Rishi Sunak to face questions over pledge to halve inflation after rate remains unchanged at 8.7% – UK politics live | Politics

Good morning. Inflation figures are out today, and they are worse than expected. Richard Partington has the story here.

And Graeme Wearden has more on his business live blog.

This is certain to be come up at PMQs later.

Rishi Sunak used to work in finance before becoming an MP (his first job was at Goldman Sachs) and he is something of an economic geek. In some respects that makes him well qualified to lead the country at a time of economic difficulty. But geeks don’t always have a good grasp of how the public at large thinks, and this morning Survation has published some fascinating polling about Sunak’s pledge to halve inflation by the end of the year.

The obvious problem with the pledge is that, although it looked easy to achieve at the start of the year, now economists are less certain about that.

But potentially a more serious problem is that the pledge has created unrealistic expectations. Halving inflation will not mean that prices go down. But when Survation asked people what it would mean in practice, most people wrongly said that the pledge would either mean prices going down (32%) or staying the same (31%). Only 23% said that this still meant prices would go up.

That suggests many people may end up being disappointed when they realise Sunak’s economic promises aren’t delivering quite what they expected.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9am: Rishi Sunak speaks at the Ukraine Recovery conference.

Noon: Sunak faces Keir Starmer at PMQs.

After 12.45pm: MPs debate Lords amendments to first the strikes (minimum service levels) bill, and then to the retained EU law (revocation and reform) bill.

Mid afternoon: MPs debate a Labour motion that would set aside government Commons business on 12 July to allow time for the animal welfare (kept animals) bill, which has been dropped by the government, to be passed.

2pm: Oliver Dowden, the deputy PM, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry. He will be followed by Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor. The current hearings are about preparedness, and so they will be questioned about the government jobs they did before 2020 (Cabinet Office minister and health secretary respectively).