Rich already being taxed properly, says minister, as Streeting calls for ‘wealth tax that works’– UK politics live

Good morning. It’s a big day for Rachel Reeves, the chancellor. In a Commons statement, she is announcing a series of measures to help people with the cost of living. She wants people to enjoy a “Great British summer”, she says. Reeves’s plan for what makes for a good summer is not quite the same as Samantha Niblett’s; the chancellor is talking about free bus travel for children, as Heather Stewart, Peter Walker and Sarah Butler report in their preview.

Reeves is speaking after 11.30am.

In the meantime, another Labour MP with ambitions to run the economy has been speaking out. Wes Streeting has given an interview to the BBC’s Nick Robinson for his Political Thinking podcast and he had a lot more to say about his policy agenda than he did in his resignation speech in the Commons yesterday. As the BBC reports, Streeting proposed a “wealth tax that works” – by which he means not what most people think of as a wealth tax (the Green party version – a tax on assets about a certain amount), but instead aligning capital gains tax rates with income tax rates. Streeting said this proposal – which is broadly the same as one of the main proposals in the Labour Growth Group’s report last week – could raise up to £12bn a year.

Lucy Rigby, the new chief secretary to the Treasury, was giving interviews this morning. Asked about Streeting’s proposal, she said she had not heard his interview, but she suggested Reeves was already taxing wealth. She told the Today programme:

double quotation markWe already tax wealth in this country. The chancellor introduced a host of measures in her first budget, and then further measures in the last budget as well, that try and make sure that tax is as progressive and fair as possible.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9am: Nusrat Ghani, a Commons deputy speaker, selects from a ballot the 20 MPs who will get a slot to bring forward a private member’s bill.

9.30am: The Office for National Statistics publishes figures for long-term migration into the UK. Separately, the Home Office publishes its quarterly asylum figures.