Starmer concludes his speech by talking about people whose mortgages have gone up.

"How do you think working people feel when the prime minister says we’ve turned a corner?" he asks.

"How do you think they feel when they see the people who did that to their mortgages, swanning around in the House of Lords because he was too weak to stand up to them."

Starmer says he's changed the Labour Party, "dragged it back to service", and will do "exactly the same for Westminster".

"The choice is yours. You can stop the chaos, you can turn the page, you can join with us, and together we can rebuild our country," he says to finish his speech, thanking those there for attending.

Starmer continues speaking about how he has changed the Labour Party, saying every change has been "shaped by a cause".

He says he know that people are looking at Labour and at himself personally. "I make this promise - I will fight for you," he says.

Starmer says he took over the reins four-and-a-half years ago and has made several difficult decisions to "turn it into the party you see today".

He criticises Rishi Sunak, saying he has "no appetite" to make the same kind of changes to the Conservative Party.

Starmer points to the Rwanda policy, which he says the prime minister "never believed in". He says Sunak eventually "caved in" to his Tory backbennchers, and now that the bill has gone through, it has cost the country £600m.

"Weakness upon weakness," he says.

If you're just joining us, we're continuing to bring you the key lines from Keir Starmer's first major campaign speech.

Starmer says the steps he's set out (for what he wants to achieve, if he becomes prime minister) will provide the country with a clear direction and provide certainty for people and businesses, "not the endless spinning around that successive Conservative governments have subjected our country to".

"The prime minister with a new plan every week, a new strategy every month, and at this rate - a new election campaign every day," is how he describes Sunak.

"All elections are a choice and this is a clear one: levelling up and the NHS with Labour. Or more desperate chaos with the Tories. That is the choice," Starmer says to loud applause from the party's supporters here.

Image source, PA Media

Iain Watson
Political correspondent, reporting from West Sussex

Labour’s inital reaction to the Conservatives’ national service idea over the weekend was cautious - the policy, they said, was "desperate" and "unfunded".

But today, Keir Starmer makes the dividing line clearer - denouncing the policy as "a teenage Dad’s Army" which takes "levelling up" funds.

(As a reminder, most 18-year-olds would do 12 weekends of volunteering under the plan, rather than military service - you read all the details here.)

Starmer returns to familiar themespublished at 10:38 British Summer Time 27 May

10:38 BST 27 May

Iain Watson
Political correspondent, reporting from West Sussex

Keir Starmer repeats Labour’s retail offer of 40,000 more NHS weekly appointments, and the recruitment of 6,500 teachers.

We will be hearing more of this, day in and day out, for the next six weeks.

And just as at last week’s launch in Kent, Liz Truss guest-stars in this speech as a symbol of Conservative "chaos" - another word we will hear regularly.

But Starmer acknowledges that some voters still have questions about Labour and his "Border Security Command" (to be set up within 100 days if Labour wins) is aimed squarely at those worried about illegal immigration.

He argues that he has changed Labour "permanently". Those close to Jeremy Corbyn, of course, thought they had done the same back in 2017.

Cracking down on antisocial behaviour is the next theme Starmer picks up on.

There'll be 13,000 more police officers, paid for by cutting down on wasteful contracts, he pledges.

He swiftly moves on, saying he also plans to get 6,500 new teachers into the classroom - paid for by removing tax breaks on private schools.

We'll reform the education system with creativity and confidence, Starmer says.

Step four, Starmer says, is the setting up of Great British Energy - a public sector energy company "owned by the taxpayer, making money for the taxpayer".

He says this will be paid for by a windfall tax on the energy giants he says have made record profits "while your bills went through your roofs".

The company, Starmer says, will make the UK's energy supply independent so that Putin "can't put his boot on our throats", and it will cut energy bills for good.

Image source, Reuters

The Labour leader says step two of his plan is to cut NHS wait times and that his government will fund an extra 40,000 appointments a week by cracking down on tax avoidance and non-doms.

Step three, Starmer says, will be the launch of a new border security unit with counter-terrorism powers.

"These vile criminals are making a fortune putting vulnerable people in boats made to order, sending them across the busiest shipping lane in the world. Nobody but nobody should be making that journey," he says.

Starmer then draws on his own experience, saying that when he was director of public prosecutions he worked on operations that "smashed" terrorist gangs in Europe and adds he doesn't accept the same can't be done with those gangs: "Labour will secure Britain’s borders."

We're still listening in to Keir Starmer, who's delivering his first major speech of the election campaign before the general election on 4 July.

He says he's fed up with PM Rishi Sunak saying we've turned the corner - and that it's Labour who can keep inflation taxes and mortgages low.

Sunak says he wants to get rid of National Insurance - £46bn, Starmer says, "that is currently used on your pension and the NHS and he’s not prepared to say how he will fund it". The Labour leader goes on:

• BBC Verify looked at Labour's claim of a £46bn tax cut here - as a reminder, the Conservatives have said National Insurance won't be abolished until at least 2030 and only then if the economy grows

"Public service is the bare minimum you should expect," Starmer says.

Everyone deserves the security, stability and the "basic ordinary hope" that Britain will be better for their children.

He acknowledges the "countless people" who don't know how to vote in this election, saying that while they don't trust the Tories, they still have questions about Labour.

Has the Labour Party changed enough? Can they be trusted with taxpayer money? To protect the UK's borders?

"Yes you can, because I've changed this party permanently," Starmer says, to applause. He adds that any foundation of a good government is "economic security, border security, and national security" - and pledges that these will serve as the "bedrock" of his Party's manifesto if it's voted in.

Starmer, still delivering his speech, says politics is about respect - but that "we are at a dangerous new point, close to crossing a rubicon on trust".

"Not just in politics," he continues, "but in so many of the institutions that are meant to serve and protect the British people."

Starmer says the country is at a moment "where people no longer believe their values or interests carry the respect of those in power" and that after 14 years in government, the Tories have lowered living standards and broken rules they set up themselves which has resulted in "a crisis in nothing less than who we are as a nation".

"Healing these wounds is what national renewal means," he says, and everyone - not just "those at the top" - deserves a chance to get on.

The Labour leader then sets out his vision: "A Britain once more in the service of working people. Country first, party second."

My background has shaped my politics, Starmer says, and it's "shaped the plan I have drawn up for Britain and the importance, above all, of economic stability".

"The need to never put working people through the whirlwind of chaos, the rising taxes, rising prices, rising mortgage costs - £5,000 for every working family - that’s what the Tories have inflicted on Britain," he goes on.

Starmer says decisions are being made by people - MPs - who live miles away from the communities their choices affect and "have little empathy for their challenges".

Starmer trying to make it personalpublished at 10:16 British Summer Time 27 May

10:16 BST 27 May

Iain Watson
Political correspondent, reporting from West Sussex

Keir Starmer was frustrated during the pandemic that he never had a proper opportunity to introduce himself to voters.

With the election campaign now under way he feels it necessary to do it again - to tell voters something of the person who wants to be prime minister.

So we're hearing in his speech about his tool-making dad, his mum who was a nurse and who fought a debilitating illness.

But in a pitch to (usually) non Labour voters, he describes his home town in Surrey as "about as English as it gets" - and stresses that some people struggle amid the affluence.

Anyone who thinks hardship is only found in the UK's cities "know nothing of the countryside", Starmer says.

He says his story is testament to this - that his father was a tool-maker, and his mother a nurse.

If you're working class, you're scared of debt, he says, and describes how his parents would rather have their phone cut off than risk falling into debt to pay the bill.

Starmer starts his speech, in West Sussex, by saying the area is a part of the world he “knows well” - and that like everyone else, his character is shaped by where he started in life.

He says he grew up in in a small town, Oxted, on the Surrey-Kent border, and invites people to visit it on their way back to London.

It's about “as English as it gets", he says.

"You could make easy pocket money clearing stones for the local farmers," he says with a smile - before adding: "That was actually my first job."

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is delivering a speech now - his first major one since the campaign began.

We'll bring you key lines right here, and you can watch it for yourself by tapping Play at the top of the page.

Iain Watson
Political correspondent, reporting from West Sussex

The venue is filling up for the Keir Starmer speech here in West Sussex.

With ex-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn now expelled from the party, the current leader is trying to address issues where potential Conservative switchers thought Labour was weak in 2019 - controlling the nation’s purse strings above all else, but also national security and immigration.

On the former, Keir Starmer has emphasised his commitment to Nato and nuclear weapons.

On the latter, there are clear dividing lines with Conservatives, with Labour committed to scrapping the Rwanda scheme.

Iain Watson
Political correspondent, reporting from West Sussex

The scene is set for Keir Starmer’s first big speech of the campaign in West Sussex - an area where Labour did well in recent council elections but is hardly the party’s traditional territory.

The Labour leader has four tasks - to convince "swing" voters his party can be trusted on:

• The economy
• Defence
• Immigration
• And that they can trust him as prime minister

In elections, people start paying more attention to the opposition leaderpublished at 09:24 British Summer Time 27 May

09:24 BST 27 May

Chris Mason
Political editor, reporting from West Sussex

Hello from the south coast of England - where the Labour leader Keir Starmer will give a speech and take questions in the next hour or so.

We expect the speech to be about him rather than any new policy.

His team are conscious there are plenty of folk who may not know much about him or what he stands for.

The leader of the opposition - almost by definition, whoever they are - is less interesting and attracts less attention between elections than the prime minister.

Bluntly, one runs the country, the other doesn’t.

But come a general election campaign, people start paying more attention - or so the theory goes - so it’s a chance for leaders to set out who they are and what the stand for, before their opponents do it for them.

Hannah Miller
Political correspondent

The Labour Party says it will carry out a 100-day national security review in government, looking at all of the threats facing Britain.

The so-called “security sprint” would bring together MI5, the police and civil service to identify emerging threats.

As first reported in The Times, the review would assess technological threats, identify gaps in regulation and develop plans to keep the public safe.

Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper tells The Times that “clear, sharp leadership and direction” was needed to prevent Britain from being “outpaced by its adversaries”.