At the Labour event a video is now being shown of Seb James, the Boots CEO, endorsing the party.

James says businesses need a stable economy and a business that listens.

And he says he was particularly impressed by Keir Starmer’s committed to reviving high streets when they met. There is a Boots on almost every high street, he says.

And he says Boots customers are worried about the cost of living.

We of course welcome sensible, fiscal measures to help [put] more money in people’s pockets and grow the economy, and that’s what I hope is going to happen.

The Labour event in Thurrock, where the party is launching its election pledges, has just started. Angela Rayner, the deputy leader, is opening the proceedings.

We’ve been told the event will go on for 90 minutes, and there are suggestions that every member of the shadow cabinet will get to speak.

Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, has been giving interviews this morning about new guidance for schools in England on sex education that says “the contested theory of gender identity” should not be taught. The proposals were briefed to right-leaning papers earlier this week, but the Department for Education has only now issued a press notice. The new version of the guidance does not seem to be available online yet.

In interviews this morning, Keegan claimed the government had to act because pupils were being exposed to “inappropriate” material. She told the Today programme:

I’ve seen some materials where they talk about gender identity being a spectrum, there being many different genders looking at you know, trying to get children [to] do quizzes on you know, what’s a different gender identity and what isn’t.

Ignoring biological sex in the material I saw anyway … and a lot of that material has caused concern.

Asked how widespread the problem was, she admitted she did not know. She replied:

I don’t think it’s widespread, I mean, I don’t know because you know, it’s not something that we’ve gone and done a particular survey of.

Keegan also distanced herself from a comment she made in 2020 saying “trans women are women”. She said that, while she was happy to say she regarded a man who had gone through gender reassignment and surgery as a woman, that was not her view of all trans women.

Good morning. Westminster is still waiting for the formal announcement about the date of the general election, but voters will have noticed that the campaign is already well underway and today we are getting a landmark moment; the formal unveiling of the Labour party’s doorstep, retail offer – the six pledges it will prioritise in the short campaign. Pippa Crerar has the story here.

The Labour promises are very similar to the pledge card used by Tony Blair and New Labour in 1997. At the time this was seen as an innovative, and successful, campaign tactic. Labour is not calling this version a pledge card – as Pippa explains in her story, the party thinks voters are more wary of “pledges” from politicians than they were in the Blair era – but in practice it is the same thing.

One obvious complaint is that there is nothing very leftwing about the offer – nothing about reducing child poverty, or inequality – and almost nothing that Rishi Sunak would not be happy to put his name to. (The Tories are not proposing a new, publicly-owned energy company, but the other five Labour promises all broadly equate to things the Tories already say they want to do or are doing.)

Pat McFadden, Labour’s national campaign coordinator, was doing interviews this morning and, on the Today programme, he defended the party’s decision to reach out to the middle ground.

Prompted by a question about the Natalie Elphicke defection, he said:

What it says about the party is that it’s changed, and that there are perhaps people looking at it today in a different light.

And I have an obvious message for listeners, and for anyone thinking of voting at the next election. We will not win the next election just by appealing to the people who always voted labour.

The only way you’re going to win the next election is by appealing to people who haven’t traditionally voted for you and who have voted Conservative in many cases in recent elections.

That is what the difference between losing and winning is, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of in that.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10am: Keir Starmer launches the Labour party’s election pledge card, described by the party as its “first steps for change” offer, at an event in Thurrock.

10am: Sue Gray, who is now Starmer’s chief of staff, gives evidence to the UK Covid inquiry in Belfast in her capacity as permanent secretary at Northern Ireland’s Department of Finance during the pandemic.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

After 11.30am: MPs debate the report from the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman saying up to £10bn should be paid to women who lost out because they did not get proper warning about the state pension age rising.

Noon: John Swinney takes first minister’s questions at Holyrood.

12.15pm: Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, gives a speech on Taiwan at the Policy Exchange thinktank.

1pm: Theresa May, the former PM, speaks at a press gallery lunch.

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