Campbell asks Starmer now whether the leader of Reform UK Nigel Farage is a "racist".

The question follows a story that broke last night around racist, homophobic and Islamophobic comments made by Reform campaigners. You can read more here.

Starmer responds that he wouldn't call him names but adds that he doesn't think Farage has the "answers to the challenges we face".

Starmer says the comments were racist and adds that the leader of a party has to set the culture and standards.

"How will you fix the NHS without throwing endless money at it?" Keir Starmer's asked.

He says a Labour government would have 40,000 extra appointments every week to help reduce NHS waiting lists.

The caller interjects to say she thinks middle management in the organisation should be cut, procurement should be done centrally so every health trust pays the same for all items.

Starmer agrees that the organisation needs to be reformed to make sure it's fit for the next 75 years.

The phone-in has now turned to pensioners and taxes.

A listener messages in to say they're close to retirement age and wants to know if Starmer is going to remove the option to take a 25% lump sum of their pension tax-free.

Starmer says he's not going to make unfunded tax cuts as it would harm pensioners. He continues by saying he won't make promises unless they're fully funded.

Referring to the listener's situation, he says the option to take out a tax-free lump sum for a pension runs out in a few years. The Labour leader adds that his party would review it then.

Rob from Swindon is asking if Starmer can guarantee that income tax would not go up under a Labour government over the next five years.

Starmer replies that income tax, national insurance and VAT won't go up.

When asked what's wrong with raising tax on the wealthy, Starmer answers: "We cannot tax our way out of our problems.

"We have had a flatlining economy for 14 years, we have the highest tax rates for 17 years and the reason is low growth. If the economy had grown under this government at the same rate as under the last Labour government, we would have tens of billions of pounds to spend on our public services."

A caller from Petersfield asks Starmer what incentives his party would provide to keep primary school teachers like her in the profession, saying the job is not as respected as it used to be.

"There will be respect", Starmer says, adding he recognises there will need to be more than that, and Labour is planning a "retention scheme" for teachers.

"I'm not going to pretend there's a lot of money, I haven't got a magic wand," he says, but adds they want to bring in extra teachers to reduce the burden.

Nicky Campbell asks Starmer whether Britain would be a better and more equal society without private schools.

Starmer says he wants the country to be in a place where it doesn't make a difference to a child whether they go to a state or a private school.

He insists he doesn't want to "abolish private schools" but wants state schools to be able to provide the same opportunities as private schools.

He gives the example of Camden, his constituency, where the state primary schools are "really good and parents who may have considered putting their children into private schools no longer feel they need to".

Keir Starmer says Labour would impose VAT on private school fees in order to better fund state education.

He was responding to a question on Radio 5 Live about how a Labour government would ensure state school places for children priced out of private school by the move.

One caller named Jenny says her son didn't get offered a secondary school place and she had to re-mortgage her house to send him to an independent secondary school.

Starmer says: "At the moment we don't have the basic teachers in state secondaries for subjects like maths... that is not acceptable, and therefore we've taken the decision to reduce the tax break for private schools."

The phone-in begins with Starmer being asked if he's concerned about US President Joe Biden's performance in the US presidential debate last night.

"I've got enough on my hands with our own campaign," Starmer says before adding that the relationship between the US and UK is "strong and historic".

"I don't think me commentating on the American election us helpful... it's for the American people to decide," Starmer says.

He's asked about a comment from Labour's shadow foreign secretary David Lammy who said US presidential candidate Donald Trump is a "threat to the international order", and whether that's fair.

Starmer says the job of the UK prime minister is to work with other world leaders, and that if he became PM, he would work with them.

You can follow our live coverage of reaction to the US debate here.

We've just brought you Keir Starmer's interview with BBC Breakfast.

He's now come upstairs from the sofa to sit with BBC Radio 5 Live's Nicky Campbell, where he's about to take questions from callers.

Stick with us as we bring you updates on what he says, and you can also follow the streamed interview by clicking the "watch live" button above.

Starmer is asked about the Reform UK campaigners who were caught making racist, homophobic and Islamophobic slurs - more on that here.

He's asked what he thinks about Reform's leader Nigel Farage distancing himself from those campaigners.

"I am shocked by what I heard, clearly racist, and I think this is a test of leadership. You have to ask the question why so many people who are supporting Reform seem to be exposed in this particular way," he says.

He says a leader has to make sure they change their party - "that's why I changed the Labour party, leadership has to be shown."

He is interrupted by Naga Munchetty who says that Farage has an impact, and asks if Starmer acknowledges that.

"Of course he's having an impact, we can see it in the polls. But what he doesn't have is the answers to the huge challenges we are facing as a country both in the UK and globally, where there's more tension and conflict."

The interview with Starmer moves to immigration, and he's asked if he will process asylum claims of people who arrive by illegal routes.

He says "yes", and when asked how, he says through the system "that's been in place for years" where people who claimed asylum were processed.

"What's happened under this government is they have stopped processing the claims," he says, claiming there are now 50,000 who are here but not being processed and so can't be returned.

"It would take 300 years to send them to Rwanda if you're sending a few hundred a year," he claims.

It's put to him that it sounds like he's saying that if someone arrives illegally, they will be treated in the same way as someone who comes legally - where is the deterrent?

The deterrent "lies in smashing the gangs", Starmer says, questioning if "not processing the claims" is "operating as a deterrent".

Starmer continues to be pushed on the phrase he uses frequently, that his manifesto is "fully funded and fully costed", but it's put to him that he'll either have to borrow more, cut public spending or increase taxes, if Labour gets into government.

He responds by saying that assumptions "made by the IFS (Institute for Fiscal Studies) and others" are based on growth staying broadly as it is.

"I don't accept that," he says.

He adds that he has a carefully thought out plan for growth, rather than a hope for it.

For context: The IFS, a leading think tank, has warned that the UK's main political parties have “ducked” addressing stark choices over public finances in their manifestos and it will be a "considerable surprise" if taxes are not increased over the next five years.

The Labour leader is seeking to reassure the public that his party is trustworthy, and its manifesto is fully funded.

"Every single thing in the Labour manifesto is fully costed", Starmer says, because people are still paying the price for "unfunded commitments like those Liz Truss made".

He says his number one objective is stabilising the economy.

It's put to the Labour leader that people still don't feel like they know what the "full picture of him" would be as prime minister - he's asked if that's a valid complaint.

Starmer says he took over the Labour Party after losing the 2019 general election, and at the time, he said he'd make it a "changed party".

He continues by saying he dealt with antisemitism in the party "ruthlessly" and changed Labour to "put country first and party second".

Starmer adds that his party now campaigns as "changed Labour" and would govern as "changed Labour".

Starmer is asked about what he could have done better as a leader.

He says there's always things to be done better, and he's pressed to give some examples.

The Labour leader says "every single vote has to be earned. We've got another six days to go, and it is very important to make the argument that if you want change you have to vote for it," he adds.

He says that it will either be five more years of what the country has had for the last 14 years, "with nothing to be changed" or "we can choose a different path to start rebuilding the country with Labour".

Starmer begins by noting it's the last few days of campaigning "after many weeks on the road".

He says his "energy levels good, we're campaigning with a smile, with a spring in our step".

He has been working for four and a half years to get to this point, he says.

Sir Keir Starmer is on the Breakfast sofa now.

We'll be bringing you all the key lines on what he has to say - and you can watch the interview live at the top of the page, so stay with us.

As we mentioned in our last post, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is on BBC Breakfast shortly before he takes audience questions in a phone-in on Nicky Campbell from 09:00 BST.

Elsewhere, PM Rishi Sunak is campaigning in north-east England today, while the SNP's John Swinney and Kate Forbes are out and about in Edinburgh.

Looking ahead, it will be Lib Dem leader Ed Davey's turn to face a grilling from Nick Robinson in his Panorama interview at 19:30.

Davey is the last leader of the seven largest parties to sit in the hot seat as part of the election interview series.

And in the last of three Question Time specials, Reform UK's Nigel Farage and the Green Party's co-leader Adrian Ramsay will answer questions from the studio audience from 20:00.

• You can read what all the parties are promising in their election manifestos here

That wraps up John Swinney's interview on BBC Breakfast.

In about half an hour, we'll be hearing from Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who will be on the Breakfast sofa, before joining Radio 5 Live for a phone-in on the Nicky Campbell show.

We will be across both of those interviews, which you will be able to follow by pressing watch live at the top of the page and by reading our updates.

Swinney is next asked why many pledges in the SNP manifesto are costed with a return to the EU in mind and whether that is false accounting.

Swinney says that the UK economy is underperforming and leaving the EU is one of the reasons for it.

He is pressed again by Naga Munchetty on why he is costing on something that's not going to happen.

Swinney says these pledges are related to the end of next parliamentary term. "We have to address the hard realities, Brexit has been undermined to have a damaging effect on the UK economy," he goes on to say:

"The money [that is lost because of Brexit] could have been invested every year in public services. It has to be confronted, it is a damage on our society and public services. Someone has to say that Brexit was a mistake. Scotland has to become an independent country so that we can re-join the European Union."