Chancellor says £22bn gap in current spending budget and state pension rise meant she had to make decision on means-testing fuel payments. Early evening summary 18:20 Rachel Reeves has defended her decisions to cut the winter fuel allowance and abandon infrastructure projects as she argued the decisions taken in the early weeks of the Labour government would pave the way to a more optimistic economic future.

Good evening. Rachel Reeves has defended scrapping the winter fuel payment for 10 million pensioners, saying it was the “right decision” in the circumstances she had inherited. Elsewhere, the Labour peer at the centre of a sleaze row has told a journalist not to ask him about donations,