Politics Live - readers' edition: Friday 26 April

Theresa May watching 10-year-old Norr Fatima as she descends the climbing wall during a local election visit to the Leisure Box in Brierfield, Lancashire yesterday. Photograph: Peter Byrne/AFP/Getty Images

We’re not writing our usual blog today but here, as an alternative, is the Politics Live readers’ edition. It is a place for you to discuss today’s politics, and to share links to breaking news and to the most interesting stories and blogs on the web.

Feel free to express your views robustly, but please treat others with respect and don’t resort to abuse. Guardian comment pages are supposed to be a haven from the Twitter/social media rant-orama, not an extension of it.

You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here.

And here are some of the main ones on our site this morning.

• Cabinet members who were at Tuesday’s National Security Council (NSC) have been sent an ultimatum by Whitehall’s most powerful official to confess or deny whether they leaked a controversial decision to allow Chinese telecoms firm Huawei to help build the UK’s 5G phone network.

• The international trade secretary, Liam Fox, has been forced to clarify comments suggesting individuals could question the scientific consensus on climate change.

• Councils in Portsmouth and Brighton have been accused by the Operation Black Vote (OBV) pressure group of being among the least representative authorities across England for people from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds.

• Staff shortages at the Department for Work and Pensions have led to thousands of carers being overpaid benefits that they could be repaying for years, a report by the government’s spending watchdog has found.

• Two Conservative local election candidates and a woman honoured with an MBE are among 40 new self-professed Tory members who have shared or endorsed racist and inflammatory Facebook posts including Islamophobic material, the Guardian has learned.

On Thursdays local council byelections take place. There was one last night. Britain Elects has the results.

Britain's last council by-election before this year's local elections: a Labour defence for the Shrewsbury suburb of Belle Vue, Shropshire.@andrewteale's preview:https://t.co/Ud5Y73Jm21

— Britain Elects (@britainelects) April 25, 2019

Belle Vue (Shropshire) result:

LAB: 47.1% (+4.1)
LDEM: 31.5% (+3.2)
CON: 11.9% (-12.3)
GRN: 5.1% (+0.6)
UKIP: 4.5% (+4.5)

Labour HOLD.https://t.co/Ud5Y73Jm21

— Britain Elects (@britainelects) April 25, 2019