Victoria Atkins, the Home Office minister, has dismissed claims that the government is involved in a “cover-up” intended to delay the publication of a report likely to expose police and media corruption. Speaking in response to a Commons urgent question, Atkins said that the Home Office had not even been given the report from the panel investigating the death of Daniel Morgan yet and that Priti Patel, the home secretary, was only insisting on seeing it ahead of publication to review it on national security grounds. Patel’s insistence on her right to redact the report has infuriated the panel that produced it, which insists that there are not potential national security issues with its contents, and as a result the panel is refusing to hand it over. Morgan was a private detective killed 34 years ago with an axe in a pub car park in south London. Chris Bryant, the Labour MP who tabled the urgent question, and one of the parliamentarians who did most to expose the media’s role in phone-hacking, told MPs that Morgan’s family had had no justice “thanks to corruption in the police and interference by News UK”. He asked Akins for an assurance that Patel has not discussed the case with News UK. He asked: It is not difficult to see why powerful people, with very close friends in News International [Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper company, now called News UK] might want to delay or prevent this publication. So has the home secretary, or any of her advisers or officials, had any formal or informal discussion or correspondence on this matter with News UK, with Rebekah Brooks [the News UK boss] or with Rupert Murdoch? And will she publish the minutes of her department’s meetings with News UK over the past 12 months? If not, won’t people conclude that the cover-up is still going on, and this isn’t the party of law and order, it’s the party of the cover-up? Atkins sidestepped the question about contacts with News UK, but she insisted that the Home Office wanted to see the report published. She said the report would not be redacted or edited, but she added a caveat, saying the home secretary had to take into account national security. The SNP Peter Grant made a contrast between the government’s stance on this issue and its response to the revelations about the BBC and Martin Bashir. Grant told the Commons: I can’t help thinking if things had been the other way round - if it had been Sun journalists who had lied to procure an interview with the late Princess of Wales and if it were the BBC that were alleged to be involved in covering up the reasons for a brutal murder on the streets of London - then the reaction on the government benches to this and [the BBC story] may have been very different. The government will not “rush into any changes” following the inquiry into the BBC’s mishandled interview with Diana, Princess of Wales, a minister has said, while warning there could be a need for new editorial oversight of the corporation. The British government has told all UK planes to cease flying over Belarus and summoned the country’s ambassador amid outrage over the arrest of an opposition blogger and his girlfriend when their Ryanair flight was forced to make an emergency landing in Minsk. Priti Patel has declined to say how much, if anything, travellers to the UK might need to pay for a planned new digital visa system, part of a series of sweeping changes to the immigration and asylum system outlined by the home secretary. Up to 8,700 patients died after catching Covid-19 while in hospital being treated for another medical problem, according to official NHS data obtained by the Guardian. That’s all from me for today. But our coronavirus coverage continues on our global live blog. It’s here.