Latest updates: Greg Hands praises deputy chairman but declines to defend some of Anderson’s controversial past remarks
Good morning. Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, is visiting London today to meet Rishi Sunak and give a speech in parliament. In a significant announcement, No 10 has also said the UK will start training Ukrainian pilots to fly the jets used by Britain and other western countries. My colleague Geneva Abdul has more details on our Ukraine live blog.
In other news, Greg Hands, the new Conservative party chairman, has been doing a media round. There have been two lines of note.
Hands described Lee Anderson, the controversial new Tory deputy chairman, as a ‘“fantastic asset” – but declined to defend some of his past remarks. Asked if he agreed with Anderson that nurses were only having to use food banks because they could not budget, Hands said: “I’m not gonna give a running commentary on things that may have been said in the past.”
