The names of those leaving the cabinet are coming quickly now, though we haven't had news of appointments. Jake Berry has announced he is leaving his position as the Conservative Party chairman.

He says it's been "an honour to serve," but says "all good things must come to an end."

Secretary of State for Wales Robert Buckland is the latest cabinet resignation, announcing he will support Rishi Sunak from the backbenches.

Buckland took on the role under Boris Johnson after Simon Hart’s resignation in July.

The former barrister had previously been in the cabinet, as justice secretary, between July 2019 and September 2021 and is also a former solicitor general.

Image source, EPA

Education Secretary Kit Malthouse is understood to be the latest member of Liz Truss's cabinet to go.

We're hearing he was offered a demotion and refused it, according to a source.

This means the country will have five education secretaries in 2022 - unless a previous appointee returns to the job.

Damian Grammaticas
Reporting from the House of Commons

We know the prime minister is in the House of Commons. We assume he's in his office there, but we can't get near it.

Meanwhile, ministers are still working metres away, as the fate of their colleagues is being decided.

Image source, PA Media

The resignations from cabinet are under way, with Jacob Rees-Mogg, Brandon Lewis, Chloe Smith and Wendy Morton all announcing their departures in the last hour.

Rishi Sunak will be deciding the make-up of government this afternoon.

It's worth remembering that existing members of the cabinet remain in position until told - or deciding - otherwise. And while we don't know for sure who's going to be called up, it's broadly expected that Jeremy Hunt is likely to stay at the Treasury as chancellor to provide some stability.

Beyond that, the new PM will have a difficult balancing act.

He’ll want to bring in some of his allies who backed him over the summer, people like Dominic Raab.

But he also wants to unite his party, which is likely to involve jobs for MPs from different wings of the Conservative Party.

Some familiar faces could also be back in the fold - with speculation as to whether ex-Home Secretary Suella Braverman or leadership rival Penny Mordaunt will be given a top role.

We'll know who's in and who's out by the end of the day.

Chloe Smith, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, is the latest member of Liz Truss's cabinet to announce she is out. She says she will support the PM from the backbenches and continue to work hard for her Norwich North constitutents.

The first pictures have been released of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak entering No 10 Downing Street.

The new PM was welcomed by cheers and applause from staff.

Image source, Simon Walker/No 10 Downing Street

Image source, Simon Walker/No 10 Downing Street

Image source, Simon Walker/No 10 Downing Street

Faisal Islam
Economics editor

In his speech earlier, the new PM wanted to be clear with the public about the extent of the tough decisions he will soon have to make.

Britain’s “profound economic crisis” is that the global economy, and Europe in particular, is aflame with the aftermath of the pandemic and the energy and food shock arising from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

On top of that, his predecessor Liz Truss “made some mistakes” that he says he has been selected to fix.

There was no hint of “I told you so”, but he must surely believe that.

The Truss administration made the financial world doubt the UK’s economic institutions.

The risk is that the crisis seen in some pension funds will now be seen in other opaque corners of the financial system. And now international markets are just that little less sure about British economic and political stability.

His appointment has so far calmed the markets. But political disunity and parlour games could easily open that up again.

Image source, PA Media

Wendy Morton is out as chief whip of the House of Commons, and says she is returning to the back benches.

Morton tweeted: "Heading to the back benches from where I will continue to represent the constituents, businesses and communities of Aldridge-Brownhills."

The party whips are responsible for party discipline as well as MPs' welfare. There had been suggestions that Morton had left her role last Wednesday after a vote on fracking descended into chaos with Tory MPs being reportedly bullied and manhandled into voting. However, the government later said she remained in post.

We saw Rishi Sunak enter for the first time as PM just a little while ago and we'll likely be seeing plenty more of the famous black front door this afternoon he makes his cabinet appointments.

No 10 been the residence of British prime ministers since 1735, and crucial decisions have been made inside - relating to World War One and Two, the end of the British Empire, and the Falklands War, among others. Its residents have included the likes of William Gladstone, David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher., external

So what is it really like inside No 10 Downing Street?

The building is actually much larger than it appears. The front door opens onto a chequered floor that leads to an array of different rooms and staircases. This includes the Grand Staircase, which is lined with pictures of past prime ministers.

Other rooms in the building include the Pillard Room, which is the largest of the drawing rooms, the State Dining Room, which hosts formal dining receptions, as well as the Terracotta Room, which was used as a dining room by Sir Robert Warpole, regarded as Britain’s first prime minister.

The building spreads to the left of the famous front door - which was steel-reinforced in 1991 - and has taken over much of 12 Downing Street, accessed by a corridor that runs through No 11 – the official residence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and where Rishi Sunak used to live.

There's also a half-acre garden and terrace that wraps around No 10 and 11 that Margaret Thatcher was known to make use of.

The street itself is named after the 17th Century diplomat George Downing.

And here are two fun facts about the No 10 door - it used to be green, and the letterbox is fake.

Read more facts about the famous residence here.

Brandon Lewis says he has resigned from his role as justice secretary.

He tweeted his resignation letter to the new prime minister and said it had been an "honour to have been one of the longest serving Cabinet ministers - having done eight ministerial roles, in five departments, under four Prime Ministers.

"The new PM will have my support from the back benches to tackle the many challenges we face - as a Party and as a country," he said.

As we await news of Sunak's cabinet appointments, it's worth pointing out that everyone in Liz Truss's cabinet stays in post until told otherwise.

As attention turns to the cabinet Rishi Sunak could appoint this afternoon, let's recap what's been happening in the last few hours:

• Rishi Sunak has become the new UK prime minister after meeting King Charles at Buckingham Palace
• In a speech outside Downing Street, Sunak paid tribute to Liz Truss but said he was determined to "fix the mistakes" made by his predecessor
• He said the UK was facing "profound economic crisis" and vowed to put the country's needs "above politics"
• In a short farewell speech earlier, Truss defended her legacy of trying to push through tax cuts and said leaders needed to be bold
• Jacob Rees-Mogg has stepped down as business secretary ahead of cabinet appointments expected shortly

Stay with us for the latest updates.

Image source, Reuters

As we've just reported, Jacob Rees-Mogg has resigned from the role of business secretary ahead of expected cabinet appointments by the new PM.

Rees-Mogg had recently said he did not expect a job in Sunak's cabinet, but indicated his openness to a position, saying: "I will do whatever he wants me to do."

In an about-turn from previous comments, he told The Telegraph, external today that he no longer believed Sunak is a "socialist". He made the claim during the summer's Tory leadership race when Sunak refused to commit to the same level of tax cuts as Liz Truss.

"The leader of the Conservative Party is clearly not a socialist," Rees-Mogg told today's Telegraph, adding that the party needed to unite behind the PM to avoid losing in future elections.

Jacob Rees-Mogg has stepped down as business secretary, the BBC understands.

Image source, PA Media

Rishi Sunak “doesn’t have a mandate” to govern and isn’t the answer to the country’s economic problems, the Labour Party says.

Responding to Sunak’s first speech as PM, Labour Party Chair Anneliese Dodds told BBC News that the country needed “a fresh start with a general election”.

Dodds said: “Rishi Sunak is saying he’s the answer when the problem ultimately is the Conservatives.

"Rishi Sunak has been part of those 12 years of Conservative failure.

"People didn’t vote at the last election for a high tax, low growth economy, but of course Rishi Sunak was right at the heart of that.”

Sunak said in his speech that the mandate won in 2019 was his party’s, rather one person's.

Dodds criticised Sunak’s lack of concrete policy proposals, saying that it’s “ordinary people, of course, who are paying the price” for what she called the Conservative Party’s “economic failure”.

She said Monday’s planned fiscal statement was “setting up as a Halloween horror show”.

Image source, PA Media

Here's some trivia for you. Rishi Sunak's first speech as PM lasted almost six minutes - five minutes and 56 seconds, to be precise - which is longer than all the equivalent speeches by incoming PMs in recent decades, except for Boris Johnson in 2019, who spoke for 11 minutes and 13 seconds.

Truss's inaugural speech on 6 September lasted just over four minutes.

You can read Sunak's speech in full here.

Within moments of Rishi Sunak being appointed as prime minister, his Twitter bio had been updated with his new title.

Meanwhile, Liz Truss's Twitter account had a swift update after Buckingham Palace announced she was no longer PM.

Image source, Twitter

Image source, Twitter

Sunak's acknowledgement of Tory mistakes won't stop election callspublished at 12:17 British Summer Time 25 October 2022

12:17 BST 25 October 2022

Nick Eardley
Chief political correspondent

Rishi Sunak has just tried to address the key criticisms of the Conservative Party.

He said he has to fix the mistakes made by his predecessor. He promised integrity in government - something opponents say was missing under Boris Johnson.

And he’s tried to take in calls for a general election, by saying the 2019 mandate wasn’t just Johnson’s.

That won’t stop calls for a general election though. And it won’t stop criticism of the Conservative Party over the economy.

The new UK prime minister has given his first speech to the nation from Downing Street.

Sunak said there were “difficult decisions to come” and he pledged to unite the country.

The Liberal Democrats responded immediately after Sunak finished his speech, saying he failed to "reassure" the public worried about the winter ahead.

Lib Dem Leader Ed Davey says Sunak's "refusal" to call a general election "shows the Conservative Party does not trust the British people".

"The public will be rightly furious that they have been denied a say, while Conservative MPs get to decide who runs our country," he says.

Davey says Sunak's speech didn't contain details on his plans to "fix the damage to our economy and the NHS" caused by, what he called, years of Tory "chaos and incompetence".

He calls on Sunak to confirm that benefits and pensions will be increased in line with inflation and that there will be no spending cuts to public services.