China has “fundamentally different values to ours”, Rishi Sunak has said, amid reports Beijing was behind a cyber attack on a database containing details of armed forces personnel.

On a visit to Crystal Palace Football Club’s academy on Tuesday afternoon, Mr Sunak told broadcasters that the government had set out “a very robust policy towards China”.

Mr Sunak said: “They are a country with fundamentally different values to ours, they’re acting in a way that is more authoritarian at home, assertive abroad.”

He added: “Recently, I announced a historic increase in our defence spending to two-and-a-half percent of GDP. And I made the point that we are facing an axis of authoritarian states, including Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China, which pose a risk to our values, our interests, and indeed our country.”

Rachel Reeves was introduced ahead of her speech on the economy today by former Tory MP Nick Boles, who said the Labour shadow chancellor understood “the central paradox of economic management”.

He said the paradox was that “it is by demonstrating discipline, responsibility and the sense of the importance of restraint that you earn the right, earn the trust, to be able to make transformative change”.

Mr Boles added: “The business community trusts that [Ms Reeves and Sir Keir Starmer] understand that stability in economic policy will unleash investment, that the ambition that Labour has will be delivered by demonstrating to markets, to investors, but also to individuals, to taxpayers, to consumers, that they are not going to play fast and loose with their money.”

Mr Boles quit the Conservative Party in 2019 over Brexit, and was revealed in February this year to be an informal adviser to Labour’s shadow cabinet on how to prepare for power.

Labour will fight the next election on the economy, the shadow chancellor has said – as she dismissed suggestions the UK was heading for a hung parliament.

In a speech in the City of London, Rachel Reeves said her party would use every day to “expose what the Conservatives have done to our country” and accused the Government of “gaslighting” the public by claiming Britain had “turned a corner”.

She said: “Instead of believing the prime minister’s claims that we’ve turned a corner, the questions people will ask ahead of the next election are simple.

“Do you and your family feel better off than you did after 14 years of Conservative government? Do our schools, our hospitals, our police, our transport work better than they did 14 years ago? Frankly, does anything in our country work better than it did when the Conservatives came into office 14 years ago?”

Train drivers are once again striking in their long-running dispute with the government. Our travel correspondent Simon Calder has the details:

Defence secretary Grant Shapps will update MPs on a cyber attack on a database containing details of armed forces personnel amid reports China was behind the hack.

David Hughes has more in this report:

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in the UK said: “The so-called cyberattacks by China against the UK are completely fabricated and malicious slanders.

“We strongly oppose such accusations. China has always firmly fought all forms of cyberattacks according to law.

“China does not encourage, support or condone cyberattacks. At the same time, we oppose the politicisation of cybersecurity issues and the baseless denigration of other countries without factual evidence.

“China has always upheld the principle of non-interference in each other’s internal affairs. China has neither the interest nor the need to meddle in the internal affairs of the UK. We urge the relevant parties in the UK to stop spreading false information, stop fabricating so-called China threat narratives, and stop their anti-China political farce.”

The government is reviewing the operations of a third-party contractor whose systems were hacked in a cyber attack on the Ministry of Defence, Downing Street has said.

Rishi Sunak’s official spokesman said: “In relation to the specific contractor involved in this incident, a security review of that contractor’s operations is under way and appropriate steps will be taken after that.”

Downing Street has declined to attribute the reported cyberattack on the Ministry of Defence to a specific state or actor.

Asked whether China was responsible for the attack, Rishi Sunak’s official spokesman said: “The defence secretary is going to give an update to parliament on this this afternoon.

“You will appreciate I’m obviously limited in what I can say until then, other than the Ministry of Defence has already taken immediate action, isolating the network and supporting personnel affected.

“I can’t get into any further speculation around the origination of the attack.”

A Muslim campaign group has issued Sir Keir Starmer with 18 demands in order to win back support lost due to his stance on Israel’s war in Gaza.

The Muslim Vote, which aims to organise voters against MPs who did not back a ceasefire in the conflict, has called for the Labour leader to apologise for his early stance on Israel’s campaign against Hamas.

And it has urged Sir Keir to promise to cut military ties with Israel and let Muslims pray in schools and for Labour figures to return “zionist money”.

Our political correspondent Archie Mitchell reports:

Just one in five voters expect the Conservative Party to win at the next general election, new polling by Redfield & Wilton suggests.

That compares with 63 per cent who believe Labour will win – the highest proportion ever recorded by the pollster.

The situation marks an utter reversal in summer 2021, prior to the Partygate scandal, when 55 per cent of voters believed the Tories would win the next election and less than 25 per cent thought Labour would.

The two parties were tied on around 40 per cent in the early days of Liz Truss’s premiership, until Tory fortunes plummeted significantly and Labour’s rose correspondingly in the wake of her disastrous mini-Budget.