Yvette Cooper defends children as young as 13 needing digital ID – UK politics live

9.08am BST UK government needs to work with China but there are 'series of security threats', says Cooper The UK government needs to work with China, but there are a “whole series of security threats”, the foreign secretary has said. Asked whether China was a “friend or foe”, speaking on LBC, Yvette Cooper said: We’ve been clear, there’s a whole series of security threats that have come from China, for example, things like transnational repression, for example, things like cyber threats and attacks and industrial espionage, and so on. They are also, of course, an important trading partner, and also they’re somebody that we need to work with on things like climate change. But where there are national security threats, we need to take them immensely seriously and respond to them, and we continue to do that. In a seperate interview, Cooper declined to say whether she has seen a dossier outlining China as a threat to the UK’s national security. Speaking on Radio 4’s Today Programme, the foreign secretary was asked whether she had seen such a document while serving as home secretary. She responded: We know China poses threats to UK national security. Referring to the collapse of a high-profile espionage case, Cooper added: I am deeply frustrated about this case, because I, of course, wanted to see it prosecuted, but ministers were not involved in any of the evidence that was put to the Crown Prosecution Service or the Crown Prosecution Service’s independent decisions. Updated at 9.09am BST 8.57am BST Friday's agenda Here is what is on the UK politics agenda today: Friday: The government, Fujitsu and Post Office are to respond to the first volume of the final inquiry report. The report said Post Office bosses should have known Horizon was faulty, but “maintained the fiction that its data was always accurate” when prosecuting post office operators. Friday: The Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, will visit the University of Edinburgh’s Advanced Computing Facility to highlight the importance of innovation to Scotland’s economy. 8.45am: Plaid Cymru annual conference in Swansea begins. Leader Rhun ap Iorwerth will make his speech at 3pm. 10am: Reform UK leader Nigel Farage will visit Caerphilly ahead of its byelection, campaigning with candidate Llyr Powell. 10am: Scottish Green co-leaders Gillian Mackay and Ross Greer will hold a press call in Coatbridge, north Lanarkshire, on the upcoming land reform bill entering stage three in the Scottish parliament. This will be the first formal visit of the Scottish Greens co-leaders since taking office last month. 10am: Former Scottish health secretary Jane Freeman is scheduled to give evidence at the Scottish hospitals inquiry. 2.30pm: Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana will discuss their new political party at The World Transformed conference in Manchester. Early afternoon: Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey will be on a gardening-related visit in Surrey. 8.52am BST Foreign secretary defends children as young as 13 needing digital ID The foreign secretary has defended children as young as 13 needing digital ID, reports the PA news agency. Asked by LBC whether she supported the Department for Science Innovation and Technology’s consultation on digital ID for young children, Yvette Cooper said: Everybody has forms of digital ID, don’t they, now. I mean, we all have different ways of having to prove who we are. She added: Lots of 13-year-olds already do [have a form of digital ID], and what the department is going to be consulting on is exactly how that should be taken forward. I do think that this is the right way forward, to have this standardised process now, and it’s something that we had been already setting out for people who come to work from abroad. Last month, the prime minister announced plans for a digital ID system, which will become mandatory as a means of proving the right to work in the UK. In other news, the leader of Plaid Cymru has said the party would bring “new energy” to the Senedd after 26 years of Welsh Labour in power, ahead of the party’s annual conference. The party conference will be held in Swansea until Saturday. Rhun ap Iorwerth told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: Plaid Cymru is a party that now is putting forward that radical idea on health, on education, on creating better and better-paid jobs, on tackling poverty, that Labour’s failed to deal with. We’ve had one party, as it happens, in power over 26 years and I think they’ve run out of steam, I think they’ve run out of ideas, and having a chance to put a Plaid Cymru government in place, new leadership for our country after 26 years of standing still frankly, we can put a new energy into getting to grips with health, getting to grips with education and the economy. I’ll bring you key updates from the party conference today as they come in as well as other developments in UK politics on stories such as: Senior Scottish National party strategists believe a majority at next year’s Holyrood elections is “within reach” despite failing public trust in Scotland’s government as they focus in on the “battleground cohort” of independence supporters who have drifted away from the SNP. Before the party’s annual conference in Aberdeen this weekend, one senior source said the path to a majority – by winning 65 seats or more – was “more straightforward now” than it had been for a long time because of the Tory collapse and Labour’s unpopularity. Bridget Phillipson is pushing the prime minister and chancellor to scrap the two-child benefit cap entirely in next month’s budget, with the education secretary telling the Guardian the evidence is clear that it needs to be removed. Phillipson, who is finalising a report to Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves on child poverty, said abolishing the cap was the most cost effective way to make lives better for young disadvantaged people. Keir Starmer has said the Gaza ceasefire deal “would not have happened without President Trump’s leadership”, but stopped short of endorsing the US president for a Nobel peace prize. Speaking on the final day of his trade visit to India, Starmer said the agreement “must now be implemented in full, without delay, and accompanied by the immediate lifting of all restrictions on life-saving humanitarian aid to Gaza”. The leader of Plaid Cymru, Rhun ap Iorwerth, has said next year’s Welsh parliament elections will be a two-horse race between his party and Reform UK. Ap Iorwerth said voters could choose to back Plaid’s vision of a progressive Wales or face the division upon which Reform thrives. Nigel Farage has claimed teachers would go on strike within weeks of a Reform UK election win, and accused them of “poisoning our kids” by telling them that black children are victims and white children oppressors. The Reform UK leader set out his view on British schools in an event for a private US Christian college in Michigan, claiming the “Marxist left” was “now in control of our education system”.