Rayner says Tory complaint about her to police was politically motivated and voters fed up of such "desperate tactics" Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, has welcomed the conclusion of the Greater Manchester police investigation into allegations against her. (See 4.01pm.) She said the Tory complaint about her was political motivated and that the public were fed up of such “desperate tactics”. I welcome the conclusion of the police investigation, and confirmation that no further action will be taken. We have seen the Conservative party use this playbook before - reporting political opponents to the police during election campaigns to distract from their dire record. The public have had enough of these desperate tactics from a Tory government with nothing else to say after 14 years of failure. I am grateful to all those who have stood by and supported me and my family. My focus now is squarely on securing the change Britain needs, with the election of a Labour government. Early evening summary Angela Rayner has been cleared of any potential criminal wrongdoing over claims she avoided tax over the sale of a home, with Greater Manchester police saying it would take no action against the Labour deputy leader. HM Revenue and Customs is not taking any further action either (see 4.26pm) in relation to the allegations, and Stockport council has also concluded no action is needed. A council spokesperson said: Stockport council has reviewed and responded to all correspondence relating to this matter, including information received from Greater Manchester police (GMP) who have concluded that no further police action will be taken. We have also concluded that no further action will be taken on behalf of the council. Rachel Reeves has said there will be no budget until September if Labour wins the election and promised the party will not announce any additional tax measures beyond what it has already promised. Nigel Farage, the Reform UK honorary president, has said Britain is moving towards “sectarian politics with women completely excluded” in inner cities and towns, as he called for rising levels of Channel crossings to be declared a “national security emergency”. Rishi Sunak has warned Conservative MPs that election campaigning is not optional after a minister decided to fly to Greece on holiday. Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer will take part in a debate on ITV next week, Ben Riley-Smith from the Telegraph reports. Rayner says Tory complaint about her to police was politically motivated and voters fed up of such "desperate tactics" Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, has welcomed the conclusion of the Greater Manchester police investigation into allegations against her. (See 4.01pm.) She said the Tory complaint about her was political motivated and that the public were fed up of such “desperate tactics”. I welcome the conclusion of the police investigation, and confirmation that no further action will be taken. We have seen the Conservative party use this playbook before - reporting political opponents to the police during election campaigns to distract from their dire record. The public have had enough of these desperate tactics from a Tory government with nothing else to say after 14 years of failure. I am grateful to all those who have stood by and supported me and my family. My focus now is squarely on securing the change Britain needs, with the election of a Labour government. Rishi Sunak has told the Daily Telegraph that he has been in touch with Boris Johnson very recently about the election. As Ben Riley-Smith reports, Sunak told the Telegraph’s new podcast: [Johnson is] a busy guy as well, but we were in touch literally just the other day, actually, about the risk that Starmer poses to the country’s security and the damage he would do. I worry about Keir Starmer’s complacency around security. Johnson still resents the role Sunak played in forcing him out of office and the two men have had very little direct contact over the past year. On Friday Sunak sounded very lukewarm about the prospect of Johnson joining him on the campaign trail. From the Telegraph report, it is not clear if the recent contact went much beyond Johnson telling Sunak to read his Daily Mail column, which on Friday was a long polemic on why he saw Keir Starmer as a threat to the UK. Scottish National party sources have denied claims their candidate in Lothian East, Iain Whyte, resigned last week partly because he was annoyed it had failed to give him the money he was promised when he first stood in the seat. (See 1.10pm.) Whyte quit the campaign suddenly the day after Rishi Sunak announced a snap election, forcing the SNP to quickly appoint Lyn Jardine, the party’s group leader on East Lothian council, as his replacement. SNP sources said that Whyte, who had previously worked in the parliamentary office for the then SNP minister Paul Wheelhouse, has health issues which he hoped to overcome in time for a general election later this year. Other sources in the constituency report Whyte also stood down because he felt the resources and money he believed were needed to compete effectively against Douglas Alexander and Scottish Labour had not been provided. The SNP has significant financial problems. Whyte was nominated by Nicola Sturgeon and believed Lothian East was a priority seat for the SNP, partly because it has been represented by Kenny MacAskill, the former Scottish justice secretary who defected to Alex Salmond’s breakaway nationalist party Alba in 2021. SNP sources said this claim was “factually incorrect”, and said spending and resources had never come up in the local branch. His decision to stand down was a purely personal one. Lothian East, long known as East Lothian until the latest Boundary Commission review, has become a Scottish political weathervane. It has changed hands between Labour and the SNP three times since the 2014 independence referendum. The SNP regained it in 2019 with a 3,886-vote majority. Alexander, a former international development secretary and transport secretary, is widely expected to win it back for Labour. Reeves hints Labour would continue with fuel duty freeze Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, has given sit-down interviews to various broadcasters which have just been released. Most of the questions focused on what she meant when she said earlier that Labour’s plans would not require any tax rises additional to the ones already announced by the party. (See 2.18pm.) Andy Bell from 5 News asked about fuel duty. In theory fuel duty is supposed to go up every year (the rates are set in cash terms, and to keep their value they have to go up in line with inflation), and the Treasury plans on the basis that it will go up every year. But for most of the last 20 years or so chancellor have frozen fuel duty rather than impose an increase on motorists. Asked if her comments about not raising taxes covered fuel duty, Reeves said: We’ve always supported the freezes in fuel duty these last few years. And we will set that out in a budget but our track record at the last budget [shows] we were calling for that freeze and we’re pleased that the government did that. Asked if that meant that she would continue to freeze fuel duty, she said she would not write a budget now, but added: “We’ve always been clear we’ve not supported increases in fuel duty over the last few years and you can judge us on our record.” Sam Coates from Sky News asked Reeves, when she said her plans did not require tax rises, whether that was a statement that would apply for a whole parliament. Reeves refused to say, and she would not go beyond just repeating the point about her plans not requiring tax rises. She said she would not write a budget now. But she confirmed that Labour has committed to not putting up income tax or national insurance – implying that her comment about taxes in general not needing to go up was not such a cast-iron commitment. And in an interview with Christopher Hope from GB News, asked if her pledges not to raise income tax, national insurance or corporation tax (a promise from February) would cover all five years of the next parliament, she said they would. Matthew Holehouse from the Economist thinks Starmer’s answer to the worker who asked about freedom of movement is significant. (See 4.55pm.) Starmer says freedom of movement not returning, but it should be easier for UK firms to deploy their workers in EU factories Back at the Q&A, Keir Starmer takes a question about freedom of movement. Q: Will you do anything on freedom of movement for goods or people? Starmer says there was freedom of movement when the UK was in the EU, but he says it is not coming back. There is no case for saying we should go back into the EU. The referendum settled that, he says. But he says he can see why a firm like Airbus needs to be able to send workers to plants abroad. That is not freedom of movement; that is just work, he says. And he says he wants to make it easier for that to happen than it is now. He says the Brexit deal negotiated by Boris Johnson was a “botched job”. It can be improved. Reeves says Labour wants a better deal with the EU on veterinary regulations. And she says Labour wants to secure touring rights for artists within the EU, so musicins going on tour don’t need to deal with the current “prohibitive and bureaucratic” rules. And she says the Brexit deal did little for the sevice sector. She suggests she would like to improve that. Rish Sunak has two young daughters, aged 9 and 11. Speaking to reporters earlier today, he said that they were more positive about his plan for compulsory national service for 18-year-olds than his plan for all pupils to study maths until they leave school. He said: My daughters are definitely more excited than they were when I announced maths to 18. [This was a] much easier conversation than that conversation was … I do this first and foremost as a dad, knowing that if I’m successful then my daughters will do it. Q: What do you think of Rishi Sunak’s plan to remove responsibility for giving sick notes to workers from GPs? Starmer says Sunak is getting desperate. He is rummaging around in the “toy box” of ideas to put proposals on the table. He says there are “positive, sensible, grown-up” things than can be done to get people into work. Starmer and Reeves take part in Q&A with workers at Airbus plant Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, are taking part in a Q&A at an Airbus plan in Hertfordshire. Opening the session, Starmer makes a point of saying questioners are not being vetted and anyone can ask anything. The first question comes from someone who says he has not voted Labour before. That’s allowed, Starmer says. The questioner asks if Labour will eliminate waste in government procurement. Starmer says he thinks the government could do more to use procurement as a means of generating growth. Reeves is speaking now. She says Labour has committed not to increase income tax or national insurance at all. She says she is particulary angry about the money wasted on Covid contracts. She would appoint a commissioner to get every penny back where contracts were not fulfilled. HM Revenue and Customs also looked into Angela Rayner’s tax arrangements relating to the sale of her first home, at her request, and it is understood that no further action is being taken. Commenting on Greater Manchester police’s announcement about Angela Rayner (see 4.10pm), a Labour party spokeperson said: The police have now completed their investigation into claims made by the Conservative party deputy chairman and have concluded that no further action will be taken. Angela co-operated fully with the police investigation throughout. Angela has always been clear that she was not liable for capital gains tax on the sale of the home she owned before she was an MP, that she was properly registered to vote, and paid the appropriate council tax. She took expert tax and legal advice which confirms this. This draws a line under the matter. How Tories now have record of demanding police inquiries into Labour politicians resulting in no action This is the second time a police inquiry into Labour launched at the behest of the Tories has gone nowhere. In the so-called beergate affair, Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner were accused of breaking lockdown rules after Starmer was photographed drinking beer in an office with Labour staff when they had a takeaway meal while working late during the local election campaign in 2021. Starmer and Rayner said they would resign if they were found to have done anything wrong. An inquiry by Durham police concluded that they hadn’t. The allegations received extensive coverage, particularly in the Daily Mail, and the Conservative MP Richard Holden was particularly prominent in demanding a full investigation. He was later promoted and appointed Conservative party chair. James Daly, the current deputy chair, was instrumental in persuading Greater Manchester police to carry out a full inquiry into the various allegations about Rayner. These allegations, also reported endlessly by the Mail, were prompted by revelations about Rayner’s living arrangements when she bought her first house published in a biography by Lord Ashcroft, who is a former Tory deputy chair. When Greater Manchester police initially decided the complaints weren’t worth investigating, Daly complained. The Tories pushed the the beergate story when Boris Johnson was under pressure over Partygate, and they clearly wanted to imply equivalance; that lockdown rules were being ignored by people from all parties. But the police inquiry into Partygate did lead to action. Some 83 people were fined, including Boris Johnson, the then PM, and Rishi Sunak, the then chancellor. Greater Manchester police says it won"t take any action over Tory allegations against Angela Rayner Greater Manchester police has said that it is not taking any further action over allegations that Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, broke the law after she bought a council home which she subsequently sold before becoming an MP. Tories and Tory-supported papers suggested that she may have broken electoral law, by registering the wrong home as her main residence, as well as suggesting that she wrongly avoided paying capital gains tax when she sold the property. James Daly, the Tory deputy chair, complained to the police, and then insisted that they looked into it properly when they initially dismissed the allegations, even though in interviews he subsequently refused to say what he thought she had done wrong. A spokesperson said: Following allegations about Angela Rayner MP, Greater Manchester police has completed a thorough, carefully considered and proportionate investigation. We have concluded that no further police action will be taken. The investigation originated from complaints made by Mr James Daly MP directly to GMP. Subsequent further contact with GMP by members of the public, and claims made by individuals featured in media reporting, indicated a strong public interest in the need for allegations to be investigated. Matters involving council tax and personal tax do not fall into the jurisdiction of policing. GMP has liaised with Stockport council and information about our investigation has been shared with them. Details of our investigation have also been shared with His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC). David Cameron is probably the best political salesman in the Conservative party and he gave a good example of why in an interview a few minutes ago. To promote his “triple lock plus” policy, Rishi Sunak has said that, because Labour is not implementing it, that means under Labour pensioners would pay more tax. (See 8.34am.) Cameron expressed the same idea more slickly; he claimed under Labour pensioners would face a “retirement tax”. He said: In the end elections are not a referendum on the government. They’re a choice, and you can see a real choice opening up: of keeping the pension out of tax with the Conservatives or a retirement tax with Labour; an exciting plan for national service to bring the country together under the Conservatives, no plans under Keir Starmer. A claim like this can be very effective. Labour backed away from the “death tax” after the Tories attacked the concept (a tax on estates to pay for social care) before the 2010 election, and Theresa May lost her majority in 2017 after proposing what Labour called the “dementia tax” (higher care costs). Cameron’s phrase won’t have the same impact because Labour is not, in fact, proposing any retirement tax. Not implementing a notional tax cut (about which voters are likely to be sceptical anyway) is different from proposing an actual tax increase. But that may not stop Cameron’s phrase making some headlines in the pro-Tory papers anyway. Rishi Sunak has said that the announcement of his party’s proposed “triple lock plus” (see 8.34am) presents voters with a choice. He said: “What I believe is if you work hard all your life you should have dignity in retirement.” He said that his policy would amount to a tax cut worth around £100 for pensioners, and that under Labour “pensioners will be paying tax”.