Rishi Sunak accused of presiding over ‘chaos’ as Tory conference braces for news of HS2 Manchester leg cancellation – as it happened

Prime minister Rishi Sunak, centre, during the Conservative party conference in Manchester. Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA

6.40pm BST

Early evening summary

• Rishi Sunak is expected to confirm he is scrapping the northern leg of HS2 to Manchester at the Conservative conference in the city despite a furious response and fears it will fatally undermine the party’s commitment to levelling up.

• Sixty Conservative MPs have joined Liz Truss’s Growth Group, imperilling the government’s majority in parliament, as Rishi Sunak was warned by former cabinet ministers “we cannot accept the status quo”.

• Business leaders who warned against Ed Miliband in 2015 have now turned on Rishi Sunak, criticising the prime minister’s plans to roll back net zero policies.

• Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, has told the conference she will review regulatory bodies to ensure they are not imposing unnecessary rules. She said:

I want us to use our Brexit freedoms to scrap unnecessary regulations that hold back firms and hamper growth.

It’s clear that the regulators that enforce the rules can also sometimes be a blocker to businesses, so our review will seek to root out the bad practices with the aim of making companies’ lives easier and reducing costs for consumers.

• Sir Jake Berry, the former Tory chair and organiser of the “tax pledge”, has told a rally organised by the New Conservatives that, with 30 MPs promising not to vote for anything that would raise the tax burden, they are too powerful to be thrown out of the party. This is from Aubrey Allegretti.

Jake Berry says it’s “pretty unlikely” the chief whip will kick MPs out of the Conservative Party for refusing to vote for tax rises.

He notes more than 30 MPs have signed the pledge and says you don’t have to be good at maths to know that is half the government’s majority.

Jake Berry says it’s “pretty unlikely” the chief whip will kick MPs out of the Conservative Party for refusing to vote for tax rises.

He notes more than 30 MPs have signed the pledge and says you don’t have to be good at maths to know that is half the government’s majority.

— Aubrey Allegretti (@breeallegretti) October 2, 2023

• Robert Jenrick has called for British families to have more children to help fund and look after an ageing population, after criticising Boris Johnson’s government for encouraging low-skilled workers to come to the UK.

6.27pm BST

A reader asks:

Does the Conservative conference do any actual party business - elect officers, approve rules, administrative measures, policies? Or is it purely a media event?

No. Most other parties do enact internal party business at their conference, such as vote on rules. But the Tories don’t. The Conservative party does have a voluntary wing, the National Conservative Convention, which in some ways is quite powerful. (If it was not for the convention and the board, the MPs might have abolished the rule letting members vote for leaders some time ago.) But the convention does not play a role in the main conference proceedings. In fact, at this conference, we have not even heard from candidates or members in the conference hall at all – just ministers.