Tory MP Paul Holmes resigns as parliamentary private secretary over ‘unacceptable’ Partygate revelations – live

Good morning. It is the day after Rishi Sunak’s cost of living support package announcement, and his third momentous fiscal intervention of the year, after the February energy bills announcement and the spring statement in March, has turned out to be the biggest (worth £15bn). And in some quarters it has turned out to be the best received. The two leading budget thinktanks, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Resolution Foundation, have been about as positive about this as they ever are about anything.

But Sunak also finds himself in the situation faced by one of his predecessors as chancellor, Hugh Gaitskell. Gaitskell was only chancellor briefly at the start of the 1950s, but he went on to become Labour leader and in that capacity he gave a speech in 1962 opposing membership of the European Economic Community (because it would mean the end of “a thousand years of history”). It was a terrific speech, and it got a great reception at Labour conference. But as Gaitskell listened to the applause on the platform, his wife Dora warned: “All the wrong people are cheering.”

They probably feel much the same way in the Treasury this morning. The Resolution Foundation says in a new analysis that the impact of all Sunak’s measures this financial year is “highly progressive” (that’s a compliment). But the Resolution Foundation is run by a former Ed Miliband adviser, and the leading Tory newspapers are much more sceptical.

I will post more on the media reaction to the announcement later.

Sunak has been giving interviews this morning and one aspect of the announcement he has had to defend is the decision to allow people with second homes to get the £400 energy bill rebate twice (once for each property). People with even more homes could get even more.

In interviews this morning Sunak said that, to get the money out easily, it was simplest to distribute these payments per property. He told Sky News that he considered using a council tax rebate to help most households, which would have allowed people living in the most expensive homes to have been excluded, but that this created other problems. He said:

We tried that [with the £150 for most homes announced in February] and we tried to do it with a discretionary fund and it has worked reasonably well, but there are lots of cases of people who will say ‘hang on, I happen to live in this expensive looking house or in a high council tax band house but I need help too’.

So actually this being universal means that we avoid all of those problems and really do get help to everyone who needs it.

Second homes account for only one or two per cent of the housing stock, Sunak added.

Sunak also said that, as he did not need the £400 payment, he would be donating the money to charity, and he urged other wealthy people to do the same. Addressing the Sky presenter Niall Paterson, he said:

I am sure, like me, you can also give that money to charity if you don’t need it.

The Sunaks own several properties and so his charity donations are likely to be more than £400.

I will post more from his interviews soon.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Boris Johnson is doing a visit in County Durham, where he is expected to record a clip for broadcasters.

11am: John Swinney, Scotland’s deputy first minister, attends the official opening of the Scottish Covid memorial.

12pm: The ONS publishes its regular Covid infection survey results.

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