Rishi Sunak says he is ‘totally, 100% on it’ in battle against inflation – as it happened | Politics

• Sunak refused to say directly whether or not he agreed with conclusions of the privileges committee’s investigation into Boris Johnson, saying he wanted to “focus on the future”. (See 3.47pm.)

In his Today programme interview James Cleverly this morning struggled to explain what the government’s plan was for tackling inflation. (See 9.26am.) In his speech this afternoon Rishi Sunak sought the tackle the same question head on, and he insisted that he did have a plan “to halve it on its way to getting it back down to 2% where it belongs”. He said his plan had three elements.

For the record, here is an extract from what he said about those three aspects of the plan.

The first is I’ve got to make sure government is doing everything that it needs to do and that means being responsible with our borrowing, because we cannot in a situation like this borrow too much money, because that just makes everything worse.

That means, much as I would love to, I’d love to cut your taxes tomorrow, you’d love that, I’d love that, of course I would, but that’s hard to do, because it means I’d have to borrow more money to do it.

Another thing is I can’t say yes to every single thing that people want me to spend more money on, because that would mean we’d have to borrow money to do all of that. That means I have to make some difficult choices, I have to prioritise, the same as all of you do in your household budgets, I have to do the same thing too.

It means when we’re trying to figure out how we pay all our fantastic public sector workers, I need to think about what’s affordable, what’s responsible, again so I can manage our borrowing …

Now, the second part of the plan is making sure we tackle all those areas where inflation is particularly bad. Energy is an obvious one. The bills that you’ve had to pay over the last year have been extraordinary. Absolutely extraordinary, never seen anything like it. Now, I’m pleased they’re going to be starting to come down …

We need to have more energy, so we are investing more in renewable energy like offshore wind, building new nuclear power stations, but also making sure that we get more energy here at home from the North Sea, more oil and gas, which we are going to need for the next few decades as we transition to a cleaner future, so we are investing in that too.

Food is another area where your weekly shop has gone up far too much in the past few months especially, so we are looking at the supermarkets, making sure that they are behaving responsibly and fairly when it comes to pricing all those products, to make sure we are easing the burdens on your weekly shop …

The third part of the plan is helping those who most need help through the worst of this. Now, how have we done that? Most importantly, we’ve helped with your energy bills.

Sir Patrick Vallance, the former government chief scientific adviser, gave evidence to the Covid inquiry this afternoon. Here are some of his main points.

When we started the vaccine taskforce, it was very possible, even likely, that it would fail. And at the end of it, of course, it was a great success, and the National Audit Office wrote a report saying what a great success.

If it had failed, the National Audit Office I suspect would have written a report saying what an outrageous waste of public money the whole thing was. And yet both things were totally possible.

And so there is an inherent reluctance to spend money on things which then might fail and look like a disastrous misuse of public money.

So I think we need to be much more explicit about why spending public money is important for certain things, even if nothing turns out not to be what’s needed or used.

• He said that Covid papers from Sage (the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies), should have been published more quickly. As the pandemic went on, early publication became more common, but it was not the practice at the start. Vallance said this was a mistake. He said:

I think in principle, the science advice – unless it’s national security-related – should become public.

One of the things we learned early during the pandemic, prior to pandemic, the minutes and output from Sage only were published at the end of the process of Sage activation. And quite early on I was keen to try and get the papers out as soon as we could.

It took longer than it should have done for that to happen, and that is, I think, a regret – and one that if you have the processes sorted out in advance should not be a problem in the future.

In other words, you should get those papers out as quickly as you can.

When we started looking at vaccines in January 2020, it was obvious that the industrial vaccine base in the UK had pretty much gone.

Not the simple store research but the industrial base, and I don’t think that was an active decision.

It was what are called benign neglect, with very significant consequences – and that had to be reactivated quickly …

Don’t dream that you can have a vaccine factory sitting there waiting for a pandemic – it’s going to be staffed by people who don’t know how to make vaccines.

You need everyday activities that you can scale quickly and I think this is a part of resilience that needs to be thought through very carefully.

Sturgeon and Yousaf lead tributes following death of SNP trailblazer Winnie Ewing

Severin Carrell

Winnie Ewing, the former Scottish National party MP, MEP and MSP widely regarded as one of the movement’s most inspirational figures, has died aged 93. Flags at the Scottish parliament were lowered in her honour.

Ewing famously won the Hamilton byelection in 1967 to become the SNP’s first female MP, a breakthrough which marked the party’s arrival as a political force. When she arrived at the House of Commons, she stated: “Stop the world, Scotland wants to get on.”

Serving too as an MEP, when she became known as Madame Ecosse, and an MSP for the Highlands and Islands, she was something of a political matriarch: her son Fergus was a Scottish government minister and is now a backbench MSP; her daughter Annabelle has been an MP and MSP, and is now a deputy presiding officer at Holyrood.

Fergus Ewing’s late wife Margaret twice served as an SNP MP before becoming MSP for Moray.

Nicola Sturgeon, the former SNP leader and first minister, tweeted that Scotland had lost one of its “foremost patriots and champions”. She said:

Heartbroken by this news. I can’t begin to convey the depth of gratitude I feel for the advice, wisdom, encouragement and inspiration Winnie gave me and so many others over the years. She was a master of the art of campaigning and it was a privilege to learn from her.

And Humza Yousaf, Sturgeon’s successor, said:

No words can truly capture the unique and unparalleled contribution that Winnie made to Scotland and Scottish politics. Her work over many decades – including in the UK, European and Scottish parliaments – shaped the modern nation we have today.

Without Winnie – without her breakthrough byelection victory in Hamilton in 1967, her dedication to the cause of Scottish independence, and her promotion of Scotland’s interests in Europe over many years – the SNP would never have achieved the success we have, and self-government for Scotland would never have become the priority it did.

In a statement, Ewing’s family said:

Mrs Ewing, generally considered the most important Scottish politician of her generation, served as an MP, MEP and MSP, and was the first presiding officer of the reconvened Scottish parliament in 1999.

She sparked the revival of the SNP’s fortunes, which continue to this day, with her victory in the Hamilton byelection of 1967.

Mrs Ewing died on Wednesday surrounded by her family.

This is what Rishi Sunak said when asked by ITV’s Robert Peston if he agreed with the privileges committee’s report into Boris Johnson. He replied:

I have enormous respect for the privileges committee, support the privileges committee and indeed respect the vote of the house that we had on Monday regarding Boris Johnson.

But what I’d also say is that I’m not focused on the past. I want to look forward. Boris Johnson is no longer a member of parliament.

It’s right that people, whoever they are, whatever position they hold, face the results of their actions, that are held accountable for their actions. That’s happened. He’s no longer a member of parliament.

We’ve got to focus on the future. And that’s what I’m doing as your prime minister …

I wasn’t there to vote because I was at a charity dinner, as you know, but I am someone who took a very difficult decision a while ago to resign from Boris Johnson’s government.

It’s not an easy thing to do to resign as being chancellor. That’s kind of a big deal. I did that because, as I said at the time, I disagreed with his approach to government.

So that tells you that I’m prepared to act according to my values and the standards that I want to see, and that wasn’t happening.

I said I didn’t agree with the approach. I said that in my resignation letter, and that’s why I resigned.

Afterwards Peston said he felt Rishi Sunak had finally come off the fence.

It is true that, in saying he had “enormous respect” for the privileges committee, Sunak was going a bit further than the line the No 10 press office has been using most of this week, when it said the committee had Sunak’s “full support”. The line about Johnson being held accountable for his actions also implied that Johnson got what he deserved.

But Sunak still would not say he agreed with the privileges committee’s report, despite his protestations only a few minutes earlier about the importance of “being straight” with people. (See 2.38pm.) And “we’ve got to focus on the future” was the ultimate non-answer. He is still dodging the question.

Robert Hutton from the Critic says this was a mistake because eventually Sunak will have to say he thought Johnson lied to MPs.

My colleague Rafael Behr agrees.

Q: Is there no chance of major tax cuts this year?

Sunak says he would love to cut taxes. But borrowing lots of money to cut tax is not going to help anyone, he says. He goes on:

If I just gave into the easy thing every time, that would just mean more and more government borrowing, that just puts fuel on the fire of inflation and makes it worse, makes it last longer, means interest rates would go up even more. And that’s not going to do anyone any favours.

And you talk about tax cuts. You know what the biggest tax cut that this government could deliver for you and for everyone else is? To halve inflation. That is a massive tax cut, because it is inflation right now that is making everyone poor.

And that’s it. That’s the end of the Q&A.