Nigel Farage trying to destroy Tory party, says David Cameron – as it happened

Keir Starmer has ruled out imposing capital gains tax on the sale of people’s homes and said it was “desperate” tactics from the Tories to suggest that he would.

The Labour leader said he could “absolutely” guarantee that would not happen.

While Labour has explicitly ruled out increasing the rates of income tax, VAT and national insurance, it has largely responded to questions about its wider tax policy by saying there were “no plans” in the manifesto that required tax rises beyond those set out in the document.

The Tories have claimed that Labour is planning a series of secret tax raids, including the possibility of making the sale of a primary residence liable for capital gains tax.

Starmer told reporters on a visit to a hospital in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, on Saturday: “This was just a desperate story by the Tories in relation to capital gains tax on primary residences.”

He added: “There was never a policy so it doesn’t need ruling out, but let’s rule it out in case anybody pretends that it was.”

His comments come after Fraser Nelson, the editor of the Spectator , criticised the Conservatives, accusing them of believing they have a “licence to lie” in election campaigns.

A Labour candidate runs a lobbying firm that represents the organisation battling Keir Starmer’s flagship private schools policy, the Observer can reveal.

Kevin Craig, Labour’s candidate for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, is the founder and chief executive of lobbying firm Political Lobbying and Media Relations (PLMR).

One of its current clients is the Independent Schools Council (ISC), an industry trade body for private schools, which has been campaigning against Labour’s plans to charge VAT on school fees and end the sector’s discount on business rates.

The policy is estimated to raise £1.5bn, which the party says will help fund its plans for the state education sector, including the recruitment of 6,500 new teachers.

Since the policy was first announced, the ISC has been campaigning heavily in the press against the proposal, arguing that it would lead to an exodus of private school pupils into the state sector. The argument has since been used as an attack line on Labour by the Conservatives.

The lobbying firm promises on its website to help its clients reach “government departments in Whitehall, government arm-length bodies, or the UK parliament” and to deliver “valuable exposure” in the media for their messaging.

Craig told the Observer that he believed “strongly in Labour’s stance on education on being both pro-parent choice and pro-better standards for all children and I always have done”.

He added that PLMR “has given hundreds of thousands of pounds to charities over the years” and works on campaigns for major charities, including Cancer Research UK.

The Scottish Conservatives have criticised the SNP’s opposition to Trident, the UK’s nuclear deterrent.

Deputy leader Meghan Gallacher is visiting Helensburgh in Argyll and Bute on Saturday, near the Faslane naval base which is home to the UK’s submarine fleet.

According to the PA news agency, she highlighted a report from the GMB union which said thousands of jobs depended on the Faslane base – 6,500 military and civilian staff at the base and 4,000 in the supply chain and local economy.

Gallacher said the stance of the SNP, along with other politicans who oppose Trident, puts the UK’s national security at risk. She said:

The Scottish Conservatives are the only party truly committed to retaining our nuclear deterrent – along with the 11,000 jobs it supports in and around Faslane.

Global security is as fragile today as it has been in decades, given Russia’s appalling invasion of Ukraine and the deepening conflict in the Middle East.

Now, more than ever, we require the security of a nuclear deterrent and yet the SNP recklessly oppose Trident while many in Scottish Labour and in Keir Starmer’s frontbench team – including his deputy, Angela Rayner – share their hostility.

They would happily put our national security at risk and threaten livelihoods in Helensburgh and beyond.”

She added: “Constituents in Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber know that only our superb local candidate, Amanda Hampsey, will stand up for those whose jobs depend on Faslane.”

Texts reportedly sent from the phone of a Conservative Senedd member, appearing to ask a member of staff to inflate her expenses claims, have been seen by BBC Wales.

South Wales police had received information from the Senedd Commissioner for Standards, which remains under investigation, the force said.

The BBC published screenshot messages, including one allegedly sent by Laura Anne Jones to a staff member, reading: “When doing petrol thing – always make more than I did – add in stuff please ok.”

When the staff member asks, “Like visits to constituency office?”, a response says: “Yes – stuff like that.”

Lawyers acting on behalf of Jones said: “Ms Jones is satisfied that any allegations in relation to impropriety surrounding expenses are entirely misconceived.”

BBC Wales reported that it had seen WhatsApp messages sent to a member of staff in response to them asking whether to make expenses claims for days when Jones was off sick. There was no direct response to that, but the screenshot appears to show a chart of proposed expenses sent by the staff member to the politician’s phone.

A reply from Jones’s phone said: “If you could always do more than it says, that’d be fab, thanks.”

Amid the investigation, the leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Andrew RT Davies, said: “I have asked Laura Anne Jones to step back from the Welsh Conservative shadow cabinet while investigations take place.

“We will not be making any comments on any active investigations being carried out.”

BBC Wales said it was unable to verify the context in which the messages were sent, or whether her messages represented the entire conversations between the people involved. The Guardian has not seen the messages, other than the screenshots published by the broadcaster.

Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner has said her party’s manifesto offer for working people is not “timid” and will “transform working people’s lives for the better”.

She was campaigning in West Lothian on Saturday with Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, meeting parents at the Broxburn Family and Community Development centre.

Labour says tens of thousands of young people in Scotland will benefit from its policies to increase the living wage for those over 18 and scrap the lower minimum wage bands for workers aged between 18 and 20.

The SNP has repeatedly accused Labour and the Conservatives of offering austerity, claiming both parties are refusing to level with people that £18bn of spending cuts are required.

Speaking to journalists, Sarwar said:

There will be no austerity under a Labour government and John Swinney can do all the scaremongering he likes, that’s not going to happen.

We’ve always been clear, this [manifesto] is our first steps for change, a key part of what we’ll be able to achieve is if we get our economy growing again, that’s why economic growth is front and centre.”

He said the SNP and Conservatives had made “big, massive promises” which they had failed to deliver on.

The PA news agency reports that Rayner also emphasised her party’s message on economic growth, saying confidence in the UK had been undermined by the “chaos of the Conservatives and the SNP”.

She said:

We can’t tax our way out of this problem, the Tories have shown us what high tax and unfunded commitments have made to our economy, working people have paid the price.

My new deal for working people is not timid, no one’s ever called me timid in my life.

I come from a trade union background, I know that will transform working people’s lives for the better.

Those 40,000 more appointments in the NHS a week, bringing down the waiting lists, that will change people’s lives, who are currently waiting years.”

She said Labour are “fixing the foundations after the SNP and the Tories have smashed them to pieces”.

A spokesperson for the Scottish Conservatives said: “Labour and the SNP are intent on putting tax up for young people and everyone across Scotland. Their plans to hike tax on working Scots would damage our economy and put jobs at risk.”

Voters will choose who the leader of the opposition is, not Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, Keir Starmer has said.

The Labour leader told the press:

Well, I don’t think it’s for Nigel Farage to declare himself leader of the opposition. I’m actually leader to the opposition just at the moment. I’m hoping to change that.

But, look, my focus is on talking to the voters directly, that’s why I’m out and about every day, because it’s their concerns and, at the end of the day, this is a contest.

But it is a choice between five more years of Conservative government after the failure of last 14 years, or turning a page and a Labour government will rebuild the country.

There are only two candidates for prime minister, Rishi Sunak and myself.”

The number of children attending private schools in England has risen, new figures show, despite claims that families are being priced out by Labour’s plan to add VAT to school fees.

The Independent Schools Council (ISC) said last month that pupil numbers had fallen – a sign, they said, that schools were already starting to see “the impact of VAT looming on the horizon”.

But official Department for Education (DfE) data published last week shows that as of this January, the number of pupils in independent schools in England was 593,486, up from 591,954 the year before and an increase of 24,150 on 2020/21.

The ISC has also blamed two recent private school closures on Labour’s policy. However, the official school census data shows that 12 new independent schools opened in the last year, with the total rising from 2,409 to 2,421.

Private schools in England currently benefit from an 80% discount on business rates, and do not have to charge VAT on school fees. Closing the tax loopholes was pledged in the 2019 Labour manifesto. Keir Starmer renewed that promise in 2021 and again last week at the launch of the Labour party manifesto.

Labour says the £1.5bn raised from imposing 20% VAT and business rates will be used to provide 6,500 teachers in secondary schools. Teacher supply in state schools is in a critical state, according to the National Foundation for Educational Research, with the government failing to hit its own recruitment targets for years. The secondary subject shortfall this year was 50%.

My colleague, Daniel Boffey, has spoken to by those who know Nigel Farage.

Boffey wrotes that while some say have good things to say about the Reform UK leader, it is striking how many enemies he has made, even among those close to him politically.

You can read the full piece here:

Keir Starmer has categorically ruled out imposing capital gains tax on the sale of people’s homes, saying it was “desperate” tactics from the Tories to suggest he would.

The Labour leader said he could “absolutely” guarantee that would not happen.
“There was never a policy so it doesn’t need ruling out, but let’s rule it out in case anybody pretends that it was,” he said.

Labour had explicitly ruled out increasing the rates of income tax, VAT and national insurance. But it has largely responded to questions about its wider tax policy by saying there were “no plans” in the manifesto that required tax hikes beyond those set out in the document.

This has led the Tories to claim that Labour is planning a series of secret tax raids, including the possibility of making the sale of a primary residence liable for capital gains tax.

The PA news agency reports that Starmer told reporters on a visit to a hospital in Worksop: “This was just a desperate story by the Tories in relation to capital gains tax on primary residences.”

He insisted he was not being cautious about responding to Tory attacks over tax. Starmer said:

The reason for that is I reject the idea that the only levers a prime minister has to pull are either the tax lever or the spend lever.

There’s growth – this has been the missing part for the last 14 years, it has been the missing part of this general election campaign, frankly, a discussion about growth.

Our manifesto is a manifesto for growth and a serious plan for growth.”

Keir Starmer has said a Labour government would take “tough” decisions to drive through plans for new homes.

He was responding to questions about Labour candidate Marsha de Cordova’s opposition to a development in the Battersea constituency where she is standing for re-election.

According to the PA news agency, Starmer said:

We have a clearly costed plan for building 1.5m homes over the course of the next parliament if we are elected into government.

I know how important it is for people to own their own home, to have that first place. That will require tough decisions.”

While planning rules would be changed, Starmer said Labour would “listen to local communities” who had concerns about infrastructure. But, he added, “we have to build those homes and we are going to take tough decisions in order to fix that”.

Three out of five people in the UK back spending more on the NHS even if it means their personal taxes would increase, a poll has found.

Pollster Ipsos found 61% of people would accept higher personal taxes if it meant the next chancellor put more money into the NHS, with only 16% saying they wanted tax cuts even if it meant less money for the NHS.

Tax has been one of the key issues of the election, with the Conservatives pledging to cut taxes and claiming Labour’s plans would see taxes rise to their highest level ever.

Meanwhile, Labour has promised not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT and said it wants to see taxes on “working people” come down.

But the Ipsos poll, published on Saturday, suggests there is some appetite for raising taxes to fund public services.

On public services more broadly, some 40% said they would accept higher taxes if it meant more funding, up slightly from 38% in February.

Some 27% of people said they wanted to see tax cuts even if it meant less spending on public services, down from 33% four months ago.

Out on the campaign trail today, Labour are focusing on the NHS.

Leader Sir Keir Starmer has toured a hospital in Nottinghamshire with shadow health secretary Wes Streeting.

And on Sky News, shadow work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall has defended Labour’s claim that NHS waiting lists could rise to 10 million despite the Institute for Fiscal Studies saying that was “highly unlikely”.

Responding to the criticism, Kendall said:

We’re saying that if there’s another five years of the Conservatives, you could see 10 million people waiting in pain or feeling they have to try and pay to go private to deal with their problem.

She said it was a “reasonable assumption” that was based on what had already happened under the Conservatives and “if the trend continues in the future, as it has done in the past, that’s what we’re likely to see”.

The Tories have dismissed the Labour attack as “scaremongering”.