Autumn Statement 2023 live: Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announces national insurance cut - latest updates

Hunt has announced a number of reforms which he says will increase house building.

He says the government will put in £110m into nutrient mitigation schemes, and launch "housing quarters in Cambridge, London and Leeds".

He'll also allow people to turn buildings into two separate flats without requiring planning permission. All fairly minor changes for a country in the midst of a housing crisis.

Watching on from high up in the House of Commons, NationalWorld's Political Editor Ralph Blackburn says that Jeremy Hunt seems confident throughout his statement.

Hunt says he's ending the freeze on local housing allowance, and moving it up to 30%.

This has been blamed for homelessness by campaigners across the country.

Hunt says the cost of living is "most acute for those on the lowest incomes".

As such he says benefits will be uprated by the September inflation figures, not the lower October figure. Universal Credit and other benefits will increase by 6.7% next year.

He claims this shows "compassionate Conservatism". This is a clever bit of politics from Hunt.

He briefed out benefits might be uprated by the October figure to save money, only to announce he's doing it by the higher September rate - which is the convention anyway.

Hunt says that the government has hit its (self imposed) target to halve inflation this year.

Yesterday, Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey said that the Bank had achieved this, not the government.

Hunt says OBR forecasts show inflation is to drop to 2.8% by the end of 2024 and to the 2% target in 2025.

Jeremy Hunt has started the Autumn Statement.

He's described it as an "Autumn Statement for growth" saying this government "is not big state and high tax".

Quite a statement from a government with the highest tax burden since 1949.

Rishi Sunak recently met with X owner Elon Musk after the AI Summit at Bletchley Park, however his meeting has come under fire from MPS.

SNP leader Stephen Flynn has asked Rishi Sunak once again to call for a ceasefire, and urged him to recognise the Palestinian state. He said: "It's not a pause in the killing of children we need, it's an end to the killing we need."

Sunak responded by saying "the agreement reached shows it wasn't right to call for a ceasefire". He added he was in discussions with the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas about a two-state solution.

Labour's focus on the NHS is a very obvious one, which is nothing new. The party has long had higher trust from the public on the health service than the Conservatives.

However new polling has given Starmer even more reason to quiz Sunak on the NHS. More In Common research has found that a majority of the public want more investment in the NHS, and after the pandemic and the energy bill crisis voters now think the government can always find money when it wants.

Starmer is focusing in on this and views that the NHS is underfunded.

Starmer keeps up the questions about the NHS. He asks why 7.8 million people are currently on the waiting list in England - record levels. He also asks the PM what the mental health waiting list is.

Sunak says "we are doing absolutely everything we can to put money into the NHS". He says Starmer fails to condem the doctor strikes and claims Labour's record in Wales is worse. Starmer hits back and says the waiting list in England is twice the population of Wales.