The government has agreed to exempt some adoptive and family groups from its plans to limit Universal Credit benefits to only two children.

Welfare Minister Lord Freud agreed in the Lords that people who adopt sibling groups will be exempt to prevent brothers and sisters being separated when they're adopted.

In addition, people who take in the children of family members, to stop them going into the care system, will also be exempt.

The proposals for the exemptions under the Welfare Reform and Work Bill were put forward by the Bishop of Portsmouth, the Rt Rev Christopher Foster, and supported by Labour, the Lib Dems and some independent peers.

However, the government didn't agree to exempt some other groups with more than two children - such as lone parents fleeing domestic violence, or those families where one parent has died.

Carole Walker
Political correspondent

The PM's spokeswoman has said David Cameron's change of plans to meet EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Friday is one of a series of meetings with key players in the run-up to the February EU summit.

The PM has cancelled planned visits to Denmark and Sweden to go to Brussels instead. 

His spokeswoman said different players had different roles in the negotiation and "you would expect the prime minister to engage with those people to make the case to get the right deal for Britain". 

Asked whether there was a new hitch in the negotiations, she said "we are making progress and continue to engage with key players to get the right deal for Britain". 

Labour's shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Seema Malhotra, has written to the National Audit Office asking it to investigate "the process by which HMRC agreed the settlement with Google UK for tax owed between 2005 and 2015". She writes:

Ms Malhotra also wants the NAO to investigate whether cuts to HMRC have impacted its "ability to negotiate fair tax settlements with multinational corporations such as Google".  

Women fleeing domestic violence should be exempted from the two child limit on universal credit, the Bishop of Portsmouth has told the Lords.

The Rt Rev Christopher Foster said he did not want to challenge the thrust of government policy aimed at making parents consider the financial implications of having more children, but said it needed to be flexible.

Exemptions should also be made for parents bereaved of their partners, where a child is disabled, where children are in kinship care, or fostered, or adopted, or where re-partnering has resulted in a household with more than two children, he said.

Sky News

Image source, Getty Images

Yvette Cooper says it is should be up to parents what they wear when they drop off their children at school, following one school's decision to ban parents from wearing pyjamas. The Labour MP, who has three children with her husband Ed Balls, tells Sky News she once did the school run in her gym kit and looked "far from glamorous". Most parents doing the school run are in a hurry and politicians should not be telling them what to wear, she adds. 

UKIP has accused TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady of failing British workers by supporting Britain's continued membership of the EU. Jane Collins MEP, UKIP's employment spokesman, said EU regulation and mass low-skilled immigration was hitting British workers.

She added: "Unions were the ultimate grass roots organisation. Now they are about feathering their own nests."

LBC

SNP MP Alex Salmond is taking questions from the public during his weekly radio phone-in on LBC. Asked for his thoughts on the PM's "bunch of migrants" comments, Mr Salmond says David Cameron has "got form on this".

His theory, he explains, is that the PM was trying to deflect attention from the Google tax settlement.

Ministers should take up the offer from many British people including Sir Bob Geldof to house Syrian refugees because pressure on the housing sector from asylum seekers is "enormous",  Home Affairs Select Committee chairman Keith Vaz has said.

Mr Vaz stressed that Syrian refugees should not end up in the same position as asylum seekers in Middlesbrough, who suffered racist abuse and vandalism after their doors were painted red.

The Labour MP said G4S told his committee that the number of asylum seekers they have to accommodate had gone up from 9,000 to 17,000 in three years and that pressure on housing was "very serious".

The advice of Syrian Refugees Minister Richard Harrington for people to contact councils if they wish to house Syrian refugees was not practical because local authorities would not cope, Mr Vaz suggested. 

All four party leaders in the Welsh Assembly have written to PM David Cameron objecting to the idea of holding the EU referendum in June.

The Labour, Plaid Cymru, Conservative and Liberal Democrat leaders say a vote the month after May's assembly election could confuse voters.

They say a later referendum would give both polls the "respect" they need.

The leaders say a June referendum would also affect election campaigning in London, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

More here.

Image source, Science Photo Library

The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission has said it will 'cross appeal' legal challenges to abortion law in Northern Ireland.

In December, a judge ruled the law does not comply with the European Convention on Human Rights in cases of fatal foetal abnormality or sexual crime.

The case was brought by the commission.

Following the ruling, Stormont's justice minister and Northern Ireland's attorney general said they would lodge appeals to the High Court ruling.

More here.

Ross Hawkins
Political correspondent

Firstly: George Osborne risked sounding far too content when he hailed the deal as a "victory" and a "major success". Government spokesmen were reluctant to repeat his verdict.

Secondly: Labour reacted quickly and managed to get a hearing. Their message sounded louder than their internal disputes, for a change.

Thirdly: voters care. The perception international firms get a better deal than ordinary people is toxic.

HMRC collects tax, not ministers, and the government says it has acted and got results where Labour did not.

But few politicians ever caught the mood of a nation declaring themselves happy with a big business’s tax return.

Welsh ministers have been accused of wasting tens of millions of pounds buying Cardiff Airport for around double an initial valuation of £20m-£30m.

Welsh Conservative leader Andrew RT Davies accused Labour of a "stunning failure to safeguard taxpayers' money" in paying £52m for the airport in 2013.

The estimate by accountants KPMG appears in a report by the Wales Audit Office.

The Welsh government said BBC reports based on those figures were "entirely selective and misleading".

See the video here.

Neil Kinnock, who backed Andy Burnham for the Labour leadership, has been critical in recent months of Jeremy Corbyn's position on Trident.

In the article in the New Statesman, he says Mr Corbyn may make his own decision to step down if he is failing to make progress with the electorate:

Mr Kinnock urges his party not to split over the issue, warning that "they would be letting the Tories rule the 21st century just like they mainly ruled the 20th century".

Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock has questioned whether Labour will ever win power while Jeremy Corbyn is leader. Writing in the New Statesman, Mr Kinnock said it was "difficult to see" that Mr Corbyn is electable in the country.

The World at One
BBC Radio 4

Business minister Anna Soubry defends David Cameron's reference to a "bunch of migrants".

The World at One
BBC Radio 4

Earlier, small business minister Anna Soubry said the Google settlement was a "huge step forward", and warned it was "dangerous" to second-guess the HMRC officials who struck the deal. But she admitted it did not appear to be an "awful lot of money".

Ms Soubry added: "It doesn't sound like an awful lot of money, of course it doesn't. It would be silly to say otherwise. But if it is within the rules..."  

Optimism about the UK  economy has reached its lowest level since April 2013, an Ipsos Mori poll suggests.

A quarter of Britons (26%) believe the economic condition in the UK will improve over the next 12 months, compared to two in five (39%) who think it will get worse, and 31% who believe it will stay the same, the polling firm said.

Reflecting on Prime Minister's Questions, both James Forsyth in the Spectator, external and Andrew Gimson in Conservative Home, external conclude that the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn missed an opportunity to embarass the prime minister over how much tax Google is paying. But, in the Guardian, external, Andrew Sparrow says public anger over the Google settlement is real and the Labour leader "articulated it very well". And, in the New Statesman, external, George Eaton suggests the PM's use of the phrase "a bunch of migrants" was a conscious attempt to divert attention from Google, suggesting he has used the tactic before and this "looks like another 'dead cat' to distract from a more troublesome political issue".