NHS England figures show waiting time performance getting worse - Politics live

Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen

11.40am GMT

Gerard Coyne does not seem to have generate huge media interest in his manifesto launch.

In Birmingham for launch of Gerard Coyne manifesto for Unite general-sec, but I'm almost only reporter here pic.twitter.com/cID0Q02S5c

Our current leader spends too much of his time – and your money – playing at Westminster politics. I will never try to be the puppet master of the Labour Party. The most important job is standing up for you the members, wherever you live and work in England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland or Gibraltar.

Your union takes more than £150m of subscription money from members every year. I do not believe there is enough openness about how your money is spent, so I will introduce proper transparency to Unite’s finances. At the moment members of the union cannot see what their money is being spent on. If elected as general secretary I will set up a new value for money and audit committee, directly elected from the lay membership, to ensure you get the best value for your subscriptions.

11.14am GMT

The Scottish government has urged the UK government not to implement section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act, the provision that would mean newspapers who do not sign up to a government-approved regulator having to pay the costs of people who sue them for libel even if the newspapers win. In a statement Fiona Hyslop, the Scottish culture secretary, said:

We are committed to ensuring the practices which led to the Leveson Inquiry in the first place do not happen again and we believe that all individuals should have the ability to seek redress when they feel they have been the victim of press malpractice.

However, the context of press regulation in Scotland is quite distinct from that in England and Wales and section 40 of the crime and courts act does not apply under Scots law. We have not introduced statutory measures to incentivise participation in the regulatory system, as has happened in Westminster, and I can confirm we have no plans to do so.

10.46am GMT

Here is the NHS England bulletin out today (pdf) with the performance statistics for November 2016.

And here are some of the key points.

The long-term trend is one of greater volumes of both urgent and emergency care and elective activity, with A&E attendances up 4.5% [the 12 months to November compared with the previous 12-month period], emergency admissions up 3.5%, diagnostic tests up 4.8% and consultant-led treatment up 4.4%.

10.01am GMT

The latest figures from NHS England show that only 88.4% of A&E patients in November were dealt with within four hours, Sky News reports. The target is 95%.

I will post more on this when I have looked in detail at the figures.

9.44am GMT

A Democratic Unionist minister has reversed his controversial decision to cut an Irish language initiative in the midst of Stormont’s eco-boiler scandal, the Press Association reports.

Communities minister Paul Givan’s decision to cut a £50,000 bursary to pay for children to visit gaelic speaking communities - the Gaeltacht - infuriated Sinn Fein and has been seen as a key factor in the republican party’s decision to pull the plug on the power-sharing institutions.

In a tweet on Thursday morning, Givan said: “My decision on the Liofa Bursary Scheme was not a political decision. I have now identified the necessary funding to advance this scheme.”

My decision on the Líofa Bursary Scheme was not a political decision. I have now identified the necessary funding to advance this scheme.

The shock development has been interpreted by some as a DUP olive branch to Sinn Fein as devolution teeters on the brink.

While the looming collapse of the ruling executive was triggered by the renewable heat incentive (RHI) affair - a green heating scandal that has left Stormont with a £490m bill - other disputes between the two main parties have been reignited by the furore.

9.34am GMT

Professor Anthony King, one of the undisputed giants of postwar British political science and a familiar face in the BBC’s live coverage of general election night results, has died aged 82.

Born in Canada, and arriving in Britain as a Rhodes scholar in the 1950s, King taught at the school of government at the University of Essex for half a century and never officially retired. After early collaborations on studies of the 1964 and 1966 general elections with David Butler, King replaced Butler as a fixture in BBC television’s coverage of UK general elections from 1983 to 2005.

9.28am GMT

Gerard Coyne has been tweeting about his manifesto launch.

Today, I'm launching my manifesto: I'll clean up Unite, freeze subscriptions & concentrate on union issues, not Westminster politics. pic.twitter.com/OzOFAAiigI

9.20am GMT

Union leadership elections tend to receive little or no attention in the mainstream press but this year’s Unite contest is different. Len McCluskey, the leftwing former docker, was first elected Unite general secretary in 2010 and he was re-elected comfortably in 2013. He is up for re-election again but this time he is facing a more serious challenge, from Gerard Coyne, Unite’s West Midlands regional secretary, who is launching his campaign manifesto this morning.

Unite is one of Britain two 1m-plus member super unions (the other is Unison) and it plays an important role in the British workplace. But Unite is also a very powerful player in Labour party politics, bankrolling the party, filling key seats on the national executive committee and exerting influence over candidate selection, and this leadership contest has become, at least in party, a proxy battle about Jeremy Corbyn. McCluskey is one of Corbyn’s strongest supporters. Coyne is arguing that McCluskey has been wrong to spend so much time dabbling in Labour’s internal politics, but he himself is seen as the candidate of the anti-Corbynites and a Coyne victory would be a significant defeat for the Corbyn project.

One of my main criticisms of Unite’s leadership is that with these huge challenges in front of him, Len McCluskey prefers to spend his time in office using the union’s money and resources to intervene in the running of the Labour Party.

I have no doubt that Unite members, and the workers Unite ought to be representing, would be better off under a Labour government, but it is not up to the General Secretary of Unite to act as Labour’s puppet master.

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