18:15

Boris Johnson has recorded a series of regional TV interviews today, and the BBC has released some of the transcripts. At least two of his claims were seriously misleading. Here are the key points

Johnson declined to apologise to the family of Jo Cox for his comments about her last night. His own sister, Rachel, said that what he said about Cox was “particularly tasteless”. (See 1.56pm.) But, when he was asked by BBC’s Look North if he had a message for the Cox family, he replied:

Look, I want to make a very, very important point. There’s a big big difference between a problem that I think is growing and that we need to deal with, which is the threat that MPs are facing, particularly female MPs [and it being important for MPs to be able to use words like surrender.]

Asked again if he was sorry for his language in any way, Johnson said he was “deeply sorry for the threats that MPs face”. But that was an expression of regret about something happening, not an apology for something for which he accepted some responsibility.

He rejected the suggestion that some of the language he had used last night might have contributed to MPs facing threats. When this was put to him, he said: “I dispute that.”

He defended his right to call the Benn Act the “surrender bill”. In one interview he said:

If you look at the language I was using, it’s important to be able to use a simple English word like surrender in a parliamentary context to describe a bill that gives the power to the rest of the EU to keep us locked in the EU by their own decision and to decide how long we should be there.

He falsely claimed that the Benn Act would give the EU the power to decide how long the UK stayed in the EU. In another interview he said:

[The act] would take away the power of this government, and the power of this country to decide how long it would remain in the EU and give that power to the EU and that’s really quite an extraordinary thing.

This is a claim that Johnson has made frequently, but it is not true. The act says, if the PM fails to pass a Brexit deal by 19 October, and if MPs have not voted for no deal, he must request a three-month extension. But it does not say the UK has to accept any length of extension it is offered by the EU. If the EU did offer a longer or shorter extension, under the legislation the PM could either accept it, or refer it to the Commons for MPs to decide. So the UK would have a choice.

He claimed that he had not talked about “betrayal” in the Commons - even though he said in his opening statement: “We will not betray the people who sent us here; we will not.” When it was put to him that he had used words like betrayal, he said:

I don’t think I did say anything about a betrayal. What I worry about is if we don’t get Brexit done, then people will feel very badly let down.

He claimed that some of the things opposition MPs were shouting at him in the Commons last night were “far harsher” than what he said.

He said there was a need for “tempers ... to come down” in the Commons. In response to another question about his language, he said:

You’re right, tempers need to come down, and people need to come together because it’s only by getting Brexit done that you’ll lance the boil, as it were, of the current anxiety and we will be able to get on with the domestic agenda.

He said he accepted the need to “reach out across the House of Commons” to get Brexit done.

That’s all from me for tonight.

My colleague Kevin Rawlinson is taking over now.