Andrew Murrison MP chairs an all-party parliamentary group on the National Trust

The Guardian reports that a new all-party parliamentary group will be dedicated to the National Trust. A circular in Parliament stated that the group’s purpose ‘is to apply parliamentary scrutiny to the operational and strategic direction of the National Trust’. A spokesman for the National Trust said that the charity had not been informed of the group but was ready to ‘engage in good faith’.

The shadow Cabinet minister Emily Thornberry has signed up her Labour colleagues Rupa Huq, Paul Blomfield, Alex Sobel and Luke Pollard to the group. “She did not want to see this APPG hijacked by a group of Tory MPs fixated on fighting silly culture wars,” her spokesman told the Daily Telegraph.