Afternoon summary
Keir Starmer has angrily confronted Rishi Sunak in the Commons as the prime minister derided Labour’s policy on transgender rights after being told that the mother of the murdered teenager Brianna Ghey was watching from the public gallery. Downing Street has rejected calls for an apology. And Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary and minister for women and equalities, has hit back, accusing Starmer of exploiting the Ghey tragedy for political gain. (See 3.25pm.)
Updated
Hunt accepts that Tory/Treasury claim about Labour's insulation plan costing £13bn might not be realistic
This morning CCHQ put out a statement from Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, highlight a Treasury analysis of Labour’s plan to insulate 19m homes in a decade saying this would cost double the £bn a year claimed. “This official costing shows that a key plank of Labour’s policy costs double what they have claimed,” he said.
But the £13bn a year price tag attached to the policy by the Treasury and CCHQ has been dismissed by Labour (see 11.53am) and by experts (see 1.44pm), and now even Hunt does not seem quite so willing to defend the figure.
When it was put to him by ITV’s Robert Peston in an interview that the £13bn figure was “implausible”, because it made assumptions such as full subsidies for wealthy families, Hunt replied: “Even if it’s not double the £6bn, it is still a very big chunk of a £28bn pound spending spree.”
