Rishi Sunak unveils £5bn extra defence spending ahead of US Aukus summit – UK politics live

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, has rejected a claim by Labour that taxes are higher in Scotland for higher earners because the SNP has mismanaged the economy.

Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, made that claim on a visit to Scotland. As the Times reports, Reeves said:

The way I see it is the last Labour government was able to keep taxes low and invest in public services and we were able to do it because we grew the economy.

When Labour was last in power — and we were in for 13 years —the average growth rate per year was 2.1 per cent. The average growth rate the last 13 years under the Tories has been 1.4 per cent. And taxes are at the highest level of being in the UK for 70 years.

The Conservatives have become a high tax party and the SNP too because they become low-growth parties … We’ve got to grow the economy.

In response, Sturgeon said taxes were higher for higher earners in Scotland because the Scottish government was more committed to redistribution than the UK government. She said the fact that Labour did not support the SNP on this showed it was “Tory-lite”.

Increasingly the Scottish government has been using its powers under devolution to set income tax rates that are different from those applying in the rest of the UK. In a recent report the Institute for Fiscal Studies explained the difference. It said:

The Scottish income tax system has more bands and different rates compared with the rest of the UK. The effect is that income tax liabilities are a very small amount lower in Scotland for those on less than £28,000 per year, but greater for those on higher incomes – sometimes by quite large margins. For example, someone on £50,000 will pay £1,550 more tax in Scotland than in the rest of the UK, and someone on £150,000 will pay £3,900 more, in the coming tax year.

The IFS report also backed up Sturgeon’s analysis. It said the Scottish government had used its powers “to make the system more progressive, as well as to raise more revenue to fund public services”.

Keir Starmer has said Richard Sharp should resign as chair of the BBC. As ITV reports, this morning Starmer said:

I think Richard Sharp’s position is increasingly untenable.

I think most people watching the complete mess of the last few days would say how on earth is he still in position and Gary Lineker has been taken off air?

This is a mess of the BBC’s own making, they need to sort it out and sort it out fast.

As Jessica Elgot reports, Starmer is echoing what Lucy Powell, the shadow culture secretary, said yesterday. Powell also described Sharp’s position at “increasingly untenable”.

Even before the Gary Lineker row erupted, Sharp was already facing calls for his resignation because he did not disclose his role in helping Boris Johnson get access to a loan facility, reportedly worth around £800,000, when he was applying for the job of BBC chairman.

Junior hospital doctors in England started a 72-hour strike this morning. My colleagues Denis Campbell and Aubrey Allegretti have the story.

This morning Prof Philip Banfield, chair of the BMA’s council, claimed that, paradoxically, hospitals could be safer than normal, because elective operations won’t be taking place and because more senior doctors, consultants, would be covering for the doctors on strike. He told the Today programme:

What is going to happen over this next three days is that we are going to see senior doctors – I don’t like the words junior and senior, this is just a level of experience and training – so we’re seeing consultants and specialists doctors cover.

They will stop, or should stop, their elective work and actually the NHS is maintaining a great deal of elective work. So we should see that the service is safe. In fact, actually we should see it is even safer than normal.

Asked to explain that, he said:

Because the care is going to be given by consultants, consultants seeing patients, doing things that they normally wouldn’t do.

My colleague Caroline Davies will be covering all the details of the Gary Lineker story, and the BBC’s climbdown, on a separate live blog.

Lineker has responded to the BBC announcement in a Twitter thread starting here.

And he is still speaking out in defence of refugees.

Tim Davie, the BBC director general, has issued a statement announcing that Gary Lineker is going back on air. In it he says that there are “grey areas” in the corporation’s guidance on the use of social media, that this has caused “potential confusion”, and he adds: “I apologise for this”.

He says the guidelines will be reviewed by an independent expert, with a particular focus on how they should apply to freelance broadcasters operating outside news and current affairs (such as Lineker). The guidelines should be “clear, proportionate and appropriate”, he says.

Sky’s Rob Harris has tweeted the full statement.

The government has struck a last-minute deal for HSBC to buy Silicon Valley Bank’s UK operations, saving thousands of British tech startups and investors from big losses after the biggest bank failure since 2008, my colleague Kalyeena Makortoff reports.

My colleague Graeme Wearden has more coverage on his business live blog.

According to Rob Harris from Sky News, Gary Lineker will return to his Match of the Day presenting job on the BBC. Harris also claims that Lineker will get some sort of apology from the BBC.

Lineker was taken off air at the weekend, prompting many of his football presenter colleagues to stage what was in effect a mini-strike in solidarity, after a tweet criticising the language used by ministers about the government’s illegal migration bill prompted both Tory fury and claims he had breached BBC impartiality guidelines.

Good morning. Rishi Sunak is in San Diego, California, where today he will meet Joe Biden, the US president, and Anthony Albanese, the Australian prime minister, for an Aukus meeting. Aukus is the Australia/US/UK security pact, primarily focused on providing Australia with nuclear-powered submarine capacity. It was set up when Boris Johnson was prime minister, and now provides him with the material for one of his most over-used jokes.

The meeting will coincide with the publication of the government’s update (or “refresh”, as it is officially called) to the integrated review of security, defence, development and foreign policy first published in 2021. Liz Truss ordered the update during her short-lived premiership, because she wanted it to take a tougher line on China. IR23, as the “refresh” is also called by No 10, will be published this afternoon.

Overnight, Sunak announced that the Ministry of Defence will get an extra £5bn over the next two years as part of the review, and that the government is committing to raising defence spending to 2.5% of GDP “in the longer term”. In a news release No 10 says:

The 2023 integrated review refresh [IR23] confirms that an additional £5bn will be provided to the Ministry of Defence over the next two years, to help replenish and bolster vital ammunition stocks, modernise the UK’s nuclear enterprise and fund the next phase of the Aukus submarine programme. It follows a £24bn four-year uplift in defence spending in 2020, the largest sustained increase since the cold war.

The prime minister will also set out an ambition to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP in the longer term, and the UK will lead a conversation with Allies on future posture and burden sharing at the Nato summit in Lithuania this summer. We will review defence spending after 2025 in light of this ambition.

As my colleague Aubrey Allegretti reports, Conservative MPs are particularly interested in what IR23 will say about China and, speaking to reporters on his flight to California, Rishi Sunak said it was too simplistic just to categorise China as a “threat” (which is what China hawks in his party want). Sunak said:

I don’t think it’s kind of smart or sophisticated foreign policy to reduce our relationship with China – which, after all, is a country with 1.5bn people, the second biggest economy, and member of the UN security council – to just two words.

That’s why in the integrated review you will see a very thoughtful and detailed approach to China …

I think [China] presents an epoch-defining challenge to us and to the global order.

Aubrey’s full story is here.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Keir Starmer is doing a visit ahead of the budget on Wednesday.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

2.30pm: Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

After 3.30pm: James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, is due to make a Commons statement about the integrated review refresh.

Around 3.30pm UK time: Rishi Sunak records a series of broadcast interviews in San Diego.

After 5.30pm: MPs start the second reading debate for the illegal migration bill.

7pm: Sky News hosts a debate for the SNP leadership candidates.

7.30pm: Sunak meets Joe Biden, the US president, and Anthony Albanese, the Australian PM, at the Aukus meeting. Sunak will also have a bilateral meeting with Biden.

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