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It was a polite start at PMQs today as deputy prime minister Angela Rayner took questions from MPs, while Prime Minister Keir Starmer made his way back to the UK from the G7 summit in Canada.

However, the cordial tone didn't last long in the House. Fiery jabs were exchanged between Rayner and shadow home secretary Chris Philp, who quizzed the deputy PM on the government's response to tackling grooming gangs, small boats crossings and housing.

Let's take a look at the key exchanges:

• Angela Rayner began with a statement in the Commons, paying tribute to those killed in the Air India crash
• Philp asked if Rayner would agree to an independent and statutory inquiry into the "rape gangs scandal," which the deputy PM agreed to

• Rayner then accused the Tories of "losing control" of Britain's borders as Philp quizzed Rayner on whether the government would accept the "small boats crisis" as an issue of public safety
• He then challenged Rayner on axing the Rwanda scheme. He said the scheme acted as a "deterrent," but Rayner disputed this as being "absolute rubbish"
• The Liberal Democrats quizzed Rayner on the Israel-Iran war and whether Labour would "blindly follow" the US - Rayner said she agreed with Trump that Iran must not have nuclear weapons and she supports a "diplomatic approach"
• The SNP pressed Labour on "disability cuts" - something Rayner hit back on, accusing the SNP of "decades of failure"

We are closing our live page on this week's Prime Minister's Questions. You can read more on the issues discussed across BBC News.

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A short while ago, the transport secretary told the House of Commons the government has formally delayed the HS2 project beyond the target date of 2033.

Heidi Alexander described the state of the project in stark terms: "It's an appalling mess, but it's one we will sort out."

Alexander addressed the report into the project by the CEO of HS2 Ltd and said: "Based on his advice, I see no route by which trains can be running by 2033 as planned."

Although Alexander did not confirm when the high speed railway line will begin operating, she did confirm that phase one - from London to Birmingham - will go ahead.

"We need to set targets which we can confidently deliver, that the public can trust, and that will take time. But rest assured, where there are inefficiencies, we will root them out," she said.

In response, the shadow transport secretary said "mistakes were made" in the delivery of HS2. Gareth Bacon said costs more than doubled and the project was "repeatedly delayed".

"It has long been apparent that HS2 was not going according to plan," he said.

Read more on the delays to the project here.

Which party oversaw record small boat arrivals?published at 13:36 British Summer Time

13:36 BST

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By Rob England

Earlier, deputy prime minister Angela Rayner and shadow home secretary Chris Philp traded statistics on the number of small boat arrivals.

Philp said that 2025 had been “the worst year in history for illegal immigrants crossing the Channel”.

Rayner replied that there had been more arrivals over a yearly period under the Conservative government than under Labour.

Both statements are true, but they are looking at different time periods. Philp was referring to the latest figures for 2025 (up to 16 June) - 16,545 arrivals.

That is the highest figure for the first six months of any year since small boat records began in 2018.

Rayner was referring to nearly a full year of arrivals. There have been just over 40,000 arrivals since Labour took power on 4 July 2024.

That is lower than the 43,000 people who arrived in the same period (July-June) two years ago - under the Conservatives.

Are most small boat arrivals men?published at 13:24 British Summer Time

13:24 BST

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By Lucy Gilder

Earlier, shadow home secretary Chris Philp spoke about the Casey report , externalon grooming gangs saying it showed “a significant number of rape gang perpetrators were non-UK nationals or were asylum seekers, many of whom entered the country illegally".

“And we know of course that most illegal immigrants crossing the Channel are young men, contrary to what the chief secretary said last week,” he added.

The Casey report said a “significant proportion” of “live” grooming cases “appear to involve suspects who are non-UK nationals and/or who are claiming asylum in the UK” - but it did not say how they entered the country.

Philp is right that the majority of people who cross the Channel are young men. The “chief secretary” he was referring to is Treasury Minister Darren Jones, who said on the BBC’s Question Time last Thursday that of the boats he’d seen “the majority of the people in these boats are children, babies and women".

Jones called a comment by another panellist - Reform’s Zia Yusuf - that more than 90% of arrivals were men, “not true”.

In the first three months of 2025, there were 6,420 small boat arrivals, external where the age and sex of the person was recorded. Of these, 5,183 were adult men and most were under 40.

Jones later clarified that he had been referring to one boat that he had seen on a recent visit to Border Security Command in Dover.

Has the government reduced asylum hotels to 'just over 200'?published at 13:09 British Summer Time

13:09 BST

By Tom Edgington

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner claimed the government had reduced the number of hotels used to house asylum seekers since coming to power.

She said: “400 hotels [under the Conservatives] which we’ve reduced to just over 200 hotels in the first 12 months of us being in government”.

It’s hard to test Rayner’s claim though because the Home Office does not routinely make this data available.

Earlier this year, BBC Verify submitted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request for the data.

The response revealed that hotel use peaked at 398 in September 2023, under the previous Conservative government.

When Labour came to power, that number had reduced to 212. However, our FOI showed the number had increased to 218 in December 2024.

It is possible that the number has reduced to “just over 200” since then - as Rayner claims - but this is not available to check on the Home Office website.

BBC Verify has contacted the Home Office and asked them to provide the latest figures.

Shadow transport secretary Gareth Bacon is next up in the House of Commons to speak. He says "mistakes were made" in the delivery of HS2.

Bacon says costs more than doubled and the project was "repeatedly delayed". "It has long been apparent that HS2 was not going according to plan," he says.

He describes a report that was released under the previous government that raised "serious concerns" about the HS2 project.

As a result of that, the-then government announced the cancellation of the northern leg of HS2, with money being diverted to a "multitude of transport projects".

He concludes by addressing the planning system in general, noting legal challenges HS2 faced.

He asks whether the government is looking at ways to minimise legal challenges when it comes to national infrastructure.

Heidi Alexander describes a "litany of failure" in the HS2 project and its management.

She confirms phase one, between Birmingham and London, will go ahead.

"We will learn the lessons of the past 15 years, and restore our reputation of delivering world-class infrastructure projects," she says to a relatively empty chamber.

"Billions of pounds of taxpayers' money has been wasted by constant scope changes, ineffective contracts and bad management," she says, adding that there are also allegations of fraud.

"It is an appalling mess, but it is one we will sort out," she adds.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander is delivering her statement in the Commons on HS2.

She says that a government-commissioned review led by senior infrastructure delivery adviser James Stewart was a "tough independent look at how the Department for Transport and Government delivers major projects".

She adds that the government accepts all of its recommendations.

She says the government are already delivering on those, especially on addressing five key areas. She lists them as:

• A lack of oversight and scrutiny
• Spiralling costs
• A deficit in capability and skills
• Addressing plans for Euston Station
• Transforming infrastructure delivery across government

Talking about a separate assessment by Mark Wild, the current CEO of HS2 Limited, she says she sees "no route by which trains can be running by 2033 as planned".

"It gives me no pleasure to deliver news like this," she adds.

Becky Morton
Political reporter

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Shadow home secretary Chris Philp quizzed deputy prime minister Angela Rayner on the government's response to grooming gangs in his first set of questions during PMQs.

As a reminder, a review into abuse carried out by grooming gangs in England and Wales was published on Saturday.

The government asked Baroness Casey to carry out the audit, examining existing data and evidence on the nature and scale of group-based child sexual abuse, in January.

Here are some of its key findings and recommendations:

• The report highlights flaws in data collection, which it says means it is not possible to assess the scale of the issue
• It says the ethnicity of perpetrators is "shied away from" and still not recorded in two-thirds of cases, meaning it is not possible to draw conclusions at a national level
• Over the weekend, Starmer accepted the report's recommendation that there should be a full national inquiry into child sexual exploitation in England and Wales
• The report also recommends tightening the law in England and Wales so adults who have sex with a child under 16 are always charged with rape, calling on society to "see children as children"

For more on the report, you can read my piece here.

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Pivoting to the HS2 update now, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander is speaking in the Commons. She's expected to say the high speed railway will be delayed beyond its target date of 2033.

There is "no reasonable way to deliver" the railway line on schedule and within budget, she is expected to say.

She is likely to say that Mike Brown, the former commissioner of Transport for London, has been appointed the new chair of HS2 Ltd.

• Read more about the delay to HS2

Helen Catt
Political correspondent

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They started out with a deceptively restrained and polite tone, as Chris Philp raised the experiences of grooming gang victims and asked for assurances about the scope of the planned inquiry.

That tone didn’t last.

The ensuing exchanges led the Labour backbencher Sarah Champion to criticise “point scoring on all sides”.

As a former Home Office minister, Philp was on solid turf prodding the government over grooming gangs and over small boat crossings, a situation which Downing Street has this week said is “deteriorating”.

He didn’t really manage to wrong foot Angela Rayner. As he is a former Home Office minister, it was all too easy for her to point to the Conservatives’ own record and label him as a “Johnny come lately” who hadn’t solved problems when in power.

The SNP's deputy Westminster leader Pete Wishart says the government is today introducing legislation that, he claims, will "push another 250,000 people into poverty".

He asks if Labour MPs will lose the whip if they vote against "disability cuts".

Rayner says Labour is committed to ending child poverty, and runs through measures they have taken on the issue, including "free school meals" and a "living wage rise".

She then accuses the SNP of "decades of failure".

Brian Wheeler
Reporting from the House of Commons

Silence as Labour’s Sarah Champion, the Rotherham MP who has campaigned on behalf of grooming gang victims and had been calling for an inquiry, asks her question.

She says she has been “floored” by the point scoring “on all sides” on this issue.

Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper asks a question about Donald Trump possibly leading the US to join the war between Israel and Iran.

She begins her question by saying the UK "blindly followed the US" in the 2003 Iraq war.

If the US joins the conflict between Israel and Iran, she asks, will the Labour government promise not to "blindly follow" the US into war "again".

Rayner says the UK agrees with Trump that Iran must never have nuclear weapons, and continues to support a "diplomatic approach".

Chris Mason
Political editor

Image source, Reuters

Meanwhile, here on the prime minister’s plane, we are an hour-ish from getting back to the UK from the G7 Summit in Canada.

While Angela Rayner answers questions, Keir Starmer grabs a late breakfast after a few hours broken sleep over the Canadian tundra, Greenland ice and Atlantic water.

International diplomacy done - for now. There is a Nato Summit in the Netherlands next week and the Middle East related phone calls are relentless.

Domestic politics returns.

Brian Wheeler
Reporting from the House of Commons

Rayner dubs Chris Philp a “Johnny Come Lately” as she has the final word in her clash with the shadow home secretary.It was a spirited debut by Philp but didn’t really shift the dial.

For his final question, shadow home secretary Philp pushes on scrapping the Human Rights Act.

Philp asks: "Why does the government side with foreign criminals and not the British public?"

Rayner replies saying Philp and the Tories had "14 years of failure" before adding: "I take no lectures".

In a fiery retort, Philp says he doesn't know how Rayner has the "brass neck" to say Labour is getting illegal immigration under control.

Amid raucous shouts, the speaker calls for quiet.

Philp says Home Office suppliers are offering above market deals to landlords to get hold of their properties for people who have arrived in the UK on small boats. He says this is happening while "hard-pressed" young people struggle to rent and buy. Why are you prioritising this, he asks.

Rayner says immigration increased fourfold under the previous Conservative government, causing a backlog that led to the use of 400 asylum hotels to house immigrants that cost £1m a day.

She says the government has reduced that number to "just over 200 hundred hotels" in the first 12 months of the year, adding Labour have started building the homes the Tories "failed" to deliver.

Image source, UK Parliament

Brian Wheeler
Reporting from the House of Commons

Chris Philp jabs his finger on his folder as he accuses Rayner of having a “brass neck”.

MPs on both sides seem to be enjoying this knockabout.

Philp says that since the Rwanda plan was scrapped, illegal immigration across the Channel has gone up by more than 30%.

So far this year, 2025 has been the "worst" for illegal crossings, he says before asking if Rayner now accepts a removals deterrent is needed.

Rayner disputes Philp's claims that the Rwanda scheme deterred small boat crossings. "It's absolute rubbish," she says.

She says the Tories lost control of borders and Labour is taking control.