Rachel Reeves promises no additional tax rises to fund spending

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has promised that there will be “no additional tax rises needed” beyond those she has set out if Labour wins the general election.

In her first major speech of the election campaign, Ms Reeves said that every Labour policy “will be fully funded and fully costed – no ifs, no ands, no buts”.

That includes recruiting thousands of additional teachers and introducing 40,000 NHS appointments every week.

However, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak claimed that Labour’s plans will cost “every working family” £2,000 each.

He said that analysis was based on Treasury officials “crunching the numbers”.

Speaking at the engineering giant Rolls-Royce in Derby, Ms Reeves said that the Labour party “is being recognised as the natural partner of business, the party of growth and the party of enterprise”.

She said: “A few years ago, you might not have expected to have heard these things from the Labour party, think how far we have come in four short years.

On Tuesday, 121 former and current business leaders signed a letter endorsing the Labour’s economic plans ahead of the general election, saying it is “time for a change”.

In a letter published in The Times newspaper on Tuesday, external, 121 founders, chief executives, and former leaders at a range of financial services, retail and manufacturing firms said Labour has changed and “wants to work with business” on long-term growth.

They said: “For too long, our economy has been beset by instability, stagnation and a lack of long-term focus.”

Labour is borrowing from the Conservatives’ playbook in getting business leaders to endorse their economic plans.

Ahead of the 2015 election, 100 corporate leaders endorsed the Conservatives.

One of those, Malcolm Walker – the founder of supermarket chain Iceland – will now endorse Labour instead.

Other former Tory business letter signatories have told BBC News they will keep their counsel amid disappointment over Liz Truss’s mini-budget, the Brexit deal and a general expectation of a change of government.

Among those who have signed the letter in the Times is the TV chef and restaurateur Tom Kerridge, some chief executives of smaller companies, former Heathrow Airport chief executive John Holland-Kaye, JD Sports chairman Andrew Higginson and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

They also include David Cleevely, former chair of Raspberry Pi, the technology firm which has just announced plans to float the business on the London Stock Exchange and Karen Blackett, UK president of the advertising giant WPP.

But speaking to the BBC’s Today programme on Tuesday, work and pensions secretary Mel Stride pointed out that no chief executives of the UK’s very largest FTSE 100 companies were among the signatories.

Following the UK’s exit from the European Union (EU), many household names learned that taking sides in a key election period may annoy their customers.

It is also unclear how representative this group of Labour backers are of business in general and their sectors in particular.