Wes Streeting, the health secretary, has insisted that a deal with the BMA to avert the resident doctors’s strike in England is still possible. In a post on social media responding to the BMA’s reaction to the PM’s article about the strike (see 9.36am), Streeting said:

The BMA seems surprised that if they reject the deal on offer and go on strike their members don’t get what the Government is offering.

We have time before Easter weekend to resolve this dispute.

A deal on jobs and pay is on the table.

At the end of his press conference Nigel Farage was asked if he was worried that his association with Donald Trump would hurt him electorally.

Farage said that he could not pretend not to know Trump. He said he admired some of the things Trump had done, on the border and on energy policy in particular. There were other things Trump had done that he did not agree with, he said, without specifying what. He went on:

He is not dictating policy to me. I’m dictating policy to me.

Farage said he also thought close links between the UK and the US were “absolutely vital”.

Q: [From the Guardian] Would you keep the youth mobility scheme that the government is negotiating with the EU, or would you repeal it?

Farage says he does not support the proposals because “this will always be one way traffic”. He says there will be three or four times as many Europeans coming to Britain as Britons going to Europe.

There are more exciting parts of the world for young British people to visit, he says. “Europe isn’t actually very sexy any more,” he says.

He says the Spanish made a “catastrophic error” by granting an amnesty to migrants in the country illegally. He goes on:

We are living in an age of increased global insecurity where national borders and protecting national interests matters more and more. And I think the youth mobility scheme falls at that first hurdle, if at nothing else.

And it’s just an attempt by the government to completely undo Brexit.

And Jenrick says, instead of letting young European people come to the UK to work, the government should be prioritising finding jobs for British people.

Q: Do you think Reform UK’s candidate vetting processes have been inadequate, given that a candidate in Wales has had to stand down after a picture emerged of him giving a Nazi salute?

Farage defends the party’s vetting process.

We vet people. We ask them to tell us the truth. We asked them for their social media handles. We do all those things.

Sometimes people lie to you and they might be using social media handles that you have no way of finding.

He says a Plaid Cymru candidate has already stood down, and he predicts the party will have more problems with candidates.

This is a problem for all parties. He goes on:

I think we’re dealing with it as effectively, if not more effectively, than the others.

(The questioner did not ask about Scotland, where five Reform candidates have already stood down or been suspended.)

Q: What do you make of the suggestion that Donald Trump could end the Iran war without securing the strait of Hormuz? Or do you think he should finish the job?

Farage replies:

I don’t think we should take literally anything right now that Donald Trump says … And then the last thing he’s going to do, or the last thing his colleagues in the White House are going to do, is to give the Iranians any idea of what their true intentions are.

Farage says he does not think anyone knows what Trump’s aims were when he embarked on the war.

Was it to remove nuclear capability? Was it aimed at regime change? I don’t think any of us quite know the absolute truth about that.

But he says he does not think Repubicans in the US would accept it if Trump were to end the war allowing Iran to continue restricting access to the strait of Hormuz. He says it is only open selectively now, “mostly for Pakistani vessels taking oil to China”.

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, and Robert Jenrick, his Treasury spokesperson, are holding a press conference at Heathrow.

They have just said that Reform UK would get rid of air passenger duty (APD), a tax on flights, on short-haul flights.

Jenrick said this would save families £45 on average per flight, or £48 on a flight in the UK. He said:

This is a time of year where millions of Brits will be going on holiday, catching some sun in Mallorca or Tenerife, and millions more will be sat at home over the Easter holidays thinking about booking a family holiday. And this year, of all years, that will be a tough decision because household finances are just so tight, and so we want to make it cheaper.

In our first budget, we will get rid of the family holiday tax. Air passenger duty will be gone for short-haul family trips, that will save a family on average £45 on their flights whether that’s abroad, or £48 if they’re going on holiday here in the UK.

That means that if you are catching a flight, for example, as a family to Málaga, you would save 23% on the cost of your flights. We appreciate that’s not a huge amount of money, but it’s an important saving that will make (it) just a bit easier, to have that family trip, to have a bit of fun, to get away and spend time with your loved ones.

He did not give details of the costings, or how this would be funded.

Asked if this would be fair, given that that wealthy people are far more likely to fly than poorer people, Jenrick did not engage with the point, but he said that people regarded APD as a sin tax, and that people should not feel ashamed for wanting to go on holiday.

He also contrasted Reform UK’s proposal with Rachel Reeves’s decision to raise APD in the budget, with the increase coming into force in April.

The Home Office has confirmed that the police are being told to stop recording non-crime hate incidents, the Press Association (PA) reports. PA says:

Under current rules, police forces are expected to look into acts which appear to be motivated by hostility towards people with certain characteristics including race, religion, disability or gender, that fall short of being crimes.

Unclear guidance has led to officers being called to people’s homes over “insults and routine arguments”, the government said.

London’s Met Police last year announced it would no longer investigate the incidents after it dropped a probe into social media posts about transgender issues by Father Ted creator Graham Linehan.

There will be no automatic wiping of the incidents from people’s records after the decision, PA understands.

Scrapping non-crime hate incidents will give officers more time to focus on their day-to-day policing, ministers hope.

The move, which comes after a College of Policing and National Police Chiefs’ Council review, will see a tighter definition of what constitutes an incident requiring police involvement.

From tomorrow the Ofgem price cap goes down from £1,758 to £1,641. The government is highlighting this as one of its cost of living support measures, because the cap is coming down as a result of decisions taken in the budget.

Here is a chart from Ofgem explaining how they calculated the new figure, which will apply for three months (from 1 April to 30 June).

It is important to stress what the price cap actually is. It is not a cap on the amount people will pay for their energy. Many people (around 50%, to be more precise) will pay more, because the cap applies to what can be charged for units of energy, not the overall bill. The Ofgem headline figure is the amount an average household would pay assuming typical household useage.

And it only lasts for three months. There will be a new figure for July to September and this morning Cornwall Insight, an energy consultancy whose price cap forecasts are widely respected in the industry, is predicting that for Q3 the cap will rise to £1,929. That is an increase of £288, or 18%, on April’s cap.

Craig Lowrey, principal consultant at Cornwall Insight, said:

A rise in July is pretty much unavoidable, but how high prices go remains to be seen.

There is some relief in the timing, summer is when energy demand is at its lowest, which should soften the impact on household energy expenditure.

If higher wholesale prices continue, it will be the effects on the October cap that have the most impact, and that is when the question of government support for households is likely to be revisited.

In response, Martin McCluskey, an energy minister, confirmed that the government was willing to intervene to help some consumers with energy costs if necessary. He said.

Tackling the affordability crisis is our number one priority and I know many families will be thinking about how events in the Middle East might impact the cost of living at home.

We will continue to fight people’s corner through this crisis and, as the energy secretary has said, if it’s necessary to intervene, we will.

The grooming gangs inquiry will directly examine whether ethnicity, culture or religion influenced offending and whether they shaped the institutional response, the Press Association reports.

Good morning. Keir Starmer is chairing a meeting of the government’s Cobra emergency committee later to discuss the Iran war, but domestic issues don’t go away and he (or, to be more accurate, his staff) have also found time to write an article for the Times delivering a warning to resident doctors in England planning to go on strike. As Jamie Grierson reports, the PM is threatening to withdraw an offer of thousands of extra NHS training posts for resident doctors if they do not call off the strike within 48 hours.

Judging by what Dr Jack Fletcher, chair of the BMA resident doctors committee, told the Today programme in an interview this morning, Starmer may have as little success with his ultimatum as Donald Trump seems to be having with his inconsistent and increasingly apocalyptic warnings to what is left of the Iranian government.

Fletcher told Today:

I’m very happy to sit down with the government at any point to try and negotiate a settlement, but I don’t think that’s done by writing in newspapers and issuing threats unilaterally.

He also claimed that the BMA had been pushed into strike action because the government changed the terms of what it was offering at the last minute. He said:

The government made very late changes to the pay offer, reducing the pay investment and stretching it over a longer period in a way that had not been previously talked about.

Ministers effectively moved the goalposts on the deal at the last minute.

But these negotiations are not about arbitrary cut-offs as the prime minister seems to think.

Any ‘deadline’ disappears the moment there is a credible and sustainable offer on the table.

Our focus remains on getting a good deal for both doctors and for patients, and we are seeking to talk once again with the government later today with every intention of achieving a meaningful outcome that could see the strikes called off and a pay deal we can support.

Asked if it was true that he had personally been in favour of giving his members the option of voting on the pay offer, Fletcher replied:

Two weeks ago, the government took that investment, reduced it, and then stretched it over three years. That is a very, very, very different outcome to the one that we were discussing just two weeks ago.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9am: The Home Office publishes the terms of reference for the national grooming gangs inquiry.

Morning: Zack Polanski, the Green leader, launches his party’s campaign for the Senedd election in Cardiff.

Morning: Kemi Badenoch is on a visit in south-west Hertfordshire.

Morning: John Swinney, the SNP leader and Scottish first minister, is campaigning in Dundee and Stirling. Alex Cole-Hamiliton, the Scottish Lib Dem leader, and Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, are also doing media-focused campaign events.

11am: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, and Robert Jenrick, his Treasury spokesperson, are holding a press conference at Heathrow airport to publicise a cost of living announcement.

Afternoon: Keir Starmer chairs a meeting of the government’s Cobra emergency committee to discuss the Iran war.

Starmer is also meeting Ahmed al‑Sharaa, president of Syria, in Downing Street at some point today.

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