Liz Truss says it is ‘unfair’ to blame her mini-budget for interest rate hike and rules out being PM again – as it happened

Liz Truss’s interview with Spectator TV.

6.02pm GMT

Early evening summary

• Liz Truss has said that it would be “unfair” to blame her mini-budget for interest rate rises last autumn. She made the comment in an interview with Spectator TV broadcast this afternoon (see 5.28pm), after she broke her post-premiership silence with a long article in the Sunday Telegraph yesterday about why she thinks her mini-budget crashed, forcing her removal from No 10. Keir Starmer said that she had done enough damage already and that his heart sank when he learnt she was speaking out again. (See 2.42pm.)

• Downing Street has declined to rule out the UK withdrawing from the European convention on human rights if it was seen as needed to stop small boat crossings, despite serious misgivings among some Conservative MPs.

• A union leader has accused the government of choosing to “punish” nurses after a health minister insisted there would be no re-examination of NHS pay for this year, as the health service in England faces what is expected to be the biggest strike in its history.

• Ministers have quietly dropped restrictions on spending controls, allowing Whitehall departments to spend millions more on external consultants.

NHS workers on a picket line outside St Thomas' hospital in Westminster today. Photograph: Steve Taylor/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock

5.47pm GMT

Miliband says thousands of people victims of government 'negligence' on prepayment meters

Turning back to prepayment meters (see 4.48pm), Ed Miliband, the shadow secretary for climate change and net zero, told MPs during his urgent question that thousands of customers had been forced onto prepayment meters because the government refused to ban the practice. He said:

The story of this scandal is of a government sitting on their hands and being far too slow to act.

Ofgem did reviews in September and November and highlighted the problem – where was the government?

[Graham Stuart, the energy minister] came to the house and refused an outright ban and now we know the result of his inaction – 30,000 people have had warrants issued for the forced installation of pre-payment meters in the last month alone, 6,000 people just in the last week alone since he said no to the ban.

That is thousands of people who are victims of government negligence.

How long will this pause that has finally been put in place last and would he pledge that it will not be lifted until this discredited, rotten system is properly reformed?

Updated at 5.50pm GMT