• David Wolfson has resigned as a justice minister saying he can no longer serve in the government because of its disregard for the rule of law. The distinguished lawyer who joined the government in 2020, said he was shocked not just by the extent of law breaking at No 10, but by the “official response” to it.

• Tory MP Craig Whittaker has called for Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak to quit after they were fined for breaching coronavirus laws. According to the Halifax Courier, the Calder Valley MP said during a Facebook Q and A: “I not only think that the prime minister should resign but I also think that Rishi Sunak should resign as well.

• A former deputy assistant commissioner for the Metropolitan police, Stephen Roberts , told Sky News that officers have a “huge amount” of Partygate evidence that they still have not reviewed. Conservative MP Nigel Mills told the World at One that he thought there were worse revelations yet to come.

• Ruth Davidson, the former Scottish Tory leader, has renewed her calls for Boris Johnson to quit over the Partygate scandal as she accused him of “traducing” the office of prime minister. The Tory peer said the prime minister had “made a mockery” of the British public’s sacrifices during the pandemic, opening up a split with Douglas Ross, her close ally and successor as Scottish Conservative leader.

• One of the most senior Cabinet Office directors is a non-dom, the Guardian can reveal. Anand Aithal, a former Goldman Sachs managing director, is the lead non-executive director at the Cabinet Office. A Cabinet Office spokesman said Aithal, who is domiciled in India, paid “all taxes on all of his income, both from the UK and abroad, in the UK”.

• The Information Commissioner’s Office said there is not enough evidence to prosecute two people suspected of leaking footage of former health secretary Matt Hancock kissing his then aide in his office in the Department of Health last year.

• Chris Mason has been named as the BBC’s new political editor, replacing Laura Kuenssberg.

David Wolfson has resigned as a justice minister saying he can no longer serve in the government because of its disregard for the rule of law. In his resignation letter Lord Wolfson, a distinguished lawyer who joined the government in 2020, said he was shocked not just by the extent of law breaking at No 10, but by the “official response” to it. He said:

I regret that recent disclosures lead to the inevitable conclusion that there was repeated rule breaking, and breaches of the criminal law, in Downing Street. I have again, with considerable regret - come to the conclusion that the scale, context and nature of those breaches mean that it would be inconsistent with the rule of law for that conduct to pass with constitutional impunity, especially when many in society complied with the rules at great personal cost, and others were fined or prosecuted for similar, and sometimes apparently more trivial, offences. It is not just a question of what happened in Downing Street, or your own conduct. It is also, and perhaps more so, the official response to what took place. As we obviously do not share that view of these matters, I must ask you to accept my resignation.

Here is his letter.

My colleague Nadeem Badshah is taking over now.

A former deputy assistant commissioner for the Metropolitan police has told Sky News that officers have a “huge amount” of Partygate evidence that they still have not reviewed. Asked if it was correct that the Partygate investigation has further to go, Stephen Roberts said:

Yes, that’s my understanding as well. There’s a huge amount of material that the team still has to sift through and collate and then submit to lawyers, to be absolutely certain that they have a cast iron case and are able to prosecute if needs be.

This backs up Nigel Mills’ claim that future revelations could be worse for the PM. (See 1.52pm.)

Ruth Davidson, the former Scottish Tory leader, has renewed her calls for Boris Johnson to quit over the Partygate scandal as she accused him of “traducing” the office of prime minister.

Now a Tory peer, she said the prime minister had “made a mockery” of the British public’s sacrifices during the pandemic, opening up a split with Douglas Ross, her close ally and successor as Scottish Conservative leader.

Ross was the first Tory MP to publicly urge Johnson to quit in January but has since withdrawn his no confidence letter to the 1922 Committee, arguing it would boost Vladimir Putin if the British prime minister was forced out of office during the war in Ukraine.

Speaking as the pair campaigned together in Edinburgh before May’s local council elections, Ross hinted his support for the prime minister was temporary and conditional, but refused to discuss what action he might take in future.

A series of Scottish opinion polls this year uniformly put the Tories third behind Labour for the first time in five years, threatening to end the Tories’ series of strong Scottish election results.

Opposition parties believe the Partygate scandal has significantly dented the Conservative’s popular support; both Labour and the Liberal Democrats claim they are picking up votes across Scotland.

If true, that implies Davidson’s decision to publicly disagree with her close ally’s stance on the prime minister has tactical value for the Tories, by signalling to disillusioned voters the Conservatives remain unhappy and critical of Johnson’s conduct.

Downplaying the polls, Ross said that if Johnson resigned that would “create a void, would create instability … Allies around the world would know he’s about to leave. And the most important person is all of this – Vladimir Putin – would know he’s about to leave and that instability would undermine everything the west is trying to do to help President Zelenskiy and the people of Ukraine.”

Davidson said that if Johnson was sincere about wanting to uphold the law over Ukraine, he should start with his own conduct. She said:

I don’t think the prime minister’s apology last night [over being fined] was anything other than contrite and a meaningful and I’m sure he is very sorry for what’s happened but I believe that the prime minister should lead by example.

I believe that the office of the prime minister is traduced when you’ve got somebody that breaks the laws that they himself have brought in and I completely understand that there are really big geopolitics happening. Right now. There are big international issues. But I still believe that when it comes to supporting a country fighting for freedom and democracy, you have to uphold your own rules. You have to.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has said there is not enough evidence to prosecute two people suspected of leaking footage of former health secretary Matt Hancock kissing his then aide in his office in the Department of Health (DHSC).

The footage was leaked to the Sun and led to Hancock’s resignation, on the grounds that his behaviour was in breach of government social distancing rules. Hancock subsequently left his wife to continue with relationship with Gina Coladangelo, who had been his adviser.

The ICO launched a criminal investigation after it received a report of a personal data breach from DHSC’s CCTV operator, EMCOR Group plc. Last year two homes in the south of England were raided as part of the investigation.

The ICO said in a statement:

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has found insufficient evidence to prosecute two people suspected of unlawfully obtaining and disclosing CCTV footage from the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) ...

Given the seriousness of the report and the wider implications it potentially had for the security of information across government, the ICO had a legal duty to carry out an impartial assessment of the evidence available to determine if there had been a breach of the law.

Forensic analysis revealed that the leaked images were most likely obtained by someone recording the CCTV footage screens with a mobile phone.

Six phones retrieved during the execution of search warrants did not contain the relevant CCTV footage. After taking legal advice, the ICO concluded that there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone with criminal offences under the Data Protection Act 2018.

The ICO has therefore closed its criminal investigation.

Chris Mason has been named as the BBC’s new political editor, replacing Laura Kuenssberg in one of the most prominent and powerful roles in British journalism, my colleague Jim Waterson reports.

Nigel Mills, who has been the only Conservative MP today publicly calling for Boris Johnson to resign after been fined (see 9.10am and 10.37am), told the World at One that he thought there were worse revelations yet to come.

Asked whether Johnson should really be resigning over such a short and relatively minor breach of the rules, Mills said that the police thought it serious enough to merit a fine and that Johnson had chosen not to appeal. He went on:

My fear for him, actually, is that the remaining parties that are being investigated actually do sound to be a lot worse transgressions of the law than the one he’s just fined for. It does not strike me that this is the end of the situation. If he’s been fined for this, then you’ve got to think that some more are going to come.

Mills also said that he would “very shortly” be writing to the chairman of the Conservative backbench 1922 Committee requesting a vote of no confidence in Johnson. Although Mills have been criticising Johnson today, he is not one of the MPs who submitted a letter earlier this year. He said he saw himself as a support of Johnson’s. He said:

I’ve not been campaigning against the prime minister. I’m a supporter of the prime minister. I think he’s done great things and I really regret that it’s come to this.

Mill said that he did not think there would be a no confidence vote (54 letters have to go in for one to take place, and several MPs who confirmed that they had written letters earlier this year withdrew them last month after the war in Ukraine started). Even if there were a ballot, Mills said he would be “very surprised” if Johnson lost.

But he said that, on principle, he could not support Johnson staying.

I just I can’t get myself past the idea that a prime minister in office can be fined and can stay there. I just think that is not a possible position to sustain.

And he said Rishi Sunak should resign too.

I just think that people have the right to expect that when laws are being put in place, for various serious reasons, the people at the top have to follow them.

I’m not saying that the chancellor should be barred from high office for life. But I think this is a line that we can’t cross.

David Frost, the former Brexit minister, has suggested that Boris Johnson should bring forward the publication of the full Sue Gray report to clear up exactly what did happen over Partygate.

The report is not due to be published until the police investigation is over, and with the Met police saying yesterday that more fines may be issued, that could take some time. The police are investigating 12 events but there only seem to be four events in relation to which it is known that people have already been fined (these three, and the surprise birthday party).

Lord Frost told LBC:

I think it’s not possible just to say, ‘That was then, this is now, let’s move on, the world is different’, as the government is trying to this morning ...

We don’t yet know what other penalties may be issued, and to whom. I think, as a source suggested this morning, if there’s some thought about bringing forward the Sue Gray report, I think there’ll be a good idea. I think it’s important to bring transparency, to be clear what’s happened, for the prime minister to make his case and people to judge him. I don’t think it’ll be enough just to say nothing.

Frost was referring to this Telegraph story, by Martin Evans, the paper’s crime correspondent, saying the Gray report could now be published as early as next week.

Frost also told LBC that Johnson should correct the record, and tell MPs when parliament returns next week that parties did take place at No 10, contrary to what he told them previously. Frost said:

The prime minister is on record saying to parliament that all the rules were observed, and there were no parties, that’s obviously not the case. And I think it is very important in our constitutional system that correct information is given to parliament. So I hope the prime minister will come to the house on Tuesday and make it make it clear what the actual position is.

Keir Starmer has been criticised by some on the Labour left for shelving the party’s commitment to abolish non-dom status. Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, was asked about this in her Today programme interview this morning and, although she would not commit to getting rid of non-dom status altogether, she did say the party would tighten the rules. She said:

I’m very clear, if you live in this country, you should pay your full taxes here and that goes on non-dom status, tax havens, trusts and all the rest of it ...

Gordon Brown cracked down on some of these rules and an incoming Labour government would go further. If you live in this country, you should pay your full taxes here, not just some of your taxes, and Labour would change the rules so that was the case.

Yesterday the Conservative MP Michael Fabricant claimed that “many teachers and nurses” broke lockdown rules with postwork drinking, like Boris Johnson. His comment angered members of both professions who insisted he was wrong. The Royal College of Nursing wrote to him last night to say hospitals do not even allow alcohol on the premises for staff to drink in working hours.

Teachers unions are also protesting. The NAHT union for school leaders has sent a letter to the education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, saying Fabricant’s comments were “wholly inaccurate and deeply insulting” to teachers as a profession. “I cannot overstate the hurt and anger these comments have caused,” said Paul Whiteman, the NAHT general secretary.

The National Education Union has also called Fabricant’s claims insulting. In a statement Mary Bousted, its joint general secretary, said:

Michael Fabricant’s attempt to defend the indefensible actions of the prime minister and chancellor are as insulting as they are offensive.

Teachers, nurses and the vast majority of the British public followed the rules set by Boris Johnson and his government. NEU members have gone above and beyond during the pandemic to keep the education system running and will be furious at this attempt to tar them with the same brush as law breakers in Downing Street.

And Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said that he would be writing to Fabricant to formally complain about the interview. He said:

Mr Fabricant’s remark is both factually incorrect and insulting. Unlike what seems to be the case in Downing Street, alcohol is not a feature of the working day in schools, and teachers do not drink in staff rooms.

More than 35 homebuilders have agreed to put £2bn towards fixing unsafe cladding on high-rise buildings in England identified in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower disaster, Michael Gove, the housing secretary, has said. My colleague Rowena Mason has the story here.

The government needs to act quickly to avoid interest rates on post-2012 student loans for graduates soaring to 12% in England and Wales, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Based on today’s inflation figures, the IFS said graduates earning more than £49,000 will see interest rates of 12% on their loans while lower earners face 9% rates, from September this year.

The IFS says the rise will mainly affect higher earning graduates because they are more likely to repay their loans in full, while lower earners will have their remaining balances wiped 30 years after graduation.

A graduate earning more than £49,000 will have to repay an extra £3,000 on student loan balances of £50,000, the IFS estimates. But it says graduates face a rollercoaster of steeply rising and falling interest rates over the next few years.

Ben Waltmann, senior research economist at the IFS, said:

Unless the government changes the way student loan interest is determined, there will be wild swings in the interest rate over the next three years. The maximum rate will reach an eye-watering level of 12% between September 2022 and February 2023 and a low of around zero between September 2024 and March 2025.

There is no good economic reason for this. Interest rates on student loans should be low and stable, reflecting the government’s own cost of borrowing. The government urgently needs to adjust the way the interest rate cap operates to avoid a significant spike in September.

Conservative MPs backing Boris Johnson have argued that it would be wrong to replace the prime minister while the war in Ukraine is taking place. But, in an interview with the Today programme this morning, Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, argued that having a new PM would help Britain show support for Urkaine. She explained:

The House of Commons, the Conservative party, the Labour party, are united in our support and solidarity with Ukraine, and our opposition to the aggression that we see from Russia in Ukraine. So changing the Conservative leader would not change our resolve in terms of the conflict in Ukraine.

What you would get is leadership that could concentrate on the job in hand. There was talk earlier this week about parliament being recalled to discuss the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine. That talk of recalling parliament has now disappeared because the prime minister knows if parliament is recalled, he will be asked about the parties and the fines and he doesn’t want to do that.

And so I would argue the exact opposite to what [Tory MPs are saying] – actually, fresh leadership would mean that we would have a government that could concentrate on the issues that we need to focus on as a country, including the cost of living crisis.

Here is a summary of the main points from Grant Shapps’ morning interviews.

• Shapps, the transport secretary, refused to confirm that parties took place at Downing Street in breach of lockdown rules. On the Today programme the presenter, Nick Robinson, said that Boris Johnson told MPs that there were no parties are No 10, after the surprise birthday event Johnson attended and after multiple other parties that have been reported. Asked if the government now accepts that there were parties at No 10, Shapps at first said Johnson did not set out to break the law. When pressed, Shapps said it was for the police to decide if parties took place. Asked why Johnson was not prepared to admit that parties took place at No 10, Shapps replied: “The police are the right people to rule on this, and they said that the gathering in the cabinet room where they wished the prime minister happy birthday breached the rules.”

• Shapps claimed that Johnson did not knowingly break the rules and that he was “completely mortified” about the fact that he did so unintentionally. (See 8.50am.)

• He said there was “clearly something wrong with the way that No 10 was operating at that time”.

• He said that he considered Johnson to be an honourable man and that he thought his record should be judged “in the round”. He said:

People judge somebody in the round, how they do the job overall. I’m not saying that the prime minister isn’t a flawed individual. We are all flawed in different ways. We all err.

The question is did someone set out to do these things with malice and overall is he doing a good job as prime minister? Which is why I do think it’s relevant how he performs the rest of his job, the rest of his task.

My colleague John Crace says that judging Johnson “in the round” might not help him very much.

Nigel Mills has become the first Conservative MP to say publicly, since Boris Johnson was fined, that he should no longer remain as prime minister. The BBC’s Georgia Roberts has his quotes.

Mills is only being consistent. In January he said that, if Johnson were shown to have attended a party in breach of lockdown rules, he would have to resign. But many of Mills’ colleagues who were saying similar things at the start of the Partygate scandal are now saying the Ukraine war has changed their thinking.

The Spectator is keeping a tally of what Tory MPs have been saying about whether Johnson should stay or go since the news that he was being fined broke yesterday. They have 69 MPs backing him, and only one (Mills) saying he should go. That’s a very positive ratio, but it also means that almost 300 Tory MPs have yet to express a view. Some of that can be explained by the (understandable) reluctance of some of them to feel the need to tweet about everything, but it also may be because some of them have considerable reservations about the PM, which for now they are keeping to themselves.

Good morning. Boris Johnson has now been fined for breaking the Covid lockdown rules that he drew up and ordered the nation to obey, but Conservative MPs are happy for him to remain as prime minister - at least for now. Although no one would claim this is a triumph, his survival prospects now look much better than his colleagues thought they would be at this point. Crucially, the Tory press, which came close to giving up on him when the Partygate scandal first erupted, is broadly supportive, as my colleague Warren Murray shows here.

Here is our overnight story about Johnson, his wife Carrie and Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, all being fined for lockdown breaches - and paying them - yesterday.

Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, and one of the best media performers in the cabinet, has had the awkward job of defending Johnson on the media this morning. His argument has been that Johnson made a mistake, but that he’s only human, it wasn’t intentional, and that he’s truly sorry. He told Sky News:

The one thing I know – and I spoke to the prime minister – is he is completely mortified by this happening ...

He didn’t knowingly break the law. He didn’t do it deliberately. He didn’t come to parliament and having knowingly done this. He thought in fact that the same people who wished him happy birthday, who he had already been meeting with earlier that day, was not breaking the law.

The police take a different view. He absolutely accepts that and has paid the fine ...

The question I suppose, your question goes to the heart of, you know, did he set out to do this? Was it something that was done with malice, with intent?

And the answer of course, is no. It’s something that happened in error, and as I have said, I’ve spoken to him, he is incredibly embarrassed by the whole thing.

He knows that it was stupid, indefensible. But he didn’t set out to break the law, and he has paid the fixed penalty notice fine, and has a very big job to do.

I will post more from the Shapps interviews shortly.

Yesterday Tory MPs weren’t calling for Johnson’s resignation. Today we will see whether that changes. Parliament is not sitting, and many MPs are on holiday, but there is a campaign event in Scotland where Ruth Davidson, the former Scottish Tory leader, and Douglas Ross, the current one, are appearing together. Davidson wants Johnson to resign, but Ross doesn’t, and so message discipline might get tricky.

Otherwise the only thing we are expecting is an update from Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, on his plans to get the housing industry to fund the removal of unsafe cladding from flats.

I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com.