UK politics live: Keir Starmer claims families will be £2,620 worse off this year under Tories

John Nicolson (SNP) goes next.

Q: You speak about “woke” alot. How would you define it?

Grade says there is a wonderful debate going on in the country. It covers a range of topics. But he does worry about the tone of it.

Q: You described Ofcom officials as “woke warrior apparatchiks”. You wrote about how “some idiot” was complaining about blacking up in a show from the 1970s.

Grade says he has strong opinions sometimes.

Q: How do you think the “woke warriors” at Ofcom will feel about your arrival?

Grade says he was making a point about a channel that caters for nostalgia, and specialises in showing old shows. The shows is broadcasts are obviously a piece of history, he says.

Nicolson says Grade is expressing himself more reasonably now. Grade says, in the article Nicolson is quoting from, he was trying to make a point, and help the channel.

Q: And you have expressed support for Laurence Fox, the actor turned rightwing activist.

Grade says he admires Fox’s courage. He says he has known Fox’s family for a long time. He says Fox’s grandfather and his father were business partners.

Clive Efford (Lab) is asking the questions now.

Q: You have expressed strong views in the past. Is that a problem?

Grade says Ofcom makes decisions based on evidence. He says you have to leave your opinions at the door.

Q: What about our views on the BBC’s licence fee?

Grade says he made a point about how the BBC was asking for an increase in the licence fee at a time when its news bulletins were full of reports about the impact of the cost of living crisis.

Q: What about your support for Channel 4 privatisation?

Grade says he opposed the privatisation of Channel 4 under Margaret Thatcher and John Major. He says Ofcom would have no say over Channel 4 privatisation.

Q: You were a Tory peer until recently?

Grade says he has spent a lifetime as a broadcaster resisting political pressure.

Ofcom’s reputation depends on it being independent, he says. He is capable of “resisting undue political pressure”.

Grade says he does not think a single candidate could have all the experience needed to cover the whole remit of Ofcom.

But he says he has experience of being regulated, as a broadcaster and as chairman of Camelot. And he has done a wide range of jobs, he says. He was chairman of Ocado for seven years, he says. He says he is “adaptable”. He has worked in the public sector and the private sector.

Q: What skills would you bring to this?

Grade says he has people skills. He has a concern for clear governance. And he is “very consensual”, he says. He says the power of a chair depends “derives entirely from your ability to carry the hearts and minds of your colleagues on the board”.

Lord Grade has just started giving evidence. He says he decided to apply for the Ofcom job in November last year. He was not asked to apply, he says.

He says he was thinking about online safety, and thought there was important work to do there.

(The online safety bill, which was published recently, will hugely expand the powers of Ofcom, giving it unprecedented new powers to regulate social media companies.)

From Bloomberg’s Kitty Donaldson

Good morning. Keir Starmer is putting the cost of living right at the centre of Labour’s campaign for the local elections, which he is launching today, with a claim that, as the party puts it in its press release, “the Tories are leaving families £2,620 worse off [this year]– even after the spring statement”.

It is an alarming figure, and it is worth explaining how Labour has calculated it. The party has taken five factors into account.

Tax burden: Tax as a proportion of the economy is rising from 34.4% in 2021-22 to 35.5% in 2022-23, and the party says this would amount to £30bn – which is the equivalent of £1,060 per household.

Energy costs: The rise in the price cap from April will push up energy bills by £690 per household.

Petrol: The increase in petrol prices over the last 12 months amounts to £300 per household, Labour says.

Food: By taking the figure for average household spending on food in 2020, and uprating it in line with the OBR’s forecast for inflation, Labour calculates that food bills will rise by £275 per household.

Mortgages: Labour calculates this as going up by £295 per household, based on the impact of interest rate rises on the cost of servicing a £100,000, 20-year variable rate mortgage.

In a statement issued overnight, Starmer said:

What did we get in that mini-budget?

A Conservative government that takes far more than it gives to working people. The biggest drop in living standards since the 50s. Taxes the highest in 70 years.

Even allowing for everything the chancellor announced, families are £2,620 worse off. Britain deserves better than this.

One obvious problem with the Labour analysis is that three of these five factors amount to inflation (and a fourth, interest rates, is a policy response to inflation), and it is very hard to argue that this is Boris Johnson or Rishi Sunak’s fault. If Labour were to take office this week, inflation would still be soaring. But, as Vote Leave discovered in 2016, even a questionable number can have its uses if it sets the terms of debate. And when voters find that money runs out at the end of the month, they may not be overscrupulous about deciding who to blame.

Labour says, with the revenue from its proposed windfall tax on energy companies, it could cut energy bills for families by up to £600.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10am: Lord Grade, the government’s choice for Ofcom chair, is questioned by the Commons culture committee in a pre-appointment scrutiny hearing.

Late morning: Starmer launches Labour’s local election campaign at an event in Bury.

11.30pm: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

12pm: Nicola Sturgeon takes first minister’s questions in the Scottish parliament.

1.30pm: Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, chief of the defence staff, and David Williams, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence, take part in a Q&A at the Institute for Government.

3.45pm: Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, speaks at the Royal Society’s Science of Covid event.

I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Alternatively, you can email me at [email protected].

Michael Grade, the veteran broadcasting executive who has run the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 in a long career, is about to be questioned by the Commons digital committee in his role as the government’s preferred candidate to chair Ofcom. The committee does not have the formal power to block his appointment, but a critical assessment could prompt ministers to think again.

Grade was eventually nominated after a chaotic two-year process that saw the government try, and fail, to instal the former Daily Mail editor, Paul Dacre, in the post.

Here is a preview of the hearing by Michael Savage and Richard Brooks.

Related: Michael Grade faces tough questions over fitness to lead Ofcom

In an interview on the Today programme this morning Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, rejected claims that it was irresponsible for Labour to call for Boris Johnson’s resignation during the Ukraine war. She said:

The whole of parliament is united in our response to Ukraine and if Boris Johnson was replaced by a different member of the cabinet, a different member of parliament … the position on Ukraine would not change.

The House of Commons is united in our resolute response to Russia’s aggression and to the needs of the Ukrainian people. The position of the UK government would not change if the prime minister changed.

But at the moment we have a prime minister who has a total disrespect for the rules, has treated the British people as if they are fools, and I don’t think that he is fit to govern.

In her interview on Sky News Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the international trade secretary, was also asked if it was appropriate for Boris Johnson to make a joke about transgender people at the Tory dinner on Tuesday night. With the Conservative MP Jamie Wallis coming out as transgender a few hours later, the timing could not have been worse.

To say that Trevelyan defended Johnson over this would be going a bit far. She half-heartedly played it down as a joke, before swiftly moving on. She told Kay Burley:

You know, jokes made at dinners are made, I think … all of us who know the prime minister know he has a very, very warm and affectionate personality and I think he is genuinely, you know, proud and affectionate and wants to support Jamie in his decision to share with the world his choice to present himself as trans. And I think, I mean, he’s a lovely young man and we are hugely, hugely proud of him.

Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the international trade secretary, was on duty miniser on the morning interview round this morning and, on Sky News, she wriggled endlessly when asked by Kay Burley if she accepted that the Met’s decision to issue fines in relation to Partygate meant that the law was broken.

This shouldn’t be a difficult question – the answer is yes, the law was broken – but, because Downing Street is refusing to concede this, loyal ministers are trying to stick to the PM’s line, which is that he’s postponing comment until the investigation is over.

Trevelyan started with the loyal minister position but, in the face of persistent questioning from Burley, eventually defaulted to common sense. “That’s right, they have broken the regulations that were set in the Covid Act,” she said.