TODAY’S WEATHER

☀️ It’ll be another pleasant day across the country, with early rain in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen giving way to a bright and warm day. London will be hot. (Here’s the UK forecast).

THE BIG STORIES
Trump quits G7 early as Middle East hostilities escalate | Scottish Government plans waste crackdown

📣 The G7 became the G6 as Donald Trump left the summit early, saying he wanted to focus on tensions in the Middle East. Before he flew home from Canada the group issued a joint statement calling for “de-escalation of hostilities” in the Middle East, including a ceasefire in Gaza. But Israel and Iran continued to attack each other, for a fifth day. (BBC) (Times £)

• Iran is looking for talks “as a possible escape hatch” from attacks by Israel, with its “air defences shredded, allies sidelined and its arsenal of missiles dwindling”. (🎁 WSJ - free to read)

• Israeli forces ordered residents of a large part of Tehran to evacuate, in an echo of warnings issued regularly to Palestinians in Gaza over the last two years. (Guardian)

• The remaining six leaders will try to show today the wealthy nations club still has the clout to shape world affairs, even without Trump. (AP)

• Carney and Trump commit to reaching trade deal within 30 days (CBC)

📣 The Scottish Government plans to crack down on public sector waste with Public Finance Minister Ivan McKee expected to unveil a review of the Scottish civil service that could include reducing its 55 directorates and 130 quangos. The news follows a speech by First Minister John Swinney, in which he stated that Scotland’s public sector would shrink as new technologies, such as AI, combined with reform, made services more efficient. (Herald)

• Unions have attacked Swinney’s assertion that Scotland’s public sector will have to shrink. Lilian Macer, Scottish secretary at Unison, said “There is no justification for job cuts in public services - these are political choices, not financial necessities.” (Scotsman)

• Graham Grant: “Swinney's discredited SNP has taken us for a ride - now he wants you to trust them to guide Scotland into the future!” (Mail £)

• Rachel Amery: Swinney is resetting Scotland’s public services - but why has he waited 18 years? (Scotsman)

IDEAS
Swinney offers a flash of a radical vision. The test will be in sorting a sore knee

🗣️ Around about the moment John Swinney was standing up at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital yesterday to talk about the future of Scottish public services, I was chatting to a friend about the health of her husband.

He normally works as a self-employed carpet fitter, but is struggling at the moment. He’s got a knee injury that stops him putting much weight on his leg. That’s a problem when you have to stand and kneel dozens of times a day.

He’s been trying to get some treatment on the NHS, but his tale will be familiar to anyone who’s struggled with this sort of injury: weeks to see a GP, who suggested unaffordable rest and ineffective painkillers. Weeks more to get a referral to a specialist, weeks more for the prescribed scan. Now - you’ve guessed - weeks more to discuss the results. You may have been here yourself.

His knee still doesn’t work well, so nor does he. Earning is a struggle. The cost to the family is huge, and the state loses out now too - in tax and, eventually, benefits. But what is he to do?

On the other side of the country, meanwhile, John Swinney was offering up some interesting ideas about digital reform in Scotland’s public services.

(See the full text of his speech)

This was, alas, no Harold Wilson-esque, “White heat of technology” rhetorical tour de force. It was dry. It went long on the repetition of familiar Westminster-blame for problems close to home.

But ideas were in there. “The central importance of technology” in renewing Scotland’s public realm was there. The use of “increasingly sophisticated” tools to meet complex challenges (he was standing in the hospital’s high-tech Imaging Centre of Excellence, which offered a metaphor, unused, for what he was talking about). “A near complete digital refit of our public realm” was called for. The use of AI to predict risk, the use of other technologies - including genetics - “to target interventions more effectively”.

The need for efficiency - the lack of which my sore-kneed friend is experiencing first-hand - was underscored. And - perhaps most vitally - an acknowledgement of the need to look at “the whole person and the whole system,” not just parts of it.

This sort of talk is new from the SNP, but has been heard elsewhere. Lest you suggest I’m making a party political point, I’d point out Swinney’s speech is an echo of some reforming voices in Labour (Wes Streeting) and the Conservatives (Michael Gove spoke like this when education secretary).

It’s also aligned with the sort of thinking that has been prevalent for decades in large organisations in the private sector, which have faced enormous technological upheaval coupled with ever-tightening budgets. You hear it less from politicians, because it’s a tough sell to a media that’s not particularly interested, and staff and unions fearful of change.

Reaction to the speech underscored just how tough. Public sector unions immediately vented fury that - they said - he raised the prospect of reducing the scale of the public sector through political choice, rather than financial necessity.

The opposition parties piled in, blaming “the SNP’s poor planning” and “rampant waste” (Labour) and “financial mismanagement” of a “bloated public sector” (Conservatives). Media reaction was wary.

Given the SNP’s track record on delivery, sceptical eyebrows are warranted. But it doesn’t necessarily make Swinney’s direction of travel wrong. After all, as my sore-kneed friend will tell you, things are hardly going well as they are.

We’ll see. Let’s raise our coffee cups to, at least, the floating of an idea. That’s the easy part, of course. Announcements due later this week - a “major review” to address public sector waste from Ivan McKee - may only offer cuts. Or they may point the way down a path to the digitally-enhanced future falteringly set out by the First Minister yesterday, and my friend’s knee will get sorted a little more efficiently.

AROUND SCOTLAND

 Nearly 100,000 Scottish households face being left without hot water and heating in two weeks, the energy regulator is warning, as old electricity meters are switched off. (The Herald has the exclusive)

📣 A building in Perth’s city centre will be completely demolished after it was damaged in a fire that left one person dead and two in hospital. (STV)

📣 East Renfrewshire Council has apologised after a head teacher said the Union flag was “potentially offensive or sectarian” in a letter to parents. (Herald)

AROUND THE UK

📣 Children and teenage girls were blamed for crimes commited against them, a damning report into grooming gangs has concluded. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper promised to take action on 12 recommendations by Baroness Louise Casey following her rapid national audit on the scandal, saying there had been “too much denial” and “too little justice” for victims. (Independent)

• The Casey report says the ethnicity of grooming gangs was “shied away from”. (BBC)

• Report pulls no punches: will it lead to meaningful change? (BBC)

• Rajeev Syal: Casey report forces Starmer’s hand on an issue that has haunted Labour for decades. (Guardian)

• Nick Timothy: This is the biggest scandal of our generation. It will sweep away failing leaders (Telegraph £)

📣 British Steel has secured a £500 million contract to supply UK train tracks, in a deal that helps safeguard the troubled Scunthorpe steelworks. (BBC)

📣 MPs will debate changing the law on abortion in England and Wales today, with an amendment expected to go to a free vote. (BBC)

AROUND THE WORLD

🌎 Israel has broadened its attacks on Iran, with many shops in Tehran now closed and long lines forming for fuel. (AP)

🌎 Donald Trump signed an order confirming parts of the already-announced UK-US tariff deal, meaning charges on UK-built cars being shipped into the US will be reduced. (BBC)

🌎 A Californian doctor has agreed to plead guilty to supplying Matthew Perry with ketamine weeks before the actor died of an overdose. (BBC)

🌎 What does the capsizing - and swift repair and relaunch - of North Korea’s latest warship tell us about the regime? (BBC)

🌎 Two US railway employees have been jailed… for building secret homes in train stations, using public money. The tiny apartments don’t look bad at all - and they may have lived there for some time. An extraordinary story… (ABC7 News)