Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, claims the government has changed its story on this.He says the PM told MPs last week minnisters and special advisers were not involved in handling the prosecution.But yesterday the Sunday Times claimed that, when the home secretary heard the case might be dropped, she made representations to ensure the evidence was as strong as possible.He asks when the home secretary heard the case might collapse.He says the Sunday Times reported yesterday on a meeting organised by Jonathan Powell, the national security minister, to discuss this in September.

He claims the government originally denied this took place.He asks if the meeting discussed the case, and the possibility of further evidence being provided.He asks if the attorney general spoke to the CPS after that meeting.Jarvis says the Tory position on this is “confusing”.He says at first they accused the government of intervening with the prosecution.

Then, when the government said it did not intervene, they said it should have done, he says.He says the Tories should show “some humility” and accept the fact that they made mistakes.They should have updated the Official Secrets Act earlier, he says.I gently say to the opposition front bench, they need to stop throwing mud and start coming to terms with what happened upon their watch.Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, has defended the government’s decision to intervene to try to get the ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans attending an Aston Villa match in Birmingham next month overturned.

Answering an urgent question in the Commons, she said that the decision raised a wider issue of principle, and that people should not be excluded from a match just because they are Israeli and Jewish.She accepted that there were concerns about the behaviour of some Maccabi fans.But she said the police decision to exclude fans was taken “in no small part” because the police feared they might be attacked in Birmingham just because they were from Israel.She said the government was offering extra resources to the police in the hope they would find a way of ensuring the fans can safely attend.(See 4.

46pm and 5,03pm,)Reform UK has suspended four councillors on its showcase county council after a leaked video showing bitter divisions in their ranks,Keir Starmer will travel to the Amazon rainforest for the UN climate summit next month, Downing Street has confirmed, after weeks of speculation that he would not,A new definition of Islamophobia being considered by UK ministers is expected to protect the freedom to criticise Islam, the Guardian understands.

For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today, do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog.The Labour deputy leadership contest concludes this week, and the winner will be announced on Saturday.Here is Jessica Elgot’s account of how it has unfolded.During the urgent question on Maccabi Tel Aviv, Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, said rejected claims that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans had a record of hooliganism.He said that they had played a match in Turkey, where there is a lot of anti-Israel sentiment, and that this would not have been allowed to go ahead if they were disruptive.

This was a claim made in an interview on Friday by Jack Angelides, the chief executive of Maccabi Tel Aviv.After the UQ was over Labour’s Ian Byrne used a point of order to point out that this was wrong.In fact, the Maccabi Tel Aviv match against Turkey’s Besiktas was moved to Hungary, and played behind closed doors, because of the security risk.Iqbal Mohamed, another indepedent MP, said he and others had received abuse on social media for supporting the Maccabi Tel Aviv ban.He said Keir Starmer presented the ban as antisemitism.

But he and others taking this view were not antisemitic,And he asked if the Israeli police who cancelled a matching involving Maccabi were antisemitic,Nandy said the police in Israel took an operational decision,But Mohamed “revealed himself” in his decision to talk about hooligans being banned,This was not just about hooligans being banned; it was about all fans being banned.

And they were banned not just because of the risk they posed; they were being banned “in no small part” because of the risk posed to them, because they were from Israel and Jewish,Nandy went on:I would just gently say to him that if he is conflating everybody who supports an Israeli team, the vast majority of whom, by definition, will be Jewish, with being violent football hooligans, then he should consider whether he can really stand in front of this house and say that he is not behaving in a way that is antisemitic,Earlier Nandy explicitly accused Zarah Sultana, who, like Mohamed, is one of the Independent Alliance group of MPs, of being antisemitic,(See 5,40pm.

)Zarah Sultana, who was elected as a Labour MP but who is now setting up a new leftwing party with Jeremy Corbyn, said:Maccabi Tel Aviv’s racist fan hooliganism cannot be separated from Israeli militarism,Many of these fans are active or former solidiers who have part in Israel’s genocide in Gaza,They should be investigated for war crimes the moment they set foot onto British soil, not welcomed into our stadiume,And let’s be clear, this Labour government is no innocent bystander,It has armed Israel’s genocide, it has provided diplomatic cover, and it shamefully denied that genocide is even taking place.

Nandy said Sultana was doing the people of Birmingham no favours with that kind of rhetoric.When it when it comes to the conflation that she makes between all of the Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters and the actions of the Israeli government, that is precisely … blaming, in many cases, British citizens who happen to support Maccabi Tel Aviv for actions that are taking place in the Middle East.Conflating being Jewish and Israeli, I have to say, I’m afraid is itself antisemitism.Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader who is now an independent MP, asks Nandy to confirm that the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were banned because of their record of hooliganism, not just in Amsterdam last year but on many occasions.He says people should be free to walk the streets safely.

Nandy says she agrees with that.But she claims some of Corbyn’s new colleagues do not support that principle.(She is referring to the fact that Corbyn now sits with four independent MPs elected at the election because of their pro-Gaza stance, and she is implying that some of these campaigners support protests that are intimidating to Jewish people.)She says the police did consider what happened at other Maccabi matches, including the one in Amsterdam last year, where “a small element caused the most appalling disorder”.But she says the police also included that there were “very real risks” of fans being attacked because they were Jewish.

Ayoub Khan, the independent MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, the constituency where the Maccabi Tel Aviv Europa League match is due to take place says he knows the situation on the ground and he thinks there has been a “deliberate, disingenuous move by many … to conflate matters of policing with those of religion”.He says there have been Jewish community leaders agreeing that the Maccabi fans should be banned.He says the Maccabi fans have long history of “violence and violent racism”.They have chanted slogans like “f… all the Arabs”, '“we will rape their daughters”, “there are no schools in Gaza because there are no children left in Gaza”.He says it is hooligans who are not welcome.

Nandy condemns the chants quoted by Khan.But she claims it is “entirely disingenuous to say that you respect cohesion and inclusion when you’re seeking to devide and exclude”.(Khan wants all Israeli teams banned from international football.See 11.10am.

)Paula Barker (Lab) says safety concerns were raised before the match that led to the Hillsborough disaster, but they were ignoreed.She says thinks it is unprecedented for safety advice like this to be overturned.She asks if Nandy has seen it.And, if she disagrees with it, on what grounds does she disagree.Nandy acknowledges that Barker represents a constituency where families of Hillsborough victims are living.

She says they should never treat safety as a secondary consideration,And says says it is “absolutely” not the case that the government is trying to overturn the decision,She says this would be the first time since the early 2000s that that all away fans would be banned from attending a match,She says she has discussed the risk assessment with the police,She goes on:That the risk assessment is based in no small part on the risk posed to those fans that are attending who support Maccabi Tel Aviv because they are Israeli and because they are Jewish.

Now we should be appalled by that and never allow it to stand.Nigel Huddleston, the Conservative culture spokesperson, and Anna Sabine, the Lib Dem culture spokesperson, both supported Nandy in opposing the ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans on attending the match and in wanting to ensure the police get the resources they need to allow the ban to be overturned.Nandy said the government was speaking to West Midlands police and to Birmingham city council to discuss what resources they need to police the match safely.She said it was ultimately for local agencies to take the safety decisions.But the government would ensure resources were not the problem, she said.

This fundamental principle, that nobody in our country will be excluded from participating in public life because of who they are, must be upheld.Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, is responding to an urgent question on the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans ban.She says the safety advisory group, which proposed the ban, is operationally independent.They take decisions based on safety, she says.She goes on:However, this decision has far wider implications.

In any situation, there is a risk that must be assessed, but in this case, prevention is in no small part down to the risk inherent in where the away fans come from and who they are,It is in that context that the solution that is proposed to exclude a group from attending is wrong,It chooses exclusion, rather than looking at the options available to manage that risk,This is about who we are as a country,A lot of the public discussion around this game has focused on events in the Middle East.

Let me be clear, it is perfectly legitimate to hold and express strong views about what is happening in Israel and Gaza,People are free in this country to protest peacefully,They are free to lobby government and event organisers about which countries can participate in tournaments, and they are free to choose not to attend events, or purchase products that they find unacceptable,But they are not entitled to dictate who can participate in competition, attend a football match or walk the streets for fear of threats or reprisals, whatever your view on the events overseas,This is a fundamental principle this government will fiercely defend.

And let me be clear, this decision was not made in a vacuum,It’s set against the backdrop of rising antisemitism here and across the world, and an attack on a synagogue in Manchester in which two innocent men were killed,It has a real world impact on a community who already feel excluded and afraid,It is therefore completely legitimate to support the independence of the police to conduct that risk assessment and to question the conclusion that follows when it excludes the people at the heart of that risk,Ben Spencer (Con) points out that Jarvis is refusing to say China poses a national security threat.

He asks how China would describe the relationship.Jarvis says:No one who’s wanting to be considered as being serious thinks that the nature of our relationship with China can be defined by a single word …This government says that China poses – and I said this a week ago - a series of threats to UK national security, from cyber attacks, foreign interference and espionage targeting our democratic institutions, the transnational repression of Hong Kongers.Yet we are also alive to the fact that China does present the UK with opportunities as the world’s second largest economy.We have to be clear-eyed, both about the challenges but also about the opportunities.Llinos Medi (Plaid Cymru) asks about Nathan Gill, the former Reform UK leader in Wales, pleading guilty to accepting bribes to make pro-Russian statements in the European parliament.

She asks what is being done to “to ensure that Russian networks cannot continue to influence UK politics”.Jarvis says the government is taking this “incredibly seriously”, and he says he can give Medi the assurances she wants.Graham Stuart (Con) says Jarvis still has not answered the question raised by the Sunday Times story yesterday – when the home secretary first learned the spy trial was about to collapse, and what she did to ensure the CPS had the strongest evidence possible.Jarvis does not answer directly, but says he has already addressed the points raised by Chris Philp when asked the urgent question.Richard Tice, the Reform UK deputy leader, says he has had legal advice saying the two alleged spies could be prosecuted via a private prosecution if the attorney general were to approve that process.

Would it do that?Jarvis says the government was disappointed about the case being dropped.He says he cannot speak on behalf of the attorney general, but would be happy to take this up with him.Graham Leadbitter (SNP) asks if Keir Starmer received a note in his ministerial red box after the September meeting organised by Jonathan Powell, his national security adviser, to discuss China, and the spy prosecution.His question was inspired by this tweet from Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser.Simple question for the lobby to ask No10 press office:Can you confirm J Powell wrote a box note for the PM on the China spy case and will the PM give this note to Parliament so MPs can see whether the PM misled the House?(I’m told by officials in No10/CO that JP was prepared to let the case collapse in pursuit of his broader goals viz China, there *was* such a box note, and the PM ticked the box note in the normal way, i