Budget 2024 live: Keir Starmer to warn UK must be ‘realistic’ in speech ahead of expected tax hikes

Keir Starmer has denied misleading the public over tax rises in the Budget after he suggested “working people” did not make money from property or shares.

The prime minister also rejected claims he had waged a “war on middle Britain”.

Labour made manifesto pledges to not hike taxes on what it described as “working people,” explicitly ruling out increases to VAT, national insurance, and income tax.

Read more from our Whitehall Editor Kate Devlin here:

The Education Secretary said she would “love to go faster” on improving family support services and bolstering protections for vulnerable children but it will “take time”.

Bridget Phillipson said the government’s commitment to extra help for foster and kinship carers - with £44 million in support announced on Sunday - “cannot be the extent of” its measures to help with safeguarding.

“This cannot be the extent of it... the children’s social care system just isn’t working,” she told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme.

Ms Phillipson said the government would legislate for a register of children not in school in order to know “where children are” and whether they are safe.

Asked whether she believed social services should be more proactive in stepping in when there are concerns about a child, following a series of high-profile cases of children being abused and killed by their parents such as Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, she said: “What I do think needs to happen though, alongside that - and there will always be cases where the state has to step in - we need to do a lot more when our children are younger, and we need to put in much put in much more support around families.

“Because sometimes problems do escalate and the situation does get worse, and we have seen the steady erosion of family support services.”

Richard Tice, the deputy leader of Reform UK, has admitted his party’s policy of picking up and taking migrants back to France could result in a “friendly stand-off” between the countries.

Speaking to Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips programme, he said: “It’s very simple. The government’s policy of smashing the gangs is clearly not working, and sadly people are literally dying... The only way to stop the boats is a variant of what Australia did.

“We’ve talked about it before. I will repeat it again: You’ve got to safely pick up and take back to France, which we are legally entitled to do under the 1982 UN Convention of the Law of Sea.

“And by the way France has a legal obligation to do the same, which they are in breach of. So we are legally entitled to do this.

“If the French coastguards say ‘you’re not coming in’ they’re in breach of international law.”

When pressed on what would happen if French authorities refused, Mr Tice said: “Well then we’ve got a stand-off... I’m not saying go to war but you can have a friendly stand-off with friends. It’s the only way you’re going to stop the deaths. Ours is the kind and compassionate policy.”

Deputy leader of Reform UK Richard Tice has said he expects Labour’s Budget to be “the most socialist budget in living memory”.

Speaking to Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips programme, he said: “What we’re going to get on Wednesday, I fear, is the most socialist budget in living memory.

“I think it’ll be an assault on jobs, I think it’ll be an assault on small businesses, on entrepreneurship, on hard work and that will end up being an assault on growth.

“We’re in a crisis. You can’t tax your way out of a crisis. You’ve got to grow your way out of a crisis, and that means reducing the size of the state and motivating people with hard work, taking risks, setting up businesses, being an entrepreneur. And that’s how you get growth in the economy.

“Instead we’re going to get a bigger state, more bloated, more inefficient and with outcomes frankly that are not commensurate with the money that’s being poured into the public services.”

Scientist and TV presenter Brian Cox has criticised reported cuts to research and development spending in the upcoming budget.

Former minister for science George Freeman MP has written a letter to Rachel Reeves expressing his concern at a reported below inflation spending settlement for UK science, research and innovation.

In his letter, Mr Freeman warned this would mean “deep cuts across other parts of R&D investment, with significant negative consequences for the UK’s world-leading R&D sector, putting the brakes on growth and undermining fragile investor confidence”.

Brian Cox shared the letter on the social media platform X, saying: “I wholeheartedly agree. Cutting UK R&D funding in today’s highly competitive and indeed dangerous world would be nothing short of idiotic.”

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson is on the media rounds this morning.

She has declined to say whether Labour’s pledge not to raise income tax, VAT or national insurance will remain in place for the next five years. However a government source has now been forced to clarify that the pledge covers the whole of this Parliament.

She also said that a working person in someone “whose main income arises from the fact that they go out to work every day”. There has been a lot of speculation about what Labour meant in their manifesto when they promised to not tax working people.

“What we’re talking about here is people whose main income arises from the fact that they go out to work every day,” the Education Secretary told Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips programme.

Rachel Reeves has compared her mission in this week’s Budget to Labour’s historic reform programmes under Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair.

In an interview with The Observer, she said: “This is only the fourth time that Labour has gone from opposition into government. In 1945, we rebuilt after the war; in 1964, we rebuilt with the white heat of technology; and in 1997, we rebuilt our public services. We need to do all of that now.

“This is a new settlement on Wednesday to rebuild our country and seize the massive opportunites in technology and energy that are out there.

“There is a global race on for those jobs and we need to seize them for Britain. If we can unlock that investment, public and private, then we can do great things as a country again.”

Rachel Reeves has said that she will launch a new era of public and private investment in hospitals, schools, transport and energy in her Budget.

In an interview with The Observer, Ms Reeves has said that Labour will change the fiscal rules to allow for £50bn of extra borrowing for capital projects.

£1.4bn has already been pledged to rebuild crumbling schools, but further measures for hospitals are expected to be announced.

She told the paper: “We inherited a plan from the previous government in which public sector net investment, capital investment, would be falling sharply over the course of this parliament, and that would mean scores of hospitals not built. It would mean massive opportunities to grow our economy in the digital and energy sector would be missed and those jobs would go elsewhere.”