Thanks for joining us today - we're closing our live blog here. A quick recap on the main news of the day:

• David Lidington and Emily Thornberry stood in for their bosses at PMQs - the latter focused her questions on the Irish border, Brexit and security
• Tory MPs decided not to change the rules to allow an early leadership challenge to Theresa May
• Government ministers call for a "full and proper" investigation after high-level discussions about the UK using Huawei technology were leaked.
• Nicola Sturgeon has said she wants to hold a second referendum on Scottish independence by 2021 if the country is taken out of the EU.
• The Greens are the "strongest choice" for pro-EU voters, co-leader Sian Berry says, as the party announced their European election candidates

The US Ambassador to the UK says staying tied to the EU after Brexit will hinder trade beyond it.

Image source, HoC

Labour's Emily Thornberry says Lyra McKee's death shows the urgent need to solve the Brexit Irish border issue. But Treasury minister Liz Truss says she's "very wrong" to link the two issues.

Sarah Smith
Scotland Editor

Nicola Sturgeon knows that the Westminster government will almost certainly refuse to allow another referendum within the next two years - so she needs to find a way to keep the constitutional argument alive while there is little prospect of an imminent vote.

The SNP know that by proposing another referendum they will be accused by those who do not support independence of introducing a divisive political issue at the worst possible time.

So the first minister is challenging other parties who do not support Scottish independence to come forward with their own ideas for constitutional change, promising that the SNP will engage fully and in good faith.

Ms Sturgeon is very deliberately talking of trying to find compromise and consensus amongst politicians - saying Scotland can do things differently from Westminster.

It is an appeal that is clearly meant to reach beyond other party leaders and straight to voters who may not welcome independence, but might well appreciate the approach the first minister is proposing.

Image source, Getty Images

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are accused of not doing their jobs as they face questions from MPs.

Image source, Getty Images

Nicola Sturgeon has said she wants to hold a second referendum on Scottish independence by 2021 if the country is taken out of the EU.

The first minister told Holyrood that she would introduce legislation soon to set the rules for another vote.

But she will not yet ask the UK government for a Section 30 order, which underpinned the last independence referendum in 2014.

And she urged her party to grow support and demand for independence.

Read more on this breaking story.

House of Commons
Parliament

With the completion of the Ten Minute Rule Bill, the Commons now moves to their opposition day debates.

The first has been tabled by Labour and is on social care and local government.

Councils have lost 60p out of every £1 which the last Labour government gave to councils for social care, says shadow communities secretary Andrew Gwynne as he opens the debate.

Mark D'Arcy
Parliamentary Correspondent

Overshadowed by tragedy and lacking its normal lead players, there was little to glean from this episode of PMQs.

The PM’s locum, David Lidington, and Jeremy Corbyn’s, Emily Thornberry, are both better performers than their bosses, funnier and more eloquent. But as Emily Thornberry rightly remarked, this was not a day for levity, with the two main party leaders attending the funeral of Lyra McKee, and with the horrors in Sri Lanka to remember.

Nor were backbenchers on the attack; in other circumstances, Tory Brexiteers, fresh from a savaging at the hands of their local activists over the delay to Brexit, might have turned on their leader. There might have been more local and even European electioneering.

Instead, there was a curiously low key interlude, with a bit of competitive greenery, a dash of Brexit grumbling and an inconclusive joust over the Commons failure to agree on any Brexit solution.

About half way through, the penny seemed to drop, that this was a non-event, and MPs began to sidle out of the Chamber. By the end it was barely half full. No winners, no losers, no result.

House of Commons
Parliament

John Bercow announces to the Commons that in line with the Recall of MPs Act, as Chris Davies, the Conservative MP for Brecon and Radnorshire, pleaded guilty to filing false expenses claims, there will now be a recall petition in the constituency.

Conservative MP for Gloucester, Richard Graham, is now introducing his Ten Minute Rule Bill which would introduce a levy on the gross income of gambling firms. Under his bill, the levy would be used to help treat those with gambling addictions.

Ten Minute Rule Bills are not a type of government bill and are unlikely to progress without government support.

Image source, Green Party

Co-leader Sian Berry says her party is the "strongest choice" for pro-EU voters. The Greens will formally launch their European Parliamentary elections campaign in a couple of weeks. The vote - assuming the UK takes part in it - will be on 23 May.

House of Commons
Parliament

Image source, HoC

Back to the Commons and that urgent question on Saudi Arabia. Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan says the government is "very concerned" by the executions and the Foreign Office is working to establish the facts.

He says Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt will be raising the issue with the Saudi authorities "as soon as possible".

He says the UK government opposes the use of the death penalty "in every country".

BBC Politics Live
BBC2's lunchtime political programme

On Politics Live, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss says she believes the issues of security on the island of Ireland and the border after Brexit are separate.

She says the prime minister "has always been absolutely clear" that the protection of the Union is her top priority "and it’s the reason that we’ve been so careful".

"I don’t think it's right for Emily Thornberry to link those two issues in Prime Minister’s Questions," Ms Truss says.

Lib Dem MP Layla Moran says it may be uncomfortable, but adds: “We need to be discussing this.

"I think it was brave of her to link them together, but I think it was right."

PMQs comes to an end, and MPs have now moved on to an urgent question from Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable on the executions yesterday in Saudi Arabia.

A statement by the country's state media said the 37 people executed had been charged with "adopting terrorist extremist ideology, forming terrorist cells".

House of Commons
Parliament

Image source, HoC

The DUP Westminster Leader Nigel Dodds says "the message across Northern Ireland is that violence is not acceptable" after the death of Lyra McKee. He says an attack on anyone in Northern Ireland is "an attack on us all".

Mr Lidington says the joint statement by all party leaders in Northern Ireland has "rejected terrorism" and the reaction of all communities has been a "visible, but also compelling, moving riposte" to the violence.

House of Commons
Parliament

Image source, HoC

Tory MP Julian Lewis asks David Lidington to acknowledge that Huawai is "intimately linked" with China's Communist government and its intelligence services.

Ministers have reportedly approved the supply of equipment by the Chinese telecoms firm for the UK's new 5G data network.

David Lidington replies that legally speaking, Huawei is a private company.

He says the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport has commissioned a review of the 5G network, and the results of this will be announced when decisions are taken.

Laura Kuenssberg
BBC political editor

I think it was surprising how explicit Emily Thornberry was during PMQs in making the link between border issues surrounding Brexit and the potential threat to security from groups like the New IRA. There are very real fears from all communities about a potential rise in violence in Northern Ireland and the Republic, but you could almost visibly see that David Lidington wasn't willing to make that explicit connection himself. And I suspect not everyone in the House of Commons will be comfortable that she made it.