Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, has said that it is the wrong time to be changing the party’s leadership election rules. He made the comment in an interview with the BBC (see 6.09pm) as the changes, which would require leadership candidates to have the support of 20% of MPs, instead of 10% as now, were being debated by delegates. A card vote was taken, and the results will be announced later, but Unison is backing the changes, which should significantly boost their chances of being passed. (See 3.41pm.) A win would go some way towards compensating Sir Keir Starmer for the humiliation of having to ditch a more significant part of his original proposal – a return to the original electoral college, under which MPs get a third of the votes in leadership contests. All aspects of his plan have been opposed by the left, which sees them as moves that would prevent the election of another Jeremy Corbyn-type candidate. Starmer has said a Labour government would not seek to nationalise the big six energy companies, apparently ditching a leadership campaign pledge to “support common ownership of rail, mail, energy and water”. He made the comment in a wide-ranging interview with the BBC’s Andrew Marr. See 11.01am. A few hours after the interview, delegates voted for a green new deal motion backing “public ownership of energy including energy companies”, but Starmer’s aides have indicated that he is willing to ignore this when drafting the next manifesto. Starmer has expressed his disapproval of his deputy, Angela Rayner, calling the Tories “scum” – but he did not directly call for her to apologise. (See 11.00am.) Sajid Javid, the Tory health secretary, has claimed that Starmer is not fit to run the NHS because, in response to a question about trans rights, Starmer said it was not right to say that only women have a cervix. (See 3.27pm.) Labour is spending more than £2m on legal fees every year in the aftermath of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, a senior party official has claimed. Jeremy Corbyn saw a Labour conference fringe event on the climate emergency disrupted by his brother Piers, who protested by shouting and handing out climate science-denying leaflets.