Closing summary
Lindsay Hoyle earlier accused Chancellor Rachel Reeves of acting with “supreme discourtesy” towards MPs given her “premature disclosure” of budget details. In an angry rebuke delivered in parliament he said it was “totally unacceptable to go around the world telling everybody” about “major” new policy announcements rather than giving the information first to MPs.
The bus fare cap in England will be extended for a further year, but rise from £2 to £3, Keir Starmer has said. The Liberal Democrats have described it as a “bus tax”, and Conservative leadership candidate Robert Jenrick called the move “clueless”. The prime minister said the previous administration had only funded the policy up to the end of this year. Green co-leader Carla Denyer described the change as “the wrong approach”.
Starmer has promised “better days ahead” and said the era of Tory neglect and “making working people pay the price” for their policies was over. Warning “there are no shortcuts” after 14 years of Tory-led government, he said “The time is long overdue for politicians in this country to level with you honestly about the trade-offs this country faces”.
The use of the word “genocide” in relation to the war in Gaza risks undermining genocides such as the Holocaust, David Lammy has said. The foreign secretary was replying to a question by Conservative MP Nick Timothy, who asked whether the description of Israel’s actions in Gaza as “annihilation, extermination and genocide” was inappropriate.
Meanwhile, Keir Starmer welcomed Lebanese prime minister Najib Mikati to Downing Street for a bilateral meeting. The pair shook hands outside Number 10, where they are expected to discuss the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. The prime minister offered Mikati his “condolences for the very many losses in your country”.
Labour figures today have been repeatedly questioned by the media about the definition of “working person”. The prime minister said “I’m concerned with what’s in their payslip, and making sure that there is no more tax in their payslip”. Cabinet minister Pat McFadden said the budget would be the “most honest” in years.
McFadden also issued a strong rebuke to shadow chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s criticism of the Office for Budget Responsibility plans to publish a report about the country’s fiscal situation, saying the Tories “don’t want to hear the truth” about the financial situation they left for the new government.
Foreign secretary David Lammy robustly defended his position and the topics he had raised with the Chinese in recent discussion during an urgent question in the Commons, where he was repeatedly criticised for not being strong enough. Lammy said it was “crass” to suggest in three months he could have brough about different outcomes to the previous government’s 14 years of diplomacy.
Kemi Badenoch said the Tory leadership election was “existential” for the party. She nevertheless claimed the party could return to power after one term of a Labour government.
Russell Findlay, the new Scottish Conservative leader, has proposed cutting free prescriptions, merging local authorities and abolishing quangos to deliver cuts in Scottish income tax rates.
The adult prison population in England and Wales has dropped 3% after reaching record levels.
That’s all from me, Tom Ambrose, and the UK politics live blog for today. Thanks for following along.
Conservative shadow Treasury minister Gareth Davies has urged the government to say how much Labour plans to borrow in this Wednesday’s budget.
Across the dispatch box from chief secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones, Davies pressed the government on what advice Treasury officials had given to ministers about the impact of Labour’s spending plans on interest rates.
He also asked: “This Labour government are quick to spend but unwilling to explain, so can I ask the chief secretary finally, on behalf of the British people and the markets who are watching this statement so very nervously, what definition of public debt is the UK offering to lenders today and how much does the government plan to borrow under an expanded definition?”
Jones said in his reply: “He has some brass neck standing up in this House telling this government how to behave after the years of his party’s maladministration over the last 14 years.”
The minister had earlier set out changes to fiscal rules, known as the “stability rule, that we will pay for all day-to-day spending on public services from receipts” and the “investment rule, which will get debt falling as a proportion of our economy”.
He said: “After years of chaos from the Conservative party, chaos that cost families, businesses and public services dear, the British people are now rightly looking to this new Labour government to clear up the mess from the last government, to fix the foundations and to rebuild Britain.”
