The Ministry of Justice has issued a news release about the conditional pardon for Ruth Ellis. (See 12.48pm.) It says:

The application for a pardon was brought by four of Ruth Ellis’s grandchildren. The application presented that her responsibility was profoundly shaped by domestic abuse, trauma and circumstances that were never properly recognised at her trial.

Under modern law, it is possible that Ruth Ellis could have argued the partial defences of loss of control or diminished responsibility applied to her – defences that might have reduced her conviction from murder to manslaughter, and which could have been considered by a jury had the case been heard today.

As the last woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom, Ruth Ellis’s sentence is an exceptional case – and replacing it with one of life imprisonment takes into account the historic injustice of the death penalty in this particular instance. The government hopes today’s decision brings a measure of peace to her family.

Lee Anderson, the Reform UK chief whip, gave an interview to GB News earlier today during which he said Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, had not yet approved Nigel Farage’s resignation.

Reeves has now confirmed that she will go ahead and accept the resignation. She is ignoring the Liberal Democrats, who want her to become the first chancellor since 1842 to block the process. (See 10.54am.)

In a post on social media, Reeves says:

I will accept Nigel Farage’s request to be appointed Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead.

It is a farce and a desperate distraction, and the people of Clacton deserve better.

But if he wants to spend the summer arguing with a bin, I won’t stop him.

As chancellor, Reeves has not been famous for her sense of humour. This tweet implies we’ve been missing out.

A host of transactions involving Reform UK’s most senior figures and donations to the party caused bankers to report potential money-laundering concerns to the National Crime Agency, a Guardian investigation has found. Anna Isaac has the story.

Andy Burnham, who is set to become PM within a fortnight, has also posted what looks a bit like a quasi-endorsement of Count Binface in the Clacton byelection on social media. He says:

Always worth knowing when bin day is.

More than 400,000 households – in which there are around 1.5 million children – are likely to see an increase in their benefits as a result of the two-child limit being scrapped, the Press Association is reporting. PA says:

The policy – which had restricted child tax credit and universal credit (UC) to the first two children in most households – was officially axed on 6 April.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced in her November budget that the policy would be ditched – after months of pressure from Labour backbenchers.

Data published by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) today stated 436,780 households in Britain are expected to see an increase in their UC following the removal of the two-child limit.

There are 1,544,900 children living in those households, the department said.

Universal credit is a payment to help with living costs and is available for people in work who are on low incomes, and those who are out of work or cannot work.

The DWP data, which covers England, Scotland and Wales, also shows almost six in 10 (58%) households affected by the policy are in work.

The government has estimated that removing the two-child limit will lift 450,000 children out of poverty by the end of 2029/30.

Ruth Ellis’s grandchildren Laura Enston and Stephen Beard were in the gallery during PMQs to hear David Lammy announce that Ellis is getting a conditional pardon.

Afterwards Enston said in a statement:

Today, justice has finally been done for our grandmother, Ruth Ellis – the last woman to be hanged in England in 1955.

This pardon does not undo what happened 71 years ago.

It does not restore the lives that were broken – the children left behind, the years lost.

But it says, formally and finally, that Ruth should not have been executed, that the justice system failed her.

That acknowledgment matters profoundly to our family.

Ruth was a victim of sustained and brutal abuse.

Her children, our mother and uncle, never recovered.

My uncle took his own life, my mother’s trauma left her unable to be the parent we needed.

The shadow of Ruth’s execution has fallen across two generations.

We have carried shame that was never ours to bear.

David Lammy and James Cleverly clearly like, or at least respect, each other. Their exchanges today, while not exactly chummy, were mostly good-natured, and they focused on matters of substance. Apart from one jibe by Lammy right at the start, they avoided insults and there was no assumption of bad faith. Kemi Badenoch is getting a lot of praise at the moment, in Tory circles and more widely, for her death-machine ruthlessness at PMQs. Unlike Cleverly, I don’t think she has ever called her opponent at the dispatch box “a good man”. The exchanges did not really break new ground, and you would be hard pressed to identify a winner, but nevertheless there was something mildly uplifting about the Cleverly approach, which was sensible, mainstream and grown-up. It was like going back to another era.

The best story from PMQs (see 12.48pm) really did take us back to a different era – the Britain of the 1950s. Lammy was able to announce that Ruth Ellis is getting a conditional pardon, which marks a victory for a campaign led by relatives and campaigners including Stephen Beard, Ellis’s grandson.

This petition explains the case for a pardon.

Ruth Ellis was the last woman to be hanged in England, she was 28. It was 60 years ago this July.

We believe that although the law of the land was technically correct in 1955, the effects of ‘Battered Woman Syndrome’ were unknown at the time and the other acts of brutality against Ellis were withheld from the jury – Ruth murdered a man, but was a victim of domestic violence. In view of these facts, we believe the decision should be re-addressed. It should be considered a crime passionnel. We believe Ruth Ellis should be given a posthumous pardon on this basis.

Another woman was reprieved the week before Ruth Ellis was hung.

David Blakely treated Ruth Ellis appallingly using continual physical and emotional violence to an already traumatised woman.

The jury did not know Ruth had suffered a miscarriage not long before the shooting due to a blow from Blakely.

This is the second announcement in less than a week that has involved righting a historic wrong. Last week Keir Starmer did this with his formal apology to the victims of forced adoptions. During his Commons statement on that apology, the Labour MP Warinder Juss asked Starmer:

Does the prime minister agree that it is never too late to issue an apology for wrongdoing?

And Starmer replied:

It is never too late to issue an apology for wrongdoing – I wholeheartedly agree with that.

Lammy did not explain why the conditional pardon is being announced now, but it is very hard to believe that it has nothing to do with Starmer wanting to clear some unfinished business before he leaves No 10 a week on Monday.

In one sense, apologies and pardons like this don’t matter because they can’t alter the past.

But in another sense they do; a country that has formally decided that Ellis should not have been punished in the way that she did is a different (and better) place from one that still says she deserved all she got. Starmer is right; it is never too late to acknowledge a wrong.

Pam Cox (Lab) said Ruth Ellis was the last woman to be executed in this country. She was hanged in 1955.

She said the case was “a haunting reminder of a time when our justice system ignored the realities of domestic abuse and control”.

She said Ellis’s relatives have been campaigning for a posthumous pardon.

They showed the importance of the need to free women “from devasting cycles of abuse.

In response, Lammy had an announcement to make.

I have the honour to say that His Majesty the King has accepted our advice to grant Ruth Ellis a conditional pardon – the last woman to be hanged.

While the pardon does not claim she was innocent of killing David Blakely, it replaces the death penalty with a sentence of life imprisonment to recognise a profound injust in this exceptional case.

Lammy said he hoped this would bring some closure to members of Ellis’s family watching in the gallery.

Emily Darlington (Lab) asked Lammy if the government would back an amendment she has tabled to the representation of the people bill intended to stop deepfakes being used to mislead voters. She said her law would “protect the UK from these destructive tactics used by foreign states who wish to see our democracy weaker”.

Lammy said he agreed that legal protections must keep pace with evolving threats.

Cooper asks for an assurance that the security services will be fully covered by the Hillsborough law.

Lammy says he will arrange a briefing for Cooper on the bill. He says it will be back in the Commons “in the coming days”.

(The bill has been held up because the government has not yet reached agreement with campaigners over the extent to which the bill will fully apply to the security services.)

Daisy Cooper, the deputy Lib Dem leader, asks if the government will stop Nigel Farage resigning until the inquiry into him is over. She jokes about how he used to take the view “leave means leave”. And he asks if the government will back a “Clacton clause” (presumably when the writ for the byelection is moved) saying the inquiry into Farage can continue while he is out of parliament.

Lammy says Farage has serious questions to answer. Labour won’t be part of the byelection “circus”, he says. He suggest the byelection will be a two-horse race between Farage and Count Binface.

He does not address the two direct questions Cooper asked.

UPDATE: Cooper said:

[Farage] used to say leave means leave, but it seems his latest stunt is to leave this place just so that he can return as a fully fledged member after not just one referendum on his behaviour, but possibly two.

Will the deputy prime minister join us in urging the chancellor to delay [Farage’s] resignation until the investigation is complete, so the good people of Clacton have all the facts before they cast their votes, and failing that will he support our Clacton clause so that even once the honourable member ceases to be an MP, the investigation can continue?

And Lammy replied:

Well, everyone can see that the Reform leader is just trying to distract from the fact that he’s up to his neck in sleaze, he’s got serious questions to answer and he can’t run away from them. Labour is not going to be part of this circus.

I hear it’s the people versus the establishment, the city trader, Putin-admiring, professional politician who’s pals with crypto billionaires versus Count Binface.

There have been unqualified joke candidates in the past, let’s see what the people of Clacton decide.

John Grady (Lab) asks about Glasgow city council’s record on dealing with sexual abuse against children.

Lammy says the council should accept the recommendations of the inquiry into this case. And he says the Scottish government should consider setting up a public inquiry.

Cleverly says the government is stripping money from where it is needed and spending it on the welfare bill, which has gone up by £20bn this year alone.

He claims that when he was home secretary police numbers were at a record level. Now they are going down, he says.

He says Andy Burnham should condemn Lammy’s plan for jury trials.

Lammy says Cleverly can’t count. The country lost 16,000 police officers under the Tories, he says.

He defends the government’s record on a range of policies, and says he will take it over the Tories’ any day of the week.

Cleverly says Lammy has not apologised, and has not said rapists and paedophiles won’t be released early.

He says Lammy’s plan to limit the use of jury trials is also wrong.

Lammy says he has no plan to scrap trial by jury. Cleverly should “get on the detail”, he says.

He says there is a threshold change.

Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron also changed jury trial policy, he say.

Cleverly says Lammy is also releasing dangerous prioners by accident. Last year Lammy claimed he had got a grip of accidental releases. But there have been more now under Labour than in the entirety of the last parliament.

Lammy says “this is rich” coming from the Tories. They wrecked neighbourhood policing. And they let out prisoners in secret, he says.

Cleverly says Lammy is a “good man” and he must know this policy is wrong.

If he won’t change course, will he at least guarantee that not one rapist or paedophile will be released early this year.

Lammy says Cleverly has not said what the Tories would do. They released 10,000 prisoners early “on the sly”. There was no impact assessment.

He says mitigating factors are in place.

UPDATE: Cleverly said:

If he will not change course, will he at least make this guarantee that not one rapist or paedophile will be released early later on this year?

And Lammy said:

He has not proposed what they would do if they were in office.

We’ve invested £700m in probation. We are rolling out the largest programme of tagging in our history. We are forcing offenders to stay boxed in certain areas rather than where victims are …

We are implementing income reduction orders, and we are expanding chemical castration for sex offenders. None of it happened when they were in power.

Cleverly says 50,000 prisoners have been released early in two years under Labour.

And he says Lammy refused to apologise to victims.

He quotes a victim saying finding out her attacker is getting out early means she can barely sleep.

Lammy must know the policy is “wrong and dangerous”, Cleverly says.

Lammy says the Tories had their own early release schemes. He says 10,000 people were released early. They kept announcing one after another. And then Rishi Sunak called an early election, apparently because jails were full.

Lammy says all MPs want to see offenders locked up. But for that to happen, the government needs prisoner places.

James Cleverly asks if Lammy will apologise to the victims of rapists and paedophiles who are being released early as a result of Lammy’s policy.

Lammy starts by attacking Cleverly’s record in government.

On prisoners, he says ever decision taken by the government has been influenced by concerns about public safety.

He says the Tories closed 23 prisons.

That is why an early release scheme is needed, he says.

Jeff Smith (Lab) asks Lammy if he welcomes the pledge by Bev Craig, Labour’s candidate in the Greater Manchester mayoral election, to give free bus travel to all 11 to 18-year-olds.

Lammy praises Craig and says Labour MPs will want to support her.