Axing most winter fuel payments would break Tory manifesto promise, says Labour – as it happened

Reports Sunak is considering the move come ahead of the Tory party conference. Photograph: Aaron Chown/PA

5.30pm BST

Afternoon summary

• Rishi Sunak’s “plan for motorists”, which would limit councils’ powers to impose 20mph speed limits and bus lanes, would simply restrict people’s travel choices and harm net zero ambitions, six walking and cycling organisations have said.

• Andrew Griffith, a Treasury minister, has defended the government’s tax plans after a report said British households were facing the biggest rise on record.

• Labour has said Rishi Sunak will be breaking a manifesto promise if reports that he is planning to remove the winter fuel allowance from all but the poorest pensioners are accurate. (See 4.48pm.)

• The UK is spending 40% a person more than any other European country on housing asylum seekers with the costs taking up nearly a third of the official aid budget, which forced a 16.4% cut in the amount of aid spent overseas in 2022, research has revealed.

• Labour has demanded that the Conservative party explain who knew about a tax investigation into one of its most important donors, Anthony Bamford, and when they were informed.

Keir Starmer with Labour supporters at a rally this morning ahead of the Rutherglen and Hamilton West byelection in Scotland which takes place next week. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

5.24pm BST

HS2 will be 'total white elephant' if Sunak cancels phase 2 to Manchester and final leg to Euston, says Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson, the former PM, has said that HS2 would be a “total white elephant” if Rishi Sunak cancels the Birmingham to Manchester and the Old Oak Common to Euston legs, as he is reportedly considering. In his Daily Mail column Johnson says:

Cancel HS2? Cut off the northern legs? We must be out of our minds. Let us get one thing clear: it is now physically impossible just to cancel the entire project, and hope that we could all quietly forget about it. HS2 is already a huge streak of construction running from London to Birmingham, with thousands of people in hard hats, and endless beeping diggers and excavators. They have dug colossal tunnels, and built bridges, and rerouted roads. You can see HS2 from space. You can’t stop now — and you can’t stop at Birmingham. If the rumours are right — and I pray they are not — the government is again debating the notion of delaying the legs to Manchester and the East Midlands, so that we are left with a massive new railway, with trains capable of running at 225 mph, from Birmingham to . . . wait for it, Old Oak Common.

Have you been to Old Oak Common? I have, and it is nowhere near the city centre. You would have to get off and schlep into town, adding about half an hour to your journey. If this really is the plan, then we are going to throw away the chance to regenerate the Euston site — an economic boost worth £50 billion for a cost of £8 billion. If this is really the plan, then we are going to end up with the crowning absurdity of spending £100 billion, or more, on a line from Birmingham to the outskirts of London that will actually be slower than the existing service. It would be a total white elephant, the vanity project to end all vanity projects; but that is not the worst thing about this proposal.