During the BBC’s live TV election debate, Penny Mordaunt said the election was about the cost of living crisis and claimed ‘Labour will put up your taxes by £2,000’, repeating a line made days earlier by Rishi Sunak during ITV’s debate. Labour’s Angela Rayner responded quickly, repeating ‘that is a lie’, and claimed the Conservatives had raised taxes to record levels, which Mordaunt accepted. The Tories said the £2,000 figure was drawn from independent Treasury data, but the Treasury’s top mandarin, James Bowler, told the government that the figure ‘should not be presented as having been produced by the civil service’. Labour say the claim is inaccurate. The BBC debate included key figures from seven parties and is the second live debate in the run up to the general election on 4 July
