Andy Burnham has said fly-tippers will be forced to pay for the clean-up when they dump waste illegally. The prime minister laid out his plans to crackdown on waste crimes as he visited an illegal dump in West Yorkshire.

Racism and sexism have become normalised in Britain, the equalities minister has said, as she warned that young men were being sucked into violent misogyny by the “cesspit” of social media. Bridget Phillipson said she was increasingly worried about how commonplace misogyny and racism had become, fuelled by online interactions and statements by politicians she said would not have been acceptable a few years ago.

Phillipson suggested her sweeping reforms to special educational needs provision could be adapted to give parents greater protections if they are unhappy about the service being provided for their children. The former education secretary told the Guardian ministers were open to making changes to the plans, which were announced earlier this year but which have since been subject to consultation.

Education Lucy Powell on Thursday addressed the GCSE gender gap, which shrank to its narrowest point this century. Almost one in four boys in England received top grades in maths while results in English improved across the board. “The white working-class review that was recently done, that was one things it found, that more boys need to see the purpose of education, they need to see the line of sight into work,” Powell told the Press Association.

Andy Burnham told reporters that funding for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s security arrangements on their return to the UK was a “private matter”, the Press Association reports. Harry and Meghan are expected to return to live in Britain later this month. After six years in the US, they will be moving with their two children, Prince Archie, seven, and Princess Lilibet, five, to a non-royal residence outside London.

Suella Braverman has urged young people getting their GCSE results not to “waste your time studying for a pointless degree at a mediocre university”. The Reform UK education spokesperson made the comment as she set out the party’s plans to create 600,000 more apprenticeship starts a year by the end of the first term of a Reform government.

Home secretary Shabana Mahmood said she wants a “fair spread” of accommodation to house asylum seekers. Prime minister Andy Burnham said last week the country “cannot have a situation where it’s only the poorest communities in the country” housing asylum seekers.

Foreign secretary Ed Miliband has issued a rebuke to Israel after it published a tender for construction of a settlement in the occupied West Bank, calling it an “unacceptable and destructive act”. He said the UK would not “stand back and accept the destruction of the two-state solution”, as he pledged to set out measures in response to Israeli policies in the coming weeks.

A former archbishop of Canterbury has accused Nigel Farage of misusing the UK’s Christianity “to channel anti-Muslim feeling” and said he also had “some awkward questions” for the far-right activist Tommy Robinson. Dr Rowan Williams, who was the archbishop of Canterbury for 10 years until 2012, said there was an “inevitable scepticism these days about some claims to religious conviction”.

Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff has lifted the lid on how “unbearable” it was working in No 10, revealing she feared her conversations were being recorded by colleagues seeking to leak her remarks to the media. Sue Gray, who was the most powerful adviser in Downing Street before her resignation in 2024, was highly critical of the working environment under Starmer, saying she was “disappointed” that he did not act on her concerns about staff briefing journalists against her.