David Lammy given warning after fishing with JD Vance without licence

David Lammy has received a formal warning after reporting himself for fishing without a licence with the US vice-president, JD Vance.The foreign secretary took Vance angling at his official country retreat in Chevening, Kent, on 8 August as he hosted him at the start of a holiday in Britain.It later emerged Lammy did not possess the required licence for rod fishing, with a Foreign Office spokesperson blaming an “administrative oversight” and saying the minister had subsequently bought a licence.Lammy referred himself to the Environment Agency over the incident.Anglers in England and Wales aged 13 or over must have a rod licence to fish for freshwater species such as carp, and can face a fine of up to £2,500 if they do not

Sir George Reid obituary

Sir George Reid, who has died aged 86, was a Scottish politician, broadcaster and all-round public figure who also spent a dozen years as director of public affairs for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent in Geneva, a post he held between two separate phases of his political career.Reid was elected as a Scottish National party MP to the House of Commons in the general election of February 1974, but lost his seat five years later. Twenty years on he was elected to the new Scottish parliament, and in 2003 became its second presiding officer.Reid later reflected that in his 12 years with the Red Cross he “did far more good than at any other time in my life”. As well as overhauling the organisation’s image and communications strategy, he served on the frontline in war and disaster zones around the world, including following the Ethiopian famine and the 1988 Armenian earthquake

Diane Abbott: I advised Jeremy Corbyn not to start new party

Diane Abbott has said she advised her longtime friend Jeremy Corbyn not to launch a new political party because she believed it would struggle to make inroads under the first-past-the-post system.Abbott, the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, said last month she would not be leaving Labour in favour of Corbyn’s as yet unnamed party, despite the pair having worked closely together in the past.Speaking at the Edinburgh international book festival in conversation with the campaigner and commentator Talat Yaqoob, Abbott confirmed she had spoken to Corbyn before the party’s launch to warn him against it.“There were people around Jeremy encouraging him to set up a new party and I told him not to,” she said. “It’s very difficult under the first-past-the-post system for a new party to absolutely win

Why Shabana Mahmood’s outlook on prisons is wrong | Letter

Shabana Mahmood’s tenure as justice secretary is more problematic than your profile suggests (Shabana Mahmood: justice secretary and rising star of the Labour party, 16 August). First, she has endorsed yet another prison-building programme, a policy that has failed so dismally for the past 200 years. If the answer to the current crisis is more prisons, then she, like her predecessors, is asking the wrong question.Second, she has said prisons should be regarded as being of “national importance”. Why should they be seen as more important than developing welfare-oriented, radical alternatives to custody, or abolishing the structural inequalities that are central to who is criminalised and imprisoned?Third, the profile mentions that her plans include chemical castration for sex offenders

Action to tackle number of asylum seekers coming to UK is important step to ‘restoring order’, says Cooper – as it happened

The home secretary has said the government’s action to tackle the number of asylum seekers coming to the UK had been an important step to “restoring order”.Responding to new immigration statistics, Yvette Cooper said Labour had overseen increased numbers of returns of asylum seekers not granted asylum and pointed to the reduced spending on asylum.According to the PA news agency, Cooper said:We inherited a broken immigration and asylum system that the previous government left in chaos. Since coming to office we have strengthened Britain’s visa and immigration controls, cut asylum costs and sharply increased enforcement and returns, as today’s figures show.The action we have taken in the last 12 months – increasing returns of failed asylum seekers by over 30%, cutting asylum costs by 11%, reducing the backlog by 18% and our forthcoming plans to overhaul the failing asylum appeal system – are crucial steps to restoring order and putting an end to the chaotic use of asylum hotels that we inherited from the previous government

Stella Creasy and Richard Tice call for scrutiny over which EU laws UK ditches

Stella Creasy and Richard Tice are pushing for Labour to allow a Brexit scrutiny committee to be formed in parliament, after the Guardian revealed environmental protections had been eroded since the UK left the EU.The Labour and Reform UK MPs argue that there is no scrutiny or accountability over how Brexit is being implemented. Creasy, the MP for Walthamstow and chair of the Labour Movement for Europe, said the UK needed a “salvage operation” to clear up the environmental and regulatory havoc caused by Brexit.The analysis by the Guardian and the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) has found that since Brexit the EU has brought forward 28 new, revised or upgraded pieces of environmental legislation that the UK has not adopted, and the UK has actively chosen to regress by changing four different pieces of legislation including on protected habitats, pesticides and fisheries.Creasy said the prime minister, Keir Starmer, needed to move more quickly to repair relations with the EU and realign on environmental law