Reeves rejects criticism from unnamed colleagues that she wrongly withheld OBR forecasts from them – UK politics live

12.57pm GMT James Murry, chief secretary to Treasury, to make Commons statement about OBR forecasts at 3.30pm James Murray, the chief secretary to the Treasury, will give a statement to MPs about the OBR forecasts. It will come at 3.30pm. The opposition were planning to table an urgent question on the OBR information released on Friday (which has prompted the claims that Rachel Reeves misled the public about the need for tax rises), and it is likely that the Treasury agreed to schedule a statement knowing that, if they did not, the speaker would grant a UQ. 12.52pm GMT 12.46pm GMT Reeves rejects criticism from unnamed cabinet ministers that she wrongly withheld OBR forecasts from them Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has denied misleading cabinet colleagues about the state of the public finances ahead of the budget. This morning the Times quoted an unnamed cabinet minster as saying “at no point were the cabinet told about the reality of the OBR forecasts”. (See 9.28am.) Beth Rigby from Sky News says she has heard the same from a cabinet minister. I was also told by a cabinet minister this morning (as per @Steven_Swinford’s @matt_dathan) they feel misled over the framing of the public finances in the run up to the Budget Speaking to BBC Wales at the Wales Investment Summit today, Reeves dismissed this claim. She said ministers would not expect to be told given all the information about the budget forecasts in advance. You would never expect the prime minister and chancellor to go through all the detailed numbers. The cabinet are briefed on the morning of the budget on the budget numbers. Of course, we go through things that affect individual government departments, but the whole information of the budget is not supposed to be provided until the chancellor delivers the budget. Obviously, this time, it was leaked early, but not by the Treasury. 12.28pm GMT Starmer's speech - snap verdict For a while the only news happening on a Monday morning was the regular Reform UK press conference. There has been no sign of Nigel Farage this morning (although his party has announced the defection of a former Tory MP), but Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch have both been doing media events. Starmer is probably reasonably pleased with the way his went. There were four points that stood out. 1) Starmer pushed back fairly confidently against claims that Rachel Reeves misled the public about the state of the public finances ahead of the budget. During the Q&A he said: There was no misleading, and I simply don’t accept, and I was receiving the numbers, that being told that the OBR productivity review means you’ve got £16bn less than you would otherwise have had shows that you’ve got an easy starting point. Yes, of course, all the other figures have to be taken into account. But we started the process with significantly less than we would otherwise have had. Starmer’s argument is unlikely to impress his media critics (see 9.53am), or Kemi Badenoch (see 10.29am). But it will hold up with more reasonable observers, and this was not one of those press conferences where the press pack is in full pursuit and the PM is on the run because there is a legitimate scandal that won’t go away. Reeves feels safe. 2) But Richard Hughes, chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility, looks a lot more vulnerable. Starmer claimed that he supported the OBR as an institution (see 11.14am), and this sounded sincere; the government passed a law last year beefing up the status of the OBR (to make a point about Liz Truss), and so he would say that. But he also publicly said the OBR should have carried out its productivity review at the end of the last parliament, and he refused to defend its decision to publish its pre-budget advice to the Treasury on Friday. He also talked up the significance of the pre-budget leak, even though in the end it had no practical impact. (See 11.14am.) This afternoon the OBR will publish its report on that affair. It is not impossible that Hughes could have to resign. 3) Starmer said the government would “keep moving towards a closer relationship with the EU”. (See 12.13pm.) In policy terms, this sounded like the most important passage of the speech. There is one very obvious policy that would bring the UK closer to the EU, and boost growth: joining the EU customs union (which is Lib Dem policy). Starmer did not propose this. But, a good article in the Observer yesterday, Rachel Sylvester said Starmer had his team did discuss this option as the budget was being prepared. She said: The prime minister’s economic adviser [Minouche Shafik] also suggested that rejoining the EU customs union would be one of the most effective ways of generating growth. Sylvester says this idea was “quickly knocked back”. But today Starmer is saying he wants to go further than what has already been agreed, and he said this would ultimately “require trade-offs”. 4) Starmer did sound a bit more shaky on welfare. He did make this a theme of his speech. But, in policy terms, his thinking on this sounded quite sketchy and, with the opposition making welfare spending one of their key attack lines, Starmer came across as someone who needs a better idea of what he wants to achieve, and how to defend it. 12.13pm GMT Starmer says UK has to 'keep moving towards closer relationship with EU' This is what Keir Starmer said about Brexit, and relations with the EU, at the end of his speech. (See 10.48am.) Let me be crystal clear; there is no credible economic vision for Britain that does not position us as an open, trading economy. So we must all now confront the reality that the Brexit deal we have significantly hurt our economy. And so, for economic renewal, we have to keep reducing frictions. We have to keep moving towards a closer relationship with the EU, and we have to be grown up about that, to accept that this will require trade-offs. That applies to our trading relations right across the world and, as you’ve seen already with this government, there are deals to be done if you’re committed to building relationships. That’s what we’ve done with the US, it’s what we’ve done with India, and it’s what we’ve done with the EU, and we will keep going. We will continue to reject drift, to confront reality and take control of our future. 11.38am GMT The final two questions at the press conference went to “influencers” – Chris Chandler who does News with Chris on TikTok, and News ASB Andrew. Q: [From Chandler] What reassurance can you give families struggling this winter? Starmer said he would assure them the government is helping to keep bills down this winter. Rail fares and prescription charges are being frozen, and energy bills are being cut, he said. Q: [From Andrew] Will you be transparent about the fiscal realities, even if the news is politically inconvenient? Starmer said he had been explaining his decisions today. Hopefully that helped to explain the process, he said. And that was the end of the press conference. 11.26am GMT Starmer declines to say if he expects welfare spending to be falling by time of next election Q: To return to the question Chris Mason asked (see 10.52am), do you want to see welfare spending falling by the time of the next election? Starmer said he has two reviews looking at welfare spending. The last government “lost control of welfare spending”, he said. He defended getting rid of the two-child benefit cap. And he said he was struck, visiting a hospital last week, how staff linked poor child health explicitly to poverty. But he did not say whether or not he wanted overall welfare spending to be falling by the time of the next election. (At the time of the proposed welfare reforms that had to be abandoned in the summer, ministers were not saying they would lead to spending on benefits falling by the time of the next election. But they did say the reforms would stop spending rising as much as it would without them.) 11.17am GMT Q: Are you confidence Labour MPs will support welfare reform? Starmer said that he saw this was a moral question. He repeated his point about being worried about young people being excluded for good from the workplace. 11.14am GMT Starmer claims to be 'supportive' of OBR, but says it should have published productivity review at end of last parliament Q: You are clearly very angry with the OBR over the timing of its productivity review. If it does not command your confidence, what is the point of the OBR? Starmer denies being “angry”. He says it is a good thing that reviews like this are carried out. But he says it would have been better if that has been carried out at the end of the last parliament. He says he feels as if he has been “picking up the tab for the last government’s failure”. He says he is “very supportive” of the OBR. But he says the release of the budget document by mistake was “a massive discourtesy to parliament”. UPDATE: Starmer said: Well, I’m not angry at the productivity review. It’s a good thing that reviews like that have done from time to time. I’m bemused. Myself, I feel that doing at the end of last government and before we started might have been a good point to do a productivity review so we could know exactly what we were confronted with. Doing it 15, 16, months into a government, it had to be done sometime, but picking up the tab for the last government’s failure – it’s been the nature of the beast, frankly, for the last 16 months, but it was given a special emphasis in that exercise. I’m not angry, I’m just bemused as to why it wasn’t done at the end of the government rather than done now, but I’m not saying that these reviews aren’t important et cetera … I’m not going to suggest that what happened last week, which was the entire budget being published before the Chancellor got to her feet, was not anything other than a serious error. This was market sensitive information. It was a massive discourtesy to parliament. It’s a serious error, there’s an investigation that’s going on. But as for the OBR itself, I’m very supportive of the OBR for the reasons I’ve set out – vital for stability, vital and integral to our fiscal rules, which I’ve said a number of times are ironclad. Updated at 12.05pm GMT 11.08am GMT Starmer declines to defend OBR's decision to publish on Friday its pre-budget advice to Treasury Q: Wasn’t it misleading for Reeves to talk about the productivity downgrade when she had been told she was heading for a budget surplus? And was it right for the OBR to reveal on Friday all its advice to the Treasury? Starmer repeats his point about not accepting the Reeves was misleading. And he says it is for Richard Hughes, the chair of the OBR, to explain why he published those figures. Updated at 11.09am GMT 11.04am GMT Starmer questions why OBR chose to carry out productivity growth review when Labour came to power, not before Q: [From Christopher Hope from GB News] How can our viewers trust anything that you say? Starmer says the government started the budget process in a bad way. Having £16bn less than expected was “a very bad starting position”. He queries why the OBR decided to review productivy growth when Labour came to power, when it had not done that earlier, but then suggests that is something he just has to accept. 11.01am GMT Robert Peston, ITV’s political editor, goes next. He says he has covered budgets for 35 years and never known one this shambolic, apart from Liz Truss’s. Starmer defends the budget. The NHS was on its knees when Labour came in, he says. And he says when he visited a hospital afterwards and said the government was cutting £150 off energy bills. Nurses clapped at that point, he says. He says he is proud of that. Q: What are you going to do to improve links with the EU? Starmer says he negotiated a reset deal with the EU. And he says a new SPS deal should cut food costs. 10.57am GMT 'There was no misleading' - Starmer defends Reeves against claims she was not honest about about pre-budget state of public finances Q: [From Beth Rigby from Sky News] Reeves did mislead people because she told people about the productivity downgrade without telling people that other revenues offset that. A cabinet minister told me this morning they felt misled. Starmer does not accept that. He says: Look, there was no misleading, and I simply don’t accept. And I was receiving the numbers. He says, because of the productivity review, the government had £16bn less than it otherwise would have done. That review had not been done for 15 years, he says. He says: Starting that exercise with £16bn less than we might otherwise have had – of course, there were other figures in this, but there’s no pretending that that’s a good starting point … To suggest that a government that is saying that’s not a good starting point is misleading is wrong in my view. 10.52am GMT Starmer is now taking questions. Q: [From the BBC’s Chris Mason] Was Rachel Reeves open about the state of the economy? And do you want welfare spending to fall? Starmer says the productivity downgrade meant the Treasury needed to raise £16bn more than it would have done without that. He says the government was always going to have to raise extra money. At one point he thought they would have to breach the manifesto promise on tax. He asks if there were alternatives. There were alternatives, and that did not need to happen. On welfare, Starmer says is particularly concerned about young people who are not earning or learning. He says there a moral element to this. 10.48am GMT Starmer then mentions the need for welfare reform. (See 9.28am.) And he ends by saying it is necessary to admit that the Brexit trade deal has harmed the economy. He calls for closer economic ties with the EU. 10.47am GMT Starmer says he wants to use the rest of his speech to talk about the next steps for economic renewal. First, he turns to regulation – and mentions the report from the nuclear regulatory taskforce last week. That mentioned “pointless gold plating, unnecessary red tape, well intentioned but fundamentally misguided environmental regulations” and said Britain awas the most expensive place in the world to build nuclear power. He says he wants the government to cut this sort of regulation. 10.44am GMT Starmer says he is confident UK can 'beat the forecasts' on growth Starmer says the measures in the budget are not just about helping people with the cost of living; they are about giving people security too, he says. On growth, he says: When it comes to economic growth, better living standards, we’re confident we can beat the forecasts. We’ve already beaten them this year. We are in control of our future. We’ve already struck trade deals. They’re attracting billions of pounds of investment. We’re removing barriers to business right across the economy in planning, industrial policy, pension reform, artificial intelligence, capital investment and right at the heart of the budget we have a package of measures to keep the green light for the world’s best entrepreneurs. That is why the budget was good for growth, he says. 10.40am GMT Starmer says Britain has now 'walked through narrowest part of the tunnel' Starmer says Labour had a difficult inheritance. But if you’d said to me 17 months ago, on the first day of government, that by now we would have cut NHS waiting times, cut immigration, cut child poverty by a record amount, if you’d said to me that Britain would now be cutting borrowing faster than any other G7 country without cutting public investment, that our fiscal headroom is up significantly, economic growth is beating the forecast, with wages up more since the election than in a decade of the previous government … If you’d said to me, because of all that, we can tackle the cost of living for working people, freezing rail fares, freezing prescription charges, freezing fuel duty, slashing childcare costs, driving down mortgages, taking £150 off your energy bills, £300 for poorer households – then I would say yes, that is a record to be proud of. Starmer goes on: Because we confronted reality, we took control of our future and Britain is now back on track. But I’m also confident we have now walked through the narrowest part of the tunnel. 10.37am GMT Starmer says Labour ruled out cutting spending or raising borrowing because those options have been 'tested to destruction' Starmer says at the budget the government could have borrowed more, or cut public services. But those ideas have been “tested to destruction”, he says. 10.35am GMT Starmer says he is 'proud' of budget, especially taking 500,000 children out of poverty Keir Starmer is speaking now. He says he remembers when he was growing up his family having the phone cut off because they could not pay the bill. So he is proud the budget took steps to cut child poverty, he says. [Not being able to pay bills] is still the reality of Britain for far too many people. So yes, I am proud. I’m proud we scrapped the two-child limit. I’m proud of lifting over half a million children out of poverty. Proud we raised the national minimum wage again. That is what a Labour government is for – making life better for working families. 10.32am GMT Q: Reform would review the triple lock. Would you? Badenoch says the triple lock is Conservative policy. It does cost a lot, she says. But getting rid of it would not help growth, she says. She says you can get rid of it, “and we can all get poorer together”. She says Reform UK don’t have serious policies. The real problem with welfare is that not enough people are working, she says. 10.29am GMT Q: Yesterday you said Rachel Reeves was lying. Today you are saying she gave out false information. Are you still accusing her of being a liar? Badenoch replies: “Yes.” 10.28am GMT At the Tory event, Kemi Badenoch was asked if she would like to take responsibility for the Conservative’s party role in the productivity downgrade. Badenoch said there was a problem with public sector productivity when the Tories were in office. She said the problem was associated with Covid. She claimed that her party accepted there was a problem and adopted some “humility”. Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, said that the government also put up public sector pay without demanding productivity improvements. 10.23am GMT OBR to publish report on accidental budget 'leak' at 2.30pm The Office for Budget Responsibility has said that at 2.30pm today it will publish its report on how its budget report was accidentally uploaded to a place on its website where it could be accessed early by journalists on budget day. 10.18am GMT 10.15am GMT Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, is speaking at the Tory event now. He says the Treasury briefing ahead of the budget deflate the “animal spirits” in the economy, holding back growth. He claims that the Tory plans to cut spending by £47bn are robust, and have stood the test of time since the party’s conference. 10.11am GMT Badenoch restates her call for Reeves to resign Kemi Badenoch is speaking at an event in London now. She restates her claim that Rachel Reeves should resign. She claims the chancellor gave people a misleading view of the financial picture because she wanted a “soft landing” for her budget. She said that private company would not be allowed to misrepresent its finances in this way. 10.01am GMT Here are two of the most level-headed members of the Westminster commentariat making the point that the Rachel Reeves feeding frenzy (see 9.53am) is getting a bit out of hand. This is from Heather Stewart, the Guardian’s economics editor (and former political editor) on Bluesky. This story is starting to make me feel I’m going slightly mad - maybe RR overdid the gloom, but the tax rises are paying for a) the welfare U-turns b) the £10bn-plus increase in headroom c) scrapping the two child limit d) bits of other spending eg higher local gov costs 🤷🏻‍♀️ And this is from the Economist’s Matthew Holehouse. It was the most botched budget briefing since Truss… but this is increasingly wild. It is not an unsubstantiated “claim” that the OBR priced the productivity downgrade at £16bn in foregone revenue! 9.53am GMT What papers are saying about Rachel Reeves Many of the papers have gone to down this morning on the claims that Rachel Reeves misled the public abouit the state of the public finances ahead of the budget. Here is the Times’s splash, as referred to earlier. (See 9.28am.) Here is the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, both highlighting an intervention from Nigel Farage (who has not hitherto been noted for his keen interest in ethical standards in public life). The Daily Express has led with Kemi Badenoch’s words on this story. And the Metro is leading with Reeves’s words. 9.41am GMT Bangladesh court sentences UK MP Tulip Siddiq to two years in prison in absentia A court in Bangladesh has sentenced the British MP Tulip Siddiq to two years in jail after a judge ruled she was complicit in corrupt land deals with her aunt, the country’s deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina. Hannah Ellis-Peterson has the story. Related: Bangladesh court sentences UK MP Tulip Siddiq to two years in prison in absentia Updated at 10.05am GMT 9.28am GMT Starmer to defend Reeves after claims that some ministers feel she misled them ahead of budget Good morning. At Westminster there used to be a theory about budgets that, if they were well received on the day, they tended to go wrong later, but the ones that were widely criticised at the time turned out to be the good ones. This does not help with Rachel Reeves’s budget though, because its reception has been very mixed. On the day it was popular with Labour MPs and with the bond markets, two important audiences for the Treasury. But the public at large believe it was unfair, and it has result in Reeves’s approval ratings with voters, which were already very low, sinking further. And that was before a huge row erupted over whether or not Reeves misled voters about the extent of the “black hole” in the national finances. All this means that, when Keir Starmer gives a speech today defending the budget, he will have to respond to Tory claims that she should be sacked for lying – not the best backdrop for a PM trying to sell a budget to the public. Starmer has given a flavour of what he will say in an article for the Guardian and Kiran Stacey has written it up in our splash story here. Related: Labour’s economic plan will take years to deliver, Keir Starmer says Judging by his article, Starmer will in part be trying recalibrate the budget message by addressing two criticisms that were being levelled at it last week. First, it was pointed out that Reeves said very little in it about promoting growth, even though this is supposedly the government’s top priority. Today Starmer will stress his commitment to deregulation as a pro-growth initiative. And, second, Reeves was criticised for increasing spending on welfare without combining that with announcements about welfare reform. Today, without giving details, Starmer will insist his commitment to welfare reform is strong. Referring to the need to stop young people getting trapped on sickness or disability benefits, he will say: We have to confront the reality that our welfare state is trapping people, not just in poverty, but out of work. Young people especially. And that is a poverty of ambition. And so while we will invest in apprenticeships and make sure every young person without a job has a guaranteed offer of training or work. We must also reform the welfare state itself – that is what renewal demands. Now – this is not about propping up a broken status quo. No, this is about potential. Because if you are ignored that early in your career. If you’re not given the support you need to overcome your mental health issues, or if you are simply written off because you’re neurodivergent or disabled, then it can trap you in a cycle of worklessness and dependency for decades. Which costs the country money, is bad for our productivity, but most importantly of all - costs the country opportunity and potential. This is from an extract from the speech released by No 10 in advance. But, without specifics, Starmer won’t stop the media asking about the claims that the Treasury’s pre-budget messaging was misleading. According to a story in the Times, even some ministers are saying this in private. The Times story includes this quote. One cabinet minister said: “Why did Keir and Rachel allow the country to believe for so long that we would break our manifesto by putting up income tax by 2p when they would have known that wasn’t true? “At no point were the cabinet told about the reality of the OBR forecasts. Had we been told, we might have been in a position to advise against setting hares running on income tax and giving the public the impression we are casual about our manifesto commitments. The handling of this budget has been a disaster from start to finish.” Darren Jones, the Cabinet Office minister and chief secretary to the PM, has been defending the chancellor in interviews this morning. His line has been the same as Reeves’s yesterday; that she did not mislead anyone about the black hole because, even if though the Treasury did not tell the public that the problems caused by the producivity downgrade (which Reeves did talk about) were offset by higher-than-expected tax revenues (which she did not talk about), she still needed to put up taxes to create proper headroom. The surplus revealed by the OBR on Friday would not have been enough, Reeves and Jones have said. Here is the agenda for the day. 10am: Kemi Badenoch speaks at a Q&A in London. It is being hosted by the broadcaster Liam Halligan, and Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, and Andrew Griffith, the shadow business secretary, are also taking part. 10.30am: Keir Starmer gives a speech in London on the budget. 1.30pm: Lord Mann, the government’s independent adviser on antisemitism, gives evidence to the Commons home affairs committee about the decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from the Europa League match in Birmingham. At 2.30pm Craig Guildford chief constable at West Midlands police, Mike O’Hara, asistant chief constable at WMP, and Simon Foster, the West Midlands police and crime commissioner; and 3.30pm Sarah Jones, the policing minister, gives evidence. 2.30pm: Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, takes questions in the Commons. After 3.30pm: A minister may be required to answer an urgent question about the OBR’s statement about the pre-budget forecasts it gave to the Treasury. 3.45pm: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing. 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