The UK’s proposal for dealing with the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic includes the creation of a series of customs posts either side and a few miles back from the border itself, according to a report by Ireland’s RTÉ News.

The outlet says it has seen extracts of documents produced in London and that the proposals also include the idea of monitoring the movement of goods from one “customs clearance site” to another using GPS via mobile phone data, or tracking devices placed on trucks or vans.

The report, which the Guardian has not independently verified, reads:

Under the British proposals, both the UK and EU would create what are believed to be called ‘customs clearance sites’, but to all intents and purposes a customs post.

Traders would have a choice of either a straightforward customs declaration which would have to be lodged and cleared on either side of the border, or the so-called ‘transit’ system.

Under a transit scheme, the exporter becomes a registered ‘consigner’ at base, and the importer becomes a registered ‘consignee’.

The method requires a bond from a financial institution to guarantee that the relevant customs duty, excise and VAT have been paid and that the goods do not go illegally off the beaten track en route.

According to RTÉ News, senior political figures on the island have already dismissed the ideas.

At the fringe event, the denunciation of the government by some of its former members goes on:

The shadow culture secretary, Labour’s Tom Watston, has welcomed the reversal of the BBC’s decision to partially uphold a complaint against the presenter, Naga Munchetty:

This is the right decision. I’m glad the complaint against Naga Munchetty has been overturned. She was right to give her interpretation of Trump’s language based on her experiences as a woman of colour. Calling out racism takes courage. The ruling against her was wrong and I hope the BBC reviews the process that led to it.

You can read more on that here:

Labour’s plans to secure cheaper medicines for the NHS through a system of “voluntary and compulsory licensing” would “put lives at risk,” the health secretary has claimed.

At Labour’s conference in Brighton last week, Jeremy Corbyn said his government would use a system of voluntary and compulsory licensing to procure cheaper versions of patented drugs. Corbyn said Labour would “tell the drugs companies that if they want public research funding then they’ll have to make their drugs affordable for all”.

He also announced plans in the longer term to create a publicly-owned generic drugs manufacturer to lower prices for the NHS and fund “socially valuable and challenging” research into antimicrobial resistance which is less profitable for pharmaceutical companies.

The health secretary, Matt Hancock, said Labour’s plans amounted to the nationalisation of parts of the pharmaceutical industry.

I think that the announcement to essentially nationalise parts of the drugs supply would ultimately lead to fewer drugs being available and less innovation and that ultimately would not only damage our life sciences industry and the economic damage that comes with that but I think it would put lives at risk.

Hancock said intellectual property - such as that for the creation of new medicines - is the “property right of the 21st century” and undermining it risks “undermining industry”.

A veteran of Boris Johnson’s political campaigns has resigned as a Downing Street political adviser as tensions rise between former Vote Leave members and ex-City Hall factions around No 10.

Alex Crowley, who worked on Johnson’s Tory leadership campaign, two mayoral campaigns and wrote a book about him, quit last week. His exit came as several sources with knowledge of No 10 suggested that there was an atmosphere of feuding inside Johnson’s administration.

The former justice secretary, David Gauke, has been saying that – while he is himself a Eurosceptic – he fears a no-deal Brexit and that the UK’s approach has been fundamentally wrong:

Here’s a little more on that fringe event, where the former minister Alistair Burt has been telling an audience he does not need lessons on loyalty to the Tory party.

Burt, along with Dominic Grieve and David Gauke, who are also appearing, had the whip withdrawn after voting against the government earlier this month.

The Guardian has just published a leader on Labour’s universal credit policy, concluding that the “plan makes sense”.

The shocking failings of universal credit are justly blamed on the government having listened to the wrong people when setting it up. The sensible reforms set out by Labour show that the opposition has been listening to the right ones. Never mind that the package of changes announced by Jeremy Corbyn on Saturday was misleadingly described as a plan to “scrap” universal credit. His party’s proposals to end the five-week wait for initial payments, scrap the benefit cap and two-child limit (and heinous “rape clause”) are sound. So are promises to review the sanctions system, ditch the “digital only” approach and hire 5,000 new advisers to help those who struggle with online applications.

The army’s zero-tolerance drugs policy has been scrapped less than a year after it was introduced, the defence secretary has confirmed.

Speaking at a ConservativeHome fringe event at the Conservative party conference in Manchester, Ben Wallace told Tory members he had changed the policy because it should be for commanding officers, and not the government, to decide to strip an individual of their job.

Wallace’s predecessor, Gavin Williamson, brought in the policy in November 2018 in an effort to ensure high standards are maintained.

Williamson said drug-taking was incompatible with the armed forces, and that a zero-tolerance approach was the only way to ensure excellence was maintained across the UK’s world-class military. But Wallace has suggested young officers who mistakenly took drugs should be offered a second chance.

I changed it. I took the view that some people are young and irresponsible and it should be up to their commanding officers to decide, whether it’s a young lad or girl who’s made a mistake, whether they should be allowed to remain in the armed forces or not.

And people who have left and want to rejoin, the same should apply to them as well. I think, you know, that doesn’t mean to say you should be able to do drugs in the armed forces.

When pushed on what limits would be imposed, Wallace added that individuals should be allowed to remain in the army “if it is appropriate”. He said:

It should be up to commanding officers to understand their workforce, to understand whether that individual is the problem, or if there’s a medical problem and they think they need help, or whether indeed it was a mistake.

Some of the 21 MPs to have had the Conservative whip withdrawn earlier this month are holding an event on the fringes of Tory party conference:

Signs have emerged that the hardline position of the Conservative party’s most Eurosceptic backbenchers has softened just days before Boris Johnson’s team are due to enter a “tunnel” of secret negotiations with Brussels.

Mark Francois, the deputy chair of the European Research Group, has opened the door to a potential Brexit deal, indicating he would look at one even if it included a version of the controversial Irish border backstop to which the Eurosceptic ERG was once implacably opposed.

During a heated and sometimes bad-tempered event on the party conference fringe, he indicated that the so-called “Spartan” wing of the party was in the mood for a deal. Referring to the bloc of 28 backbenchers who voted against Theresa May’s Brexit deal three times, he said:

It has been sometimes been said that we will vote against anything regardless. That’s not true.

If there is some form of deal, be it over the backstop or anything else, then I and my colleagues will look at it and read it very carefully, because at the end of the day you are talking about international treaty law. So I’ll look at a deal if there is one.

An anti-abortion billboard targeted at the Labour MP Stella Creasy, who is pregnant, has been removed amid claims the campaign amounted to harassment.

The owner of the billboard, the advertising agency Clear Channel, apologised and said it was taking immediate action to remove them. The Walthamstow MP said she was being targeted by the anti-abortion group, CBRUK, because she is pro-choice.

She posted an image of the billboard online, asking the agency how much they had been paid for hosting it. Later that day, the billboard appeared to have been painted over. Creasy has asked the company to donate the fee made from the billboard to an abortion support charity. She also criticised the Met police’s refusal to intervene. Clear Channel wrote online:

A spokesman for the Advertising Standards Agency said:

Clear Channel have taken the decision to remove the ad. Therefore we will not be taking any further action at this point.

This is from my colleague Graeme Wearden on the UQ in the Commons this afternoon on the Brexit and currency speculation.

The UK government has refused to launch an inquiry into its links to financial speculators who are accused of shorting UK assets to profit from a disorderly departure from the EU.

Treasury minister Simon Clarke has tried to rebut claims, from former chancellor Philip Hammond, that Boris Johnson’s hedge fund backers would win “billions of pounds” from a no-deal Brexit.

But several MPs have warned that Boris Johnson faces a conflict of interest, having taken money from investors who have shorted UK companies and could be speculating heavily against the pound.

Answering an urgent question on Hammond’s allegations, Clarke claimed that such theories were “more fit for the tin-foil-hat brigade”. He insisted that the pound should be free to float, and accused critics of “selling this country short”.

Claims that investors who backed Johnson, or the leave campaign, would win billions from the collapse of sterling were simply wrong, Clarke insisted.

And he told several MPs that the best way to avoid a no-deal Brexit was to support efforts to leave with a good deal.

But opposition MPs fear that City speculators are hoping to profit from a disorderly Brexit - as the Treasury’s former top civil servant, Nick Macpherson, has warned. Labour’s Tracey Brabin said it was simply immoral for speculators to profit from the pain and disruption that a no-deal Brexit would cause.

There is more on Graeme’s business live blog.

That is all from me for tonight. My colleague Kevin Rawlinson is now taking over.

And here is some business reaction to the national living wage announcement.

From Carolyn Fairbairn, the CBI director general

Business shares the chancellor’s ambition to end low pay. Increasing productivity is the only way to sustainable pay rises. The success of the independent low pay commission has been its evidence-based approach to increasing wages without damaging job prospects. The commission will work best if it retains the ability to judge the pace and affordability of any future wage rises.

From Adam Marshall, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce

The government’s ambition to raise and simplify the national living wage is laudable but the path to doing so must be on the basis of clear economic evidence, with ample time for businesses to adjust to any changes. Companies already face significant cumulative employment costs, including pensions auto-enrolment, immigration skills charge and the apprenticeship levy, so government must take action to alleviate the heavy cost-burden facing firms, or risk denting productivity and competitiveness.

These are from Sky’s Sam Coates.

From ITV’s Robert Peston

And here is Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the TUC, on the national living wage announcement.

The TUC has long campaigned for a minimum wage of over £10, and an end to the discrimination young workers suffer from lower rates.

But the chancellor’s pre-election promise should be taken with a huge bucket of salt. This pledge would be overwhelmed by a no-deal Brexit. If we leave the EU without a deal, jobs will be lost, wages will fall, and our public services will suffer.

The Resolution Foundation, a thinktank specialising in low pay, has welcomed Sajid Javid’s plan to increase the value of the national living wage and widen its scope. Here is an extract from its news release.

The chancellor’s plan to eliminate low pay over the next five years – by raising the national living wage (NLW) to reach two-thirds of typical hourly pay – is hugely ambitious and will need to be implemented carefully, the Resolution Foundation said today ...

The foundation says that achieving this would mark a dramatic turnaround for Britain’s low pay landscape. Before the introduction of the national living wage (in 2016), over one in five workers across Britain (20.7%, or 5.5 million workers in total) were in low-paid work, a figure which has now fallen to 17.1 per cent (or 4.7 million workers). Aiming to abolish low pay entirely represents a significant increase in ambition.

Raising the NLW to £10.50 in 2024 would see a worker (aged 25+) on the wage floor earn around 70p an hour more than they would have done if the previous plans for the NLW had been maintained – equivalent to an extra £1,400 a year for a full-time worker.

The £1.400 a year average gain quoted by the Resolution Foundation is considerably less than the £4,000 a year average gain quoted by Treasury sources (see 4.23pm), but that figure included those gaining because the age at which the national living wage is paid is coming down from 25 to 21.

Mark Francois, the deputy chair of the European Research Group, the Tory caucus pushing for a harder Brexit, has opened the door to a potential vote in favour of a deal that could include an Irish border backstop.

Francois said during a heated debate on the future of Brexit that the ERG would be the first to sign off a deal if it meant a genuine exit from all the institutions of the EU. He said:

It has been sometimes been said that we will vote against anything regardless. That’s not true.

If there is some form of deal, be it over the backstop or anything else, then I and my colleagues will look at it and read it very carefully because at the end of the day you are talking about international treaty law. I’ll look at a deal if there is one, but as I think I said my acid test will be, does it mean we genuinely leave the EU?

I want nothing more than to see the sun rise on the 1 November on a free country.

Explaining the conditions under which he would consider supporting deal, Francois said:

It rather depends what’s in it. As a so-called Spartan, if it means we genuinely leave the EU, if it means we genuinely leave on Halloween, I will be the first in the Aye lobby.

But if it did not mean that, then he would vote against it, Francois said, “and no amount of brow beating will make me change my mind.”

Javid praises Ruth Davidson, the former Tory leader in Scotland. She was one of his biggest supporters, but she has not been mentioned by other ministers on the conference platform. (She resigned partly because she disapproved of Boris Johnson’s Brexit strategy.)

Javid turns to buses - a subject he said this morning had been long neglected by Whitehall. (See 9.18am.)

Now buses ....

… they haven’t been given the attention they deserve from politicians…

… but they are still the backbone of our public transport in most of the country.

Well, not only do you have a chancellor with a well-known family connection to buses…

… but a PM who likes to paint them!

At the spending round we allocated £220m to buses alone.

This will form part of a national bus strategy next year.

Rolling out new ‘superbus’ networks…

… expanding our fleet of low-emission buses…

… and delivering better value for money for passengers.

And last but not least, connecting us to the modern, global digital economy with gigabit broadband.

Javid promises an infrastructure revolution.

Successive governments failed to invest enough for the long term.

We’ve started to put that right, but we can do more, a lot more.

This government is going to build Britain’s future,

and bring in a new infrastructure revolution.

He is confirming the proposals briefed overnight. My colleague Peter Walker wrote them up here.

Javid stresses his commitment to public services, saying they will be at the heart of the government’s agenda.

For me, like so many others around the country…

… public services were my lifelines.

The teachers who made my career possible.

The police officers who kept us safe when the street I grew up on became a centre for drug dealers.

The NHS that cared for my dad in his final days.

These aren’t just numbers on a spreadsheet - they are the beating heart of our country.

That’s why public services are at the heart of this government’s agenda.

Javid says since 2010 the Conservatives have reduced the deficit.

We may disagree on our approach on Brexit…

… but as Conservatives we can be very proud of what they helped us to achieve.

Labour left behind a bankrupt Britain - and we’ve fixed it.

Javid says Brexit is an opportunity to ask big questions about the future of the country.

Jeremy Corbyn sees this as an opportunity to bring in nationalisation, protectionism and state control.

Javid says international investors fears Labour more than they fear Brexit.

If they [Labour] had their way, whole sectors of the economy would be renationalised.

People’s taxes would rise to the crippling levels of the past.

People’s jobs would be put at risk with sectoral pay bargaining.

The return of trade union militancy would once again hold the government to ransom …

… wasting hundreds of billions of pounds…

… and hitting families and businesses around the country.

The British Chambers of Commerce said last week that Labour’s plans will “send an icy chill up the spines of business owners and investors”.

And it’s no wonder.

We have a shadow chancellor who says businesses are “the real enemy”…

… and openly admits he wants to overthrow capitalism.

Javid turns to Labour.

They’re so split down the middle…

… that even their leader and their shadow chancellor don’t agree on whether they support Brexit.

So they’ll hold another referendum with two options: perhaps, and maybe.

What a leader.

A man for the many Brexit positions, not the few.

Javid says this is ultimately a question about trust.

Democracy is not just for when it suits you, he says.

A strong economy can only be built on the foundation of a successful democracy.

And by definition, democracy isn’t just for when it suits you.

Like the Lib Dems - who called for a referendum for years, then sort of changed their mind, then said they’d respect the result, then sort of didn’t, then called for a second vote, then changed their mind again…

… and now want to somehow pretend the whole thing never happened.

Going back on our promises to the British people isn’t “liberal”, and it certainly isn’t democratic.

Javid says, deal or no deal, the UK will be ready.

Javid says we are leaving the EU in 31 days - deal or no deal.

Preparing to leave without a deal is not only the responsible thing to do, but the best way of getting a deal too.

In all his years negotiating multi-million pound deals in the City, he never walked into a room without being able to walk away.

That is why he has increased no-deal spending.

And he has been able to guaranteed devolved administrations all the £4.3bn of EU funding they were expecting under a deal (which involved a transition period).

Sajid Javid is speaking now. He says his mother is here. Twenty years ago she thought it was a big deal when the first Asians moved into Coronation Street. Now she has seen the first Asians move into Downing Street.

Once again, they are living above the shop.

From Sky’s Europe correspondent Adam Parsons

Like her colleagues, Andrea Leadsom, the business secretary, used her conference speech to road test an attack line against Labour. Hers involved quoting what Tim Roache, the GMB general secretary, said about the plan to cut carbon emissions to net zero by 2030. She said:

We’re working out the path to achieving net zero emissions by 2050. We can do it, and we will help the world to do it.

Contrast that to Labour who last week announced net zero by 2030! Total tosh!

A perfect example of Labour promising something they can’t deliver and don’t understand.

Unusually, I find myself agreeing with the GMB union, who’s spokesman said, this ‘threatens whole communities, threatens whole jobs … This means that within a decade people’s petrol cars being confiscated. This will mean families can only take one flight every five years. Net zero carbon emissions by 2030 is utterly unachievable.’ Well said, that man.

Here is more from the Bruges Group fringe. These are from my colleague Lisa O’Carroll.

These are from the Times’ Steven Swinford.

From HuffPost’s Arj Singh

Mary Wakefield, the Spectator journalist who is married to Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s special adviser, has denied being the second woman at the lunch attended by Charlotte Edwardes 20 years ago where the latter alleges she was groped by Johnson. There was a rumour Wakefield was the second woman referred to, but not named, in Edwardes’ Sunday Times column as being groped by the then editor.

There are two urgent questions in the Commons today, starting at 2.30pm. (There are no questions today.)

My colleague Graeme Wearden will be covering them on his business live blog, but I will flag up the highlights from Graeme’s blog here too.

In the conference hall yesterday Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Commons, seemed to get a warmer reception than any of his ministerial colleagues. He has been speaking at a Daily Telegraph fringe event at lunchtime and, as the Telegraph’s Owen Bennett points out, the queue to see him was huge.

And here are some of the best lines, from the Telegraph’s Kate Ferguson, my colleague Rowena Mason, the Mirror’s Dan Bloom, and PoliticsHome’s Alain Tolhurst.

• Rees-Mogg defended Boris Johnson’s use of the term “surrender bill”.
  

• He stressed that the EU agreeing to a Brexit extension was not inevitable.

• He defended Johnson’s decision to dismiss Labour MP Paula Sherriff’s question about threats to MPs in the Commons last week as “humbug”.

• Rees-Mogg said the Fixed-term Parliaments Act was “one of the most stupid” pieces of legislation passed by parliament.

• He did not deny calling the supreme court ruling a “constitutional coup”.

• He praised David Gauke, one of the 21 pro-European Tories who had the whip removed after rebelling over Brexit, and said he was sorry Gauke had the whip removed.

My colleague Lisa O’Carroll is at a Bruges Group fringe. The Bruges Group represents hardline Brexiters, and it seems that the Guardian is not especially popular ...

The pharmaceutical industry has already moved 25% of its medicine imports away from Calais to mitigate the risk of bottlenecks in a no-deal scenario, the industry body has revealed.

Mike Thompson, the chief executive of the British Pharmaceutical Association, has also criticised the EU for not allowing the industry on both sides of the channel to engage in talks to prevent blockages.

“There has been an enormous focus on what’s going on. Politics is getting in the way,” he told a fringe event at the Tory conference called “The NHS in a post-Brexit world”.

He said the refusal of the EU to engage with the issue of potential medicine shortages in a no-deal Brexit will gone down in history as a mistake.

The UK exports 46m finished packs of medicines to the EU compared with 37m imported by the UK. Among the drugs supplied to the continent was a specialist prostate cancer drug manufactured in Macclesfield, he said.

Thompson told the conference that the UK buys 12,300 types of drugs a year and there are generally shortages in 52-100 of them.

BBC News has just broadcast a clip of Boris Johnson responding to a question about whether he squeezed Charlotte Edwardes’ thigh at a Spectator lunch 20 years ago with a long and rambling reply about his plans to improve bus services.

In an interview with ITV’s Joe Pike, Boris Johnson refused to apologise for his comment about money spent on historical child abuse investigations being “spaffed up a wall”. Johnson said it was “very, very important” that historical child abuse was investigated, in places such as Rotherham. But he said his comment referred to other cases where allegations were unfounded, such as those raised by the man known as “Nick”.

Good spot from ITV’s Angus Walker:

Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, used his conference speech, to claim that Labour’s plans to return schools to local authority control would amount to removing “choice” from parents. He said:

I’m not going to let Labour’s ideological zealots tear up years of progress … made by both New Labour and Conservative governments.

Because let’s be clear: abolishing all primary school tests, ending phonics reading tests, scrapping free schools and academies, taking freedom from headteachers, and choice from parents, returning all schools to local authority control, scrapping Ofsted, and making local authorities responsible for inspecting their own schools and even their own local children’s services, this is no plan for the future.

This is a recipe for disaster.

From the Spectator’s Isabel Hardman:

In his speech to the conference earlier Matt Hancock, the health secretary, said he loved the NHS because it embodied “timeless Conservative values”. He said:

Now, as you might have heard, I love the NHS.

And I think the NHS embodies timeless Conservative values:

• Patriotism – because we look out for each other in this country.
• Global leadership – because in many ways it’s the finest health service in the world.
• Public service – because so many people give so much, day in day out, to care for others.

These values are Conservative values, they are British values, and they are the values of the NHS.

Sir Nicholas Soames, one of the 21 Tories who had the whip withdrawn after a Brexit rebellion earlier this month, has described the decision to punish those 21 as “absolutely insane”.

Normally at Tory conferences cabinet ministers have a sprinkling of policy announcements in their speeches. This year most of them have had little or nothing to say on policy. Partly that’s because the overall focus is on “getting Brexit done”, but partly it is because this is a government without a majority, probably just weeks away from an election, which is not really in a position to implement anything.

Instead, ministers are using their speeches to rehearse attack lines against Labour. Therese Coffey, the work and pensions secretary, used her speech a moment ago to claim that a Jeremy Corbyn government would penalise pensioners. She was not arguing about the value of state benefits, but instead making an argument about the value of pension funds, and the possible impact on them of policies like Labour’s inclusive ownership funds. (See 10.33am.) She said:

Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour will hit pensioners’ saving pots through hiking taxes and renationalising swaths of industry – costing pensioners thousands of pounds.

Unlike Conservatives.

Since 2010, we have increased the basic state pension by £1,600 a year.

Boris Johnson’s long-standing allies have accused him of shutting them out and only listening to his adviser, the Vote Leave campaign head Dominic Cummings, and to Carrie Symonds, Johnson’s partner, the Sun’s Tom Newton Dunn is reporting this morning. Newton Dunn says Lynton Crosby, the Tory election strategist, and Will Walden, Johnson’s communications chief when he was London mayor, feel marginalised. Newton Dunn writes:

One former close ally of the PM’s told the Sun: “The Cummings experiment has palpably failed, but Boris will not turn the ship.

“He’s only listening to two voices now, Dominic and Carrie - and Dominic’s approach is proving a car crash. We’re getting really worried.”

Having played a key part in Boris’s leadership campaign, it has also emerged that Mr Walden refused to take up a senior role in No 10 after feeling marginalised, and has returned to his job in PR.

In the conference hall Rishi Sunak, the chief secretary to the Treasury, has just delivered what he said was his first speech to a Tory conference. He spent much of it attacking Labour, saying that its plan to give up to 10% of shares in large companies to an “inclusive ownership fund” controlled by workers would be “the largest expropriation of assets ever seen in a western democracy”. Sunak said:

Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell would fundamentally destroy the free enterprise economy that pays for our nurses, our teachers, our armed forces.

Take just one example. Their plan to confiscate 10% of the value of all successful companies.

What would happen? Investment would cease, jobs would disappear, pensions savings would be hammered.

This £300bn raid would be the largest expropriation of assets ever seen in a western democracy.

I’ve spent my career in business, investing in companies, big and small. I have pored over Labour’s plans in detail and I can tell you, everybody would end up paying the price.

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, has criticised Sajid Javid for not being able to say how much a no-deal Brexit would cost the economy. (See 8.21am.) McDonnell said:

The chancellor refused to say what the real costs of a no-deal Brexit would be, or how it would impact on the economy. He either has no clue or he is being completely disingenuous, because he knows what a disaster no deal would be for everyone except the super rich.

Robert Jenrick, the housing secretary, will use his conference speech to announce plans to extend the right that housing association tenants have to shared ownership of their homes. In a press statement, the Conservative party says:

We will establish a new national model for shared ownership which allows people in new housing association properties to buy a proportion of their home while paying a subsidised rent on the rest – helping thousands of lower earners step on to the housing ladder. People will be able to buy more of their home in 1% increments, rather than the 10% (or more) chunks currently required.

This seems to be mostly a restatement of a plan announced by the housing ministry over the summer.

Sajid Javid implied in his Today interview that the government does have a plan to bypass the Benn Act. In a useful Twitter thread at the weekend, the Times’s Raphael Hogarth listed five possible ways in which this could be done - all of which he thinks are flawed.

Q: What has happened to the Tory inquiry into Islamophobia in the party?

Javid says it will happen.

Q: At a fringe meeting last night some people questioned whether Islamophobia even exists.

Javid says he does not know about that.

He says he prefers to call this anti-Islam hate crime. When people talk about Islamophobia, they think it is about stopping people attacking a religion. He can see why people should be allowed to attack a religion. It is attacking people he finds objectionable, he says.

Q: Should the PM set a lead? Should his behaviour be better than other people’s?

Javid says the PM is taking a lead. People want to get Brexit done. Johnson is taking a lead on that.

Q: Yesterday a No 10 spokesman accused Tory MPs of foreign collusion. Is the government really behaving properly?

Javid says the government should behave properly at all times. We have seen inappropriate language across parliament. [The shadow chancellor] John McDonnell has talked about MPs being lynched.

And that’s it.

I will post a summary soon.

Javid says he has spoken to Johnson about the groping allegation. Johnson denies it. Javid says he trusts him.

He says he does not get involved when people make allegations like this.

Q: Your plan for buses involves spending just £30m. That will make just a dent on the spending lost over the last decade.

Javid says the total spending being announced is worth £220m.

He says, outside London, buses are the main public transport people rely on. Politicians have not paid enough attention to them. He wants contactless payment and joined-up services.

Q: When Jeremy Corbyn raised it at PMQs, Tory MPs laughed. Does he deserve an apology?

Javid says he cannot remember the context. Perhaps people made a point about Corbyn avoiding the topic of Brexit.

Q: Are the EU going to get formal proposals from the UK this week?

Javid says the EU complaints are just part of a negotiating strategy.

He says a few weeks ago the EU were saying they would not change the withdrawal agreement. Now they are open to that.

Q: Most ministers think the chance of a deal is less than 20%. Do you agree?

Javid says he won’t put a figure on it.