Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the Treasury, was on Politics Live earlier (the other one, the BBC version) and, asked about the impact assessment saying the disability cuts will push 250,000 more people into poverty, he argued that these figures did not take into account the postive impact of people finding work. (Rachel Reeves used the same argument a few minutes ago – see 5.19pm).

But then, to explain his point, Jones said that if he cut his children’s pocket money by £10 a week, but told them to set a Saturday job, an impact assessment would say they were losing £10 a week – without taking into account the extra cash they would get from the Saturday job.

Jones was not saying that Pip was like pocket money, or that disability benefit claimants are like children. But that hasn’t stopped his comment being interpreted as if he were (which on its own is enough to show that he probably should not have said it).

The Liberal Democrats are calling for an apology. Steve Darling, the Lib Dem work and pensions spokesperson, said:

This is incredibly insulting and shows the government just doesn’t understand the challenges facing people with disabilities. Darren Jones owes an apology to the hundreds of thousands of people his government’s decision has pushed into poverty and the millions more whose lives they have made more challenging.

And this is what Rachel Reeves said at her press conference in response to the free tickets part of the question mentioned earlier. (See 5.19pm.)

Now, it may come as a surprise to some of you, that I’m not personally a Sabrina Carpenter, being a 46-year-old woman, but a member of my family did want to go and see that concert.

I’m not in a position now that I can easily just go and sit in at the concert, and some of the things that I might have been able to do in my everyday life in the past are not so easy now.

And so I had advice that it would be better to be in a box. The owners of the O2 had a box, tickets that are not available to buy, and they said that I could go in there, and that was better for security reasons.

I do recognise that people think that that’s a bit odd, but that’s the reason why I did that rather than just being in normal seats, which, to be honest, for me and my family, would have been a lot nicer and a lot easier.

Reeves has two children.

Many people will sympathise with Reeves’ explanation – although she did not say why she did not offer a payment to cover the notional costs of the ticket, which would stopped this turning into a controversy.

Among today’s flurry of news, the government has also launched a consultation on new measure to clamp down on tax avoidance schemes.

The proposals would give HMRC new powers and stronger sanctions to disrupt the business model which the promoters of tax avoidance schemes rely on.

The proposal falls into four parts:

• expanding the scope of the Disclosure of Tax Avoidance Schemes (DOTAS) regime.

• introducing a Universal Stop Notice and Promoter Action Notice

• tackling controlling minds and those behind the promotion of avoidance schemes through new highly targeted obligations and stronger information powers

• exploring options to tackle legal professionals designing or contributing to the promotion of avoidance schemes

More here.

Tax campaigner Dan Niedle reckons that this could be the toughest ever suite of anti-tax avoidance proposals introduced in the UK.

Niedle explains that the government would be able to issue a “promoter action notice” to third parties (such as banks, employment services or social media networks) who facilitate a scheme. It would also become a criminal offence to not report a tax avoidance scheme to HMRC.

Q: Do you regret accepting free tickets worth £600 for a Sabrina Carpenter ticket when you are taking decisions that will plunge 250,000 people into poverty?

Reeves said the poverty projection was based on an assumption involving “no one going into work who was previously out of work”. She goes on:

And yet we’re putting £1bn in for targeted employment support to get people back to work. So I’m confident that our plans, far from increasing poverty, will actually result in more people having fulfilling work, paying a decent wage to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.

This is a firmer version of the answer given earlier. (See 4.53pm.)

In effect, she is saying that the DWP projection is unreliable.

Q: Can you justify giving a £1bn tax cut to global tech firms?

Reeves replies:

In terms of tax policy, it’s up to the UK government to set tax policy for the UK economy, including digital services tax.

Now the digital services tax was supposed to be temporary until there was a global agreement as part of pillar one and pillar two of the OECD agreement, but we believe that companies should pay tax in the countries in which they operate, which is why we introduced the digital services tax in the first place, and our views on that have not changed.

Rachel Reeves is speaking at her press conference now.

Q: Is pushing 250,000 more people into poverty a price worth paying?

Reeves says the OBR has not taken into account the impact of more people going into work. She says they will be doing some work on this ahead of the budget in the autumn.

And she says the government is investing £1bn on getting more people into work.

And so we’re confident that the changes that we are making and the support that we’re providing to get people into work, will result in more people having fulfilling careers paying decent wages and of course, that’s the best way to lift families out of poverty.

The Resolution Foundation have declared that Rachel Reeves is wrong to balance the books on the backs of low-income families.

They fear that the “rushed welfare changes” will leave 3.2 million families £1,700 worse off on average, and risk causing “significant damage” to many families’ living standards.

They argue that the chancellor did not need to concentrate the pain on welface cuts. Extending the freeze in personal tax thresholds by just a single year would have saved almost as much (£3.9bn in 2029-30) and would have been shared far more widely across 24 million households, they say.

Ruth Curtice, chief executive at the Resolution Foundation, warns that the living standards pain this decade could be even worse than in the 2010s:

“Having set her new fiscal rules only last autumn, and faced with rising debt interest costs and a weaker outlook for the public finances, Rachel Reeves had little choice but to make a downbeat Spring Statement.

“But while the Chancellor was right to balance the books, she was wrong to do so on the backs of low-to-middle income families, on whom two-thirds of the welfare cuts will fall. Over three million households will be worse off as a result of welfare changes.

“Major cuts to Universal Credit were made so late in the day that the OBR was unable to assess them, suggesting that long-term change is playing second fiddle to short-term savings. This approach to welfare reform that rarely ends well for individuals or the Government.

“The £3.6 billion trimming of departmental spending is a far cry from the austerity of the 2010s. But it is not pain-free either – crucial public services like courts, prisons and local government will feel the strain of reduced funding in the second half of this Parliament.

“The Government’s welcome ambition to kickstart growth got closer to reality today, with planning reforms set to boost GDP in the coming years. But the outlook still looks bleak. Much has been made of the living standards pain Britain experienced during the 2010s, but the 2020s are still on track to be even worse.”

[Resolution Foundation’s focus is on improving living standards for those on low-to-middle incomes]

Here is some more political reaction to the spring statement.

This is from Adrian Ramsay, co-leader of the Green party

The chancellor had a choice today. To rebalance our economy by asking the very wealthiest to contribute more, or to remove vital support from ill and disabled people. That she chose to take from the most vulnerable to balance her books is a damning reflection of how out of touch this government is. It is morally repugnant.

And it’s not just ill and disabled people who will suffer as the chancellor doubles down on cuts to frontline services. This will weaken our communities and leave us all poorer. Labour once claimed that they were for the many, not the few – it’s clear now that is this is no longer the case.

And this is from Richard Tice, the Reform UK deputy leader.

Quite simply, this emergency budget is a disaster and was entirely avoidable, yet Labour decided to plough regardless. The OBR has forecast that tax as a share of the economy will hit a historic high within three years and halved the revised growth forecast for 2025 from 2% in the autumn to 1% today.

Yet the OBR thinks that this government will somehow pluck growth out of thin air in the coming years. The OBR are delusional.

The economy is shrinking, growth is collapsing towards recession, energy bills soaring because of net zero, the cost of government borrowing soaring back to 15 year highs and the job market is collapsing. The reaction by the bond market should be a dire warning to us all.

Quite what Tice means by “reaction of the bond market” is not clear. As mentioned earlier, the bond market seems quite calm this afternoon. (See 2.30pm.)

Peter Walker is a senior Guardian political correspondent.

The Conservatives’ approach to redefining their economic policy is “a blank sheet of paper exercise” with nothing yet ruled out, the shadow chancellor, Mel Stride, has told reporters after the spring statement.

At a press briefing in parliament, Stride also questioned whether Rachel Reeves had left herself enough fiscal headroom, and described the cuts to welfare and disability payments as “rushed” and “botched”.

The Tories have thus far announced few policies, which Stride described as being the luxury of being voted out of office and into opposition. In his brief, he said, the aim was to “get away from managerial incrementalism”, saying this had only brought sluggish growth.

Policies aimed at “rewiring the economy”, Stride said, would thus be wide-ranging, and would definitely include shrinking the state.

You need to look at skills and education and higher education, all those areas. You need to look at welfare … and then certainly supply side issues like planning and housing, and roads and rail and reservoirs and getting energy costs down. So there are many things that we’re going to have to think very deeply about.

On the welfare cuts, Stride, a former work and pensions secretary, said the government had taken the easy option of freezing benefits or squeezing access to them without fundamentally rethinking whether the payments worked for people.

As an example, he said, someone receiving Pip due to a long-term mental health challenge should be given help with this, and not simply a long-term payment without help.

He also said Rachel Reeves’ restoration of her £10bn fiscal headroom might not last till the autumn budget:

Given her track record and the way that she’s run the economy, I suspect that markets and others will look at that headroom and say to themselves that perhaps she should have built more in than she has.

Dutch bank ING has predicted that further UK tax rises in the autumn are becoming increasingly inevitable, unless there is more good news on growth before the next budget.

ING predict that today’s upgrade to Britain’s medium-term growth forecasts “may not stick for long”. If those forecasts are cut, then Reeves’s headroom on delivering a budget surplus at the end of the decade would be wiped out.

In a note to clients, James Smith, ING’s developed markets economist, explains:

The OBR is still relatively optimistic about productivity growth, despite output per hour actually falling repeatedly over the past year or two. At some point, the OBR is probably going to have to throw in the towel and cut back its forecasts. And if it does this at the Autumn Budget, that will further reduce the money available under the fiscal rules. Bear in mind that the current level of “headroom” – £9.9bn – is a rounding error in the context of the UK’s public finances.

The UK’s public finances are operating on increasingly fine margins, and we don’t think that defence will be the only department requiring fresh cash injections over the coming years. At the Autumn Budget, that may leave the Treasury with little choice but to boost government spending plans even further.

In the absence of further upgrades to GDP growth, or a fall in gilt yields (not our base case), we think this is likely to necessitate further tax hikes.

Aamna Mohdin is the Guardian’s community affairs correspondent.

The Women’s Budget Group, a feminist economic thinktank, has described the spring statement as “deeply disappointing and misguided”, citing the government’s own analysis, which shows that single women will be the hardest hit by the announced changes.

Mary-Ann Stephenson, director of the group, said:

We recognise the challenging situation facing the chancellor. However, the government is making decisions that will seriously impact people’s lives up and down the country, particularly children, women and disabled people, based on forecasts that may not even materialise in order to meet its own self-imposed spending rules. This is deeply disappointing and misguided.

[The DWP’s impact assessment shows] that the largest group affected by the changes will be single women, making up 44% of those losing out, at an average of £1,610 a year.

Stephenson is referring to these figures.

And this is what the DWP analysis says about these numbers.

Single females are more likely to lose than single males which reflects that women are more likely to be in receipt of disability benefits than men, and single females have a slightly higher average loss per annum compared to single males.

However, the majority of families gaining are single female families. The package of measures means that around 4 in 10 families gaining are lone parents with the majority of lone parents gaining. Lone parents are more likely to claim Universal Credit than other family types and benefit from the increase in the Standard Allowance, with most lone parents being women.

The OBR is forecasting that the government will miss its target of building 1.5m new homes in this parliament.

OBR chief Richard Hughes has told reporters that the OBR believes the government’s reforms to the residential planning system will deliver “a significant increase” in the rate of housebuilding.

Hughes explains that these planning reforms will deliver an extra 170,000 houses, and take net additions to the housing stock to around 1.3m over the next five years.

Growth in new homes is expected to reach 305,000 a year by 2029-30, which would be the highest in 40 years.

Jamie Gollings, interim research director at Social Market Foundation, has warned that the government must move “further and faster” to hit its housebuilding goals.

Gollings says:

The Chancellor was celebratory over the OBR’s uplifting of the housebuilding rate in their forecasts. However, whilst the rate is increasing, they show the government set to miss its target of 1.5 million new homes in England by some way.

The OBR forecasts 1.3 million homes over the 2025/26 to 2029/30 period for the UK – perhaps around 1.1 million for England. It is likely to be even worse than that. The last year of the period, 2029/30, is when housebuilding is expected to be at its highest, but only a portion of it will fall within this parliament.

Clearly, the government needs to go further and faster if it is going to have any hope of hitting 1.5 million.

When Liz Kendall announced last week that the government was restricting eligibility to Pip (the personal independence payment), it was clear that this would lead to some people losing the carer’s allowance (an £81.90 per week benefit paid to people who do a lot of unpaid care, with Pip being one of the benefits going to those needing the care that determines whether the person providing the care can get carer’s allowance). But the DWP did not say how many carer’s allowance recipients would be affected.

Now the DWP is saying 150,000 people getting carer’s allowance will lose out. It says:

By 2029/30 an estimated 800,000 people will not receive the daily living component of Pip who would have under current rules, a significant proportion of these people will retain access to the obility component and will remain on the benefit. A further 150,000 people will not receive carer’s allowance or the UC [universal credit] carer element as a result.

And here is the table illustrating this.

t.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) is fast out of the gate with an early reaction to the chancellor’s spring statement – pointing out two problems with it.

Paul Johnson, director of the IFS, says Rachel Reeves has “fine-tuned” departmental spending plans and welfare policy to simply restore the headroom against her fiscal targets in 2029-2030.

The first problem, Johnson explains, is that the chancellor is left at the mercy of events, by insisting on “iron-clad” fiscal rules then leaving next to no headroom against them.

He says:

Ms Reeves has left herself with the same £9.9bn sliver of headroom against her target to balance the current budget as she had in October, and a very similar amount of headroom against the target that debt should be falling in 2029–30 (£15.1 billion, down from £15.7 billion in October).

All of that adds to uncertainty around policy. We can surely now expect 6 or 7 months of speculation about what taxes might or might not be increased in the autumn. There is a cost, both economic and political, to that uncertainty. The government will suffer the political cost. We will suffer the economic cost.

Secondly, Johnson criticises the fine-tuning of policy in pursuit of a measure of ‘fiscal headroom’ that is “arbitrary and highly uncertain”.

Second, the Chancellor really does seem to risk losing the wood for the trees.

If it was right to announce halving the health-related element of universal credit last week, is it now really appropriate not only to halve it, but also then to freeze it for the rest of the parliament?

Knocking a pound a week off the main rate of universal credit in order, it seems, to return the fiscal headroom to exactly where it was last October, really does risk undermining the idea that benefit reform, which is much needed, is being made for any reason other than chasing a fiscal number.

As the old saying has it, “taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society”

And that price is heading higher!

Tax as a share of the economy is forecast to rise from 35.3% of GDP this year to a historic high of 37.7% in 2027-28, the Office for Budget Responsibility’s new Economic and fiscal outlook shows.

The tax burden then remains at a high level for the rest of the forecast.

The increase is partly due to the increase in employer national insurance contributions announced in the last budget, which kick in next month.

The freeze on income tax thresholds will also lead to more people paying higher rates of tax, as their incomes rise.

The OBR says:

The sharp forecast increase in 2025-26 is largely due to the Autumn 2024 Budget increase in employer NICs, which takes effect in April 2025, and an expected recovery in capital tax receipts.

The further forecast rise in the tax take to 2027-28 is mainly due to growth in nominal earnings combined with frozen tax thresholds, further rises in capital taxes, and a boost to receipts from the Temporary Repatriation Facility (TRF) announced at the Autumn Budget as part of the reforms to the non-domicile regime.

The tax take is then forecast to level off as personal thresholds are unfrozen, the TRF window closes, and the take-up of electric vehicles reduces fuel duty receipts.

The Department for Work and Pensions’ impact assessment of the health and disability benefit cuts also says that will put an extra 250,000 people, including 50,000 children, into relative poverty.

The potential impact of these reforms on poverty projections has been estimated using a static microsimulation model. Using this model, we estimate there will be an additional 250,000 people (including 50,000 children) in relative poverty after housing costs in 2029/30 as a result of modelled changes to social security, compared to the baseline projections.

Relative poverty is defined as having a household income below 60% of the median.

The Treasury has published a general impact assessment, covering decisions taken in the spring statement and the budget last year. As this chart shows, in total the government can says its measures are progressive.

But the Department for Work and Pensions has also published a detailed analysis of the impact of the disability benefit cuts, and those findings present a very different picture.

Here is potentially the most damaging paragraph.

Overall, it is estimated that in 2029/30 there will be 3.2 million families – some current recipients and some future recipients - who will financially lose as a result of this package, with an average loss of £1,720 per year compared to inflation. There are also estimated to be 3.8 million families - some current recipients and some future recipients - who will financially gain from this package, with an average gain of £420 per year compared to inflation.

This is an astonishing figure, that goes beyond some of the figures quoted by thinktanks last week, but it an illustration of an old Treasury saying: “You want me to cut £1bn. Shall I take £100 each off 10 million people, or £1,000 each off 1 million people?” Reeves was looking for, not £1bn, but £5bn.

The Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that a full-scale trade war between the US and other major training partners could cut the size of Britain’s economy by 1%, and drive up inflation.

Its new central forecast does not explicitly account for the impact of recently announced tariff increases by the US and other countries (fair enough, given the uncertainty about what Donald Trump will decide on tariffs).

Instead, the OBR has drawn up three scenarios for how global trade may evolve.

In the first scenario, the US increases tariffs levied on goods arriving from China, Canada and Mexico by 20 percentage points, and these countries retaliate equivalently.

In this scenario (which is already unfolding) GDP growth in these countries slows while prices rise. This leads to UK GDP being around 0.2% lower in 2026-27 than in the OBR’s central forecast – a fairly modest hit – “as demand for UK exports slows and uncertainty weighs on UK economic activity”.

The second scenario is based on the possibility that the US increases tariffs on goods arriving from all other countries, including the UK, by 20 percentage points.

That, predictably, has a worse impact on the UK economy – GDP in this scenario is 0.6 per cent lower than in the central forecast in 2026-27.

The third scenario assumes that all US trading partners, including the UK, retaliate against the US by imposing their own equivalent tariffs on US goods.

This third scenario is not a pleasant picture. UK inflation is 0.6 percentage points higher than forecast in 2025-26, as the price of imports of US goods increases. Growth is quickly hurt too – as inflation eats into real incomes, and global growth slows.

The OBR says:

Alternatives to US goods may be more expensive which could lower living standards further. The peak impact on GDP is around 1 per cent in 2026-27. As GDP growth weakens, there are limited secondround effects on inflation, which then falls to 1.8 per cent in 2027-28.

Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, is responding to Reeves.

He says this is really an emergency budget.

When the Tories were in office, the UK was growing faster than any other G7 economy, he says.

Reeves is blaming others – the war in Ukraine, President Trump, tariffs, President Putin, and the Conseratives – for the fact that growth has stalled.

But it is her fault, he says. He says Reeves caused business confidence to crash with the tax increases in her budget.

And he claims she fiddled her target and she missed them.

Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, intervenes. He says he is not happy about Stride using the word fiddled.

But Stride does not withdraw the word, and just carries on. He says for Reeves to have been on course to miss her fiscal targets so quickly is a “public humiliation”.

The Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that Britain’s economic and fiscal outlook has become “more challenging since the Autumn Budget”, in its official verdict on the economy – and the spring statement.

The OBR explains that domestic output “stagnated” in the second half of last year, and that business and consumer confidence have “trended lower recently”.

The watchdog also confirms that Rachel Reeves was on track to miss her fiscal target of a budget surplus in 2029-30m, before taking extra steps to bring borrowing into line, restoring the £9.9bn surplus at the end of the decade.

The OBR explains:

Higher debt interest payments and weaker-than-expected receipts take the current balance from a surplus of £9.9 billion to a deficit of £4.1 billion in 2029-30, before accounting for new policies.

They also explain that more expensive energy and food will push inflation up this year:

Higher energy and food prices and more persistently high wage growth cause inflation to rebound to a quarterly peak of 3.7% in mid-2025, before returning to target over the rest of the forecast.

Reeves ends by saying the OBR is also saying that people will be richer by the end of the decade.

She says that, compared to what was being forecast at the time of the last budget delivered under the Tories, people will be on average £500 a year better off, taking into account inflation.

As feared, the Office for Budget Responsibility has halved its forecast for UK growth this year.

But growth over the following few years will be faster than expected by the OBR last autumn.

Here are the new forecasts, and the old ones.

• 2025: 1%, down from 2.0% forecast in October’s budget

• 2026: 1.9%, up from 1.8% forecast in October’s budget

• 2027: 1.8%, up from 1.5% forecast in October’s budget

• 2028: 1.7%, up from 1.5% forecast in October’s budget

• 2029: 1.8%, up from 1.6% forecast in October’s budget

This means the economy will be larger at the end of the forecast period than expected at the Budget, Reeves declares.

Reeves says, although the OBR has cut its growth forecasts for this year, it has increased its growth forecasts for future years.

She says it is now forecasting growth of 1.9% in 2026, of 1.8% in 2027, 1.7% in 2028 and 1.8% in 2029.

Reeves says the OBR is also calculating that the planning reforms will allow 1.3m over the next five years.

That alone puts the government “within touching distance” of its target of building 1.5m new homes over this parliament, she says.

Reeves turns to the plans for planning reform, saying the OBR has now concluded that these reforms will permanently increase GDP by 0.2% by 2029/30, which is worth £6.8bn, and increase GDP by 0.4% within 10 years.

She says this os “the biggest positive growth impact that the OBR have ever reflected in their forecast”, she says. And it has come at no cost, she says.

The latest inflation forecasts show that the cost of living will be rising at a faster, more painful, pace than expected this year.

Reeves says the OBR now forecasts inflation will average 3.2% this year (reminder, it was 2.8% in February). Back at October’s budget, inflation was forecast to be 2.6% this year.

In 2026, inflation is forecast to drop to 2.1% – just above the Bank of England’s target, but below the 2.3% inflation rate forecast in the budget.

Reeves says inflation is then seen at around 2% from 2027 onwards, previously the OBR forecast 2.1% inflation in 2027 and 2028.

Reeves confirms that the OBR has cut its growth forecast for this year from 2% to 1%. She goes on:

I am not satisfied with these numbers, and that is why we on this side of the house are serious about taking the action needed to grow our economy, backing the builders, not the blockers, with a third runway at Heathrow Airport … increasing investment with reforms to our pension system and a new national wealth fund.

That is a serious plan for growth. That is a serious plan to improve living standards.

Reeves is now talking about government spending plans.

She says overall day to day spending will be cut by £6.1bn from what was previously planned by 2029/30.

That means it will grow by 1.2% a year above inflation, not 1.3% as planned in the autumn.

Reeves confirms that she is still meeting her fiscal rule to deliver a current balance in five years’s time (ie, day-to-day spending to be funded by tax receipts), thanks to the decisions (ie benefit cuts) she is taking today.

The latest forecasts show that the headroom to achieve a current balance is still £9.9bn in 2029-30 – without the new measures, Reeves says it would have been a deficit of £4.1bn.

But, the deficit is higher than previously forecast in the next two financial years, with smaller surpluses in the two years after that.

Here are the new forecasts, compared to the numbers the chancellor announced in the last budget:

• 2025-26: A deficit of £36.1bn, compared with a £26.2bn deficit forecast in October’s budget

• 2026-27: A deficit of £13.4bn, compared with a £5.2bn deficit forecast in October’s budget

• 2027-2028: A surplus of £6bn, compared with a £10.9bn surplus forecast in October’s budget

• 2028-2029: A surplus of £7.1bn, compared with a £9.3bn surplus forecast in October’s budget

• 2029-2030: A surplus of £9.9bn, matching the £9.9bn surplus forecast in October’s budget

Reeves says the welfare changes will save £4.8bn.

She says there have been “final adjustments” since the announcement last week.

Referring to these changes, she says:

The universal credit standard allowance will increase from £92 per week in 25/26 to £106 pounds a week by 29/30 while the universal credit health elements will be cut to the new claimants by around 50% and then frozen.

Reeves says she will set out the steps she has taken.

The budget protected working people by not raising income tax, national insurance for workers, or VAT, she says.

This statement does not contain any further tax increases, she says.

But it is not right people are evading tax, she says.

The budget contained measures to raise £6.5bn by a crackdown on tax avoidance and evasion by the end of the forecast period.

She says new measures announced today will increase this by £1bn.

The OBR has approved these figures, she says.

Reeves says the OBR’s forecast shows, without the measures announced today, the budget would have been in deficit by £4.1bn deficit in 2029/30.

She says she has acted to restore in full the headroom planned in her budget last year – with a surplus of £9.9bn in 2029/30.

She says that is more than the headroom of £6.5bn planned by the last Tory government.

Reeves says Labour was elected to bring change to the country, to provide security to working people and to deliver a decade of national renewal.

She claims this has started.

But now the task “is to secure Britain’s future in a world that is changing before our eyes”.

She says the situation changed when Putin invaded Ukraine, and the threats are escalating.

Rachel Reeves is delivering her spring statment.

Davey asks about the Signal leak in the US. Will the PM order an urgent review into the security of intelligence that we share with the US?

Starmer says the UK works with the US on a daily basis. Davey would like to think of himself as reasonable and serious, he says. He goes on:

Unpicking up our relations with the US on defence and security is neither responsible nor serious.

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, asks Starmer to guarantee that the digital services tax will not be watered down to appease President Trump and Elon Musk.

Starmer says social media laws will be made in the UK. But he ignores the question about the digital services tax.

Kemi Badenoch says the chancellor will deliver an “emergency budget”. Even Ed Balls is calling it that, she says.

But she will turn to another minister making a mess of her brief – the education secretary. Why did she reject the Tory call for a ban on mobile phones in schools?

Starmer says “because it is completely unnecesary”. Schools are doing this already.

He says what matters is the content on the internet.

UPDATE: Starmer said:

Because it’s completely unnecessary. I’ve got teenage children. Almost every school bans phones in school.

They do it already. We need to concentrate on what’s really important here, which is getting to the content that children shouldn’t be accessing. That’s where I would genuinely like to work across the House because I think there’s a huge amount of work to do.

But the battle is not with schools that are already banning phones in school. The battle – and this is an important emerging battle – is to work together to ensure that we can ensure that the content that children are accessing wherever they are is suitable for their age.

PMQs will be starting soon. Rachel Reeves will deliver her spring statement as soon as it is over, just after 12.30pm.

Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.

Scope, the disability charity, has condemned what it calls the government’s “knee-jerk” decision to deepen the welfare cuts announced last week. (See 8.33am.) This is from James Taylor, its director of strategy.

The government is rushing to make further cuts with no thought to the impact on disabled people.

This is on top of billions of pounds in cuts that were the primary motivation for welfare reform.

This move will further hit disabled people hard and drive even more into poverty.

There has to be a better way of reforming welfare than moving from one set of knee-jerk proposals to another.

The Conservatives are still calling the spring statement an “emergency budget”, even thought the date was announced many weeks ago (which means it is not an emergency measure) and Rachel Reeves is not planning to change tax policy (which means it is not really like a budget at all).

This is what Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, said in a statement ahead of the statement at 12.30pm.

Our national security demands a strong economy. Yet since Rachel Reeves’ first Budget, growth is down, borrowing is up and business confidence has been destroyed.

Labour broke their promises to pensioners on winter fuel payments, and to farmers and businesses with crippling tax rises that have pushed up inflation and interest rates.

The chancellor should use the emergency budget later today to fix her own mistakes and end Labour’s war on enterprise.

Former MP Kenny MacAskill has been elected as Alex Salmond’s successor as leader of the Alba party. PA Media reports. Salmond founded the party after leaving the SNP and his death at a conference in North Macedonia in October left it searching for a new leader.

Acting leader MacAskill won the leadership contest with 1,331 votes (52.3%), the party announced at an event in Edinburgh, beating rival candidate Alba MSP Ash Regan, who secured 1,212 votes (47.7%), PA says.

The British Medical Journal, a leading medical publication, has published an article by four public health experts saying the sickness and disability benefit cuts announced last week – the single biggest cut in today’s spring statement package – could lead to deaths.

The article says:

A key proposal in the green paper is to tighten access to Pip [personal independence payment] – a benefit covering the extra costs of disability or long term health conditions – by raising the eligibility threshold. The Fraser of Allander Institute, an independent economic research centre, estimates that saving £1bn a year could mean about 250 000 fewer people receiving Pip. Existing evidence suggests this is unlikely to increase employment rates. Previous governments have sought to restrict eligibility to, and levels of, these benefits. Most notably, just over one million existing recipients had their eligibility re-assessed between 2010 and 2013, with benefits removed if the assessor thought they were fit for work. This led to an increase in 290 000 people with mental health problems, increased antidepressant prescribing, and an estimated 600 suicides.

One of the group, Prof Gerry McCartney – a specialist in wellbeing economy at the University of Glasgow, said:

There is now substantial evidence that cuts to social security since 2010 have fundamentally harmed the health of the UK population.

Implementing yet more cuts will therefore result in more premature deaths. It is vital that the UK Government understands this evidence and takes a different policy approach.

Ever since Donald Trump became US president, Keir Starmer and all his ministers have tried as much as possible to avoid saying what they think about all the things being said and done by his administration (many of which are abhorrent to mainstream UK political opinion). Sometimes Starmer and his team have adopted the line that it is not their job to be “commentators”. (Lynton Crosby used to try the same argument with the Tories.) This has led to many interviews taking a surreal turn, like Angela Rayner’s on the World at One yesterday, where she refused repeated attempts to offer any significant response to JD Vance, the US vice-president, and Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, denouncing the Europeans as pathetic freeloaders.

But this morning John Healey, the defence secretary, was a bit more forthcoming. In an interview with Times Radio, asked about the Vance/Hegseth argument, he said:

I regard it more of a challenge.

Asked again about the Europeans being described as pathetic freeloaders, he said:

The Americans have got a case, the Americans have absolutely got a case, that on defence spending, on European security, on our support for Ukraine, European nations can and will do more and the UK is leading the way.

I’m proud of that on defence spending, on European security and on Ukraine. It’s why we’re pulling together the coalition.

And in an interview on the Today programme, asked about Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff describing Keir Starmer’s Ukraine policy as posturing, Healey did push back against Witkoff’s argument, without criticising him personally. He said:

I’m proud that the UK, alongside France, is leading the coalition of the willing, ready to stand by Ukraine in the event of a negotiated peace just as we have through the war.

And we’re responding to the US challenge to European nations like the UK to do more to support Ukraine.

We’re responding to the requirement of Ukraine to say, ‘look, post-ceasefire, what are the security arrangements that give us the confidence that any negotiated peace will, as President Trump has said, be a durable peace’.

John Healey, the defence secretary, has been doing an interview round this morning because overnight the Treasury briefed journalists that Rachel Reeves will announce an extra £2.2bn in defence spending from April in the spring statement. (Presumably that was the story the Treasury press office were hoping would be leading the news bulletins this morning, not the new benefit cuts).

In its news release, the Treasury said:

The chancellor will announce a further £2.2bn funding increase for defence from April, as she warns that Britain has to “move quickly in a changing world”.

The funding will be invested in advanced technologies so that Britain’s armed forces have the tools they need to compete and win in modern warfare. This includes guaranteeing the investment to fit Royal Navy ships with Directed Energy Weapons by 2027. These weapons can hit a £1 coin from 1km away and take down drones at a distance of 5km.

It will also be used to provide better homes for military families by refurbishing the defence estate – including over 36,000 homes recently brought back into public ownership from the rental sector. In addition to this, the funding will unlock rapid preparatory work, such as site surveys, planning and architecture, for the major redevelopment of armed forces housing through the defence housing strategy.

The investment will also help fund upgrades to infrastructure at His Majesty’s Naval Base Portsmouth, securing its ability to support Royal Navy operations into the future.

Defence spending in 2024/25 was around £57bn.

According to the Treasury, in her spring statement speech later Reeves will say:

In February, the prime minister set out the government’s commitment to increase spending on defence to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027 and an ambition to spend 3% of GDP on defence in the next parliament as economic and fiscal conditions allow.

That was the right decision in a more insecure world, putting an extra £6.4bn into the defence budget by 2027.

But we have to move quickly in a changing word. And that starts with investment.

So I can today confirm that I will provide an additional £2.2bn for the Ministry of Defence next year – a further downpayment on our plans to deliver 2.5% of GDP.

This increase in investment is not just about increasing our national security but increasing our economic security, too.

As defence spending rises, I want the whole country to feel the benefits.

UK inflation has fallen back by more than forecast to 2.8%, providing some positive news for Rachel Reeves before she makes her spring statement, Richard Partington reports.

Good morning. This time last week Stephen Timms, a welfare minister, was doing an interview round to defend the £5bn disability benefit cuts announced the previous day, and he refused to rule out further benefit cuts in the future. Most of us thought he was being careful because of the risk of further cuts later in this parliament, or possibly later this year. I don’t think anyone expected extra cuts to be announced within days.

But that is exactly what has happened. As Heather Stewart, Kiran Stacey and Richard Partington report in the Guardian splash, only hours before the spring statement, the Treasury has revealed that the disability benefit cuts are going to be even deeper than the ones set out last week. That is because the Office for Budget Responsibility, the government’s all-powerful fiscal regulator, has ruled that the Treasury was being unrealistic when it said the benefit cuts would save £5bn. (The OBR is probably right – in the past benefit “crackdowns” have rarely saved as much the Treasury forecasts.). And this means the cuts have to be beefed up by £500m, as a contribution to saving another £1.6bn.

The change was first reported by the Times, which says that “universal credit incapacity benefits for new claimants will now be frozen until 2030 rather than increased in line with inflation” and that there will also be “a small reduction in the basic rate of universal credit in 2029”.

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves were already facing a strong backlash from Labour backbenchers over the benefit cuts. This development is likely to exacerbate that, although quite how visible that will be today is hard to predict. Many Labour MPs are alarmed about the cuts in private, but have not spoke out publicly.

John Healey, the defence secretary, has been giving interviews this morning, and he has defended what the Treasury is doing. Referring to the assessment that last week’s benefit cuts will only save £3.4bn, not £5bn, he told Times Radio:

I think that’s a calculation that we may see confirmed from the Office of Budget Responsibility about the longer term savings that our plans to change the welfare system may bring, and that’s a must-do for any responsible government, particularly one that believes in the importance of our social security system. Doing nothing is not an option. It’s failing and writing off a young generation.

Today we will be focusing almost entirely on the spring statement. Graeme Wearden, who writes the Guardian’s business blog, will be joining me here later, and we will be covering the statement in detail, and bringing you all the best analysis and reaction.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.

12.30pm: Rachel Reeves delivers the spring statement.

2.30pm: Richard Hughes, chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility, holds a press conference.

4.15pm: Reeves holds a press conference.

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