Also on the panel is Lord Howard - a former Tory leader - who is asked why his party where hit hard in Thursday's election.

Howard says it is "natural" to blame the government and accepts people are "not as well off as they could be" at the moment, he says, adding that he wishes the new government well.

Unite union general secretary Sharon Graham, meanwhile, says there are "lots of things that need to be dealt with" by the incoming government, saying the future of Tata Steel's Port Talbot plant is one.

There, she says, jobs could be lost in "a matter of days" and the government needs to "back" British steel, with investment in the industry "key".

The show begins with the new Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds who tells Laura Kuenssberg walking up Downing Street on Friday "was a very special moment personally and for the group of people assembling to make that cabinet".

Turning to the panel after recapping the Sunday newspapers, the historian Simon Schama says it is a "reboot for democracy" which he says is a "healthy thing".

As he goes through UK political history Schama says this result is "shrewdly" presented by Sir Keir Starmer.

But he warns not to expect miracles.

Image source, Getty Images

We'll hear shortly from new Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg - but coming up later on the show is former Conservative immigration minister Robert Jenrick.

He has been writing in the Sunday Times this weekend telling the paper the Tories have "suffered a crushing defeat".

In the paper, external Jenrick wrote that he believes the Conservative Party lost the election "because we got Brexit done but nothing else".

"This was the Conservative Party’s worst result for centuries," Jenrick said. "Not only did we lose almost all of the 'red' and 'blue' walls, but vast swathes of our inner heartlands too.

"The public have had enough and want to see that we are an effective and serious opposition. We owe that to the country."

And we’re live - Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg is now on air on BBC One, the BBC News Channel and BBC iPlayer.

You can press Watch live above to watch the show.

And we’ll bring you live text updates, clips, reaction and analysis right here on this page.

An overflowing in-tray...published at 08:55 British Summer Time 7 July

08:55 BST 7 July

Lora Jones
Business reporter

To say Jonathan Reynolds will have an overflowing in-tray on his desk would probably be an understatement.

Just some of the most pressing issues the new secretary of state for business and trade faces include:

• Tata Steel job losses: Tata hopes Labour will honour a £500m subsidy, raising hopes jobs can be protected at the steelworks after recent strike action was narrowly averted
• Thames Water: The troubled supplier is due to release its annual results on Tuesday, perhaps signalling the depths of its debt problems and raising further questions around whether the government may have to step in with a temporary nationalisation programme
• Shein: Reports that the Chinese-founded fast fashion firm is planning to list on the London Stock Exchange have gathered pace in recent weeks. Some see a potential London float as a boost for the UK, others have raised concerns over previous allegations around forced labour, which the company has denied, as well as the environmental impact of its quick-turnaround production methods

Lots to get into - we’ll keep you across the latest developments as we hear him speak.

Image source, PA Media

Last but not least, we will also hear from Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey.

On Saturday afternoon the Liberal Democrats clinched the final seat to be declared marking a haul of 72 seats - the party's highest number ever.

It also represents a big increase on its performance in the 2019 election, when it returned to Parliament with just 11 MPs.

Several Tory ministers were unseated by Lib Dem challenges, including Education Secretary Gillian Keegan, Justice Secretary Alex Chalk, Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer and Science Secretary Michelle Donelan.

Sir Ed Davey - known for his exuberant style of campaigning during the trail - hailed a "record-breaking" night for the Lib Dems.

"I've rather enjoyed this campaign," Davey said in his acceptance speech after increasing his majority from 11,000 to 17,000 in his own seat of Kingston and Surbiton.

Image source, EPA

Laura Kuenssberg will also be speaking to Tory MPs Victoria Atkins and Robert Jenrick, who both served as secretaries of state under Rishi Sunak’s former Conservative government.

Atkins retained her seat in Louth and Horncastle on Thursday, where she has been an MP since 2010.

She has held positions as minister for women and financial secretary and most recently held the role of secretary of state for health and social care.

Jenrick has also held on to his constituency of Newark, which he has been representing since 2014.

His most recent government role was as state minister for immigration in the home office, a position he resigned from because he disagreed with the government’s Rwanda scheme, which he stated at the time did not go far enough.

So far none of the Conservatives' 121 surviving MPs have confirmed whether they plan to run in the eventual contest to replace the former PM, but both Jenrick and Atkins have been tipped as potential successors to Rishi Sunak.

Image source, Reuters

Another guest on today's programme is Andy Burnham. The Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, he won his third successive term in May 2024.

He was born in 1970 in Liverpool and joined the Labour Party aged 15, having partly been politicised by the miners' strikes of the 1980s.

In 2001 Burnham was first elected as an MP and five years later was promoted by Tony Blair to the position of junior Home Office minister. He then served as culture secretary under Gordon Brown and became health secretary in 2009.

Burnham joined the race to succeed Brown as party leader in 2010 but lost out to Ed Miliband, coming fourth out of five candidates. He did better in 2015, coming second, beaten by Jeremy Corbyn.

He served in Corbyn's shadow cabinet, but stepped down to run for the mayoralty of Greater Manchester - a position he won in 2017 with 63% of the vote.

Keir Starmer has signalled more power could be given to metro mayors as he announced he would hold a meeting of the metro mayors on Tuesday to discuss with them “their part in delivering the growth that we need across the United Kingdom”.

Image source, EPA

As we've mentioned, we'll be shortly hearing from Jonathan Reynolds, the new government’s secretary of state for business and trade.

Reynolds was born in Houghton-le-Spring, Sunderland in 1980, and joined Labour while still in college.

He has been the MP for Stalybridge and Hyde, having won four consecutive terms since 2010 and has served as shadow energy and climate change minister, shadow transport minister and as shadow treasury minister from 2016 until 2020.

He then held the position of shadow secretary of state for work and pensions, shadow secretary of state for business and industrial strategy and most recently shadow secretary of state for business and trade.

As he starts his new position in Sir Keir Starmer’s cabinet, Reynolds faces a number of issues as business secretary, most pressingly the potential takeover of the Royal Mail by a Czech billionaire, whether to temporarily nationalise Thames Water and how to handle the closure of Tata Steel blast furnaces in Port Talbot.

Joining the panel on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg are former Tory leader Lord Michael Howard, general secretary of Unite trade union Sharon Graham, and historian Simon Schama.

• Lord Michael Howard, is a former Conservative leader and former leader of the opposition. He had called for Boris Johnson to resign in 2022 following by-election defeats, saying Partygate had revealed an "unacceptable" culture that "came from the top"
• Sharon Graham is the general secretary of Unite, one of the biggest unions in the UK and Labour's biggest trade union backer. Unite refused to endorse Labour’s manifesto in June.
• Simon Schama is a historian and BBC presenter. He is a professor of art history and history at Columbia University

At 09:00 this morning we’ll hear from a host of political figures on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

Facing Laura’s questions will be Lib Dem leader Ed Davey, Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds, Labour Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, conservative MPs and former state secretaries Victoria Atkins and Robert Jenrick.

And on the panel are former Tory leader Lord Michael Howard, general secretary of Unite trade union Sharon Graham, and historian Simon Schama.

Stick with us as we bring you updates, analysis and the latest news lines.

Will Starmer reset relations with Holyrood after years of tension?published at 08:00 British Summer Time 7 July

08:00 BST 7 July

Nick Eardley
Reporting from Downing Street

You might hear the word reset a lot over the next few weeks. That’s inevitable when a new government comes in.

But will Sir Keir Starmer be able to reset relations with the Scottish Government after years of tension between Westminster and Holyrood?

He might find it easier than his predecessors in No 10.

Labour is now the biggest party in Scotland when it comes to general elections. By some margin.

That means it has a mandate in a way the SNP used to argue the Conservatives didn’t.

The SNP’s dominance of Scottish politics has taken a massive dent too - which is likely to mean a period of self-reflection, particularly when it comes to independence.

In other words; the context is very, very different for this relationship.

There will always be a tension between a Westminster government and an independence supporting party.

Remember, support for independence in Scotland hasn’t fallen in the same way support for the SNP has.

But both the prime minister and Scotland’s first minister have said they are looking forward to working together. It’ll be interesting to see if that leads to a new period of cooperation.

Image source, Reuters

This UK election saw the second lowest turnout since 1885. Turnout across the UK as a whole was 60% - only 2001 was lower with 59%.

The lowest turnout of any constituency was 40% in Manchester Rusholme, where Afzal Khan held the seat for Labour. The bottom five for turnout also included Leeds South, Hull East, Blaenau Gwent & Rhymney and Tipton & Wednesbury.

Jessica Ligh, 28, is one of several people in Middleton, part of Leeds South, who says she did not vote.

"I don't really know how it all works," she says. "I don't really follow it, or watch the news."

She also didn't have the required ID, and says that issue - plus the general pressures of day-to-day life - were factors she believed might be behind the low turnout in the area. This general election was the first where voters had to show identification to take part.

Gary O'Donoghue
Reporting from Westminster

Image source, Getty Images

A Labour source has confirmed that new Health Secretary Wes Streeting has been having conversations with Alan Milburn, Tony Blair's health secretary during the latter part of his first term and the beginning of his second term in government.

Milburn was responsible for introducing NHS federation trusts and expanding the private sector's role in the provision of NHS services.

Asked if the conversations between Milburn and Streeting had included further expansion of private sector provision, the source said: "We’ve consistently said we will use spare capacity wherever it is to get faster treatment for NHS patients”.

Suggestions that Milburn might take up some kind of executive role in the NHS, or get a life peerage and become a minister were downplayed significantly by the source.

"Alan has been working closely with Wes and his team to make sure they’re ready to hit the ground running," the source went on to say.

"What Alan showed as health secretary was that it’s investment and reform that cuts waiting lists and makes the NHS sustainable for the future. That’s the approach this government will take too," they added.

Image source, PA Media

In his first press conference as prime minister, Keir Starmer has said he wants to reduce the number of people going to prison through renewed efforts to cut reoffending.

Starmer said too many people found themselves back in jail "relatively quickly" after being sent there and admitted there was no "overnight solution".

Steve Searby, who is from the Prison Officers' Association (POA), represents thousands of prison workers across the UK. He has told BBC Breakfast the situation has been a problem which "has been coming for years and years".

"I cannot see how we are getting out of this crisis," Searby explains. "The whole criminal justice system has been in crisis since before Covid-19.

"The situation is something which isn't going away, you have to deal with it. There is no immediate fix."

Recent Ministry of Justice figures, external show jails currently hold 87,395 inmates, with the total number of spaces standing at 88,778.

Searby also believes the situation in prisons across the country is going to get "worse before it gets better".

"The prison service has been the forgotten service for years and years," he adds. "This is having a detrimental effect on staff as well.

"You need to get people who know what they are talking about around the table."

Catriona Renton
BBC Scotland reporter

The Prime Minister has pledged, in his words, to place Scotland "back at the beating heart" of everything the UK Government does.

He said that he was offering the Scottish Government a "genuine seat at the table" and that they could deliver change for a generation through "meaningful co-operation".

This is part of an ambition he's set out to try to establish a way of working across the United Kingdom that he says would "be different and better" than in recent years.

In a phone call with Keir Starmer on Friday, John Swinney committed to working cooperatively with the UK government.

His spokesperson said the first minister believed there were many ways in which the two governments could work together for the benefit of people in Scotland.

Image source, Getty Images

Writing in the Sunday Times today, Tony Blair is warning Keir Starmer that the new government's focus should be on illegal migration and to avoid "any vulnerability on wokeism".

The remarks came after the former PM congratulated Starmer on "the most remarkable turnaround in recent British electoral history".

But Blair says he does not want his successor to get complacent. He also says Starmer should introduce digital identity cards and embrace the potential of technology - a move he attempted to roll out himself while in power but which was killed off by the following coalition government.

"We need a plan to control immigration. If we don't have rules, we get prejudices," Blair writes. "In office, I believed the best solution was a system of identity, so that we know precisely who has a right to be here."

In its editorial, the Sun gives a positive assessment of Sir Keir's news conference on Saturday, describing it as a "confident, analytical, performance of a prime minister determined to be across every detail".

But the paper warns he'll soon find out that governing a country is not the same as prosecuting a court case.

Meanwhile the Sunday Mirror's editorial says the work of rebuilding Britain has begun, after what it calls 14 years of despair under the Conservatives.

The paper says the prime minister knows that, if Reform UK is to be kept at bay, Labour must deliver.

More from the papers here.

Francesca Gillett
Live reporter

It may be Sunday, but for the new government and new opposition (and old us) there's no rest yet. Here's what's coming up:

• PM on tour: Today Starmer sets off on a tour of the four nations - travelling to Edinburgh to meet First Minister John Swinney. He'll then head to Belfast and Cardiff tomorrow, before returning to England to meet with regional mayors
• New faces: We now know who's getting some of the junior ministerial jobs. Among them are two blasts from the past - Jacqui Smith and Douglas Alexander who served under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Another pick is Ellie Reeves, the sister of Chancellor Rachel Reeves. And we're primed for more possible announcements today
• World stage: Downing Street has shared a video of Starmer speaking to Biden in their first phone call, external, which took place on Friday. Starmer's heading to Washington DC on Tuesday for a Nato summit
• Rwanda scheme ends: The new government has begun manoeuvres to scrap the policy. The home secretary reveals that more than 200 people who had been detained to go to Rwanda were already released on bail during the election campaign, and the final two will be released in the coming days
• What about the Tories? No Conservatives have announced bids for the party leadership yet.
• Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg: Lots to talk about this week. Lib Dem leader Ed Davey and the new Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds are among the guests.

Downing Street has shared a video of Starmer's first call with US President Joe Biden after taking over as PM.

"This is the White House Situation Room, going to connect Prime Minister Starmer to President Biden," the video begins.

Biden congratulates Starmer and says there is "no doubt" that the UK and US are going to "continue our special relationship".

Image source, No 10