Summary
Here is a quick recap of the main stories from today:
Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer has reiterated his party’s pledge not to raise taxes, despite reports from The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) that tax rises would be necessary to maintain current levels of departmental funding. Sir Keir told reporters in Essex: “We will not be raising taxes on working people. That means we won’t be raising income tax, national insurance or VAT.
An ally of Rishi Sunak has insisted the prime minister will “absolutely” continue to lead the Conservative election campaign after his D-day ceremony blunder, which triggered fury within the party. The prime minister was campaigning in Yorkshire on Sunday without media appearances, after cutting short his attendance at the 80th anniversary of D-day in France with other world leaders. Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, said Sunak would not resign over the move in the middle of an election campaign.
Sir Keir Starmer has described the party’s general election manifesto as a “winning” manifesto. He told reporters in Essex: “The manifesto’s a really good document and I’m looking forward to you seeing it. And it was signed off with acclaim at the end of the meeting.”
Starmer has also criticised the Conservatives’ “scatter-gun approach of desperate policy” in response to their latest pledge to halt the rising costs of welfare by reforming the benefits system. The plan from the Tories would save £12bn a year by the end of the next parliament, the party has claimed, by ensuring more working age people currently claiming benefits have a job.
Labour’s head of justice has declined to rule out her party ending the Tories’ early prisoner release scheme, despite Sir Keir Starmer saying he was “critical” of the strategy. The plan introduced under Rishi Sunak allows certain prisoners to be released up to 70 days before the end of their sentence in an effort to ease overcrowding in prisons in England and Wales.
Alex Salmond’s Alba Party will “make its mark” at the general election, the former first minister of Scotland has said. The Alba leader took aim at his former party the SNP, claiming it has a lack of strategy to achieve Scottish independence. Speaking on BBC Scotland’s The Sunday Show, he said Alba is “credible” with “excellent prospects”, adding: “I think we’re going to do great and we are going to have substantial results in a number seats.
Work and Pensions secretary Mel Stride has told Sky News that Rishi Sunak “deeply regrets” his decision to leave D-day 80th anniversary events early. Speaking to Trevor Phillips this morning, Stride said that the prime minister was “deeply patriotic” and committed to supporting veterans, after he was roundly criticised for leaving France ahead of other world leaders to film a television interview.
Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said Labour and the Conservatives “don’t really want to talk about the scale of the challenge facing them”, should they win the election. He told Sky News: “Both parties have tied themselves to the, in my view, rather bizarre fiscal rule which is they want debt down.”
Nigel Farage has defended his claim that Rishi Sunak’s early exit from D-day commemoration events in France demonstrated that he did not understand “our culture”. Asked if he was trying to highlight Sunak’s British-Asian background, Farage pointed to the contribution made by Commonwealth troops and suggested he was talking about the prime minister’s “class” and “privilege”.
The Labour shadow justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has defended her party from being “changed into the Conservatives”. Responding to a comment made by Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer during Friday’s seven-way BBC debate that Labour had “changed into the Conservatives”, Mahmood said: “That’s exactly the kind of stuff you’d expect from some of the smaller parties.”
Labour is promising new powers for police to quickly scrap noisy dirt and quad bikes causing havoc in neighbourhoods as part of a crackdown on antisocial behaviour. Keir Starmer’s party also wants to raise on-the-spot fines for using off-road bikes or ignoring officers’ instructions to stop, which are as low as £100.
A £2 hourly pay rise could help tackle the care worker shortage, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has said. He told the Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips programme: “If you paid this extra money to care workers, I think people would make a choice of not working in supermarkets or Amazon warehouses and things like that because they would feel that the tough job of being a carer would be properly rewarded.”
Thank you for following along. You can find more of our politics coverage here.
Class sizes in state schools may increase as a result of Labour adding VAT to private school fees, shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry has said.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has said the policy will generate roughly £1.5bn a year, which Labour plans to invest in state education, including in recruiting more teachers.
Labour’s Thornberry was asked about the potentially thousands of students who are expected to leave private schools because of the 20% rise in prices as a result of the introduction of VAT.
She told GB News:
Certainly, some schools that have vacancies – my primary schools and my secondary schools have space and they’re very welcome.
They are good schools and people should send their children there. I mean, it’s fine, and if we have to, in the short term, have larger classes, we have larger classes.
All we need to do is we need to raise the money in order to make sure that children who go into state schools have had breakfast.
That’s what our priority is, and we need to raise the money from somewhere. What we’re going to do is we are saying everything we’re going to spend money on, where money is coming from because we will have a proper manifesto.
All our spending commitments will be costed, and we will be able to say where it comes from and, sure, there may well be complaints about it.
I understand that, but I’m afraid that if I have a choice between putting VAT on private schools and making sure that the children in my area can have breakfast before they start learning, I know where I am.”
