Here are the main lines from the Downing Street lobby briefing this morning.

• The PM’s spokesperson rejected suggestions from Liz Truss that Rishi Sunak is anti-growth. In his speech this morning Truss implied that she views the PM as the “anti-growth coalition” who support statist economic policies “fashionable on the London dinner party circuit”, but she did not criticise him personally. Asked about the speech, the spokesperson said Sunak had not watched it. Asked if Sunak was anti-growth, the spokesperson said: “Both the chancellor and the prime minister are committed to growth.”

• The spokesperson said Sunak did support Keir Starmer’s proposal for a renegotiation of the post-Brexit trade deal with the EU. Asked if Sunak favoured a renegotiation, the spokesperson said “No”. He went on:

We expect the TCA [trade and co-operation agreement] to remain the basis of our relationship with the EU and are focused on maximising the opportunities it presents us with.

Asked if the government thought the deal could be improved, the spokesperson replied:

We are focused, as I say, on taking the TCA and using our Brexit freedoms to the benefit of the public already. We’re not looking to relitigate the past or reopen it in any way, shape or form.

Obviously there is a set statutory review period but beyond that we’re very much focused on maximising the opportunities it presents for the public.

• The spokesperson said the strikes by consultants and junior hospital doctors in England later this week would pose “a huge challenge for the NHS and for patients, who will see their care significantly disrupted”.

• The spokesperson said the allegations about Russell Brand were “very serious and concerning”. He said that anyone who thought they were a victim of sexual assault should contact the police, and that the government wanted the BBC and Channel 4 to investigate what happened when Brand was working for them “transparently”.

Up to 8 million people could be denied their right to vote thanks to an “outdated registration system”, the Electoral Commission has said. As PA Media reports, the commission called for “urgent reforms” to electoral registration rules as it published research showing the number of people either incorrectly registered or missing from the electoral roll completely. PA says:

The figure is more than the combined adult populations of Scotland and Wales and includes disproportionate numbers of young people and private renters.

Only two-thirds of private renters in Britain are registered at their current address, while the proportion of renters in Scotland included on the register has fallen from 49% in 2018 to 45% last year.

Homeowners were much more likely to be correctly registered, with 88% of mortgage-holders and 95% of owner-occupiers appearing on the register at their correct address.

Pensioners were much more likely to be correctly registered than anyone else, with 96% included on the register compared with 60% of those aged 18-19 and 67% of those aged 20-24.

There were also wide ethnic disparities, with 87% of white people correctly registered compared with 80% of Asian people and 72% of black people. The proportion of black people correctly registered has fallen from 75% in 2018.

Craig Westwood, the Electoral Commission’s director of communications, policy and research, said: “Millions of people across the UK are not correctly registered to vote. While some may not want to participate in elections, for many people it is a consequence of an outdated registration system that disproportionally affects private renters and young people.

Without action, we’ll continue to see large numbers of people unable to take part in elections. The electoral community needs a clear plan to ensure that electoral registration processes are modernised so that people are registered and able to exercise their right to vote. As part of this plan, governments will need to pass legislation to enable data to be shared with electoral administrators.”

Changes proposed by the Electoral Commission would allow government departments and public bodies to share data on potentially eligible voters with electoral administrators, allowing them to register voters directly or send voters invitations to register.

The commission said this would not only improve the experience for voters, but would also reduce the burden faced by electoral administrators who currently receive high numbers of applications to register in the run-up to major elections.

This chart, from the report published by the commission, shows how figures for the completeness of the electoral register have changed since the 1950s. Completeness means the proportion of people entitled to be on the electoral register who are actually registered, and at the right address.

The polling expert Peter Kellner argued in a recent blog that, because people not registered to vote are more likely to live in Labour constituencies, and because the UK draws up constituency boundaries on the basis of the number of registered votes, not on the basis of population (as many other advanced democracies do), non-registration creates a bias towards the Conservatives.

Welsh government announces plan to increase size of Senedd, with new proportional voting system

Steven Morris

The Welsh government has revealed what it calls “once-in-a-generation” proposed reforms to the Senedd – the Welsh parliament.

If Senedd members support the changes outlined in the Senedd reform bill, they will be in place for the 2026 Senedd elections.

Proposed changes include:

• The current voting system, under which 40 members are elected under the first-past-the-post system, to be scrapped. Members would be elected using closed proportional lists. The seats would be allocated to parties using the D’Hondt formula.

The Welsh counsel general, Mick Antoniw, said of the proposed changes to the Welsh parliament:

This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create a modern Senedd, which truly reflects Wales, and to strengthen our democracy.

We are creating a more effective Senedd, with a greater ability and capacity to hold the Welsh government to account. This bill will help ensure the Senedd also reflects the huge changes to Wales’ devolution settlement since 1999, including law-making and tax-raising powers.

Wales is the most under-represented country in the UK – the Senedd has the least members of any devolved parliament in the country and the recent reduction to UK parliamentary seats is the most significant change in a century.

The leader of Plaid Cymru, Rhun ap Iorwerth, said:

A stronger, more representative Senedd, elected through a proportional system, will be better equipped to continue to make a difference to the people of Wales.

The Welsh Conservative shadow constitution minister, Darren Millar said:

It’s disappointing that Welsh Labour ministers continue to press ahead with plans to increase the size of the Senedd at a cost of tens of millions each year while threatening to cut budgets for schools and hospitals.

Wales need more doctors, dentists, nurses and teachers, not more politicians.

The Welsh government believes the reforms will lead the additional running costs of between about £14.5m and £17.5m annually. It says this is a tiny fraction of the £24bn total annual Welsh budget. Set-up costs are expected to be in the region of £8m.

Ofcom says GB News broke impartiality rules by having two Tory MPs interview chancellor about budget

Aletha Adu

A GB News interview with the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, aired before the spring budget breached impartiality rules, Ofcom has found.

Senior Conservative MPs Esther McVey and her husband, Philip Davies, were accused of hosting a “love-in” interview with their party colleague Jeremy Hunt on Saturday 11 March for their weekly show.

The watchdog said GB News “failed to represent and give due weight to an appropriately wide range of significant views on a matter of major political controversy” in its programme, given it featured “two sitting MP presenters from one political party interviewing the chancellor of the same political party”.

After the interview, Scottish National party MP John Nicolson, who sits on the Commons digital, culture, media and sport committee, claimed McVey and Davies “used their regular Saturday show on GB News to interview the Tory chancellor about how good the Tory budget was”. He added: “The interview was trailed by HM Treasury on its social media pages.”

Ofcom said in a statement:

Given this programme featured two sitting MP presenters from one political party interviewing the chancellor of the same political party about a matter of major political controversy and current public policy, we consider, in these circumstances, that GB News should have taken additional steps to ensure that due impartiality was preserved.

Our investigation therefore concluded that GB News failed to represent and give due weight to an appropriately wide range of significant views on a matter of major political controversy and current public policy within this programme, in breach of [the] rules.

UPDATE: In response to the ruling, a GB News spokesperson said:

We are disappointed by Ofcom’s ruling on our programme, Saturday Morning with Esther and Phil. We feel that the regulator’s definition of ‘due impartiality’ is imprecise.”

Ofcom’s finding also accepts that our programme included ‘reference to a wider range of views’ in its interview with Chancellor Jeremy Hunt ahead of his budget in March.

These included opinions from independent journalist and commentator Michael Crick and SDP politician Patrick O’Flynn, who disagreed with Mr Hunt on several key points.

Here are the key points from Liz Truss’ speech.

The reality is that over time, we’re not bringing in as much as a country as we are spending. Our debt levels are close to 100% of GDP. We have the highest debt interest payments in the developed world, and according to the Growth Commission, the average person in the UK is now £9,100 worse off than the average person in the U.S.
I believe that the reason for the problems we have is the 25 years of economic consensus that have led us to this period of stagnation.

• She said the problems was caused, not be too much capitalism, but by too little capitalism. She said:

Some say this is a crisis of capitalism – that free markets are responsible. But that’s not borne out by the facts. Quite the opposite is true. The fact is that since the Labour government was elected in 1997, we have moved towards being a more corporatist social democracy in Britain than we were in the 1980s and 1990s.

State spending now accounts for 46% of GDP, higher than it was in every year in the 1970s, bar 1975 – and up from 34.8% in 2000. No other European country, apart from Greece or Spain, has seen this level of growth in state spending.

There is also a growing burden of regulation. The cost of regulations introduced in 2022 alone is £10 billion according to the government – and I suspect this is an underestimate.

Free market economists went off to lucrative jobs in the City, allowing academic institutions and think-tanks to be captured by the left. Demand management crept back in alongside neo-Keynesian-dominated monetary policy.

We Conservatives allowed the debate to be framed and led by the left. Whether it’s the anti-capitalist arguments of the Occupy movement, the woke diversity policies or the statist environmental solutions, the left have been making the running.

The counter-examples of higher growth – in places like Poland, the Baltic states or Florida and Texas – are largely countries or states with low regulation and low taxes. In Poland corporation tax is 19% and income taxes are extremely flat.

Some people said we were in too much of a rush. And it is certainly true that I didn’t just try to fatten the pig on market day; I tried to rear the pig and slaughter it as well. I confess to that.

But the reason we were in a rush was because voters wanted to see results, having already voted for change twice – in 2016 and 2019.

I knew with the level of resistance and the lack of preparation time that things weren’t going to be perfect. However, given the situation for the UK was so difficult, it was important to take action and not do nothing. I went into politics to get things done, not to do public relations.

This is a bold claim because many of Truss’s critics say that, in her ministerial career, Truss prioritised PR, briefing the media and her Instagram presence above almost everything.

The anti-growth coalition is now a powerful force comprising the economic and political elite, corporatists, parts of the media and even a section of the Conservative parliamentary party. The policies I advocate simply aren’t fashionable on the London dinner party circuit.

When Truss referred to a section of the Tory party being part of the anti-growth coalition, she was presumbly referring to Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt (whom she appointed chancellor as her premiership was imploding), although when journalists invited her to criticise Sunak directly during the Q&A, she would not do so.

• She said the government should set out plans to generate sustained 3% annual growth by the end of the decade and she set out some policy proposals that she argued would help. They included: reducing corporation tax to 19% again, slowing the rate at which spending on benefits and pensions increases, raising the retirement age, allowing fracking, abolishing the windfall tax, further regulatory divergence from the EU and delaying the implementation of some net zero measures, like delaying the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars scheduled for 2030.

Conor Burns, the Tory MP and former minister, has posted a message on X, formerly Twitter, saying Liz Truss is “toxic” with voters and that the only useful thing she could do for the party is shut up.

She is a drag anchor to any cause she attaches herself to. And toxic on the doorsteps. Only service she could provide is sustained silence.

Burns has an understandable grudge against Truss. She sacked him as a trade minister after an allegation was made that he had behaved inappropriately in a bar during the Tory conference. At that point the claim had not been properly investigated. A subsequent inquiry found he had done nothing wrong.

During the Q&A Liz Truss was twice asked if she would withdraw her resignation honours as a favour to Rishi Sunak, who is under pressure to reject it. (See 9.32am.) Both times she ignored the question (which she was able to do fairly easily, because she was taking questions in groups, and with three people asking sometimes more than one question each, she had quite a lot of leeway in choosing what she wanted to overlook).

Q: [From Liam Halligan, a journalist and economic commentator] When I speak to people in financial markets, they are critical of the role of the Bank of England during the period you were PM. Could you say more about that?

Truss says she was not the chancellor. She did not deal with the Bank directly.

But, on LDIs [liability-driven investments], she was blindsided. She did not know what an LDI was until the Monday after the mini-budget.

She says there needs to be more analysis of what happened in the markets?

Q: What would you have done differently?

Truss says preparing her premiership two years earlier would have helped.

She did not know this would happen. She thought Boris Johnson would survive. She was in Indonesia when it all kicked off. Launching a new economic policy two years before an election is not ideal, she says.

But she decided to go for it.

Obviously, if I’d known about the LDIs, we would have done things differently.

But, as for being more slick on the media, Truss suggests she cannot change the way she is.

Q: Are you happy with the way the OBR does its forecasts?

Truss says they should do more dynamic forecasting. They tend to understate the impact of regulation and tax cuts, and to overstate the impact of public spending.