Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has said she does not “recognise” reports ministers may means test free school meals. Asked if free school meals would be means-tested following the spring statement, as a report in the Times suggests (see 8.27am and 11.47am), Reeves told broadcasters: This government is rolling out free breakfast clubs in all primary schools from April. I don’t recognise those claims that the government are looking at means-testing free school meals. In fact, this government are ensuring that all children get a good start to the day with a breakfast club, helping working parents and helping all children get a good start in life. That is what this government is determined to do after 14 years of Conservative failure. At the Downing Street lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson also said that he did not “recognise” the reports. Asked what exactly this meant, and if he could confirm the government was ruling out means testing school meals currently free to all infant pupils, the spokesperson declined to elaborate. But later a source said Reeve had given a clear indication that the proposal as reported was not one being considered. Keir Starmer and Donald Trump spoke about a UK-US economic prosperity deal in a call last night, Downing Street said this morning. At the lobby briefing, asked about reports that the government may cut the digital services tax, to help US tech firms and to persuade the White House to reduce the impact of tariffs on the UK in return, the PM’s spokesperson replied: Firstly, just taking a step back, the UK is working with the United States on an economic prosperity deal, building on our shared strength of that commitment to economic security. As part of those discussions, the prime minister and President Trump discussed progress made in those discussions last night. The UK will only do a deal in the national interest, which reflects this government’s mandate to deliver economic stability for British people. The spokesperson did not say whether or not the digital services tax came up in the call. But he said the government remained in favour of the tax in principle. In relation to the digital services tax, the chancellor this morning said that the digital services tax is hugely important. It brings in around £800m a year and ensures that companies pay tax in the country that they’re operating in. So we will continue to make sure that businesses pay their fair share of tax, including businesses in the digital sector. On the prospects of a trade deal, the spokesperson said that “good progress” was being made. But he confirmed that what was being envisaged was less a full-blown free trade agreement, and more a deal just covering certain sectors. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has been criticised for accepting two free tickets for a corporate box to see a Sabrina Carpenter concert at the O2 Arena. She went with a family member and, in an interview with the BBC yeserday, she defended accepting the gift on the grounds that her security concerns mean it is difficult for her to attend a concert like that as an ordinary member of the audience. Keir Starmer says he accepts corporate box tickets when he goes to see Arsenal matches for the same reason. Reeves’s explanation did not impress the Daily Mail, which has splashed on the story this morning. Asked about the issue in interviews this morning, Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, wasn’t 100% supportive. She told Times Radio: I haven’t taken any tickets, to be honest, since I was elected back in [July] as a new member of parliament, and going straight into the Ministry of Justice and then coming straight into the Department for Transport. I actually, sadly, haven’t been to see any concerts at all over the last nine months, partly because I’ve been very, very busy. As a member of parliament, I have never accepted tickets to any concerts or anything like that. She also said that, when she did have time off, she would prefer to spend it with her family. The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority has confirmed that MPs will get a pay rise of 2.8%, taking their salary in 2025-26 to £93,904. Ipsa proposed this figure last month, and it has now been confirmed following a consultation. According to the Times, Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, has floated the idea that the Department for Education might have to stop funding free school meals for all infants (pupils in reception and years one and two) to meet the Treasury’s targets for cuts. But this is seen as a negotiating ploy, more than a serious option, and the Times also says “while moves to axe some policies are likely to be abandoned as politically toxic, they illustrate the scale of the cuts being examined as part of the government’s zero based review of all spending”. That has not stopped the opposition parties criticising the idea. Munira Wilson, the Lib Dem education spokesperson, said: Children cannot be expected to learn on empty stomachs. If the government go ahead with this, they should hang their heads in shame as they slash free school meals, while giving a tax cut to Musk and other tech billionaires. And Pete Wishart, the SNP’s deputy leader at Westminster, said: Reports that the Labour government is planning billions of pounds of austerity cuts to public services, and could even end universal free school meals for infants, will send alarm bells ringing in Scotland and it shows the Labour Party can’t be trusted to protect families. Keir Starmer had taken part in a pothole-related photocall this morning. But, instead of actually pointing at a pothole like someone auditioning for a slot in Angry people in local newspapers (see 8.27am), he instead visited a garage where mechanics fix the damaged caused by potholes. As PA Media reports, being shown damage to tyres caused by potholes, Starmer said: “It’s really irritating, if you’re doing the school run or you’re using your car or your van for work.” The PM also said there needs to be “accountability” in the system of fixing potholes. While speaking to two members of the public who have been affected by pothole damage, Starmer was told that budgets for fixing the holes are “the wrong way around”. Starmer replied: The first thing we need to do is to get a bit of accountability into it to know which councils are doing what where. He said today’s announcement would “incentivise” councils to “get on and do it”. In his Radio 5 Live interview this morning Starmer said fixing potholes “isn’t boring”. (See 8.34am.) The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK group is urging Rachel Reeves to abandon the plans to cut Pip (the personal independent payment, a disability payment). It has explained why in an open letter to the chancellor that it says is backed by almost 10,000 relatives of people who died during the pandemic. Here is an extract. Rampant inequality also contributed to the UK’s high death toll. Disabled people were 11 times more likely to die from Covid-19 than non-disabled people. Instead of addressing the inequalities that contributed to that horrifying statistic, the government is pushing ahead with plans to slash disability benefits, driving more people into poverty and making the country even less prepared for future pandemics. A broken safety net doesn’t just fail individuals – it weakens society’s ability to respond to a crisis. The full letter has been posted on social media. If you are wondering why, as an alternative to cutting spending in areas like disability benefits and overseas aids, Rachel Reeves does not just revise her fiscal rules and borrow a bit more, you should read this by Alex Clark and Richard Partington. It explains, with clear, interactive graphics, how government borrowing costs have soared over the past decade, leading to a huge rise in the proportion of government spending going on debt repayments. Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, was doing an interview round this morning. She may have been hoping to talk about potholes, but mostly she faced questions about the closure of Heathrow on Friday after an electricity substation was knocked out by a fire. Here are some of the main lines from her interviews. Alexander said said she would have struggled to sleep if she were running Heathrow airport during last week’s power outage. She was responding to reports that Thomas Woldbye went back to bed after the crisis began late on Thursday night. Asked if she would have done the same, Alexanderm who was in charge of transport in London as a deputy mayor for three years, told LBC: I’ve had to deal with some pretty stressful situations in my time. I probably would struggle to sleep, to be honest. But she also stepped back from being explicitly critical of Woldbye’s decision, saying: It’s my understanding that he placed his chief operating officer in charge. He will have also known that there was going to be a huge number of very difficult decisions the following day. I’m not going to justify decisions that Heathrow leadership did or didn’t take. I wasn’t sat at the table. I didn’t have the information that he had available to him at that time. She sidestepped questions about whether or not closing Heathrow was the right decision. She told the Today programme: The decision to close the airport on Friday was a decision taken by Heathrow’s management. Pressed on whether she thought that was the correct decision, she replied: I don’t have all the information that they had available at the point in time when they made that decision. In another interview, on BBC Breakfast, asked if she had full confidence in Heathrow management, she replied: That’s not a matter for me. The individuals who need to ask themselves whether they have full confidence in Heathrow management are the Heathrow board … Heathrow is a private company. Decisions about the leadership of that company are matters for its own board. She said that, although Heathrow had back-up generators, they were “designed to protect the critical systems within the airport not to power the entirety of the airport” because it consumed “roughly the amount of energy that a small city would consume”. She said Heathrow had to suspend flights on Friday because its power system had to be rebooted. She explained: I had a conversation with the chief executive of Heathrow on Friday morning. He told me that whilst there are multiple power supplies into the airport, the fire had created a very significant problem with respect to Terminals 2 and 4 specifically and that there had to be some reconfiguration of power supplies into the airport. That meant all the systems had to be turned off and all the systems had to be restarted again in a safe way. There have been a lot of claims recently, in the rightwing papers and on social media, that the government is wasting a fortune on expensive cars for disabled people getting benefits, through the Motability scheme. Archie Bland has a very good explainer setting out how the scheme actually works, and showing why many of these allegations are false or misleading. The forthcoming plan to fix the NHS will see funds allocated to social care, Wes Streeting, the health secretary, has suggested. PA Media reports: Streeting said spending NHS resources “more effectively though social care” will be better for patients and deliver better value for taxpayers. At present, social care is most often paid for by councils, but thousands of people at any one time are stuck in NHS hospital beds even though they are fit to be discharged. This is because of delays in arranging social care in local communities, finding spaces in care homes or difficulties in arranging other care. At any one time, around one in seven hospital beds are taken up by people who could be cared for elsewhere. Inadequate social care in the community also puts pressure on the NHS, such as through increasing hospital admissions and GP visits. Speaking to the BBC’s Panorama programme, Streeting suggested he will increase NHS spending on social care but did not say by how much. He said: “I want to spend more of our resources through social care because it delivers better outcomes for patients and better value for taxpayers. So I’m convinced that we can spend NHS resources more effectively through social care.” On the figures involved, he said: “Well, these sorts of discussions are always subject to spending reviews, but the 10-year plan for health will include elements of social care, because the two do have to go hand in hand together.” Streeting also repeated his belief that the NHS is “also not all about money”. He said that “you can’t just keep on pouring ever increasing amounts of taxpayers’ money into a system that is not set up to deliver best use of that money and best care for patients and that’s why the system needs to change”. The forthcoming 10-year plan for the NHS will focus on the “three shifts” the government says are needed – moving NHS services towards more community-based care, preventing people getting ill in the first place and better use of digital technology. Well, that did not really get us very far. Apologies to anyone who feels misled by “grilling” in the headline. We learned very little. After the interview was over, Rachel Burden, the Radio 5 Live presenter, read out some listener reaction, including a message from someone who said: “The country is literally falling apart and Sir Keir is fixated on potholes. I give up.” But in the interview Keir Starmer did not challenge the claim that some government departments will have to reduce spending. This is what he said when it was put to him that unprotected deparments would face cuts. We’re looking across the board. We made a budget last year, we made some record investments, and we’re not going to undo that. So, for example, we’ve got a record amount into the NHS. That’s just delivered five months’ worth of waiting lists coming down – five months in a row during the winter, that’s really good. So we’re not going to alter the basics. But we are going to look across. And one of the areas that we will be looking at is, can we run the government more efficiently? Can we take some money out of government? And I think we can. I think we’re essentially asking businesses across the country to be more efficient, to look at AI and tech in the way that they do their business. I want the same challenge in government, which is, why shouldn’t we be more efficient? The main budgets that are protected are health, defence, schools and early years. Starmer seemed to be confirming that other departments face cuts. Edwards asks masculinity, the Gareth Southgate lecture and the TV show Adolescence. Starmer says he is “worried” about this. Southgate’s lecture was “really powerful”, he says. I do think this is something that we have to take seriously. We have to address. We can’t shrug our shoulders at it. There’s a reason why the debate has suddenly sparked into life on this and that’s because I think a lot of parents, a lot of people who work with young people at school or elsewhere, recognise that we may have a problem with boys and young men that we need to addres Q: Who are the male role models? Starmer says he looks to sport. But he says for pupils it is often people at school. I always go to sport for this. Footballers, athletes, I think they are role models. But I also think if you actually ask a young person, they’re more likely to identify somebody who’s in their school, a teacher, or somebody who maybe is a sports coach, something like that. So we need to make sure that – this is something that dads do, dad would reach for a sort of sporting hero – I think children, young people, are more likely to reach someone closer to them, within their school, within their community. And that’s, I think, where we need to do some of the work. Q: Do we need a minister for men? Starmer says he does not think that is the answer. And that’s it. Q: ‘Efficiency’ sounds nebulous. What do these cuts mean? Starmer says AI can bring huge efficiencies. As an example, he says it makes heart scans quicker and more efficient. Q: You are betting big on tech. Starmer says it is going to be transformative. He recalls speaking to a social worker in this room in No 10 who told him she used AI to organise her notes, meaning she could spend more time talking to clients. Starmer segues into border control, and says the Border Force is getting new, anti-terrorism style powers, to deal with small boats He says he does not believe that the gangs running small boats cannot be taken out. Q: Will some government departments face cuts in the spring statement? Starmer says the budget last year included record investment, and that will not change. But the government is looking to see if it can do some things more efficiently. Q: Is this central government taking more control? You could just give councils the money? Starmer says government used to do that, but councils did not always use the money to repair potholes. He says people may think this is trivial. But if a driver hits a bad hithole, they could end up with a £600 repair bill for their car. He says the government is allocating a record amount of money for this. And there is also a safety issue for cyclists, he says. UPDATE: Starmer said: You say that, and some people do say, ‘well, it’s just potholes’. I can tell you, if you hit a pothole, there will be some people hitting a pothole this morning, and then they are picking up an average £600 bill to their car or their van. That isn’t boring, that is really irritating. We’ve got far too many of them, and this is about getting that job done. Radio 5 Live is playing its interview with Keir Starmer now. Rick Edwards is interviewing him live. Edwards starts by saying they are in the grand Terracotta room, under a chandelier. He starts by asking what Starmer is announcing, and Starmer does the pothole spiel. (See 8.27am.) Good morning. Keir Starmer will be on Radio 5 Live soon to talk about potholes. The government is promoting a new scheme that involves councils getting extra funding to repair roads, but with the release of cash contingent upon pothole monitoring – authorities having to publish details of the progress they are making. As the Department for Transport explains in a news release: From mid-April, local authorities in England will start to receive their share of the government’s record £1.6bn highway maintenance funding, including an extra £500m – enough to fill 7 million potholes a year. But to get the full amount, all councils in England must from today publish annual progress reports and prove public confidence in their work. Local authorities who fail to meet these strict conditions will see 25% of the uplift (£125m in total) withheld. Potholes matter. Voters care about the state of the roads, they notice when they improve and so there is a reason why Starmer talking about potholes, just as Rishi Sunak did when he was PM. We may even get a picture like this soon. But with the spring statement only two days away, and the government facing criticismg on multiple fronts, Starmer will be lucky to get 90 seconds on potholes before other questions kick in. Here are just some of the other difficult topics that could come up. Why does the government seem minded to water down the digital services tax, saving US tech companies potentially hundreds of millions of pounds, in a move that would be seen as appeasement of the Trump administration? Rowena Mason has the latest on this story, which splashes the Guardian, here. Will the government’s plans to cut the size of the civil service really lead to the loss of 50,000 jobs, as the Times reports? In their story Oliver Wright and Aubrey Allegretti say: Ministers are drawing up plans to axe up to five times as many civil service jobs as previously planned, as Rachel Reeves puts herself on a collision course with public sector unions. As she looks to balance the books in her spring statement this week, the chancellor announced on Sunday that she would cut up to £2 billion from the government’s running costs by 2030. The cut equates to 15 per cent of the government’s £13 billion-a-year administration budget, of which more than three quarters is spent on staff. The Times understands that the cuts are likely to reduce the size of the civil service by up to 50,000 jobs — five times more than previously mooted by the government. Will Starmer let the Department for Education cut universal free school meals for infants as part DfE budget cuts? According to the Times, that is one option that has been floated. “The education secretary has also offered to axe funding for free period products in schools as well as dance, music and PE schemes as part of potential savings,” the Times reports. Will Hazell in the i says the education sector “is braced for the “worst financial situation for a generation”. All these headlines relate to the spring statement on Wednesday, which is already generating grim headlines for No 10. But Starmer is also likely to be asked about relations with President Trump, and how he felt when he heard Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy, ridicule Starmer’s Ukraine policy in an interview. Asked about Starmer’s plans for a “coalition of the willing”, Witkoff said: I think it’s a combination of a posture and a pose and a combination of also being simplistic. There is this sort of notion that we have all got to be like [British wartime prime minister] Winston Churchill. Russians are going to march across Europe. That is preposterous by the way. We have something called Nato that we did not have in World War Two. Here is the agenda for the day. 8.30am: Keir Starmer is being interviewed on Radio 5 Live. 11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing. 2.30pm: John Healey, the defence secretary, takes questions in the Commons. 4.30pm: Steve Reed, the environment secretary, gives evidence to the environmental audit committee. 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Author: Andrew Sparrow