Watch live: Keir Starmer faces grilling from Kemi Badenoch in Commons after surprise inflation fall

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Watch live as Sir Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, 15 January, after a surprise inflation fall gave a boost to under-fire chancellor Rachel Reeves.

The prime minister is likely to be grilled in the House of Commons on the state of the economy and his confidence in his chancellor

after new figures from the Office for National Statistics showed the rate of Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation slowed to 2.5 per cent in December, from 2.6 per cent in November.

Analysts had been expecting CPI inflation to stay the same or edge higher.

Speaking to the BBC, former Bank of England policymaker Michael Saunders said of the new figures: “I think you can hear a sigh of relief coming out from Downing Street, the Bank of England and across financial markets as a whole.”

Hitting out at “unfair” criticism of Ms Reeves after the cost of government borrowing rose to its highest level since 1998, Treasury minister Darren Jones appeared to rule out an emergency budget in March, telling Times Radio on Wednesday that there will only be “one major fiscal event a year”.