The Press Association’s QuickCheck service has been looking at some of the facts cited by Louise Haigh, the first secretary of state, and Alex Burghart, the deputy Tory leader, at PMQs. Here are three figures that it suggests are potentially misleading.

215,000 jobs at risk from Labour tax rises?

Burghart claimed the OBR report said 215,000 jobs were at risk from the government’s tax rises.

PA says he seemed to be quoting a figure that applied to the impact of the tax threshold freezes that started when the Tories were in office.

The OBR said: “Following our standard approach, we have estimated that, taken together, the threshold freezes in income tax and NICs from 2022/23 to 2030/31 could decrease labour supply by 215,000 in average-hours equivalent (AHE) terms by 2030/31.”

£183bn spent on working-age welfare?

Burghart asked Haigh how much the government was spending on working-age welfare and, when she refused to answer, he said the figure was £183bn.

PA says he seemed to be referencing a figure that covered spending for children and pensioners. It says:

The OBR forecasted total welfare spending to reach £352.7bn in the current fiscal year.

This figure falls to about £182.8bn when excluding certain spending on pensioners. This might be the figure Mr Burghart was referencing, however it includes £13.7bn of child benefit spending.

This figure also includes attendance allowance, which is a disability benefit paid to those of state pension age.

Separate data show the Department for Work and Pensions spending on benefits for working-age people is set to reach £136.1bn in 2026/27. This does not include welfare spending from other departments, such as HM Revenue and Customs.

Welfare spending rising £88bn under the Tories?

Haigh said welfare spending rose by £88bn in a decade under the Tories.

PA says this is close to what OBR and DWP figures say. But those are cash figures, it says. “In real terms, a measure which offsets for inflation, the DWP figure rose by a more modest £21.8bn,” PA says.

The UN refugee agency has said a government plan to make refugees wait up to 30 years before they get permission to settle in the UK “raises significant concerns”. Diane Taylor has the story.

Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.

John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, has rejected calls from MSPs for a review of laws which allow people with limited rights to live in the UK to stand for Holyrood.

Yesterday the standards, procedures and public appointments committee, chaired by the Scottish National party MSP Jenni Minto, said the reforms could undermine “fragile” confidence amongst voters in the country’s institutions.

Swinney told LBC he had no plans to review the provisions, which first came into force this year in the Scottish Elections (Representation and Reform) Act 2025. He said:

We don’t intend to do so, no. The parliament voted unanimously for the provision for foreign nationals to be able to stand for elections in certain circumstances.

The reforms came under intense scrutiny after the May election after the Conservatives and Reform UK protested about the election of Q Manivannan, an Indian citizen, for the Scottish Greens in Edinburgh and Lothians East region.

A post-graduate student at St Andrews, it emerged their student visa was due to expire at the end of 2026. They have since been granted a three-year graduate visa, given them right to remain until the end of 2029.

Swinney’s government is bidding to expand the provisions of the act by including Commonwealth citizens, who were excluded as a category last year. Swinney told LBC “the government will press ahead with that.” Manivannan only qualified because they were on a student visa, not because they were a Commonwealth citizen.

The act covers elections to Holyrood and Scottish councils; Westminster contests in Scotland are reserved to Westminster and excluded.

The Commons Treasury committee has started taking evidence from officials from the Office for Budget Responsibility about the budget. Harriett Baldwin, a Conservative member of the committee, asked about Shabana Mahmood’s announcement on Monday axing some of the restrictions to indefinite leave to remain (ILR) that had been planned by the Home Office.

The Tories claim this U-turn will cost the exchequer £10bn.

Asked what impact this announcement would have on the OBR’s fiscal assumptions, Tom Josephs, a member of the OBR’s budget responsibility committee, said the OBR would have to review this for its next forecast in the spring. He said he could not give an answer now.

Asked if he thought it really would cost £10bn, Josephs said “that is not an estimate that we produced”. He said that was a government estimate for the lifetime cost of some migrants.

Asked if the change on Monday would be "material enough” to require a change to the OBR’s forecast, Josephs just said the OBR would assess the policy as a whole. “If we think [the Monday announcement is] significant enough to adjust the forecast, then we will do so.”

Mahmood originally produced the £10bn figure to justify the plans she originally announced last year. She said making it harder for migrant workers to get ILR would save the government £10bn over time.

This claim backfired when Mahmood U-turned on a large part of her plan, leading the Tories to claim she was now in effect raising spending by almost £10bn (because the savings were forgone).

Some experts claim the £10bn figure for supposed savings was never realistic in the first place.

Just under half of young people not in work, education or training were classed as disabled in the year to March – a proportion which has more than doubled in just over a decade, the Press Association reports. PA says:

The government is currently working on reducing the number of 16 to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training – known as Neets – with a review expected to be published in the coming weeks making recommendations for changes in the system.

The number of Neets topped a million earlier this year for the first time in more than a decade, fuelling calls for more help to get young people into work.

Government data published today showed 45.3% of Neets were classed as disabled in the year to March.

The Department for Work and Pensions said this was a rise of 24.2 percentage points since the proportion of 21.1% in the 12 months to March 2014.

The latest data showed disabled young people were more than three times as likely to be Neet compared to non-disabled young people – 30.2% compared with 8.6%.

Depression, bad nerves or anxiety was the most common main health condition reported by disabled Neets, accounting for almost a quarter (23.8%), followed by autism (22.7%).

Andy Burnham has urged Poundland bosses to work with the government on trying to find a “practical solution” to the problems that have left the company on the brink of administration.

In a pooled interview, asked if he had a message for Poundland executives, Burnham replied:

Focus on the people in your employment, meet with the business secretary because we are setting up that meeting, come up with a practical solution that saves jobs and saves those stores because many of them are viable propositions, they’re on high streets, they matter in our communities. There is a solution to be found here, sit down with us and let’s find it.

When it was put to him that there was a limit to what the government could do if the company was not profitable, he replied:

There’s always a limit, but we’re prepared to find what we can do. We believe in this instance there is a solution. There are many viable outlets here. Other retailers are expressing interest. Get around the table. Let’s find a solution.

Andy Burnham has said that he hopes the sweeping losses for Donald Trump’s Republican party in the US elections will give the world an “opportunity” to focus on ending the Iran war and easing the cost of living pressures.

In an interview at the Commonwealth summit in Antigua, asked if he was worried the results might make Trump more unpredictable, Burnham replied:

President Trump has accepted the results, and I feel the world has an opportunity now to unite around the issue that is affecting us all, and that’s the cost of living.

That has been the issue that I have put front and centre in my first three months in Downing Street, and we’ve made moves.

But I can’t get people’s cost of living pressures down until the conflict in the Middle East is resolved. The conflict in Ukraine started by Russia.

These are the things we have to focus on now, and I hope the world has a moment to do that. And certainly, in my calls with leaders, that is what I will be asking everybody to do.

Some politicians and commentators have interpreted the results as evidence that rightwing populism is in retreat around the world. But when asked if he thought the elections were part of a global pattern, Burnham was reluctant to make that claim. Instead, he replied:

I think people want to see the world coming together and focusing on the things that matter to people, and that’s what the voters, in my view, are saying in the United States.

Let’s get focused in a laser-like way on those cost of living issues. And I think around the world there’s a recognition that countries can’t do that on their own, and can’t do that when we have division between nations.

I’ve been working hard as prime minister to bring a new approach, a new approach in the Middle East, and the foreign secretary set that out [with the announcements about sanctions on illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank].

A new approach to Europe, and we believe that will help us get growth back up and reduce those cost of living pressures. But a new approach with the Commonwealth too.

Asked if Britain would be pushing for de-escalation in the Iran war, Burnham said:

I’ll be working for de-escalation. To make it very clear, we want to see a resolution, the Strait of Hormuz fully opened again. That’s what we will be working towards.

If you are deputising at PMQs, it may be nice to get a good write-up from the sketchwriters, and satisfying to craft a line that will play well on the TV or radio later, but, frankly, one task matters above all others: don’t mess up. And, in that respect, Louise Haigh and Alex Burghart both performed well – in exchanges likely to be quickly forgotten.

For Haigh, this was her first time, but it did not particularly sound like this. She sounded confident and authoritative, without being brash and hubristic. She did not have anything very new to say about welfare, and Labour does not have a firm answer yet to the question as to when it will cut the benefits bill, but Haigh swerved this quite adequately with attacks on the Tories’ record and by making the Labour argument about now wanting welfare spending on failure. She said:

We have been repeatedly clear that we cannot afford to pay for failure and must invest in success – and that is how we will bring the welfare bill down.

We will make support more conditional on taking up opportunities, ensuring young people get help they need earlier, tackling the long-term drivers of welfare spending, including high housing costs, and we will do all this in a Labour way.

She would not rule out tax rises to pay for more welfare spending (see 2.16pm), but that was the sort of question opposition parties ask when they can’t think of a proper, specific one and so instead have to resort to simplistic politics-by-slogan.

Burghart has done PMQs before, and he was a bit more polished. His pre-scripted riffs about “two 10-year plans in 10 months”, and John Healey’s Today programme welfare gaffe last week, were elegantly done, but not quite withering or funny enough to be truly damaging. He didn’t fail, but he didn’t score.

The most interesting question came from the Lib Dem deputy leader Daisy Cooper, who is probably the first MP to get a ‘Trump might be a rapist’ allegation into Hansard. (See 12.29pm.) Rather ingeniously, she tried to suggest there might be some sort of UK government angle. But there probably isn’t. This is one for Congress.

If anyone had a bad PMQs, it was probably Lindsay Hoyle. It was not clear who he was referring to when he delivered his ‘don’t shout a woman down’ bollocking to some Tory MP. (See 12.20pm.) But it sounded a bit chauvinist. Haigh is the second most senior person in government; she seemed perfectly capable of coping with a bit of heckling; and if shouting down a minister is unacceptable, it should not matter what sex they are.

Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem deputy leader, says US voters have rejected the policies of Donald Trump. But Trump is threatening more strikes against Iran. Will the government tell him “no more strikes”.

Haigh says the government’s policy is de-escalation. She says she hopes the Tories and Reform UK will reconsider their decision to back the war.

Cooper says US voters are also sick of Trump’s scandals, including an allegation of rape. Will Haigh join her in saying we will not tolerate powerful men who abuse women? And will the UK support any investigations that Congress launches.

The American people have also sent a message that they are sick of Trump’s scandals, from his blatant corruption to his close friendship with Epstein and, most recently emerging from the Epstein files, an allegation of rape. Will the first secretary of state join me in saying that in this house we will not tolerate powerful men who abuse their position against women in this parliament or any other? And will the government commit to assisting any and all inquiries that the new Democratic Congress may launch?

Haig replies:

The honourable lady raises an incredibly important point about the Epstein files and everything that they revealed. She’s absolutely right to highlight the importance always of challenging power and standing on behalf of vulnerable victims.

Cooper is referring to allegations contained in some of the Epstein files, recently set out at some length in a report from the Democrats on the House judiciary committee.

This is probably the first time rape allegations about Trump have been raised in the Commons.

PMQs is starting soon. Louise Haigh, the first secretary of state, is taking PMQs for the first time, standing in for Andy Burnham. She will be up against Alex Burghart. Kemi Badenoch used to rotate the shadow ministers who would stand in for her on a day when the PM was away. But recently Burghart was made deputy leader, and so he is now the permanent stand-in.

Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.

Here is some reaction to the US midterm election results from British politicians. Progressives – people from Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens – are delighted. Rightwingers seem to be largely silent about the results on social media so far. Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader who used to boast regularly about his friendship with Donald Trump, last posted on X about 12 hours ago – about migrants.

From the Lib Dem leader Ed Davey

For anyone who believes in decency, respect and the rule of law, it feels good to see the American people so comprehensively reject Donald Trump’s politics of hate, division and economic harm.

From the Green party leader Zack Polanski

Congratulations Abdul El-Sayed. Congratulations to everyone celebrating victories across the United States.

These are victories for communities standing up to billionaires & the media empires they own.

Around the world, we’ve all got a lot of work to do. Let’s go! ✊🏽

From Simon Hoare, a Conservative MP and chair of the Commons public administration and constitutional affairs committee

Waking up to some incredible results from US Midterms. A massive and welcome rebuttal of Trump and Trumpism. Heaven knows how he will respond but it’s one hell of a message the American people have sent him. The decent civilised rest of the world will be glad and relieved

From Sayeeda Warsi, a former Conservative party chair who now sits as a non-affiliated peer

Hope won over hate in the US American voters in large numbers rejected the politics of bigotry and division Those that engaged in maligning, stereotyping lying and subjecting opponents to deeply personal attacks lost Let that be a lesson for those who mimic this form of politics in the UK

From the Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesperson Calum Miller

Voters punished Trump for crashing the US economy by launching the Iran war and imposing tariffs.

British voters will not forget that Trump’s cheerleaders, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage, wanted the UK to back him in Iran

From the Labour MP Neil Coyle

Trump fanboy Farage should learn from the US results that Reform’s isolationism, dodgy billionaire obsessions and divisive policies would be as damaging to UK families here as that of the man whose boots he has so often licked.

From John McDonnell, a Labour MP and former shadow chancellor

The US results should give confidence to progressives everywhere. People have rejected the racism displayed by Trump and his supporters and in many states have cited his brutal treatment of migrants as a factor in their decision to reject the politics of Trump.

From the Lib Dem international development spokesperson Monica Harding

Congratulations to @RepSusieLee reelected in Nevada - I spent time on her campaign in the summer - when today’s Democrat tsunami wasn’t yet clear…. Such an exciting day for us here in the UK who are willing on all those who want to put an end to Trump’s division, corruption and economic harm that hurts us all. 🇺🇸🇬🇧

From Darren Jones, the Labour chief secretary to the PM under Keir Starmer

The brilliant election results from our sister party @TheDemocrats in the United States shows us something important about politics:

Hope and love trumps money and division.

“The first light of dawn is on the horizon” - @ossoff

From the Labour MP for Falkirk Euan Stainbank

The news this morning is the best thing to come out of the US this year other than Jacob Murrell.

The Labour MP Lizzi Collinge has posted a giff implying she is pretty delighted too.

Energy bosses in the UK will have their bonuses curtailed when suppliers and brokers break the rules under a crackdown on mis-selling, Pippa Neill reports.

Andy Burnham has described the Commonwealth as “more important today than ever before” amid “such volatile times”. He used the phrase in a meeting with his Antigua and Barbuda counterpart Gaston Browne, who is hosting the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm).

In a readout of the meeting, released this morning, a No 10 spokesperson said:

The prime minister thanked Prime Minister Browne for the warm welcome from Antigua and Barbuda and for hosting Commonwealth leaders at such an important time.

In such volatile times, it was clear that the Commonwealth was more important today than ever before, the prime minister added.

Good morning. Wednesdays are normally the most exciting day of the week at Westminster, because it’s PMQs, but today (unless we get some mega surprise) all the action is taking place somewhere else. In part, that’s because Andy Burnham is still at the Commonwealth summit in Antigua. But mostly because anyone in SW1 with even a passing interest in politics will be far more interested in the outcome of the US midterm elections. You can catch up with all the drama on our US politics live blog.

While the US results are undoubtedly fascinating, quite how relevant they are to the UK is a bit harder to discern. Donald Trump is still president for the next two years, and none of the chaos he has caused for Britain and other European allies is going to go away; conceivably, he could end up even more disruptive. Trump was first elected president in 2016 only months after the UK voted for Brexit and there will be progressives in Britain hoping the US results show that what Ed Davey is this morning calling the “politics of hate, division and economic harm” might be on their way out this side of the pond too. Maybe? But it is probably too soon to get carried away. Our US coverage is all here. In so far as there is any interesting UK reaction, I will post it here.

Back to the Commonwealth summit, and Ed Miliband, the foreign secretary, has given an interview to the BBC in which he defended Burnham’s decision to open talks about a proper UK apology for slavery. In particular, Miliband was critical of Tony Blair’s attempts to settle this issue with what Miliband described as a “sorry not sorry” apology.

Miliband was referring to this statement that Blair issued in 2006, written up at the time by the Guardian here. Blair said the slave trade was “profoundly shameful” and he expressed “deep sorrow that it ever happened”. But he did not formally apologise.

In an interview with the BBC’s Newscast podcast, Miliband said Burnham wanted a different approach. He said:

People have been honestly a bit bruised by the past, what happened in the past, the sense that we just really just wanted to sweep this issue under the carpet and not confront it.

My sense is there’s a bit of a sigh of relief that, OK … at least there’s a sense of we’ve got a shared interest now in moving the Commonwealth on.

Miliband said Blair “did sort of do a kind of ‘sorry not sorry’ situation”. He added: “He kind of expressed ‘sorrow, but’ and then said sorry, and then it was walked back by No 10.”

(Miliband has for many years had a strained relationship with the former prime minister, who was opposed to the way Miliband criticised some aspects of New Labour’s record when he was party leader between 2010 and 2015. These latest remarks are just the latest example of feuding between the two of them.)

Burnham has said he wants a “structured dialogue” with Commonwealth countries about the wording of an apology. Asked whether the government might reach the point of a formal apology by the time it hosts the G20 leaders’ summit in Manchester next November, Miliband said: “Broadly speaking, yes.”

But he also stressed that the UK was not offering reparations. Asked whether the government’s new approach could end up costing UK taxpayers a penny more, Miliband replied:

No … For us, that’s never been what it’s about. And that’s why it’s been important that … I did have this conversation with our partners in advance. I said, ‘Look, we are going to say we are willing to say that we’re open to an apology, but we’re not going to shift our position on reparations.’

It’s not for us. It’s not the right answer. It’s not practical. It’s not feasible for us, but there are things we can work on co-operatively.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Yvette Cooper, the health secretary, gives evidence to the Commons health committee.

10am: Lucy Powell, the education secretary, gives evidence to the Commons education committee.

Noon: Louise Haigh, the first secretary of state, faces Alex Burghart, the deputy Conservative leader, at PMQs.

Afternoon (UK time): Andy Burnham is due to record a pooled TV interview while attending the final day of the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Antigua and Barbuda.

2.15pm: Jonathan Haskel, chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility, gives evidence with colleagues to the Commons Treasury committee about the budget.

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