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Boris Johnson – remember him? – has been speaking in Canada, where he has criticised Rishi Sunak for his plan to phase out cigarette smoking by progressively raising the age at which tobacco can be bought.

Johnson, who stepped down as an MP in June 2023 to pre-empt a damning verdict from the Commons privileges committee into whether he misled parliament over lockdown-breaking parties, was speaking at a gathering of conservatives in Ottawa. He told the Canada Strong and Free Networking Conference:

We are, on the whole, in favour of freedom and it is that single Anglo-Saxon idea of freedom that I think unites conservatives, or should unite conservatives.

And when I look at some of the things that we are doing now, or that are being done in the name of conservatism, I think they are absolutely nuts.

When the party of Winston Churchill wants to ban cigars, donnez-moi un break as they say in Quebec, it’s just mad.

It isn’t entirely clear that they do say “donnez-moi un break” in Quebec.

Introducing his policy, Sunak had said: “If we want to build a better future for our children we need to tackle the single biggest entirely preventable cause of ill-health, disability and death: smoking.”

Phillip Inman

A bit of economic news from my colleague Phillip Inman here:

Cuts in UK interest rates should be “a way off”, according to a Bank of England policymaker, who has said that inflationary pressures will keep the cost of borrowing higher than financial markets expect.

Megan Greene, a member of the Bank’s nine-member monetary policy committee (MPC), which sets interest rates, said financial markets were betting “in the wrong direction” when they judged how quickly the central bank would make its first rate cut.

Read more here: Interest rates need to stay higher for longer, says Bank of England policymaker

The NHS recovery plan set a target of March this year for 76% of patients attending A&E to be admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours, and in the latest figures the health service only achieved 74.2% of patients in England being seen within four hours.

This is an improvement on the February figure of 70.9%, and PA Media reports it is the highest figure since April 2023.

One target that has been met is that 78.1% of patients urgently referred for suspected cancer in February were diagnosed or had cancer ruled out within 28 days. It is the first time the target of 75% has been met.

Cancer referrals are up year-on-year from 229,769 in February 2023 to 253,025 in February 2024.

The first person up at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry today is David Smith, former managing director of Post Office Ltd. He is being questioned by barrister Sam Stevens. So far it has been a somewhat unenlightening deep dive into the complex corporate structure of the company at the time Smith was there, which began in 2010. Previously he had been at Parcelforce.

An interesting nugget from PA Media here on those NHS England figures, where patients in England who are waiting for treatment by community services are no longer included in the overall waiting list.

Around 36,000 treatments have been excluded from the figures for February, PA Media reports, including some of the patients who have been waiting the longest.

It is likely, it says, that this change has had an impact on the data for February, which shows that 9,969 people had been waiting more than 18 months to start routine treatment at the end of February, down from 14,013 in January.

This figure had previous risen six months in a row.

The Government and NHS England set the ambition of eliminating all waits of more than 18 months by April 2023, excluding exceptionally complex cases or patients who choose to wait longer.

The Post Office Horizon IT inquiry is starting for the day. You can watch it here.

The waiting list for routine hospital treatment in England has fallen for the fifth month in a row, figures show.

An estimated 7.54 million treatments were waiting to be carried out at the end of February, relating to 6.29 million patients, down slightly from 7.58 million treatments and 6.29 million patients at the end of January, NHS England said.

The list hit a record high in September 2023 with 7.77 million treatments and 6.50 million patients.

In 2010, when David Cameron’s coalition government came to power, the figure stood at about 2.5 million.

More details soon …

Back on migration for a second, and home secretary James Cleverly has issued a video statement claiming that the government is delivering “the biggest ever cut to migration numbers”.

In it, he says:

At the end of last year, we promised to change the migration system to deliver the biggest ever cut to migration numbers. And today, we’ve enacted the final part of that plan.

Taken together, the measures we’ve introduced will radically reduce legal migration. 300,000 people who arrived in the UK last year, would no longer be eligible to do so under these new rules.

We’ve tightened the rules around overseas students, the vast majority of whom can now no longer bring dependents to the UK whilst they study.

We’ve reformed the health and social care visa, introducing more safeguards to protect this route from abuse and removing the ability of care workers to bring dependents.

And we’ve also raised the skilled worker visa salary threshold by 48%, and replaced the shortage occupation list to encourage British businesses to invest in a British workforce, and also to prevent wages being undercut by overseas workers.

And finally, we’ve raised the family visa minimum income requirement, ensuring that people can only bring dependents to the UK that they can financially support.

It is a firm approach, but it is a fair approach and we are delivering the change that we promised, and which the British people expected.

The last couple of days at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry have seen some very gentle questioning of key figures in the campaign for justice for subpostmasters like Alan Bates and former MP James Arbuthnot. The chair of the inquiry, Wyn Williams, was even moved to warn people attending the hearing not to applaud at the end of their testimonies. I suspect the tone will be rather different in the next two days, when it will be Post Office and Royal Mail bosses giving evidence. That starts at 10am and I will bring you the key moments.

If you missed the last couple of days, here is what happened …

37 housing and homelessness charities have written to home secretary James Cleverly warning that new government legislation risks criminalising homelessness.

Matt Downie, chief executive of Crisis, said “The government cites a moral imperative to end rough sleeping, yet these new measures will make it more difficult to do so. They will punish people for having nowhere else to go and push them further away from support. The first and easiest thing the home secretary can do is listen to the concerns of these experienced organisations and remove these cruel and counterproductive measures.”

Speaking about the plans during the media round this morning, health secretary Victoria Atkins said:

We have been very, very clear. What we’re trying to target are those criminal gangs that make a living out of intimidating people.

We want to stop some of the aggressive begging that can happen around cash points, for example.

But we do not and will not criminalise people who don’t have a home. Absolutely not. That is not what this bill is about.

There are real vulnerabilities here that we want to support. And this is not about criminalising people who are homeless.

The proposals have been criticised for loose language in the drafting. Police in England and Wales are to be given powers to fine or move on rough sleepers deemed to be causing a “nuisance”.

The bill defines “something that is a nuisance” in relation to a person who “causes or does something capable of causing damage”. A section of the criminal justice bill defines that damage as including “excessive noise, smells”. Education secretary Gillian Keegan was forced to clarify that people wouldn’t be arrested just because they smell.

Campaigners have said new visa rules are destroying the idea that the UK is a place where families can “thrive”.

As the minimum income for family visas rose by more than £10,000 to £29,000 from Thursday, the organisation Reunite Families UK claimed the values of family and love are being treated as “as yet another political football to be sacrificed in order to receive better poll or electoral results”.

The minimum income requirement will rise further to £38,700 by early 2025.

Caroline Coombs, co-founder of Reunite Families UK, said people are feeling “punished” and “excluded” by the new rules.

Coombs said: “This increase, together with the ones which will come into force in the next 12 months destroy the notion of the UK as a place where families can thrive.

She added “We are dealing with a community of members who are punished and feel excluded and discriminated by their own government only because they fell in love with somebody from abroad and do not or cannot earn the ‘right amount’ to be able to love whoever they choose.”

In advance of the publication of NHS England waiting lists, health secretary Victoria Atkins has said “nobody pretended at the time” that it would be easy to bring waiting lists down.

She also blamed industrial action as a factor in Rishi Sunak failing to meet his key pledge on waiting lists.

She told viewers of ITV’s Good Morning Britain:

We know the pain and the anguish that waiting lists cause people – none of us want people to be waiting for the treatments they need. And that’s why the prime minister set it as one of his five priorities, and nobody pretended at the time that this was going to be easy to achieve.

Now, in fairness, in the last four months we have seen a reduction in waiting lists and that is even though we’ve had, sadly, industrial action – particularly damaging industrial action – by junior doctors in January, which of course is the busiest time for the NHS coming out of Christmas.

But despite that we’ve seen this fall in waiting lists, and I am focused relentlessly on trying to improve waiting lists times.

With junior doctors, my message has always been: ‘Look, if you work with Government, if you come to the table with reasonable expectations, as the consultants did, we will be able to find a deal.’

Labour’s big announcement today is a plan to improve bus services in England, with shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh promising to end “four decades of disastrous deregulation”.

She said:

Reliable, affordable and regular buses are the difference between opportunity and isolation for millions of people across the country.

Four decades of disastrous deregulation of Britain’s buses has robbed communities of a say over the vital services that they depend on, instead handing power to unaccountable private operators who have slashed services.

Labour will give every community the power to take back control of their bus services, and will support local leaders to deliver better buses, faster.

Labour’s plans will create and save vital routes and services, end today’s postcode lottery of bus services, and kickstart a revival of bus services across England.

The announcement was given short shrift by transport minister Guy Opperman, who said “Labour’s bus nationalisation policy won’t work but will force huge council tax hikes. Because Rishi Sunak and the Government took the long-term decision to cancel HS2 phase 2, we have been able to extend the £2 bus fare cap and invest £1bn in bus services across the Midlands and the North.”

The NHS England data today comes against a backdrop of persistently high waiting lists and public discontent with the service.

At the end of last month, Denis Campbell reported that public satisfaction with the NHS has fallen to its lowest ever level, with long delays to access care the biggest source of deepening frustration, a study has shown.

At the beginning of April, a new estimate suggested almost 14,000 people died needlessly last year in England while waiting in A&E for up to 12 hours.

ONS figures have suggested that the NHS data may be underestimating waiting lists by up to two million people.

Health secretary Victoria Atkins has claimed the government is making progress on waiting lists.

She told listeners to Times Radio:

We’ve seen now for four months in a row a reduction in waiting lists. That is a significant achievement, particularly when it is against the background of industrial action by junior doctors.

We have seen waiting lists fall, we have an unrelenting commitment, determination, to reduce yet further those backlogs and we are seeing progress.

Across the country there are different achievements, across the country different trusts managing to manage their waiting lists and what we are trying to do is spread that good best practice across the country incentivising trusts so that they are dealing with their backlogs but also importantly meeting the targets for people who are entering the system today and next week and so on.

Health is a devolved matter, and the Westminster government is only responsible for the NHS in England. Cutting waiting lists was one of Rishi Sunak’s five key pledges announced in January 2023, and was one of several which he failed to meet. The latest NHS waiting list data is due to be published by NHS England at 9.30am.

Good morning. Health secretary Victoria Atkins has been on the media round today, touting government progress with NHS waiting lists in England. New figures will be published today. More of that in a moment. Here are the headlines …

• Rishi Sunak spent £2m on focus groups for ‘eat out to help out’ scheme during the pandemic

• The government has insisted it isn’t criminalising homelessness as a number of charities hit out at new plans

• English schools could lose £1bn by 2030 as pupil numbers fall

• A Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) survey showed property prices stabilised in March after months of decline, and are expected to return to growth within the next 12 months

There is some committee business scheduled at Stormont, but Westminster, the Scottish parliament and the Senedd remain on recess.

The Post Office Horizon IT inquiry continues. Former managing director of the Post Office David Smith, and former chair of Post Office Ltd Michael Hodgkinson appear. I will bring you the key lines.

It is Martin Belam with you again today. I do try to read all your comments, and dip into them where I think I can be helpful, but if you want to get my attention the best way is to email me – martin.belam@theguardian.com – especially if you have spotted my inevitable errors and typos, or you think I’ve missed something important.