Farage and Reform ‘not the cause of Tory problems, but a symptom’, says Badenoch – as it happened

Badenoch has published a piece in the Spectator on her plan to win back power. Photograph: GB News/PA

4.25pm GMT

Summary of the day …

• Keir Starmer’s government held a “political” cabinet meeting without civil servants as chancellor Rachel Reeves prepares to deliver tomorrow’s budget, the first Labour budget for well over a decade

• There were snippy exchanges in the Commons as Labour ministers were criticised over the pre-briefing of elements of tomorrow’s budget. Shadow Treasury minister Laura Trott said that the current government’s handling of criticism by speaker Lindsay Hoyle resembles “the worst bits of our record”. Reeves told Tory MP Desmond Swayne “It’s good to be explained how to do my job by one of the members opposite who crashed our economy”. Commons speaker Lindsay Hoyle administered another rebuke to the Labour front bench

• Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick have been making their pitches in the last week of the drawn-out Conservative leadership contest. Badenoch said Nigel Farage and the Reform UK were a symptom of the party’s problems, not the cause. Both Jenrick and Badenoch described the contest as “neck and neck”

• Jeremy Hunt has called on the cabinet secretary, Simon Case, to prevent the release of a review by the Office for Budget Responsibility into his spending plans, which is scheduled to be released on the day of the budget. Reeves said the outburst showed the Tories has failed to heed the lesson of the Liz Truss era

• Health secretary Wes Streeting said it would take more than one budget cycle to “fix” the NHS

• The SNP was excluded from getting an automatic seat on the Scottish Affairs committee in Westminster

• Andy Burnam, mayor of Greater Manchester, has said the region’s bus network will retain a £2 single fare cap

4.04pm GMT

Burnham: Greater Manchester will retain a £2 bus fare cap throughout 2025

Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, has just posted to social media to say he can confirm that buses in his region will retain a £2 single fare cap through the whole of 2025.

I can confirm that we plan to stick with a £2 cap on single bus fares for the whole of 2025.

More detail here.👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/NXgGoNPRKp

— Andy Burnham (@AndyBurnhamGM) October 29, 2024

More details soon …