As we reported overnight, Rachel Reeves will use her conference speech this afternoon to confirm the government is appointing a Covid corruption commissioner to recover money lost on dodgy PPE contracts.

Jolyon Maugham, who runs the Good Law Project, a campaigning group that has done much to expose favouritism and malpractice in the awarding of Covid contracts through the legal battles it has been fighting, is not impressed.

Given the complexity - and number - of suspect contracts, I don’t see how this job gets delivered 2-3 days a week for one year.

Tragically it shows all the signs of being set up to fail.

Multiple sources say Cabinet Office was opposed to the appointment of a Commissioner - yes, the same Cabinet Office as ran the VIP lane during the pandemic - and from the job ad it looks like Cabinet Office won that fight.

The truth is that the system is rigged to power - civil servants knew who they were servants to, Ministers expected no accountability, and Judges suspended disbelief - and no insider (Labour is said to want a retired High Court judge) will understand or tell that vital story.

I hope David Conn won’t mind me saying that to him I compared it to Hillsborough: another rare opportunity for us to understand who we are as a country, what our institutions are capable of, and to learn. Genuinely tragic to see a Labour Government throw that opportunity away.

Henry Newman, a former Tory aide, gave a different take in a post on his Whitehall Project Substack blog earlier this month.

Some may wonder why - beyond an attempt at political point-scoring - Rachel Reeves is establishing this Commissioner. There has already been a National Audit Office ‘investigation into government procurement during the COVID-19 pandemic’ in November 2020. Then in 2021, there was the Boardman Review of Government Procurement in the COVID-19 pandemic. And the actual judge-led UK Covid Inquiry, under Baroness Heather Hallet, has an entire module - Module 5 - on procurement, which will cover PPE and Covid contracts.

[Personally, I have always had little time for Rachel Reeves on this topic, given the absurdly embarrassing missive she sent Michael Gove in Spring 2020 when he was running the Cabinet Office. She asked him to consider buying PPE from, amongst others, a sole trader specialising in bespoke clothing, and suggested a football agent could secure ventilators. Do have a read.]

Of course it’s right to address fraud and to recover taxpayer money. But I think it’s clear that a better way to address fraud is, firstly, to focus on improving bodies like the National Crime Agency, and, secondly and more generally, to implement the recommendations from a series of Government reports into Fraud, Error and Debt. See for example this annual report produced by the Government which details various actions that have been taken to deal with Covid fraud. Or this announcement detailing action by the last Government on fraud, including in Covid support schemes.

Newman used to work for Michael Gove, who has been questioned as a witness as part of the investigation into Michelle Mone and her PPE contracts because he helped her access the VIP lane for contracts.

In her Today programme interview Rachel Reeves said that, even though she needed to address a black hole in the spending plans left by the last government, she would not cut investment.

She said:

We have to [make sure] … that we make the right decisions to ensure that we balance tax receipts and day to day spending, and, crucially, that we can continue to invest in our economy, in the infrastructure that is needed, so that the Treasury counts not just the costs of those investments, but also the benefits as well.

Because the previous government always cut back on investment, and that made growing our economy even harder. I won’t make those false economies, because we’ve got to return growth to our economy.

Faisal Islam, the BBC’s political editor, thinks this is significant.

NEW Reeves promises to increase investment spending to NickR on Today “Continue to invest in our economy in infrastructure needed so Treasury counts not just costs of those investments but the benefits as well… the previous Govt cut back, I won’t make these false economies”

That would be a change as she inherited cuts in net investment spending as a percentage of GDP and plans involved slower cuts - she seemed to imply that wouldn’t be cut… which might be a consequence of a tweak to fiscal rules

In interview this morning Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, defended her own decision to accept clothing donations worth £7,500 when she was in opposition.

Speaking on the Today programme, she said:

I can understand why people find it a little bit odd that politicians get support for things like buying clothes.

Now, when I was an opposition MP, when I was shadow chancellor of the exchequer, a friend of mine who I’ve known for years [Juliet Rosenfeld] – she’s a good personal friend – wanted to support me as shadow chancellor and the way she wanted to support me was to finance my office to be able to buy clothes for the campaign trail and for big events and speeches that I made as shadow chancellor.

She went on:

It’s never something that I planned to do as a government minister, but it did help me in opposition.

In a separate interview, with BBC Breakfast, Reeves also defended opposition MPs taking donations to help run their offices. Referring to £98,500 she was given to fund her office, she said:

It’s rightly the case that we don’t ask taxpayers to fund the bulk of the campaigning work and the research work that politicians do, but that does require, then, donations – from small donations, from party members and supporters, from larger contributions, from people who have been very successful in life and want to give something back.

We appreciate that support. It’s part of the reason why we are in government today, because we were able to do that research work, and we were able to do that campaigning.

The Daily Mail has splashed today on a story claiming that Angela Rayner, the deputy PM, has hired a government-funded “vanity photographer”.

The government says the story is referring to the fact that Rayner’s department has a photographer in the communications teams, just like many other government departments.

Asked about the story on her interview round, Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, said:

We have committed to reducing the size of the government communications budget, but all government departments have media officers and photographers.

Not for individual politicians but to support the policy work, the campaigning work, the initiatives of government departments, to help government departments do their jobs.

This is not to support Angela Rayner as a Labour party politician. This is to support the ministry for housing, communities and local government.

Most political parties publish a detailed conference timetable in advance. But Labour only publishes a skeleton schedule before the conference starts, and the exact time when certain debates and votes will happen often only gets decided the night before (by the conference arrangements committee).

Yesterday people were expecting the vote on the winter fuel payments cut to happen today. Now it looks like it will be on Wednesday. But no one has said for sure, and in an interview with LBC Rachel Reeves said even she did not know.

Asked if the vote had been moved to Wednesday because Labour was “running scared of this vote taking place prior to the prime minister’s address [on Tuesday afternon]”, Reeves replied:

I don’t know the situation about when votes take place, but if delegates want to vote on this, they will get a vote on this.

I don’t know the timing of the vote, but we’ve already had a vote in parliament where it was overwhelmingly passed.

This isn’t the decision that I wanted to make. It wasn’t a decision that I expected to make, but given the state of the public finances that I inherited, I think it was right to restrict the winter fuel payment to the poorest pensioners, and to make sure that all of the pensioners entitled to it are getting it.

Q: Did you buy the suit you are wearing?

Yes, says Reeves.

But she confirms that she has accepted clothing gifts. They came from a lonstanding friend who wanted to help out.

Q: Should ministers accept free tickets?

Reeves says she does not mind ministers, or shadow ministers, going to a concert. She points out that she has been to events like the First Night of the Proms with Robinson himself, and Chris [presumably Chris Mason, the BBC political editor] as a guest of the BBC.

Q: Are people right to be saving now, because the budget will cost them more.

Reeves says the government will protect working people. That is why income tax, national insurance and VAT won’t go up.

Q: You used to back a wealth tax. You don’t now. But you also said council tax bands should be revalued.

Reeves says she wrote that seven years ago. Since then the economy has been going through difficult times.

Q: Do you still believe that?

Reeves says there won’t be a wealth tax.

Q: So you are not ruling out a council tax.

Reeves says she is not writing her budget now. She will take decisions in the round.

Q: You have to raise another £16.5 or £17bn this year in spending cuts or tax rises to fill the black hole in the budget, based on the figures you presented to parliament in July.

Reeves says the figures do move around, but she does not contest the broad point Robinson is making.

Q: Can you say no department will have its budget cut in real terms?

Reeves says she is going through the figures now.

We’re doing the spending review in two parts. There will be the settlement for next year, made on October the 30th at the budget, and then next spring, we’ll be doing the settlements for the next two years.

Robinson says, if Reeves is not ruling out real term cuts to departments, then that suggests a return to austerity.

Reeves says there will be no return to austerity.

Q: But what does that mean, if departments face real-terms cuts?

Reeves says overall government won’t be cut in real terms.

UPDATE: Reeves said:

There won’t be a return to austerity, there will be real terms increases to government spending in this parliament …

What I’m saying is there will not be real terms cuts to government spending, but the detailed department by department spending will be negotiated.

Nick Robinson is interviewing Rachel Reeves on the Today programme.

Q: It’s been doom and gloom. Have you cheered up?

Reeves said she found a £22bn black hole cover up when she became chancellor. The Tories lost because the economy was in bad shape. People get that, she said.

But she said today she would be setting out the “prize” on offer if the economy revives.

Q: But businesses are saying they are not investing because you are talking the economy down.

Reeves said she was being “honest” about the scale of the challenge. But she was also setting out policies to reform the economy.

Good morning. Britain has a competitive national newspaper market which has many flaws but at least one advantage; with papers presenting wildly different takes on the same news every morning, readers get a daily reminder that life is complicated and that there are always alternative ways of interpreting the same events.

There is a good example. Yesterday the Labour party sent out some advance extracts from Rachel Reeves’ speech to the Labour conference today. The Times also got an article from Reeves, which said more or less the same thing, but with slightly different language.

The Daily Telegraph today is splashing on a story saying Reeves is delivering a message of pessimism.

But the Times is saying the opposite.

Both interpretations are defensible, although the Times’s is more in line with the message Reeves wants people to take away from the speech. At the Guardian we avoided this choice by focusing on a different aspect of the speech – Reeves’ confirmation that she will appoint a Covid corruption commissioner to recover money lost because of dodgy PPE contracts.

In interviews this morning Reeves has been focusing on the optimism. On BBC Breakfast, defending her decision to cut winter fuel payments, she said:

I think it’s important to level with people about what governments have to do to get a grip of the public finances.

But, by getting that grip, by bringing stability back to our economy, because we have been plagued by chaos and instability these last few years, along with the reforms we are making – reforming the planning system to get Britain building, creating a national wealth fund to support homegrown industries and jobs here in Britain, reforming the pension system to unlock money for startup and scale up businesses and get better returns for pension savers – if we can do these things, I know that the prize on offer is immense: more money in people’s pockets, more good jobs paying decent wages, more money to invest in our front line public services, particularly our national health service.

So stability, combined with the reform to get Britain building and get Britain growing, is the prize that is on offer for governments that are willing to take the decisions to get our economy on a firmer footing.

And she was even more positive in the Times article.

None of this will come easy. I would be doing a disservice to the British people if I did or said otherwise. However, I have never been more optimistic about our country’s fortunes. Britain lost confidence in the Conservative party, but it has never lost confidence in itself. The prize on offer is immense. The future has never had so much potential. It now falls on all of us to seize it.

But will that be enough? In their Guardian splash, Kiran Stacey and Peter Walker quote a minister saying, in private, the government has not done enough to explain what the bright future it wants to create will look like. They report:

One minister said the party had spent too much time in government talking about its inheritance and not enough about what it will do with power.

“There’s a sense that there has been a bit much blaming the inheritance and not enough of anything else,” they said. “It’s all very well to say we need to fix the foundations, but people also want to know what the house will look like at the end of it all.”

Will the minister ever find out what the house will look like? On the basis of Reeves’ interviews so far, they will be none the wiser, but we might learn more from the speech.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.15am: The conference opens.

9.30am: John Healey, the defence secretary, opens a “Britain Reconnected” debate

10am: Bev Craig, the leader of Manchester city council, and Richard Parker, the West Midlands mayor, speak.

11.50am: Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, speaks.

Noon: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, gives her speech.

1.45pm: Conference reconvenes after lunch. Peter Kyle, the science secretary, opens a session on “Growth for Higher Living Standards”, followed by Louise Haigh, the transport secretary, at 1.50pm.

2.50pm: Ian Murray, the Scottish secretary, and Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, speak in a session on Scotland.

3pm: Eluned Morgan, the Welsh first minister, and Jo Stevens, the Welsh secretary, speak in a session on Wales.

3.10pm: Hilary Benn, the Northern Ireland secretary, speaks.

3.15pm: Steve Reed, the environment secretary, opens a session on the clean energy mission, followed by Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, at 3.25pm.

4.30pm: Wes Streeting, the health secretary, speaks at an ‘in conversation’ event at a fringe meeting run by the Institute for Government thinktank.

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