South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa has been reelected by lawmakers for a second term, hours after his African National Congress and the Democratic Alliance (DA) agreed to form a coalition, setting aside their rivalry in a historic governance pact.

Ramaphosa won the late Friday vote against Julius Malema, leader of the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters, winning 283 votes to Malema’s 44.

Earlier in the day the pro-business DA said it would vote for Ramaphosa as part of an agreement with the former liberation movement to form a unity government.

Ramaphosa’s centrist preferences ultimately won out over more leftwing factions of the ANC which wanted to strike a deal with breakaway parties that back nationalisation and seizing land from white farmers. The deal was struck amid criticisms that the DA favours the interests of South Africa’s white minority, something it denies.

The ANC lost its parliamentary majority in the 29 May elections for the first time since it swept to power in 1994 at the end of apartheid. Its vote share collapsed from 57.5% in 2019 to 40.2%, as supporters defected to breakaway parties amid chronic unemployment and worsening public services.

The DA, which received almost 22% of the vote, will back Ramaphosa’s election by lawmakers for a second term, while its MPs will also vote for an ANC speaker of parliament in return for the position of deputy speaker, its leader, John Steenhuisen, told a press briefing.

“Today, the DA becomes a party of national government,” Steenhuisen said, after the legislators were sworn in at a convention centre in Cape Town, while the parliament buildings are still being renovated after a fire in 2022.

“Through their votes, the people have made it clear that they do not want any one party to dominate our society. The people have also told us that the time for finger-pointing is over and that the time for a new politics of collaboration and problem-solving has arrived.”

An ANC-DA coalition was favoured by large businesses and international investors, with Ramaphosa, 71, expected to continue to try pushing forward policies such as allowing the private sector to generate renewable energy, which has contributed to a fall in power cuts.

Negotiations will continue after Friday on policies and cabinet positions, Steenhuisen said, adding that the two-week period after election results that the constitution mandates for the election of a president was not long enough to reach a full coalition agreement.

A “statement of intent” signed by the ANC and DA includes a commitment to a “merit-based, nonpartisan and professional civil service”. The DA has long criticised the ANC appointment of its supporters to public sector positions, known in South Africa as “cadre deployment”, claiming it fosters corruption.

Two smaller parties, the Inkatha Freedom party (IFP), a Zulu nationalist party, and the Patriotic Alliance (PA), which wants to bring back the death penalty and deport illegal immigrants, have also said they will join the government.

The inclusion of the IFP, which received 3.8% of the vote, is viewed as a way to deflect criticism of the ANC for working with the white-led DA. The PA, led by the self-described reformed bank robber Gayton McKenzie, received 2% of the vote and has its support base in South Africa’s Coloured communities.

The ANC’s vote share collapsed in large part due to the new uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party, named for the ANC’s armed wing during apartheid. It came a surprise third in the election with 14.6% of the vote, just six months after it was launched by the former president Jacob Zuma, who has feuded bitterly with Ramaphosa since being forced to resign the presidency in 2018.

The MK party, which wants to replace constitutional democracy with parliamentary supremacy, boycotted parliament’s opening, after a legal challenge to the election results was rejected by the country’s top court. It has said it would not work with the ANC while it is led by Ramaphosa, who said that potential coalition partners needed to respect the constitution.

Meanwhile, the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), who were sworn in as MPs in their trademark red overalls, some wearing hard hats and rubber boots, were among the parties that turned down Ramaphosa’s call to join a Government of National Unity (GNU).

Malema, the EFF leader, who founded the Marxist party in 2013 after he was expelled by the ANC while its youth leader, said it would not join a government with the “neo-colonial” DA, which he labelled “our enemy”.

Some ANC politicians and supporters had favoured a coalition with either or both the EFF and MK, viewing them as political and ideological relatives.

Ramaphosa’s call for a GNU, however, was in keeping with his cautious political approach, some analysts said, and positioned the ANC as inclusive, with parties that didn’t join excluding themselves.

A pro-Palestinian student encampment at a prominent Canadian university has announced a “revolutionary youth summer program” with posts featuring photos of masked, armed guerrillas reading communist literature, drawing criticism from a Canadian Zionist organization decrying what it said was metastasizing antisemitism.

The student group Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) McGill called for students to sign up for “revolutionary” trainings to be held on the university campus this month. Since April SPHR McGill has been occupying part of the Montreal campus to protest against Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza.

“We pledge to educate the youth of Montreal and redefine McGill’s ‘elite’ institutional legacy by transforming its space into one of revolutionary education,” the group said in a post.

“The daily schedule will include physical activity, Arabic language instruction, cultural crafts, political discussions, historical and revolutionary lessons.”

The announcement was illustrated with photos of gunmen wearing keffiyeh scarves covering their faces reading from Chairman Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book. The photos of the Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organisation were taken in Jordan in 1970, a time when the Chinese Communist party supported the Palestinian movement.

In a statement on Friday, the McGill president and vice-chancellor, Deep Saini, described the use of the image as “extremely alarming” and said the university had contacted law enforcement agencies.

“It should go without saying that imagery evoking violence is not a tool of peaceful expression or assembly. This worrying escalation is emblematic of the rising tensions on campuses across North America, where we have seen many incidents that go well beyond what universities are equipped to manage on their own,” he said.

Saini said the university had contacted “municipal, provincial and federal public safety authorities, flagging this social media post and other recent activities as matters of national security, and requesting all appropriate interventions to ensure the safety of our community”.

Montreal police say they have no plans to end the pro-Palestinian encampment.

SPHR did not respond to requests for comment but one McGill faculty member said that while the advertisement used deliberately provocative imagery, what was being proposed appeared to amount to a teach-in.

“I don’t see anything objectionable in providing history and context to the current movement,” said Barry Eidlin, an associate professor of sociology at McGill.

“Are you going to be outraged about a 50-year-old picture of a PLO guerrilla, or by hundreds of people in a refugee camp being slaughtered because the Israeli government doesn’t know how to negotiate and feels that they can kill any number of Palestinians to justify liberating a few hostages?” he asked.

This week SPHR rejected McGill’s latest offer aimed at securing an end to their protest.

The student group has been calling on the university to cut investments they say are complicit in the genocide of Palestinians and to end relations with Israeli academic institutions.

The students rejected a proposal to offer clemency to protesting students and to review McGill’s investments in weapons manufacturers as “laughable” and “an immaterial response”.

The Canadian Zionist organisation the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) called on McGill to stop turning a blind eye to “hate and toxicity”.

“Authorities must act to dismantle the toxic encampment immediately, or the antisemitism, hate, intimidation & harassment will continue to metastasize,” it said in a statement.

“You have masked individuals with assault rifle weapons as the image representing what they hope to do, they’re calling it revolution,” Eta Yudin, CIJA vice-president for Québec, told the Guardian. “One has to ask what they have planned?”

Let’s rock! Germany’s players were clearly paying close and diligent attention to Julian Nagelsmann’s signoff at his pre-tournament press conference.

At the Munich Football Arena the hosts kicked off Euro 2024 with a kind of pomp-metal power surge, a first-half display that brought three goals, a red card for Ryan Porteous and evidence of how well Nagelsmann has rebalanced this talented German team.

The night ended in a 5-1 defeat for a persevering Scotland, but it was pretty much packed away in those 10 first-half minutes, with goals from Florian Wirtz and the impressive Jamal Musiala, plus a series of lovely supple passing moves fed through the ageing rhythm section Toni Kroos.

Scotland did at least win the pre- match, occupying Munich for the last two days, wallpapering the Aldstadt with wool-mix plaid. They almost had the last laugh too, pulling one back via an own goal from Antonio Rüdiger. But Emre Can added a fifth in stoppage time. At the end the home players took time to commune with the crowd, take in the ripples of the flag and parp of the horns. It was a near-perfect opening night.

The Munich Football Arena is a giant lighted doughnut dumped down on the wooded fringes of Munich. Hours before kick-off its ­concourses were blocked with heaving human flesh for a game that seems to have acted as a kind of bat-signal for the global Scottish diaspora.

Germany has been a little cool ahead of these Euros. As ever this kind of occasion trails its own fog of mild confusion over flags and emblems and optics. Exactly how German do we want to be here? And is that OK? In the event this turned out to be a gloriously full-throated occasion.

Before kick-off the pitch was concealed beneath miraculous white Uefa vinyl flooring, while joyful gnome-like figures of no discernible nationality gambolled and pranced to give a sense of inoffensive pageantry. The anthems were intense. This felt real, authentic, one of those occasions where memories of early tournament goals, the first eruption of the crowd, are minted and never quite forgotten.

Steve Clarke left Billy Gilmour on the bench, bringing in Callum McGregor. Germany were as expected. Nagelsmann only recently switched to the 4-2-3-1 that has seen this team begin to thrum up through the gears. And they were in with 55 seconds gone, Angus Gunn blocking Wirtz’s close-range shot. He was ­offside. But it felt like a moment. Wirtz’s direct, creative energy is key to how Germany hope to play.

Clarke has done an excellent job of organising this Scotland team, radiating both gloom and quiet optimism in just the right measures. But he will be frustrated by the way his players let Kroos have his own portable pocket of space here.

It was Kroos who made the pass that made the opener on 10 minutes. This was a lovely Germany move and a really poor defensive moment for Scotland, who offered no resistance, lulled by the flight of the ball as Kroos pinged his second howling dipping diagonal out to Joshua Kimmich on the right.

Kimmich was free to lay an easy pass across the empty channel of green at the edge of the Scottish area. Wirtz had time to essay a lovely running first-time shot that Gunn got a hand to, but could not keep out. It felt like a training ground goal, with cones for defenders, lovely geometry, the ball travelling in a perfect zigzag into the Scottish net.

At that point Kroos was running the game at a leisurely pace, like a man in a hammock idly completing a word search.

It was 2-0 on 19 minutes, made by another quick-slow passing move. Kroos slipped the ball to Ilkay Gündogan, who whipped around then threaded the perfect pass to Wirtz. He laid it back to Musiala, who chopped past McGregor and didn’t just shoot, but smashed the ball into the top corner, free to choose exactly how to decorate the moment, and drawing a delayed boom of celebration, the sense of a crowd completely inside the game, reading the goal before it happened.

It got harder for Scotland. Germany had a penalty moments later, awarded by Clément Turpin, then disallowed by VAR. But they got a real one on 43 minutes, this time for a two-footed ankle-lunge by Porteous on Gündogan, for which he was correctly shown a red card. Kai Havertz took the kick, sending Gunn the wrong way. A man down, 3-0 down, Scotland trudged to the break in a kind of daze.

Robert Andrich was off at half-time and Ché Adams replaced by Grant Hanley. The question at that point seemed to be: how cruel did Germany want to be?

The Euros demand a show, an absence of dead air. Musiala went through his scales on the left. Wirtz came off to a huge ovation, part of it reserved for his replacement as Germany went full Füllkrug.

On 68 minutes Niclas Füllkrug made it 4-0, taking a loose touch from Hanley and spanking the ball with thrilling power into the top corner. Scotland’s players tracked gamely to the end. Switzerland are five days away. They will require a full mental and physical reset before then.

This was a reminder of Germany’s talent, of Nagelsmann’s status as the most state-of-the-art coach here. And a reminder too for Scotland of the brutality of tournament football, to go with its many glories.

Italy’s far-right government has denied that it removed references to abortion and LGBTQ rights in the final declaration of the G7 summit in Puglia.

In the declaration, published late on Friday, a reference to the protection of the “gender identity and sexual orientation” of the LGBTQ community did not appear, although reference had been included in the final declaration of the G7 in Japan last year.

The word “abortion” was also left out of a broader commitment to “universal access to adequate, affordable, and quality health services for women, including comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights for all”.

In last year’s communique, G7 leaders had explicitly committed to addressing “access to safe and legal abortion”.

Bloomberg, which first reported on the removed LGBTQ passage, linked the removal to the involvement in the summit of Pope Francis, with whom the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has bonded over LGBTQ and abortion issues. It is the first time a pontiff has addressed a G7 meeting.

“The news published by Bloomberg, according to which any reference to the rights of LGBT people could be removed from the final G7 communique, is devoid of any foundation,” Meloni’s office said. “The Italian presidency [of the G7] categorically denies this reconstruction.”

The allegation followed a clash between Meloni and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, after Italy was accused of diluting a reference to guaranteeing access to “safe and legal” abortions in the G7’s final text. The clause had also been agreed by the G7 members in Japan.

Sources in Meloni’s office denied that the reference had been removed, saying on Thursday that the declaration was still being negotiated and that “everything that will be included in the final document will be final points resulting from the negotiations”.

Macron told reporters on the sidelines of the event that he “regretted” the removal of the reference.

“You don’t have the same sensibilities in your country,” Macron said to an Italian journalist. “France has a vision of equality between women and men, but it’s not a vision shared by all the political spectrum.”

Meloni hit back by accusing Macron, who called a snap election after a surge by France’s far right in the European elections, of using the G7 for “electioneering”, according to reports in the Italian press.

Since taking power in October 2021, Meloni’s government has introduced policies against the LGBTQ community, such as a crackdown on same-sex parenting, and in April approved a law allowing anti-abortion activists to enter abortion clinics.

In early May, Meloni vehemently defended the Italian families minister, Eugenia Roccella, after she was heckled by student protesters over the government’s stance on abortion during a conference on how to reverse Italy’s declining birthrate.

Roccella initially tried to confront the protesters but decided to abandon her planned speech and left the stage. Meloni called the protest “disgraceful”, posting on social media: “It is time to say enough is enough.”

The Princess of Wales has said she is making “good progress” but is “not out of the woods yet” as she announced she intends to attend trooping the colour on Saturday, which would be the first time she has been seen in public since her cancer diagnosis was announced.

Sharing that she has “good days and bad days”, she also revealed her treatment would continue for “a few more months”.

In a personal written message, released on the couple’s social media accounts, along with a new photograph of her taken in Windsor this week, she said she and the Prince of Wales were “blown away” by kind messages of support.

She said: “I am making good progress, but as anyone going through chemotherapy will know, there are good days and bad days. On those bad days you feel weak, tired and you have to give in to your body resting. But on the good days, when you feel stronger, you want to make the most of feeling well.

“My treatment is ongoing and will be for a few more months. On the days I feel well enough, it is a joy to engage with school life, spend personal time on the things that give me energy and positivity, as well as starting to do a little work from home.”

The princess added: “I’m looking forward to attending the king’s birthday parade this weekend with my family and hope to join a few public engagements over the summer, but equally knowing I am not out of the woods yet.

“I am learning how to be patient, especially with uncertainty. Taking each day as it comes, listening to my body, and allowing myself to take this much-needed time to heal. Thank you so much for your continued understanding, and to all of you who have so bravely shared your stories with me.”

Catherine is due to watch the parade from the major general’s office with her family and is expected to appear on the Buckingham Palace balcony, though plans may be amended at short notice depending on how she feels. Downing Street and the Cabinet Office have been informed of her decision to attend.

A Buckingham Palace spokesperson said on Friday: “His Majesty is delighted that the princess is able to attend tomorrow’s events, and is much looking forward to all elements of the day.”

The princess announced in March that she was undergoing a course of preventive chemotherapy, which she is still undergoing, and her attendance at trooping is said not to represent a return to a full schedule of public engagements. She will not attend the Order of the Garter or Royal Ascot next week.

She may decide to attend some events over the course of the summer, as and when she feels able to, with the support and guidance of her medical team, but is said to be prioritising her recovery. No decisions have been made on specific engagements over the coming months.

Catherine is said to have started working a little from home and both she and her medical team have made it clear that going about her normal life and doing some of the things she enjoys will be an integral part of her recovery, it is understood.

In addition to briefings from her team at Kensington Palace, the Royal Foundation and the Centre for Early Childhood, she is said to have started to undertake some meetings relating to her work and projects.

A Kensington Palace spokesperson said of her attendance at this weekend’s event: “As she has said, she is making good progress and is looking forward to joining the family.”

Of her treatment, the spokesperson said: “As she said in her message, and as anyone receiving chemotherapy will know, she has good days and bad days.”

Of Prince William, the spokesperson added: “The prince is pleased to see the princess starting to engage with the work and projects that are important to her. He will continue to focus his time on supporting his wife and children, while continuing to undertake his public duties.”

Aides are not putting a timeframe on when she will be able to resume full public duties, stressing it is important she is allowed time to heal and build her strength. Speculation over her condition has been extremely unhelpful and put extra pressure on her and her family, it is said.

This week I have seen more than one tweet from mortified people who thought it would be OK to watch the new batch of Bridgerton episodes on the train on their way to work. The reason they were mortified was the first new episode, in which a sex scene goes on and on. And on. And on.

According to people who know these things, the sex scene – between Nicola Coughlan’s Penelope Featherington and Luke Newton’s Colin Bridgerton – was the longest in the show’s history, clocking in at almost six minutes. It was so long, in fact, that Coughlan and Newton managed to break the furniture they were filming on.

Even more inexplicably, it’s a good sex scene, in that it’s absolutely vital to the storyline. It’s a key moment in the evolution of the characters, and an important part of the story. It’s romantic and tender, and also sexy enough to embarrass anyone who made the mistake of trying to watch it on public transport.

But is it the longest sex scene ever to be shown on television? The answer is no, not quite. Before I proceed, I’d like to point out that I was asked to do this and I really should have charged double for the irreparable damage this research has done to my internet search history, but on we go anyway.

Technically the longest sex scene ever shown on British television comes during episode four of Billie Piper and Lucy Prebble’s brilliant series I Hate Suzie. At the time of broadcast, many headlines declared that this was not only a wildly long sex scene, but a wildly long solo sex scene, lasting a full seven minutes and four seconds. Whether or not it counts is another matter entirely, since the masturbation is used as a framing device allowing Piper’s character to think about her entire life up until that point. Most of it is flashbacks. It’s very cleverly done – and, again, important to the story – but you suspect all the tabloid readers who watched because of a few lurid headlines probably left quite disappointed.

Netflix’s Sense8 – a show still mourned by a devoted few – never shied away from sex. There were rumours that the orgy in the sixth episode was one of the longest ever shot, but again that isn’t quite what it delivered. Although the scene is all meat, so to speak – with three guys and a girl going at it in a variety of positions and locations – it’s let down slightly by its length. Yes, by most standards it’s long, but at four minutes it’s hardly a record breaker. Worse, the whole thing is soundtracked by a Macy Gray song, so that’s something you’ll have to learn to cope with.

Also, it might be worth pointing out that length of individual sex scenes is not the only way to quantify a show’s sexiness. If you want to know which show has the most sex in total, the winner is likely to be Starz’s still-preposterous Spartacus: Blood and Sand, which notched up 79 minutes of sex in its 13-episode duration. Then again, in 2020 a company called UberKinky claimed that 19.25% of David Duchovny series Californication was made up of sex scenes. That seems high but, hey, who am I to argue with UberKinky?

Clearly, though, there’s only one winner here, and that’s the BBC Three adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People. Even though episodes were only half an hour long, there were two separate occasions in which sex scenes exceeded that of Bridgerton. In episode 11, one stretches on for six and a half minutes. Meanwhile, episode two features a sex scene that lasts for a full 10 minutes. Again, we might have to invoke the I Hate Suzie rule a little here, since a minute and a half of that is flashback. But even if we do, it’s a clear runaway winner. The moral of the story is that you definitely shouldn’t watch Normal People on a train.

Of course, I don’t possess an encyclopaedic knowledge of every sex scene ever filmed for television, so there’s a decent chance that I’m missing some whoppers here. If I am, please be sure to let everyone know. Alternatively, keep it to yourself, pervert. Either way, this is how I spent my morning. I look forward to making eye contact with people today.

Vladimir Putin has demanded that Kyiv cede more land, withdraw troops deeper inside its own country, and drop its Nato bid in order for him to end his war in Ukraine.

Putin’s fresh ceasefire demands were issued as envoys from more than 90 countries, including Ukraine, convene in Switzerland this weekend to discuss a western-led peace plan. Russia is not invited to the conference and the president’s remarks on Friday were likely to have been timed as a spoiler to that summit.

Speaking to diplomats at the Russian foreign ministry, Putin publicly updated his terms for ending the war in Ukraine for the first time since he launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022, when he demanded regime change in Kyiv and the country’s “demilitarisation”.

The US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, said Putin was in “no position” to make demands on Ukraine and could end the war he had started “today if he chose to do that.” The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the offer could not be trusted and Putin would not stop his military offensive even if his ceasefire demands were met.

The new terms appear to be a nonstarter, as Putin staked out a maximalist position that included claims on land that Russia has “annexed” without holding under its military control. Putin demanded that Ukrainian troops leave the entire regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia and that they be declared Russian territory by international agreement, calling the issue “closed” for Russia.

“As soon as Kyiv says it is ready to make this decision, begins the actual pull-out of forces from those regions and formally declares the abandonment of its plans to join Nato, we will instantly, that very second, order a ceasefire and begin negotiations,” Putin said.

Putin also demanded that the west drop all financial sanctions against Russia as a precondition to a ceasefire. The US this week expanded sanctions on the Russian banking sector, currency trading on the largest Russian stock exchange, as well as chips and other technology. US Treasury officials said they were targeting the Russian financial infrastructure and access to third markets as Russia completed its “transition to a full war economy”.

The G7, which comprises the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan, also agreed this week to use Russian sovereign assets frozen in the west as collateral for a $5bn loan package that would help keep Ukraine’s economy afloat in what had become a war of attrition against its Russian neighbour.

Putin on Friday decried the agreement as an attempt to provide “some kind of legal basis” for “theft”.

“Despite all the trickery, this theft will certainly remain a theft,” he told diplomats during the speech. “And it will not go unpunished.”

Ukraine and western countries were highly unlikely to agree to Putin’s terms. Kyiv has demanded that Russian troops leave its territory and that it return control over the 1991 borders, including the Crimean peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014. Ukrainian officials quickly dismissed Putin’s remarks as a “complete sham”.

“Of course, there is no novelty in this, no real peace proposals and no desire to end the war,” wrote Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidential administration. “But there is a desire not to pay for this war and to continue it in new formats. It’s all a complete sham. Therefore – once again – get rid of illusions and stop taking seriously the “[Russian proposals]” that are offensive to common sense.”

Podolyak interpreted Putin’s proposals as telling Ukraine to “give us your territories”, “give up your sovereignty and subjectivity”, and to “leave yourselves unprotected” by committing to a non-aligned status outside of Nato.

The alliance’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, rejected the conditions set out by Putin. “This is a proposal that actually means that Russia should achieve their war aims, by expecting that Ukrainians should give up significantly more land than Russia has been able to occupy so far,” he told reporters.

“This is a proposal of more aggression, more occupation and, and it demonstrates, in a way, that Russia’s aim is to control Ukraine.”

Boris Bondarev, a former Russian diplomat who resigned in 2022 in protest at the war, said Putin had “thrown a bone to a bunch of useful idiots” by giving lip-service to a peace process without fundamentally altering Russia’s negotiating position on the conflict.

Zelenskiy last November issued a 10-point peace plan that included stipulations that Russia leave Ukrainian territory and that a special tribunal be established to investigate war crimes.

Putin on Friday dismissed the forthcoming peace summit in Switzerland, saying it was “just another trick to distract everyone’s attention”.

“Without Russia’s participation, without an honest and responsible dialogue with us, it is impossible to reach a peaceful solution in Ukraine and in general on global and European security,” Putin said.

The UK’s insect populations are declining at alarming rates and the next government must put in place plans to monitor and reduce the use and toxicity of pesticides before it is too late, wildlife experts say.

In recent years, concerns have been raised over earthworm populations, which have fallen by a third in the past 25 years. A citizen science project that monitors flying insects in the UK, meanwhile, found a 60% decline between 2004 and 2021. The overall trajectory, as government monitoring figures show, has been downwards since the 1970s.

Yet despite the evidence of the harmful effect of pesticides on our insect population, governmental action has been slow, and experts are concerned that the UK is failing to monitor pesticide use correctly.

“There is an almost complete lack of effective monitoring of pesticide use in UK agriculture,” said Nick Mole, the policy officer at Pesticide Action Network UK. “What little we do have is incomplete, out of date and on such a broad scale as to be virtually meaningless.

“The UK urgently needs a publicly accessible record of all pesticides used on farms across the UK, that is presented within six months of application and shown at farm level or, at a minimum, by river catchment. We should also have access to pesticide sales data, information which is currently concealed beneath the cloak of commercial confidentiality. Without accurate data, it is impossible to properly assess the impact of pesticides or to make effective decisions. Right now we are legislating in the dark.”

The Conservative government was due to publish the National Action Plan on the Sustainable Use of Pesticides (NAP) in 2018, which would have laid out targets and plans for pesticide reduction and monitoring. But six years later it has still not materialised.

The Pesticide Collaboration, made up of 81 NGOs, academics and farming groups including the RSPB, Buglife, British Beekeepers Association, Greenpeace and the Nature Friendly Farming Network, has set out its “red lines” for what needs to be in the delayed plan.

It said: “The UK has committed to ‘reducing the overall risk from pesticides and highly hazardous chemicals by at least half’ in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework agreed at Cop15. This should now be reflected in national policy, and domestic pesticide regulation must go further than this and use the words ‘use’ and ‘toxicity’ instead of risk.”

Labour sources have said that they will immediately consult scientists in the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) if and when the team enters the department after the election.

The party has already announced that it will end exemptions for bee-killing pesticides that have been outlawed in the EU but which the UK government has approved for four years in a row.

This year, the Conservative government allowed the use of thiamethoxam, also known as Cruiser SB, on sugar beet crops – against the advice of its scientists, who said it would pose a threat to bees. Prof Dave Goulson, a bee expert at the University of Sussex, has warned that one teaspoon of the chemical is enough to kill 1.25bn honeybees. Even a minuscule trace of this toxin can disrupt a bee’s ability to navigate and reproduce, significantly reducing its chance of survival.

There is also a growing gap in ambition on pesticides between the UK and the EU. The UK has failed to ban 36 pesticides that are prohibited in the EU, even though ministers promised the UK would not water down EU-derived environmental standards after Brexit.

Campaigners have called for the next government to put in place a proper strategy for pesticide reduction. Vicki Hird, agriculture lead at The Wildlife Trusts, said: “Pollinating insects like bees and moths, and predators of crop pests like ladybird beetles and dragonflies, are the foundation for a productive and sustainable food system. Yet these two groups of bugs have declined by 18% and 34% respectively since 1970. An overreliance on chemicals – combined with habitat loss and climate change – could see these figures plummet even further. This would make a bad situation much worse for UK wildlife and potentially spell disaster for UK food production.

“Despite outlining some positive intention to reduce pesticide use, the current UK government has failed to give this issue the attention it deserves. Earlier this year, it sent signals to the rest of the world that insects don’t matter by authorising the use of a banned pesticide, thiamethoxam, on sugar beet crop for the fourth year in a row. We want to see an end to these emergency authorisations and a proper plan to dramatically reduce pesticide use over the next few years. This issue – and indeed dangerous chemicals – must not be kicked into the long grass.”

Richard Benwell, the CEO of Wildlife and Countryside Link, said: “The UK is signed up to an international pledge to halve the risk from pesticides and hazardous chemicals by 2030. Political parties should offer greater incentives to farmers to reduce or cease pesticide use across their farms, ban the use of pesticides in urban areas, and review the approach to authorisations so that banned chemicals cannot continue to be granted emergency use”.

Under the new post-Brexit farming payments, the environment land management schemes, farmers are rewarded for using fewer pesticides. However, agricultural businesses argue that more support and education is needed so farmers do not fear moving away from the pesticides they have long relied on to grow their crops.

Martin Lines, the CEO of the Nature Friendly Farming Network, said: “We’ve been on a journey of change for the last 10 to 15 years. I remember seeing fields being cultivated with very few worms and hardly any birds following the plough, so we changed the way we managed our soil to reduce disturbance and increase the organic matter that feeds the worms. As a result, I’ve seen numbers greatly increase along with improved soil health.

“Having healthier soil is leading to healthier crops, which in turns leads to less disease and less use of fungicides to control them. Gaining knowledge of the role of predatory insects, pollinators, invertebrates and beetles in managing and controlling pests led me to change practices and put more diversity of habitats in our farmed landscape. The flower-rich margins and grass margins we placed in and around our fields are home to the predatory insects and pollinators that now control the majority of our pests. This has allowed me to stop using insecticides altogether.”

Defra has been approached for comment.

The invention of the contraceptive pill heralded the sexual revolution of the 1960s, and now scientists are looking to revolutionise wildlife control by getting animals in on the action.

Trials are under way in the UK and elsewhere in Europe of how to get contraceptives into pigeons, wild boar and grey squirrels, with scientists also proposingother rodents, invasive parakeets and deer as other target species.

As destruction from invasive and pest species grows, researchers are looking to fill special feeders and bait boxes with hazelnut spreads and grains laced with contraceptives. They believe this could be a more humane and effective way of controlling populations that have previously been poisoned, shot or trapped.

The aim is to find “creative solutions”, says Dr Giovanna Massei from York University. “The main message is that the economic and the environmental impact of wildlife are increasing worldwide, and we are running out of options,” she says. “Traditional methods such as culling are ineffective, can be inhumane, unsustainable, environmentally harmful, and are increasingly opposed by the public.”

Grey squirrels are a particular issue for the UK. These non-native animals were first introduced from the US to England in the 1800s as an ornamental species for stately homes. However, they spread widely, causing local extinctions of the native red squirrels and damaging woodlands by stripping bark. The species is estimated to cost £37m a year in lost timber in England and Wales. Grey squirrels are seen as a bigger threat to broadleaf trees than deer and pathogens, according to a Royal Forestry Society survey.

Trials are under way to deliver oral contraceptives hidden in a hazelnut spread for squirrels in the UK, using specially weighted feeders that only grey squirrels can open (red squirrels are lighter, so the trap will not open for them). Preliminary results suggest the method is working.

Pigeons could be fed a “breakfast” of corn grains containing the contraceptive every morning, said Dr Marco Pellizzari, a veterinary consultant. “They really love to get that … It’s very easy,” he says.

In London, the non-native parakeet could also be a recipient, but it would mean asking residents who routinely feed them in their gardens to give them food with contraceptives in it.

Next week York University will host the first workshop on wildlife fertility control, where experts and researchers involved in the trials will discuss how to deliver contraceptives to pests – animals considered harmful to people, farming or native habitats.

Across continental Europe and Scandinavia, there has been a rapid increase in wild boars, with the rise in numbers believed to be linked to milder winters. Some consider them pests because they root up cropland, munch through rubbish and cause traffic accidents. Italian farmers’ associations say the wild boar population doubled from 500,000 in 2010 to one million by 2020. In Germany and in France, more than half a million are shot every year, but numbers are increasing, and the number of people who want to hunt them is declining. Massei says culling is “clearly not controlling a number of these animals”.

A pilot programme is under way to look at giving them contraceptives using devices that only boar can lift up, using their burrowing snouts. The feeder works but the oral contraceptive has not yet been developed.

Many countries are now banning the use of rodenticides because of their impact on other animals, including birds of prey, which have died from eating the poisoned carcasses. The chemicals are also considered inhumane, as animals can suffer for several days after eating anticoagulants before they die. Glue traps have been banned in England, Scotland and Wales, and other sorts of live traps will probably be further regulated, according to Prof Steve Belmain, an ecologist from Greenwich University.

Yet rodents pose significant threats to agriculture, as well as transmitting diseases to livestock. “We don’t have many alternatives to lethal control. That’s where fertility control really could be a great opportunity to manage these things,” says Belmain.

Feral horses in the US are already on contraceptives, as well as African elephants outside Kruger national park, who are injected. The only contraceptive registered for use in Europe is nicarbazin, which is only allowed to be used on pigeons in a few countries such as Italy, Spain, Belgium and Austria.

Researchers are also looking into the possibility of giving deer contraception, but so far no orally administered one has been designed for grazing animals. Britain has more deer than at any point in the past 1,000 years, causing extensive damage to woodlands.

There is concern that using products based on synthetic hormones could result in oestrogenic chemicals getting into the environment, which has negative effects such as feminising male fish. It is also not known what the impacts would be on a predatory bird if it ate a rodent that had eaten a contraceptive. “We need to really understand these things as part of that regulatory process,” says Belmain.