more innocent people fleeing to British and European shores.Alongside our European neighbours, we can choose a fair and controlled system to handle asylum applications and decide who can stay and who must return.Or we can choose chaos, with no system for dealing with the men, women and children who arrive on our shores.Our own research shows that the majority of British people are proud of the country’s role taking in refugees since the second world war.Local communities across our country have welcomed and supported refugees to rebuild their lives, and play their part by contributing to our businesses, our high streets, our communities and our NHS.

While the election focus today has been on the Holyrood byelection in Scotland, there were eight borough and county council byelections in England yesterday – and there were good results for Reform UK and the Liberal Democrats.Reform gained four seats – three from Labour, and one from the Conservatives.And the Liberal Democrats gained two seats – both from the Conservatives – and held two.The full results are available here.Here is the full text of Kemi Badenoch’s speech this morning on the establishment of the party’s “lawfare commission” – the review that will consider the case for leaving the European convention on human rights.

Labour has dismissed it as an attempt to appease Robert Jenrick and Reform UK, who are both unequivocally in favour of leaving the ECHR.During the Tory leadership contest last year Jenrick said the UK should definitely leave, while Badenoch said she was not ruling it out, but thought it was too simplistic to think leaving would just solve the problem.Some Tory leftwingers voted for Badenoch (who in other respects was more rightwing than Jenrick) just because of her stance on this issue.They regarded EHCR withdrawal as an unacceptable red line.Labour also says leaving the ECHR would put peace in Northern Ireland at risk because the ECHR is one of the foundations of the Good Friday agreement.

A Labour spokesperson said:Kemi Badenoch’s review is nothing more than a desperate attempt to appease Robert Jenrick and Nigel Farage’s Reform Party,If she’s so certain in her approach, why didn’t the Conservatives make these changes when they had the chance in government, rather than simply booting them into the long grass,Compliance with international law has helped us strike deals with France and Germany to crack down on criminal smuggling gangs, and underscores the Good Friday agreement, which secures peace in Northern Ireland,Kemi Badenoch has said that there is no need for her to expel Liz Truss from the Conservative party because she is not relevant to its future anymore,Yesterday, after Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor gave a “never again” speech disowning Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget, there were calls for the party to go even further.

Today the BBC’s political editor, Chris Mason, asked Badenoch about the case for expelling Liz from the party, just as Keir Starmer removed Jeremy Corbyn,Asked if Truss was still a party member, Badenoch professed not to know,Asked if she would consider kicking Truss out, Badenoch said she was focusing on showing voters that the Conservatives have responsible economic policies,She went on:It is not about any particular individual,I don’t want to be commenting on previous prime ministers.

They’ve had their time.What am I going to do now? Removing people from a political party is neither here nor there in terms of what it is your viewers want to see.When it was put to her that thowing out Truss would send a signal to voters about the kind of party she was leading, Badenoch replied:Liz Truss is not in parliament anymore.We need to focus on how we’re going to get this country back on track.Truss, who remains a Conservative party member, aides say, has responded to Stride with an article in the Critic.

She says it is Stride and his allies who should be apologising.Until Mel Stride and his allies admit the real economic failings of the last Conservative government, the British public will not trust the party with the reins of power again.He should be repudiating the globalist, leftist agenda they pursued which has dragged our country down with the Conservative Party as collateral.What is needed – and fast – is an acknowledgment of those failings and the need for wholesale reform of how our country is governed.Because nothing will ever change so long as the existing broken system and its acolytes remain in control.

Rachel Keenan is a Guardian reporter,John Swinney, the SNP leader and Scottish first minister, has offered a relatively positive take on his party’s defeat in the Hamilton byelection,Speaking at a low-key press conference this morning (much of the Scottish media were at Labour’s victory rally instead), Swinney argued that the result could be seen as a modest victory for the SNP in the circumstances,He explained:Last summer people would have doubted, after the really poor result we had in the UK general election, that the SNP could be back in contention to win a seat like Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, but we were in contention and only 600 votes adrift from winning it,The SNP has made progress in this election.

It’s not as much as I would like us to have made, but we’ve made progress against the backdrop of a really damaging election last summer.Many were surprised that Labour did not seem to be the SNP’s priority when campaigning in this byelection with their line focussing on the rise of Reform UK.Using the line “vote SNP to stop Reform UK”, Swinney said he was just following what he was hearing on the doors while out campaigning.People were telling us on doorsteps of their anger and frustration at the Labour party because of things like winter fuel payments being abolished and they weren’t going to vote for the Labour party.But also, on the same sessions on the doorsteps, [we were hearing] that people were planning to vote Reform.

The confluence of those two things meant that I had to say our message was the SNP could stop Reform,I certainly don’t want the poisonous politics of Farage to be imported into the Scottish parliament,Despite the majority of votes going towards pro union parties, the first minister still thinks that there is an appetite for independence in Scotland and said: “Fundamentally people’s views about independence are strengthening,”He also said that going forward the party would be “making sure that people see independence as a real and urgent priority that can make a difference in their lives”,Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.

Despite the hyperbole from Richard Tice about the Hamilton byelection result on the Today programme (see 9,39am), Reform has not actually come from “nowhere” in Scotland,There has long been a Eurosceptic vote in Scotland, sometimes active or at times latent, and Nigel Farage, Reform’s leader, has campaigned here before, in his previous guise as leader of the UK Independence party,In 2014 he capitalised on that strain of nativist Euroscepticism when Ukip won a Scottish region seat in the European parliament – the year Scotland was immersed in the independence referendum debate,And in 2016, more than 1m Scots voted to leave the EU in the Brexit referendum - 38% of the votes cast.

The Reform brand may be relatively new in Scotland but its leader is not a fresh face, nor is the sentiment and attitude it seeks to represent - notwithstanding the other question of whether Reform’s role this time is largely as a conduit for protest votes from the large minority of voters disillusioned and angered by the incumbents in both the Scottish and UK government.Libby Brooks is the Guardian’s Scotland correspondent.It’s a sunny morning in Hamilton town centre and a jubilant Scottish Labour head of comms has just presented the press pack with an apple pie (“they didn’t have any humble pie in the shop”) after the party’s surprise win in yesterday’s key byelection, which defied the predictions of pretty much every journalist gathering there.The newly elected MSP for Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, Davy Russell, was congratulated by politicians and party workers as Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar told reporters:The SNP’s balloon has burst, the people have changed their minds, they know the SNP have failed them and they want them out from office.What this byelection has proven beyond any doubt is that if you want to get rid of the SNP, then the election next year is a straight choice between me and John Swinney.

Reform might try to be a spoiler factor, but they can’t win here, they have no care for here.It’s between us and the SNP.Sarwar said the byelection made it clear too that it was time for “the pollsters, pundits, political commentators, and the bookies to stop believing John Swinney’s nonsense”.The SNP leader and first minister had described this byelection as a two-horse race between his party and Reform UK.But in the end the SNP, which had previously held the seat, were pushed into second place, only narrowly beating Reform UK by less than 1,000 votes.

At the rally, Scottish Labour’s deputy leader Jackie Baillie said this contest demonstrated that “talking to people and doing to work on the doorstep is absolutely vital to how we win”.Other Labour figures, even those not brandishing pies of any kind, pointed out that the party had made a conscious decision to focus on the ground campaign, which is largely invisible to the national media but secured them victory in the end.Q: If you think the defence review does not go far enough fast enough, what would you do differently?Badenoch said the defence review unravelled because the government does not have a plan for getting defence spending to 3% of GDP.The Tories would address that, for example with welfare cuts, she said.That was the final question.