A clip has just been shown of the BBC Question Time audience being asked if they believe Boris Johnson's evidence on partygate, to which barely anyone said they did.

But Gove says he believes Johnson's evidence to the privileges committee earlier this week. He says the former PM worked hard and believed saying thank you to departing No 10 staff was part of that job.

Gove says he is inclined to give Johnson the benefit of the doubt.

In our digest of the newspaper front pages earlier we told you The Observer, external is reporting that a number of senior Conservative MPs asked for up to £10,000 a day to work for a fake company.

Gove is asked about a Led By Donkeys sting which shows Kwasi Kwarteng and Matt Hancock, plus three other MPs, discussing fees for working for a fake firm on top of their jobs in parliament.

Asked if they are worth £10,000 a day. Gove says the market decides the costs. He says you can have MPs who do other work, like nursing, but is asked again if they are worth £10,000 a day without responding directly.

Gove says he won't pass judgement and that there are rules to follow, adding that their constituents will ultimately decide.

When asked about ex-prime minister Liz Truss releasing an honour lists and nominating people to the House of Lords despite her short tenure, he says: "That is a matter for the prime minister."

Laura asks Gove what he thinks is the biggest achievement of Nicola Sturgeon - the departing Scottish first minister. Gove hesitates and after a long pause, says he does not want to say anything bad about her.

He calls her a "dedicated public servant", despite him fundamentally disagreeing with her on issues.

Image source, Reuters

Gove confirms that nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, is set to be banned.

If you walk through any urban park you will see the discarded canisters, Gove says, which is unacceptable, and outside areas need to be safe for children.

It can have a dangerous and potentially harmful impact on young people. He acknowledges that the Home Office's own drugs advisory council recommended it should not be banned but Gove says the government has made a decision to clamp down.

What appear to be small infringements turn into wide lawlessness, he says.

Image source, Getty Images

Gove is now being asked about anti-social behaviour.

He says women are scared to walk at night in their areas.

He says the government needs to deal with that.

Moving on to the cost of renting now, Laura asks Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove if landlords are profiteering. He says that in every market there will always be some people do and says there are cases in housing.

When asked if it is acceptable BBC viewers says rents are climbing significantly, Gove replies "no".

He says "unscrupulous" landlords should not "jack up rents and victimise tenants".

Laura asks Michael Gove: "Do you accept we are a poorer country?"

Gove says everyone accepts had we not had the war in Ukraine or the pandemic the growth rate would be significantly higher.

Gove says the government is seeking to grow the economy overall at the same time as providing help for people struggling amid rising costs and sky high energy bills.

Retirement rules are being changed too, he says, but Kuenssberg pushes back and points out that change helps wealthier people with big pensions pots.

Gove says the government is taking action to ensure people are being helped through the cost of living crisis.

He references the government's windfall tax on oil and gas firms, as well as the "unpalatable" decision to increase taxes on businesses.

Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Secretary Michael Gove starts his interview with Laura Kuenssberg by saying he is not going to criticise forecasters at the Office of Budget Responsibility.

But he says the UK has been "dealing with aftershocks" from significant events - the war in Ukraine and the Covid pandemic.

Image source, PA Media

Here's Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Secretary Michael Gove arriving at the BBC.

He is now sitting down with Laura Kuenssberg.

Laura moves the interview on to climate change as the OBR has forecast if nothing is done to halt it our debt to GDP ratio might rise to 289% of GDP. She asks what this would feel like.

Hughes says this would be lhe level of debt that we had at the end of the Second World War...so a lot of our economic model would cease to work.

"A lot of our infrastructure would end up being under water or unusable. We would have housing which would be close to floodplains which would be under water," he says.

"So the damage to the economy comes from the fact that the infrastructure that you’ve got ceases to be usable because it is too close to the water level, or global temperatures mean that things like UK agriculture become non-viable."

Laura asks chairman of the government's independent forecaster Richard Hughes how he would describe the state of the economy.

He says it's "clearly the biggest squeeze on living standards we’ve faced in this country on record".

He expects in the next three or four years that real income will start to recover. But he says people's real spending power won't get back to pre-pandemic levels for another five or six years.

Laura asks how much stronger would the economy be if we’d stayed in the EU?

Hughes says: "We think that in the long run it reduces our overall output by around 4% compared to had we remained in the EU".

The OBR has predicted that inflation - the rate of price rises - will fall back to 2.9% by the end of 2023 but February's figure showed a surprise jump in the opposite direction, to 10.4% up from 10.1% in January 2023. Laura asks OBR chairman Richard Hughes how confident he is that inflation will get under 3% by the end of the year.

He says "there’s a huge amount of uncertainty around the outlook for inflation".

But he says about half of the rate we are seeing at the moment is coming from energy prices and food prices and there are a number of factors which ought to bring those prices down over the remainder of the year.

It's important to remember that even if inflation comes down it doesn't mean prices come down - it means prices are going up less quickly.

Laura asks if Hughes thinks we will ever see lower food prices.

He says some of them may do. But our challenge as a country is that we are a net importer of food and energy, and the prices of the things which we consume have been rising at twice the pace of the prices of the things which we produce.

"And that just means that as a country we are poorer, we are worse off," he says.

First up is Richard Hughes, chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility.

The OBR is independent of the government, it checks the health of the UK's economy and makes forecasts on what impact things like tax changes and public spending will have.

Laura starts the interview by asking if it matters that the OBR's forecasts often turn out to be wrong.

He says thse forecasts are "a snapshot" of where you expect the economy and where you expect the public finances to end up in five years’ time. But because things like energy prices, interest rates, inflation, are changing so much recently, it's a volatile environment to be forecasting in.

Asked if these forecasts have too much influence over how politicians make decisions, he says they always base their decisions on forecasts from somebody. He thinks the OBR forecasts have fewer errors and are less biased than ones the Treasury used to produce up to 2010.

We're hearing from our panel for the first time this morning as they discuss the cost of living and take a look at the Sunday morning front pages.

Former Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane says it's "pretty nailed on" that inflation will come down "pretty rapidly" thanks to falling energy prices. Things will feel a bit better by the end of the year, he predicts.

West Midlands Mayor Street says it's a "mixed picture" for people there. Living pressures are tough for some people but there is big growth in other economic areas which are performing well. He said there has been a "decisive response" to regions asking for better funding and powers, saying the "begging bowl" approach is coming to an end.

Costa Rican diplomat Christiana Figueres says food prices are being pushed up because of the "outrageous" prices of fossil fuels and decreasing crop yields being hit by extreme weather events. She says a move to clean energy would protect the most vulnerable.

Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg is live now on BBC One, the BBC News Channel, iPlayer and here on this page.

Before the first of this week’s main interviews, the panel of Andy Street, Andy Haldane and Christiana Figueres are giving Laura Kuenssberg their take on the big stories of the day.

Then we’ll hear from OBR head Richard Hughes before we go to Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove.

All this and more to come in the next hour.

Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg is due at the top of the hour, and wherever you are in the world you can watch the programme without leaving this page by clicking on the play button in the picture above.

Stay with us for the latest news lines, quotes, and video clips as we follow the show - which features this week Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove, Labour’s shadow culture secretary Lucy Powell, and Office for Budget Responsibility chair Richard Hughes.

We’ll also hear from West Midlands Mayor Andy Street, chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts and former Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane and Costa Rican diplomat, external Christiana Figueres.

Laura Kuenssberg
Presenter, Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg

How politicians answer that big question sets the terms for the next election. The response is certainly not this week.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak might have told MPs "we are halving inflation" but repeating that political slogan in the Commons doesn't make it true. In fact he was wrong - just as economic sages were mistaken.

Prices went up faster in February than in January - which came as a surprise to the experts. Interest rates edged up too and will make rent, mortgages and credit more expensive.

What the government hopes is that next month, and the month after that, and the month after that, the number crunchers are correct and inflation will drop pretty sharply by the end of the year and the toothpaste does, after all, go back in the tube.

But inflation slowing down doesn't mean prices will drop. What politicians and the public have to confront is that there could be many years where voters feel hard up.

You can read more from Laura writing ahead of her show here