PM also refused to say what he would do if inquiry into Dominic Raab found justice secretary bullied officials. This live blog is closed

The UK government has announced a £57m funding package to support Northern Ireland charities and community organisations facing a financial crisis due to a loss of European money, PA Media reports. PA says:

Eighteen projects across the region will receive backing through the UK shared prosperity fund with a focus on groups helping support people into work.

The announcement comes just a day before financial support provided by the European social fund comes to an end due as a consequence of Brexit. Some charities in Northern Ireland had warned they would have to cut staff and support programmes if funding was not replaced.

‘Unparalleled negligence’ by water companies continues to create consequences

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: Raw sewage discharged into English rivers more than 300,000 times in 2022

Goodbye, food standards. Hello, corporate lobbyists. Why are we doing this, for no real economic benefit?

Last night, the government announced that Britain has joined a trade deal so contentious that it united Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in opposition to US membership.

While hardcore Brexiters would like to pretend this is the ultimate payoff of our decision to leave the EU and write our own rules, the reality is somewhat different. In signing the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), Britain has ditched environmental standards, signed up to terms that will undermine British farmers, and left us open to being sued by multinational corporations in secretive courts. And all for no real economic benefit.

Nick Dearden is director of Global Justice Now (formerly World Development Movement)

The heatwave and drought of summer 2022 has had a major negative impact on some UK butterfly species, a study has confirmed.

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: Hot, dry summer impacts UK butterfly populations

If you think abortion rights in the UK are secure and the equivalent of overturning Roe v Wade couldn’t happen here, think again

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: The rise of Christian conservatism: a threat to abortion rights in Britain

Support for the European Union is strong – even in post-Brexit Britain. Can it come through its external battles, too?

It’s springtime in Brussels and the European Union has a spring in its step. Its leaders and institutions have been galvanised by the war in Ukraine. “The war has reminded us what Europe is really about,” people kept telling me on a recent visit to the EU’s capital.

There’s a popular theory that says European integration advances through crises. The truth is that sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. You’d have to be a starry-eyed Euro-optimist, for example, to claim that European unity was really advanced by the 2015-16 refugee crisis. But in its last two big ones, the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine, we have seen the “challenge and response” mechanism that the historian Arnold Toynbee identified as one of the patterns of history.

Unions have condemned clauses in deal that will allow large firms to sue UK government behind closed doors

Britain has joined the 11-member strong Asia-Pacific trade bloc that includes Japan and Australia after nearly two years of negotiations.

The deal, part of a push to agree worldwide trade deals after Brexit, secures access for British exporters to 500 million people in the 11-member Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

Final evaluation of Unboxed science and arts festival finds it delivered on its economic objectives

At a cost of £116.8m to the taxpayer, it was hoped that the Unboxed science and arts festival would bring the UK together in a post-Brexit love-fest and enhance our international reputation – to “showcase what makes our country great today”.

The final evaluation has found that the festival, commissioned by Theresa May in 2018 and named a “festival of Brexit” by Jacob Rees-Mogg, brought together a fraction of the audiences initially hoped for. It nevertheless met later, radically downgraded predictions and delivered on its economic objectives.

The tragic story of Ruth Perry brought back a recent traumatic experience of an Ofsted inspection for this headteacher

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: Ofsted inspection tragedy: it could have been me

Monarch says he wants to ‘renew special bond of friendship’ between countries, in speech delivered in English and German

King Charles said he wanted to “renew the special bond of friendship” between the UK and Germany, without mentioning the B-word that has caused the friendship to grow cold in recent years, as he addressed the Bundestag in Berlin on Thursday.

The monarch’s speech was the first given to Germany’s federal parliament by a non-elected head of state. It was pitched as a celebration of cultural commonalities and joint ventures past and present – from a shared love of music and comedy to energy and security cooperation – and an attempt to repair ties that have fractured since the Brexit vote seven years ago.

If the government won’t help Ukrainian refugees for moral reasons, perhaps it will be moved by how failures can be weaponised by the Kremlin

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: Ukrainian refugees – housing failures and the battle for hearts and minds

Graham Clark has his expectations blown away by the stage adaptation of Baz Luhrmann’s sequin-smattered dance extravaganza

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: Strictly Ballroom – The Musical, dazzles at the Bradford Alhambra

Faith in bloc higher than that in UK parliament for first time in three decades of World Values Survey

People in Britain have more confidence in the EU than the UK parliament, reversing a state of affairs that has lasted for more than 30 years, research reveals.

Since the UK voted for Brexit, the proportion of people declaring confidence in parliament has slumped by 10 percentage points to 22% while there has been a seven percentage point rise in confidence in the Brussels-based bloc, to 39%. Confidence in the UK government also fell from 2017 to 2021.

The first aconites appear, followed by hares, frogs and a hungry heron: it’s spring in the ten acres!

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: The firsts of spring entice and bring hope of nature’s renewal

Jens Meurer’s Seaside Special follows Brexit-divided Cromer as town prepares for annual variety show

A German film director’s whimsical and heartfelt portrait of Cromer has become an unexpected hit among audiences and critics in his home country, sparking an interest in the town on the north Norfolk coast.

Seaside Special follows the town as it prepares for its annual end-of-pier variety show – a burlesque mix of song and dance, standup comedy and slapstick performed twice a day for three months – in the summer of 2019, set against the tumultuous backdrop of clashing views within the community over Brexit.

Sheffield homeless charity, The Sunday Centre is appealing for financial support, as it finds itself struggling with the cost-of-living crisis

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: Sheffield homeless charity appealing for donations

Rishi Sunak’s supporters see in him quiet competence, yet his record demonstrates quiet incompetence; voters must deliver a message in May

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: How could Sunak be considered a ‘safe pair of hands’?

British politics is bent out of shape to accommodate a narrow set of views clustered to one side of a partisan divide

Whatever happens in the next general election, Britain will be governed by some kind of coalition. That can be said with confidence because all governments are coalitions of some kind, even when there is only one ruling party.

There are Conservatives who see Rishi Sunak as their rightful leader and others who submit to his authority without enthusiasm. The factions must be balanced in cabinet. The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, is a Sunakian. The home secretary, Suella Braverman, was a rival leadership candidate for the party of perpetual Brexit.

Chapel FM arts centre stages a new play celebrating the ‘homes from home' we find in our community and emphasises how they must be preserved

Yorkshire Bylines Local News: Save our Stories: good teenagering at East Leeds’ Chapel FM

New legislation will give ‘extra chance’ to Britons who missed deadline to apply for residency

• Politics live – latest updates

British nationals have spoken of their “relief” after the Danish government lifted a Brexit-related deportation threat, with new laws allowing them more time to apply for residency status.

Laws will be brought in to accommodate between 300 and 2,000 Britons living in the country before Brexit who had not been informed or did not know they had to apply to stay there by 31 December 2021.

The party hasn’t reconnected with its traditional working-class voters – and looking soft on immigration will make things worse

Labour has staged one of the most impressive recoveries in history. After finding itself outflanked by Nigel Farage’s national populism, then Brexit, and then Boris Johnson, the party now commands a 17-point lead in the polls over the Conservatives, more than enough to win a majority next year.

Other things also seem to be moving Labour’s way. The implosion of the Scottish National party opens the door to a serious Labour recovery there, which, in turn, will make life much easier for the party in non-London England where, remarkably, it has not won the popular vote since 2001.

Government’s post-Brexit funding U-turn comes too late for councils to allocate money to keep them running

Back-to-work schemes across England previously paid for by the EU are being forced to close and lay off staff, despite a last-minute rule change by the government aimed at allowing councils to fund them.

Michael Gove’s Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) wrote to local authorities last week giving them the green light to spend their shared prosperity fund (SPF) allocations on job schemes, from April.

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MPs have approved a bill to give people on zero-hours contracts the right to request regular hours.

The workers (predictable terms and conditions) bill, backbench legislation introduced by the Conservative MP Scott Benton, cleared its third reading in the Commons today and will now go to the House of Lords.

While zero hours contracts are an important part of the UK’s flexible labour market, the 2017 Taylor review of modern working practices found that workers on zero hours contracts, as well as agency workers and temporary workers, struggle where flexibility is one-sided in an employer’s favour.

The new rights will boost workers’ satisfaction and productivity and allow employers to retain skilled staff.

This bill forms part of a wider package of six private members’ bills on employment rights which the government is supporting. Taken as a package, these bills will deliver on our 2019 manifesto commitments to enhance workers’ rights, and support people to stay in work.

UK foreign secretary James Cleverly met with Maroš Šefčovič, the European Commission vice-president, to agree to work 'intensively and faithfully' to implement the Windsor framework after formally adopting it. On behalf of the UK and EU, both counterparts agreed to accept the revised version of the Northern Ireland protocol. Prime minister Rishi Sunak's deal with the 27-nation bloc has rewritten the post-Brexit rules on Northern Ireland trade. Cleverly said that, after long negotiations, the two had finally found a way 'to move forward'

• Brexit: UK and EU formally agree Windsor framework for Northern Ireland – live

Joint statement hails ‘positive approach’ as Windsor framework adopted after Tory rebellion fails

• Politics live - latest updates

Rishi Sunak’s Brexit deal for Northern Ireland has been formally signed off at a meeting in London, after a Conservative rebellion against the deal failed this week.

James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, adopted the new arrangements for Northern Ireland at a meeting with the European Commission vice-president Maroš Šefčovič.

A health and cost of living crisis is causing real problems that must be addressed. Democracy cannot be hamstrung any longer

Nothing in Boris Johnson’s post-Downing Street antics has been more cynical than his dodging from the privileges committee hearing on Wednesday to vote against Rishi Sunak’s Windsor framework. That reform was a hard-won attempt to rescue and reorder Johnson’s own hard-Brexit shambles. The least he could do was say thank you and shut up.

Fleeing to Northern Ireland’s extremist wilderness has long appealed to Britain’s political rejects. It offered a bunker to FE Smith and Enoch Powell. If Uxbridge now drops Johnson as its MP, Antrim will doubtless make him an offer, from whose cliffs he can rant and conspire against colleagues to his heart’s content. But the damage done by Brexit to the vexed politics of Northern Ireland does not end there. As its trade protocol sinks below the horizon, Churchill’s “dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone” are emerging once more in its place.

The former prime minister represents a vandalistic, irresponsible ethos of government. The Tories must repudiate him unconditionally

Boris Johnson knew the rules, broke them and lied about it. That much is not disputed. The former prime minister accepts that statements he made to the Commons about parties in Downing Street during the pandemic were false. He has a police record for attending illegal gatherings. As the prime minister who imposed social restrictions and explained them on television, he cannot plausibly claim to have been ignorant of what constituted a breach.

The slender terrain on which Mr Johnson strives to clear his name is the insistence that other people told him his statements were correct and that he innocently believed them. Testifying to the Commons standards and privileges committee on Wednesday, he said those judging him could not access the truth in his heart, to which he alone had access, and he could report faithfully that it exonerated him.

Rishi Sunak has won parliamentary backing for his revised post-Brexit trade arrangements in Northern Ireland despite hardline Conservative Brexiters voting against it. Among those who did not support the prime minister’s proposals were his two immediate predecessors, Liz Truss and Boris Johnson, members of the European Research Group as well as Democratic Unionist party MPs

• More Partygate evidence published as Boris Johnson prepares to face inquiry – UK politics live 
• Boris Johnson and Liz Truss to vote against Northern Ireland Brexit plan
• Northern Ireland voters back Windsor framework – poll

Britain appears to be an international outlier after the shock reading in double digits this week

• Live coverage: Inflation jumps as cost of living crisis intensifies
• UK inflation rate in surprise rise to 10.4%
• Inflation calculator: find out how much price rises affect you

Britain has the highest inflation rate in the G7, as the only nation in the group of advanced economies with a reading in double digits after last month’s shock increase.

With the UK appearing to be an international outlier, some economists have suggested Brexit is having an impact.

Conservative MP Mark Francois, who chairs the European Research Group, makes a statement to the press detailing its study of Rishi Sunak's Northern Ireland Brexit plan. Summarising the ERG's stance, Francois said  it had concluded the Stormont 'brake' was not effective and that the check-free 'green lane' for the bulk of goods moved between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK would not work as billed

• Hardline Tory MPs reject Sunak’s Northern Ireland Brexit plan

Jeremy Hunt says the economy is his priority; but it and he are still really in thrall to the ideological blight of Brexit

A budget for growth? Sorry, pull the other one. Below the spin, even the official forecasts are laden with gloom. Funnily enough, it is 50 years since one of Jeremy Hunt’s chancellarial predecessors, Tony Barber, produced a “budget for growth” that really worked – indeed, rather too well. It resulted in the “Barber boom”, when gross domestic product rose by some 6% in real, adjusted-for-inflation, terms in one year.

They don’t come like that any more, which is just as well, because the Barber boom ended in tears. (In truth it was the Heath boom, because the prime minister was really in charge.)

Reworking of policy marks Britain’s changed view of its position in light of tilt to authoritarianism and volatility

Britain’s refresh of its defence and foreign policy may mark the moment when the UK sobers up about its place in a world that it now describes as “defined by danger, disorder and division”, and increasingly tilting to authoritarianism.

Gone is the optimistic Global Britain bombast of the Boris Johnson era, set out in the original integrated review only two years ago. That version championed the UK as “a beacon of democratic sovereignty” and one of the most influential countries in the world, and hailed its ability to draw on its post-Brexit status to “do things differently, economically and politically”.

“What has changed is that our collective security now is intrinsically linked to the outcome of the conflict in Ukraine.”

“The transition into a multipolar, fragmented and contested world has happened more quickly and definitively than anticipated. We are now in a period of heightened risk and volatility that is likely to last beyond the 2030s.”

“A growing convergence of authoritarian states are challenging the basic conditions for an open, stable and peaceful international order, working together to undermine the international system or remake it in their image.”

Some of party’s MPs even believe they could narrowly win next election – but the odds remain stacked against them

When Rishi Sunak took over, most Conservative MPs were in despair. Some even suggested the party did not deserve to be in power. “We need a reset,” one said at the time. “A period out of office to get our act together.”

But almost five months on, Sunak has given them hope that they can avoid a total wipeout at the next election. Despite 13 years in office and all the problems the UK is facing, they now believe they could hang on, albeit with a significantly smaller majority.

The retained EU law bill is an outrageously undemocratic attempt to transfer law-making powers from parliament to Whitehall

The House of Lords may be doomed, so reformers say, but it has a last chance to redeem itself. It is currently being asked to approve a Boris Johnson legacy, the retained EU law (revocation and reform) bill. This bill is so outrageously undemocratic that it would have been flushed down the loo by any parliament before the gutless one that Johnson ushered in after the 2019 election. It blandly states that some 3,000 to 4,000 statutes passed by parliament over half a century of Britain’s EU membership must now be rewritten by ministers, not parliament, or they will lapse at “sunset” on 31 December this year.

This is astonishing. At the time of Brexit, it was agreed that, in general, regulatory harmonisation with the EU would remain for the time being so that trade could continue. Such laws covered swathes of public life: farming, food safety, health standards, travel, animals, employment rights, water and air quality, tax liability, consumer protection, even civil liberties, indeed almost every activity that would benefit from what Margaret Thatcher hailed as the largest market in the world.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

The prime minister now supports the EU more enthusiastically than Labour and it’s hard to know which way is up

The contradictions of the Brexit era confound comedy. Having publicly extolled the virtues of Northern Ireland’s access to the single market on Tuesday, Rishi Sunak was momentarily so engorged by exciting economics he forgot the ideological implications of what he was saying, while Tory advisers chewed off their feet backstage. The Tory Brexiter Sunak is now a more enthusiastic supporter of the EU than the Labour remainer Keir Starmer. An unrepentant remainer until I die, do I now vote Tory? Was this the secret Tory plan all along?

Brexit has reversed the polarities of Sunak’s and Starmer’s brains. It’s like Face/Off, where John Travolta becomes Nicolas Cage and Nicolas Cage becomes John Travolta, but with the exciting martial arts sequences replaced by Sunak, who went to prep school and has the personal GDP of a South American dictatorship, accusing grammar-school grafter Starmer, whose dad was a toolmaker, of being a north London metropolitan elitist. Again.

Speaking at the Global Soft Power summit in London, the ex-prime minister Boris Johnson said the Northern Ireland Brexit deal agreed by Sunak was 'not about the UK taking back control'. Johnson admitted he was at fault that the checks on the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland had become too 'onerous' but reiterated his call for the UK to be allowed to diverge with EU regulations and laws. He said: 'This is nothing if it is not a Brexit government, and Brexit is nothing if we in this country don’t do things differently' 

• UK politics live - latest updates

Conditions that would let Northern Ireland politicians block EU laws are very strict, it has emerged

• UK politics live – latest news updates

The right of local Northern Ireland politicians to block new EU laws under the Brexit deal just announced by Rishi Sunak and the European Commission president can only be used in exceptional circumstances, it has emerged.

How the so-called Stormont brake can be used is just one of four big questions about the revised Northern Ireland protocol pact, known as the Windsor framework.

Speaking at a Q&A in Lisburn as he pitched his new protocol deal, Rishi Sunak said Northern Ireland would be 'the world’s most exciting economic zone', because if the agreement passed, it would have access to both the European single market and the UK. 'Nobody else has that. No one. Only you guys. Only here. And that is the prize,' he said. 

• Being in single market and UK makes NI ‘world’s most exciting economic zone’, says Sunak – UK politics live

Trade and governance will be at centre of new post-Brexit pact, but what about other areas of disagreement?

• UK politics live – latest news updates

Named the “new Windsor framework”, the revised Northern Ireland protocol has been described as a “decisive breakthrough” by Rishi Sunak and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.

What does it mean and what are the big breakthroughs?

The British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has unveiled an agreement with the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, after four months of negotiations.

In a press conference, Sunak said the new Windsor framework would help restore the previously strained relationship with the EU 

• UK politics live – latest news updates

UK and EU aiming to finalise a deal to revise terms of agreement on post-Brexit trade

The UK and the EU are on the verge of an agreement to revise the Northern Ireland protocol, the part of the Brexit deal that sets out trade rules for the region.

Rishi Sunak will hold face-to-face talks in the UK with the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, on Monday as they aim to finalise a deal.

Three big retailers are placing limits on shoppers on some produce lines. What is behind the rationing?

• Aldi joins rivals Asda and Morrisons in rationing salad ingredients

Three of the UK’s largest supermarket chains have introduced limits for shoppers on several fresh produce lines, including tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, as they try to prevent gaps appearing on shelves.

So what is going on and are the shortages going to spread to other retailers and foodstuffs?

Rishi Sunak has suggested MPs will vote on his proposed Northern Ireland protocol deal. During an exchange at prime minister's questions, Keir Starmer told Tory MPs they were cheering as Sunak pulled 'wool over their eyes'

• Sunak suggests MPs will vote on proposed NI protocol deal and accuses Starmer of wanting to ‘surrender’ to EU – UK politics live
  
• Rishi Sunak will not ‘sell anyone out’ on NI protocol deal, says minister
  

As the PM faces the biggest challenge of his premiership, Tory divisions are coming to the fore

Rishi Sunak is facing the biggest challenge of his premiership as former Conservative party divisions over hard and soft Brexit are re-emerging just as he appeared to be on the cusp of a deal with the EU to end the protracted row over the Northern Ireland protocol.

An intervention by Boris Johnson in the row over solving the post-Brexit deadlock in Northern Ireland is 'not entirely unhelpful', Penny Mordaunt has said, as work to clinch a deal with the EU goes down to the wire. The Commons leader suggested concerns reportedly raised by the former prime minister were a welcome reminder to Brussels of the threat that Britain could try to unilaterally override the Northern Ireland protocol. The bill designed to do so is paused, but Mordaunt said that 'Boris is being Boris' and added: 'The intervention by a source close to the previous prime minister is helpful to remind the EU of that bill'

• Boris Johnson’s intervention in NI Brexit row ‘not entirely unhelpful’ – minister
• Boris Johnson threatens Rishi Sunak’s bid to end deadlock over Brexit

The billionaire businessman Guy Hands has described Brexit as a 'complete disaster' and a 'bunch of total lies' that has harmed large parts of the economy. The founder, chair and chief investment officer of the private equity firm Terra Firma spoke on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on the third anniversary of the UK's departure from the EU. Referencing the bus promising £350m for the NHS during the government's Brexit campaign, Hands said the former prime minister Boris Johnson 'threw the NHS and the public under the bus'

• Brexit is a ‘complete disaster’ and ‘total lies’, says Tory billionaire
• UK politics live – latest news updates

In Newark, hundreds of environmental protesters marched towards Robert Jenrick's office, the local MP, calling on him to vote against the EU retain law bill that put thousands of environmental protection laws at risk. The bill gives ministers the power to abolish an estimated 4,000 laws derived from Brussels by the end of 2023. The deadline has been put in place by Rishi Sunak, who pledged to scrap thousands of EU laws to 'protect Brexit' during his leadership campaign. Cross-party MPs are concerned the deadline is impractical, as hundreds of civil servants would be required to review each piece of legislation. As well as environmental regulations, the EU-derived laws include employment protection and transport regulations

• Cross-party MPs launch fightback against bill to tear up 4,000 EU laws