Security minister Dan Jarvis says Tories ‘hollowed out’ our armed forces – UK politics live | Politics

Gareth Davies has been doing the media round for the Conservatives this morning. He doesn’t haven’t have a shadow cabinet role yet, but the MP for Grantham and Bourne was previously a treasury secretary in the last government. He said the GDP figures were good news.

He said they “exceeded expectations” and showed the government he was part of were right to claim that under them the economy had “turned a corner”.

Put to his that the figures suggested it was a mistake for Rishi Sunak to have called an election when good economic news was around the corner, he said “the economy is just one factor”. He said it was “other people to reflect and assess” whether it had been the right decision, adding “it was going to be this year at some point, wasn’t it?”

The new chancellor Rachel Reeves has responded to the GDP figures, which showed the UK headed back to growth in May during the closing last days of Rishi Sunak’s government. She said:

Delivering economic growth is our national mission, and we don’t have a minute to waste.

That is why this week I have already taken the urgent action necessary to fix the foundations of our economy to rebuild Britain and make every part of Britain better off.

A decade of national renewal has begun, and we are just getting started.

My colleague Julia Kollewe has our business live blog today, which will be following reaction to those figures closely …

Security minister Dan Jarvis has accused the former Conservative government of hollowing out the country’s armed forces while reiterating that the new Labour administration would carry out an armed services review “very quickly”.

Saying “there is nothing that we take more seriously than our national security”, he told Sky News viewers:

The prime minister and my colleague, defence secretary John Healey, have made a commitment that a review will be initiated very quickly. It’s important that we follow the process and look carefully at the nature of the threat our country faces, and the resources that will be required to be put in place.

It is an important process and it will take a period of months. The British army is now smaller than any point since the Napoleonic war. We need to do this properly. Our armed forces have been hollowed out in recent times.

Challenged that current plans suggest it might take a year to get a review in place, when army leadership says it could be done in a matter of weeks, Jarvis said “We’re not in the business of cutting corners. We need to look at the complex nature of the threat that we face.”

Jarvis added:

Call me old fashioned, but I believe in process. I believe in doing things properly. And that’s what this government will do. We will do things properly. There will be a comprehensive process of review, and then we will make sure that the correct resource is allocated to meet the findings of that review.

Good morning, and one week after the country voted for a change of government in the general election, new MPs will continue to be sworn into the House of Commons today. Here are your headlines …

• Enough to make Rishi Sunak weep, the first set of GDP figures to be published during Keir Starmer’s time as prime minister shows the UK economy returned to growth in May, just when the former PM decided to gamble on an election

• Starmer has said he is “shocked” about the prison crisis his government has inherited

• Suella Braverman has attacked her fellow leadership hopeful Kemi Badenoch over shadow cabinet leaks

• Household water bills in England and Wales are to rise by an average £19 a year over the next five years under draft proposals announced by Ofwat

The House will meet at 9.30am for swearing in, with the Table Office saying today is “likely to be the best opportunity for new members who have not already done so to take the oath or affirm”. The Lords are not sitting.

The Scottish parliament is in recess from 29 June to 1 September. The Windsor framework democratic scrutiny committee is sitting in Stormont. A cross-party group on Hospice and Palliative Care has a meeting in the Senedd. The Post Office Horizon IT inquiry is not sitting today.

It is Martin Belam with you for the next few hours. The best way to get my attention is via email, especially if you spot typos, errors or omission. You can reach me at [email protected].