It’s nearly 5pm in Westminster. Here is a summary of the day’s main news stories: The work and pensions secretary, Mel Stride, has conceded that Brexit delivered a blow to investment decisions in the UK. He told the BBC’s The World At One programme: “I think if you have a situation where you create frictions between yourself and your major trading partners, I think you have to accept that that will have an impact.” Stride’s concession over Brexit came after Paul Drechsler, the chairman of the International Chamber of Commerce UK, said Labour was now winning the argument on business. Drechsler, who was a skills adviser to former Tory prime minister David Cameron, blamed Brexit and the chaos afterwards for reducing the willingness of firms to invest in Britain. The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, finds himself under pressure today to follow in his predecessor’s footsteps and label China a “threat” as part of the government’s integrated review of global security. In October, Liz Truss formally designated China “the most serious long-term threat to our values and way of life”. With concerns mounting over the UK’s capability to deal with suspected Chinese spy balloons, Sunak is being urged by his backbench MPs to be just as hawkish when it comes to his own review, which is due to take place on 7 March. A former British ambassador to the US and national security adviser has questioned whether the UK has a “watertight capability” to deal with suspected Chinese spy balloons. Asked if Sunak is right to suggest the UK has a “watertight rapid response to intercept these kind of things”, Kim Darroch told Times Radio he is not totally confident this is the case. Negotiations over the Northern Ireland protocol are in the crucial final phase with a potential deal as early as next week, according to UK government sources. Sunak is expected to spend the latter half of the parliamentary recess this week looking at the shape of the deal, with calls pencilled in with EU leaders. However, UK sources stressed talks were at a delicate phase and there was no guarantee of a final agreement. More than 70,000 staff at 150 universities have gone on strike today, in the first of three successive days of industrial action this week. The University and College Union confirmed that it is reballoting members, to enable strike action to continue throughout the rest of the academic year, in line with legislation which requires that industrial action mandates are renewed every six months. Meanwhile, talks which began yesterday will continue with employers, who are represented by the University and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA) via the Acas conciliation service. Civil servants who are members of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) are striking this week, as figures revealed the UK recorded the highest number of working days lost to strike action for more than a decade in December. PCS members are also on strike this week at the Department for Work and Pensions, DVLA and the Animal and Plant Health Agency. They will also be joined by striking Border Force staff in Dover, Calais, Coquelles and Dunkirk on Friday. Millions of households face further cost of living pressures after research suggested three-quarters of councils will hike tax by 5% from April. The County Councils Network (CCN) has found 84 councils out of 114 who provide social care and have published their 2023-24 budget proposals plan to raise council tax by the maximum permitted which is 4.99%. The Labour vice-chair of CCN and leader of Cheshire East council, Sam Corcoran, said local authorities had “little choice” but to propose increasing council tax. The UK’s unemployment rate has remained unchanged despite Britain’s economy flatlining as a wave of people returned to work, official figures show. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the rate of UK unemployment was 3.7% in the three months to December, the same rate that was recorded in the three months to November. However, it had edged higher than the previous calendar quarter, with the unemployment rate standing at 3.6% in the three months to September, PA Media reported. Liz Truss oversaw a major jump in spending on government credit cards at the Foreign Office when she took over, a Guardian analysis shows, with spending on restaurants, bars, leisure activities and hotels all rising sharply during her time in office. An analysis of data collated by the Labour party shows officials spent far more on procurement cards under the former prime minister than they had under her predecessor, Dominic Raab. A request for a “modest” delay to the start of the first public hearing in the UK Covid-19 inquiry has been made. Hugo Keith KC, counsel for the inquiry, said that “literally thousands of manual redactions” were having to be made to submitted government policy documents and emails related to the UK’s preparedness and resilience for a pandemic, with those documents then resent to the relevant parties for review. No new pay offer has yet been made to Scotland’s teachers in a bid to end strike action, union leaders have said. Andrea Bradley, the general secretary of the EIS teaching union, said that they did “not have a piece of paper with numbers on it”. The Scottish education secretary, Shirley-Anne Somerville, said on Monday that she hoped a “new, fair and affordable offer” could be put to teaching unions “within the next few days”. Six people were arrested after climate activists blocked a major bridge in central London in a protest calling for investment in plant-based food. Members of Animal Rebellion, an offshoot of Extinction Rebellion, staged the Valentine’s Day protest on Westminster Bridge just after 10am on Tuesday to urge the government to sever ties with animal farming, PA Media reported. The government has hailed a “landmark” deal by Airbus and Rolls-Royce to supply new aircraft to Air India in an agreement expected to create and support hundreds of jobs in the UK. The airline has reportedly agreed to buy 250 planes from the European aviation giant, with a significant proportion of the manufacturing process expected to take place in the UK, PA Media reported. Campaigners are to make a high court challenge to the government’s plan to reduce raw sewage discharges into rivers and seas, arguing it does not go far enough. The case, to be taken by the Good Law Project, will put the storm overflow scheme under detailed scrutiny. It will argue that the plan will lead to raw sewage being discharged into waterways for decades to come and does not protect the majority of coastal areas designated as ecologically sensitive. Campaigners in east London have said the mayor of Tower Hamlets is engaged in a “culture war” against low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) as he consults for a second time in a year on the future of traffic reduction schemes. The controversy in the borough – where Lutfur Rahman, promised in his manifesto to remove LTNs – came as neighbouring councils Hackney and Islington strengthened their commitment to the schemes. The veteran broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby has said Richard Sharp should quit as BBC chair for the good of the corporation over the criticism he has received after it was revealed he helped Boris Johnson to secure an £800,000 loan. Speaking on Newsnight, Dimbleby said the row was causing “a great deal of damage” for the BBC. That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, and indeed the UK politics live blog for today. I’ll be back tomorrow morning but for now, have a pleasant evening.