Sue Gray, Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff, has used her maiden speech in the House of Lords to defend civil servants from attacks by politcians – including Labour ones.

Without naming individuals, she seemed to refer directly to a recent Guardian report saying No 10 was taking a close interest in thinktank plans to reshape the state that were privately being referred to as “project chainsaw”.

Gray, who spent her career as a civil servant before joining Starmer’s team in 2023, told peers she worked with “truly heroic and committed people” when she started in Whitehall. She went on:

Today I see the same sort of brilliance. What these and other civil servants are doing is central to the government’s and the nation’s mission to bring back growth into our economy and security to our society.

That is why I would caution all of us to be careful, not just about our decisions but our language.

When we hear the phrases, ‘blobs’, ‘pen-pushers’, ‘axes’, ‘chainsaws’ and other implements, they hear it too.

A ban on ninja swords campaigned for by the family of a murdered teenager is set to come into force by summer, PA Media reports. PA says:

It will be illegal to possess, sell, make or import the weapon from 1 August as the final part of anti-knife crime measures introduced under Ronan’s Law, named after Ronan Kanda.

His mother, Pooja Kanda, has campaigned for a law change after her 16-year-old son was yards away from his Wolverhampton home when he was murdered with a ninja sword in 2022.

The move to ban the blades was being laid before parliament today and will come into force in the summer once it has gained approval in parliament.

Anyone caught with a ninja sword in private could face six months in prison, set to increase to two years under plans in the crime and policing bill.

The weapons can be handed over in knife-surrender bins or local police stations under a surrender scheme running in July.

No ninja swords bought after Thursday will be eligible for compensation as part of efforts to stop exploitation of the scheme, the Home Office said.

Under Ronan’s Law, the Home Office has also announced a raft of measures including making retailers report bulk or suspicious sales to police, and increasing the jail sentence for selling weapons to children, or illegal blades such as zombie knives, to two years.

Kemi Badenoch has claimed that the Conservative party lost the last election because of its “technocratic managerialism”.

She used the line in a speech today at a conference run by Anthropy, a leadership organisation.

In the past Badenoch has argued that the Tories lost in 2024 because they “taked right, but governed left”.

But today she offered a slightly different take, which may surprise Britons who remember Brexit, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. She told the audience:

One of the reasons my party is out of office is because we forgot what we were about and opted for a technocratic managerialism that didn’t inspire anyone and didn’t tell a story about who we are and how we make the world a better place.

The Conservative party is now under new leadership and one of the things I want us to do is remember the social value of business and enterprise.

Badenoch said that other politicians gave speeches claiming to support business, only for them to introduce “more regulations” and “rising taxes. She suggested she would be different.

But she also claimed business was at fault too.

One of the biggest threats to free enterprise isn’t just government – it’s the corporatism and compliance culture that has taken over large parts of our economy.

Big business today often spends more time lobbying for regulation than competing in the market. We have an industry built around box-ticking – without real impact.

This is a major shift.

And it’s time to get real: we don’t have time for all of this anymore.

We need businesses laser-like focused on their mission.

In her speech, Badenoch also included at least one line she might regret. In a reference who how she wants business to be at the heart of the Tory policy review, she said:

For too long, politics has been about winning elections, not planning for the future. I want to change that.

On this measure, she is doing quite well; according to recent polling, the Conservatives are not on course to win.

Today’s DWP figures show child poverty in the UK going up. (See 10.52am and 2.03pm.) But in Scotland, where devolution allows gives the Scottish government powers (which is is using) to vary tax rates, and some benefit payments, child poverty has fallen, the Scottish government says. Relative child poverty in Scotland is 9 points lower than in the UK as a whole.

In a news release it explains:

Annual statistics published today show that compared with the previous year’s statistics, relative child poverty in 2023-24 reduced from 26% to 22% in Scotland while absolute child poverty fell from 23% to 17%. UK poverty statistics published today show levels of relative child poverty at 31% and absolute child poverty at 26%.

Modelling published today suggests that UK government policies are “holding back” Scotland’s progress. It estimates the UK government could reduce relative child poverty by an additional 100,000 children in 2025-26 if it heeded Scottish government calls to end the two-child limit, replicate the Scottish child payment in universal credit, remove the benefit cap and introduce an essentials guarantee.

Commenting on the figures, Shirley-Anne Somerville, the Scottish government’s social justice secretary, said:

Eradicating child poverty is the Scottish government’s top priority and we are committed to meeting the 2030 targets unanimously agreed by the Scottish parliament.

Our policies are having to work harder than ever to make a difference, against a backdrop of a continuing cost of living crisis, rising energy costs and UK government decision making. However, we know these policies are working.

Statistics published today show that, although we have not met the interim child poverty targets, the proportion of children living in relative poverty has reduced and year-on-year rates are now lower than they have been since 2014-15, while the proportion in absolute poverty has also fallen with the annual figure the lowest in 30 years.

This briefing from the Fraser of Allender Institute has more on Scotland’s child poverty record. It includes this chart.

Q: Is the IFS right to say there is a good chance that you will have to raise taxes in the autumn? (See 11.57am.)

Starmer said people predicted the government would raise in the spring statement. But it didn’t.

He said he would not write budgets in advance. But he went on:

Obviously, I’m not going to write future budgets. Every prime minister and every chancellor, from every government, always takes that position.

But if you look at the pattern, or the intent, from both the budget and the spring statement, you’ll see that when it’s come to the decisions we’ve had to make, we have not taken a decision to increase tax. And I think that indicates the mindset that we bring to this.

Starmer was referring to taxes for workers. The last budget did put up taxes hugely for businesses, and it raised some taxes affecting the wealthy.

Pressed a second time on whether fish is an issue complicating the UK-EU security pact, Starmer says he does not want to address that because he thinks “negotiation through press conferences” is not a good way to resolve these problems. He says that did not work in the past (during the Brexit process, he means).

Fish is an issue because the UK-EU post-Brexit trade deal involved the UK giving European fleets better-than-expected access to UK waters. But those concessions were time-limited and need to be renegotiated. It has been claimed that President Macron is blocking a UK-EU security deal (that would give British manufactuers the right to pitch for orders from a new €150bn defence fund) until he gets assurances that French fishermen will be protected.

Q: To negotiate a security pact with the EU, you are also going to have to come to a deal over fish. That’s insane, isn’t it?

Starmer says there is a broad consensus in Europe. But he says he’s “going to resist your temptation to start talking about fish”, because he does not want to engage in a running commentary.

Q: Did President Trump give you any notice of the car tariffs. Are you confident about the UK being exempted?

Starmer says:

I think tariffs are very concerning. There’s no doubt about that. And I’m very clear in my mind that the sector, the industry, does not want a trade war, and that’s why, first and foremost, we’ve got to work with the sector work, with industry, in our response in relation to this.

He says he wants to be “pragmatic and clear-eyed” and he is engaged in intensive talks with the US. He says he hopes they can avoid a trade war.

But he has to act in the national interest. “We will keep all options on the table,” he says.

Starmer does not say if he had advance warning about the tariffs.

Q: [From the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen] Isn’t it time to admit that Russia has no interest in a ceasefire, and that a different approach is needed?

Starmer says he does not accept that.

He says he thinks President Trump is serious about wanting peace. And the Ukrainians want peace too, he says.

Q: But what makes you think Putin will give up his long-held views on Ukraine?

Starmer says this is a process. A lasting peace is the right goal, he says. It is what Trump wants, and what the Europeans want.

If they can provide leadership, backed up by operational plans, that is the best chance for peace.

Bowen tried twice to get Starmer to addresss his point about Russia, but both times Starmer refused to engage with Bowen’s point.

Starmer is now taking questions.

Q: The US describe Europeans as pathetically freeloaders. How can you trust them? And will you commit to putting troops on the ground?

Starmer says there were 30 countries at the meeting today, as well as Nato and the EU.

There was a broad consensus that this group of nations is now stronger and broader than it’s ever been.

In terms of military planning, that is going alongside the political process, he says.

He says he has always been clear that a European-led initiative would need US support.

Keir Starmer is speaking at his press conference in Paris.

In his opening statement, he says Russia has continued to attack energy infrastructure in Ukraine, despite a partial ceasefire agreement that was supposed to stop this.

He says Russia is “filibustering … playing games and then playing for time”.

Leaders at the summit today said they would not let Russia drag this out, he says.

The Child Poverty Action Group has published more figures from the poverty figures out today showing there were almost 4.5 million living in poverty last year. (See 10.52am.)

Today’s statistics also show:

-44% of all children living in poverty are living in a household where someone is disabled

-72% of poor children live in working families

-44% of children in families with 3 or more children are in poverty, far higher than families with 1 child (21%) or 2 children (25%)

-Poor families have fallen deeper into poverty. There are 3.1 million children in deep poverty compared to 2.9 million children last year (i.e. with a household income below 50% of after-housing-costs equivalised median income)

-48% of all children in poverty were in families with a youngest child aged under five

-49% of children in Asian and British Asian families are in poverty, 49% of children in Black/ African/Caribbean and Black British families, and 24% of children in white families

-43% of children in lone parent families were in poverty, higher than the couples rate of 26%

-More children in poverty are growing up in privately rented homes – 1.7 million, a record high, up from 1.1 million in 2010/11

-The three-year average poverty rate has fallen in Scotland from 24% to 23% (one-year from 26% to 22%) and has risen in England from 30% to 31%, in Northern Ireland from 23% to 24%, and in Wales from 29% to 31%

And here is some more reaction from charities, who are urging the government to respond to the figures by changing policy.

Philip Goodwin, chief executive officer at UNICEF UK, said:

The UK has seen the highest increase in child poverty of any OECD and EU country in the past decade and today’s shocking figures show the situation is getting worse. Now record numbers of the UK child population are living below the poverty line, many of whom are under 5 years old …

The prime minister promised action to break the link between background and future success and reduce the number of children living in poverty. But with the cuts announced in yesterday’s spring statement predicted to increase this figure, the government must show it is serious by calling an immediate end to the two-child limit and benefit cap in its child poverty strategy. This one step would lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty.

And Silvia Galandini, Oxfam’s domestic poverty lead said:

These latest poverty figures are as damning as they are heartbreaking – almost one in three children are living in poverty across the UK. This is before yesterday’s brutal cuts, where the chancellor chose to remove vital security and safety from those who need it the most instead of taxing the super-rich.

Keir Starmer has hinted that he would like to see more sanctions imposed on Russia. In brief comments to reporters at the end of today's “coalition of the willing” summit, he said there was “complete clarity that now is not the time for lifting of sanctions.” He went on:

Quite the contrary, what we discussed is how we can increase sanctions to support the US initiative, to bring Russia to the table through further pressure from this group of countries.

Jakub Krupa has more on this on his Europe live blog.

Starmer is due to hold a formal press conference any minute now.

Rachel Reeves said in an interview this morning that she was “absolutely certain” that the government’s sickness and disability cuts would not increase overall poverty numbers. That was because they would lead to more people getting jobs, she argued. (See 8.46am.)

But the Institute for Fiscal Studies has cast doubt on this argument. In one of the presentations at the news conference this morning, where it was giving its detailed assessment of the spring statement, it said the pro-job measures in the Pathways to Work green paper would just have a “small” poverty-reduction impact.

Here is the relevant slide from the presentation.

There is an example of how hard it can be to get people off sickness and disability benefits and into work in the Pathways to Work green paper published last week. As an example of a good programme in this area, the green paper cites additional work coach support, saying this can increase people’s chances of getting a job by a third. But the figures show this means 11% of participants finding work, instead of 8% in the control group. Paragraph 226 says:

We have good evidence that when people receive support it has an impact. For example, additional work coach support, where people on the health journey spent more time with a work coach, found that voluntary participants in the LCWRA [limited capability for work-related activity – a universal credit category for people judged too sick to work] group were a third more likely to be in work than a comparison group 12 months later. 11% of participants were in work 12 months later, compared to 8% of the comparison group.

Scottish government minister Christina McKelvie has died at the age of 57, PA Media reports. PA says:

McKelvie took medical leave from her role as the alcohol and drugs policy minister last year to seek treatment for secondary breast cancer.

Keith Brown – SNP depute leader and McKelvie’s long-time partner – announced the news in a statement today. He said that McKelvie “lit up every room she was in with her positivity and bright smile” and that he and her sons were “heartbroken”.

First minister John Swinney said he was “devastated” at McKelvie’s death, describing the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse MSP as “one of the kindest and most generous people I have ever met in my life”.

MSPs openly wept in the Holyrood chamber as tributes were paid to McKelvie.

Swinney posted this on social media.

Stephen Timms, the welfare minister, has rejected claims that the changes to sickness and disability benefits are being rushed.

He was speaking in the Commons in response to an urgent question from Steve Darling, the Lib Dem work and pensions spokesperson, who said that any changes to the benefits system should be introduced in a “caring and compassionate” way, and not “rushed”.

Timms replied:

I very much agree with him that this all needs to be done in a managed and compassionate way. That is exactly how we’re doing it.

I don’t agree with him that it’s being rushed. The changes won’t happen for over 18 months until November 2026, that’s when the change will take effect and they won’t affect current recipients of personal independence payments until their first award review after November 2026 and typically review periods are three years, so this is definitely not being rushed, it’ll happen in a properly planned, staged and careful way.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has also released its considered verdict on the spring statement this morning. Like most thinktanks, it was also commenting yesterday, but the full number-crunching analysis takes a while.

Here are some of the key points from the opening presentation by Paul Johnson, the IFS’s director.

• Johnson said that there is a good chance that Rachel Reeves will have to raise taxes in the autumn. And he claimed speculation about what taxes might rise could be economically damaging. He explained:

There is a good chance that economic and fiscal forecasts will deteriorate significantly between now and an autumn budget. If so, she will need to come back for more; which will likely mean raising taxes even further. That risks months of speculation over what those tax rises might be – a raid on pensions, a wealth tax on the richest, another hike to capital gains tax? I mention those not to commend them, far from it, but to exemplify the kinds of taxes regarding which mere speculation about increases can cause economic harm. With no sense of a tax strategy, we have no idea which way the chancellor might turn.

Reeves did not accept this when this point was put to her in interviews this morning. (See 8.07am.)

• He said that Reeves’ obsession with ensuring she had exactly the same fiscal headroom as she did in the autumn budget was getting in the way of rational policy making.

We had £9.9bn of headroom in October. We have £9.9bn of headroom today. Astonishingly the numbers are within a mere £2m of one another. It is hard to believe this is a fluke. The Treasury has clearly worked overtime to ensure that precisely the same fiscal headroom remains today as was projected in October. This is not sensible.

• He said that, while the sickness and disability benefit cuts announced last week were “defensible” (because costs were rising so much), the decision to announce an extra £500m in cuts yesterday, just to make sure the fiscal headroom figure did not change, was a mistake.

Whilst unquestionably tough for those on the receiving end, those original cuts were defensible as a response to problems manifested by huge increases in numbers of claimants, and in spending. One could make a defence of them unrelated to the details of any particular fiscal rule. Coming back a week later with just a slightly bigger cut because that’s what’s needed to return the fiscal headroom to precisely where it was a few months ago risks undermining that case and discrediting attempts at genuine reform to the benefit system. If it was right last week to announce a halving of the health component of universal credit, it is hard to see why this week it is right to do more than that by halving it and then freezing it in cash terms.

• He said having little fiscal headroom, and then applying the fiscal rules rigidly, was “not conducive to a sensible policymaking process”.

It is the combination of “iron-clad” pass/fail numerical fiscal rules and next to no headroom against them that is causing so many problems, leaving fiscal policy completely exposed to economic developments outside the government’s control. That is not conducive to a sensible policymaking process. This is not the OBR’s fault. It is the product of the chancellor’s choices.

• He said future government spending was “even more front-loaded than before”.

Spending growth is now set to be 2.5% in 2025-26, 1.8% in 2026-27 and 1.0% in each of the subsequent three years. One should always be sceptical of plans to be prudent, but only in the future. Front-loaded or not, the problem for the chancellor is that keeping to these growth rates overall will inevitably mean cuts for some departments in the years to come.

Almost 4m hours of raw sewage was discharged into rivers and coastal waters in England last year, with waterways that have the highest environmental protections subjected to days of pollution, Sandra Laville and Michael Goodier report.

Shona Robison, the Scottish finance secretary, has said that the Scottish government will “look at every lever” it can pull to avoid cutting benefits.

Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland this morning, she said:

We have invested in social security, things like the Scottish child payment for example, which is keeping thousands of children out of poverty.

We’re in the business of keeping people out of poverty, not pushing children particularly into poverty.

So we have made decisions over the years to prioritise the spend on our most vulnerable.

In terms of going forward, the announcements yesterday are going to have a major impact on our budgets in the coming years and what we will be doing is to look at every lever we can use to avoid having to replicate the decision the UK Labour government have made.

Under devolution, the Scottish government can now diverge from Westminster policy in some areas in relation to benefits. But much welfare policy is still determined in London and, according to the Fraser of Allander Institute, a thinktank, the spring statement decisions will lead to the Scottish government’s budget being “around £900m worse off on the current side in 2029-30 than previously projected”.

The number of children living in poverty in the UK has reached the highest level for more than 20 years, PA Media reports. PA says:

The official figure comes a day after government estimates suggested welfare cuts will plunge thousands more children below the poverty line by the end of the decade.

There were 4.45 million children estimated to be in households in relative low income, after housing costs, in the year to March 2024, data published by the Department for Work and Pensions shows.

The latest figure is the highest since comparable records for the UK began in 2002/03.

It rose from an estimated 4.33 million in the year to March 2023.

A household is considered to be in relative poverty if it is below 60% of the median income after housing costs.

The Child Poverty Action Group said the number of children living in poverty in April 2024 was 100,000 higher than the previous year. But the total could rise to 4.8 million by the end of this parliament if the government does not scrap the two-child benefit cap, it said.

Alison Garnham, chief executive of the CPAG, said:

Today’s grim statistics are a stark warning that government’s own commitment to reduce child poverty will crash and burn unless it takes urgent action. The government’s child poverty strategy must invest in children’s life chances, starting by scrapping the two- child limit.

The government has a taskforce working on a strategy to reduce child poverty, and it is due to be published later in the spring.

One of the peculiarities of Rachel Reeves’ spring statement speech yesterday was that she was blaming global economic trends for the downturn in the public finances, but yet (in line with the standard government approach) she would not say anything critical about President Trump, who is the cause of all this turmoil.

In her interview with Sky News this morning, Reeves did not criticise the president directly, but she did say trade wars were bad for everyone.

Asked about the new US 25% tariffs on car imports, she said:

We’re not at the moment in a position where we want to do anything to escalate these trade wars.

Trade wars are no good for anyone. It will end up with higher prices for consumers pushing up inflation after we’ve worked so hard to get a grip of inflation, and at the same time, will make it harder for British companies to export.

Reeves also said talks were continuing with the US about securing “a better trading relationship”.

In her Today programme interview Rachel Reeves was asked about the Resolution Foundation’s spring statement analysis published this morning. (See 8.33am.)

This is what it says in its summary about how the government’s measures will cost poorer families around £500.

This is still early days for this government, but it could fairly be judged not just by this spring statement alone, but in the round – considering all the choices it has taken so far affecting family finances, including at the 2024 autumn budget. Taking everything together, the burden of adjustment looks less slanted – but poorer, disabled households are still set to take the biggest hit. More generally, a combined squeeze that reduces incomes by around 1.5% in the lower-middle reaches of the spectrum declines to only 0.5% at the very top.

Factoring those distributional decisions into the general outlook for growth and income makes for particularly grim reading. Across the poorer half of the country, the five years up to 2029 will see after-housing-costs incomes drop by around £500. In data going back to the early 1960s, larger drops for low-to-middle income families have only been seen twice before – in the sharp recession of the early 1990s, and then again in the immediate wake of the credit crunch. Disproportionate income reductions for sick and disabled people in poorer households are not going to help with any of these trends.

The Resolution Foundation uses its own disposable household income figures that are different from the real household disposable incomes (RHDI) used by the OBR. One difference is that it focuses on non-pensioner households. In its report it says:

Real income of the person one tenth of the way up the income distribution (‘p10’) or one fifth of the way up (‘p20’) is projected to be lower in 2029-30 than in 2023-24, by 5% and 1% respectively. In contrast, although even higher-income households may have lower incomes on this measure by 2029-30 than in 2024-25, they would nonetheless be better off than in 2023-24 given the strong growth in 2024-25.

Here is the chart illustrating this.

And here is the passage from the report explaining the headline £500 figure.

As ever, the outlook depends on many factors and is by no means set in stone, but any significant decline in incomes for the poorest in society would be historically notable. Figure 21 shows how real household incomes have grown for the poorest half of the non-pensioner population over every (rolling) five-year period since the 1960s. Over the next five years, the average equivalised income of the bottom half is projected to decline by 3%, or £500. And this scale of fall has only been (narrowly) worse during the early 1990s recession (1989 to 1994-95) and the financial crisis (2007-08 to 2012-13).

Here is figure 21.

Reeves yesterday told MPs almost the opposite. She said: “The OBR says today that households will be on average more than £500 a year better off under this Labour government.”

Why are the figures so different? Because the OBR and the Resolution Foundation are measuring disposable income in different ways. This is what the Resolution Foundation says about why its measure implies a more negative outcome.

In small part this is due to our focus on non-pensioners; but also because ‘non-labour income’ is growing disproportionately within the OBR’s RHDI projections (as the labour share is assumed to fall back), and this income may be either entirely excluded from our analysis (in the case of ‘imputed rents’); under-represented (e.g. rental income); or because it is important for average income but less so for low-to-middle income households (e.g. for many elements of investment income).

The OBR in part accepts this. This is what it says, for example, about the “imputed rent” part of its calculation.

Planning reforms boost incomes, offsetting some of the hit, as higher productivity raises wages and a larger housing stock means more compensation for housing services. Yet three quarters of the extra income from housing services comes as ‘imputed rent’ – what homeowners would receive if they rented out their home. This makes the boost less tangible for households.

In an interview with ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, said she would not accept free tickets for concerts again in the future.

Asked about the controversy about her decision to accept two corporate tickets for a Sabrina Carpenter concert at the O2, she repeated the line that she used at her press conference yesterday – that a family member wanted to attend the concert (presumably one of her children, but she did not say that), and that she accepted tickets for a corporate box because security concerns meant it was not deemed safe for her to get normal tickets for the auditorium.

Asked why she did not pay for the tickets, which have been described as being worth £600, Reeves said that tickets like this were not available for sale.

She went on: “I don’t have any intention of doing this again.”

Asked if she was admitting she made a mistake, she replied:

I’m just saying I wouldn’t do it again. I felt I was doing the right thing. But I do understand perceptions.

Rachel Reeves was on Sky News earlier. Asked about the DWP analysis saying the benefit cuts will push another 250,000 people into poverty, Reeves said this would not happen, because that analysis did not take account of the impact of more people getting into work. She made this argument at her press conference yesterday, but was even stronger in her words this morning.

She said:

I am absolutely certain that our reforms, instead of pushing people into poverty, are going to get people into work.

And we know that if you move from welfare into work, you are much less likely to be in poverty.

That is our ambition, making people better off, not making people worse off, and also the welfare state will always be there for people who genuinely need it.

Q: Was Darren Jones right to say disability benefits were like pocket money?

Reeves says Jones was “clumsy in his analogy” and he was right to apologise.

Nick Robinson is interviewing Rachel Reeves on the Today programme now.

Q: You promised just one budget a year, but yesterday you had to announce drastic cuts. What’s gone wrong?

Reeves says she does not think anyone would claim the welfare system is working well. Those plans are about reforming the system.

But the world has also changed since the autumn, she says. That eroded her fiscal headroom. She says she will never take risks with the public finances.

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has said the UK is not planning “at the moment” to introduce retaliatory tariffs on the US, after Donald Trump imposed a new trade tax on car imports.

Speaking on Sky News, she said:

We’re not at the moment at a position where we want to do anything to escalate these trade wars.

Trade wars are no good for anyone. It will end up with higher prices for consumers, pushing up inflation after we’ve worked so hard to get a grip of inflation, and at the same time will make it harder for British companies to export.

We are looking to secure a better trading relationship with the United States. I recognise that the week ahead is important. There are further talks going on today, so let’s see where we get to in the next few days.

Graeme Wearden is covering all the reaction to Trump’s car tariffs announcement on his business live blog.

Good morning. Day two after a budget-type event is when the most insightful analysis tends to come out, and this morning the two heavyweight public spending thinktanks, the Resolution Foundation and the Institute for Fiscal Studies, are delivering their considered verdicts. And Rachel Reeves is doing interviews now defending her decisions.

Here is our overnight splash about the spring statement.

Many commentators have said further tax rises are likely in the autumn. But Reeves is refusing to accept this.

In an interview with Times Radio, Kate McCann put it to Reeves:

You’re going to have to come back for more. You’re going to have to come back for more cuts or tax rises in the autumn. That’s the truth, isn’t it?

And Reeves replied: “No, it’s not.”

Asked if she was ruling out tax rises, Reeves would not go that far, but she explained why she thought they would not be necessary.

What I’m saying is that there are loads of things that this government are doing that are contributing to growth. And the Office of Budget Responsibility said yesterday that the planning reforms, the national policy planning framework, which enables us to build, for example, on grey belt land, enables building to happen more quickly, will add £6.8bn to the size of our economy by the end of this parliament. And we’ll add £3.4bn to our public finances.

That shows if we go further and faster on delivering economic growth with our planning reforms, with our pensions reforms, with our regulatory reforms, we can both grow the economy and have more money for our public services. And that is what I’m focused on.

Reeves is about to be interviewed on the Today programme.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Keir Starmer arrives in Paris for talks with other leaders about Ukraine.

9am: Richard Hughes, chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility, speaks at a Resolution Foundation event about the spring statement.

9.30am: The Department for Work and Pensions releases annual poverty figures.

10.30am: Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and his colleagues speak at an IFS briefing on the spring statement.

11am: Jonathan Reynolds, business secretary, speaks at a Chatham House conference on trade.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

Around 12.30pm (UK time): Starmer holds a press conference in Paris.

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