Day 7 of UK electoral campaign: as it happened

Lloyd Russell-Moyle has been suspended as a Labour MP pending an investigation following a complaint.

The MP for Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven said in a statement that a “vexatious” claim had been made about him and he had been told he was no longer eligible to be a candidate in July’s election.

“This is a false allegation that I dispute totally and I believe it was designed to disrupt this election,” Russell-Moyle said. 

Labour said: “The Labour Party takes all complaints extremely seriously and they are fully investigated in line with our rules and procedures.” 

The Institute for Fiscal Studies think-tank has questioned the Conservatives’ plan to raise the number of apprenticeships by 100,000 a year.

• It was unclear whether this meant 100,000 more than the 752,000 people in apprenticeships in England today, or an increase on the 337,000 who start each year.

• The IFS estimates the annual cost at £900mn, and notes a Conservative estimate of annual savings of £910mn from scrapping “rip-off university degrees” and other courses teaching 13 per cent of students.

• But scrapping any given course results in winners and losers. The fiscal question is “whether lower future taxes paid by those who would have benefited will be outweighed by higher tax payments from those who are financially better off with the alternative — for example, an apprenticeship.”

The Conservatives and Labour are engaged in a tit for tat over who can generate the most outlandish claim about the other’s spending commitments. 

Labour this afternoon said the Tories had made around £71bn in unfunded spending commitments in the campaign, only for the ruling party to hit back stating the opposition party’s policies would cost the exchequer £196bn a year. 

Both claims are based on erroneous assumptions including policies that do not belong to either party. 

The Labour party has accused the Conservatives of making £71bn of unfunded spending commitments, in a further bid to signal to voters that Labour can best be trusted with the economy.

Shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones said: “If the Conservatives continue down this path . . . it could cause a loss in market confidence once again, leading to increases in interest rates, our economy sliding back into recession and ordinary people paying the price with their jobs and mortgage bills.”

He said Conservative costings were “nonsense”, with some plans spending the same money twice — such as a plan to reintroduce national service and another promising tax cuts to pensioners — and some “simply refusing to say how they would pay for them”.

Private schools have called on Labour to clarify whether parents will have to pay VAT on fees from September if the party wins power at the general election, after officials refused to say when the policy would come into force. 

Sir Keir Starmer, Labour leader, has said the flagship policy would be implemented “as soon as it can be done” after July 4 if his party wins power.

However, Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, this week ruled out a Budget before September — leaving schools uncertain if parents will face the higher charges from next term.

“Schools and families certainly need clarity on Labour’s proposals,” said Julie Robinson, head of the Independent Schools Council, which represents more than 1,300 independent UK schools.

Read more here.

Sir Keir Starmer said no decision had been taken to prevent Diane Abbott standing as a Labour candidate. 

The Labour leader told broadcasters that it was “not true” that the veteran leftwing MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington had been barred from standing again, despite her stating this was the case on Wednesday morning. 

“No decision has been taken to bar Diane Abbott. The process that we were going through ended with the restoration of the whip the other day,” he said. “She’s a member of the Parliamentary Labour party and no decision has been taken barring her.”

Labour MP Jess Phillips has called for Liz Truss to be removed as a Conservative candidate ahead of the former prime minister’s appearance on a podcast founded by far-right influencer Carl Benjamin, who once speculated whether he would rape Phillips.

Benjamin, founder of media platform Lotus Eaters, discussed “whether I would or wouldn’t rape Jess Phillips” in a video published in 2019.

In a letter to Rishi Sunak, published on X, Phillips wrote: “The impact men like Benjamin have on politics cannot be underestimated.”

Truss’s interview, set to be released later on Wednesday, was with Lotus Eaters presenter Connor Tomlinson, who has also spoken on GB News. 

Truss’s spokesperson declined to comment. The Conservative party was approached for comment by the FT.

Junior doctors in England will go on strike for five days in the run-up to the UK general election, after failing to reach an agreement with the government to secure a better pay offer.

The British Medical Association, the main doctors’ union, said on Wednesday that junior doctors would walk out from June 27 to July 2, in a significant escalation of their battle for a 35 per cent pay rise.

The statement comes just days after UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a July 4 election.

Robert Laurenson and Vivek Trivedi, co-chairs of the BMA junior doctors’ committee, said junior doctors had “made clear to the government that we would strike unless discussions ended in a credible pay offer”.

Diane Abbott said she was “very dismayed” at reports that she had been barred from standing as a candidate, in a move that denied her the opportunity of stepping down quietly after serving 37 years in parliament.

The veteran leftwing MP said in a post on social media platform X on Wednesday that she was delighted to have the party whip restored and would campaign for a Labour victory. “I am very dismayed that numerous reports suggest I have been barred as a candidate,” she added.

She confirmed on Wednesday morning that she had been barred. The Times on Tuesday was briefed by Labour figures that Abbott would not be allowed to stand, triggering disquiet from supporters over how the affair had been handled. 

Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer will take part in the first head-to-head televised debate of the general election campaign on Tuesday June 4.

The prime minister and the leader of the main opposition will participate in an hour-long debate in front of a live studio audience, which will air on ITV at 9pm. It will be moderated by broadcaster Julie Etchingham.

The Conservatives have called for weekly debates throughout the six-week campaign, but Labour has indicated Starmer will commit to two showdowns, matching the precedent set in the 2019 general election campaign. 

Labour MPs are privately expressing anger and upset over the treatment of Diane Abbott and warning that it is becoming a distraction in a tough election campaign. 

One centrist MP said the party should allow the veteran leftwing MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington to stand. “Just get it off being an issue,” they said. 

Another former MP said they felt sorry for Abbott and believed that she should have been readmitted months ago rather than the leadership dragging out the process until an election had been called, when it would be put in sharp focus. 

Labour has been accused of “double standards” under Sir Keir Starmer after it banned Diane Abbott from standing as a party candidate.

Momentum, a leftwing pressure group, said it was “sickened and disgusted” by the treatment of Abbott, Britain’s first Black woman MP. It added that the decision to prevent her standing was a “slap in the face” for those inspired by her courage in the face of discrimination and abuse. 

The group added: “It is a dark day for the Labour party when Diane Abbott isn’t welcome as a Labour MP, but a hard-right Tory like Natalie Elphicke is.” 

Wes Streeting, Labour’s shadow health secretary, has warned junior doctors that achieving fair pay would be “a journey, not an event” under a Labour government.

Meeting the junior medics’ demand for a 35 per cent pay rise would not be possible straight after the election, Streeting said on Wednesday, but he told the BBC: “I’d be willing to sit down and negotiate.”

He said he would also seek to address junior doctors’ complaints about rotations and placements if Labour is elected, as he accused the Tory government of treating medics with “disrespect and lack of care”.

Following a report in The Times that junior doctors could strike again before voters head to the polls on July 4, Streeting urged restraint. “Of course I don’t want to see strikes during the general election period. I don’t want to see patients experiencing more misery,” he said.

Wes Streeting, shadow health secretary, said he was “not particularly” comfortable with the treatment of Diane Abbott, who confirmed on Wednesday she had been barred from standing as a Labour MP.

Abbott was readmitted to the party on Tuesday, having been suspended last April for remarks about Jewish people, but will not be permitted to stand as a candidate in the upcoming election.

Speaking on Times Radio, Streeting insisted he was “not aware of the circumstances” and “not responsible for the process”.

Schools minister Damian Hinds has said the Conservatives will legislate to make sure that non-performing university courses will not “be able to recruit new people”, if they form a government following the upcoming election.

He said the funding that would no longer be directed towards the “small minority” of degrees that are “not performing well” — often referred to as Mickey Mouse courses — would go towards growing the number of apprenticeships on offer by 100,000.

In an interview with Sky News’ on Wednesday, Hinds said the plan to reduce government funds for certain courses would raise about £900mn for apprenticeships.

Diane Abbott has been banned from standing for Labour in July’s election, the veteran leftwing MP confirmed on Wednesday. 

Abbott, MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, said that while the party whip had been restored on Tuesday she would not be permitted to stand as a candidate. 

She had been suspended by Labour in April last year after suggesting that Jewish, Irish and Traveller people only experienced “prejudice” rather than racism in a letter to the Observer newspaper.

She apologised and retracted her comments shortly after the Observer letter was published, but remained suspended from the party.

An investigation into Abbott was completed by Labour’s ruling national executive committee in December, when she was instructed to apologise, according to a Labour figure.

Labour has a “serious plan” to clear the NHS waiting-list backlog, according to the shadow health secretary.

Wes Streeting said on Wednesday that Labour’s plan would enable the NHS to deliver an additional 40,000 appointments per week by expanding out-of-hours staffing, purchasing more advanced diagnostic scanners and using capacity from the private sector.

Although the extra shifts required to fulfil out-of-hours appointments would be voluntary, Streeting, speaking to BBC Radio Lancashire, insisted that the approach had “been proven to work”.

As of March, more than 3.2mn people in England had been waiting for treatment for longer than the 18-week NHS target.

Some of the UK’s biggest companies are refusing to back either of the main parties ahead of the country’s general election, as businesses attempt to avoid being drawn into partisan politics.

Labour landed an early blow against the ruling Conservatives when 120 business executives signed a letter backing the opposition party in the run-up to the July 4 election.

But the letter published by the Times on Monday was considered “light” on big names, with JD Sports chair Andrew Higginson the only sitting chair or chief executive of a FTSE 100 company to sign.

The Financial Times contacted the other 99 companies in London’s FTSE 100 index, asking whether they were backing a party ahead of the election.

Of the 58 that responded, 34 said they were not supporting any party, with several citing policies of political neutrality, while 24 declined to comment.

Read the full story here

The Financial Times’ UK general election model shows how headline polling numbers translate into seats in the House of Commons.

The chart below shows the national voting share for each party, with the drop-down menu allowing you to see the projected results for each of the 632 constituencies in Great Britain. The headline projection will be updated every day as more national and local polling is released.

Click the featured link at the bottom of this post for more graphics, including the projected parliamentary seats for each of the parties contesting the election.

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Underpinning the model is an attempt to track which voters have changed their minds since 2019, and which have not.

The FT has used data from the British Election Study to observe how national changes in polling led to local changes in political support between 2019 and 2023.

For Sir Keir Starmer to win a House of Commons Labour majority of just one, he must gain about 125 seats at the July 4 general election. Given the party’s record postwar defeat in 2019, that would be a big achievement.

Winning a large majority is a monumental task, requiring Labour to win seats across the country and for the Conservatives to crash from the highs they achieved under Boris Johnson’s leadership in 2019.

The election will be fought in four key campaign battlegrounds. In Scotland, Labour is locked in a fight with the Scottish National party, in what will be a pivotal election north of the border.

Starmer is hoping to rebuild his party’s northern “red wall”, once a Labour stronghold that was stormed by Johnson in 2019, and secure decisive gains in the traditional swing region of the West Midlands.

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View the full analysis and interactive graphics here