Nigel Farage has condemned Tory hypocrisy on the economy after Kemi Badenoch won plaudits in Westminster for her confident takedown of the Budget last week.

The Reform leader says that while the Tories now preach about economic prudence on tax and spend, both ballooned during their time in office.

Writing for the Telegraph this evening, Mr Farage slams: “The Tories might think they are on an easy winner by attacking Reeves and Starmer for breaking their election pledges. Do they seriously imagine that the British public has forgotten 14 years of Conservative governments trashing promises, raising taxes, piling up national debt and saying one thing and doing the opposite?

Listen to Kemi Badenoch slamming Labour’s plans to raise welfare spending by another £9bn as “a Budget for Benefits Street” based on “hiking taxes to pay for welfare”. Nice try, Kemi. But the fact is the welfare spending surged under the Conservatives, rising from £211bn in 2013/14 to £297bn in 2023/4, according to estimates.

“Why should we believe a single word they say?”

Asked about the allegation that the Treasury misled the country about the state of the economic plight we face, Graham replied: “I think the Chancellor, when she made her speech in November at breakfast time, didn’t tell direct lies, as much as I can see it, as opposed to not informing the country… It was a sin of omission, not commission, and it’s still a sin.”

The Labour MP for Blackley and Middleton South, Graham Stringer, has told LBC’s Andrew Marr that he “can’t see how [the PM and Chancellor] can stay” in office if things do not improve, adding “if things aren’t turned around by May, then [he] would vote for a change” in the Labour Party’s leadership.

Keir Starmer has led the official turning on of Downing Street’s Christmas lights. Watch below

The militant doctors’ union is set to plunge the NHS into pre-Christmas chaos after the BMA announced a fresh junior doctors’ strike this December.

Resident doctors – formally known as junior doctors – will join the picket lines from the 17th December to the 22nd December.

The Tories say both the Union and Labour have left patients “facing a nightmare before Christmas”, and demanded Labour introduce their proposals to ban doctors from striking

Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage MP said: “Whatever the failings of the OBR, they have not wilfully attempted to mislead the British public. The wrong person has resigned today, it should have been Rachel Reeves.

“I am now calling on Richard Hughes to release all his correspondence with the Chancellor in the run up to the budget so we can see exactly what she knew and who’s really to blame for this mess.”

Kemi Badenoch has said Rachel Reeves is letting Richard Hughs act as her ‘fall guy’.

The Tory leader blasts: “Rachel Reeves has gone from legislating to strengthen the OBR, to trying to make the OBR Chair a fall guy for her deception and lies.

“Reeves must stop passing the buck. Either she gives Richard Hughes her full backing or the PM needs to bite the bullet and sack his Chancellor.”

The chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has resigned over the early publication of the watchdog’s forecasts.

Richard Hughes said he was resigning to allow the OBR to “quickly move on from this regrettable incident”.

The Tories have warned the Government against scapegoating the OBR for the Treasury’s handling of the Budget.

Tory shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride told the Commons: “Can I also seek the immediate reassurance that (Treasury minister James Murray’s) concluding comment, and I quote, ‘we will respond to this matter with the seriousness it demands,’ will not include scapegoating the OBR to distract from the serious questions surrounding the handling of the Budget by the Chancellor, ministers, the Treasury and Number 10?”

Shadow Chancellor Sir Mel Stride hit out at Rachel Reeves for being absent from the Commons for today’s statement.

He told MPs: “It is a matter of profound regret that while the Chancellor chose to appear before the media yesterday she did not see fit to appear here today.

“The Chancellor’s credibility is in tatters and to the long list of her failings in respect of these matters should be added that of disrespecting this House.”

The Chancellor is attending an investment summit in Wales.

Shadow Chancellor Sir Mel Stride told the Commons: “We expect those in positions of power to act with transparency, openness and integrity but it is increasingly clear that in recent weeks the conduct of people in government fell short of those standards.

“The impression has been given that there was a concerted attempt to paint an inaccurate picture of the public finances designed to give political cover for policy decisions around increases in taxes and welfare spending.”

The early release of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) Economic and Fiscal Outlook (EFO) was a “fundamental breach” of the watchdog’s responsibility, a Treasury minister has said.

James Murray told the Commons: “Last Wednesday, before the Chancellor (Rachel Reeves) had begun to give her Budget speech, the OBR published their entire EFO online.

“Let me be clear, this is a very serious breach of highly sensitive information.

“It is a fundamental breach of the OBR’s responsibility. It is a discourtesy to this House, and it should never have happened.”

Chief Secretary to the Treasury James Murray insisted Rachel Reeves has been “consistent and upfront” with the public.

In a Commons statement, he said: “The Chancellor has been consistent and upfront with the public about her considerations in the lead-up to the Budget last week.”

He added: “The Chancellor has been honest and consistent with the public in everything she has said.”

The Office for Budget Responsibility has said its leadership must take “immediate steps to change completely” how it publishes documents containing sensitive forecasts after it mistakenly released an analysis of the Budget early.

A report released today recommended a review of the watchdog’s processes for publishing such documents.

It said: “To rebuild trust, the leadership of the OBR must take immediate steps to change completely the publication arrangements for the two important and time-sensitive documents containing the results of its biannual forecasts that it publishes in a normal year, and review arrangements for all other publications.”

The Office for Budget Responsibility’s investigation found that last week’s Budget leak to be the “worst failure” since the watchdog was created in 2010.

A report released today said: “It is the worst failure in the 15-year history of the OBR. It was seriously disruptive to the Chancellor, who had every right to expect that the Economic and Fiscal Outlook would not be publicly available until she sat down at the end of her Budget speech, when it should, as is usual, have been published alongside the Treasury’s explanatory Red Book.

“The chair of the OBR, Richard Hughes, has rightly expressed his profound apologies.”

Asked whether Rachel Reeves misled the public in the lead-up to the Budget, Business Secretary Peter Kyle described the Chancellor as a “dedicated” public servant.

He said: “Rachel was fully focused on the interests of the economy and the people who live in every corner of the United Kingdom.

“She is a dedicated, professional and determined public servant, she inherited, even according to Tony Blair, she inherited the most difficult financial situation since the Second World War.

“She is healing the broken economy we inherited, and at the same time trying to create new opportunities that are fit for the moment that we are living in, and for that, I for one, am very grateful.”

Rachel Reeves’s deputy will make a statement to the House of Commons on the Budget row at around 3.30pm.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury James Murray is standing in for the Chancellor as she is attending an investment summit in Wales.

The SNP’s John Swinney has said Rachel Reeves “very clearly” misled the public over the state of the UK’s finances ahead of the Budget.

The Scottish First Minister said: “Rachel Reeves very clearly misled the public.

“She had information from the Office for Budget Responsibility before she made her infamous Downing Street speech, in which she suggested the situation was much graver than it actually was.”

It’s quite something that days after delivering the Budget your boss has to come out and defend you.

That’s exactly what’s just happened in a toe-curling moment this morning when Sir Keir Starmer said Rachel Reeves didn’t lie about the nation’s financial fortunes.

As a lawyer, Keir Starmer is well aware of speaking “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”. I’m still not sure we got the full story here.

Make no mistake about it, both the Prime Minister and his Chancellor are on very shaky ground indeed.

Read the full analysis here

Sir Keir Starmer dodged a question on if he would remove the whip from Labour MPs if they do not welfare reforms after the previous rebellion.

He said: “On this issue in welfare, I’m focusing particularly on young people, I do think there’s a general consensus there is a moral mission.

“I mean, there aren’t many people who are comfortable with nor should they be the fact there’s nearly a million young people who are … stuck with not earning and not learning.”

He later added: “I think it’s generally there’s a strong consensus that we must do something about that, and we will do something about it.”

He acknowledged the welfare bill has risen “extraordinarily” but failed to explicitly say that he planned to bring it down by the next election.

Sir Keir said: “In terms of the welfare bill, we’ve got two reviews going on … we need to let them complete their course.

“It is a moral mission. But I’ve been outspoken a number of times on the fact that the last government lost control of the welfare spending, and like all things, it falls to us to pick up the mess that they have made.”

“I am very supportive of the OBR,” the PM says with all the hearfelt meaning as if it had been spoken by an AI generated version of himself

He said: “I’m not going to suggest that what happened last week, which was the entire Budget being published before the Chancellor got to her feet, was not anything other than a serious error.

“This was market sensitive information. It was a massive discourtesy to Parliament. It’s a serious error, there’s an investigation that’s going on.

“But as for the OBR itself, I’m very supportive of the OBR for the reasons I’ve set out – vital for stability, vital and integral to our fiscal rules, which I’ve said a number of times are ironclad.”

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has responded to claims that she misled Cabinet ministers about the Budget.

The Times quoted an unnamed Cabinet minister as describing the handling of the Budget as “a disaster from start to finish”.

“At no point were the Cabinet told about the reality of the OBR forecasts,” they told the newspaper.

Speaking to BBC Wales at the Wales Investment Summit, the Chancellor said: “You would never expect the Prime Minister and Chancellor to go through all the detailed numbers.

“The cabinet are briefed on the morning of the Budget on the Budget numbers.

“Of course, we go through things that affect individual government departments, but the whole information of the Budget is not supposed to be provided until the Chancellor delivers the Budget.

“Obviously, this time, it was leaked early, but not by the Treasury.”

Sir Keir Starmer was asked if Rachel Reeves failed to offer “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” over the state of the public finances ahead of the Budget.

He said: “On the build-up to the Budget, let me just step through that in some detail. Because there was an OBR productivity review. The result of that was there was £16 billion less than we might have otherwise had. That’s a difficult starting point for any Budget.

“We had already made commitments that I think I’d expressed to you and many others, many times over, that we were going to protect our public services particularly the NHS, to cut borrowing costs, and to bear down on the cost of living … We had clear commitments that we’d made throughout the process as to what it was that we were going to achieve.

“Therefore against that backdrop it was inevitable that we would always have to raise revenue, so there’s no misleading there. During the overall process the numbers improved and there was a point at which we thought myself included that we might have to raise for a manifesto breach of some significance. I didn’t want to get to that place but I recognised I might have to.

“And as the process then continued it then became clear to me and others that we might be able to do what we needed to do with our priorities without our manifesto breach and that’s what we did with the fair and necessary decisions that we took … which did make good on the principles.”

Sir Keir Starmer hit out at Brexit as he called for closer ties with the EU.

The Prime Minister said: “Let me be crystal clear, there is no credible economic vision for Britain that does not position us as an open, trading economy.

“So we must all now confront the reality that the Brexit deal we have significantly hurt our economy and so for economic renewal, we have to keep reducing frictions.

“We have to keep moving towards a closer relationship with the EU, and we have to be grown up about that, to accept that this will require trade-offs.

“That applies to our trading relations right across the world, and as you’ve seen already with this Government, there are deals to be done if you’re committed to building relationships.

“That’s what we’ve done with the US, it’s what we’ve done with India, and it’s what we’ve done with the EU and we will keep going.

“We will continue to reject drift, to confront reality and take control of our future.”

Sir Keir Starmer said: “I’m proud we scrapped the two-child limit.

“I am proud of lifting over half a million children out of poverty, proud we raised the national minimum wage again.

“That is what a Labour Government is for, making life better for working families, unlocking their potential and giving our children a fair chance to get on and that is the story of the Budget.”

Usual attacks on the Tories – austerity, Liz Truss….

He claims Britain has now got its confidence back under Labour.

Sir Keir Starmer said: We have now walked through the narrowest part of the tunnel.”

He acknowledged that the cost-of-living crisis has not gone away and said: “In the year ahead you will see the benefits of our approach, and not just in the national statistics, but in your communities.”

He added: “Bit by bit, you will see a country that no longer feels the burden of decline, or the sense that things can never get better.”

And he admits “there are alternatives.”

Sir Keir Starmer said the Budget was a “moment of personal pride”.

He said: “I do not want to see a country where children grow up in poverty. I don’t think anybody in this country wants that.

“It is a fundamental British belief that every child should go as far as their talent will take them and poverty is a barrier to that.”

Sir Keir Starmer is now delivering his post-Budget speech at a community centre in London.

Plenty of “will she, won’t she” chit chat over whether Rachel Reeves will survive this latest scandal in the minute’s before Sir Keir Starmer takes to the stage.

A gathering of around 200 journalists, MPs, and supporters have packed into a south London community centre to hear the Prime Minister explain the Budget but also launch a staunch defence of his under-pressure Chancellor

Sir Keir Starmer’s top aide has insisted that Rachel Reeves did not mislead voters over the state of the public finances ahead of the Budget.

Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister Darren Jones insisted there was a “funding gap” to fill when asked when he knew that there was no “black hole” in the public finances.

The Cabinet minister told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “There are two things relevant here. The OBR did downgrade its assumptions about how much money was coming in over future years by looking at the past 10 years.

“That is true and correct. And as I say, there was a funding gap.”

Daily Express political editor Martyn Brown is at the central London venue for Sir Keir Starmer’s speech.

He has sent over this picture showing the stage is set ahead of the Prime Minister’s address at 10.30am.

Sir Keir Starmer has met parents and children at a nursery in central London to discuss the rollout of free childcare for children aged nine months to four years ahead of his speech.

Rachel Reeves has defended herself over claims she misled the public over the Budget.

In media interviews on Sunday morning, the Chancellor said she “of course” did not lie when she set out a gloomy economic picture at the beginning of November.

She said: “Anyone who thinks that there was no repair job to be done on the public finances, I just don’t accept that.

“We needed to build more resilience, more headroom into our economy. That’s what I did, along with that investment in the NHS and cutting bills for families.”

Nigel Farage has urged the Prime Minister’s independent standards adviser to look into potential breaches of the ministerial code by Rachel Reeves.

The code demands ministers “give accurate and truthful information to Parliament” and are “as open as possible with Parliament and the public”.

In his letter to Sir Laurie Magnus, the Reform UK leader accused the Chancellor of “a sustained and deliberate narrative advanced across multiple platforms, after the OBR forecasts were known to the Treasury, and in circumstances where the existence of fiscal headroom was not being disclosed to Parliament or to the public”.

Analysis by the Institute of Directors revealed confidence amongst company bosses fell last week after Labour’s tax rises dampened growth hopes.

The latest poll by the IoD found that business leaders’ confidence in their own company plunged to -20 after the Budget, down from zero in October.

Confidence has only ever been lower in April 2020, when Britain was reeling from the pandemic and lockdown restrictions.

Sir Keir Starmer will use a speech backing the Budget to signal a fresh push on welfare reform.

The Prime Minister will say an overhaul of the benefits system is needed after he was forced to abandon cuts planned earlier this year in the face of a major backbench Labour rebellion.

The Labour leader will say: “We have to confront the reality that our welfare state is trapping people, not just in poverty, but out of work.”

The Chancellor’s stealth taxes will lead to slower economic growth in 2026.

The economy will grow by just 1pc in 2026, according to KPMG, down from previous forecasts of 1.1pc before last week’s Budget.

Yael Selfin, chief economist at KPMG UK, said: “With ongoing headwinds continuing to weigh on household activity, consumer spending is likely to remain subdued over the coming year.

“Although the autumn Budget avoided front-loaded tax hikes, the decision to maintain frozen tax thresholds until 2031 means that fiscal drag will persist.”

Labour MP Tulip Siddiq has, in a court in Bangladesh, been sentenced to two years in prison for corruption involving a government land project.

Her aunt, ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina, was sentenced to five years.

Ms Siddiq, who is MP for Hampstead and Highgate in London, has denied the allegations.

The Associated Press reports Rabiul Alam, the judge of Dhaka’s Special Judge’s Court, said Ms Hasina misused her power as prime minister.

He also said Ms Siddiq was guilty of corruptly influencing her aunt in helping her mother get a piece of land in a government project.

Ms Siddiq’s lawyers have called the charges baseless and politically motivated.

The UK does not have an extradition treaty in place with Bangladesh.

The Hampstead and Highgate MP resigned from her ministerial job in the Treasury earlier this year following an investigation by the Prime Minister’s ethics adviser into her links to Ms Hasina’s regime, which was overthrown last year.