Sunak defends betting response, as Starmer denies Corbyn support — as it happened

“But to be fair, you do need to allow people to have due process and that will actually be determining what follows, what actions need to be taken.”

Nigel Farage has insisted he is not a “Putin apologist” as he sought to defend his position that the West should not “poke the Russian bear”.

Speaking at a rally in Devon, the Reform UK leader said: “Somehow, I am made out to be a Putin apologist, which of course I’m not. What he’s done in Ukraine is reprehensible.

“His Majesty’s Daily Mail, who have decided that I am one of the worst people that’s ever been born, not for the first time, just because I got up over ten years ago and said that I felt the eastward expansion of Nato and the European Union would be used by a dangerous dictator as a reason to go to war.

“In Ukraine, I said, don’t poke the Russian bear with a stick because if you do you will get a very predictable result.”

Farage said he was the only person saying it and “they hated me at the time for daring to do so” and they hate him more now “because I have been proved right”.

Rishi Sunak has told Tory supporters that they have “ten days to save Britain from a Labour government”.

In a campaign event in London, the prime minister said: “Don’t surrender to Labour. Fight for every vote, fight for our values, fight for our vision of Britain, because it is only us Conservatives that can deliver the secure future that our country needs and our country deserves.

“So let’s get out there and smash it everyone.”

In what appeared to be a tacit acknowledgement of the Tory betting scandal, Sunak said was not “blind” to people’s frustrations with him and the Conservative party. But he said this is “not a by-election” or a “referendum on me”.

Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer faced questions on immigration, the Tory betting scandal and the NHS during the election campaign’s fourth live televised event.

The prime minister was repeatedly quizzed on the betting scandal and integrity while the legacy of Jeremy Corbyn and Brexit dominated the questions posed to the Labour leader.

Several questions were designed to hit both leaders’ weak spots. For Starmer, it was questions about women’s rights and trans issues.

After JK Rowling said at the weekend that Labour had “abandoned” women, Starmer said he would “welcome” a discussion with the author and campaigner.

The issue of integrity, meanwhile, dominated Sunak’s portion of the event as the prime minister stuck to prepared lines when grilled on the betting scandal.

Sir Keir Starmer has said he would not pay to “jump” an NHS waiting list as the debate shifted to the country’s creaking healthcare system.

Starmer said: “I wouldn’t say to the rest of the population, you can be on a waiting list give me to fix it but I’m going to speed myself through — I’m not going to look people in the eye and say that, it’s not me.”

Asked if he would choose the private system to save a loved one’s life, Starmer replied: “If a family member was in an acute, life-threatening situation, I would want the NHS because it is absolutely the best place to be. That’s my choice, based on my experience. I’m not going to say to other people that’s the choice that they should make.”

He continued: “The bigger discussion that we are not really having here is why are so many people having to now go private because they are having to wait so long on the NHS. They are hardworking people who are having to use their money, their savings, for operations which they ought to be able to get on the NHS.”

Sir Keir Starmer has said the process of changing gender is “not dignified” and said he would be happy to meet JK Rowling to discuss her criticisms of his stance on trans rights.

The Labour leader said: “I respect [Rowling] … I’m not as tribal as anybody else. My view is, if there’s an issue or a challenge, get people around the table and talk through the issues and find a way.”

He defended Labour’s policy on gender issues, saying that “women’s issues must be protected”, and adding: “When I was chief prosecutor, I was working with very many people who have been victims of sexual violence and domestic violence … I saw for myself how important those women’s spaces are, and they must be whether it’s a single sex ward or sport, that must be protected.”

“We mustn’t go down the route of self identification, but we do need to recognise the process at the moment is not dignified.”

Sir Keir Starmer has insisted he has “nothing against private schools” as he defended Labour’s policy to introduce VAT on private school fees.

The Labour leader: “I accept that many families, parents work hard and save hard to send their children to private school because they’ve got aspirations for their children, and they think that’s the best place for their child.

“I’ve got nothing against that, against private schools. And I completely understand that for some parents, that’s quite hard to do because there’s not all money going around.

“But we’ve got to recruit the numbers of teachers we need in our state secondary schools … it is a tough choice, it’s a difficult choice.”

The Rwanda policy is an “expensive gimmick”, Sir Keir Starmer has insisted, as he labelled the small boats crisis a potential national security risk.

He said: “Nobody should be making that journey across the channel. Nobody. It’s a breach of our borders. It’s also a matter of national security because the government should be ID’ing who comes to this country.”

Starmer has insisted that a Labour government can tackle illegal immigration by processing asylum claims.

The National Crime Agency have argued that Channel crossings cannot be solved without a “removal and deterrence” scheme.

The Labour leader said the Rwanda scheme was “not a deterrent” because it does not work in practice.
He added: “This is such an absurd position for the government. You’re paying the bills for people not to be processed … They’re here for life at the moment, and that’s why it’s not a disincentive.”

Sir Keir Starmer has insisted Britain is “not going to reopen what was actually a pretty awful period for us” when asked about his Brexit policy.

The Labour leader backed Remain and at one point advocated for a second referendum as the shadow Brexit secretary in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet.

He said: “I personally voted to remain, but I accepted the outcome and I walked through the lobby and supported the Brexit deal that Boris Johnson put on the table. I don’t think it’s good enough. I do actually think we can get better than that, but we are not going back in to reopen what was actually a pretty awful period for us.

“Between 2016 and 2019, in parliament we were arguing about nothing else. And I think many people in this room across the country, by the time it came to 2019, said we’ve got to move forward. I agree with that. We’re not going back in.”

Sir Keir Starmer has said it was “very difficult for me and our party” when Jeremy Corbyn was elected as Labour leader.

In his most comprehensive explanation of the campaign over his backing of Jeremy Corbyn in the general elections of 2017 and 2019, he said: “I didn’t vote for Jeremy Corbyn to be leader of our party. In 2015 I didn’t vote for him to be leader, in 2016 I supported another candidate, but our membership returned him as the leader.

“But that was very difficult for me and for our party, because I thought that we were not going to be heading in the right direction… Leaders are temporary, but political parties are permanent.”

Sir Keir Starmer has said no Labour leader has “ever done anything so serious” on changing the party than his treatment of Jeremy Corbyn.

He said: “Jeremy Corbyn not only lost the whip … he’s now been expelled from the Labour Party. No Labour leader has ever done anything as serious about changing his or her party before, and so I’m really proud of that over the last four and a half years.

“The party, I’ve changed it, and now I hope that there is a Labour Party which people feel that they can vote for this time in a way I accept wasn’t the case last time around.”

Now Sir Keir Starmer faces questions and has praised Boris Johnson for taking a “strong position” on Ukraine.

He said: “I’m going to do something unusual and praise Boris Johnson. I thought the way he conducted himself and Partygate was a disgrace, and he should have got kicked out of parliament. But to be fair, on Ukraine, he took the strong position.”

The prime minister has claimed that illegal immigrants are “queuing up in Calais” waiting for Keir Starmer for become prime minister.

Rishi Sunak said illegal migrants “will be out on our streets” if Labour won the election, instead of “on planes to Rwanda”.

He added: “I can tell you now they are queuing up in Calais waiting for a Labour government so they can come here and stay here.”

Jon Ashworth, the shadow paymaster general, said the claim was “absolute rubbish”.

The prime minister has insisted he does not regret calling the election early.

Asked whether another six months might have helped him “turn it around”, Rishi Sunak said: “No because when I got this job, my number one priority was to get the economy in a strong position.

“And that’s what we’ve been able to do over the last 18 months, get inflation back to target and the economy growing, wages rising, energy bills falling, so this is the moment for you to decide what future you want. And I want you to have the opportunity.”

Conservative MPs and party officials involved in the Tory betting scandal will be held “to account”, Rishi Sunak has insisted.

The prime minister said: “If anyone has not upheld the standards that I expect, if they have broken the rules, they should face the full consequences of the law and they will be booted out of the Conservative party. I couldn’t be clearer about that.”

The Conservatives launched their own inquiry into whether politicians or officials gambled on the timing of the election on Monday, almost a week after the scandal first emerged.

The Conservatives can give people the “certainty” of decreasing legal migration year after year, Rishi Sunak has said.

The prime minister said the “numbers were too high” when he entered office 18 months ago.

Sunak added: “I want to go further with a legal cap and give you the guarantee that it will keep coming down again … I’m going to give all of you the certainty that it’s going to keep coming down year after year.”

Journalists should “be careful” when questioning politicians on the Tory betting scandal, Rishi Sunak has suggested, as he defended his response to the growing controversy.

Challenged on why he was yet to suspend those suspected of being involved in the scandal, the prime minister said: “These really serious matters [and] they are subject to multiple investigations including a police criminal investigation.”

He added: “I’ve been crystal clear if anyone has broken the rules then they should face not just the full consequences of the law but they should be booted out of the Conservative party.

Sunak was asked to explain how the scandal reflected on his pledge to restore integrity to politics.

The prime minister said: “Just be careful, there are independent inquiries ongoing those haven’t concluded they are being done by very serious bodies the gambling commission and the police it’s important nobody says or does anything that compromises the integrity of those investigations.”

Rishi Sunak said he doesn’t regret making the commitment to stop the boats, and said that he’s “kept going” when facing barriers to his schemes to tackle illegal migration.

The prime minister argued that in the last 12 months the numbers of migrants arriving on small boats was lower than in the year before. He said: “I’ve kept going. I put new laws on the table. We’ve passed those laws. We’ve got a deal done with Albania but this is about the future.”

The prime minister has insisted that there has been progress over the past 14 years of Conservative government.

Rishi Sunak used the example of education, saying: “We’ve marched up all the international rankings for how well our schoolchildren are performing.

“Now that’s as a result of Conservative reforms done painstaking over years, all opposed by the Labour Party, that’s transforming millions of young people’s lives. And that’s just one thing I can point to.”

Rishi Sunak has revealed that there is an internal investigation into Conservative candidates and aides placing bets on the election.

He said: “I want to reassure people, we are in parallel and have been conducting internal inquiries and wouldn’t hesitate to act if findings or information comes to light.”

He repeated that he was “incredibly angry” after hearing of the allegations, but said it was a “very sensitive” matter.

The fourth live televised event with both Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer will take place on the top floor of the News UK headquarters in central London.

The leaders will face questions from readers of The Sun from 5.30pm as part of the newspaper’s Never Mind The Ballots show.

Senior figures from both sides will also be present and are set to “spin” the journalists present to convince them that their side has won. For the Tories, Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, and Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, will argue the case for the prime minister.

Making the argument for Starmer’s performance will be Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, and Jon Ashworth, the shadow paymaster general.

Penny Mordaunt, a former contender for the Conservative Party leadership, has reportedly had her old supporters group reactivated ahead of the general election.

Mordaunt has represented the Tories in two election debates and has been tipped to run for the leadership if Rishi Sunak leaves Downing Street on July 5.

The Spectator’s James Heale has reported that a WhatsApp group named “PM4PM Supporters’ Group” has been reactivated and members of it have been urged to get out and campaign.

Mordaunt won a majority of 15,780 in the 2019 general election but her seat is described as a “bellwether seat” and Heale described this as a “tacit admission of a national Labour triumph”.

The Tories and Labour have both “turned their back on Scotland’s interest” by refusing to consider rejoining the European Union, John Swinney has said.

The SNP leader used a campaign speech in Aberdeen to hit out at the “truly disastrous outcome” the Brexit referendum has had on Scotland.

Swinney said: “You can’t be a party of Brexit and a party of growth.” Leaving the EU has cost Scotland £2.3 billion in public revenue, he claimed.

A “conservative estimate” suggested there was now about £1.6 billion less to spend on the NHS and other public services as a result, Swinney said, adding: “To put that into context, £1.6 billion is the equivalent of more than one in six of our NHS staff.”

Union barons and champagne socialists are driving a surge in donations to Labour, an email sent to Tory supporters has claimed.

The email urged party activists to “close the gap” after Labour received 15 times more private money than the Tories during the second week of the campaign.

The message, first reported by The Telegraph, said: “Looks like the trade unions are chipping in for Labour. Will you chip in for us?

Alan Mabbutt, a senior party staff member, wrote: “These figures are only for large donations. Really large donations. The kind that trade union barons and champagne socialists can afford to make. So whilst they flood Labour’s coffers, we’re reliant on you more than ever before.”

The email made four mentions of Sir Keir Starmer but did not reference Rishi Sunak.

Jeremy Hunt has deleted an image of his wife voting which he shared on social media after users pointed out that it broke electoral law.

The chancellor posted a picture of Lucia Hunt with a pen hovering over the box next to his name on the ballot paper in the Godalming and Ash constituency where he is standing.

“Marriage safe … got the wife’s vote,” the caption read.

An Electoral Commission spokesperson said: “Every voter has the right to vote in private. The secrecy of the ballot is fundamental to our voting process and is protected in law. The law allows a postal voter to take a picture of their own postal ballot paper and publicise it (including via social media).

“It is an offence to pressurise or induce a postal voter, or indeed any voter, to make their information available. It can also be an offence to obtain and share information about how someone else has voted. These laws are enforced by the police.”

Rishi Sunak leaving D-Day celebrations early and the Tory betting scandal have been the biggest missteps of the election campaign so far, new polling has shown.

A survey by More in Common for The News Agents has found over 70 per cent of those polled believed that the two incidents reflected badly on the Conservatives.

The row over Diane Abbott’s candidacy was the most high-profile Labour misstep, with over 50 per cent of those believing it reflected badly on the party.

JK Rowling has been offered a meeting by the shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves who promises to reassure the author about Labour’s protection of women-only spaces.

The Harry Potter author wrote in The Times on Friday that Sir Keir Starmer had failed to convince her that the Labour Party had changed its position on the rights of women.

“As long as Labour remains dismissive and often offensive towards women fighting to retain the rights their foremothers thought were won for all time, I’ll struggle to support them,” Rowling wrote.

Reeves has since said: “We’re really happy to talk to JK Rowling to give her assurances about that. For me those protections, whether it is about prisons, refuges, changing spaces, are really important to me.

“It is really important to the Labour Party that those single sex spaces, based on biological sex, are protected.”

Reeves said that single sex spaces would “absolutely stay” and she argued that Labour was “not going to be changing anything about biological sex”.

Labour would not allow gender ideology to be taught in schools, Sir Keir Starmer has said after the shadow education secretary appeared to suggest the party would revisit government guidance that bans children from being taught that there are more than two genders.

Bridget Phillipson, Labour’s education spokeswoman, repeatedly refused to endorse guidelines published by ministers earlier this year that ban schools from teaching gender ideology in any form — and criticised their “partisan and unnecessary language”.

In an apparent shift in tone from Phillipson’s BBC interview, however, Starmer told reporters on a visit to a school in Northamptonshire on Monday morning that a Labour government would not overturn the ban.

Read more here: Keir Starmer will not allow ‘gender ideology’ to be taught in schools

The Liberal Democrats have called for the government’s ethics adviser to investigate whether the ministerial code has been breached in the betting scandal.

The party’s deputy leader Daisy Cooper has written to Rishi Sunak’s independent adviser on ministerial interests, Sir Laurie Magnus, and urged him to provide urgent clarity before polling day.

“People are fed up with endless sleaze and scandal under the Conservative Party, from partygate to this latest gambling fiasco”, Cooper warned.

“We urgently need an inquiry by the government’s ethics adviser to look into whether any Conservative ministers were involved in placing bets on the election date. If they were, this could amount to a very serious breach of the ministerial code”, she added.

Sir Keir Starmer is now four points ahead of where Sir Tony Blair was at the same stage of the election campaign in 1997, analysis has found.

Labour’s lead of more than 20 points has remained almost entirely unchanged throughout the current election campaign, confounding Tory hopes that the race would tighten.

Ahead of the 1997 landslide, Blair began the campaign about 26 points ahead but his poll lead later contracted by more than eight points.

Analysis by Will Jennings, a political scientist at Southampton University, found that Starmer’s lead has remained consistent and is now about four points higher than Blair’s 17-point lead at this stage of the 1997 election campaign.

The former head of the British Army has said Nigel Farage “doesn’t have a point worth listening to about anything”.

Lord Dannatt was responding to remarks made by the Reform UK leader that Nato had “provoked” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“If the issue is the wider point as to whether the situation in the war has got to a point where negotiations should take place, that is entirely a matter for President Zelensky and really for him alone to decide whether, in his judgment, to negotiate would be a better thing to do in order to save more Ukrainian lives than continue fighting,” he tells the BBC’s World At One.

Rishi Sunak has accused Sir Keir Starmer of failing to care about women’s rights after it emerged that Labour plans to remove the need for people who are transitioning to prove they have lived as their preferred gender for two years.

The prime minister attacked the policy after he launched the Scottish Conservative manifesto in Edinburgh. Douglas Ross, the outgoing Tory leader north of the border, said Labour had failed to learn the lessons of the SNP’s botched plans for gender reform, which were ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court.

“What I’m seeing from the Labour Party is that they’re going to undo all the progress that we’ve made on this issue, undermine the protections that we’ve put in place for women’s rights and their safety and security, and create loopholes that will be exploited by bad faith actors,” Sunak said.

“Now, I don’t think that’s right. We have a very clear plan in place and fundamentally I just don’t think that Labour have ever properly cared or understood this issue and that’s crystal clear from Keir Starmer’s track record.”

Kemi Badenoch has dropped a hint she would stand to be Tory leader if the Conservatives lose, saying she will discuss her ambition “after an election”.

She said “there’s no better job” than her current role as business secretary, “It’s a lot easier and less pressured than being prime minister. The fact of the matter is I stood and I lost [in 2022]”.

She added: “This is one of the things that I have found most difficult doing this job, that people tend not to know what it is I’m doing because I’m always asked the leadership question — we’re so interested in the personality, gossip and so on.”

Badenoch said “we need to focus on this election”, but added: “We will talk about leadership things after an election but not before.”

Voters should be “absolutely terrified” of the Labour Party’s plans for business, Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, has said at Bloomberg’s UK Election 2024.

Badenoch was debating workers’ rights with Jonathan Reynolds, the shadow business secretary, who discussed Labour’s New Deal for Working People.

She questioned the extent to which Labour has been consulting businesses about their plans. “It is unbelievable that Jonathan would actually suggest that those employment regulations have been developed with business. Which business? Business is terrified of what Labour is selling,” she said. “You should be terrified about surrendering your business, the economy, tax to Labour, absolutely terrified,” she added.

Labour would consider giving the European Court of Justice oversight of future trade negotiations, the shadow business secretary has suggested.

Jonathan Reynolds said it would be a “negotiation” what role EU courts had in overseeing Labour attempts to find a better deal on food imports and exports. “We’re not going to give away our negotiating hand,” he said but insisted that “if we don’t want lower standards surely we remove, pragmatically, some of those checks”.

However, speaking in a Bloomberg election debate he acknowledged that barriers to trade would remain as there would be no return to the single market or customs union. “There will still be costs, because we’re not going to talk about going back into a customs union,” he added.

Rishi Sunak has shown an “astonishing lack of leadership” for failing to suspend Conservatives who are facing an investigation into betting on the date of the general election, Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, has said.

Speaking during a visit to a windfarm in East Renfrewshire, Reeves said: “If this had been Labour candidates, their feet would not have touched the ground. It is an astonishing lack of leadership from Rishi Sunak that these candidates are still in place, they have still got the Conservative rosette.”

Reeves argued that the prime minister was “so weak” that he was unable to “suspend people who are accused of profiteering from inside information”. “When wrong doing takes place in Labour, candidates are suspended. That is not an easy thing to do but it is the right thing to do,” she said.

Nigel Farage has said he would “never, ever, ever defend Putin” when speaking at a campaign event in Maidstone in Kent.

After Farage received widespread criticism from Labour and Conservative Party politicians, he described President Putin’s behaviour as “reprehensible” and attacked Boris Johnson for betraying an “80 seat majority”.

He will go down as “the worst prime minister of modern times”, Farage argued.

The Reform leader accused Johnson of “pretending” to be a Conservative and said he was instead a green.

Sir Keir Starmer has refused to deny reports that he could appoint dozens of new peers in the first weeks of a Labour government.

The leader of the opposition would not be drawn on a story in Monday’s Guardian that suggested he had drawn up a list of Lords appointees in a bid to ease the passage of legislation through parliament and increase the number of women in the upper chamber.

The Times first revealed Labour’s plans to ennoble dozens of new peers last year. Speaking to reporters in Northamptonshire, Starmer said: “Don’t believe everything you read in terms of Lords appointments.”

He did not deny that he could boost Labour’s numbers in the Lords, however, and his spokesman subsequently acknowledged there was an “imbalance” between government and opposition peers.

The Conservatives currently have 104 more than Labour.

Sir Keir Starmer has been pressed on whether he owed his Labour colleague, Rosie Duffield, an apology after he said last year that the candidate was “not right” to say only women have a cervix.

“I treat this in a dignified, respectful way. I respect Rosie and her views and I respect the way in which we can conduct this debate”, he said on a visit to a school in the East Midlands.

Starmer said he has “tried throughout to treat everybody with dignity and respect because … I do think that that’s the approach that we should bring to all discussion.”

Last week Starmer said he agreed with Tony Blair’s definition that “biologically, a woman is with a vagina and a man is with a penis.”

Rishi Sunak said he was not aware of any other Tory candidates, including cabinet ministers, who are being investigated over the betting scandal.

After two of those standing to be MPs were revealed to be under investigation by the Gambling Commission, Sunak said: “I am not aware of any other candidate that they are looking at.”

He was also asked if he, any close family or friends were being investigated. Sunak said “of course” he was not being investigated by the commission, and confirmed none of his family members were being looked into either.

The prime minister has called the betting allegations “really serious”.

Speaking in Edinburgh, he said: “These are really serious matters, it’s right they’re investigated properly. We have relevant authorities who do that — it’s the Gambling Commission. The police are also looking into it.

He added: “And because these are serious, and indeed these are law enforcement investigations, we have to be mindful of not compromising the integrity of that.”

Rishi Sunak has promised to pass on any findings from an internal Conservative party probe into betting on the election date to the Gambling Commission.

The prime minister defended his decision not to suspend two candidates who are being looked at by the regulator, but said he would “act” if necessary.

He said: “We’re conducting our own internal inquiries in parallel to that. Of course, we’ll act on any information or findings in the course of that — including passing it on to the Gambling Commission and relevant authorities.”

The Conservative Party has set up an internal inquiry into officials and candidates betting on the election date, Rishi Sunak has said.

The prime minister said he had personally never bet on politics and was not aware of any Tory candidates besides the two already identified being investigated by the Gambling Commission.

Sunak told journalists at an event in Edinburgh that none of his family were being investigated either, after it emerged the regulator was probing whether senior Tories had bets placed on their behalf by people close to them.

Labour would boost growth faster by investing in roads rather than green technology, the IFS has said.

Paul Johnson said that Labour’s “green prosperity plan” may help with net zero but was not the fastest route to growth. “If you had £5 billion a year to put into the most growth-friendly policy, it is unlikely that green investment is what you’d choose.”

If the party were “really focused on growth it would almost certainly be putting money into transport, transport and levelling up the north”, Johnson said, adding that more housing near jobs would also help.

Sir Ed Davey has warned there are only “ten days” to save the NHS during a campaign visit to Wimbledon on Monday.

Davey wore overalls and a hi-vis jacket while he cleaned an ambulance during a visit to the southwest London seat, which is one of the Liberal Democrats’ top targets.

The visit has been made to highlight his warning that voters have only “ten days left to save the NHS”.

The IFS has warned Sir Keir Starmer that it is “completely inappropriate” not to say whether he would cut spending or raise taxes if growth was not as high as hoped.

The Labour leader has insisted it is “defeatist” to consider what happens if its ambition for higher growth falls short. But Paul Johnson, the IFS director, said “a prudent party is hoping for the best but planning for something that isn’t the best” and it is “completely inappropriate for parties not to plan”.

He warned Starmer: “Even if you do get 0.5 percent extra a year of growth, that’s just about enough to avoid the cuts, it’s not enough to pour loads of money into the NHS”.

Rishi Sunak said only the Scottish Conservatives have the “courage to stand up to the nationalists” as he launched Scottish Tory manifesto.

The prime minister said: “It’s only Douglas [Ross] and his team that have been prepared to properly stand up to the SNP, standing against both Nicola Sturgeon’s gender recognition reforms and the dangerous Hate Crime Act. It shows you that only the Scottish Conservatives have the courage to stand up to the nationalists.”

The manifesto pledges to scrap the intermediate rate of income tax in Scotland. The intermediate income tax rate — which sees Scots pay 21p in the pound on earning between £26,562 and £43,662 — should be reduced by 1p, the party has said, returning it to the same rate as elsewhere in the UK.

Labour would have to find up to £9 billion more to avoid cuts in unprotected departments by 2028, while the Tories would need twice that, the IFS has estimated.

Funding the NHS workforce plan, boosting defence spending, implementing childcare reforms and protecting aid and school spending would mean cuts in other areas without top ups, the think tanks says.

It estimates Labour would need to find £5 billion to £9 billion and the Tories £14 billion to £18 billion depending on how their commitments are interpreted.

This comes on top of big cuts to councils, courts and other areas since 2010, with the local government budget down by about two thirds.

Nigel Farage has accused Boris Johnson of being “a liar and a hypocrite” in response to Johnson’s criticism of remarks the Reform leader made about the invasion of Ukraine.

In a BBC Panorama interview with Nick Robinson, Farage suggested the west “provoked” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by expanding the EU and Nato eastwards.

Writing on Twitter/X, Johnson said: “It is bizarre that the author should also suggest we now reduce our support for Ukraine, when the solution to the conflict is in fact clear — the Ukrainians need to win, and to repel Putin’s invasion. They can and they will.”

Farage said in response that he was “glad” Johnson was no longer prime minister and claimed he was both “a liar and a hypocrite”.

Sir Keir Starmer has declined to endorse a ban on politicians betting on politics, as he rejected Tory claims that Labour was seeking to unduly influence the Gambling Commission.

Speaking to reporters on a visit to a school in Kettering, Northamptonshire, Starmer told The Times that he did not agree with suggestions from Tobias Ellwood, the former Conservative minister, that MPs should not be allowed to gamble on politics.

“I’m not sure we need to start changing the rules,” Starmer said. “The rules, actually, aren’t the problem here.” A senior Labour source confirmed the party would not ban politicians “having a flutter” on elections but were instead in favour of penalties on “insider trading”.

Asked whether Labour’s demands for the Gambling Commission to identify the subjects of its investigation into gambling by Conservative candidates and officials amounted to “undue influence”, as the Tories have claimed, Starmer said: “That’s nonsense.”

Larry the cat, the chief mouser to the Cabinet Office at Downing Street, could face competition for affection if Sir Keir Starmer’s family become the new occupants.

Speaking to school pupils, Starmer revealed that their cat named JoJo was the “most loved in our family”. The Labour leader admitted that his daughter was on a campaign to persuade him to get a dog.

Rishi Sunak has been photographed in Downing Street with his labrador retriever, Nova, which he welcomed into his family in June 2021.

Speaking about Larry the cat in his Daily Mail column, Boris Johnson has said: “Larry, in my view, is a bit of a thug. I say this because our dog Dilyn went a few times to Larry’s lair, and Larry being out at the time Dilyn decided — entirely naturally and reasonably — to eat his food. The reprisals were terrible.”

More than 50,000 migrants have now arrived in the UK on small boats since Rishi Sunak became prime minister.

The milestone was reached after 257 arrived in four boats on Sunday, according to Home Office figures published this morning. It takes the total since Sunak became prime minister in October 2022 to 50,150, according to analysis of the figures by The Times.

Sunday’s crossings also set a new record for the first six months of a year, with 12,901 arriving since January. The previous record for arrivals in the six months from January to June was 12,747 in 2022. In the first half of 2023, arrivals stood at 11,433.

Labour is likely to have to cut welfare or accept “much more spending” on sickness benefits, the IFS has warned.

Tom Waters, an economist at the think tank, said it was reasonable for the Tories to be worried about a huge increase in sickness benefits spending, which has doubled since 2010, but warned plans for £12 billion of savings were “easier said than done”.

While Labour is promising a “proper plan” for health and welfare, Waters said: “I don’t doubt that some sort of plan along these lines could make a difference … but really the bigger picture is that absent quite sudden improvements in national health, whoever wins the election is likely to have to make hard choices, either except much more spending, or significantly tighten this assistance.”

Sir Keir Starmer has defended the Labour Party’s plans to lower the voting age to 16 during a visit to a school in the East Midlands with the shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson.

Answering questions from pupils, Starmer said it was right to lower the voting age as “if you pay tax you should be allowed to say what you think your tax should be spent on”.

Another pupil asked Starmer, who supports Arsenal, who he expected to win the premier league next season.

“It is going to be Arsenal … it is my team and we did really well this year”, he replied.

Boosting growth cannot produce a “spending bonanza” the IFS has warned.

He warned the Labour Party, which insists that higher growth will fund public services without tax rises, that “hoping for the best is not a strategy”. Growth will take “a long time to arrive” and lower forecasts would mean bigger spending cuts or higher taxes, he said.

“A clear lesson of the last parliament is that bad shocks do happen. Is it so unreasonable for us to be given a hint of how they would prioritise before polling day?” Paul Johnson said.

Even growth 0.5 percentage points higher than forecasts, which Johnson said was “ a lot”, would only “allow the new government to avoid cuts, it wouldn’t create a spending bonanza”.

Nigel Farage and the Green party “poison” political debate by offering completely unrealistic plans, the IFS has said.

Paul Johnson, the IFS director, likened Reform UK’s plans for spending rises and tax cuts to Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget, but “on a much bigger scale”.

He said of Reform and the Greens: “The way they suggest that they have radical ideas which can realistically make a positive difference, when in fact what they propose is wholly unattainable, helps to poison the entire political debate and makes the other parties look feeble. When you say ‘we could do all this stuff’, we can’t.”

Labour’s tax rises are “small” but they are likely to have to raise others if they win, Paul Johnson has predicted.

The head of the IFS said: “If you’re a non-dom working in private equity and receiving income from carried interest and send your children to an expensive private school, then this is a big tax rise.

“Unfortunately for the Labour Party there aren’t many such people and the amount of money available is therefore small.”

He added: “It will be a considerable surprise to me at least if no other taxes have increased over the next five years.”

The next government will need to raise more in taxes than spends on public services, the IFS has warned.

“Low growth, high debt and high interest payments mean we need to do something quite rare just to stop debt spiralling ever upwards: we need to run primary surpluses,” Paul Johnson said.

“That means the government collecting more in tax and other revenues than it spends on everything apart from debt interest. Not necessarily a recipe for a happy electorate.”

Labour’s spending promises are “essentially trivial” and both main parties’ promises to improve the NHS are “essentially unfunded”, the IFS has said.

Sir Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak are both promising to implement the NHS workforce plan, which the think tank has estimated requires spending increases of 3.6 per cent a year, which neither Labour nor the Tories are promising.

“Both parties want to reverse nearly a decade of rising waiting times. Both reaffirm their commitment to the NHS England workforce plan. Build more hospitals. Expand mental health services. The list goes on,” Paul Johnson, the director of the think tank, said.

“These “fully costed” manifestos appear to imply all this can be delivered for free. It can’t. You can’t pledge to end all waits of more than 18 weeks, allocate no money to that pledge, and then claim to have a fully costed manifesto.”

Wes Streeting has said he is “depressed” that JK Rowling thinks Labour has abandoned women.

The shadow health secretary said that he had a lot of “respect” for the writer’s campaigning for women and that his party had a “lot more work to do” to regain their trust.

• JK Rowling: Labour has turned its back on women

He said that he felt “very optimistic” that his party could find a way to address both the rights of biological women and trans women in the debate.

“When women like JK Rowling do speak up, I think it’s important we engage seriously with the arguments that she’s making, with the concerns that she has, and also we listen to what trans people are saying about the everyday injustices and indignities that they’re experiencing too, whether that’s hate crime or poor provision in public services”, he told Times Radio.

“I think at times in pursuit of inclusion, we’ve ended up in a position where women have felt excluded, biological women have felt excluded”, he said.

The director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said “spending on many public services will likely need to be cut over the next five years if government debt is not to ratchet ever upwards or unless taxes are increased further”.

Paul Johnson said that “a £50 billion a year increase in debt interest spending relative to forecasts and a growing welfare budget bear much of the responsibility”.

He added: “Then we have rising health spending, a defence budget which for the first time in decades will likely grow rather than shrink, and the reality of demographic change and the need to transition to net zero.”

Both Labour and the Conservatives have “singularly failed” to acknowledge the tax and spending problems the next government will face, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned.

Paul Johnson, the think tank’s director, warned of a “toxic mix” of challenges for the public finances which will likely see higher taxes and spending cuts whoever wins the election.

An ageing population, higher defence spending and debt interest will mean “painful choices” which neither main parties have faced up to, he said.

Criticising a “conspiracy of silence” from both main parties, Johnson said the manifestos “certainly don’t answer the big questions facing us over a five year parliament”.

Politicians should be banned from placing bets, a senior Conservative has said.

Tobias Ellwood told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “Let’s give the nation greater reassurance that I think it wants to see to ensure this never happens again.

“Let’s introduce clear rules as you have in the banking world and in the City … let’s prevent any current politician or party professional from placing any bets in the future.

“That would send a clear message to the public that this sad incident is being taken seriously and it won’t happen again.”

Labour has acknowledged that it cannot know how much money it will have to spend on public services under its plan to rely on growth to avoid tax rises or cuts.

Sir Keir Starmer has insisted he can avoid spending cuts pencilled in for next year without putting up taxes through growing the economy, a claim that has been greeted sceptically by experts such as Paul Johnson, head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, insisted Labour had “a serious plan for growth”. But he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “What you can’t do, as Paul rightly says, is project forecasted income from growth very accurately. And that’s why what we haven’t done with our manifesto is just assume that the proceeds of growth will be there to spend.”

Streeting insisted that if the plan works “that then makes choices around either investing in our public services or putting money back into people’s pockets far easier”.

A cabinet minister has said it is not a problem that so many senior Tories are privately educated because the party wants “the best people”.

Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, was criticising Labour’s plan for VAT on school fees as “very bad policy” that would drive more pupils to the state sector.

But asked by Sky News if it was a problem that so many of the cabinet were privately educated, Heaton-Harris, who went to a grammar school, insisted: “No, we want the best people”.

He said: “The House of Commons is wonderful because people come from every single background that there possibly could be. I used to be wholesale fruit and veg in New Covent Garden Market, became a member of parliament, and then I was lucky enough to become a minister too. We want the best people to be able to come forward and if the best people just happen to come from a different type of education system then so be it.”

Rishi Sunak should remove Conservative party support for the suspended Tory candidates, Tobias Ellwood has said.

The bets are a “deeply unhelpful, self-inflicted distraction” and could cost the party seats at the election, the former minister warned.

He said the Gambling Commission needs to identify whether the people involved were just “responding to the whirlwind of the rumour mill” or were “in the room when the decision was made”.

Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, said the Gambling Commission should be allowed to “get on with the job” of their investigation before any candidate has support withdrawn.

Tory officials and candidates being investigated over bets on the date of the general election should not be suspended because it is not clear whether they actually knew when Rishi Sunak would go to the polls, a cabinet minister has said.

Chris Heaton-Harris said those being investigated by the Gambling Commission were “innocent until proven guilty” as he likened them to Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner, who both remained in post during police investigations.

Asked by Sky News why Tories being investigated had not been suspended, Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, said: “I don’t know if they did have any knowledge at the time they made the bet.”

He added: “This is for the Gambling Commission to investigate. When the commission will report back, as the prime minister has said, if people are found guilty of doing something that is incorrect, then they’ll be kicked out of the party.”

Wes Streeting has told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme he is “disgusted” at the conditions junior doctors face in hospitals.

The shadow health secretary said that while Labour would not agree to the 35 per cent pay increase requested by the British Medical Association (BMA), resolving the dispute would be an immediate priority if it won the election.

“To be honest, I’ve been pretty disgusted by the way junior doctors have been treated in terms of their placements, their rotations, I hope we can improve the working conditions of junior doctors too.

A Conservative minister has accused Labour of putting “undue influence” on the Gambling Commission after the party’s Pat McFadden asked the body to identify who it was investigating.

Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, told Times Radio McFadden’s letter was “pretty concerning”.

He said: “Labour trying to lean on yet another independent body like it lent on the speaker of the House of Commons to not have a vote on Gaza, and I think you’re beginning to see, and people are beginning to see, what a Labour government would actually be like in the United Kingdom.”

He added the body should “not [be] confirming or denying the identity of any individuals because it goes about its business in an independent way and trying to lean on bodies like that, it does demonstrate how sometimes politicians and political parties can well overstep their mark”.

Labour’s request for more details has been refused until the investigation is concluded.

The Times has learnt that the gambling watchdog’s investigation into the Conservative Party betting ring has been widened to look into hundreds of suspicious bets.

A dossier containing details of all bets that stood to win more than £199 has been passed to the Gambling Commission by betting companies.

Investigators are sifting through a spreadsheet of hundreds of names to identify gamblers who were employed by the Conservative party — or had ties to someone who was.

It marks an escalation in the scandal, which has overshadowed the Tory election campaign and attracted unfavourable comparisons with the Downing Street parties.