Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has defended a video he posted online that led to him being widely accused of provoking the summer riots.

In the video released shortly after three young girls were killed by an attacker with a knife in Southport, Farage suggested “the truth is being withheld from us” and said there were reports the killer was known to security services.

He was widely criticised for publicising false information, and a subsequent poll in August said 51% of people viewed him as being to some extent responsible for the racist rioting that erupted in the wake of the Southport attacks.

Farage later admitted that one of the “reports” he was quoting came from Andrew Tate, a misogynist influencer facing criminal charges including human trafficking and rape.

But today, in a phone-in with LBC, Farage strongly defended his original video. Asked about the polling saying he was seen as to blame for the riots, Farage said that he was perceived like that because of “lies and incitement coming from Labour and Conservative politicians, and broadcasters”.

He went on:

I asked a very simple question: can we please be told the truth? That was all. Can we please be told the truth?

When it was put to him that his video message included the claim that some reports were saying the Southport killer was known to the security services, Farage said he was only saying that to ask if it were true. He went on:

What I thought vindicated me wholly was Jonathan Hall, KC, who is the tsar for terrorism and rioting, backed up by Lord Carlile, Liberal Democrat peer – both said that the public, the government and police, need to level with the public.

Farage was referring to Hall, the government’s independent reviewer of terrorist legislation telling a conference in September that the information “vacuum” after the Southport attack may have been a factor contributing to the riots. As the Times reports, Hall said:

One of the problems and the consequences of the Southport attack was that there was an information gap, a vacuum, which was filled with false speculation.

I personally think that more information could have been put out safely without comprising potential criminal proceedings.

As the Times reports, Carlile, a previous independent review of terrorist legislation, made the same point. He said:

I think we should get out more information if we possibly can. We have learned from these events that when somebody is arrested, and there was a potential issue like this arising, the police probably need to tell the media who has been arrested and what their background is.

The government is going to consult on ‘“tough” new laws designed to reduce the extent to which small firms get their bills paid late.

Making the announcement, Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, said late payments were “simply unacceptable” and that the new moves would help small businesses.

He said:

When the cashflow runs dry, small firms go under which is why we need to hold larger business to account with their payment practices and foster an environment that supports growth and jobs.

Previous governments have tried to protect SMEs (small and medium-sized entreprises) from late payment difficulties, and in theory big companies that do not report their payment practices face heavy penalties. But Reynolds said these sanctions were not being sufficiently enforced.

In a news release, the Department for Business and Trade said:

The government will consult on tough new laws which will hold larger firms to account and get cash flowing back into businesses – helping deliver our mission to grow the economy.

In addition, new legislation being brought in the coming weeks will require all large businesses to include payment reporting in their annual reports – putting the onus on them to provide clarity in their annual reports about how they treat small firms. This will mean company boards and international investors will be able to see how firms are operating.

Enforcement will also be stepped up on the existing late payment performance reporting regulations which require large companies to report their payment performance twice yearly on GOV.UK.

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has said that Donald Trump’s claim about immigrants in Ohio eating pet cats and dogs – widely seen as one of the ex-president’s more ludicrous falsehoods – will turn out to be true.

Farage, who is proud of his friendship with Trump, made the claim this morning in a phone-in with LBC in which he also said he wanted to see Trump re-elected because he thought that would make the world safer.

Farage has been giving interviews ahead of the Reform UK conference, which opens in Birmingham tomorrow.

Asked on LBC why he supported Trump so much, Farage replied:

Because I think the world is a safer place with Trump, I think his instincts on the big stuff are right, I do not believe for a moment that Kabul would now be controlled by the Taliban again [if Trump had remained president].

I don’t believe for a moment that the Ukraine war would even have happened. And I think that peace through strength is a very important thing.

The presenter, Nick Ferrari, asked Farage if he believed Trump when he said, in his debate with Kamala Harris, that immigrants in Ohio were eating pet dogs and cats.

Trump is notorious for lying and saying things that are not true, but even by his standards this claim was seen as extreme. As Rachel Leingang explains for the Guardian here, there is no evidence for this allegation, which has been widely repeated by Republicans. It is a rumour that has spread on social media.

But Farage said he thought Trump would turn out to be right. He told Ferrari:

Whenever [Trump] says something like this that sounds absolutely crackers, in the end, there always proves to be some truth in it.

When Ferrari pressed him again, Farage said:

I’ll have a tenner with you that within the next month or so, we find some evidence of it. What the scale of it is, I have no idea …I think Trump generally, when he says these things, is proved to be right.

Even JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, has suggested there is an element of fabrication in the claims he and Trump has been spreading. In an interview with CNN at the weekend Vance said the claims were based on “first-hand accounts”. But he went on:

The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.

In interviews this morning Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, also said that he rejected “very much” a claim by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, that Labour’s decision to suspend some arms sales to his country was a boost to Hamas.

Netanyahu made the claim in an interview with the Daily Mail. He told the paper:

After the October 7 Hamas massacre, the previous British government was clear in its support. Unfortunately, the current government is sending mixed messages.

They say that Israel has the right to defend itself, but they undermine our ability to exercise that right both by reversing Britain’s position on the absurd allegations made by the ICC [International Criminal Court] prosecutor against Israel and by blocking weapons sales to Israel as we fight against the genocidal terrorist organisation that carried out the October 7 massacre.

And, on the suspension of arms sales, he said:

The new UK government suspended 30 arms licences to Israel, days after Hamas executed six Israeli hostages, sending a horrible message to Hamas.

These misguided decisions will not change Israel’s determination to defeat Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organisation that savagely murdered 1,200 people on October 7, including 14 British citizens, and took 255 people, including five British hostages.

Asked how he reacted to Netanyahu saying Labour was sending a “horrible message to Hamas”, Reynolds said:

I would respectfully reject very much that position and say the decision we took was fair, was proportionate, was consistent with international law, and, fundamentally what we need, what everyone needs in the Middle East is a ceasefire in that conflict.

That is in Israel’s interest. I think it’s in everyone’s interest to make sure we get there.

But we will always comply with international law as a government. I think you’d expect that of the UK government, but I was cognisant of the risk in the north, in Lebanon, from Hezbollah, and made sure the restrictions we put in place reflected that situation.

As business secretary, Reynolds took the final decision to suspend the arms licences, but he was acting on advice from the Foreign Office.

In his interviews this morning Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, defended Keir Starmer over his record of accepting freebies.

On Monday the Guardian reported that “Starmer has declared more free tickets and gifts than other major party leaders in recent times, with his total now topping £100,000”. Sky News has also produced its own version of this story, with figures showing how Starmer compares with other MPs who have accepted many gifts.

Referring to Starmer accepting tickets for events like football matches and concerts, Reynolds said that politicians doing jobs that involved working long hours needed some relaxation. Speaking on Times Radio, he said:

There’s always going to be the case where people in public life are invited to certain events. I can tell you having been a secretary of state for two months, pretty much every working hour of it is spent working. And if people get the chance for a little bit of relaxation as part of that, again, I’ve no problem or objection to that.

When the presenter, Aasmah Mir, put it to Reynolds that he seemed to be saying these freebies were “a perk of the job”, Reynolds argued politicians accepted tickets to events like this so they could “engage” with people.

It’s not a perk of the job, it’s part of the job. People want to engage with decision makers. They want to ask you to be aware of what they are doing. Again, I think we have the right rules on transparency in relation to that. But this is about the job that we do and the need to be engaged with the sectors that we cover.

And he made the same argument on Sky News, where he was asked specifically about Starmer accepting tickets for a Taylor Swift concert. Reynolds said:

I think these are major cultural, sporting events. I think it’s important people in public life have some connection to that, that they are aware of that. Of course, going to see Taylor Swift – I’ve never seen her myself, but I hear it’s a very significant and lovely experience to do so.

But, again, as long as those things are declared openly, transparently, in accordance with the rules, there’s no objection on my part to that.

Good morning. Yesterday the BBC broke the story that Sue Gray, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, is paid £170,000 a year, which is about £3,000 a year more than the PM himself. It is not a typical BBC story (more on that later), and it would be a classic prosecution exhibit for anyone arguing that political journalists are too obsessed with insider processology. There is also a strong argument that ministers and officials at the very top of politics are paid relatively little anyway if you take into account the skill set required, the hours worked, and what they might earn in the private sector.

Yes, as Chris Mason, the BBC’s political editor has argued in a blog about the story, this is more than just a slice of Whitehall trivia. That is because the story suggests serious feuding is happening within the Labour adviser machine in government. A story like this would not have ended up on the BBC without someone quite important briefing viciously against Gray, and the revelation has angered other special advisers who claim that Gray is to blame for them being offered measly salaries, at least compared to what their Tory predecessors were on, or what they were earning when they were paid by the Labour party.

So what, you might think. A few dozen special advisers most people have never heard of want to be paid more. Don’t we all? That might end up as being the appropriate response to the story. But if this row means No 10 can’t function properly because the PM’s most senior political adviser is too divisive, it will matter.

Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, has been doing a media round this morning, and, in an interview with Kay Burley on Sky News, he rejected her suggestion that Gray’s decision to accept more pay than the PM demonstrated her “stunning arrogance”. When this was put to him, Reynolds replied:

Clearly this an important job.

There’s a process that sets these paybands. It will reflect previous experience … It is a long-established way of establishing within certain pay bands renumeration relating to the job that you do. That’s what have been followed in this case.

The original BBC story included a quote from a source saying it was put to Gray that she might want to accept a small cut so she earned less than the PM, and that she declined. Government sources are saying that is “categorically untrue”.

Reynolds also suggested Starmer himself did not decide Gray’s pay. He said:

I think it’s important people understand that the pay bands for any official, any adviser, are not set by politicians. There’s an official process that does that. I don’t, for instance, get to set the pay for my own advisers who work directly for me. So, there’s a process, we don’t have political input into that.

The decision to increase the top salary available to special advisers in No 10, compared to what it was before the election, was taken by a committee of officials. But, according to the BBC story, Starmer signed off its decision.

When it was put to Reynolds that this was hypocritical given the fact that Starmer criticised Dominic Cummings getting a big pay rise when he was Boris Johnson’s chief adviser, Reynolds ignored this point and just replied:

There’s a process that sets these things. It is widely recognised. It’s long-standing. It hasn’t changed and that is how pay bands are set for any adviser.

There will be more on this as the morning goes on – not least because there is not much else in the diary. In fact, the main news is likely to come late afternoon. Starmer is doing a marathon series of interviews with regional TV editors (26 of them, according to Politico), but their contents are embargoed until 5pm.

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