Only 8% of voters think Rishi Sunak deserves credit for inflation falling, poll suggests – politics live updates | Politics

Good morning. The second half of August is normally the worst time of the year for political news, because the summer media campaigns pre-cooked by the political parties (like small boats week) are running out of steam, but today we will at least be hearing from Rishi Sunak, who has a visit planned.

Much of the focus this morning will by on the sentencing of Lucy Letby. It is primarily a horrific crime story, but there are implications for government and this morning Claire Coutinho, the education minister who has been doing an interview round, has been defending the government’s decision not to make the inquiry into the case a statutory one (a non-statutory one would be quicker, she argued) and insisting that ministers do want to change the law to try to stop offenders like Letby not attending court for sentencing. We will be covering these developments in detail in a separate live blog on the Letby proceedings.

Sunak’s visit this morning is linked to an announcement from the Department for Education this morning about childminding. Coutinho was promoting in during her morning media round, and it rather proves the point about late August news announcements from government being a bit thin. She has announced that “housing associations, social landlords and developers in England are being urged to allow childminders to work in their rented properties, to help encourage entry into the profession and increase availability of childcare for parents.”

There was good news for Sunak last week when inflation fell sharply. But there is less good news in the Times today, which is reporting the results of a YouGov poll suggesting that very few people think the PM deserves any credit for this, despite the fact that he has made cutting inflation one of his five key priorities for the year. In the write-up Matt Dathan reports:

A YouGov poll for the Times found that only 8% of voters credited government policy for the fall in inflation, which dropped to 6.8% last month, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics last week.

More people, 17%, believe the Bank of England is responsible despite criticism of its response to high inflation. In June Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, blamed flaws in the Bank’s economic forecasting after it failed to get a grip on runaway inflation.

The polling suggests that the most commonly believed reason for the fall in inflation is external factors such as global oil and gas prices. Thirty-eight per cent cited external factors, but 31% said they did not know what was responsible for the easing of price rises.

The polling is more stark in red wall seats in northern England, where only 5% thought government policy had brought inflation down.

Sunak is due to be speaking to the media on his visit later this morning, and so perhaps we will get a response from him then. We are also getting a No 10 lobby briefing at 11.30am, but otherwise the news diary is mostly empty.

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