European summit live: Starmer hosts leaders as Labour warns UK ‘nowhere near’ Brexit deal renegotiation with EU

Sir Keir Starmer is hosting European leaders at the fourth European Political Community summit a day after setting out his government’s agenda in the King’s Speech .

The prime minister will use the 47-member EPC meeting at Blenheim Palace , the birthplace of Winston Churchill, to push for action to secure the continent’s borders, as he steps up efforts to tackle the UK’s asylum backlog.

More than 100 Home Office staff will be redeployed from working on the now-scrapped Rwanda scheme to focus on a “rapid returns unit” to send people with no right to be in the UK back to their home country.

But foreign secretary David Lammy has said the UK is “nowhere near” negotiating agreements with the EU.

Speaking this morning, he said the European Union and the European Commission will not be up and running until December following their elections.

After the keynote meeting, EU leaders including Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky will attend a reception hosted by King Charles in the palace’s Long Library.