• Rachel Reeves has scrapped the social care cap and curbed winter fuel payments, as well as announcing big cuts to hospital and road projects, as she seeks to plug what she called a £22bn hole in public spending that was “covered up” by the Conservative government.

• Junior doctors’ leaders in England have agreed a new pay deal with the government, which could lead to their wages rising by 22.3% over two years.

• Reeves has announced that the government is accepting public sector pay review recommendations in full. The awards include 5.5% for teachers, 6% for members of the armed forces, 5% for prison officers, 6% for judges and 5% for senior civil servants.

We are going to close this blog now but you can read our report on today’s announcement from the chancellor here:

Here is the statement mentioned in the press conference from Age UK on the decision to cut the winter fuel payment. Caroline Abrahams, director of the charity, said:

We strongly oppose the means-testing of Winter Fuel Payment (WFP) because our initial estimate is that as many as two million pensioners who badly need the money to stay warm this winter will not receive it and will be in trouble as a result – yet at the other end of the spectrum well-off older people will scarcely notice the difference – a social injustice.

A big reason for this disastrous outcome is that more than one in three pensioners entitled to Pension Credit, the qualifying benefit for WFP under this proposal, don’t receive it, a proportion that’s been roughly constant for many years. More than 800,000 older people living on very low incomes – under £218.25 a week for single pensioners and under £332.95 for couples – who are already missing out of the Pension Credit they are entitled to get to boost their incomes, will now lose the WFP that helps them to pay their fuel bills.

In addition, there are also about a million pensioners whose weekly incomes are less than £50 per week above the poverty line, who will also be hit hard by the loss of the Payment. Older people in this group often tell us they really struggle financially; the proposed change will make it even harder for them to afford to stay warm when it gets chilly.

Finally, there is a third group who will find it extremely difficult to heat their homes adequately this winter as a result of the proposed change: older people whose incomes are a little higher though still limited, but who live in energy inefficient homes and/or who are seriously unwell and need to keep the thermostat turned up high in order to protect their health.

My colleague Vicky Graham is taking over now.

The two most prominent public spending thinktanks have now published their responses to the Rachel Reeves statement.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies says Reeves was entitled to feel aggrieved, because some of the details of the spending inheritance were “shocking”. Paul Johnson, its director, says:

Rachel Reeves is within her rights to feel somewhat aggrieved. It was always clear and obvious that the spending plans she inherited were incompatible with Labour’s ambitions for public services, and that more cash would be required eventually. But the extent of the in-year funding pressures does genuinely appear to be greater than could be discerned from the outside, which only adds to the scale of the problem …

Nonetheless, some of the specifics are indeed shocking, and raise some difficult questions for the last government. If the scale of these overspends and spending pressures was apparent in the spring – and in lots of cases, there’s no reason to suppose otherwise – then it is hard to understand why they weren’t made clear or dealt with in the spring budget. Jeremy Hunt’s £10bn cut to national insurance looks ever less defensible. On asylum costs, the decision to effectively stop processing claimants, and to budget virtually nothing for the resultant costs of housing them, looks like very poor policy making. The new chancellor is right to be cross.

And the Resolution Foundation says this announcement will make the budget in the autumn even more difficult. It says:

Today’s assessment looked only at spending pressures in the current year, but many of these, including the extra spending on public sector pay (£9.4bn), will continue throughout this parliament. As a result, even after today’s new cuts to public spending, the foundation notes that the chancellor faces a huge challenge to bring down public sector debt without cutting unprotected departmental spending by more than the £18bn a year already pencilled in to the government finances – or adding to the £23bn a year tax rises announced by the previous government that have not yet come into force.

The chancellor’s challenge in the autumn budget will become even more severe if she wishes to maintain even modest fiscal buffers – or if bad news about the growth or interest rates materialise in the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR’s) autumn budget forecasts. If the OBR was to mark down its forecast for trend productivity growth by just 0.2 percentage points, it would blow a further £17bn hole in the public finances.

The foundation warns that, when delivering the autumn budget, the government must continue to prioritise its growth ‘mission’ and focus on increasing living standards. Today’s announcements included cuts to some transport investment and £1.5bn cuts to winter fuel payments. If this approach was repeated at the Autumn Budget, this would both hamper growth, and damage living standards.

In the Commons Sarah Olney, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesperson, focused mainly on criticising the last Tory government in her response to Rachel Reeves. She said:

The outgoing Conservative government will go down in the history books as one of the most damaging administrations our country has seen and today’s statement has thrown that picture into even more stark relief.

It wasn’t just their catastrophic mini budget, we saw a vicious cycle of stagnation and recession driven by years of chaos and uncertainty.

Over the last parliament we saw the Conservative Party raise taxes on hardworking households again and again just to pay for its own mistakes.

But Pete Wishart, the SNP’s deputy leader at Westminster, told MPs that cutting winter fuel payments felt like Tory austerity. He said:

Everybody and their granny knew that there would be a multibillion pound black hole, only the chancellor seemed to be deaf and blind to the situation, but we knew she was going to be here explaining the sheer scale of it.”

Isn’t it the case that cutting winter fuel payments to all pensioners seems and feels like Tory austerity? And what discussions has she had with the Scottish government? Because she will know obviously that this is a devolved responsibility.

In the Commons Rachel Reeves has now finished her statement. After she wrapped up three Conservative MPs used points of order to say that the supply and appropriation (main estimates) bill was presented to the Commons on Thursday last week and it was based on the pre-election spending figures, not the new ones announced today. They argued that, if Rachel Reeves know on Thursday those figures were problematic, she was misleading the Commons.

The “estimates”, as they are called, are how parliament approves public spending. On Thursday the bill was passed without a debate. (The statement from Reeves today shows why “estimates” really is the operative word for these figures.)

In the Commons Caroline Nokes, the new deputy speaker who was in the chair, dismissed the points of order, saying it was for the government to decide how it presented the estimates.

UPDATE: A Treasury source points out that the document published this afternoon addresses this point. It says the Treasury had to use the pre-election figures in the estimates to allow a vote on them to take place before recess. The report explains:

The government laid main estimates for 2024-25 before parliament on 18 July, the earliest available opportunity after the general election and considerably later than the usual timetable. These estimates were prepared before the general election, and the government was forced to lay them unchanged in order to allow them to be voted on before the summer recess. This was necessary to avoid departments experiencing cash shortages over the summer. The pressures set out in this document represent a more realistic assessment of DEL spending. As usual, departmental spending limits will be finalised at supplementary estimates.

Teachers in England will get a pay rise of 5.5%, Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, has said. In a written statement Phillipson said:

I am today announcing that we are accepting in full the independent School Teachers’ Review Body’s (STRB) recommendations for 2024/25, implementing a substantial pay award for school teachers and leaders of 5.5% from September. This award will apply to maintained schools across all pay points and allowances, and in practice, will also be implemented in many academies at their discretion. I want to thank the STRB members for their careful consideration of the evidence presented to them.

And police officers in England and Wales will get a pay rise of 4.75%, Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, has announced. In a written statement she says:

Both the PRRB [Police Renumeration Review Body] and SSRB [Senior Salaries Review Body] recommended a consolidated increase of 4.75% to all police officer ranks and pay points with effect from 1 September 2024. The government is accepting the recommendation in full. The Home Office will provide £175m additional funding in 2024-25 to forces to help with the cost of the pay increase.

While the recommendation for a consolidated award of 4.75% is significantly above what had been budgeted for in the 2021 spending review, it is right that we accept it in full. Police officers have a crucial role to play in delivering the government’s manifesto commitments to make Britain’s streets safe and increase public visibility through neighbourhood policing.

The main pay award for members of the armed forces is worth 6%, the Ministry of Defence has said, although new recruits will get more. In a written ministerial statement John Healey, the defence secretary, says:

Along with various forms of support, accommodation, and pensions, pay plays a vital role in rewarding our people for the work they do. To recognise the commitment and service of our armed forces personnel, we are announcing today that we will be accepting in full the 2024 Pay Award recommendations made by the independent Armed Forces’ Pay Review Body (AFPRB) and Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB). This year’s award provides a targeted and significant pay uplift for new recruits alongside a large headline increase of 6%.

Prison officers will get a pay rise worth 5% for 2024-25, Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, has said in a written statement to MPs. She says:

All Prison Service staff play a vital role in helping to rehabilitate prisoners and keep the public safe. I am grateful for their hard work and dedication. Acceptance of these recommendations reflects our priorities in ensuring the recruitment and retention of Prison Service staff to deliver this essential frontline service and recognises the valuable service they deliver every day.

The award will deliver a pay rise of at least a 5% base pay increase for all prison staff between Operational Support Grade and Governors (Bands 2-11), with a targeted focus on the lowest paid.

And judges will get 6%, she says. Explaining the difference, she says:

The SSRB [Senior Salaries Review Body] recommended a pay award of 6% for all judicial office holders within the remit group for 2024/25. I have decided to accept this recommendation in full, which will be applied equally to all judicial office holders for whom I have responsibility and will be backdated to April 2024.

I recognise the SSRB’s concerns regarding persistent recruitment and retention issues affecting parts of the judiciary. I look forward to working alongside the judiciary to understand how we can start to address these shortfalls through system-wide reforms going forwards.

The Office for Budget Responsibility seems to be backing up Rachel Reeves’ claim that the last government was not open about the cost of the measures it was committed to. Richard Hughes, the OBR’s chair, has announced that he has set up an inquiry into the accuracy of the figures the OBR was given.

In a letter to the Treasury committee explaining the move, Hughes says:

In my testimony before the Treasury committee and other parliamentary committees, I have expressed my concerns about the transparency and credibility of the existing arrangements within government for forecasting, planning, and controlling the 40 per cent of public expenditure within DEL [departmental expenditure limit]. In our semi-annual EFO [economic and fiscal outlook] reports (including the March 2024 EFO) and in our August 2023 working paper on the OBR’s forecast performance, the OBR has highlighted potential overspending against the DEL plans set by the Treasury as one of the most significant risks to the fiscal outlook.

The document published today by HM Treasury entitled Fixing the foundations: Public spending audit 2024-25 identifies £21.9 billion in net pressures on the DEL budgets set by the Treasury for the current financial year 2024-25. We were made aware of the extent of these pressures at a meeting with the Treasury last week. The Treasury document also sets out its plans for further managing down these pressures over the remainder of the financial year. If a significant fraction of these pressures is ultimately accommodated through higher DEL spending in 2024-25, this would constitute one of the largest year-ahead overspends against DEL forecasts outside of the pandemic years.

Given the seriousness of this issue, I have initiated a review into the preparation of the DEL forecast in the March 2024 EFO. The review will assess the adequacy of the information and assurances provided to the OBR by the Treasury regarding departmental spending and report to Baroness Sarah Hogg, chair of the OBR’s Oversight Board, and Dame Susan Rice, chair of the OBR’s Risk Committee.

This is drafted in OBR jargon, but the message is a strong one; Hughes is suggesting the OBR was mislead by the Treasury about the true cost of the Tories’ spending plans.

Hughes has expressed his concerns about the accuracy of Treasury future spending figures in the past. In January he told the Treasury committee they were worse than a work of fiction because “someone’s bothered to write a work of fiction, whereas the government hasn’t even bothered to write down what its departmental spending plans are underpinning the plans for public services”.

In the Commons a few minutes ago Rachel Reeves said this letter was “incredibly serious”. In response to a question from Labour’s Mark Ferguson, Reeves said the letter “can leave no one in this chamber under any doubt about the seriousness of the situation”.

And here is an extract from the Treasury report explaining how the government will save £5.5bn in 2024-25 and £8.1bn in 2025-26 to address this shortfall.

Making sure that departments absorb at least £3.2 billion of the public sector pay pressure this year. The Treasury will work closely with departments to identify savings to fund pay. To achieve this, the Treasury will help departments to bear down on waste and drive efficiency, including by:

Taking immediate action to stop all non-essential government consultancy spend in 2024-25 and halve government spending on consultancy in future years. This will save £550 million in 2024-25 and £680 million in 2025-26. To help departments do this and make value for money decisions about how to resource work the civil service headcount cap announced by the previous administration will be lifted.

Delivering administrative efficiencies across government – the Treasury will implement a 2% saving against government administration budgets, cutting down on waste while prioritising the frontline. This will save £225 million in 2024-25.

Reducing communications and marketing budgets – the government will review the hundreds of millions spent each year across government on communications and marketing campaigns, with a view to making reductions.

Continuing to dispose of surplus public sector estates, raising money for public services and enabling assets to be put to productive use where the government can increase their social value and drive greater value for money.

Targeting Winter Fuel Payments. Winter Fuel Payments will be targeted from winter 2024-25 at households in England and Wales with someone aged over State Pension age receiving Pension Credit, Universal Credit, Income Support, income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance and income-related Employment and Support Allowance. They will continue to be worth £200 for eligible households, or £300 for eligible households with someone aged over 80. This will better target support for heating costs at those who need it, while all pensioners will benefit from the government’s commitment to maintain the triple lock for the basic and new State Pension in this Parliament. Winter Fuel Payments are devolved in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The government wants those entitled to Pension Credit to claim it. The government will bring together the administration of Pension Credit and Housing Benefit as soon as operationally possible, so that pensioner households receiving Housing Benefit also receive any Pension Credit that they are entitled to. The Department for Work and Pensions will continue to work with partners to encourage take-up alongside their own communication campaigns and to support people with their Pension Credit claims.

Stopping the Rwanda migration partnership. This will create savings on flights and payments to Rwanda, and removing retrospection of the Illegal Migration Act will allow the government to process asylum seekers and reduce use of hotels.

Cancelling the Investment Opportunity Fund. This was announced at Autumn Statement 2023 but has yet to support any projects this academic year.

Not proceeding with adult social care charging reforms. The previous government committed to introduce these in October 2025 but did not put money aside for them. The reforms are now impossible to deliver in full to previously announced timeframes.

Reviewing the previous government’s transport commitments. This will ensure our transport infrastructure portfolio drives economic growth and delivers value for money for taxpayers. The government is cancelling the A303 Stonehenge tunnel and the A27 schemes. These are low value, unaffordable commitments which would have cost £587 million next year. The government will also cancel the Restoring Your Railway programme, saving £76 million next year. Individual Restoring Your Railway projects will be able to be reconsidered through the Transport Secretary’s review.

Cancelling the Advanced British Standard. The government will cancel the unfunded commitment to additional teaching hours, which would have cost almost £1 billion a year in the medium term. The government will continue to fund more and better maths teaching, additional funding to support young people resitting maths and English GCSEs, and teacher recruitment and retention incentives in 2024-25 and 2025-26.

Reviewing the New Hospital Programme and the previous government’s ‘40 hospitals by 2030’ commitment. The government will put the programme on a more sustainable footing, following persistent delays and overruns, and recognising delivery and market constraints. The government is undertaking a full and comprehensive review of the programme while continuing to deliver the most advanced and most urgent hospitals to a realistic timeframe.

Jeremy Hunt, the shadow chancellor, is responding. He accuses Reeves of “a shameless attempt” to prepare the ground for tax rises.

He quotes Reeves saying before the election she knew the state of the public finances. He says people like Paul Johnson from the Institute for Fiscal Studies have also said this.

He says the Office for Budget Responsibility audited the government’s figures shortly before the election.

And he says that Reeves had access to the Treasury permanent secretary, as part of the routine access talks the opposition has with civil servants ahead of the election. She could have asked him about the public finances, he says.

Reeves said adult social care charging reforms delayed by the Tories (imposing a cap on how much people have to pay for adult social care) will not be taken forward, saving more than £1bn by the end of next year.

Reeves says she will hold a budget on October 30.

That will involve “taking difficult decisons .. across spending, welfare and tax”, she says.

Reeves says pensioners not in receipt of pension credit will no longer get the winter fuel payment.

That means it will only go to poorer pensioners.

She says this is not a decision she wanted or expected to make.

But this is an urgent decision she has to make.

UPDATE: Reeves said:

This level of overspend is not sustainable. Left unchecked, it is a risk to economic stability and, unlike the party opposite, I will never take risks with our country’s economic stability.

So, it therefore falls to us to take the difficult decisions now to make further in-year savings. The scale of the situation we are dealing with means incredibly tough choices.

I repeat today the commitment that we made in our manifesto to protect the triple-lock but today I am making the difficult decision that those not in receipt of pension credit or certain other means-tested benefits will no longer receive the winter fuel payment from this year onwards.

The government will continue to provide winter fuel payments worth £200 to households receiving pension credit or £300 to households in receipt of pension credit with someone over the age of 80. Let me be clear, this is not a decision I wanted to make, nor is it the one I expected to make – but these are the necessary and urgent decisions that I must make.

Reeves says, even though Rishi Sunak was personally committed to the advanced British standard (a new educational qualification, replacing A levels, ensuring all pupils study maths up ot the age of 18), he did not set aside any money for it.

So she is cancelling it, she says.

Reeves says the pay review body recommendations will come at an additional cost of £9bn, because the last government had not said what was affordable.

She says she is asking departments to find £3bn to help the new government meet these recommendations.

UPDATE: Reeves said:

I have today set out our decision to meet the recommendation of the pay review bodies. Because the previous government failed to prepare for these recommendations in their departmental budgets, they come at an additional cost of £9 billion this year.

So, the first difficult choice I am making is to ask all departments to find savings to absorb as much of this as possible, totalling at least £3 billion.

To support departments as they do this, I will work with them to find savings ahead of the autumn budget, including through measures to stop all non-essential spending on consultancy and Government communications, and I am taking action to ask departments to find 2% savings in their back office costs.

Reeves says the spending plans included £6.4bn on the asylum system due to be spent this year. That sum was unfunded and undisclosed.

She says the transport budget included commitments worth £1.6bn that were unfunded.

And, on public sector pay, she says the government had made recommenations to the pay review bodies without telling them what would affordable. That was almost unprecedented.

She confirms that the government has reached a deal with the junior doctors.

UPDATE: Reeves said:

The previous government had not held a spending review since 2021, that means they never fully reflected the impact of inflation in departmental budgets.

This has had a direct impact on budgets for public sector pay.

When the last spending review was conducted, it was assumed that pay awards would be 2% this year. Ordinarily, the Government is expected to give evidence to the pay review bodies on affordability, but, extraordinarily, this year the previous government provided no guidance on what could or could not be afforded to the pay review bodies.

This is almost unheard of but that is exactly what they did.

Reeves says when she was told by officials there were unfunded commitments worth £22bn this year.

She says she will show how she will address this with measures worth £5.5bn this year, and more than £8bn next year.

UPDATE: Reeves said:

The government published its plans for day-to-day spending in the spring budget in March.

But when I arrived in the Treasury, on the very first day I was alerted by officials that this was not how much the previous government expected to spend this year – it wasn’t even close.

In fact, the total pressures on these budgets across a range of areas was an additional £35bn.

Once you account for the slippage in budgets you usually see over a year and the reserve of £9bn designed to respond to genuinely unexpected events, it means that we have inherited a projected overspend of £22bn.

A £22bn hole in the public finances now, not in the future, but now – £22bn of spending this year that was covered up by the party opposite. If left unaddressed it’d mean a 25% increase in the budget deficit this year …

Let me be clear. I’m not talking about costs for future years that (the Conservatives) signed up to but did not include, like the compensation for infected blood, which has cross-party support.

I’m not talking about the state of public services in the future, about the crisis in our prisons which they have left for us to fix.

I’m talking about the money that they were already spending this year and had no ability to pay for which they hid from the country. They had exhausted the reserve, and they knew that, but nobody else did.

They ducked the difficult decisions, they put party before country and they continued to make unfunded commitment after unfunded commitment, knowing that the money was not there, resulting in the position that we have now inherited.

The reserve spent more than three times over only three months into the financial year, and they told no-one. The scale of this overspend is not sustainable. Not to act is simply not an option.

Keir Starmer is in the chamber, sitting on the front bench as Rachel Reeves starts.

Reeves starts by paying tribute to the emergency service dealing with the Southport attack.

She says she will reveal the seriousness of what has been uncovered by the assessment of the inheritance left by the Tories. She will then say what she will do about it, before talking about her long-term plans.

She says she said before the election she would face the worst economic situation facing an incoming government.

But since becoming chancellor, she has discovered things she did not know about – things covered up by the Tories.

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is about to make her statement to MPs on the “spending inheritance” left by the Tories.

Here is a picture of her working on the statement earlier in her study.

Bob Blackman, chair of the Conservative 1922 Committee, has confirmed that there were six candidates in the leaders contest when nominations closed this afternoon. They are: Tom Tugendhat, James Cleverly, Mel Stride, Priti Patel, Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch.

As Katy Balls from the Spectator reports, Blackman also said the 1922 Committee would impose a “yellow card” warning system on candidates deemed to have criticised their opponents too aggressively. The last proper contest, in 2022, featured numerous “blue-on-blue” attacks that were seen as very damaging to the reputation of the party as a whole.

1922 chairman Bob Blackman announces a ‘yellow card’ system for Tory leadership contest

Any candidate acting too aggressively or personal will receive a yellow card

Unclear if this can escalate to a red card

Junior doctors’ leaders in England have agreed a new pay deal with the government, which could lead to their wages rising by 22.3% over two years, Andrew Gregory reports.

Hilary Benn, the Northern Ireland secretary, has announced that the government is dropping an appeal against a ruling from the high court in Northern Ireland saying the last government’s Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act is not compatible with the Human Rights Act. In a written ministerial statement, he says this is the first step towards repealing the act, as Labour promised in its manifesto.

He says:

The government has today written to the Northern Ireland court of appeal to formally abandon all its grounds of appeal against the section 4 Human Rights Act declarations of incompatibility made by the Northern Ireland high court in relation to the act. The declarations of incompatibility that the government is no longer challenging include those relating to the conditional immunity provisions, which could – had they not been struck out by the high court – have seen individuals being granted immunity from prosecution for providing information about Troubles-related deaths and serious injuries.

This is the first step in fulfilling the government’s manifesto commitment to repeal and replace the act. Victims and survivors have felt ignored by the previous government’s approach to legacy, which has been clearly rejected across communities in Northern Ireland. The conditional immunity provisions, in particular, have been opposed by all of the Northern Ireland political parties and by many victims and survivors, as well as being found by the court to be unlawful.

But Benn also says it would be “irresponsible” to repeal the act without having anything to replace it. And he suggests that this will not be a straightforward process. He says:

Effectively addressing the legacy of the past is hugely important, not just for those victims and survivors who continue to pursue answers, but for society in Northern Ireland to be able to move forward. The government recognises that achieving absolute consensus on these issues is immensely difficult.

Benn says the government will consult with interested parties, including victims and survivors, on the way ahead. He goes on:

The government recognises that this process will involve difficult conversations, and that many stakeholders will hold different views regarding the best way forward. It is also clear that a resolution to addressing the legacy of Northern Ireland’s past will not be reached without a willingness, by all, to listen, to understand the perspectives of others, and to compromise. The government welcomes the opportunity to have these conversations in the months ahead.

Downing Street has restated the government’s desire to address the carer’s allowance scandal, which has led to thousands of people being required to pay back large sums because they inadvertently broke the £151 weekly earnings limit when they were claiming the benefit available for unpaid carers. Stephen Timms, the minister for social security and disability, is meeting Carers UK this afternoon to discuss the problem, whch has been highlighted in many Guardian reports. At the No 10 lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson did not say what action the government would take, and an announcement is not expected today. But the spokesperson said the government would come up with a plan. He said:

Our country would grind to a halt without the millions of carers who provide care and continuity of support to vulnerable people every day.

We recognise the challenges they’re facing and we’re determined to provide unpaid carers with the support they deserve.

The minister for pensions, social security and disability is meeting with Carers UK today to understand their experiences which will help establish the facts before setting out a plan to put it right.

Downing Street has refused to comment on a report saying junior doctors are being offered a pay rise worth about 20% over two years.

In a story for the Times, Steven Swinford reports:

The British Medical Association’s (BMA) junior doctors committee has recommended an offer that includes a backdated pay rise of 4.05 per cent for 2023-24, on top of an existing increase of between 8.8 per cent and 10.3 per cent.

Junior doctors will be given a further pay rise of 6 per cent for 2024-25, which will be topped up by a consolidated £1,000 payment. This is equivalent to a pay rise of between 7 per cent and 9 per cent.

The overall package represents a pay rise of about 20 per cent. The BMA’s committee has agreed to put the offer to its members, and if it is accepted it will bring an end to industrial action.

Asked about the report at the Downing Street lobby briefing, the PM’s spokesperson said:

As we’ve said before, we’re committed to working to find a solution, resolving this dispute, but I can’t get into detailed running commentary on negotiations.

We’ve been honest with the public and the sector about the economic circumstances we face. But the government is determined to do the hard work necessary to finally bring these strikes to an end.

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is expected to make an announcement about public sector pay later today.

A ban on puberty blockers introduced by the Conservative government using emergency legislation was lawful, the high court has ruled. The full story is here.

The press summary of the judgment is here.

And the full 62-page ruling is here.

In response, Wes Streeting, the health secretary, said:

Children’s healthcare must be evidence-led.

Dr Cass’s review found there was insufficient evidence that puberty blockers are safe and effective for children with gender dysphoria and gender incongruence.

We must therefore act cautiously and with care when it comes to this vulnerable group of young people.

I am working with NHS England to improve children’s gender identity services, and to set up a clinical trial to establish the evidence on puberty blockers.

I want trans people in our country to feel safe, accepted, and able to live with freedom and dignity.

Kemi Badenoch, the former business secretary, confirmed that she is standing for the Conservative party leadership with an article in the Times published last night. She was the sixth candidate to declare (the others are Tom Tugendhat, James Cleverly, Mel Stride, Priti Patel and Robert Jenrick), and no one else is expected to come forward before the deadline for nominations closes this afternoon. Badenoch is the bookmakers’ favourite, and her article is less platitudinous than some of the equivalent ones from her rivals. Here are the main points.

• Badenoch says the Tories deserved to lose the general election. She says:

The electorate did not make a mistake. We deserved to lose because the past decade saw us twist and turn in the wind, unsure of who we were, what we were for and how we could build a new country …

Some will argue our loss was down to this policy, that person or some decision. The truth is our policy offer was incoherent, and we could not articulate why conservatism should matter to our fellow man. We thought we could just be managerially better at governing than the other side – a weak foundation at the best of times. Too often, we were led by focus groups.

• She says the last Tory government was too leftwing. “We talked right yet governed left,” she says. In particular, it was too liberal, she argues.

We sought to build an increasingly liberal society. But liberalism has been hacked. Our empathy with those fleeing persecution has been exploited to create an asylum system that is effectively open borders to anyone willing to lie about their circumstances. Legislative improvements ensuring that everyone can be treated equally, irrespective of their race, sex or religion have morphed into a nasty identity politics that seeks to divide based on these characteristics.

Under the guise of politeness and good manners, free speech and the freedom to dissent is curtailed, exemplified by Labour scrapping the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act. In its place we have a coarsening of language and promotion of a postmodernism that can best be described as joyless decadence. We must renew.

That prompted this response from the Economist’s Matthew Holehouse.

Nadine Dorries, the former Tory minister, has claimed that Michael Gove is helping Badenoch with her speeches. (She is critical of them both.) “Postmodernism … described as joyless decadence” is the sort of phrase that makes it possible to believe she might have a point; it is very Gove.

• Badenoch says the Conservative party needs to rediscover what it stands for. She says:

It would be easy to give in to the fatigue we all feel. To just focus on being a credible opposition or lose ourselves debating individual policy positions, as if we remain in government. But there is a bigger question of what it means to be a conservative today. If there wasn’t, the Reform party would not exist. It is not enough to call for “unity to win”. We need to ask ourselves, what are we uniting around? What are we winning for?

This is a dig at rivals like James Cleverly and Priti Patel who have made being ‘unity candidates’ a big part of their pitch.

• Badenoch says she wants the state to do less than it does now. She says:

We will renew by starting from first principles: we can’t control immigration until we reconfirm our belief in the nation state and the sovereign duty it has, above all else, to serve its own citizens. Our public services will never fully recover from the pandemic until we remember that government should do some things well, not everything badly.

• She says she wants to renew capitalism. She says:

The wealth of our nation is built upon our historic ability to capture the ingenuity and industry of our people, and the willingness of many to trade risk for reward. It’s become a dirty word, but our renewal must also mean a renewal for capitalism.

• She suggests she wants to let members play a bigger role in making policy. She says:

Presidential politics don’t work in the UK. Conservatism must become a team effort once again as we renew our party from top to bottom. A new respect for our members who, in their daily lives, are the backbone of communities across our country but are sneered at and pilloried by elitist commentators. We need to do right by our local councillors, many who ran successful councils but lost their seats because of behaviours in parliament.

It is not clear whether Badenoch is implying any formal changes to the way the party makes politics, or whether she is just buttering up the voters who will have the final say in the election. Commentators have been critical of Conservative party members, but that is mainly because they thought Liz Truss would be a good prime minister.

As Aletha Adu reports, Rachel Reeves is expected to announce this afternoon that the government is cancelling or postponing various infrastructure projects because of what it has learned about unfunded spending commitments left by the last administration.

In an interview on the Today programme this morning, it was put to Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, that cancelling transport projects would ultimately hold back growth. McFadden insisted that growth remained the government’s priority. He told the programme:

Growth is the challenge for the country. Growth is the mission for the country.

We will have more to say about that later this week – for example, when we talk about how we are going to get housebuilding moving again with all the positive repercussions that has for the economy.

In everything that we do and everything that the chancellor sets out later this afternoon, the priority of growth is there.

But let me say something else about growth. We also always said that the foundation for growth was fiscal responsibility and stable public finances. That is why we talk about fixing the foundations, that is why we have to be candid with the public about the situation that we have inherited after the general election.

Good morning. After three weeks as chancellor, Rachel Reeves will today present the most significant policy announcement of the new Labour government so far. Think of it as an inverse budget. Budgets are all about how the government intends to spend money. According to the extensive briefing about this statement, instead it will mostly focus on what the government won’t be spending, on projects it is cancelling because supposedly the last administration kept them on the books without having the cash to fund or finish them.

In policy terms, it will tell us more about what the government wants to prioritise. (Reeves will include recommendations from public sector pay review bodies in her list of Tory “spending black hole” measures. She is expected to accept the recommendations for above-inflation pay increases which the Tories had not approved.)

In political terms, this is an announcement intended to reinforce a narrative Labour wants the public to remember for a decade or more – that the Tories left Britain “broke and broken”.

And, in economic terms, today’s statement is widely expected to pave the way for significant tax rises in the autumn. During the election campaign Labour said it did not want to raise taxes for “working people”. But this implied that tax increases that would only affect the wealthy were in scope and the Treasury has not denied suggestions that today’s analysis could be used to justify measures like capital gains or inheritance tax rises in the budget in the autumn.

Here is Aletha Adu and Peter Walker’s preview story.

In an article for the Daily Express, Jeremy Hunt, the Tory former chancellor, has accused Reeves of being “beyond disingenuous” and of peddling “mistruths”. He argues that she cannot say that she was misled about the state of the public finances because the Office for Budget Responsibility publishes its own assessment twice a year.

Hunt also implies Labour have betrayed voters over tax (ignoring the fact that, during the election, CCHQ regularly attacked Labour for not give cast-iron commitments not to raise taxes like capital gains tax and inheritance tax).

But in interviews this morning Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, said that, since taking office, ministers had discovered new information about the government’s spending liabilities that was not publicly known before the election. He told Sky News:

What we have discovered since taking office a few weeks ago is things were even worse than we thought and the previous government was certainly guilty of running away from the situation. Let me give you a couple of examples.

We were told, for example, that the Rwanda scheme was going to cost £400m. We have now found that it is £700m, with billions more to be spent in future.

The government were emptying the country’s reserves to pay for other parts of their asylum policy.

In addition to that, the secretary of state for education had a pay offer for teachers on her desk that nobody told anyone about during the election.

When you take up all of this, and you add it all up, it adds to significant pressures on the budget this year which we have to react to.

And, in an interview with the Today programme, McFadden accused Hunt himself of not telling the truth about tax policy during the election. McFadden said:

One of the very revealing things that has happened since the election is that the now shadow chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has admitted to his shadow cabinet that that £17bn pounds of unfunded tax cut promises at the heart of the Tory manifesto could not have been implemented this year. That is not what they were saying during the election. It is a profoundly revealing admission. And it shows that they knew more about the public spending situation during the election than they were telling the electorate.

Here is the agenda for the day.

11am: The high court is due to give its judgment on a claim that the government’s emergency ban on puberty blockers is unlawful.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

2.30pm: Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

2.30pm: Nominations officially close for the Conservative party leadership contest. Six candidates have already said they are standing – Tom Tugendhat, James Cleverly, Mel Stride, Priti Patel, Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch – and no one else is expected to run.

After 3.30pm: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, makes a statement to MPs on the Treasury’s “audit of the spending inheritance left by the previous administration”.

Late afternoon: Reeves holds a press conference.

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