Starmer starts by recalling that 97 people went to a football match at Hillsborough and never came back.

He says the British state failed the families of those victims at an almost inhuman level.

But those victims refused to give up, he says. They fought to ensure “people they would never know or meet” would never have to go through this again. That is why this law is being passed.

He says the victims were killed unlawfully. That should have been said immediately. It was not an accident; it was an injustice, he says.

And “further injustice” happened when the families were subject to police lies. And the state aided and abetted “a cover-up by the very institutions that are supposed to protect, not to serve”.

And this has happened in many other cases, which is why legislation is needed, he says.

MPs are now debating the second reading of the public office (accountability) bill – known at the Hillsborough law.

And, unusually, Keir Starmer is going to open the debate.

The Tories have urged the government to rethink its Northern Ireland Troubles bill in the light to the acquittal of “Soldier F” in the Bloody Sunday murder trial.

Speaking during an urgent question in the Commons, Alex Burghart, the shadow Northern Ireland secretary, said the result of the trial showed how it was “vanishingly difficult” to obtain convictions in cases like this. He went on:

And this, of course, has implications for the government’s Troubles bill, which will reopen many such cases, cases where there is no prospect of resolution but only of ongoing legal process, with almost no possibility of bringing terrorists to court, but which, ultimately, leave open the likelihood of ever more vexatious complaints against our veterans.

Burghart urged the government to “think again” about its bill.

Hilary Benn, the Northern Ireland secretary, defended the Troubles bill. He said the Legacy Act passed by the Tories had to be replaced because it was “opposed by all of the political parties in Northern Ireland, and was found by the courts to be incompatible with our human rights obligations”.

The candidate who came last in the Runcorn and Helsby byelection has launched a legal challenge against the result on the basis there was “fraud” at the count, PA Media reports. PA says:

English Constitution party candidate Graham Moore received 50 votes, or a 0.15% share of the vote, in the May election, which saw Reform UK candidate Sarah Pochin claim the seat with 12,645 votes, just six more than the Labour candidate.

Giving evidence in the trial of his election petition challenge at Chester crown court on Monday, Moore spoke about the “statistical impossibility” of receiving 50 votes, which he said was the exact number he received when standing in the Tooting byelection in 2016.

He told the trial, sitting before high court judges Mr Justice Spencer and Mr Justice Bryan: “I need the court to focus on process, because process is key.”

Moore, who represented himself in the hearing, added: “It’s not the first time it’s happened but, most importantly, when I’ve seen it happen at other counts no one has ever pushed it forward to an election hearing and explained the method and operation of fraud to two high court judges.”

He said he and his count agents had seen an estimated 116 ballots with votes cast for his party on.

He told the court: “I’m not suggesting that I have won this election. I have never said that. We’re not really interested in whether it would be Labour or Conservative or even Reform.”

Moore said he did not know whether the loss of votes which he said he saw was down to error or fraud.

The petition has been made against two respondents, Pochin, who was legally represented but not present in court, and returning officer Stephen Young.

The trial is listed for three days.

Max Wilkinson, the Lib Dem home affairs spokesperson, said within hours of this attack happening, social media was full of speculation about this attack, inciting racist and Islamphobic reaction.

He accuses “figures on the hard right, including members of the Reform party” of trying to “exploit the incident for political gain”.

Desperate to involve themselves in the tragedy, they reached for their dog whistles. They threw around baseless opinions on levels of crime when facts were available. They were shamelessly trying to turn tragedy into yet another excuse to whip up fear and sow division.

He claims Philp’s comments today “also veered into that realm”. He added:

Never is an opportunity to blame foreigners missed. That is beneath contempt.

Philp heckles, saying he was not blaming foreigners and that Wilkinson should withdraw his accusation.

Mahmood says she deplores the way “armchair warriors” spread misinformation online.

She says at moments of crisis “people normally reveal their true colours”. She says she will leave her comments there.

Mahmood starts by saying her thoughts are with the victims.

She thanks the emergency services.

The speed of their response, as well as their skill and professionalism, were exemplary, she says.

She goes on:

I would also like to pay tribute to the breathtaking bravery of those on the train itself, including the heroic acts of the passengers and train police who intercepted the attacker.

I would like to a particularly attention to one member of the [train’s] crew who ran towards danger, confronting the attacker for a sustained period of time, and stopped his advance to the train.

He put himself in harm’s way, suffered grievous injuries as a result, and remains in hospital today in a critical but stable condition. On Saturday, he went to work to do his job. Today he is a hero and forever will be.

Shabana Mahmood is making a Commons statement about the Cambridgeshire train attack.

Before she starts, Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker, says charges have been brought, and he urges MPs to avoid saying anything that may be prejudicial to a trial.

Kemi Badenoch has admitted that treating PMQs like pantomime has helped her prepare for it.

In an interview with the BBC’s Newcast podcast, she said that she has changed her approach to PMQs in the year she has been Tory leader.

At first she started doing a lot of research, “being very forensic, having all these statistics”, she said.

But she realised that people were not following the argument she was trying to make.

She went on:

I just thought this isn’t working, I need something that people can understand. And actually thinking about it like a panto helped …

It’s more theatre than it is a prosecution or a question and answer session or an interrogation. And that helped in terms of simplifying it, so that everybody could follow, rather than me rushing through loads of statistics and thinking ‘Yeah, I got him,’ and no one noticed.

Badenoch said she was also now more inclined to stick to one topic at PMQs.

[Originally] I would often cover more than one topic because lots of people wanted me to say different things. I get letters from people, please, can you talk about this? Can you talk about that? And I would try and do that.

But people couldn’t follow it.

Here is a round-up of what journalists and commentators are saying about Nigel Farage’s speech today.

• Peter Walker from the Guardian says there was wishful thinking in the speech.

This “major” speech on the economy and deregulation by Nigel Farage is thus far a bit of an odd one - mainly some fairly generalised complaining about compliance and diversity, with a callout for cryptocurrencies. As yet less a policy speech than a condensed thread of Telegraph reader comments.

Twenty-plus minutes in and it’s all been about making the UK more attractive for wealthy people. It feels a fair way from Farage’s boast in April that Reform are the party of workers and had “a good partnership” with unions.

Several times in this speech Farage has confidently predicted a 2027 (or sooner) general election due to a disastrous fiscal crisis. This is a trope which was also common at the Conservative conference, and it feels to me more like wishful thinking than anything else.

• Adam Bienkov from Byline Times says this about Farage’s proposal for the minimum wage for young workers to be cut.

Nigel Farage, who has so far registered a total of £280,500 for four hours a month as a “brand ambassador” for a company selling gold bars, thinks a £10 an hour minimum wage for young people is too high

• George Eaton at the New Statesman says Farage is not giving an accurate picture of what drastic spending cuts would look like.

What would real spending cuts look like? A recent report by Policy Exchange offers a snapshot. It calls for a three-year freeze in the state pension and the abolition of the triple lock; the removal of pensioner benefits such as winter fuel payments, free bus passes and free prescriptions from all but the poorest; the scaling back of childcare subsidies and free school meals; and the introduction of a £20 fee for GP appointments. Reform and the Conservatives – for all their purported radicalism – are not prepared to propose anything so contentious.

• Ben Riley-Smith from the Telegraph says Nigel Farage’s new economic offer is reminiscent of what mainstream parties offer.

For an insurgent, the new strategy has curious echoes of how the mainstream parties play it when they’re in opposition - keep your powder dry on giveaways until nearer the general election, when you know where the governing party is ending up and what you can afford

• James Heale at the Spectator says Farage sounded like a mainstream Conservative.

Farage declared that a Reform administration would be ‘the most pro-business, the most pro-entrepreneurship government that has been seen in this country in modern times’. He accepted that major tax cuts would be off the agenda until government debt was down, hammering both of the two main parties on their record here. Much of his 30-minute speech was indistinguishable from that given by any mainstream Conservative politician. There were echoes of the address given by Andrew Griffith, the shadow business secretary, at last month’s Tory conference: financial education in schools, revitalising the City and cutting post-Brexit regulations.

• Sean O’Grady from the Independent says Farage seems to be hoping economic collapse will trigger and election.

Nigel Farage‘s suggestion that market forces will force Labour to adopt austerity measures that will in turn collapse the government is wishful thinking masquerading as wisdom.

• Matthew Lynn at the Spectator says the speech shows Farage is serious about power.

In reality, Farage has learned the lesson of the Truss debacle. A Reform government could easily be destroyed by the financial markets within its first few weeks of taking power. Instead, Farage has seen that it is better to bet on growth, especially from scaling back Net Zero, and potentially opening up the UK’s plentiful reserves of shale oil and gas, and then use the revenues from that to steadily lower the tax burden. It is dull, and doesn’t promise many fireworks. But it is also a lot more likely to actually work.

Farage’s latest speech is hardly tantalisingly, but it makes one thing plain to see: this is a man, and a party, that is serious about winning power.

• Tom Harwood from GB News says one energy plan announced by Farage today was identical to the Tories’.

Interesting pledge today from Farage to reduce energy bills by £165 pa.

That’s the same precise figure that the Conservative Party announced a month ago at their conference.

There are details of the Tory plan here. Today Farage said “We reckon, sensibly we could cut £165 per annum off everybody’s electricity bill.”

Harwood also says the speech was more lightweight than he was expecting.

This big economic speech from Nigel Farage is much lighter on policy than I was expecting.

• Michael White, the former Guardian political editor, says Farage has bowed to reality.

Farage using the word “aspiration” about Reform fantasy tax & spend 2024 promises (£100 bn extra borrowing?) is a big moment, his first brush with reality. And he’s right to question UK’s costly pension triple lock – we must target it better so I get less

• Robert Hutton from the Critic says Farage should have more respect for PR departments.

There is something magnificent about Nigel Farage, who has lost two of the five MPs he was elected with *last year*, explaining that HR departments don’t matter.

A head teachers’ union has lost a bid to bring a high court legal challenge against Ofsted over the watchdog’s plan to grade schools through report cards, PA Media reports. PA says:

The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), along with head teacher Barbara Middleton, began legal action against Ofsted in May this year, claiming that the body failed to adequately consult on its plans to change the way schools are inspected.

Ofsted scrapped single-word judgments for schools in 2024 and unveiled the new report card scheme in September, which is due to come into effect on November 10.

The new framework was announced following a consultation launched after criticism of the inspection system since the death of head teacher Ruth Perry.

At the high court today, barristers for the NAHT and Middleton said that they should be allowed to proceed with a legal challenge over Ofsted’s consultation and decision to adopt the new framework.

They claimed the consultation “ruled out” the use of “narrative-only verdicts” on schools and failed to consider the impact of the new framework on staff wellbeing.

They also asked a judge to temporarily block the report card plans from coming into force, pending the full hearing of the challenge.

Lawyers for Ofsted said it was “vigorously opposed” to a delay in implementing the plans, telling the court that they were a “considerable upgrade in terms of wellbeing” and that the challenge “is on any view a weak claim”.

In a ruling, Mr Justice Saini dismissed the claim, finding that Ofsted had not made an “arguable error”.

He said: “It is for Ofsted to decide how to conduct its inspections in the way which, in its expert judgment, is most effective, while taking account of the risk to the wellbeing of teaching staff and leaders.”

He continued: “The evidence satisfies me that Ofsted’s conclusions, that a grading plus narrative approach best balances the different interests at play, was reached after a detailed consultation conducted in a procedurally lawful way and after a careful assessment of the various views expressed to it, including consideration of wellbeing issues.”

Peter Walker is the Guardian’s senior political correspondent.

The Liberal Democrats have condemned Nigel Farage as “a chancer” after the Reform UK leader declined to say whether he still supported proportional representation now his party seems likely to benefit from the current voting system.

Farage has long been a vocal advocate as PR, including before the last general election, where Reform received more than 14% of the total votes but fewer than 1% of the MPs.
Now, however, things are different. Such is the distorting effect of first past the post that now Reform are polling above 30%, this is generally seen as enough to give them a clear majority in the Commons.

Asked – by the Guardian’s Pippa Crerar – at Monday’s press conference about why he had “gone rather quiet” on PR, Farage ignored the question.

Lisa Smart, the Cabinet Office spokesperson for the Lib Dems, who very much remain fans of PR, said:

Nigel Farage is a chancer and a grifter. He’s following the Trump playbook once again: cynically liking one set of rules until another lot suit him better.

Previously a supporter of proportional representation, Farage seems to have dropped that commitment – along with his economic contract to the nation – as he thinks it’s in his interests. But maybe truly fair votes were never going to be Farage’s bag, given his deep-seated desire to twist Britain into a shape that benefits him and his ilk.

In its manifesto last year Reform said it was committed to PR. But earlier this year Zia Yusuf, who at the time was party chair and who is now head of policy, said moving to PR would bring Britain to gridlock. He told a Spectator podcast:

I firmly believe – and I’m speaking personally here – I think if PR was ever instituted in this country, we will end up in a state of gridlock. We will not be able to do the frankly quite ambitious, and in some cases radical, things by the time we get to 2029 that we’re going to need to do to unshackle the British economy from the crazy overregulation to unleash the potential of British ingenuity.

The Conservatives have described Nigel Farage’s speech today as rambling and incoherent. This is from Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor.

After a speech that was supposed to be Reform’s attempt to restore their economic credibility, Nigel Farage has left the public with far more questions than answers.

Farage did not set out which of the £140bn of commitments he made last year he still stands by, and which he has now dropped. And in a speech which was supposed to be demonstrating fiscal restraint, he instead announced ‘the biggest council housebuilding programme ever’, which could run into the tens of billions of pounds.

Stride was referring to Farage saying in his speech: “We will commit to the biggest building programme of genuinely affordable housing in this country that has ever been seen.”

Stride added:

After this rambling, incoherent speech, it is clear Reform’s economy policy is in chaos. Farage might claim he’s not a ‘one man band’, but he can’t even tell us who his chancellor would be. This is not serious, it is just more announcements without a plan.

To back up Stride’s point about unanswered questions, the Tories released a list of 10 questions unanswered by Reform UK. For the record, here they are:

1) Which of their previous £140bn of spending commitments are Reform saying are fully funded commitments, and which are merely “aspirations”?

2) In the speech, Farage promised the biggest council housebuilding programme ever – how much would this cost and how would it be funded?

3) Reform’s ‘Contract’ promised what they said were £141bn a year of spending increases and unfunded tax cuts. The IFS pointed out their proposals would cost “tens of billions of pounds per year” more than they had calculated. What are Reform’s current spending and tax pledges, and how are they being paid for?

4) Farage claimed that he had been “misunderstood” on the two-child benefit cap. So why did he previously say “we believe lifting the two-child cap is the right thing to do”? What’s changed?

5) Farage claimed he has proposed the biggest welfare cuts of any party, including £9bn from Pip for people with low level anxiety – what evidence does he have for these claims?

6) Farage today criticised stamp duty on shares – is he promising to remove this?

7) Farage praised crypto again today and last month promised to cut capital gains tax on crypto assets from 24% to 10%? How much would this cost, and what would stop it from being used for tax avoidance?

8) Farage said public sector pension savings are supposed to pay for these promises. How much are Reform proposing they will save and how? Can we see their workings?

9) Why can’t Farage say who his shadow chancellor will be – or is he just a one-man band?

10) Reform’s last manifesto was billed as a “contract” with the British people. Isn’t today’s speech a (partial) admission that, if he’d been elected as prime minister, he would have broken the promises he made in that contract? What does this say about our ability to trust anything Reform ever say?

If Nigel Farage was hoping to use his speech this morning to establish some economic credibility (see 9.34am), he did not really achieve that. While he confirmed that the 2024 Reform UK manifesto has been consigned to the dustbin, and that the party is now committed to controlling borrowing before it starts slashing taxes (see 11.53am), there was next to no detail at all about what this policy might involve, or how the party would cut overall spending. Instead, most of it was just a familiar rant about regulation, and how everything was better in the 1980s.

But there is at least one area where Farage might attract the backing of mainstream economic opinion; he refused to commit to keeping the pensions triple lock. (See 11.58am.)

Commenting on this, Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem Treasury spokesperson, said:

Farage is looking to raid the pockets of some of the most vulnerable pensioners to pay for his anti-net zero agenda and the mysterious, unelected ‘advisers’ he envisages running the government.

He is no champion of pensioners – he’d betray them if he ever reached Downing Street.

The Lib Dems were proud to introduce the pension triple lock to tackle pensioner poverty and we will fight to protect the pensioners of today and tomorrow from the vultures in Reform UK.

Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, has also backed the triple lock, implying her party would commit to keeping it in a future manifesto. Labour has not made a commitment on the triple lock for the next election, but it has not indicated any enthusiasm to get rid of it.

Yet many economists and policy experts believe the triple lock, which guarantees that the state pension will rise every year in line with earning, inflation or by 2.5%, whichever is higher, is not a sensible long-term policy. It is due to cost £15bn a year by 2030, three times more than expected when it was introduced by the coalition government.

This is what Robert Colvile, director of the Centre for Policy Studies, told Politico after it reported that Reform might get rid of the triple lock.

For years it’s been clear to everyone who’s looked at the public finances that the triple lock is unsustainable – and increasingly unfair given that so much of the extra money goes to the already wealthy.

If Farage really does commit to replacing the triple lock with a more sustainable alternative, it will not only be an extremely welcome – and courageous – move, but would allow Reform to depict themselves as the real party of fiscal discipline.

At the start of his Q&A Farage was also asked if his comments about defined benefit pensions (see 10.12am and 11.51am) meant that people like teachers, police officers and NHS staff would get their pensions cut under a Reform government.

Farage rejected the premise of the question.

But he said, in the councils it runs, Reform had discovered that the authorities were paying “exorbitant fees to the pensions industry”. He claimed the pension funds could be better administered. And he said Richard Tice would say more on this in a speech later this week.

Q: [From the Guardian’s Pippa Crerar] Who would be your chancellor – Richard Tice, Zia Yusuf, or someone else? Do you still support PR? And, if you are breaking promises, doesn’t that make you look like other parties?

Farage pushes back at the idea that he has gone back on has promises. He says the policies in the 2024 manifesto were just “aspirations”. He says today he is being realistic “about the state of the economy”.

As for who the chancellor might be, or who the home secretary might be, Farage says: “This is a work in progress.” He said Reform has been attracting high-profile recruits. He goes on:

There’ll be more announcements in the next couple of weeks of people with expertise. No speculation about defections here …

And what I’ve tried to do really hard this year is to get away from this idea, this criticism, that somehow it’s a one-man band. It’s not a one-man band. It’s a broadening team.

He cites David Bull, the party chair, Richard Tice, the deputy leader, MPs Lee Anderson and Danny Kruger, and the policy chief Zia Yusuf sitting in the audience as members of this team. And there will be more and more as time goes on, he says.

As we develop and build that team, we’ll start to give people labels. Right now, we’re not ready.

But he says all the press conferences the party is holding shows it is developing thinking “in a wide range of areas”. He says Tice will give a speech on Wednesday.

He does not anwer the PR part of Pippa’s question.

That was the end of the Q&A.

Q: [From Christopher Hope from GB News] Are you still committed to raising tax thresholds? And what will you do about the pension triple lock?

Farage says he wants to raise thresholds.

He says he thinks the election will come in 2027. And he does not know that state of the economy then, he says.

And he does not commit to keeping the pensions triple lock.

If I’m right, and that election comes in 2027, then the economy will be in an even worse state than any of us in this room could even predict. So how can anybody project on pensions or thresholds or any of those things between now and then?

Farage claims Reform UK are “on the side of working people”.

We are the party of alarm clock Britain, and we want people who are out there working to be genuinely better off working than they are on a whole range of benefits.

Farage moves on to benefits, and he says this is one reason he wanted to give the speech today.

Referring to the Conservatives (see 9.34am), he says there have been “misunderstandings” about Reform’s policy.

He says he would get rid of the two-child benefit cap – but only to help low-paid couples who are both working.

He also says Reform would cut spending on disability benefits, as set out by Lee Anderson last week.

He says:

We will substantially cut the benefits bill. We will reduce the size of the public sector. We will look as we’ve already started, at public sector pensions, which are a massive liability. [See 10.12am.]

Farage says wealthy people have been leaving the UK because of Labour’s policy.

Britain is suffering a wealth drain, just as it suffered a brain drain in the 1970s, he says.

He says George Osborne started this when he started imposing extra charges on non-doms.

He goes on:

So let me make it clear. I want as many high-earning people as possible living in this country, paying as much tax as they legally have to.

Because if the rich leave and the rich don’t pay tax, then the poorer in society we’ll all have to pay more tax. It’s as simple as that.

What we’re doing is crazy and we need those people back.

Farage claims the opportunity of Brexit has been squandered.

Brexit has been squandered. The opportunity to sensibly deregulate the opportunity to become competitive globally – all of that has been squandered.

And the worst thing is that regulations and the way regulators behave with British business is now worse than it was at the time of the Brexit referendum vote.

And I apply that with knowledge from everything through the financial services industry to the fishing industry.

Farage says the national debt increased by two-and-a-half times while the Tories were in office.

Our debt GDP ratio is up by nearly 60%. We are doing worse on debt than any of our competitors, and that includes eurozone countries who are in deep, deep trouble.

Our debt repayments are over £100bn a year. They’re over the level of our defence budget and the markets are getting nervy.

We’ve seen this with ten and 30 year gilt yields.

In fact, my own view is that in two budgets time the markets will actually force the chancellor into what will be a genuine austerity budget, at which point the left in the Labour party won’t buy it.

Farage is speaking now. He says another “depressing budget hoves into view”. It will be a budget that “doesn’t have the guts to cut public spending”.

He says Britain has been living under an illusion.

I think for some years we’ve actually been living under an illusion. We’ve not been prepared to face up to just how much of an economic mess we genuinely in.

As we slipped down the global league tables, we kid ourselves that it’s OK, we’ve got GDP growth.

But there wouldn’t have been any GDP growth over the course of the last few years if it wasn’t for mass migration on a scale hitherto never even contemplated.

Nigel Farage is about to give his economy speech.

There is a live feed here.

Keir Starmer has been “listening” to Donald Trump’s complaints about the restrictions the UK government is imposing on oil and gas companies in the UK, Warren Stephens, the US ambassador to the UK, has said.

Stephens said that he thought there had been “a bit of movement” in UK policy as a result of Trump’s interventions and that he hoped that would continue.

Trump publicly urged Starmer to allow more oil and gas extraction from the North Sea during his state visit in September. In his first broadcast interview since taking up his post as ambassador, Stephens, a former investment banker, said that he had sat in meetings between Starmer and Trump where North Sea oil policy was discussed.

Stephens told Sky News:

I hope that the UK will continue to examine the policies in the North Sea and frankly, make some changes to it. To allow for more drilling and more production. Because you’re getting – you’re using oil and gas but you’re importing it. Why not use your own?

Asked if Starmer was “listening” to this message when it was conveyed to him in meetings with Trump, Stephens replied:

Yes, absolutely. And I think there are certainly members of the government that are listening to that. And there is a little bit of movement to make some changes to the policy. And I hope that will continue.

Stephens was then asked about reports saying the government might scrap the windfall tax on North Sea oil energy companies earlier than planned, which was cited as one example of where government policy might be changing in this area.

Asked if US firms would benefit from this, Stephens replied:

But it’s not just US companies; it’s a lot of UK companies here. I literally just had a meeting with a lot of them, a round table, and they’re worried about their supply chain. They’re worried about their workforce because right now they don’t have enough work for their workers.

So, not only are the current policies leaving a lot of oil and gas in the North Sea, they’re going to have a huge impact on employment.

Ministers are set to create a new quango to run military housing after concluding the Ministry of Defence was not up to the job, PA Media reports. John Healey, the defence secretary, has announced the move after years of complaints about the poor quality of MoD homes. PA Media says:

The Defence Housing Service will operate as an arm’s length public body, with Healey saying the new service would “deliver better value for the taxpayer and fulfil our promise to provide homes fit for heroes”.

When created, it will be one of the largest publicly owned housing providers in the country.

Sources said the Ministry of Defence (MoD) had “not been very good” at operating service accommodation itself, and would be better able to focus on “core defence responsibilities” once housing was hived off to the new body.

Earlier in the year, Keir Starmer pledged to reduce the number of quangos to improve accountability and cut back on bureaucracy.

But defence sources said they had been allowed to create the new housing service as the MoD was still a “net reducer” of quangos, pointing to a “significant” consolidation of innovation bodies.

The creation of the new body is part of a 10-year defence housing strategy, also launched today, that will see £9bn invested in service accommodation and 100,000 homes built on surplus MoD land.

Healey said: “Our British forces personnel and our veterans fulfil the ultimate public service. Our nation is rightly proud of them. And the very least they deserve is a decent home. This new strategy will embed a ‘forces first’ approach that tells our forces, our veterans and their families: we are on your side.”

The “forces first” approach, announced at Labour’s party conference in September, will see military families given “first dibs” on new homes built on defence land.

The strategy will also see almost all of the 47,700 military family homes, known as service family accommodation (SFA), either refurbished or replaced.

The Tories claim Reform UK are “leftwing” partly on the basis of Nigel Farage’s welfare policies. In particular, in their briefing overnight (see 9.34am), the Tories backed this up by saying that they would cut welfare spending by £23bn, when Reform’s plans (so far) only add up to £9bn, and that Farage would abolish the two-child benefit cap (but only for British parents working full-time, Politico reports).

The “leftwing” description is even harder to sustain in the light of this report for Politico by Dan Bloom about Reform’s economic plans.

Bloom says Reform could get rid of the pensions triple-lock. He interviewed Richard Tice, the party’s deputy leader, and when he was asked about the triple-lock, Tice replied:

Let’s be clear, we’ve said we don’t guarantee it. Everything’s up for review, because nothing’s affordable if we keep spending more than we’re earning. And we’ve said that consistently … if we the country go bust, which is the direction of travel we’re heading, one way or the other, nothing’s affordable.

But Tice told Bloom that he should be asking about public sector defined benefit pensions.

You’re not asking about the much, much bigger issue, right – which is, how long can we carry on offering defined benefit pensions to all public sector workers?

That is a much, much bigger issue that is not properly discussed in Westminster, in the media and so on.

When Bloom asked how Reform might replace defined benefit pensions for public sector workers in the future, Tice replied:

That’s where patience is a virtue. These are such big issues — you don’t answer them in a day, a week, frankly, or a month.

The prospect of looming tax rises and a fall in business investment will restrict the UK’s economic growth rate next year to less than 1%, according to a health check of the economy by a leading consultancy. Phillip Inman has the story.

Good morning. Even though Reform UK has had a clear lead over all other parties in opinion polls for much of the year, it has multiple vulnerabilities. One of them is that immigration is the only potential winning issue it has got, because on all almost other subjects its policy offer is flimsy and its credibility is minimal. And nowhere is this more obvious than on the economy, where the party has already had to admit that the £90bn tax cuts it was proposing in its manifesto last year are now being ditched because they are unachievable.

Today Nigel Farage is trying to address this problem with a speech where, as he puts it, he will “set out our economic vision for a future Reform government”. As Kiran Stacey reports in his preview, Farage will commit the party to wholesale deregulation.

Farage will also say that, under Reform, spending cuts would happen before tax cuts.

Reform will get public spending under control, so that the nation’s borrowing costs come down. Then, and only then, will I cut taxes to stimulate growth. We must get the economy growing.

This is a huge change from what Farage was offering last year.

There was a time when Labour and the Conservatives largely ignored Farage speeches, but last night they both issued lengthy “pre-buttal” comments that contained more information than the Reform party preview. Labour said that Farage would revive austerity. A Labour spokesperson said:

Nigel Farage says he is offering something new – but for all his talk, his plan would take us back to austerity.

We’ve seen from the councils Reform run that they’ve failed to deliver the savings they already promised and are cutting services and raising taxes as a result. They’ve said themselves that those councils are a shop window for what a Reform government would do nationally – we know that this is more empty promises and no real plan.

The Conservatives issued a seven-page document attacking Reform’s economic policy. In a statement, Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, said Reform promises “disintegrate after five minutes” and that its economic policies are “leftwing”.

Of the two lines of attack, Labour “austerity” one is more plausible, not least because of what Farage plans to say today about spending cuts coming before tax cuts. The Tories are trying to depict Reform as “leftwing” partly because some of their welfare proposals don’t involve cuts as deep as those proposed by the Tories and because the last Reform manifesto included a plan for public utilities to be run according to a model involving 50% public ownership, with the over 50% being owned by UK pension funds. But this is not an idea that Reform has been promoting recently; this aspect of the Tory briefing does not take into account Stride’s point about Reform manifesto promises only lasting five minutes.

After the speech, other parties will get the chance to revise their attack lines against Reform.

There is a lot of other stuff on today too. Here is the agenda.

10.30am: Chester crown court starts hearing an election petition challenging the result of the Runcorn and Helsby byelection, which was won by Reform UK’s Sarah Pochin by six votes.

11am: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, gives a speech on economic policy.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

1.30am: Sir Chris Wormald, the cabinet secretary, and Sir Olly Robbins, permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, give evidence to the Commons foreign affairs committee about the work of the Foreign Office. The hearing is expected to include questions about the vetting of Peter Mandelson before he was appointed ambassador to the US.

2.30pm: John Healey, the defence secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

After 3.30pm: Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, makes a statement to MPs about the Huntingdon train attack.

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