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Hello, I'm Sean Curran, and this is yesterday in Parliament from BBC Radio 4.

The Chancellor Rachel Reeves has said the government introduced changes to its flagship planning bill

in the hope of getting it onto the statute book earlier.

The legislation which overhauls the planning system in

England is currently being debated in the House of Lords. And last week, ministers offered concessions

on environmental protections. Westminster has started to wind down for the summer with some

traditional end-of-term activities. The leader of the opposition reshuffled

the shadow cabinet and the Chancellor made her annual appearance before the Economic Affairs Committee

in the House of Lords. Rachel Reeves faced the peers just a few hours after official

borrowing figures revealed that the government borrowed more than expected last month.

The Chancellor said her self-imposed rules on tax and spending

that the government should only borrow to invest

and that debt should fall were non-negotiable.

We are still very reliant on the goodwill of strangers

in buying our government bonds.

One in 10 pounds of government spending is spent servicing government debt.

I'm a Labour politician.

I don't think there's anything progressive about spending £100 billion a year, often to US hedge funds,

when I'd rather spend that money on the health service or on our defence or on better schools for our children.

And so that is why I am going to stick to those fiscal rules so that we can start to bring down the costs of servicing that debt.

So we can free up that money, whether it is to have lower taxes on working people

...