Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, has told MPs that he announced a cut in income tax two years early to help the Treasury resist pressure for an increase in public spending. He said public spending was going up in this parliament anyway. Asked why he had announced a tax cut for 2024, when there was so much uncertainty about the public finances, he said: I think it’s good to give people a sense of direction, a plan for where we’re trying to head. Also, I think that by doing that it’s also helpful because it creates a discipline, which is very beneficial ... Now having something very clearly to aim for means that I think, hopefully, we can have a more disciplined conversation about incremental public spending from this point, which is already at very high levels. But one Labour MP, Siobhan McDonagh, suggested to Sunak that he was assuming voters were stupid if he did not realise that they would see this as a transparent election ploy. (See 4.01pm.) Sunak refused to accept an assessement from the Office for Budget Responsibility that Brexit has led to a 15% drop in trade. When first asked about the analysis, published in the OBR report last week, Sunak said: It’s quite hard to disentangle the various impacts of the pandemic, but also the change in our trading relationship with the EU. The data is actually a bit imperfect. When pressed a second time on the OBR analysis, and asked if the fact that UK trade intensity has stayed down since the pandemic, while it has bounced back in other G7 countries, implied Brexit was the crucial factor, he replied: It might well be. I’m just saying it is too early to be definitive. I haven’t got all the numbers in front of me but when I was looking at this a couple of weeks ago, if you look at UK/EU and UK/rest of world imports and exports, there are a range of different things moving on. They’re not actually all consistent with themselves. So we are still trying to work through what the impacts are. But he claimed some change was always expected. He said: It was always inevitable that there would be a change in our trade intensity with Europe as a result of the change in the trading relationship. That was expected, and unsurprising when you change a trading relationship. Sunak also claimed trade intensity was falling anyway, because of the desire to onshore supply chains after the pandemic, for example. And he said “the benefits of new trading relationships take time”. Asked if he would be surprised if Brexit did lead to a permanent fall in trade, Sunak sidestepped the question, but said he would be happy to discuss it on a future occasion. Sunak insisted that he was not blocking the publication of the government’s energy security strategy. Asked about reports claiming that his objections had led to it not being published this week, as planned, he said: I’m certainly not blocking anything and the prime minister continues to work through the details of that. Given how important it is, I think it’s important that we get it right. It will impact lots of different things and it’s being worked on at pace between all the relevant ministers. P&O Ferries has “one last opportunity” to U-turn on the sacking of 800 crew and must lift this week’s deadline for the employees to sign redundancy and non-disclosure agreements, the government has warned. Leading refugee charities have called on the UK government to scrap visa requirements for Ukrainian refugees, amid mounting anger about the government’s slow progress in issuing paperwork to people fleeing a war zone. Ministers are to launch a new national behaviour survey as part of its plans to improve standards and lift attainment in schools in England. As Sally Weale reports, it is one of a package of measures outlined in a schools white paper unveiled on Monday, which also includes ambitious new attainment targets for all primary and secondary pupils across the country.