Politics latest: Chancellor Rachel Reeves tells Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips civil service can be cut by 10,000 people to 'deliver better public services' (2025)

Thank you for joining us for live coverage of today's events in Westminster.

We spoke to the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, like on Sky News first thing, and heard from the Lib Dem leader, who gave a speech to his party faithful at their spring conference.

Use the key points above for all the main things you need to know, and scroll down for full coverage and analysis.

And if you missed this week's edition of Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips - fear not, you can watch it in full below.

Join us again from 6am for the very latest from Westminster.

In recent months, the chancellor has become a lightning rod for criticism.

She has been accused of ushering in a new era of austerity and channelling George Osbourne over the government's cuts to welfare, winter fuel and international aid.

She's been described as a new Liz Truss – with her focus on growth and tearing up regulation.

She's been urged to hike taxes for the wealthy by left wing labour MPs.

She's been under pressure to loosen her self-imposed fiscal rules – even Lord Blunkett, the former Labour home secretary, has called on her to allow more government borrowing.

As for the Tories – they claim she's in an economic situation is a crisis of her own making by trash-talking the economy and damaging business confidence by hiking national insurance on employers.

But if the pressure is taking its toll on Rachel Reeves– it didn't show this morning.

She breezed into the Sky News Westminster studio for her interview with Sir Trevor Phillips and positively beamed when he asked about the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) preparing to slash its growth forecasts, reportedly by as much as half, and the severity of the country's financial situation.

She insisted that the "world has changed" since her October budget, and that therefore the government is responding to that change through greater investment in defence and security.

The chancellor has clearly decided to come out fighting.

She's wedded to her fiscal rules, she's sticking to her promise not to cut taxes, and determinedly standing by the decisions she took in the October budget.

"I promised at the general election to bring stability back to the economy – and as a result of that stability, interest rates have been cut three times since the general election,” she said.

"That's only been possible because we put our public finances on a firm footing, and we've also put our public services on a firm footing."

There was no real acknowledgement that cuts in interest rates have now stalled, and economic growth is flatlining.

She brushed off the prospect of a more negative outlook by deferring again and again to the as yet unpublished OBR forecast.

It's clearly part of the chancellor's job to talk up the economy they're responsible for. But the strategy here was to show no hint of weakness.

The spring statement is already done and dusted as it had to be submitted to the OBR last week for its forecasts to be prepared and printed.

So there's no way back now on the likely cuts to come.

We're expecting the chancellor to set out savings of around £10bn pounds, including the £5bn of welfare savings announced last week.

Today she confirmed the civil service will be forced to cut £2bn a year by cutting administration costs by the end of the decade – although the savings will be used to protect frontline services from cutbacks.

She told me people who were describing the event as an emergency budget – which implies tax changes - are going to look "very silly" when they hear what she's got to say on Wednesday.

That's a dig at shadow chancellor Mel Stride and the Tories, who've been doing their best to make the "emergency budget" moniker stick.

You'd think they might want to avoid reminding people of the last emergency budget, which was Jeremy Hunt's effort to clean up the shrapnel left behind by Liz Truss's mini budget implosion.

But for Rachel Reeves, it's an ever present reminder of what can go wrong.

As Rachel Reeves prepares to unveil the spring statement next week, Beth, Ruth and Harriet discuss what cuts the chancellor will make to close her budget deficit and how difficult it will be for her to justify her actions.

They also examine the effects of this week's welfare reforms and look at what a change in the personal independence payment, or PIP, means for those who rely on it.

Also, how will Sir Keir Starmer's "coalition of the willing" protect Ukraine from Russia without US support? The three look at how the prime minister is performing on the world stage and what difference he can make.

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A swathe of celebrities including Sir Stephen Fry and Succession star Brian Cox have urged the government to reverse its "shameful" cuts to welfare.

Sir Stephen said the cuts should not be targeted at "the most vulnerable and overlooked of all our population", while Mr Cox recalled his own experience of child poverty and argued the plans would "have a lasting impact on the lives of so many people already finding it difficult to afford life's essentials".

They were joined in their criticism by actor Stanley Tucci, who branded the plans "wrong" and said they would force parents in disabled families to "skip meals so that they can feed their children".

The celebrities' intervention comes after Sir Keir Starmer defended his government's shakeup to the welfare system, designed to shave £5bn from the disability benefits bill for working-age people, which is set to balloon to £75bn by the end of the decade.

The prime minister has branded the current system "morally and economically indefensible" and said the government cannot simply "shrug its shoulders" and pretend the welfare system is "progressive".

Sir Keir Starmer has had a phone call today with his Dutch counterpart to discuss Ukraine.

A Downing Street spokesperson said the PM "reflected on his attendance at the UK Permanent Joint Headquarters on Thursday, noting the impressive military co-ordination taking place and looking ahead to further planning meetings this week."

"Both also agreed that continued political momentum and action, driven by the members of the Coalition of the Willing, is vital to put Ukraine in the strongest possible position for a secure and lasting peace."

They also talked about European defence and security, and the pair agreed that "much closer cooperation on our defensive capabilities will be vitally important in the coming decades in order to protect Europe and secure its future".

In a post on X, Dick Schoof said he "thanked Prime Minister Starmer for the leading role he has played in recent weeks".

"We are working not only for the security of Ukraine but also for that of Europe, and therefore the Netherlands too," he added.

The chancellor's update on the economy next week is not going to be an emergency budget in its truest sense. But it will be a moment when the sirens flash red.

It's not an emergency budget because the chancellor, as our listeners will know from our interview with Rachel Reeves on Electoral Dysfunction a couple of weeks ago, is not going to make tax changes (such a move would tip it into budget territory because it would turn the spring statement into a major fiscal event).

But it looks set to be a red siren moment for a chancellor. Having staked her reputation on growing the economy and no return to austerity, she is going to have to announce a downgrade to growth forecasts and could also unveil the biggest spending squeeze on Whitehall in years.

The welfare cuts this week were just the starter - the opposition are going to have a field day.

Watch out in the next few days for a "re-education" as the Treasury tries to frame the arguments Reeves will get in at the despatch box on Wednesday.

You'll hear about how the "world has changed", with global uncertainly knocking growth and forcing countries to invest more in defence.

This is all part of the chancellor seeking to distance sluggish growth from her own budget decisions last October (the Conservatives will shout back jobs tax - their rebranding of the Reeves' £25bn hike in employers' national insurance contributions).

In the final stretch of his speech, Sir Ed Davey returns to what appear to be his favourite topics - Donald Trump and Brexit.

On Brexit, he says the Lib Dems are "a movement of proud internationalists", and they are "the only party that has consistently opposed the Conservatives' damaging Brexit deal from the start."

He calls for "a new deal with the EU, with a Customs Union at its heart – putting us on a path back to the single market".

And he says they are "the only party still championing international aid" after both the Tories and Labour "shamefully cut it", and "the only party in British politics speaking up in defiance of Donald Trump".

Davey says the "obvious truth" is that Trump is "no leader of the free world", and is "a man who stands on the White House drive, flogging Teslas for Elon Musk like a particularly bad used car salesman".

He hits out at Trump for withholding aid to Ukraine, and notes that "this is the man Nigel Farage calls his 'inspiration'".

"We must deal with [Trump] as he is. Bullying. Narcissistic. Unpredictable," he argues.

"We must deal with Trump from a position of strength, not weakness."

Davey criticises the government for not ruling out changing or scrapping the tax on tech giants' UK profits in order to avoid tariffs, saying: "Appeasement never works with bullies, and it doesn't work with Trump – as his tariffs on British steel already show."

The Tories, he continues, would "have us go to Mar-a-Lago, begging bowl outstretched, pleading for a trade deal on whatever terms Trump will give us".

He calls on the government to bring Canadian and EU leaders together to "agree a coordinated response to Trump's trade war" - which should include tariffs on Teslas.

In closing, Davey says his party's "liberal belief in internationalism [...] offers the solution" to the problems facing the UK, "with Trump in the White House and Farage leading a Trump tribute act".

"Our trademark community politics is the only way to defeat their cynical populism. The threat they pose is grave. The challenge before us is great.

"This is a battle of competing values. A battle of competing visions. A battle for the future.

"We didn’t choose this fight. But friends, I know you are up for it. I know together we can win it."

Sir Ed Davey next turns his fire on the Conservative Party, who he accused of "chasing Reform's tail".

"What we can offer people is even more powerful than all their lies. All their false promises. The easy answers of the populist right," he tells his party's conference.

"Hope based not on empty rhetoric or magical thinking, but on hard work and concrete action that people can see making a difference to their lives and to their communities.

"That's what good old-fashioned Liberal Democrat community politics has always been all about - winning people's trust by getting things done."

The Lib Dem leader points to Kemi Badenoch recently saying that "typical Liberal Democrat will be somebody who is good at fixing their church roof and people in the community like them".

He says: "I think she meant it as an insult. But I'll happily wear it as a badge of honour.

"Because she's right. Liberal Democrats fix things."

He says she has "good reason" not to like the party, noting that they took 60 seats off them at the general election.

"But what I'm talking about is the sneering attitude of the leader of the Conservatives, the sneering attitude that says fixing church roofs is somehow beneath her. Even beneath politics altogether.

"That what happens in our communities is trivial and insignificant compared to debating the true meaning of conservatism on Twitter.

"And it goes far beyond Kemi Badenoch and church roofs. It's the whole Conservative Party – whether in Westminster or in town halls and county halls across the country."

Davey says the Tories have "abandoned our communities" and public services, which is "why so many lifelong Conservative voters have turned to the Liberal Democrats".

He adds that "no one ever joins the Liberal Democrats as a shortcut to high office", but to "make a difference to our communities and our country".

Sir Ed Davey says one does not deal with people like Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump by "curling up in a ball and hoping they'll leave you alone".

"You have to stand up. Stand tough. Stand together with our friends. Make clear that an attack on one is an attack on all," he argues.

"What Trump and Putin are doing offends our fundamental British values of decency, fair play, respect for national sovereignty and the rule of law," he says - but adds that there is "one lone holdout" who "simply doesn't seem to get it".

"A man who splits his time between GB News, Mar-a-Lago… and weirdly selling nappies on social media, apparently.

"A man who can even, legend has it, occasionally be spotted in the House of Commons and – if you wait long enough – in the town of Clacton-on-Sea - Nigel Farage."

Davey says Farage "thinks Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are great" in a "celebrity crush kind of way".

"A tyrant responsible for the brutal suppression of Russia’s own people, and countless atrocities in Ukraine, who has murdered thousands of innocent civilians, and abducted 20,000 children from their homes - snatched them away from their families.

"That, apparently, is the sort of man who wins Nigel Farage's admiration.

"How despicable. How completely out-of-touch with British values. With human values. How unpatriotic. How deeply un-British.

"And this from a man who thinks he can be our prime minister. Not on our watch."

He calls for "patriotism", and says the Reform UK leader "is not the least bit interested in solving" the problems facing Britain, and instead would "turnour great country into little more than a Donald Trump tribute act".

The Lib Dem leader says Farage does not believe in universal healthcare free at the point of use, and has "nothing to say" about the challenges facing the health service, noting that he has "never uttered the word 'care' once in parliament".

"Imagine that. A political party whose leader has nothing at all to say on one of the biggest issues on people's lips, and the biggest challenges we face."

He accuses Reform UK of peddling "superficial, simplistic, snake-oil solutions", and choosing to "exploit" the "struggles and anxieties" of the British people "for their own selfish ends".

At stake at the local elections in May is "the very future of liberal democracy itself".

Sir Ed Davey opens his conference speech by telling Lib Dem members that this is "a time of great peril for our continent, and for our country".

"Because Donald Trump is not only betraying Ukraine," he says. "It's not only their sovereignty he's selling out.

"It's our security. The security of Europe and the security of our United Kingdom. And that is unforgivable."

He says Putin has "fooled Donald Trump into thinking that his ambitions do not extend beyond parts of Ukraine", and points to Russia's activities in countries like Georgia, Moldova, and Romania, accusing Russia of "undermining their democracies and seeking to extend his grip further into Europe".

He praises Ukraine for fighting for "the freedom and security of people across Europe, including ours here in the UK", and declares: "We stand with you. Today. Tomorrow. Always."

Davey expresses pride in the UK's response to Russia's invasion, and says he was "proud that the prime minister brought Europe and Canada together here in Britain to chart a way forward, the day after those appalling scenes of Trump and Vance ambushing President Zelenskyy in the Oval Office".

Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, provoked controversy overnight by saying that Sir Keir Starmer's efforts to create a 'coalition of the willing' is simply "a posture and a pose".

Davey says in response: "We know what it really is - Britain, leading in Europe again, as we have done at the greatest moments in our nation's history."

He calls on the government to go further in its efforts to support Ukraine, arguing that frozen Russian assets should be given in funding, and wants to join a new European Rearmament Bank.