UK’s top civil servant rejects Robert Jenrick’s demand to investigate Richard Hermer’s career as human rights barrister for Gerry Adams

• UK politics live – latest updates

The cabinet secretary has dismissed Conservative demands for an investigation into whether the attorney general has advised the government on issues where he has conflicts of interest.

Chris Wormald, the UK’s most senior civil servant, wrote to Robert Jenrick on Thursday saying there was a “rigorous system” to prevent government law officers from advising on issues where they may be conflicted.

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Tory leader told shadow cabinet last week she wanted predecessor to stop making unhelpful interventions

• UK politics live – latest updates

Kemi Badenoch has told shadow ministers she wants a period of silence from Liz Truss, as the Conservative leader seeks to distance herself from her predecessor’s economic legacy.

Badenoch told the shadow cabinet last week that she wished Truss would stop intervening in British politics after the former prime minister wrote a “cease and desist” letter to Keir Starmer demanding he stop saying she crashed the economy.

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Housing minister shoots down idea floated by Maroš Šefčovič designed to help reset UK-EU discussions

Good morning. The government is obsessed with finding any levers it can that might generate growth. At Davos yesterday Rachel Reeves , the chancellor, was asked if growth was even more important than promoting net zero, and she replied: “Well, if [growth is] the number one mission, it’s obviously the most important thing.” Today the government is announcing potentially significant plans that could limit the scope of judicial review applications to hold back growth. Pippa Crerar, Kiran Stacey and Sandra Laville have the details here.

Economists argue that an obvious move to promote growth would be to have closer trade links with the EU. But the government has ruled out rejoining the single market or the custom union (let alone rejoining the EU proper – which is still largely a taboo proposal in most parts of UK politics). And today a minister has ruled out an EU proposal for the UK to join, not the customs union, but a customs union with the EU.

Šefčovič referred to the idea of the UK joining the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean Convention (PEM).

These are common rules that allow parts, ingredients and materials for manufacturing supply chains to be sourced from across dozens of countries in Europe and North Africa to be used in tariff-free trade.

We’re not seeking to participate in that particular arrangement.

I think in general the government’s been very clear … we do want a closer relationship with our European partners, both in trading terms, but also, importantly … in terms of security and defense cooperation, where we need to work far more closely. So absolutely, yes, we do want a closer relationship.

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Health secretary says Tories had ‘no credible plan or funding’ for hospitals they promised to build by 2030

• UK politics live – latest updates

Work will not begin until 2039 on some of the “40 new hospitals” Boris Johnson promised to build by 2030, after a Labour rethink on a pledge it called “a work of fiction” by the Conservatives.

Wes Streeting on Monday told MPs that construction on seven of the 40 projects in England would begin until 2025-2030, with another nine in starting in 2030-2035 and a further nine in 2035-2039.

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Given anxiety about Kemi Badenoch, surely now would be a good time to find clarity about what we actually believe. Without that, we misfire

What would the ideal leader of the Conservative party look like? Despite the party’s newly developed regicide habit, this question doesn’t receive enough serious consideration. The sitting leader naturally becomes the locus for dissatisfaction, while speculation understandably focuses on the actual alternatives.

On one level, this is perfectly sensible. As a matter of practical politics, there is limited short-term use in dreaming up an ideal candidate who does not exist: like the serial online dater with the long list of must-haves, you risk ending up in a place where no living candidate can measure up to the one who lives in your head.

Henry Hill is deputy editor of ConservativeHome

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Westminster is preparing for Donald Trump’s second term ahead of the US president’s inauguration in Washington

Good morning. Donald Trump becomes president of the United States for the second time today and in Westminster, as across the rest of the word, supporters are giddy with excitement, while opponents feel this is a moment for epoch-defining dread. Nigel Farage , the Reform UK leader and Britain’s leading Trump evangelist, has got so carried away that he has told an interviewer he thinks there is a 20/25% chance that he could be prime minister by the time Trump leaves office (January 2029). It’s not impossible; but few other people would put his chances as high as one in four.

Most people in Labour politics, privately at least, regard Trump with horror, but the government has to work with him and Keir Starmer, who has invested a lot of effort in trying to establish a decent personal relationship with the new president, has issued a statement sending Trump his “warmest congratulations” on his inauguration. David Lammy , the foreign secretary, was on the Today programme this morning and, when asked if he he had changed his mind about Trump since the days when he used to denounce him in the strongest possible terms, he said his approach to foreign policy was grounded in “progressive realism”, taking the world as it is. He went on to praise the Trump he met when he and Starmer had dinner with him in New York in September last year.

The Donald Trump I met … had incredible grace, generosity, very keen to be a good host, very funny, very, very, very friendly, very warm, I have to say, about the UK, our royal family, Scotland, his relationship with Scotland, his mother. That was the Donald Trump I found.

There was a survey this week – 70% of the world welcomed Donald Trump coming to power, 70% of the world, much of that worried about authoritarian actors, actually quite like the fact that Donald Trump keeps them guessing.

I think surrendering the Chagos Islands, or putting the Chagos Islands in a situation where they can easily be coerced, by the Chinese Communist Party for example, I hope it’s a position that we see reversed here by Donald Trump, and by the UK government.

The Pentagon, the State Department and the White House under the last administration pored through this deal. There was an interagency process, [they] said it was a good deal. It’s right and proper that the new administration is able to consider it.

But having gone through the deal in detail, it’s the right deal to keep the global community safe, and I emphasize the importance of that military base and those assets on Diego Garcia that we’ve been working together with with the United States now for all of my lifetime.

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Peers call on Labour to carry out ‘fundamental review’ amid rising concerns over retention of Tory plans for £3bn in cuts

Labour must carry out a root-and-branch overhaul of the UK’s incapacity benefits system if it is to rein in rising heath-related welfare spending, an influential cross-party Westminster committee has warned.

The House of Lords economic affairs committee – whose members include two former Treasury permanent secretaries and a former chancellor – said major reform was needed to address the rising social and fiscal costs of disability benefits.

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Health secretary to set out revised plans in Commons after warning from the Infrastructure and Projects Authority

Boris Johnson’s 2019 pledge to build 40 new NHS hospitals by 2030 across England “appears to be unachievable”, government advisers have told Labour ministers.

The warning from the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) comes as Wes Streeting prepares to tell MPs how the government plans to proceed with 25 of the 40 rebuilds which have been paused.

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Responding to an article by Polly Toynbee, Prof Sophie Watson highlights the social benefits of the workplace, while Pete Dorey takes issue with ‘labour market flexibility’. Plus letters from Ian Arnott , Maddy Gray , Dr Kirstine Oswald and David Mayle

I was surprised to read such a partisan argument on working from home by Polly Toynbee, whose articles I often appreciate ( Labour has been sucked into the WFH culture war. It should know better, 14 January ). Yes, there are certainly advantages – mitigating the environmental effects of commuter travel, flexibility of hours particularly for working parents, and so on.

But it is a far more complex picture. For many people – particularly for young or single people – the workplace is an important place of social connection. It also makes possible informal connections that can enhance creativity, mitigate tensions that can arise through email communication, make possible the creation of new networks, and countless other benefits.

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