Labour’s attempt to block illegal migration bill defeated in Commons – live

Opposition amendment to stop the government barring small boat arrivals claiming asylum defeated by 312 votes to 249

Junior hospital doctors in England started a 72-hour strike this morning. My colleagues Denis Campbell and Aubrey Allegretti have the story.

This morning Prof Philip Banfield, the chair of the BMA's council, claimed that, paradoxically, hospitals could be safer than normal, because elective operations won't be taking place and because more senior doctors, consultants, would be covering for the doctors on strike. He told the Today programme:

What is going to happen over this next three days is that we are going to see senior doctors - I don't like the words junior and senior, this is just a level of experience and training - so we're seeing consultants and specialist doctors cover.

They will stop, or should stop, their elective work and actually the NHS is maintaining a great deal of elective work. So we should see that the service is safe. In fact, actually, we should see it is even safer than normal.

Because the care is going to be given by consultants, consultants seeing patients, doing things that they normally wouldn't do.