Buckingham Palace has announced the Queen will meet Joe and Jill Biden at Windsor Castle next Sunday.

Mr Biden will be in the UK next week for his first trip abroad as president. He will attend the G7 summit in Cornwall before meeting Her Majesty.

The following Monday, 14 June, he will head to Brussels for a Nato summit.

DUP minister Edwin Poots has defended his decision to suspend post-Brexit checks at Northern Ireland ports earlier this year after threats to staff.

The agriculture minister said he was “very concerned” about the risk to staff at the beginning of February.

Giving evidence to the Stormont Agriculture Committee, Mr Poots said there was a “whole series of events”, including a tip-off from a “coded source”, that led to conclude they could not guarantee the safety of staff at ports.

The Conservative Party has been fined £10,000 for campaign emails sent in the weeks after Boris Johnson became prime minister.

The Tories sent 51 emails in the prime minister’s name to people who had asked to be removed from marketing lists, urging them to join the party.

The emails also set out Tory priorities, including issues surrounding Brexit, the NHS, and police officer numbers.

The Information Commissioner’s Office said the party had committed a “serious” breach of data laws by sending the emails, which adressed recipients by name, over eight days in July 2019.

And while the investigation was ongoing, there was an “industrial-scale marketing email exercise” during the December 2019 election where nearly 23 million emails were sent and a further 95 complaints were raised.

Chart here from Statista showing the level of government spending on foreign aid since 1970. The target of 0.7 per cent was met by the coalition government under David Cameron.

Andrew Mitchell, leading the current rebellion, was involved in drawing up the legislation to pass the commitment into law in his time as international development secretary.

Theresa May has joined the Tory rebellion on cuts to foreign aid, as the growing list of backers hit 30.

Ms May‘s former deputy Damian Green, and Johnny Mercer, who recently resigned as defence minister, also added their names to an amendment led by former international development secretary Andrew Mitchell.

Ashley Cowburn, Political Correspondent, reports here.

The recovery in the UK’s service sector gathered pace in May as it was boosted by the reopening of thousands of hospitality and leisure businesses, according to new figures.

The closely-watched IHS Markit/CIPS Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) recorded a reading of 62.9 for May, up from 61 in April, representing the fastest growth in output for 24 years.

Any reading above 50 signals growth.

It was ahead of the predictions of analysts who had forecast a 61.8 reading for the month.

James Murray, the shadow treasury minister, said Labour’s proposals for an education catch-up fund would have granted a similar amount of funding as suggested by Sir Kevan Collins, ten times that on offer from the government.

Mr Murray told Sky News: “I think what the government has been exposed as having done is not prioritising children’s education, not prioritising the wellbeing of children, and this is the chancellor’s responsibility for not putting the funding forward.”

The Ealing North MP said funding for the catch-up should come from “Covid reserves”.

The government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, known commonly as furlough, currently pays 3.4 million workers up to 80 per cent of their wage if they cannot work due to the pandemic.

The scheme is set to end on 30 September, after three months of phasing payments back into the hands of employers.

From 1 July, the government will only pay 70 per cent of wages, up to £2187.50 a month, while employers will be expected to fund the next 10 per cent. The following month, the government proportion will drop to 60 per cent.

More than 11.5 million employees and 1.3 million employers have been supported by furlough since coronavirus arrived, according to government figures.

Nicola Sturgeon will today argue for the scheme to be extended beyond September, with Michael Gove saying the government is open to the idea.

Labour has called on Rishi Sunak to back the global minimum rate of corporation tax put forward by Joe Biden ahead of a meeting of G7 finance ministers tomorrow.

Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, wrote to the chancellor urging him to take the opportunity to “show leadership on curbing tax avoidance”.

The G7 is united in support for the plan with the exception of the UK. A US Treasury official said yesterday that Washington expects full endorsement of the plan.

The UK Government is “open minded” about extending the furlough scheme, Michael Gove said.

Speaking ahead of the UK four-nations summit on tackling Covid, Mr Gove said the initiative, which sees the taxpayer pay cash towards workers’ wages, had been a “huge success” that was only possible “thanks to the broad shoulders of the UK Treasury”.

Asked about a possible return to austerity, the cabinet office minister insisted higher government spending in response to the pandemic would continue.