UK politics: ‘Bungling Badenoch’ under fire after suggesting Starmer wrong to miss PMQs for Nato summit – as it happened

Kemi Badenoch speaking at the British Chambers of Commerce conference on Thursday Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

6.05pm BST

Early evening summary

• Keir Starmer has confirmed Downing Street is offering concessions to rebel Labour MPs to get his welfare bill over the line.

• Kemi Badenoch has been criticised by Labour and the Lib Dems for suggesting that Keir Starmer was deliberately avoiding PMQs when he attended the Nato summit this week, and the G7 last week. The Lib Dems called her “Bungling Badenoch” and Ed Davey, their leader, said Badenoch seemed to be suggesting it was now Tory policy to prioritise PMQs ahead of attending major international summits. (See 11.59am and 4.09pm.) Badenoch said Starmer did not like answering questions and could easily have moved PMQs to Thursday if he had wanted to. (See 3.59pm.)

• There are growing signs that the UK jobs markets is slowing as employers respond to higher national insurance contributions (NICs) by cutting hiring and offering weaker pay rises, the governor of the Bank of England has warned.

• John Major has condemned cuts to overseas aid as “callous” and shortsighted, in a blistering speech that took aim at leaders obsessed by national self-interest and explicitly linked Donald Trump with Xi Jinping as the world’s main destabilising forces.

• No 10 has been accused of “control freakery” after issuing guidance that bans civil servants from any level of speaking at events where journalists are present or from answering questions.

• Ministers are refusing to name the media companies that lobbied them over laws restricting foreign state ownership of British newspapers, the Guardian can reveal.

5.45pm BST

Poorer working age people expected to see their incomes fall in real terms by end of decade, Resolution Foundation says

The Resolution Foundation thinktank has also published a major report today – its living standards outlook 2025.

It says, overall, working-age people will be just 1% better off by the end of the decade.

The headline outlook for living standards is, at best, disappointing. In our central scenario, the typical annual real income of non-pensioners grows over the five years after 2024-25 but only slightly (1 per cent overall growth, or a cash increase of around £300 in total) – and our outlook for 2025-26 specifically remains poor with income flat (0 per cent growth).

But poorer working-age peope will be worse off, it says.

The outlook for the lower-income half of the non-pensioner population is even worse. In our central case, the average real incomes of this group would be 1 per cent (£200) lower in 2029-30 than in 2024-25. This compares to 1 per cent growth for the top half. The only projected year where the bottom half outperforms the top half is 2026-27, when the real value of basic benefit adequacy rises given lagged uprating plus the first of the planned above-inflation boosts. Coupled with net real income hits over the past five years, these projections would leave the bottom half worse off at the end of the 2020s than in 2019-20 (by 2 per cent) while the higher-income half would be slightly better off (by 1 per cent).

Updated at 5.47pm BST