Minister refuses to dispute IFS report saying £60bn spending cuts needed due to mini-budget – UK politics live

Keir Starmer has unveiled a shake-up of the Labour party’s campaign machinery, my colleague Pippa Crerar reports. She says this includes the departure of Sam White, his current chief of staff. White used to work as a special adviser to Alistair Darling when Darling was chancellor.

In her morning interview round Thérèse Coffey, the health secretary and deputy PM, also said nurses will not get a higher pay offer. My colleague Jessica Elgot has the story here.

Thérèse Coffey, the health secretary and deputy PM, also refused to deny reports that she intends to shelve the government’s proposed smoking action plan in her morning interview round.

The questions on this were prompted by a story by my colleague Denis Campbell saying ministers are expected to break a promise to publish a smoking action plan later this year. Denis reports:

The government had committed several times to publish a tobacco control plan “later this year”. However, the health secretary, Thérèse Coffey, does not intend to honour that promise, according to officials with knowledge of her intentions.

Coffey, who is also the deputy prime minister, smokes and has previously accepted hospitality from the tobacco industry. Since becoming an MP in 2010 she has voted in the Commons against an array of measures to restrict smoking, including the ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces, the outlawing of smoking in cars containing children and forcing cigarettes to be sold in plain packs.

When asked about the story, Coffey was evasive, but she did not deny it. She said she was “not aware” that the plan had been shelved. (The story says it will be shelved, not that it has been shelved already.) Asked to confirm that the plan would go ahead, she implied it was not a priority for her. She told LBC:

I’ll be looking in the next few months at all our different prevention programmes, seeing what’s potentially working, seeing how many things there. There’s quite a lot of things in draft at the moment and working that through. But my top priority is where the majority people interact with the health and social care today [she means ambulances, backlogs, care, and doctors and dentists – her “ABCD” priority list].

Asked if she was committed to the government ambition to make England “smoke-free” by 2030 (defined as getting the smoking rate down to 5% – it was 14% in 2019), she replied:

I’m the government minister, so if that’s government policy today, then that’s what I agree with.

Note the wording – “if that’s government policy today”; it sounded like a diplomatic way of saying, actually, no, she did not agree with it.

The IFS report is not the only fresh blow to the credibility of the mini-budget around this morning. As my colleague Richard Partington reports, the Bank of England has stepped in with another emergency intervention in the markets in an attempt to stave off a “fire sale” of UK government bonds by pension funds.

My colleague Graeme Wearden has further coverage on his business live blog.

Good morning. MPs return to the Commons after the party conference season today and, although Liz Truss has performed potentially quite a significant reset after the most disastrous first month in office of any prime minister in modern times, her problems still seem near impossible.

A report today from the Instute for Fiscal Studies highlights quite how dire the situation is. It says that the government will need to find £60bn of savings by 2026 to fill the gap left by the unfunded tax cuts in the mini-budget. My colleague Phillip Inman has the story here.

This morning Thérèse Coffey has been giving interviews. As well as health secretary and deputy prime minister, she seems to have been designated “minister for the Today programme” (No 10’s first choice for a broadcast round, when someone sounding calm and sensible is needed – previous holders of the post include Grant Shapps and Michael Fallon). On Sky News she was asked about the IFS report, and she responded as if it were a moderately interesting academic exercise. Crucially, though, she did not at any point try to suggest that what the IFS was saying was wrong.

When Kay Burley asked about the IFS’s claim that there is a £60bn black hole in the government’s accounts, Coffey replied:

The IFS obviously does its own modelling. The government works with the Bank of England and the OBR on these measures and that is what the Treasury has been working on …

But I think the IFS also pointed out, if we don’t grow, then this problem will get worse and worse. And that’s why, very clearly, the prime minister and chancellor set out a plan for growth.

Asked again how the government would fill this “black hole”, Coffey again said this was IFS modelling. Asked if it was right, she replied:

That’s not for me to say. That’s their forecasts. The chancellor will be speaking at the end of the month with the medium-term fiscal plan.

Burley tried again. She said the IFS said all government departments, except the NHS and defence, might have to face budget cuts of 15% to fill this “black hole”. Coffey replied:

I’m just not going to get into hypotheticals, Kay. The chancellor is working on that …

Later we will hear from Kwasi Kwarteng, the chancellor, himself on this. He is taking questions in the Commons.

Here is the agenda for the day.

8.45am: Liz Truss chairs a meeting of political cabinet, followed by a normal cabinet.

10.30am: The supreme court starts hearing the case brought by the Scottish government arguing that it has the right to hold an independence referendum.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

1pm: Truss takes part in a virtual G7 summit, which will also be addressed by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

2.30pm: Kwasi Kwarteng, the chancellor, takes questions in the Commons.

After 3pm: Peers begin debating the second reading of the Northern Ireland protocol bill.

After 3.45pm: MPs begin debating the health and social care levy (repeal) bill.

4pm: Lord Frost, the Tory former Brexit minister, and Lord Mandelson, the Labour former Northern Ireland secretary and former trade secretary, give evidence to the Lords European affairs committee about Brexit.

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