LABOUR leader Sir Keir Starmer has denied his party has made an electoral pact with the Liberal Democrats to beat the Tories in tomorrow's elections.

Appearing on Good Morning Britain, Sir Keir dismissed the claims that Labour was not standing candidates in areas where the LibDems would be popular in exchange for them returning the favour in the North of England. 

He said: "No, we haven’t and we are actually standing more candidates in this election than any other party. and more than we’ve stood for many years. We haven’t got a pact with the Lib Dems.”

Asked about a letter sent to him by the chairman of the Conservative party, Oliver Dowden, alleging the pact the Labour leader said: "Firstly, I’m afraid I don’t take what Oliver Dowden says very seriously these days, but the fact that a few days before the local elections the only thing he wants to talk about is a Lib Dem/Labour pact rather than the issue which is the cost of living tells you everything about a Government that’s absolutely out of ideas and is completely out of touch.”

Sir Keir also rejected claims that he had broken lockdown rules when he had a takeaway and beer with colleagues during an election campaign session last April, and said that police had not been in touch with him about it.

It has been reported that around 30 people had gathered in Durham while the party was preparing for a local by-election, and Sir Keir is photographed having a beer with colleagues in a room. 

At the time socialising was banned except for the purpoes of work, which Sir Keir caims is what was happening at that time.

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Asked about it again this morning, he said: "We’re on the road at the end of the day, we’re in the office preparing. Now, that evening, from memory, we were doing an online event for members because we had this get out the vote thing.

"At some point, this was in the evening, everybody’s hungry and then that takeaway was ordered. It was then delivered into the kitchen.

“Restaurants and pubs were closed, so takeaways were really the only way you could eat.

“So, this was brought in and at various points people went through the kitchen, got a plate, had some food to eat and got on with their work.”

He said that despite some Tories requesting that the police reinvestigate the event, the police had not done so, explaining: "I think they put out a statement last week saying they’re not reinvestigating and they haven’t spoken to me.”

Despite criticising the Chancellor for his rise in National Insurance, the Labour leader refused to say whether his party would reverse it if they were in power. 

He said he would take stronger action to tackle fraud in the Covid support schemes but would not spell out how he would match the expected extra annual revenue raised by the health and care levy.

Sir Keir said: “In terms of what we will do going into the next election, obviously, I don’t know what the state of the economy will then be. Nobody knows what the state of the economy will then be.

“We will set out our plans when we get to the election in full, we’ve set out the principles that we will apply, it will be a fair taxation system, particularly for working people.

“At this stage two years out, I don’t know what the state of the economy will be.”

Sir Keir said he “can’t possibly set out in detail what we will do” this far from a general election.