Q: [From Christopher Hope from GB News] To Starmer – Which countries are you talking to about hosting ‘return hubs’ about migrants from the UK whose applications for asylum have failed?Starmer says he is interested in using return hubs.He says he is in talks with other countries about this.But he would like to add them to the list of measures being used to tackle this problem.But he says he is not in a position to give more information about this plan yet.Keir Starmer has been accused of overseeing a diplomatic “embarrassment” after arriving in Albania to promote a policy of establishing “return hubs” for refused asylum seekers only for his counterpart to rule it out.

But Downing Street says Starmer never expected Albania to agree to host a “return hub”.(See 4.50pm.) Starmer has said the government is talking to other countries about the proposal, which he says could be an “important innovation”.(See 12.

41pm.)Ministers have admitted that some domestic abusers and sexual abusers will be released under new plans to free up spaces in prisons in England and Wales, despite a denial from another government minister.The UK economy grew at the fastest pace in a year between January and March, defying warnings of a collapse in activity, as businesses scrambled to invest and export before Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs.For a full list of all the stories covered here today, scroll through the key events timeline at the top of the blog.The Scottish government faced legal costs of almost £160,000 in its unsuccessful court battle on the definition of a woman, which ended in the supreme court, it emerged today.

The bills were revealed in a freedom of information request by the Scottish Conservatives, PA Media reports.Downing Street has rejected Tory claims that Keir Starmer was snubbed when the Albanian PM said today he would not host a “return hub” for the UK.(See 2.35pm.)At the afternoon lobby briefing, a No 10 spokesperson said Albania being a possible return hub was “never planned as part of the discussions” between Starmer and Edi Rama.

The spokesperson said it was was established before Starmer’s trip that Albania would not be part of plans for the UK to have “return hubs” for refused asylum seekers,Rama made this clear in his own remarks at the press conference,(See 11,57am,)The spokesperson said:So there’s a specific Albania-Italy relationship there, but we work with Albania very, very closely when it comes to tackling organised immigration crime and illegal immigration.

That was obviously what the prime minister was seeing in person operationally on the visit today as well as announcing the expansion of the joint migration task force that already includes Albania,Politico has discovered via a Freedom of Information request that the government estimates that “opening a third runway at Heathrow Airport could result in pollution equivalent to an additional 2,4 million tons of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere each year by 2050”,Commenting on the story, the Green MP Siân Berry said:This Labour government is wildly out of touch with reality,Even with the maximum possible impact of “jet zero” efforts on fuel this expansion remains a climate catastrophe …No credible net-zero plan can include rampant airport expansion and it’s time Labour looked to the many, many alternative ways to create high-paid green jobs.

Richard Adams is the Guardian’s education editor.The UK’s elite private schools have passed the cost of adding VAT to their fees onto parents, according to figures from the Independent Schools Council showing a 22.6% increase since the tax was added.The ISC - whose members represent just over half of the UK’s private schools - said the average termly fee for its members’ day school pupils was £7,382 in January, including 20% VAT, compared with £6,021 in January 2024, as reported by the BBC.The government added VAT to private school fees at the start of this year.

The ISC said the increases also included the effects of higher national insurance contributions and an end to business rates relief for schools run by charities,The business rates relief was scrapped for private schools in Scotland in 2022, and in England and Wales from April,Julie Robinson, the ISC’s chief executive, said:These statistics show that school leaders have done what they can to keep baseline fee rises to a minimum in the face of this unprecedented tax on education,A Treasury spokesperson said:This data misrepresents reality - the increases in fees are not only down to VAT,Average [school] fees have risen by 75% in real terms in the past 25 years and pupil numbers have remained steady.

The Treasury added that the measure is expected to raise £1.8bn a year.At the last election four independent MPs – Shockat Adam, Ayoub Khan, Adnan Hussain and Iqbal Mohamed – were elected because they campaigned on a pro-Gaza platorm.Along with Jeremy Corbyn – also pro-Gaza but who may have been re-elected anyway, without the war, because of his status as a former Labour leader – they formed the Independent Alliance.On Bluesky, Corbyn has posted a joint statement from them marking Nakba Day – commemorating the Nakba (“catastrophe”), the displacement of an estimated 750,000 Palestinians forced to leave their homes when the state of Israel was formed.

As Mark Sweney reports, the government has decided to allow foreign states to own stakes of up to 15% in British newspapers,This is primarily to end the deadlock over the sale of the Daily Telegraph, allowing a consortium backed by the United Arab Emirates to take over,The Liberal Democrats have announced that they are going to try to block this in the House of Lords by using a fatal motion, a rarely-used procedure that can be used to block secondary legislation,They believe that, with Tory support, they could pass the fatal motion,Max Wilkinson, the Liberal Democrat culture spokesperson in the Commons, said:Our free press is the cornerstone of British democracy – it can never be for sale to foreign powers.

In 2024, it seemed there was cross-party consensus on this.But just as we’ve seen with their approach to copyright protections and AI, Labour are demonstrating they are willing to put at risk one of this nation’s great assets.This move insults all of those working to maintain the centuries-old British value of press freedom.It must be reversed.At PMQs yesterday Keir Starmer accused the Conservative party of “sliding into oblivion”.

In an effort to prove him wrong, CCHQ has issued a press notice criticising Keir Starmer for refusing to fly the flag of Middlesex above Downing Street.And it is not just a short press release.It runs to 1,700 words (including the notes), covering, among other things, Napoleon, bisexual flags, and the record of the last Conservative government in championing England’s traditional counties.Readers may not be familiar with the Middlesex flag – in part because Middlesex does not even exist anymore as a unit of government.But the Tories say tomorrow is Middlesex Day, celebrating “the victory of the Middlesex Regiment (‘the Die Hards’), holding back the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte in the Battle of Albuhera during the Peninsula Wars”, and that when the Tories were in power they flew the Middlesex flag from Downing Street on 16 May to mark the occasion.

By tabling a Commons written question, Richard Holden, a shadow Cabinet Office minister, discovered that No 10 will not be doing the same again this year.In a statement denouncing the government for this, he said:As the Labour government prepares to give in to betray Brexit and make our country an EU law-taker, it speaks volumes that they refuse to fly the historic flag that marks victory over the forces of Napoleon.Keir Starmer would rather hoist the white flag of surrender.The Tories also say Labour’s “refusal to fly county flags contrasts with the decision in September by David Lammy’s Foreign Office to hoist the bisexual flag from Whitehall, adjacent to Downing Street”.Asked about the story, the PM’s spokesperson pointed out that Starmer celebrated St George’s Day.

NHS England has said that a “particularly sharp rise in referrals” explains why hospital waiting lists rose slightly in March.(See 10.03am.)In its own news release on the figures, NHS England said they showed “the NHS delivered over 100,000 more treatments in March compared to the same month last year”.Prof Sir Stephen Powis, NHS England’s national medical director, said:The scale of demand that our frontline NHS teams are managing is enormous – today’s figures show that each month, they are having to not only deal with an historic backlog, but they are also working to keep up with the hundreds of thousands of new patients that need our care.

In March, we saw a particularly sharp rise in referrals – yet staff still managed to deliver more for patients with 100,000 more treatments delivered and thousands more getting a timely diagnosis for cancer.Commenting on the figures, Edward Argar, the shadow health secretary, said:Patients will be disappointed that waiting lists have begun to rise again in this latest data, at just the same time Wes Streeting has announced plans for big bonuses for NHS bosses.And the Health Foundation charity put out a statement about the figures saying:These latest statistics are a reminder that patients and NHS staff continue to bear the consequences of the strain on NHS services.A quarter of patients waited more than 4 hours to be treated in A&E in April, with over 44,000 waiting more than 12 hours to be admitted to a bed.And while the NHS waiting list had seen a slow and gradual decline over the past 6 months, it increased slightly to 7.

42m in March,Behind these figures are more than 13,000 patients who are fit to be discharged but still in hospital,This underlines the urgent need to improve the flow of patients out of hospital – including by investing in social care,New Health Foundation analysis out today estimates an additional £3,4bn a year would be needed by 2028/29, just to avoid adult social care services deteriorating further.

Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, has claimed that Keir Starmer’s trip to Tirana was pointless because the Albanian PM ruled out hosting a “return hub” for the UK,(See 11,57am,)And he also claimed that Starmer was trying to take credit for a reduction in small boat arrivals achieved by the Conservatives,In a statement he said:This trip is an embarrassment.

Starmer jetted off and now the Albanian prime minister has made clear that there will be no UK return hubs in Albania.So, what was the point of this entire visit?Under the Conservatives, we already struck a real returns deal and a law enforcement deal with Albania - and they worked.Small boat arrivals from Albania dropped by over 90%.Now Labour are dishonestly insinuating it’s down to them.Keir Starmer has confirmed that he intends to fight the next election as Labour leader.

He made this clear after giving an answer during an interview in Albania that implied that this was not a certainty,Asked by GB News if he would still be Labour leader at the time of the next election, he replied:You’re getting way ahead of me,I’m absolutely clear, I’m absolutely clear that my task is to rebuild our country, the security that we need, we’re getting on with that,After this was interpreted as evidence that Starmer was not sure (Starmer “sparked confusion”, according to the GB News story), Starmer later said:Of course I am going to stand at the next election,I’ve always said this is a decade of national renewal that I intend to lead.

They were part of what we were arguing for at the last election and of course we’ve got a lot more work to do but we’re making huge progress.