[Denver]

Emily Thornberry was forced to scramble for her notes during a live TV grilling on Labour's tax plans as she became the latest front bencher embarrassed over numbers.

The shadow foreign secretary was unable to answer specific questions on Labour's tax plans just hours after Jeremy Corbyn unveiled his manifesto.

Ms Thornberry was flustered by Kay Burley's questions on Sky News and dived out of shot to lay her hands on the notes.

Asked how much the party wanted to raise from a tax hike on those earning more than £80,000, she said: 'Oh. I've got a sheet, can I get my sheet?

'Let me just go through it. We've got income tax rises for the top 5 per cent and that will raise £6.4billion.'

During yesterday's interview, Burley warned Ms Thornberry that economists did not think the plans would raise anything like that much money - leaving a huge black hole in Labour's plans.

But Ms Thornberry insisted: 'These things are always open to a certain amount of argy-bargy, there's always a certain amount of disagreement about whether you're going to be able to raise as much as you think you will.'

Fumbling over numbers has dominated Labour's campaign for the general election.

Burley warned Ms Thornberry that economists did not think the plans would raise anything like that much money - leaving a huge black hole in Labour's plans

She said: 'Well, if we recruit the 10,000 police men and women over a four-year period, we believe it will be about £300,000.'

Ferrari replied: '£300,000 for 10,000 police officers? How much are you paying them?'

Ms Abbott replied: 'No, I mean, sorry, they will cost, it will cost about, about £80 million.'

'About £80 million? How do you get to that figure?' he said.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell was unable to tell yesterday's Today programme what the deficit was without looking it up.

Rustling could be heard over the radio as he scrambled for an answer and he was accused of searching Google after coming up with a figure that was wrong but which matched Wikipedia.

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