Good morning. It is going to be a busy political news day, but potentially quite a mixed and messy one. Keir Starmer is in Helsinki for a meeting of the Joint Expeditionary Force (the northern European military pact – the Nordics, the Baltics, the Dutch and the UK), and he has already been speaking to the media. In the Commons it is the last day before the Easter recess, which means it is “take out the trash day” – the trash, in this case, being government announcements that have to be reported to parliament (so they can’t be announced during the recesss), but which have been held back because they’re moderately embarrassing (or sometimes just too dull). There are 24 written ministerial statements (full list here). Few, if any, of these are likely to produce big headline stories, but there should be a lot here for people interested in the workings of government.

And, with the parliamentary session also about to end soon (the new king’s speech is expected to take place on Wednesday 13 May), the government is also trying to get all its bills onto the statue book. And it faced a new problem last night after peers voted for a second time to insert a clause into the bill committing the government to an Australian-style social media ban for under-16s.

The government has already launched a consultation on the case for a ban, and it is including provisions in the children’s wellbeing and schools bill that would allow it to implement a ban very quickly, and so the gap between what the Lords are demanding and what the government is already offering is quite narrow. But Starmer does not want to commit to a full social media ban for under-16s, because he thinks other options might be more effective.

Speaking to reporters in Helsinki, Starmer said he was determined to do more to tackle “addictive features in social media” and that he would announce more on this tomorrow. Asked about the Los Angeles court case where Meta and YouTube were found liable for deliberately designing addictive products, he said he thought it should that the public wanted to see social media companies regulated more aggressively. He went on:

Obviously we’ll study that ruling very carefully, but I’m absolutely clear that we need to go further.

The status quo isn’t good enough. We need to do more to protect children.

That’s why we’re consulting about issues such as banning social media for under-16s.

I’m very keen that we do more on addictive features within social media.

We’ve already taken the powers so that when we get to the end of the consultation, we don’t have to wait years to implement this.

But I want to be really clear, it’s not if things are going to change, things are going to change. The question is, how much and what are we going to do?

And that’s what we’re working on. I’ll be saying some more about this tomorrow.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: The Department for Work and Pensions publishes annual poverty figures. And the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero publishes fuel poverty figures.

10am: Robert Jenrick, the Reform UK Treasury spokesperson, holds a media event at a Dover petrol station to promote the party’s call for VAT on petrol to be halved for three months.

10am: John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, launches the SNP’s 2026 election campaign. At 10.30am Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, launches his party’s Holryood election campaign, and at 1.30pm Russell Findlay, the Scottish Tory leader, launches his campaign.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

After 11.30am: Torsten Bell, the pensions minister, is expected to make a Commons statement about the failure of National Savings and Investments to pay money owed to the families of people who have died.

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