Boris Johnson was aware of some allegations relating to Chris Pincher when the MP for Tamworth was appointed deputy chief whip in February, Downing Street has admitted. Keir Starmer is to set out his vision for Brexit, promising to remove a series of trade and travel barriers while insisting that the debate on any UK return to the single market or customs union is definitively closed. For a full summary of Starmer’s speech, see 11.20am. And for full details of Starmer’s five-point plan for Brexit, see 11.34am. Robert Peston, ITV’s political editor, has been interviewing Starmer about his plan and, in a blog, he says he came away unimpressed by the answers Starmer gave him. Here is an excerpt. On whether it makes economic sense, I pointed out that many economists would say that the economic price to the UK of being outside the EU stems mainly from the increased costs of trading with the EU that were imposed when the UK left the EU’s single market and customs union. The heart of Starmer’s plan, however, is that the UK must not rejoin the customs union and single market - largely because it would reopen all those emotional arguments about whether the UK should subjugate its product standards and service standards to those of the EU. And when I asked Starmer whether a single distinguished economist had backed his plan, he deflected and did not answer ... In a nutshell, Labour’s new Brexit policy is at its heart similar to Johnson’s. It’s Starmer’s recognition that the hard Brexiters have definitively won the argument. It is only more credible than Johnson’s approach to Brexit if you believe the EU is more likely to give the UK what it wants and needs in the coming years of negotiations if Johnson’s nuclear option of breaching the Brexit treaty and international law is neither wielded or held in reserve. A Labour government would scrap the House of Lords and create a “senate of the nations and regions” in its place, Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, has announced. For a full summary of Sarwar’s speech, see 1.25pm. The government should impose strict price controls on fuel and basic food items to help families struggling with soaring living costs, the former Labour shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, has said.