Ex-Post Office chair gives details of ‘stitch up’ which he says led to Badenoch making false claims about his sacking – as it happened

5.31pm GMT

Afternoon summary

• Jeremy Hunt is to cut national insurance by 2p in his budget on Wednesday, the Guardian understands, in a move designed to offer voters a pre-election giveaway but which could mean steeper spending cuts after the election.

• Henry Staunton, the former Post Office chair, has given details of what he calls the “stitch up” that he says led to Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, making false claims about his dismissal in a statement to MPs. (See 3.51pm.)

• Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan police commissioner, has hit back at Rishi Sunak’s criticism of the policing of anti-war protests, dismissing claims officers are failing to enforce the law and saying officers were being labelled “woke and fascist” at the same time.

• Jonathan Ashworth, a senior Labour frontbencher, has placed a bet on live television that Rishi Sunak will call a general election in May.

• Downing Street is facing a backlash from Conservative MPs and peers over moves to create a broader of definition of extremism in response to what Rishi Sunak describes as the threat of “mob rule”.

• Martin Lewis, the consumer champion, has told MPs that introducing financial education into the national curriculum in England may have been “counterproductive”. Lewis campaigned for this move, which was introduced in 2014. But, in evidence to the Commons education committee this morning, he said schools did not have the resources to deliver it properly. He said:

I still think there is a real poverty of financial education in the UK … I think in many ways, getting it on the curriculum was a pyrrhic victory. In some ways, it was counterproductive.

5.16pm GMT

Keeping primates as pets in England will be banned from 6 April, the government has announced. People will only be allowed to keep primates if they provide them with zoo-level welfare standards.