Marita Moloney
Live reporter

That's a wrap of our coverage of Prime Minister's Questions for another week, we'll be back in the same place at the same time next Wednesday.

Today's page was written by Sam Hancock, Jack Burgess, Chas Geiger and Kate Whannel, with Leila Nathoo in the Commons. It was edited by Heather Sharp, Alys Davies and myself.

There was a lot of discussion around the Covid inquiry - you can read the latest on that here and why it matters here.

And as Rishi Sunak visits the US, you can see what's on his agenda here. We'll be bringing you live coverage of his trip to visit President Joe Biden tomorrow, so hope you can join us then.

Image source, EPA

Here's an unexpected one - it seems Gene Simmons the bassist of rock band Kiss was in Parliament today, as a guest of DUP MP Ian Paisley.

Asked by PA what he made of Deputy Prime Minister's Questions, he said: "What I just saw in there was controlled chaos.

"It was the clash of wills but respectful - the right honourable so and so, it was fascinating.

"I think Americans can take a big lesson in civility in how to make democracy actually work and still respect the other side."

The musician - nicknamed the God of Thunder - was also impressed by the age of Parliament: "I will tell you, touching a piece of granite that's over 1,000 years old is insane.

"America is so young and has no sense of history, everything over there is just fast, immediate, instant gratification and there's no time to sit there and just gaze, I mean, look where you are - it's insane.

"We're standing on, in terms of democracy, hallowed ground."

As our political correspondent Leila Nathoo points out, we didn't really learn much from that PMQs - particularly about the Covid inquiry.

If you're just coming to the page, here's what happened in the Commons:

• Deputy PM Oliver Dowden faced off against Labour's Angela Rayner for a second time, due to PM Rishi Sunak being on a visit to Washington
• In a back and forth between the two, Rayner accused the Tories of blocking the Covid inquiry, wasting taxpayers' money in the process and, more generally, failing to deal with rising cases of fraud in the UK
• Dowden defended the government's record on Covid, saying it had provided all documents requested by the inquiry - but insisted private material, including civil servants' personal medical details, should not be disclosed. He also quipped that he found it "extraordinary" that a Labour MP would lecture anyone on "value for the taxpayer"
• Elsewhere, the SNP cited increasing mortgage rates as evidence of ministers trashing the economy while the Lib Dems and Labour brought up various issues including carer support and energy windfall taxes

Could Labour's plans increase mortgages by £1,000?published at 13:20 British Summer Time 7 June 2023

13:20 BST 7 June 2023

The deputy prime minister also said at PMQs: "What do we have from the party opposite? Plans for an unfunded £28bn spending spree. And what would that do? Drive up borrowing, push up interest rates, adding £1,000 to everyone's mortgage."

We've asked Downing Street how he worked that out and have not yet heard back, but he may be referring to a report in Monday’s Daily Mail, external of Treasury analysis (that we have not seen) of Labour's plans to increase investment in the green economy.

The thrust of the analysis, according to the Mail, is that the Bank of England would increase interest rates in order to prevent extra government spending causing inflation.

The article’s sources say this could add 0.75 percentage points to the Bank of England’s rate, which in turn could feed through to mortgages.

Such an increase, if it happened, would add a little less than a £1,000 to the cost of the average outstanding mortgage, which is a bit less than £200,000.

Interest rates have been going up over the last year as mortgage lenders reacted to global events, attempts to combat inflation and the government’s mini-Budget last Autumn.

Let's turn briefly away from PMQs now to activity in nearby Whitehall, where temporary road closures were put in place earlier by Met Police.

Police said they were "made aware of a suspicious package" in the area at 12:13 BST.

"The item has been assessed as not suspicious and road closures are being lifted," they added.

It comes after a man was arrested after a car crashed into the Downing Street gates last month. No one was injured in the incident and No 10 confirmed Rishi Sunak was not in the building at the time.

Is the UK economy going to grow this year?published at 12:58 British Summer Time 7 June 2023

12:58 BST 7 June 2023

We've been looking into some of the exchanges at today's PMQs.

Oliver Dowden said earlier: "Again the OECD upgraded our growth forecast".

International body the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has indeed increased its growth predictions, external for the UK, projecting growth of 0.3% in 2023.

This is an upgrade from its March prediction that the UK economy would contract by 0.2%

However, the UK is still predicted to perform worse than all other G7 countries, apart from Germany.

As we've been reporting, deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner accused the Conservatives of blocking the Covid inquiry and spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on legal advice.

Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden said the government has handed over all documents related to the inquiry but not those deemed "wholly and unambiguously irrelevant".

Watch the exchange here:

Leila Nathoo
Political correspondent

We didn't learn very much from the Covid inquiry line of questioning.

Labour wanted to focus on whether the government's legal challenge was value for money for the taxpayer but Oliver Dowden insisted this was a point of principle, saying messages about civil servants' medical conditions or intimate details about families shouldn't be handed over.

Interesting that Angela Rayner focused today on the cost of the government's court action rather than Labour's previous claims of a cover-up.

MPs have just filed out of the Commons, signalling an end to this week's Prime Minister's Questions.

We'll catch you up on everything we learned - stay with us.

Image source, .

Labour's Fleur Anderson is on her feet and asks Dowden if he will "finally commit to introducing a proper windfall tax on the enormous profits of the oil and gas giants".

The deputy PM replies by saying the government "actually introduced a bigger windfall tax than the Labour party were proposing".

He adds "last winter we paid half of people's energy bills".

Labour's Ashley Dalton notes that the Department for Education has estimated it will take a decade to get the attainment gap in schools back to pre-pandemic levels.

When will the government take responsibility for lost learners, she asks.

Dowden replies that the attainment gap had been narrowing before the pandemic struck.

He says the government is providing £5bn to support post-Covid recovery in education.

He adds that the MP should support schools by urging education unions to call off their "damaging strikes".

The next question is from Labour's Paula Barker, who says "the government's post of anti-corruption champion has been vacant for over a year".

She asks the deputy PM if the vacancy "increases or decreases the risk of corruption in government", which provokes laughs from some in the Commons.

Dowden says "we are taking extensive steps to make sure we crack down on fraud" and says we will be "filling that vacancy very shortly".

Image source, .

Over to Labour's Nia Griffiths now, who asks about the UK's asylum backlog and if Home Secretary Suella Braverman will meet her to discuss concerns about a hotel being used in her constituency to house asylum seekers.

Dowden, quick to get on his feet, says the government will take "whatever" action is necessary to clear the backlog and stop small boats crossing the English Channel.

He also says small boat arrivals in the UK are down 20% this year - a claim Rishi Sunak made recently and was fact checked by our BBC Verify colleagues. You can read more on that here.

Image source, .

Conservative Flick Drummond says currently local authorities "can't honestly" answer the question of how many children in their area are not in school.

"These children are out of sight and out of mind," she says and asks the government to support her bill, which compels local authorities to maintain a register of children who are not in school.

Dowden says the Department for Education is undertaking work to support swift identification of missing children.

Image source, .

The SNP's Gavin Newlands in next up, saying he knows the deputy PM likes to call himself "Mr Normal".

He adds that normal people, such as nurses, are struggling during the "Tory cost of living crisis".

Newlands then takes aim at Dowden charging two businesses £20,000 for "just two hours" work and asks if the Deputy PM thinks "he's worth 65 times a Band 2 nurse".

Dowden responds by saying the government has "provided over £3,000" to help people with the cost of living crisis and criticises the SNP for "putting taxes up" in Scotland.

Labour's Catherine West is speaking about the care sector's struggling infrastructure now.

She says that Conservatives have, for 13 years, consistently broken their promises to fix issues in social care. Will that change or will Labour have to fix it? she puts to Dowden.

The deputy PM responds by saying funding for the sector is up £70bn.

The SNP's Ronnie Cowan raises the issue of a universal basic income and plans for pilot schemes in two areas in England.

He says the progress of the gig economy and acceleration of AI will drastically change the working environment, so will the government now engage with such pilots to assess the pros and cons and make the future less precarious for the next generation?

Dowden says he and his fellow ministers have never been convinced about the case for a universal basic income - that's also the position of (independent think tank) the IFS, he adds.

He says the route to prosperity lies in creating more jobs and cutting taxes on working people.

We're now hearing from Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey, who raises the case of Karen - a carer for her husband who has dementia.

He tells MPs that carers like Karen save the government more than the entire NHS budget and asks the deputy prime minister to give carers "the financial support they deserve".

Dowden pays tribute to carers and says the government has provided £2.3bn for social care support, an additional £25m committed to "putting people at the heart of care" in its white paper, external and a further £327m through the Better Care Fund.

Mhairi Black responds by saying she doesn't know what question the deputy PM was answering.

She says the government aims to "cut taxes for the richest" and spend billions of pounds imprisoning people fleeing war.

She asks if "the view from the prime minister's luxury helicopter" is so skewed that he thinks this is what people want during a cost of living crisis.

Dowden replies by saying this government has provided "record increases to the personal allowance", meaning people working full time on minimum wage have seen a "£1,000 reduction in their tax".

It's time to hear from Mhairi Black now, the SNP's deputy leader at Westminster.

She says Rishi Sunak promised to put economic stability at the heart of the government, yet mortgage rates are skyrocketing.

Is it not the case this government is trashing the economy "a wee bit slower" than the last one, she asks - to huge cheers from some sections of the Commons.

Dowden responds by citing the latest projections by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which he says has again upgraded its growth forecast for the UK.

He also refers to the recent Coronation of King Charles, asking why Black described it as a "a pantomime" at the time. The real pantomime is the SNP in Scotland, he chimes back, to cheers from the Conservative benches.