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Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, is asked about the chaos in Calais, where migrants are trying to get into delayed lorries heading to Britain.

He rejects suggestions that migrants want to come to the UK because of its benefits system, saying it is because it's the country "they think they can work in illegally". The UK needs to send "a clear message" that they will be "stopped and removed" and that those who employ them will be prosecuted, he adds.

"That message has not come across as clearly as we would like," says Mr Vaz.

Marc Williams
Newsnight Election Producer

Image source, PA

Zac Goldsmith is as of today officially a candidate to be Boris Johnson's successor as Mayor of London after winning an "endorsement" vote from his Richmond Park constituents. 

The result , external (a 79% thumbs up) has drawn some snarky comments from his opponents, pointing out that the turnout of just short of 26% would fail the Government's proposed 50% threshold for industrial action.

Nonetheless, there is a definite sense that Labour insiders see Goldsmith as a clear threat to their chances of retaking the capital.

Read more from Newsnight, here.

A bill - which is currently being debated in the House of Lords - designed to ban so-called legal highs "is arguably the worst piece of legislation in living memory", former UK government drugs adviser Professor David Nutt has said.

Professor Nutt was sacked by the Labour government in 2009 after disagreeing with its decision to re-classify cannabis.  

Image source, AFP/Getty Images

David Cameron has been kept updated on the situation at Calais today, his spokeswoman said.

The British authorities were in "close touch" with the French, she said, and were monitoring the impact of the strike on Britons.

She said 39,000 attempts to enter Britain illegally were stopped by French authorities in 2014-15 - double the number the year before - after a joint plan was agreed by the two nations last year.

The spokeswoman had no estimate of how many attempts to enter Britain illegally from Calais were successful.

She said a "comprehensive approach" was need to tackle illegal migration at source in other countries, but she accepted this was a long term challenge.

Serious criminal cases are taking longer to process than at any point in the last 15 years, according to research by a victims' charity.

The Victim Support analysis of Ministry of Justice statistics suggests that the average time it takes for a contested case to be listed for trial at a crown court has increased by 55%, to 29 weeks over the same period.

The study highlighted a backlog of more than 54,000 outstanding cases at crown courts in England and Wales at the end of 2014, up 75% since 2000, while the total time from an offence being committed to the conclusion of criminal proceedings in a crown court is said to be more than 10 months on average.

Victim Support chief executive Mark Castle welcomed Justice Secretary Michael Gove's "bold intervention" to reduce court delays.

House of Commons
Parliament

Responding to the Westminster Hall debate on the CPS, Solicitor General Robert Buckland references Simon Danczuk's remarks and said it would be "wholly inappropriate" to comment on an ongoing case.

But he told MPs that child sexual exploitation was "a national emergency" and that the way it had been dealt with in the past was "wrong". There was far too much of an emphasis on the reliability of the complainant – often "young and vulnerable" – rather than "an overall view of the merits of the case", he said.

Greville Janner was born in Cardiff in 1928. He served in the Army and studied at Cambridge before becoming a barrister and then QC. He served as Labour MP for Leicester North West and then Leicester West from 1970 until his retirement in 1997, when he was made a life peer.

Lord Janner has been the subject of several police investigations, but has never been arrested or charged. In 1991, he made statements in Parliament asserting his innocence after a man claimed he had abused him.

He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2009. Earlier this year, Director of Public Prosecutions Alison Saunders said his condition was "rapidly-worsening".

Lord Janner, now 86, has been suspended from the Labour Party, but will remain a member of the House of Lords until his death or until he formally retires under reforms passed last year. His family have described him as a man of "great integrity", and said he is "entirely innocent of any wrongdoing".

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Lord Janner has been accused in Parliament of being a serial abuser who attacked children inside the Palace of Westminster.

The Labour MP Simon Danczuk said police had told him they wanted to bring 22 historical charges against Lord Janner, dating back to the period between 1969 and 1988.

Speaking in a debate about the Crown Prosecution Service, Mr Danczuk said: "I have met with Leicestershire Police and discussed the allegations in detail. Children being violated, raped and tortured - some in the very building in which we now sit."

The director of public prosecutions (DPP), Alison Saunders, announced in April that Lord Janner's dementia made him unfit to be prosecuted, although that decision is under review.

Mr Danczuk told the Commons: "If Lord Janner really is too ill to face prosecution, then why can't the courts establish this with a fitness to plead process? This would clear up doubts that still linger, for example, why he was still visiting parliament on official visits after he was declared unfit to face justice."

He said a "trial of the facts" would allow the victims to tell their stories, but that the DPP had said that would not be in the public interest.

"Personally, I fail to see how the knowledge that a peer of the realm is a serial child abuser is not in the public interest."

Mr Danczuk was repeatedly warned by the chair of the debate against criticising Lord Janner.

A former DPP who is now a Labour MP, Sir Keir Starmer, said: "The decision before the DPP was not an easy decision. It was a stark and difficult choice between two unattractive approaches.

"We should respect the independence she brought to the decision making, and the fact she's had that decision out for a review.

"To that extent I think we should inhibit our comments on the case."

House of Lords
Parliament

A government minister has apologised after being told she had accidentally insulted Welsh members of the House of Lords by using the term "welching".

The local government minister, Lady Williams of Trafford, had been answering a question about tackling rogue landlords, when she suggested a need to stop some "welching" on their obligations.

The Welsh Labour peer, Lord Morris of Aberavon, challenged her on the use of the term, describing it as "inappropriate".

Lady Williams explained: "There is a term to welsh on an agreement... I simply meant to not meet their obligations."

She later clarified that she "did not realise in using the term 'welsh' it was an insult to anybody, and I do apologise if any bad feeling was felt by that term."

The origins of the term are disputed and it can be spelt 'welch' or 'welsh'. There is some suggestion it maybe have come from the habit of English bookmakers travelling to Wales to avoid payments on debts incurred in England.

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The body that oversees UK elections said Scotland's independence referendum was well run and offered a template for future votes like the EU referendum.

The Electoral Commission's observations came as it published a report about last year's poll., external

It said the pro-Union Better Together campaign spent £1,422,602 and the pro-independence Yes Scotland campaign spent £1,420,800.

Read the full story.

An interesting piece on the Spectator's Coffee House blog, external  flags up a piece written by Dominic Cummings, the man drawing up the No campaign for the EU referendum.

Cummings has written a piece suggesting there should actually be two referendums, with the first being purely being to support or reject whatever renegotiation David Cameron comes up with. If it is rejected, there would be then be a second in-out referendum on EU membership as a whole.

Cummings writes: 

Image source, Conservatives

After Zac Goldsmith's constituents gave him the green light to run for London mayor, former Conservative MP Nick de Bois - pictured - has revealed he'll be his campaign chairman., external Mr de Bois - who lost his seat at the election - said "because of his commitment to his constituents and the integrity he has demonstrated in Parliament".

Mr Goldsmith is perhaps best known for his opposition to the expansion of Heathrow Airport, having said he would quit and trigger a by-election if David Cameron agreed to a third runway. 

The chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, Tony Cross QC, doesn't greet Michael Gove's speech with the same fury as his solicitor colleague.

Bill Waddington, chairman of the Criminal Law Solicitors' Association, is not impressed with Michael Gove's plans.

He said cuts already in train to the legal aid system would reduce the number of solicitors firms by two thirds and "within a matter of months create legal advice deserts".

He added:

House of Lords
Parliament

Things are also just getting going in the Lords. After oral questions the main business is day one of committee stage for the Psychoactive Substances Bill.

The bill seeks to place a blanket ban on new psychoactive substances (NPS) - also known as "legal highs".

It means that, as our Westminster Live friends put it, while the subject matter of the bill is serious, we may hear the incongruous sound of phrases like "meow meow" and "hippy crack" being uttered in the Upper House's chamber.

House of Commons
Parliament

Some fairly weighty material currently being discussed in the Commons, specifically the European Union (Finance) Bill. MPs are scrutinising it line by line, with Financial Secretary to the Treasury David Gauke, pictured, moving the bill on behalf of the government.

The purpose of this bill is to give UK approval to the financing aspect of the seven year EU Budget deal agreed in 2013, which saw a real-terms cut in EU spending. 

It would preserve the UK's rebate, and prevent new EU-wide taxes to finance EU spending.

Thanks to our colleagues over at Westminster Live for that explanation of what exactly is going on...

The political situation in Northern Ireland remains "very serious", the prime minister's official spokeswoman has told reporters. Stormont has been locked in stalemate for months over a failure to agree welfare reform. The future of power-sharing is under threat.

"Clearly much more progress needs to be made," the spokeswoman said. She spoke after Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers briefed Mr Cameron and fellow ministers at the weekly cabinet meeting this morning.

The prospect of the Stormont executive collapsing receded in the short term on Monday after Sinn Fein offered "conditional support" to a budget bill. The passing of the budget will avert a short-term financial crisis and means a senior civil servant will not have to administer an emergency budget.

Ms Villiers will chair the latest of a series of meetings to review the state of the Stormont House Agreement in Belfast on Thursday.