Chancellor says £22bn gap in current spending budget and state pension rise meant she had to make decision on means-testing fuel payments

In interview this morning Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, defended her own decision to accept clothing donations worth £7,500 when she was in opposition.

Speaking on the Today programme, she said:

I can understand why people find it a little bit odd that politicians get support for things like buying clothes.

Now, when I was an opposition MP, when I was shadow chancellor of the exchequer, a friend of mine who I’ve known for years [Juliet Rosenfeld] – she’s a good personal friend – wanted to support me as shadow chancellor and the way she wanted to support me was to finance my office to be able to buy clothes for the campaign trail and for big events and speeches that I made as shadow chancellor.

It’s never something that I planned to do as a government minister, but it did help me in opposition.

It’s rightly the case that we don’t ask taxpayers to fund the bulk of the campaigning work and the research work that politicians do, but that does require, then, donations – from small donations, from party members and supporters, from larger contributions, from people who have been very successful in life and want to give something back.

We appreciate that support. It’s part of the reason why we are in government today, because we were able to do that research work, and we were able to do that campaigning.

Unite and the Communication Workers Union (CWU) have put forward motions which were due to be debated on Monday afternoon, with strong support expected from other unions.

Sources said unions were told late on Sunday that the debate is being moved to Wednesday morning.