Rachel Reeves accused of misleading UK over public finances – live updates

Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn have announced the options under consideration for the new name of their party, currently known as Your Party.

Members will gather in Liverpool over the weekend for the party’s first conference, where they will also vote to establish a new leadership model for the group.

In a post on X, the party said names under consideration are Your Party, Our Party, Popular Alliance, and For The Many.

Sadiq Khan has said Nigel Farage’s denials of claims he used racist and antisemitic language towards classmates during his time at Dulwich College are “desperate”.

Speaking to The Guardian, the London mayor said the claims from more than 20 individuals had reminded him of his own past.

He added he could not understand why the Reform UK leader had failed to apologise to his contemporaries. Mr Farage denies the allegations.

The Treasury has refused to be drawn on claims Rachel Reeves “misled” the public over the size of the fiscal black hole.

In a statement, a spokesperson said the chancellor had made her choices to “cut the cost of living, cut hospital waiting lists and double headroom to cut the cost of our debt”.

It added: “We take Budget security extremely seriously and believe it’s important to preserve a private space for Treasury–OBR policy and forecast discussions, so we welcome the OBR’s confirmation that this will not become usual practice.”

Rachel Reeves is facing pressure to explain her fiscal decisions this afternoon as the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said she knew as early as September that a much-discussed black hole in public finances did not exist.

A Treasury source has reportedly now insisted the chancellor’s decision not to increase income tax rates was not due to political pressure, but instead a bid for increased headroom, according to The Guardian’s political editor Pippa Crear.

Talks on the UK joining the European Union’s flagship £130 billion defence fund have failed.

Negotiations foundered over how much the UK should pay to participate in the EU’s Security Action for Europe (Safe) rearmament fund.

Reports suggested the UK rejected French demands to pay up to £5 billion to participate in the scheme.

Minister for European Union relations Nick Thomas-Symonds said it was “disappointing” but the UK was focused on obtaining “value for money”.

Amid growing scrutiny over Rachel Reeves’ assessment of public finances going into the budget, a former minister accused the chancellor of misleading the public.

John Glen MP, a member of the Treasury select committee, told The Times she had misled the public, in his estimation.

“She told the public she needed to make tough decisions to fill a gap in funding identified by the OBR,” he said.

“That was not true and she knew it was not true when she said it. It was all an elaborate ploy to try and excuse her decision to break her manifesto pledge on taxes.”

A senior minister has defended the government’s decision to scrap day-one workers’ rights against unfair dismissal amid more accusations it has broken its own manifesto promises.

Asked whether watering down the Bill was a U-turn, Ms Phillipson told BBC Breakfast: “I don’t accept that characterisation, I’m afraid. The Employment Rights Bill represents the biggest upgrade to workers’ rights in a generation.”

Asked by Sky News if it was a broken promise, Ms Phillipson insisted it was not. She said: “In the manifesto, what we said was that we would work with trade unions, with businesses, with civil society, in consulting on those protections that we’d be bringing forward.

“So, there are both parts to that, within the manifesto, the important rights and the consultation.”