Reform UK would seize control of civil servants just like Trump in US, says Kruger – as it happened

5.03pm GMT Afternoon summary Reform UK would allow ministers to ignore international law and give them the ability to fire civil servants in a Donald Trump-style overhaul of government powers, the party’s new efficiency tsar has said. Rachel Reeves will have to account for a bigger-than-expected £20bn hit to the UK public finances in next month’s budget, increasing the likelihood that the chancellor will breach a key Labour’s manifesto pledge not to raise income tax. Refugee organisations have described plans to house thousands of asylum seekers in two disused military sites as fanciful and too expensive as local discontent grows. Ministers have agreed to give bankrupt Woking council an “unprecedented” £500m taxpayer bailout under government plans to merge a dozen local authorities in Surrey. The boss of the UK’s main betting and gaming lobby group has told MPs that there is no “social ill with gambling” as she warned against imposing higher taxes on the sector in the November budget. For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today, do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog. 4.58pm GMT Labour says Reform UK won't save £500m by closing office buildings because government ending those contracts anyway Labour has said that Reform UK’s plan to save £500m over the course of a parliament by closing big departmental offices in Whitehall is flawed because the current government is going to end those contracts anyway. At a press conference this morning, Danny Kruger said that he had identified how his party could save £100m a year – or £500m over the course of a parliament – but terminated the leases on five office buildings in Westminster. (See 2.42pm.) But Anna Turley, the Labour chair, said the government announced very similar plans earlier this year. She said: It’s deeply embarrassing for Nigel Farage that his new policy chief’s first policy has already fallen apart. You can’t save money by closing government buildings that are already closing. Danny Kruger didn’t do the work and he’s been found out. It’s the same at local level. Reform made big claims about the money they could save in councils, found they were wrong, and are now proposing raising council tax and cutting services. Local government was supposed to be the blueprint for what Reform would do nationally, and it’s true: their savings plans collapse at the first contact with reality. It’s a serious case of Doge-ja vu. Updated at 4.58pm GMT 4.04pm GMT John Major says many traditional Tory supporters now 'politically homeless' because of party's lurch to right John Major has become the second former Conservative PM in less than 24 hours to warn his party against embracing populism. In a speech to a Tory lunch today, Major, who led the party from 1990 to 1997, said that many traditional supporters feel “politically homeless” because of the way that the party has lurched to the right. Like Theresa May, who delivered a speech covering the party’s future last night (see 11.55am), Major argued that embracing populism would be disastrous for his party. He criticised the party’s current leadership for its stance on climate change, as May did in her speech. But Major’s attack on his party’s record went far beyond what has happened over the past 12 months. He implied that the party lost its way some years ago, and his only direct references to Kemi Badenoch were positive ones. Major said that the Conservative party succeeded in the past when it was “a coalition of ideas” but that over time moderate views stopped being tolerated. He went on: So ‒ when our party says “No” to Europe. “No” to climate change. “No” to overseas aid – it falls out with the majority of public opinion. Such policies may delight a minority of opinion, but not the broad mass of electors in our essentially tolerant and kindly nation: it seriously alienates many of them. This world of “No” gives a false impression of our party. We do not believe in “No” to helping others or – as our opponents falsely claim – “Yes” to helping ourselves. This loss of pragmatism, tolerance, nuance ‒ call it what you will ‒ has left many long-term Conservative supporters politically homeless. They are not socialists or liberals – nor ever will be – but the form of Conservatism they had always supported seemed to have been cast aside. Whenever our party lurches too far to the right ‒ or condemns moderate Conservatives ‒ it pulls us further away from the traditional mass of our vote. We can almost see and feel our vote moving away from us. If you look at the results of recent byelections the evidence is clear to see. Major was damning about the notion that populism offers the party a way forward. Unthinking populism has already wrecked our trade with Europe and made us poorer, weaker, and less relevant in the wider world. Do not allow it to take away the decencies and civilities of our country as well. While Badenoch has clearly adopted a populist approach in some areas, Major did not critcise her directly for this and he praised her for setting up commissions to work on long-term policy. “It It showcases serious intent. More please,” he said. He also said she was right to rule out an alliance with Reform UK. The majority of Conservative voters understand that – if we were to allay with [Reform UK] – we would forever destroy the tolerant, broad-based, national party that once we were – and can be again. It would be beyond stupid. And he also struck a note of optimism for Tories. The possibility of electoral recovery is better than many believe. The electorate is less committed to any one political party than, perhaps, at any time in the last 65 years. We are now a nation of floating voters, and the Conservatives must offer sound reasons for them to float to us. In a nation disillusioned with politics we must re-offer hope and integrity. Updated at 4.06pm GMT 2.37pm GMT Highland council complains about impact of plan to put asylum seekers in barracks in centre of Inverness Libby Brooks is the Guardian’s Scotland correspondent. Highland council has accused the UK government of failing to consider the local impact of moving hundreds of asylum seekers to barracks in the centre of Inverness. (See 9.13am.) In a strongly worded statement, the council said it had “repeatedly” asked the home office for confirmation of their plans to use Cameron Barracks, which is within walking distance of tourist attractions like Inverness castle, as transitional accommodation for asylum seekers as it phases out to use of hotels. The joint statement from council convenor Bill Lobban, SNP leader Raymond Bremner, and opposition leader Alasdair Christie, issued this morning, said they wrote to the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, last week to request additional information. To date we have not received a response. We await more details on how Inverness was selected over other available locations and how community cohesion will be maintained given the large number of asylum seekers planned relative to the local population. Our main concern is the impact this proposal will have on community cohesion given the scale of the proposals as they currently stand. Inverness is a relatively small community but the potential impact locally and across the wider Highlands appears not to have been taken into consideration by the UK government. Highland council said it was finally notified of the plan yesterday. The UK government have informed the council that their accommodation will be self-contained, with all necessary services provided on site. The asylum seekers are ‘non-detained’, meaning they will be free to leave their site should they wish. The intention is to use the barracks for short-term accommodation before people are moved to dispersed housing around the UK to await the outcome of their asylum applications. The council also warned: “The Home Office has informed us that asylum applications will not be processed in Inverness, which will create more disruption”. Updated at 2.39pm GMT 2.32pm GMT Plans to house UK asylum seekers in barracks are costly and complicated, experts say Refugee organisations have described plans to house thousands of asylum seekers in two disused military sites as fanciful and too expensive as local discontent grow, Rajeev Syal and Libby Brooks report. Related: Plans to house UK asylum seekers in barracks are costly and complicated, experts say 2.24pm GMT Reform UK would seize control of civil servants just like Trump in US, says Kruger, as he sets out plan for Whitehall reform Donald Trump’s first term in office was widely seen as chaotic. He did not expect to win, and his administration did not seem to have much of a clue as to what it wanted to achieve. His second administration is also chaotic, but it is effective and purposeful in away that the first one wasn’t (which is largely why authoritarianism is being enforced so rapidly). This time Trump seems to know what to do with the levers in power, and that is partly because his allies worked up detailed plans for government ahead of 2020 presidential election, even publishing a 900-page manifesto, Project 2025. (During the campaign, when its extreme proposals started getting negative attention, Trump falsely claimed he had nothing to do with it. But now it is being implemented.) All this is worth knowing because it explains, at least in part, what Danny Kruger is doing for Reform UK. He has been told by Nigel Farage to get the party ready for government. Today, in a speech and Q&A with Zia Yusuf, Reform’s head of policy, he set out some of his thinking. He was focusing on machinery of government matters, not policy. But if Farage ever were to form a government, these are proposals what would change quite radically the governance of Britain. Here are the main points. Kruger said that Reform UK would take on the government machine just as Donald Trump is doing in Washington. Asked if he would emulate Trump in taking on the machinery of government, Kruger replied: In a nutshell, yes. I think he came into government with exactly the same analysis that we have, which is that in his case the federal government wasn’t under the control of the administration. And he has taken deliberate steps to bring it back under control. Kruger said that Reform did not agree with everything Trump has been doing. And he said he was not sure if the party would would “emulate his style”. But it would adopt his radicalism, he said. We are very serious about making profoundly deep, structural change to the system. Yusuf said Nigel Farage wanted to fill about half his cabinet with experienced outsiders who did not have seats in the Commons or the Lords. He said that cabinet is currently too big to be an effective decision making body, and that Farage wanted it to be smaller. He went on: Nigel is extremely open to the idea of maybe around half of those cabinet ministers to not be members of parliament. That is not because we don’t have confidence in our [candidates to be MPs]. But the kind of people we are looking for, not all of them will want to run a campaign and do constituency work too. We are competing with countries, like China, like America for example, in certain ways. You’ve got to ask yourself, [Scott] Bessent, the [US] Treasury secretary, isn’t also doing constituency surgeries about the chlorine levels in the local swimming pool. We have to ask ourselves, is that necessarily the best use of time for people who are holding some the highest offices in the land. In theory there is nothing to stop the PM appointing someone without a seat in the Commons or the Lords to sit in cabinet. But in the past it has only happened very rarely, and never on the scale proposed by Yusuf. However, Farage has often spoken about the attractions of a US-style system, where the executive is separate from the legislature. Kruger said that wanted to give ministers much stronger powers over civil servants, including proper hire and fire powers. While officials are in theory accountable to ministers, in practice that is not the case, he said. Civil servants should not block the will of an elected government, he said. We will reform the civil service code to ensure that officials at the top of the civil service, and certainly those at the centre of government, are directly answerable to politicians, including for their jobs … We obviously recognise the huge value of a professional civil service in this country. Nevertheless, we want it to be under proper political control. Kruger said Reform has not yet decided what the right mix should be between career civil servants and political appointees. Currently, very few government officials are political appointees. Kruger was implying a move towards the US system, where thousands of government jobs go to partisan supporters of the president, and the people all get replaced when a new administration comes in. Kruger said he wanted the size of the civil service to fall “dramatically”. He said the civil service was 30% smaller than it is now before Brexit, and he said he wanted to “at least” get it back to that size. Britain used to administer an empire from a couple of buildings grouped around Downing Street. In the 1820s Sir Robert Peel ran the Home Office. Lloyd George delivered the People’s Budget in 1911 with a Treasury of 26 people. And, of course, in those days, Westminster was a residential district. Now, in 2025, it’s a wasteland of acronyms, the MoJ, the DWP, the DfT, the DfE, the DHSC, the MHCLG, all housed in these great glass and steel towers, mostly empty because everyone is working from home. He said that there were five big office buildings in Westminster housing government offices that together cost £100m a year to rent. Those leases were coming up for renewal before the next parliament. Reform would not renew them, he said. Kruger said that Reform would rewrite the ministerial code, in particular removing the obligation on ministers to obey international law. He said he had a “glaring objection” to this. He said Reform would also rewrite the civil service code to impose a wider definition of impartiality. The definition of impartiality is too narrow in the current civil service code. It’s defined simply as being party political, which, of course, they shouldn’t be. But there’s a whole range of other political affiliations or commitments that civil service can have and introduce through their work that might not have a party political label, but is nevertheless essentially political. The whole the DEI [diversity, equity, inclusion]/woke agenda that has infected so much of Whitehall will be in contravention of the civil service code that we introduce. Socially controversial political positions will not be acceptable in the civil service. He said Reform would not allow the House of Lords to “obstruct legislation passed by parliament”. Reform also would have to create new peers, he said. And he said Keir Starmer should start creating new Reform peers before the election. He said: We’d like the prime minister to get on with that, and start doing that in this parliament to reflect the reality of public opinion. Kruger said that Reform UK would make sure that it had constitutional reform legislation “ready to go” as soon as it took office. He said that he would like to improve the way parliament scrutinises legislation. In particular he praised Ian Dunt’s book How Westminster Works … and Why It Doesn’t, saying that what it revealed about how badly laws are scrutinised before they are passed was “particularly shameful” for parliamentarians to read. (It is an excellent book, although Dunt, who is a progressive, may be horrified to find out that Danny Kruger may be more interested in his proposals than Keir Starmer.) There was one obvious omission from Kruger’s contitutional reform wishlist. The Reform UK manifesto in 2024 called for proportional representation. That was when first-past-the-post was holding the party back. But now, given their support in the polls, FPTP would disproportionately favour Reform, not handicap them, and PR seems to have fallen off the agenda. Updated at 4.24pm GMT 1.29pm GMT Starmer confirms that he wants to see asylum seekers removed from hotels 'as quickly as possible' Keir Starmer has confirmed that he wants to see asylum seekers removed from hotels “as quickly as possible”. 'I'm really angry,' said Starmer about the amount of hotels being used to house asylum seekersThe government is planning on using military bases to house asylum seekers 'by the end of this year,' with the PM saying he wanted the hotels closed 'as quickly as possible' pic.twitter.com/RbP0WPrNpx— ITVPolitics (@ITVNewsPolitics) October 28, 2025 12.59pm GMT No 10 confirms it could move asylum seekers from hotels to sites like barracks even if it costs more At the Downing Street lobby briefing this morning, the PM’s spokesperson insisted that moving asylum seekers into military camps could be worth it even if it cost more than hotel accommodation. Confirming the argument made by Luke Pollard, a defence minister, in interviews this morning (see 9.13am), the spokesperson said: What the public don’t want is a situation where asylum seekers, who have a legal duty to have basic accommodation, we don’t want a situation where there is an entitlement to luxury sites as we’ve seen in recent years. Military sites can provide proper security, health and wellbeing standards, and that is what we’re intent on delivering, instead of luxury sites, as we’ve seen over recent years. (Campaigners would dispute the word “luxury”. While asylum seekers have sometimes been housed in hotels with a rating that would lead them to being described as luxury, asylum seekers don’t receive the same service that paying customers would have had in those places and their experience – sharing space with many other desperate people with nothing to do and no money – doesn’t equate with being on holiday.) Asked if barracks were a better option even if they cost more, the spokesperson said: I think there’s a number of issues in play. The costs will vary site by site, and as I say, we are looking at these initial two sites and if they will prove the concept, and if successful we’ll look at scaling that up. But this is also a core issue of public confidence. The public is very clear it does not want asylum seekers housed in hotels, and neither does the government. Updated at 1.22pm GMT 12.26pm GMT 'Nothing works ... we're becoming poor, sick and unhappy' - Kruger delivers damning verdict on how Tories left UK Earlier I pointed out that, in his Today interview this morning, the Reform MP Danny Kruger was strangely reticent when it came to explaining why the size of the civil service has grown so much in recent years. (See 11.09am.) In his speech this morning Kruger was a bit more forthcoming. He said: Let me be very clear. The growth of the civil service will be reversed. After falling in the wake of the global financial crisis, the headcount of the civil service rose again after Brexit – shame on the Tories – and it passed 500,000 in 2023. He also delivered a damning verdict on the party that he worked for about 20 years, and represented in parliament for about five and a half years until he recent defection to Reform. Describing the state of the country, he said: Nothing works properly. It’s impossible to build anything. The streets are dirty and unsafe. Taxes and prices are far too high. Immigration is changing our country for the worse and far too fast. And we’re becoming poor, sick and unhappy. There is a malaise over Britain. These problems are complex. But the effective cause of them is simple. Since 1997 we have had governments that, firstly don’t share the attitude of the country they govern, and secondly, they aren’t properly in charge of the state. Yesterday I said that Wes Streeting’s weekend comments about the state of the UK were reminiscent of Jimmy Carter’s “malaise speech”. Kruger even used that word this morning. Given the role the Conservatives have played in allowing the country to get into this state, it is quite something for Kruger to admit things are this bad. The speech, and the press conference, were interesting because of what Kruger, and Zia Yusuf, had to say about how a Reform goverment would govern. I will summarise those points shortly. 11.55am GMT Theresa May condemns Tories over Climate Change Act, 'villianisation of judiciary', ECHR and populism Theresa May, the former Conservative PM, gave a lecture in the House of Lords last night which she used to criticise several – perhaps even most – of Kemi Badenoch’s flagship policies. Here are some highlights, from the PA Media report. On getting rid of the Climate Change Act May said Badenoch plan to repeal the Climate Change Act (updated when she was PM) was an “extreme and unnecessary measure” that would “fatally undermine” Britain’s global leadership on climate issues. This announcement only reinforces climate policy as a dividing line in our politics, rather than being the unifying issue it once was. And, for the Conservative party, it risks chasing votes from Reform at the expense of the wider electorate. On attacking judges (which was the main theme of shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick’s party conference speech) Without mentioning Jenrick, May condemned the “villainisation of the judiciary”. By undermining the judiciary we further erode public trust in the institutions of our democracy and therefore in democracy itself. So I say to those seeking to villainise a judiciary that cannot easily answer back, who wilfully discredit our legal system for their own expediency – it’s time to show responsible leadership. On leaving the European convention on human rights May said that, while it had been “frustrating” for her to “come up against the courts” as a minister, the Tories should “tread carefully”. This is not just about short-term decisions to make it easier to deal with public concerns about immigration. Our support for human rights has its origin in Magna Carta. How we deal with issues of human rights is fundamental to our ability to deal with autocracies and dictatorships. Every step we take to reduce our support for human rights merely emboldens our rivals and weakens our position in the world. On using populism Badenoch has enthusiastically embraced populist causes. May said she was not in favour. In the world of power where the club of strong men want to carve the world up in their own interests, populism and polarisation are enablers. And those politicians in the Western world who use populism and polarisation for their own short-term political ends risk handing a victory to our enemies. We must not risk walking into that trap. 11.32am GMT Zia Yusuf rejects claims Reform UK more shambolic than Labour or Tories at council level, as Kent turmoil goes on At the Reform UK press conference, Danny Kruger has delivered his speech (see 11.09am) and he is now taking questions with Zia Yusuf, the party’s head of policy. Asked about the turmoil at Kent (see 9.52am), Yusuf claimed that Reform UK’s record in local government was no worse than other parties’. He claimed that Reform councils were being subject to “a level of scrutiny” he had never seen anywhere else in his lifetime. But Labour and Tory leadere were “never asked about the any number of utterly shambolic councils, that they presided over”. He mentioned Thurrock, Slough and Croydon as examples. He went on: If senior party representatives from the Labour party and the Tory party had questions about every single councillor that did something that they didn’t like, these [press conferences] would go on all day. 11.09am GMT 'It's gone up hugely since ...' - Danny Kruger comes close to admitting civil servants numbers soared after Brexit Danny Kruger, who defected from the Conservatives to Reform UK and who has been put in charge of getting the party ready for government, is giving a speech this morning about proposals to cut the cost of the civil service. In an interview on the Today programme this morning, he said that Reform would “close down many of the sprawling offices that Whitehall currently occupies across the whole district of Westminster”. He claimed that moving the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department of Health and Social Care out of their offices would save £22m a year, moving the Home Office could save £30m, and moving the Department for Education could save £12m. Reform would like to move some of these offices out of London, he said. And he said that he wanted to cut the number of people working in the civil service. At one point in his interview, he said: We now have over half a million civil servants working for central government. It’s gone up hugely since – I’m afraid to say, in the last 10 years. At this point it sounded as if Kruger was correcting himself mid-sentence; he was about to say “since Brexit”, because Whitehall has had to hire thousands officials to do jobs that were previously done in Brussels, but he seemed to hold back because it is awkward for him to admit that he is trying to solve a problem created by a policy his party supported in the first place. 10.50am GMT Government won't commission enough offshore wind to meet clean energy pledge, analysis suggests Helena Horton is a Guardian environment reporter. Ed Miliband has not been given enough of a budget to secure enough offshore wind to meet his clean energy promise, new analysis shows. The energy secretary has promised to decarbonise the electricity grid by 2030, and to do so he needs to commission between 7-8 GW of offshore wind power a year until 2030. However, he has only budgeted for around 4 GW, according to analysis by Carbon Brief. This confirms a story broken by the Guardian last week, which revealed Keir Starmer was getting ready to drop the 2030 target if it proved too expensive to do so. There are fears that commissioning too much wind at a high price will hike consumer bills. Miliband previously promised to drive bills down by £300 by the end of this parliament. The budget works by promising a certain amount of money to the wind companies per megawatt hour of electricity they produce. This means if the wholesale electricity price is above what is called the “strike price”, consumers do not pay it. However, if the wholesale price is below the “strike price”, we top this up with our bills, so the energy companies are paid a guaranteed amount. The maximum strike price for this year’s auction round is £113/MW h, and these contracts will run for 20 years. For reference, today’s wholesale price is around £76/MW h. If the government manages to negotiate a lower price, they still will not commission enough wind with their current budget. If they get down to £90, they will commission 4 GW, 5 if they drive it to £80, and 6 if they drive it to £70. This is unlikely, and industry figures predict the price will settle at £105. Ana Musat, executive director of policy and engagement at RenewableUK. said: The budget announced today will not maximise investment in new offshore wind farms. We have a record amount of offshore wind capacity eligible for this auction - more than 20 gigawatts - and the current budget would only procure about a quarter of that. Given the amount of competition in this year’s auction, we expect to see competitively-priced bids, so the government should adjust the budget to maximise procurement, which could attract up to £53bn in private investment in the UK economy. Updated at 12.02pm GMT 10.42am GMT Labour at 17%, its lowest level ever in YouGov poll, level with Tories, with Greens on 16%, Lib Dems 15% - and Reform on 27% YouGov has published the latest results from the weekly polling it carries out for the Times and Sky News. The results are startling, showing Labour on just 17% (the party’s lowest ever score in a YouGov poll), the Green party just one point behind, and four parties clustered within two points of each other. One fairly reliable rule about polling is that any poll that makes headlines is likely to be wrong. That is because things become news when they are unusual, but in polling ‘unusual’ is likely to mean outlier (which means wrong). Polling is most useful when it illuminates trends. But four of the main parties – Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens – are clustering, or at least have been over the past few months. This chart from Politico’s poll of polls (which aggregates all polling results) illustrates this. The YouGov numbers may be ‘wrong’, but the overall story is probably ‘right’. Commenting on these results, Mothin Ali, the Green party’s co-deputy leader. When we said we were here to replace Labour and take the fight to Reform we meant it. People are flocking to the Greens because they see we are the party pushing for bold change and are making hope normal again. We have now surged beyond 150,000 members - a more than 100% increase in just over a month. In the same period our poll ratings have shot up to their highest ever YouGov showing and the Green Party is now within touching distance of Labour. Updated at 10.45am GMT 10.10am GMT Badenoch declines to say whether or not she thinks Sarah Pochin's black people on TV complaint was racist Keir Starmer (here) and the Lib Dem leader Ed Davey (here) have both said that the Reform UK MP Sarah Pochin was being racist when she said “it drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people”. Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has said that, though the comment was “ugly”, his colleague was not being racist. Last night Kemi Badenoch was on ITV’s Peston. She said the Pochin comments were “quite shocking”. But, asked if they were racist, she said that as a black person she was “tired” of having to address questions like that, and she did not give an answer. She said she wanted to talk about Conservative plans to fix the country, not Reform UK and TV adverts. Here is the clip. “We’re talking about fixing the country, they’re talking about TV adverts. It’s not serious”Asked if Sarah Pochin’s comments were racist, Conservative leader @KemiBadenoch calls them ‘shocking’ and says she’s tired of having to talk about Reform#Peston pic.twitter.com/EU8iYLmSly— Peston (@itvpeston) October 27, 2025 Updated at 10.11am GMT 9.52am GMT Three more Reform UK councillors expelled from party over 'dishonest' behaviour Three more members of Reform’s “flagship” council have been expelled for “dishonest and deceptive behaviour” following a leaked video meeting, PA Media reports. PA says: Reform UK took control of Kent county council (KCC) after winning 57 of the 81 seats at the local elections in May, overturning a 30-year Tory majority. Due to the number of suspensions and removals since May, there are now less than 50 Reform councillors sitting at KCC. After footage of an online meeting where KCC leader Linden Kemkaran was seen shouting and swearing at her members was revealed by the Guardian, four councillors were suspended. Three of those councillors: Bill Barrett, Oliver Bradshaw and Paul Thomas, along with another councillor, Brian Black, have now been kicked out of Reform UK following investigations. A Reform spokesperson said: “At the request of the leader of Kent County Council, Cllr Black and Cllr Thomas were invited to meet with officials from Reform HQ in order to find a way forward for all involved. “Following this meeting, a decision has been made to expel Cllr Black, Cllr Thomas and Cllr Bradshaw from the party after they displayed a lack of integrity. “These individuals have shown a pattern of dishonest and deceptive behaviour which the party will not tolerate from its elected officials.” Last week, Barrett and another councillor, Robert Ford, were kicked out by email from Reform HQ which said they had “undermined” the interests of the party and brought it into “disrepute”. 9.47am GMT OBR productivity downgrade to create £20bn hole in budget, more than expected, reports say The budget is just over four weeks away, and already the papers have been awash with speculation about what Rachel Reeves, but some stories are probably better sourced than others. When the BBC and the Financial Times start leading with the same scoop, it is wise to take it seriously. That is why there is a lot of interest in the news that Reeves faces a bigger-than-expected hit to the public finances of around £20bn, because of poor productivity in the UK economy. As Graeme Wearden reports, The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the government’s official forecaster, is expected to cut its trend productivity growth prediction by 0.3 percentage points, the Financial Times reported. It is expected to deliver its forecasts to Rachel Reeves on Friday, and they will be published on budget day on 26 November.The Institute for Fiscal Studies think-tank has said that each 0.1 percentage point downgrade to productivity would increase public sector net borrowing by £7bn in 2029-30, so a 0.3 point reduction could create a £21bn hit. Analysts have been expecting a smaller downgrade to productivity that would result in a £7bn to £14bn fiscal hit under the IFS calculation. Graeme has more on his business live blog. Related: UK reportedly faces more than £20bn hit from steeper productivity downgrade, fuelling tax rise speculation – business live 9.13am GMT Minister defends plan to house asylum seekers in military sites even if it costs more Good morning. The Home Office confirmed last night that it wants to use two barracks, in northern Scotland and southern England, to house around 900 male asylum seekers. The two sites are Cameron Barracks in Inverness and Crowborough Training Camp in East Sussex and ministers want the men to start moving in from the end of next month. Kevin Rawlinson has more details here. Related: Hundreds of asylum seekers to be moved to two UK military sites In some respects, this announcement can be added to the list of government U-turns; only last summer the government was saying it wanted to end the use of military sites for asylum seekers. This morning Luke Pollard, a defence minister, has been on the airwaves. He confirmed that Cameron Barracks in Inverness and Crowborough Training Camp were being lined up as accommodation for asylum seekers and he told the BBC that this was about seeing if this approach works. Some bases are small, some bases are larger in terms of numbers, but I think the conversation around the bases that are in the news today is about proving this concept, is about seeing whether this works. We believe that these bases can provide adequate accommodation for asylum seekers. Yesterday the Commons home affairs committee warned that housing asylum seekers in barracks, not hotels, could end up being more expensive. Pollard suggested that this would be worth it given the extent of public opposition to asylum seekers being housed in hotels. We’re looking at what’s possible and, in some cases, those bases may be a different cost to hotels, but I think we need to reflect the public mood on this asylum hotels need to close. We are likely to hear more on this from Keir Starmer, who is doing a visit this morning where he will be speaking to the media. Here is the agenda for the day. Morning: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is still in Saudi Arabia, where she is speaking at an investment conference. Morning: Keir Starmer is on a visit in the north-west of England, linked to the deal he signed yesterday to sell Typhoon jets to Turkey. 11am: The Reform MP Danny Kruger holds a press conference to announce plans to cut spending on the civil service. 11.30am: Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, takes questions in the Commons. Noon: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing. 2.45pm: Starmer chairs cabinet. If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (normally between 10am and 3pm BST at the moment), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word. If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary. I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog. Updated at 4.26pm GMT