The Conservative party says Rachel Reeves’s decision to change the definition of debt in her fiscal rules will put up the cost of borrowing. In a statement issued by CCHQ, Gareth Davies, a shadow Treasury minister, said:

Before the election Rachel Reeves promised that she would not ‘fiddle’ the fiscal rules, and now it seems she is going to do exactly that. Remarkably she is announcing this not to parliament, but to the IMF in advance of the budget.

This is already having real world effects, with borrowing costs rising. This uncertainty over additional borrowing risks interest rates staying higher and for longer. It’s families up and down the country who would pay the price.

And George Osborne, the former Tory chancellor, has told the Political Currency podcast he co-hosts with Ed Balls that he is voting for Kemi Badenoch, not Robert Jenrick, in the Conservative leadership contest because Jenrick’s proposal to leave the European convention on human rights is a red line for him. He says:

I started the campaign thinking that Robert Jenrick was going to win. But he underperformed at the conference, and I can’t get round this promise to leave the European convention on human rights.

For me, that is a red line; this is just a really impossible thing for Britain to do. A Conservative party that said it was going to withdraw from the European Convention Human Rights, I could not vote for. It’s breaking the rule of law that we’ve helped establish around the world, it’s something that Conservative governments did so much to establish.

I’m just fed up with the Conservative party wanting to leave things and break up international alliances. I want to hear about the Conservatives building things and forming international alliances.

I just can’t get around the Jenrick promise, and therefore, I’ve come around to saying I will vote for Kemi Badenoch. I’ve ticked the box and I’m about to post it after this podcast.

Ed Balls, the Labour former shadow chancellor, has said Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have not done enough yet to persuade people they have a plan to stimulate growth.

Before the election Keir Starmer said that securing the highest sustained growth in the G7 would be one of his five missions for government.

But, in his Political Currency podcast, which he co-hosts with George Osborne, the Tory former chancellor, Balls said the new government has not properly explained how this might happen. He said:

They haven’t done enough to explain to us why growth has been so weak over 10,15, 20 years – so that we understand why what they’re going to do is going to turn things around.

It’s not enough to say to business, or to the markets or to the population, ‘we’re not the Tories’ – because nobody thinks it was simply the Conservatives, by being Conservatives, which led to low growth.

[The question is] do they really have a plan on transport infrastructure investment? What is the plan for driving regional growth? How is innovation going to work?

We’ve seen some things around the green agenda, which is good, but they’ve been cutting back – not just public investment, but the national wealth fund investments into those areas. How strategic is it actually going to be? Are they going to choose the areas where they can really have a big impact?

They haven’t done enough yet to persuade us there really is a growth plan.

Balls also said that, although British activists have been going to the US to campaign in elections for years, it was “naive and gauche” to a Labour figure to seem to be organising an effort like this for the 2024 presidential election. He explained:

These kinds of visits have been happening for decades but this is a different election. You would think people would have known from 2020 how delicate this is. Both Keir Starmer and David Lammy had been going out of their way to say they would work with Trump …

When you start organising a sort of a posse of campaigners as a foreign party, now a foreign government, an alarm bell should have rung, and there will be people kicking themselves, thinking ‘I saw that and I didn’t do anything.’

If you’re in opposition for years, you get used to the idea that nobody cares that much what you do, and when you’re in government, suddenly it changes overnight.

They won’t make this mistake again, but it’s definitely a mistake, and somebody should have spotted it earlier.

Balls was a lead figure in Labour politics for two decades, but now he works as a TV presenter and podcaster. He is married to Yvette Cooper, the home secretary.

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has published an article for the Financial Times about the new version of the fiscal rules she will unveil in the budget. While she is not confirming that she will move to the PSNFL measure of debt (see 9.01am), she hints at this by saying that her investment rule “will make space for increased investment in the fabric of our economy”.

This is what she says in the article about her rules.

My fiscal rules will do two things. The first and most important: my stability rule will mean that day-to-day spending will be matched by revenues.

Given the state of the public finances and the need to invest in our public services, this rule will bite hardest. Alongside tough decisions on spending and welfare, that means taxes will need to rise to ensure this rule is met. I will always protect working people when I make these choices, while taking a balanced approach.

Crucially, my stability rule will also cover the interest on our national debt and unlike the previous government I won’t cut capital budgets to make up for shortfalls in the day-to-day running costs of departments.

My second fiscal rule, the investment rule, will get debt falling as a proportion of our economy. That will make space for increased investment in the fabric of our economy, and ensure we don’t see the falls in public sector investment that were planned under the last government.

We will invest alongside business, through expert bodies like the National Wealth Fund, multiplying the impact of public money. And I will invest wisely — we won’t just increase investment, we will also invest differently. We won’t repeat the costly mistakes of the past.

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

Harriet Harman, the former Labour deputy leader, has accused Keir Starmer of failing to understand why other Commonwealth leaders are so keen on having a full debate about having a reparatory justice for slavery.

While No 10 has indicated that it is open to some discussion on this issue (see 12.32pm), Downing Street said before the Chogm summit that Starmer would not be offering reparations or an apology when he met his fellow Commonwealth leaders. Speaking to reports on his flight to Samoa, Starmer said he was more interested in “looking forward rather than looking backwards”.

Speaking on Sky News’ Electoral Dysfunction podcast, Harman said Starmer did not appreciate why this was a live issue for so many country, and she said the PM should “lean in to a sense of cultural respect and equality”.

She explained:

I think that reparative justice is not about the past.

Of course it’s about what happened in the past, but it’s about relationships in the future and what those relationships are based on.

And therefore, I think to say ‘that’s all in the past, let’s look to the future’ feels like a misunderstanding of what they’re actually saying.

Harman said trying to argue that this was just a historic matter would not work. “[Starmer] needs to be in this conversation rather than be ruling it out,” she said.

The UK government’s borrowing costs have risen on global financial markets amid expectations that Rachel Reeves will change Britain’s debt rules to unlock up to £50bn of additional headroom for investment in infrastructure, Richard Partington reports. He says:

The yield – in effect the interest rate – on UK government bonds rose by about six points to trade above 4.2% in early trading on Thursday morning before easing, contrasting with a fall in borrowing costs for other comparable countries, including the US. The spread between gilts and German debt rose to the highest in more than a year, according to Bloomberg.

“It seems to be related to Reeves last night suggesting that the fiscal rules would be rewritten to increase spending on infrastructure,” Lyn Graham-Taylor, a senior rates strategist at Rabobank, told Reuters.

Here is the full story.

Peter Walker

Robin Butler, the former cabinet secretary who is now a peer, has described being in a Brighton hotel room with Margaret Thatcher when an IRA bomb exploded – and how she rushed in to check on her husband, Dennis, after he hesitated.

Butler, who was the head civil servant under Thatcher, John Major and (briefly) Tony Blair, told a podcast led by the Lord Speaker, John McFall, that he was with the then-prime minister in the sitting room of her suite at the Grand hotel at around 3am in October 1984, going over some government business, when there was “this mighty explosion”. He went on:

And I’d heard bombs before, so I knew it was a bomb. I suddenly came to, and I thought, ‘You’re alone with the prime minister. Somebody’s trying to blow her up. You better do something sensible.’ So I said to her, ‘I think you should come away from the windows in case there’s another bomb.’ She didn’t hesitate for a moment. She said, ‘I must see if Dennis is all right.’

So she goes to the bedroom, opens the door, bedroom in darkness. And you could hear the sounds of falling masonry through, because it was the bathroom that was collapsing. And I should have said, ‘Stand back, prime minister. This is a job for somebody more dispensable than you,’ but I had my inhibitions, so she went in. And a moment or two later, she came out with Dennis pulling his grey flannel trousers over his pyjamas. We went out into the corridor and we looked up the corridor, and amazingly the lights had stayed on despite this huge explosion in the hotel.

And when we looked up, the next suite along, we saw what looked like smoke coming out from under the door. And that was the suite that Geoffrey Howe had. So I thought the bomb must have been in there. And again, I’ll never forget it, his security man was running at the door trying to kick it in so that … And luckily he failed because there had been a void the other side of the door. Geoffrey came out from the next room along, which was their bedroom, and came down.

Butler also recounts having to tell Thatcher later in the morning that five people were confirmed dead and two of her ministers, Norman Tebbit and John Wakeham were either trapped or badly hurt:

She didn’t hesitate for a moment. She said, ‘Well, the conference is due to begin at 9.30, and we must make sure it begins on time.’ And I was appalled. I said to her, ‘This terrible thing’s happened. Some of your closest colleagues have been killed and badly injured. You can’t be going on with a party conference.’ And she said, ‘This is our opportunity to show that terrorism can’t defeat democracy.’ Of course, she was right and I was wrong, and that’s what she did demonstrate.

Crime figures out today show robbery, violence with injury and fraud up significantly over the past year.

As the Office for National Statistics says in a report, the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) shows a 10% increase in overall crime in the year ending June 2024, compared to the previous year.

The ONS says that overall crime, on this measure, has been falling over the past decade, and that the 10% increase might be partly explained by the fact that the previous survey period covered a time when some Covid restrictions were in force.

But it says with some crimes there has been a “notable” rise. It says:

While most crime types did not show a statistically significant change, there were notable increases in robbery, violence with injury and consumer and retail fraud. In the year ending June 2024:

-robbery returned to levels last seen before the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, rising to an estimated 139,000 incidents, compared with 60,000 incidents in YE [year ending] June 2023; although police recorded crime is our preferred source for robbery

-violence with injury also returned to pre-pandemic levels and increased to an estimated 562,000 incidents from around 376,000 incidents in YE June 2023

-consumer and retail fraud increased by 19%, reaching approximately 963,000 incidents

The crime survey measures crime by asking people what crime they have experienced. It is seen as a good way of measuring some crimes, like violence and fraud, while statistics about the crimes recorded by police are seen as a more accurate measure of other crimes, like robbery.

Here is a chart from the report with the headline crime figures, as recorded by the crime survey. There is a gap where comparable data is not available.

And here are figures for specific crimes, using a mix of crime survey data (CSEW) and police recorded crime data (PRC).

Keir Starmer is open to discussing non-cash forms of reparatory justice for Britain’s former colonies, the Guardian understands.

The prime minister is under pressure to open the door to reparations at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm) in Samoa this week.

Caribbean countries have been pushing for the issue to be discussed at the summit, despite resistance from the UK government.

No 10 has ruled out paying reparations or apologising for the UK’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, and this uncompromising tone has irritated some Commonwealth countries.

But a Downing Street source indicated that the UK could support some forms of reparatory justice, such restructuring financial institutions and providing debt relief. The source said:

There is a general sense that these multilateral institutions give out loans to developing countries then charge large interest rates for repayments.

They added that reforming financial situations was something the UK often took a lead on and was a form of reparatory justice that would not come at a cost to UK taxpayers.

Other proposed forms of restorative justice include making a formal apology, running educational programmes, establishing cultural institutions and providing economic and public health support.

A draft of the CHOGM communique leaked to the BBC said that governments, “noting calls for discussions on reparatory justice with regard to the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement … agreed that the time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity.”

According to the broadcaster the communique sought to broaden the issue to include the slave trade not just across the Atlantic but in the Pacific, by saying that a majority of Commonwealth countries “share common historical experiences”.

It mentioned the practice of “blackbirding”, where Pacific islanders were kidnapped and brought to Australia where they were sold as slaves or cheap labour to work on plantations in Queensland.

In 2021 Jack Dempsey, then mayor of Bundaberg in Queensland, issued a formal apology for blackbirding.

Asked about reparations ahead of the Chogm summit Pat Conroy, Australia’s minister for the Indo-Pacific, told the Guardian:

I don’t want to get into the UK particular focus but what I can say is from an Australian point of view, on things like blackbirding, it’s really important to be conscious of the past, learn from it and not be afraid of discussing it.

No 10 has ruled out making a formal apology for slavery and colonialism at Chogm.

Philip Davis, the prime minister of the Bahamas, has said that he wants to have a “frank” conversation with Keir Starmer about slavery reparations.

In an interview with Politico, Davis also said that he was encouraged because he had worked with Starmer on death penalty cases when they were both lawyers in the past – and he knew Starmer to be a “fair-minded” person.

Davis was speaking to Politco’s Dan Bloom, who says the two prime ministers worked together on a case in the early 2000s that led to the mandatory death penalty being abolished in the Bahamas.

On the subject of reparations, referring to Starmer’s comment about wanting to look to the future not the past, Davis said:

I don’t want to comment on his views about looking forward or on the past, but I think knowing what the past is should inform your decision-making towards the future.

Let’s have a conversation about this … We all appreciate this, the horrendous impact that the transatlantic slave business had on the African diaspora and it requires justice.

It’s not just about an apology. It’s not about money. It’s about an appreciation and embracing and understanding of what our ancestors went through, that has left a scourge on our race, culturally, mentally and physically.

Davis also said that, because they knew each other, he hoped to have a “frank” conversation with Starmer on this.

He’s not unknown to me, we have come out of the same profession, and we will have met each other during the course of our profession over the years, and I’ve always known him to be a fair-minded, just individual.

Sometimes we get hamstrung by those around us.

The Green party says the UK should commit to paying slavery reparations.

Keir Starmer is refusing to talk about slavery reparations at the Commonwealth summit (during Black History Month no less).

The Green Party calls on the Government to commit to a holistic process of atonement and reparations.