Keir Starmer says Labour will have "no tax surprises" in manifesto 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. We will launch our manifesto very soon and that will have no tax surprises in it because all of our plans are fully funded and fully costed and none of them require tax rises over and above the ones that we’ve already announced. What we do need to do, just to take up the challenge that’s been put to us is, we do need to grow the economy. We do need to make sure that the economy and living standards across the whole country are growing and that’s why step one, in government if we get to serve our country, will be to stabilise and grow our economy. We are not returning to austerity. 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.” Douglas Ross’s position as Scottish Tory leader has been “significantly undermined” after he chose to stand as a general election candidate over colleague David Duguid, John Swinney has said. The Scottish Tory leader has faced criticism after he announced his candidacy in the Aberdeenshire North and Moray East constituency last week after Duguid was blocked over health concerns. Duguid had hoped to contest the seat, which replaced his previous Banff and Buchan and part of Ross’s former Moray constituency under new boundary rules. However, Duguid is now in hospital after becoming unwell in April and said the party’s membership candidate had de-selected him as a candidate. Ross previously said he would not contest his seat at the general election, instead promising to focus on his MSP role and leadership responsibilities. While Ross has defended his position to stand, citing the “very unique circumstances” around Duguid’s health and the timing of the election as his motivations, SNP leader and Scottish first minister John Swinney accused his opponent of “naked self-interest”. He said: I think his ability to continue as Scottish Conservative leader is significantly undermined by his behaviour. Douglas Ross has no credibility whatsoever – he has been telling us all that he wants to be leader of the Scottish Conservative party so that he can become the first minister of Scotland. But he is now taking a decision to try to get back to the House of Commons so he is just exercising constant naked self-interest in the decisions that he takes. Duguid has denied claims he is “unable to stand” in the election. A Scottish Conservative spokesperson said: “The party management board took an incredibly difficult decision to conclude that David Duguid could not stand at this election for health reasons. “David has been a fantastic local MP for the last seven years and Douglas worked incredibly well with him as the neighbouring MP in Moray. “Everyone wishes David well in his continued recovery and looks forward to his return to frontline politics. “Given the short timeframe to ensure we had a candidate in this key seat, Douglas decided he needed to lead from the front and stop this area being represented by an SNP MP who would only focus on independence, rather than local people’s real priorities.” Here is a picture of Keir Starmer in Essex during the election campaign trail. Sir Keir Starmer said talking to voters in Essex about crime was “really helpful”, adding “because when we’re sitting down another time hammering out what we’re going to do, it’s very important for us to say ‘hey, remember what we were told there or what a difference this would make?”’ The Labour leader and shadow home secretary spoke to victims of antisocial behaviour during a campaign stop in Essex. Brian Johnson, 56, told Sir Keir Starmer about the theft of his son’s motorcycle, with the suspects riding it up and down his street. However, police said there were no officers available to attend, so Johnson chased the suspects himself with his car but could not get the motorcycle back. Asked by Sir Keir how he felt, Johnson said: “I was absolutely devastated”. Sir Keir said: Well we want 13,000 more neighbourhood police, neighbourhood being the key word here. Sunak will ‘absolutely’ remain Tory leader despite D-day blunder, ally says Rowena Mason, the Guardian’s Whitehall editor, has the latest about Rishi Sunak’s future in the party following backlash after he left D-day celebrations early: 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. Asked whether Sunak might hand over the Conservative leadership before the 4 July 4 election, Stride dismissed the idea. “There should be no question of anything other than [Sunak continuing to lead the party],” he told Sky News. Stride said Sunak “deeply regrets” his decision to leave the D-day events early, calling the prime minister “deeply patriotic” and committed to supporting veterans. “He has recognised that he made a mistake. He deeply regrets that. He has apologised unequivocally for that,” Stride said. “The prime minister has accepted that he made a mistake. He has apologised unequivocally for that. “And I think he will be feeling this personally, very deeply because he’s a deeply patriotic person. He will be deeply uncomfortable with what has happened.” Sir Keir Starmer has 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 some £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. The Labour leader said: I have never seen such an ill-thought-through proposal that’s been desperately put on the table today, and you will all be picking at it. You will have seen the reaction of the various bodies that look at the numbers, and what we’re seeing now on a daily basis is a sort of scatter-gun approach of desperate policy put on the table that isn’t thought through. We’ve seen this almost every day. I do accept that we do need to improve here; I do accept that we need to get the bill down. More from Essex, Keir Starmer said Rishi Sunak has "“got questions he needs to answer” when asked about the prime minister’s early departure from D-day commemorations. He said: Clearly he’s got questions he needs to answer in relation to what happened on D-day and at the moment he doesn’t seem to want to answer them. I know what I stand for, I know why I was there on Thursday, paid my respects and saying thank you. And I was humbled actually, when I was there. Labour leader 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. We didn’t have a vote on it because nobody wanted to vote, it was signed off with acclaim. And I said to that meeting, and I’ll say to you now, that the best manifestos we produced as a party were 1945, 1964 and 1997 because they told the story about the future of the country and they were winning manifestos from opposition into power. I want the 2024 manifesto to join that list, of not only telling a story about the country, but being a winning manifesto. So it was a very good-natured meeting, it was signed off with acclaim, and very soon you’ll be able to see what’s in that manifesto.” 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. The Tories had previously promised to deliver 20,000 new prison places, and 6,000 have been created so far. Labour said it would ensure the delivery of the remaining 14,000 by unblocking the planning process and boosting the prison-building programme. Shadow justice secretary Shabana Mahmood declined to rule out ending the early release scheme, as she said Labour would need to “lift the bonnet” in government before knowing the true extent of the crisis in prisons. She told the BBC: I think actually the government needs to level with the public. We all know that prisons are running at either 98% capacity or 99%. It is a dereliction of duty that the government hasn’t actually released all of the figures about their early release scheme – they’ve actually been doing that in secret. It would be irresponsible for me from opposition, without seeing the data about the number of offenders that have been released or having all of that information, to make those decisions now. When again asked if she would rule out continuing early release, Mahmood said: It would be irresponsible to make those decisions from opposition without all of the information to hand. 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. “You’ll see Alba making its mark at this election.” Salmond confirmed earlier this week that he is not standing for election himself, instead setting his sights on the Scottish parliament in 2026. He has often urged other pro-independence parties including the SNP to work together to secure a “democratic mandate for independence” which, with the majority of Scottish seats, would see the parties “face down Westminster”, he said. However, Salmond, who formed the Alba Party in 2021 after a high-profile fallout with his former deputy Nicola Sturgeon, accused the SNP of “trying to avoid the constitutional issue”. He said: If the SNP wants to compete to win an election, they have to make sure that independence is the key issue of the election. They might do very well as they have done in a number of elections, or they might just do quite well, but unless you make independence and the constitution the defining issue of the campaign, you will lose. He added that a loss of the election for the SNP would see pro-independence voters make a “substantial and early transfer” to Alba. At the campaign event in Essex, Sir Keir Starmer said he was “critical” of the early release scheme for prisoners but added that “tough decisions” would have to be taken by a Labour government. He said: I am critical of the Tories’ early release scheme because what’s happened is that they’re releasing early, prisoners who should still be in prison and that’s a shocking state of affairs. Like the many problems that they have left for the country, if we do come into power we’re going to have to fix it. Now that will involve building prisons, that will involve taking tough decisions because the money has been allocated for prison building but there are tough decisions about planning and getting those prisons up.