Boris Johnson news: PM under attack for 'schmoozing Tory donors while ignoring flood victims', as Sajid Javid issues public warning to leader

Good morning and welcome The Independent’s live coverage of events at Westminster and beyond.

Chancellor will have to raise taxes or entrench austerity, says IFS

Rishi Sunak will have to hike taxes or entrench austerity to pay for a spending splurge in the upcoming budget, according to a respected think tank.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said Sunak will have to abandon fiscal commitments in the Tory manifesto – or increase taxes next month – if he wants to avoid cuts to day-to-day spending.

Some £54bn would be needed to reverse cuts to public spending outside of health since 2010, the think tank said, which is still 26 per cent lower than a decade ago.

The IFS also warned that cuts to some benefits that would leave poorer families worse off were working their way through the system.

Tory minister defends MP who exposed himself – dismissing incident as youthful indiscretion

The police minister Kit Malthouse has defended a Tory MP facing calls to resign after a video emerged which shows him exposing himself to a woman in a pub.

James Grundy, the new MP for Leigh since December, has apologised for the 2007 incident at the Rams Head Inn in Wigan. Footage obtained by LBC captures Grundy lowering his trousers and lifting his shirt to expose his genitals, as requested by a woman heard off camera.

“I’m sure there are lots of things people have done when they teenagers that they may not have contemplated would surface,” Malthouse told Sky News.

“He’s a young man, and he was even younger then.”

DWP reviews into benefit claimants’ deaths kept ‘hush-hush’, says Labour

The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) has been accused of dealing in a “secretive and unsatisfactory way” with reviews into cases of benefit claimants who have gone on to take their own lives.

Labour MP Stephen Timms, chairman of the Commons work and pensions committee, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the department had been looking to keep the reviews “hush, hush”.

It comes after the DWP had been found to have destroyed reviews into suicides that took place more than five years ago, citing data protection laws.

Timms said he was “sympathetic” to families of loved ones who feared a cover-up. “I think families should be entitled to see these reports. The law does not specify five years or six years, and I think this kind of information should be held for longer.”

The MP also told the BBC that his committee plans to write to the DWP about the issue of reviews into cases where benefit claimants have taken their own lives to call for “clarification and improvements”.

Timms said: “I think all of this raises very troubling questions for the department. For a long time they refused to address them at all. Now they’re starting to address them but in a very secretive and unsatisfactory way.

“I think for a long time they were very reluctant to accept that what they were doing had contributed to these deaths at all.

“I think they are now being forced to own up to the fact. That is happening, but they're doing it very reluctantly and very slowly and trying to keep the thing as hush-hush as possible, and it’s not good enough.”

What are the red lines that could block a Brexit trade deal?

It looks like someone’s red lines will have to turn pink, or we’re headed for a no-deal disaster at the end of 2020.

EU ministers have signed off on a 46-page mandate for trade talks beginning next week – and chief negotiator Michel Barnier said the UK must agree to a “level playing field” on rules and regulations or there won’t be any deal. “We will not conclude an agreement at any price,” he said.

No 10 – due to publish the UK’s mandate on Thursday – decided to issue a response in five tweets. Downing Street demanded “autonomy” to set its own rules and claimed the EU had forged a deal with the US “without the kind of level playing field commitments ... they have put in today’s mandate.”

Our political editor Andrew Woodcock has taken a closer look at both sides’ demands.

Russia report release taking ‘quite a lot of time’, admits minister

Police minister Kit Malthouse said he had “no idea” when the government’s report into Russian interference in the UK would be released.

“It does seem to have been quite a lot of time ... when I get back to office I’ll check,” he told Kay Burley on Sky News.

Asked if he would come back on and tell the public, Malthouse replied: “Certainly will once I know, yes.”

The minister also claimed “glutinous harmony” has broken out in the Home Office following the tit-for-tat anonymous briefings and allegations of bullying against home secretary Priti Patel.

Patel and permanent secretary Sir Philip Rutnam released a joint statement on Monday to deny reports of a deep rift at the top of the department.

Asked if his boss Patel was a bully, Malthouse replied: “I haven’t witnessed any of that. To be honest with you, I’m totally focused on crime. Everybody in the Home Office is focused on that, rather than on the sort of soap opera, I’m afraid.”

London mayor backs Starmer in Labour leadership race

Sadiq Khan has thrown his backing behind Sir Keir Starmer to succeed Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader.

Labour’s Mayor of London tweeted: “I will be voting for Keir-Starmer to be the next Labour leader. I've known Keir for decades. He’s the best person to unite our party, take the fight to the Tories and put Labour in government.”

Sir Keir said he was “honoured” to have Khan’s support. He tweeted: “I’m honoured to have received Sadiq’s backing to be the next Labour leader. Sadiq is demonstrating that Labour in power can change lives. I look forward to campaigning alongside him to keep London Labour.”

DWP destroyed reports into people who killed themselves after benefits were stopped

Our deputy political editor Rob Merrick has more now on claims of a “cover-up” at the department for work and pensions (DWP).

After destroying reports into suicides linked to benefits being stopped, the DWP was accused by Labour of “trying to keep the thing as hush-hush as possible”.

Around 50 reviews into deaths following the loss of social security payments before 2015 have been shredded, officials have admitted – blaming data protection laws.

Yet has said there was no requirement to destroy the reports by any particular date and that a “public interest” exemption could have been used.

More details here:

Time has come for ‘major’ defence review, says top Tory MP

Boris Johnson’s defence review – billed as the most wide-ranging look at Britain’s foreign and security policy since the Cold War – has been welcomed by the Commons foreign affairs committee chairman.

Tom Tugendhat MP told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “This is really the first serious defence review in 10 years. Its time really has come.

“The last really major review, I would argue, was in 1997, which was 23 years ago.”

Asked about reports that the PM is considering cutting the Army but upping defence spending overall, Tugendhat said: “I want this to be foreign policy-led, so let’s see what the foreign policy aims that the government sets out are.

“Once they have set out that aim, let’s look at the tools you need to achieve it. And I don’t know whether those tools are going to be more ships, more men, more aircraft. But let’s have a look at it properly and strategically.”

PM visiting flood-hit residents ‘wouldn’t make any difference’, says minister

The environment secretary George Eustice defended Boris Johnson over the PM’s failure to visit any flood-hit communities last week – claiming it would not have made “any difference”.

“He wanted me to lead on it, and it’s entirely right that in a cabinet government secretaries of state lead on issues that are relevant to them,” he said.

Asked why Johnson was able to visit flood affected residents during the election campaign in November, Eustice said: “We were in what’s called purdah period so ministers weren’t in the department and that made it harder, initially, for civil servants to make the decisions they needed to.

“That is why the prime minister felt the need to get involved at that point.”

Asked if it would have helped him, Eustice said: “I don’t think it makes any difference at all … a visit from the prime minister would not have affected the way we’ve approached this crisis.”