We're now closing our live coverage of today's developments in Westminster and beyond - but there's plenty more BBC content on today's political and economic developments.

You can read our write-up of today's economic news - including that inflation fell to 3.4% in February - here.

Over in the House of Lords, peers inflicted fresh defeats on the government over its flagship Rwanda deportation policy.

The bill must now return to the Commons in a process known as "ping pong", where it is batted between the two Parliamentary chambers until they can agree the final wording. Read more about that here.

The economy will be front and centre again tomorrow when the Bank of England decides whether to change the interest rate - a key tool for tackling inflation. You can find out more about how that decision affects your cost of living here.

Today's coverage was edited by Jemma Crew, Sophie Abdulla and Alex Therrien.

The writers were Emily Atkinson, Barbara Tasch, Jake Lapham, Paul Seddon, Ece Goksedef and Gabriela Pomeroy.

Image source, Reuters

It's been another eventful day in Westminster. We're soon going to be closing our live coverage, but before we do here's a recap of today:

• Rishi Sunak predicted 2024 would be the year the UK's economy "bounces back" after inflation fell to 3.4% in February - a bigger drop than expected
• The prime minister told the BBC he believed the country had "turned a corner" following the financial shocks of the past few years, including Covid and the Ukraine war
• He also insisted he'd still be prime minister after the May local elections - which are expected to be difficult for the Conservatives - amid reports some in the party are plotting to oust him as leader

• Unity was the theme when Sunak addressed the influential 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers, as he urged them to "pull together"
• One of those MPs in attendance, Jonathan Gullis, insisted only a "tiny minority" of Tory MPs were trying to undermine Sunak
• Earlier, the PM rejected Labour's call for an imminent general election, saying his "working assumption" was for it to happen in the second half of the year
• Speaking at Prime Minister's Questions, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer claimed the PM was "scared" of facing voters over his record on immigration and mortgage rates
• Starmer also called the PM's plan to deport some asylum seekers to Rwanda a "gimmick" - while the PM said Labour "don't care" about "fixing" illegal migration

• The House of Lords inflicted fresh defeats on the government over its flagship Rwanda bill

Brian Wheeler
Politics reporter

After nearly an hour, the 1922 Committee is over.

Tory MP Jonathan Gullis denied reports of dissent in the meeting. He tells reporters there was “not a single dissenting voice in that room”. All present were firmly behind Rishi Sunak.

In a spirited defence of the prime minister, Gullis attacked the “tiny minority” of Tory MPs he said were trying to undermine him. He said he wanted to “call out those idiots”.

Sunak had told the meeting everyone in the party had to “pull together” after listing his achievements, the MP added.

We've just received word that the 1922 Committee meeting has wrapped up, and MPs are slowly filtering out.

According to one Tory MP, Rishi Sunak was "the best we've seen him in a while" as he addressed the committee.

He gave the speech an "11/10".

Chris Mason
Political editor

The former prime minister Theresa May has just left the meeting.

"You must miss doing that?!" she was asked in jest by George Parker of the Financial Times.

We were greeted by a deep and hearty laugh from Mrs May.

Brian Wheeler
Politics reporter

Half an hour in and we are still hearing regular bursts of laughter and desk banging from behind the heavy doors of Room 14.“Top stuff,” says Darlington MP Peter Gibson with a thumbs up, as he dashes away.Reporters are not allowed in to these meetings, so we are hanging around in a sweltering Commons corridor speculating about what’s going on inside.

Meanwhile, the government's flagship Rwanda deportation bill is being debated in the House of Lords.

The legislation is currently undergoing the parliamentary process known as ping-pong - where bills pass back and forth between the Commons and Lords when the two chambers cannot agree on proposed amendments.

Peers have inflicted a fresh defeat, voting by 271 to 228 to press their demand that the legislation include a provision to ensure "due regard" for domestic and international law.

The change could threaten the government's ambition to start sending asylum seekers to the east African country this spring, as it could push the bill's scrutiny beyond Easter as it will now have to return to the Commons.

Earlier in the debate, Labour frontbencher Lord Coaker suggested the government has ignored constitutional convention by rejecting the Lords' suggested changes "carte blanche". "That's not our fault it's coming back after Easter, it's the Government's own management of its own timetable", he told peers.

Government law officer Lord Stewart of Dirleton said a lot of the criticism the bill has faced is "fundamentally misconceived", and he restated the government's position that there is nothing in it that "requires any act or omission that conflicts with our international obligations".

The debate is continuing and further votes on other proposed changes are expected.

Brian Wheeler
Politics reporter

Jacob-Rees Mogg is among the first to leave the 1922 Committee meeting - but he is all smiles about how the PM went down.

“You heard the cheering, the roof virtually went off," he tells reporters.

Chris Mason
Political editor

"Ready when you are," says William Wragg, the vice-chairman of the 1922 Committee.

He is talking to the prime minister, who is hovering in a corridor outside the room, flanked by his security team and his political secretary (and the best man at his wedding) James Forsyth.

Sunak has entered the room to applause and desk banging from Conservative MPs that - if you’d arrived this morning from Pluto - you might assume would accompany winning a landslide election victory.

The polls suggest the Conservatives could soon be on the wrong side of just such a thing secured by Labour.

Beyond the applause, Sunak and his team know he has some persuading to do.

Chris Mason
Political editor

Conservative MPs are filing in, in clumps and clusters, into Committee Room 14 to listen to the prime minister.

Rishi Sunak is to address what is known at Westminster as the 1922 Committee - in other words, Tory backbenchers.

"If you can hear a pin drop, it’s because I’m still holding the grenade," joked one.

A cryptic line - suggesting, I suppose, that metaphorically it hasn’t been thrown - but a wry indicator of the backdrop: the Conservatives are in a dire place in the opinion polls and some MPs getting increasingly jumpy about whether Sunak can improve their prospects.

Talking to the BBC's Economics Editor, Faisal Islam, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak explains why he is optimistic about the future and how his policies are helping the economy.

Faisal Islam asks Rishi Sunak if the Conservative party's economic credibility was broken by policy proposals made when his predecessor, Liz Truss, was in power.

Sunak accepts that when he was appointed as the UK's prime minister he inherited an economy that faced "lots of different challenges".

He argues his government has since "brought stability back".

When asked whether it "infuriates" him that "the same people who supported that moment which wrecked the credibility of your party are now plotting against you?" , the prime minister laughs, and says he is not interested in "Westminster gossip".

Sunak - who is facing the powerful 1922 Committee - says the gossip is not important.

"What's important is the future of our country and people's financial security and the peace of mind that they rightly deserve and my job and what I am working every single day to deliver is that peace of mind that there is a brighter future ahead," Sunak says.

"And you'll be Prime Minister after the May (local) elections?" he is asked.

The PM says he will be because "the things that we are doing are making a difference".

BBC Economics Editor Faisal Islam asks the PM how he can "credibly say" that people are feeling that things are getting better when energy bills are still high, groceries are still going up and private rents are up 9 %.

Sunak says he knows things still feel tough for people.

“We’ve been through an enormous amount and we can’t be complacent because we’re not through this yet,” Sunak says, adding it is therefore crucial to “stick to the plan” and that “things don’t get better by accident”.

He says all of the recent Budget’s announcement in terms of tax cuts will help with these bills.

“Are there still challenges? Of course there are, but we’re in a far better place than we were when I became prime minister because of our plan, and I think people can start to see that we are delivering the change that I talked about when I got this job,” Sunak says.

He adds his plan is working by bringing the inflation down, controlling the economy and controlling public spending, and making sure it is possible to cut people’s taxes.

Image source, Simon Dawson/10 Downing Street

The economy will bounce back in 2024, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says.

In an interview with the BBC's Economics Editor Faisal Islam in Downing Street, he says the last few years have been difficult – dealing with Covid and the ramifications of the war in Ukraine – but adds that things have been starting to look up.

“I do believe that at the start of this year we have turned a corner after the shocks of the past few years and we are in a new economic moment, and 2024 will prove to be the year that the economy bounces back,” Sunak says.

The PM adds that it can be seen in how people are feeling, companies are investing and inflation is halving.

Asked if this signifies “green shoots of recovery”, the PM says: “If you talk to businesses as I do across the country, they're starting to see that and feel that in what's happening in their shops in their restaurants... wherever you are in fact, people are seeing that things have turned."

Image source, Reuters

As we reported earlier this week, Rishi Sunak is facing increasing questions about his leadership and it's a topic that will likely come up when the 1922 Committee meets later today.

Just a few hours ago, during PMQs, Sir Keir Starmer claimed "half his cabinet" were vying to replace him as leader.

Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt is viewed by some as the most likely candidate should the mood for a leadership change intensify.

Sunak's press secretary was questioned today about whether the prime minister has held talks with Mordaunt, or rebels agitating for his removal.

The press secretary said she would not "get into private discussions between colleagues".

Asked whether the prime minister was disappointed Mordaunt had not firmly denied being part of a plot to replace him, his political spokeswoman said: "What the Prime Minister wants is all of his Cabinet ministers and the wider Conservative team to focus on delivering for the country."

Mixed picture in A&E performancepublished at 16:20 Greenwich Mean Time 20 March

16:20 GMT 20 March

We've also been looking at Rishi Sunak's earlier claim to MPs that there has been “improved A&E performance over the past year”.

The NHS, external publishes monthly figures for England on A&E performance that focus on the percentage of people attending who are dealt with within four hours.

The latest figures for February suggest that 70.9% of all admissions were dealt with within four hours. That’s fewer than a year ago when it was 71.5% - and way below the government target of 95%.

But if you look at the winter as a whole, when A&E departments are under most pressure, since the start of November an average of 70.1% of people were seen within four hours, which was a slight improvement from last winter when that average was 69.6%.

You can find out about hospital waiting times in your area here.

Think tank says Scottish NHS budget is downpublished at 15:59 Greenwich Mean Time 20 March

15:59 GMT 20 March

Back to PMQs from earlier, and responding to a question from the SNP, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: "whilst NHS spending in England is going up in real terms, in Scotland it's going down".

He was referring to a report, external from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think tank, which said the Scottish budget had given a “misleading impression” about spending.

The IFS said Scottish ministers were wrong to say health spending would rise by 1.3% after adjusting for rising prices in 2024-25 because that ignored extra money the NHS had been given during the previous year.

If that was taken into account, the budget was actually down by 0.7%, the IFS said.

You can read more about it here.

The prime minister will tell fellow Tories to "pull together" at the 1922 Committee this afternoon, according to Rishi Sunak's press secretary.

She told reporters after PMQs he would talk to backbenchers about the local elections and about the need to "pull together to make sure Labour don't do what they have done to Britain, what they have done to Birmingham".

His spokeswoman added that "eye-watering tax rises, bins uncollected, massive cuts to the arts in Birmingham" have made it "worse than in the 1970s under Labour leadership there."

Asked whether the PM was concerned the Conservative Party had not been pulling together, she said Sunak wanted everyone to go into the local elections talking about Labour's "poor record in Birmingham, Wales and London".

Prime minister Rishi Sunak will be appearing before the 1922 Committee of backbench MPs later this afternoon, after days of speculation about plotting among some MPs about a possible leadership change.

It's a tradition that the Conservative Party leader appears before the committee at the end of the parliamentary term. The session is held privately.

Described as a "kingmaker" in the Conservative party, the powerful committee runs the selection process for new leaders. If MPs want to get rid of their current leader, then it's "The 1922" that collects the votes to do so.

Has £600m been spent on Rwanda policy?published at 14:12 Greenwich Mean Time 20 March

14:12 GMT 20 March

Earlier, Sir Keir Starmer criticised the government’s Rwanda policy during PMQs.

He claimed the PM had spent £600m of taxpayer money on a “gimmick to deport 300 people”.

The UK government has already paid £240m to Rwanda as part of the migration deal.

That total is expected to rise to at least £370m over the five years of the scheme, according to a recent report by the National Audit Office, external.

But there are additional costs too. After the first 300 people are sent to Rwanda, the UK would pay a one-off sum of £120m, with further payments of £20,000 per individual relocated.

On top of that, the NAO also estimates processing and operating costs of up to £151,000 for each person sent to Rwanda.

Along with other costs - such as staff and training - the estimated total spend on the Rwanda scheme is about £600m.