General election latest: Sunak apologises for leaving D-Day events early

A story that’s been rumbling on for days is a row between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer about claims the prime minister made during the pair’s first live TV debate earlier this week.

Sunak said that, if elected, Labour would hike taxes up by £2,000 per working household – and he also claimed that the figure had been costed by “independent Treasury officials”.

The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) subsequently said that anyone who heard Sunak say Labour’s plan would mean £2,000 of tax rises would have no way of knowing that was a sum totalled over four years. “We warned against this practice a few days ago, following its use in presenting prospective future increases in defence spending,” the statistics watchdog said.

It was also revealed that the top Treasury civil servant had objected to the Conservatives presenting their accusation as if it had been produced by impartial civil servants.

Starmer said the claim was “garbage” and went on to accuse Sunak of having lied during the debate.

The Conservatives have insisted ever since that the prime minister was not lying, but we’ve now heard from Sunak himself for the first time. In an interview for ITV’s Tonight programme, he replied “no” when asked by presenter Paul Brand if he was “willing to lie in order to stay in power”. Sunak added that Labour were “rattled that we’ve exposed their plans to raise tax”.