Harriet Harman pledges that Labour will use its setback to build membership, claiming there are "thousands of people who are so motivated by the disappointment of defeat, they want to get involved, want to do more".

"We can't be the government we wanted to be. We applied but we didn't get that job," she says. But the acting leader adds that the party has a different role to play - as an effective opposition that holds the government to account.

Victoria Derbyshire

Asked about Len McCluskey on the Victoria Derbyshire programme, chair of Liz Kendall's leadership campaign, Toby Perkins MP, says he will be looking to persuade each party member individually, "rather than worry about having a gun held to the head of the Labour Party by a couple of people who maybe haven't always got things right in the past".

In a message to the party, Harriet Harman urges the party, when electing its new top team, to "have the public in the forefront of our minds"

"We must let the public in. Into our minds and into the process as we make the decisions about who is our next leader and how we go forward.  So we are going to start that with how we do the leadership elections. "

Anyone can pay £3 to become a registered Labour supporter and vote for next leader, Ms Harman announces. She also calls for tough, televised hustings.

Looking to the future, Ms Harman counsels: "We need a forensic, honest examination of what happened which looks at and understands the results, looks at the statistics and the all the science, and hears from our party, our candidates who won and who lost but above all, the public."

She says the party's defeat is an opportunity for a more fundamental debate about its future than when Gordon Brown succeeded Tony Blair, and Ed Miliband took over after Brown.

Harriet Harman is continuing to draw comparisons with 1992. We need to be honest and make the right decision to win the next election in 2020, she insists.

Acting Labour leader Harriet Harman is recalling the shock and pain of election night, when the party realised it was going to lose the eleciton.

It took me back to 1992, she says, recalling how the Conservatives won an unexpected victory after the polls wrongly predicted the outcome.  

BBC Radio 5 Live

On Labour's links with the union, Barry Sheerman MP says trade unions have changed dramatically and are much smaller than they used to be. He also notes the low membership numbers of political parties.

Norman Smith
Assistant political editor

There is a real debate opening up in Labour circles about the party’s ties with trade unions. It’s an argument that’s been a long time coming but one which no-one has wanted to have. John Cruddas has said those going for the leadership have to be ready to go to "the darkest places" – and its links with the trade unions are the darkest of the dark places for the party.

The unions are interwoven with the very existence of the Labour Party. But they are no longer the force they once were, they have been in long-term decline since a peak in membership the 1970s. So there are profound questions opening up about whether the party is being damaged by its relationship with the unions. But interestingly it's not the Blairites starting this debate- it’s the trade unions themselves.

Roger Helmer, MEP and UKIP Industry spokesman on  Lord Bamford's remarks about a UK exit from the EU .

BBC Radio 5 Live

Mick Whelan, general secretary of union Aslef, and Labour MP Barry Sheerman are on 5 Live, talking about the next Labour leader.

Who do you want to see get the job, Mr Whelan is asked. He declines to offer a personal opinion and says the union is yet to to sit down and discuss its preferred candidate.

Mr Sheerman, Huddersfield MP, says he wants all those who have put their name forward to get the required nominations (35 votes a piece) "so we get a pretty good variety and can see what they're like under fire".

The in/out referendum on the EU may not be planned until 2017 but the campaigning for and against a British exit seem to be under way already.

Over at CapX, Conservative MEP Dan Hannan has compiled a list of nine ways , externalhe thinks eurosceptics can win the argument for leaving the union. He recommends being optimistic, internationalist and business-friendly.

"So, my fellow eurosceptics, don’t whine about being overrun by foreigners, or about the referendum being rigged, or about media bias. Talk, rather, about how Britain can thrive as a merchant and maritime power, playing its full part in world affairs while living under its own laws," he writes.

House of Commons
Parliament

Image source, AP

For the first time since the general election, MPs will gather in the House of Commons later to elect a Speaker.

Amid much pageantry, MPs will be summoned by the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod to the House of Lords to hear a Royal Commission which will order them to elect a Speaker.

John Bercow  is set to be a reappointed, although he is not popular among many Conservative MPs. On the final day of the last parliament the government bid to change the rules on electing Commons speakers (to make it a private ballot) - seen by Labour as an attempt to oust Mr Bercow, but it was defeated by the House.

The makeup of the House will be substantially different to the last parliament, with the Conservatives forming a majority bloc on the green benches, the Liberal Democrats out of government and reduced to 8 MPs and a significantly larger presence of SNP MPs.

Today Programme
BBC Radio 4

As the interview draws to a close, the health secretary tells Today he'll be making a speech on a new deal for general practice "in about a month's time" - and says he'd be "delighted" to come back on the programme and talk about "specifics".  

Today Programme
BBC Radio 4

But where will the extra NHS money come from? Jeremy Hunt says David Cameron has promised "a minimum" of £8bn extra for the health service. And he's keen to point out that David Cameron's first major speech since the election is on the NHS.

"The NHS being there for you when we need it is a central part of what a Conservative government will deliver," he pledges.

After further questioning, he clarifies that the promised 5,000 extra GPs will be full time, but adds that this figure is an estimate of what is needed, "it could be more, it could be less".

The chairman of construction equipment firm JCB has said the UK should not fear an exit from the European Union. "We are the fifth or sixth largest economy in the world. We could exist on our own - peacefully and sensibly," Lord Bamford told BBC Midlands Today.

Lord Bamford said an exit would enable the UK to "negotiate as our country rather than being one of 28 nations". Prime Minister David Cameron has promised an in-out referendum on the UK's EU membership by the end of 2017.

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Today Programme
BBC Radio 4

The biggest change in the next five years in the NHS in England "will be the care you get outside hospital", Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt says as he sets out the thinking behind plans for a seven-day-a-week health service,

Today Programme
BBC Radio 4

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt - who retained his job in the PM's recent cabinet reshuffle - is on Today, where he is being pressed over the government's plan for 7-day-a-week GP access. Specifically, he is asked how it will deliver on its promise of an extra 5,000 GPs.

Mr Hunt says the government increased the number of GPs by 5% in the last parliament - and says they can do it again. He also stresses the need to "reinvent" general practice, including by making it a more attractive career, to retain more GPs in the profession. We also need to look at locum contracts, he says, adding that GPs need to feel that they are valued and "part of the future".