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An ex-UKIP councillor has been ordered to pay £80,000 in damages to two Labour MPs over remarks he made about the Rotherham's child abuse scandal.

Caven Vines claimed during an interview in January 2015 the MPs knew about the abuse but did not intervene.

MPs Sir Kevin Barron and John Healey were awarded £40,000 each in libel damages at the High Court in London.

Mr Justice Warby said the "offensive and wrong" allegation had caused "real anger and distress".

Read more.

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Responding to comments by Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, that a points-based immigration system would lead to restrictions on British workers in the rest of the EU, Leave campaigner Michael Gove said: "I don't think that the Dutch prime minister is saying anything other than this is an enviable scheme which will have other countries thinking that Britain is doing the right thing for its citizens and its economy."

Speaking to the BBC on the Vote Leave campaign bus in Darwen, Justice Secretary Mr Gove said the "only way" to control immigration was to leave the EU. He said the government's target of reducing immigration to the tens of thousands would be "incredibly difficult" as long as the UK remains in the EU and that he wanted to help the government achieve it by supporting Brexit.

Mr Gove said the "great merit" of a points-based system was that it would allow the UK to decide to take a limited number of migrants and also be in a position to provide a safe haven for people fleeing persecution.

He added that if the price of controlling immigration was wrecking the economy - which Remain campaigners have suggested would be the outcome of leaving the EU - he would not support a vote to Leave. He insists the economy will be stronger if the UK leaves.

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More on the news that Kent Police have been given a further 12 months to investigate claims of improper election spending by the Conservative Party.

The allegations concern 2015 general election expenses in the Thanet South constituency, where Craig MacKinlay beat UKIP leader Nigel Farage.

The Tories blamed an "administrative error" for not declaring £38,000 of expenses for their Battlebus 2015 tour.

It follows a Channel 4 investigation into spending, external in key constituencies.

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The Dutch prime minister said other EU states would "retaliate" if the UK applies a points-based immigration system to EU citizens.

Mark Rutte told the BBC he was "surprised" that campaigners such as Boris Johnson and Michael Gove put forward the policy, calling it "very bad news" for the UK and the Netherlands.

Kelly Tolhurst, the MP for Rochester and Strood, has come out for Remain in the EU referendum. 

This is particularly interesting as her constituency is arguably among the most Eurosceptic in the country. She won her Kent seat from UKIP's Mark Reckless at the last election - Mr Reckless having defected from the Tories eight months earlier and won a subsequent by-election. 

Nick Beake
Europe reporter, Brussels

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European Council President Donald Tusk has said the EU should give up on "utopian dreams" of ever-closer integration if it is to secure its future.

Speaking at a summit of business leaders in Brussels, Mr Tusk said promoting such ideas would only strengthen Eurosceptic sentiment, not just in the UK.

Mr Tusk also warned of the "dramatic" impact of Britain leaving the EU and pointed to today's warning from the OECD that the UK's GDP could fall by 3% by 2020 following Brexit. 

Mr Tusk said EU leaders should concentrate on more practical measures.

Mr Tusk said the "greatest threat" to the EU was a "lack of energy" on the part of its leaders and urged them to match the endeavours of the anti-EU lobby.   

Reality TV star Joey Essex is on a mission to understand the issues at stake in the EU referendum.

He says many young people "don't really understand it as much [and] just don't really bother getting involved".

"We need them voting," he tells the BBC's Vicki Young. 

Conservative MPs Michael Gove and Priti Patel appeared alongside Boris Johnson at the Vote Leave event in Preston.

Justice Secretary Michael Gove said if the UK voted to leave it would mean that 55 million people would be “liberated” and the UK could have a “fair, humane and sensible migration policy”.

A vote to Leave would take back control from the “faceless bureaucrats in Brussels” and “restore power to the people of this country”, he added.

Fellow Vote Leave campaigner Priti Patel said they were campaigning to get the control back from “those European elites that sit in Brussels and in Strasbourg and dictate to us, those individuals that have the audacity to lecture us in terms of how we should live our lives".

South West Trains suspends an employee after a message appearing to support Brexit was put up on the side of a train.

Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston doesn't hold back in her response to the news that Donald Trump will be visiting the UK on the day after the EU referendum.

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Patrick Rock, 65, a former Downing Street aide to Prime Minister David Cameron, has been found guilty at Southwark Crown Court in London of five counts of making indecent photographs of children.

Home Secretary Theresa May responds to Vote Leave's proposals of an "Australian-style" points system for immigration.

"Australia has nearly double the level of immigration per head than we have here in the UK," she says.

"The current level of immigration is too high but there is no silver bullet," she adds. "Controlling immigration is hard."

Mrs May says the EU referendum "is about the future prosperity of the UK - and I'm clear that leaving the EU poses a real risk to British economy".

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A gesticulating Boris Johnson earlier took to the stage in Preston as part of the Vote Leave battle bus tour.

He argued that many lower-paid workers have not seen their income go up and many have seen it go down. This is partly the result of immigration, he said.

He called for British workers to have "the pay rise that they deserve".

And he hit out at the Remain campaign:

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Kent Police confirm they've been granted an extension to investigate allegations concerning Conservative Party expenses in last year's general election.

The allegations concern campaign spending in the Thanet South constituency, where UKIP leader Nigel Farage was defeated by Conservative candidate Craig Mackinlay.   

In a statement, Kent Police said: "On 1 June, at Folkestone Magistrates Court, Kent Police's application for an extension to investigate any local offences relating to the general election spending under the Representation of the People Act was successful. The extension allows a further 12 months for an investigation."

Seventeen police forces have now either applied for, or been granted, extensions to investigate whether expenses generated by activists on a Tory battlebus were correctly declared. The window for investigation would normally expire a year after expenses were filed.

Image source, Reuters

EU leaders have been celebrating the opening of the world's longest rail tunnel in Switzerland - a non-EU country - which is part of a project to link northern and southern Europe.

French President Francois Hollande took part with others in a follow-up trip through the tunnel on a train, emerging on the southern side to give a speech in which he compared the Gotthard to the Channel Tunnel.

Recalling the great Franco-British project, which was completed in 1994, he said: "Nobody could have imagined that one day you would be able to travel from England to France in that way."

"Since then we are more united than ever and I hope the British will remember that when the day comes," he added, to laughter and applause from the audience in the Swiss village of Pollegio. The French leader went on to praise European aspirations, including the free movement of people and goods.

The chairman of the Commons Treasury Committee has written to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to ask him to provide "unbiased" information to support the economic case for a third runway at Heathrow.

Last year the Airports Commission backed the expansion of Heathrow Airport but Andrew Tyrie claims the economic case in the commission's report was "opaque".

The Conservative MP wants the Treasury to set out the risks and benefits of the commission's proposals - and complains in a latter to George Osborne than ministers have failed to answer his parliamentary questions.

Mr Tyrie said: "It is generally agreed that Britain needs more airport capacity. But the public cannot have full confidence in the government's decision to expand it until the Airports Commission's economic case is laid out in full. It has not been so far.

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Minister Priti Patel says the Leave campaign wants to replace the current system for EU migrants with "one which is much fairer and based on meritocracy".

She argues it is "harder" for the government to achieve its goal of cutting migration to the tens of thousands while the EU is "dictating what kind of immigration policy we can have".

The UKIP leader, Nigel Farage, says his views on immigration have now become "mainstream" and he believes the Leave campaign will win the European Union referendum.

UKIP included the policy of an Australian-style points system - now proposed by Vote Leave - in its 2015 general election manifesto.

Mr Farage described Boris Johnson and Michael Gove's support for the policy as a "sea change".

Anna Holligan
Reporter BBC News, The Hague

Dutch PM Mark Rutte tells the BBC that if the UK introduced a points-based system for all migrants coming to the UK, other European nations would be forced to do the same for British workers.

Mr Rutte said it would be "an inevitable, unavoidable race to the bottom".

Mr Rutte also described David Cameron as a friend and said they text regularly but that they hadn't discussed this issue. He said the time was right to intervene because this proposal had the potential to affect his country and its people.