Theresa May was put on the spot by a doctor considering resigning over understaffing in the NHS and low morale caused by the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, as she took questions from members of the public on an LBC radio phone-in.
The prime minister was told by Romeena from Leeds that healthcare professionals were finding it “near impossible” to provide safe care for their patients. The paediatrician said she was considering resignation after 12 years “because things have got so bad on the shop floor” and questioned why Hunt was still in his job following the doctors’ strikes.
“I’ve witnessed organ transplants being cancelled because there haven’t been enough nurses to provide post-operative care,” the doctor said. “Whatever the government is doing, it is clearly not enough – and you have reappointed as health secretary somebody who has demoralised the whole workforce.
“It seems like you stand up and support somebody who allowed junior doctors to go on strike, who seems to be allowing nurses to go on strike and that doesn’t fall in line with what the frontline of the NHS want to see.”
May dodged a question about whether she knew how unpopular Hunt was and maintained he had sorted out the row with junior doctors over their pay and conditions satisfactorily.
“What I would say is Jeremy Hunt has done a very good job in saying to everyone what we need to focus on is the quality of care,” she said, adding that she had experienced care as a type 1 diabetic.
The prime minister claimed the Conservatives had responded to a request from the NHS for £10bn by 2010 in real terms, although this figure is disputed, and that more money would be going to A&E departments because more people are going to be treated there.
May was hit with tough questions from members of the public over the state of public services, her record on failing to meet the Conservative target on immigration, low morale in the armed forces and insufficient help with childcare.
A listener called Sophia, who also worked in the NHS, said she was thinking of voting Labour because she was not yet convinced that May was helping the “just-about-managing” people with childcare costs of around £700 a month.
“I think it’s great you’ve increased it to 30 hours for three- and four-year-olds but there is a great gap there for two-year-olds,” the listener said.
May cited cutting the personal allowance and free hours of childcare for three and four years, but acknowledged there was “more work to do” when it came to helping just managing families with their costs.
Nick Ferrari, the LBC interviewer, interjected many times with follow-up questions, pressing the prime minister particularly on whether she would be raising taxes, as the party looks set to abandon its promise not to raise VAT, income tax or national insurance for the next five years.
She declined at least three times to say she would make that promise for the full parliament, saying: “We are a party that believes in actually trying to ensure we have low taxes … we have no plans to increase the level of tax but what I’m saying is that’s because we are party that believes in a low tax … as a government, we would go into government with no plans to raise the level of tax.”
May was confronted with remarks made earlier on Thursday by her predecessor, David Cameron, who said May needed to win a strong majority in the election so she could stand up to people in the UK and Europe who wanted an “extreme Brexit”. She said Cameron had been right about the need for the election but the reason for that was the requirement for “the security, the stability for five years of greater certainty that can take us through Brexit and beyond”.
The half-hour programme contained personal revelations from May, as she talked about being “very said” not to have had children with her husband Philip. “Of course, we are not the only couple that finds ourselves in that situation and when you do I suppose you just get on with life,” she said.
Asked if she would have been able to devote so much of herself to work if she had children, May replied: “I look at some of my parliamentary colleagues and people who have been in the cabinet who had children and yes, they do apply themselves, they are just very well organised. I think that is the key thing.”
And amid reported tensions with Philip Hammond, her chancellor, the prime minister raised some eyebrows by claiming that the most important Philip in Downing Street was the one who shared her flat in No 10 rather than the political occupant of No 11.
The prime minister did not shy away from talking about her faith in the interview; she said her Christianity helped her through the death of her father and mother when she was in her 20s.
She also discussed her love of cooking, saying she has more than 100 cookery books and would make Donald Trump a slow roast shoulder of lamb if the US president came to dinner.
Theresa May will pledge to scrap the “flawed” Mental Health Act, warning that it has allowed the unnecessary detention of thousands of people and failed to deal with discrimination against ethnic minority patients.
In an attempt to meet her pledge to prioritise mental illness during her premiership, she will commit to ripping up the 30-year-old legislation and replace it with new laws designed to halt a steep rise in the number of people being detained. Increased thresholds for detention would be drawn up in a new mental health treatment bill to be unveiled soon after a Conservative victory. Mental health charities, clinicians and patients would be consulted on the new legislation.
While the announcement is likely to be welcomed by mental health campaigners, there will be warnings that a lack of resources, rather than badly drafted laws, has been the real driver of the increase in detention.
The overhaul is being described by the Conservatives as the biggest change to the law on mental health treatment in more than three decades.
“On my first day in Downing Street last July, I described shortfalls in mental health services as one of the burning injustices in our country,” May said. “It is abundantly clear to me that the discriminatory use of a law passed more than three decades ago is a key part of the reason for this.
“So today I am pledging to rip up the 1983 act and introduce in its place a new law which finally confronts the discrimination and unnecessary detention that takes place too often. We are going to roll out mental health support to every school in the country, ensure that mental health is taken far more seriously in the workplace, and raise standards of care.”
More than 63,000 people were detained under the Mental Health Act in 2014-15, an increase of 43% compared with 2005-06. Black people are also disproportionately affected – with a detention rate of 56.9 per 100 patients who spent time in hospital for mental illness. It compares with a rate of 37.5 per 100 among white patients.
In its last report on the act, the Care Quality Commission, the independent regulator of healthcare services, said it had “failings that may disempower patients, prevent people from exercising legal rights, and ultimately impede recovery or even amount to unlawful and unethical practice”.
The new legislation would include a code of practice aimed at reducing the disproportionate use of mental health detention for minority groups and countering “unconscious bias”. Safeguards would be introduced to end rules that mean those who are detained can be treated against their will. Those with the capacity to give or refuse consent would be able to do so.
The new bill would form part of a series of measures designed to improve mental health in schools and the workplace. However, ministers would face immediate questions over whether they were providing sufficient funding for their plans.
The Tories would commit to hiring 10,000 staff in the NHS by 2020. An insider said the plan would be funded from existing budgets, because mental health service funding will be up by £1.4bn in real terms by 2020.
The Equalities Act would also be altered to prevent workplace discrimination. Currently patients who have conditions such as depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder are only protected from discrimination if their condition is continuous for 12 months. That would be altered to take account of the fact that the conditions are often intermittent.
Every primary and secondary school in England and Wales would have staff trained in mental health first aid and be given a single point of contact with local mental health services. Children would be taught more about mental health, including keeping safe online and cyber-bullying.
Large companies would be required to train mental health first responders alongside traditional first aiders.
It was during a walking holiday in Snowdonia, says Theresa May, after ‘long and hard’ reflection that she made the decision to call a June election. So much for walking and creative inspiration. But is there a connection between the two?
Neuroscience would say that depends on the difficulty of the task. Using a mathematical example, you can test this out for yourself. When you start with an easy challenge like counting in fives, fast walking isn’t a problem, but try multiplying 37 and 23 and you’ll find your feet slow down no matter how hard you try and keep up the pace.
We only struggle to walk and problem solve when the task is sufficiently difficult (if deciding on an election was a no-brainer for May, it’s unlikely her walking pace suffered). Various theories have been advanced to explain the finding, but really it’s down to attention being a limited resource in the brain. It’s not as good at multitasking as you’d expect. In May’s case, it could even be that the opposite was happening; the effort required to maintain a steady walking pace distracted her from the everyday preoccupations of running the country, enabling her to hatch a fiendish plot to steal a march on the opposition.
Dr Daniel Glaser is director of Science Gallery at King’s College London
NHS leaders are urging Theresa May to give the health service an emergency cash injection of £25bn before 2020 or risk a decline in the quality of care for patients and lengthening delays for treatment.
An influential group representing NHS Trusts says that the care provided by hospitals and GP surgeries will suffer over the next few years unless the prime minister provides an £5bn a year for the next three years – and a further £10bn of capital for modernising equipment and buildings.
NHS Providers is preparing to release its own manifesto next week, calling on the Conservatives and Labour to end what it calls the austerity funding of the health service. Saffron Cordery, the director of policy and strategy , said its analysis showed that there was a “revenue gap” of £4.5bn-£5bn a year in 2017-18 and “each of the subsequent two years as well.”
Hospitals needed that sum, said Cordery, to get rid of their deficits, which are running at £800m-£900m a year, deliver new NHS commitments on cancer and mental health and improve their performance against key waiting time targets.
The NHS also needed a further £10bn for capital spending on building and repairing premises, buying new equipment and moderning how care is provided, she added. That is the sum which a recent report commissioned by the Department of Health said the service needed for those purposes.
May inherited a pledge from David Cameron and George Osborne to provide a £10bn real-terms increase between April 2014 and April 2021. So far in the election campaign, the prime minister has refused to be drawn on how she might fund the health service, telling journalists that they would have to wait for the publication of the party’s manifesto.
A second group, the NHS Confederation, which represents hospitals and ambulance and mental health services, urged May to commit to giving the NHS £8bn-a-year annual budget increases after 2020-21, when the current funding settlement expires. The Department of Health’s budget is due to reach £133.1bn by March 2021.
Niall Dickson, its chief executive, said NHS services were so stretched that it would have to go back to getting at least the 4%-a-year budget increases it enjoyed historically between its creation in 1948 and 2010. After that, the coalition government limited rises to only 1% annually.
“It’s quite unsustainable for the shackles to remain on the health and care system and for society to expect the levels of need that will arrive over the next 10-15 years to be met unless it is willing to fund them,” Dickson said. “If we aren’t ready to put significant extra resources into the NHS then difficult choices will need to be made about things that we are going to do.”
Prof John Appleby, chief economist at the Nuffield Trust thinktank, said that returning to 4% a year rises, which the NHS used to receive regardless of which party was in power, “would require a cash increase of around £8bn in 2021-22.”
While Tory backing for such large sums was unlikely, “this could change if the NHS continues to miss its headline performance targets and the concern the public are starting to express about the NHS continues to rise”, he added.
The two interventions put pressure on May on an issue that some polls show is top of voters’ list of priorities in the general election, even ahead of Brexit.
Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, has said several times that the NHS budget will need to rise by a significant amount after the current funding schedule ends in March 2021. For example, last October he told the Commons health select committee: “It is a given that over coming decades we will need to put more into the health and social care system … if we want a high quality healthcare service, yes, we need to continue investing more.”
Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS, England, has voiced concern that per capita health funding will decline in 2018-19 and 2019-20. It is due to fall from its current level of £2,223 per head this year by £16 next year and £7 in 2019.
Anita Charlesworth, the director of research at the Health Foundation thinktank, said the NHS could no longer make ends meet by holding down pay and reducing investment in equipment and facilities. “Cracks are evident – access to new drugs is being restricted, waiting times have increased and recruitment and retention are growing problems across the NHS. The health service can always be more efficient but it cannot bridge the gap between pressures rising at 4% and funding at 1% for much longer without quality and access suffering”, she said.
A Conservative spokesman said: “A strong NHS needs a strong economy. Only Theresa May and the Conservatives offer the strong and stable leadership we need to secure our growing economy in future and with it funding for the NHS and its dedicated staff.
“We’ve protected and increased the NHS budget and got thousands more staff in hospitals – but we know that progress is on the ballot paper at this election.”
Live coverage of all the day’s campaign action with the last PMQs before the election and a row over Labour’s NHS funding promises
Labour will lift pay cap for ‘overworked’ NHS staff
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PMQs – Snap verdict
PMQs – Verdict from the Twitter commentariat
Afternoon summary
You’d have to have a screw loose not to think things are pretty tough. I noticed when Jeremy addressed the PLP [parliamentary Labour party] he didn’t announce the key seats we’d need to take off the Tories to form a Labour government. I thought that was ominous.
It is a remarkable achievement for the leadership to have taken a catastrophic situation in Scotland and made it quite a lot worse. We seem to be doing worse in Wales … We’ve gone backwards amongst every demographic, every region of the country. Jeremy is behind Theresa May on managing the NHS! It’s quite a special achievement to put all of that together in a short period of time. Hats off to Jeremy and Seumas [Milne], Diane [Abbott] and John [McDonnell]. That’s pretty special.
In February the government announced that it would close the so-called Dubs scheme for taking unaccompanied child refugees from Europe after a total of 350 were admitted. This caused outrage because, when the government accepted Lord Dubs’ amendment to the Immigration Act committing it to take some unaccompanied child refugees, it was expected that around 3,000 could be admitted.
Today, in a written ministerial statement, the Home Office minister Robert Goodwill has admitted that a further 130 places are available for unaccompanied child refugees. The Home Office should have know about these extra places when it made its announcement two months ago but it didn’t because it lost the submission from a council saying it could provide the places.
The government remains fully committed to the implementation of our commitment under section 67 [the Dubs amendment] to transfer unaccompanied children to the UK from Europe and no eligible child has been refused transfer to the UK as a result of this error. The home secretary has written to her counterparts in France, Greece and Italy and we are working closely with member states, as well as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and NGO partners so we can identify and transfer children to the UK as soon as possible.
It is welcome that an extra 130 children will be brought to safety in Britain under the Dubs scheme. But it beggars belief that these children weren’t helped earlier because of a basic admin error. This shows a shameful failure by the Home Office to talk properly to local councils who were willing and able to help or to check they had counted the figures up right. This shows the Home Office simply hasn’t taken this seriously enough.
Time and again the select committee and local councils across the country told the Home office that there were more places available, but they wouldn’t budge and they failed to follow up. Surely on something as important as this, when children are at risk of trafficking and prostitution, they would have checked the numbers were right.
Here is another picture from Jeremy Corbyn’s NHS visit this afternoon.
The Scottish Labour party has named a former chief of the pro-UK Better Together campaign, Blair McDougall, and a leading Corbyn supporter, Rhea Wolfson, in their first tranche of general election candidates.
After its rout by the Scottish National party at the 2015 election, Scottish Labour was left with one MP, leaving it the major task of finding up to 58 new candidates when its popularity is at a record low of 14%. This is the first election where Scottish leader Kezia Dugdale and her officials have autonomy from the UK party in choosing candidates.
Leanne Wood, the leader of Plaid Cymru, has also criticised Jeremy Corbyn for not being willing to take part in a leaders’ debate without Theresa May. She is echoing what her friend and political ally, the SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, said on Twitter earlier. (See 2.08pm.) In 2015 Wood and Sturgeon joined Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, Natalie Bennett, the Green party leader, and Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, in a so-called “challengers’ debate” that did not feature David Cameron.
Wood said:
It is disappointing to hear that the leader of the Labour party is not prepared to take part in any televised leaders’ debates without the prime minister.
These debates are a good opportunity for people to engage with the election and for the leaders to put forward their vision to voters.
You have probably got the point about “strong and stable leadership” by now, but just in case you haven’t, the Guardian video team have produced a video pointing out just how frequently the Tories hammered home this message at PMQs.
Jeremy Corbyn has renewed his call for Theresa May to take part in TV election debates. And he has signalled that he won’t take part if she is not included. Speaking to Sky News, he said:
I asked Theresa May this morning about the TV debates, lots of people asked her about it, and she said they’re over because there are no more prime minister’s question times because parliament is now dissolved, or will be dissolved next week. And so, actually, the debate has to include the prime minister, the leader of the Conservative party, and we are up for that debate.
You will see me all over the country taking questions from people on the streets.
This is from the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.
CPS source confirms they’ve received a file from Kent Police over election expenses in South Thanet
Jeremy Corbyn has been meeting health workers today.
A Panelbase poll is out today giving the Conservatives a 22-point lead over Labour. Here are the figures.
On BBC Radio 5 Live Michael Gove, the former Conservative justice secretary and a leader of the Vote Leave campaign, said he was “absolutely convinced” that Brexit would result in more money going to the NHS. When it was put to him that Vote Leave had said at one point that an extra £100m a week would go to the NHS if the UK left the EU, and he was asked if he still expected that, he replied:
I am absolutely convinced that we will be spending significantly more on the NHS [after Brexit.] I hope it’s £100m.
Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, has tweeted saying that he has “sacked” David Ward as a candidate. (See 2.26pm.)
I believe in a politics that is open, tolerant and united. David Ward is unfit to represent the party and I have sacked him.
Arlene Foster, Democratic Unionist leader and first minister in the last power sharing government in Northern Ireland, took time out today from electioneering to pay a highly symbolic visit to Irish language pupils at a Catholic school near the border.
Foster had been criticised earlier this year for her opposition to an Irish Language Act – a key demand by Sinn Fein – which would put Gaelic on an equal par to English throughout Northern Ireland.
Now Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, is accusing Jeremy Corbyn of “running scared” after it emerged that Corbyn will not take part in TV election debates if Theresa May is not included. Farron said:
Corbyn is running scared. He is running away from facing his opponents, he is running away from defending his policies, he is running away from leadership.
The Liberal Democrats have barred former Bradford East MP David Ward from standing again for the party, after Tim Farron said his comments about Jews had been “deeply offensive, wrong and antisemitic”, my colleague Jessica Elgot reports.
Related: Tim Farron sacks Lib Dem candidate for ‘deeply offensive and antisemitic’ comments
In the huddle for lobby journalists after the final PMQs of the parliament, Jeremy Corbyn’s spokesman struck an upbeat note about Labour’s prospects. He said the Conservatives’ poll lead will narrow once the campaign gets underway and the public get to hear Labour’s message, “in our own voice”.
We are confident that we can win this election, and we’re fighting for every seat, and we’re confident that once Labour’s message is clearly heard, and there is a chance for the public to hear policies that many of them won’t have heard before, but which are extremely popular, and we know to be so, that will have cut-through, and Labour support will increase.
The politics and the polling is actually quite complex and quite varied across different countries, and I don’t think it’s just a technical issue to do with the polling companies that we’re in; I think it’s to do with the volatile and fluid political situation, with much more fragmentation.
This was all dealt with when the allegation first came out, and it’s not the case that John McDonnell signed any such statement. When the story was first run about a year ago it was made clear that it was confusion about another statement; he never signed the statement involving MI5, it was another story entirely. This is recycled fake news.
Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, has been campaigning in Stirling today.
On the World at One Andrew Gwynne, Labour’s general election coordinator, said the party’s manifesto would be published on Monday 15 May. Asked how Labour would fund its promises, he replied:
I’m not in a position to spell out the Labour party’s full manifesto here. But we will have to wait until May 15 for the manifesto.
Conservatives have denied that Boris Johnson is being sidelined from the party’s general election campaign by Theresa May, the Press Association reports.
Reports have suggested the foreign secretary has been told to keep a low profile because he is vulnerable to challenge over his pre-referendum claims that Brexit would deliver £350m a week to spend on the NHS.
A senior Conservative source dismissed the claims as speculation, and said Johnson would soon enter the fray.
Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, has criticised Jeremy Corbyn for apparently refusing to take part in an election debates if Theresa May is not involved. She posted this on Twitter.
Faced with an open goal, Corbyn decides against even attempting to score . Unbelievable, if true. https://t.co/JkRBLxgLID
Source close to Jeremy Corbyn reveals he won’t take part in TV debates if Theresa May doesn’t. #GE17
This is what political journalists and commentators are saying about PMQs.
Mostly people are quite positive about Jeremy Corbyn, although several people think Angus Robertson was more effective.
Corbyn uses last #PMQs to attack May on triple lock, NHS, housing, education spending cuts. Weak ground 4 May but no real blows dealt #PMQs
May is a master at not answering the question. That is why Corbyn should use #PMQs to ask her the same one 6 times. Makes her uncomfortable
Corbyn channelling impressive levels of passion at #PMQs
Corbyn is doing rather well, as he did last week. Spitting out the questions. May quite pugnacious in reply
There’s much more to being a good PM than PMQs, of course, but May remains quite weak at this. No wonder she’s dodging tv debates
COMMENT AR shows JC how to do #PMQs but remember TM wants to drop pensions triple lock. If this is the worst this gets for her…
Theresa May savages Jeremy Corbyn at final PMQs before election #GE2017 https://t.co/9X2W54WHBL pic.twitter.com/hsy094eOaX
.@AngusRobertson there proving he’s the best opposition leader in the Commons. Skewers May on pension lock #pmqs
SNP’s Angus Robertson doing what Corbyn cd hv done: forcing May to wriggle on triple lock for pensions. May refuses to guarantee it. #pmqs
Corbyn channelling Miliband 2013: “He may be strong at standing up to weak, but always weak when it comes to standing up against the strong”
Corbyn with decent election lines the tories are for ‘the rich not the rest, the strong against the weak, and weak against the strong’
Corbyn quoted both Blair (“many not the few”) and Miliband (“weak against the strong”) at #PMQs. https://t.co/Q15ztRfeIH
Some very glum faces from Labour moderates sitting behind Corbyn during PMQs.
This is #PMQs at its worst – neither answering questions, talking about completely different subjects and shouting slogans #PMQs
Labour sources are also criticising Theresa May for referring to Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs as a terrorist sympathiser.
Senior Labour source says May calling Corbyn “a terrorist sympathiser” in #pmqs was a “discredit to the office of Prime Minister”
I Like Corbyn, But… https://t.co/xZPMEvtpjH
It gets so much better #ILikeCorbynBut pic.twitter.com/YzQwd7xrC8
Labour are ruling out Jeremy Corbyn taking part in any TV debates that do not feature Theresa May, Huffington Post’s Paul Waugh reports.
Labour source just ruled out Corbyn taking part in any TV debates that don’t feature Theresa May.
Theresa May refused to commit to keeping the triple lock at PMQs. But, according to today’s Times, the Tories are thinking of keeping the policy, which ensures pensions rise every year in line with earnings, inflation or 2.5%, whichever is highest, on the grounds that it would be cost free. Here’s an extract from Francis Elliott and Oliver Wright’s story (paywall).
Theresa May is considering keeping the “triple lock” guarantee on state pension increases because it is likely to be a cost-free promise for the next parliament, according to senior ministers.
Labour has promised to increase the state pension by a minimum of 2.5 per cent a year, despite warnings that it could cost taxpayers an additional 1 per cent of GDP by 2036. The lock is triggered only if inflation falls below that figure and the Office for Budget Responsibility is predicting that wages and prices will increase at a faster pace in the next few years.
The Lib Dem peer Olly Grender, who worked in Number 10 as deputy communications director during the coalition, says Theresa May was wrong at PMQs to argue that the Conservatives deserved credit for increasing council house building during the coalition.
Under Coalition NOT Con Govt increase in council house building thanks to LibDems who insisted (Tories at time didn’t give a ****) #PMQs
This is from Politico Europe’s Tom McTague.
French ambassador Sylvie Bermann in the chamber for PMQs. Chuckling away. Would love to read her diptel!
The SNP’s Alex Salmond says Liam Fox went to the Philippines and said we had “shared values” with it. What shared values do we have with Rodrigo Duterte?
May says we need trade deals after Brexit to ensure a strong economy.
Sir Simon Burns, a Conservative, says he has been Chelmsford MP for 30 years. They are perspicacious, he says. They want a government with a strong economy, strong defences and strong leadership. May will deliver that for the next five years, he says.
May thanks Burns for his contribution as an MP and as a minister.
Douglas Carswell, the independent MP, asks what assurance May can give to the 3.8m people who voted Ukip at the last election.
May says she wants to see the UK getting control of its borders and control of its laws.
Dame Angela Watkinson, a Conservative, asks May why people should continue to vote Conservative.
May says every vote for her and the Conservative candidate will be a vote to strengthen her hands in the Brexit talks.
Labour’s George Howarth says Andy Burnham had a debate yesterday on contaminated blood. He called for a Hillsborough-style panel to get to the truth. Will May join the SNP and Labour in backing the idea.
May says the government has put more money into compensation. The department of health will respond to the consultation.
Mike Wood, a Conservative, says it is good to be back. Doctors saved his life in January. Will May look at what can be done to reduce deaths from sepsis.
May says it is fantastic to see Wood back. She says he is right to focus attention on this problem. The department of health is working on a new sepsis action plan.
Labour’s Grahame Morris asks why May is afraid of TV debates. One should be held in Easington, he says, where May could see the impact of her policies.
May says she has been debating Corbyn every week.
Sir Gerald Howarth, a Conservative who is standing down, says he came into the Commons in 1983, when the country had a strong woman leader, and he leaves as another one is restoring British sovereignty. He appeals to Howarth to protect the armed forces guarding “this sceptred isle”.
May says people will have a choice at the election. The Tories will continue to protect the armed forces.
Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, says May once berated her party as the “nasty party”. But it has never been nastier. And Labour is not holding to account. Doesn’t the country need the Lib Dems?
May says Farron talks about a decent opposition. She says Farron cannot say that when the Lib Dems have just elected a candidate with a questionable record on antisemitism.
Sir Eric Pickles, the Conservative, asks May about anti-semitism, and if she shares his disgust at the selection of David Ward, a former MP accuses of anti-semitism, as a Lib Dem candidate. (See 10.35am.)
May pays tribute to the work Pickles had done tackling anti-semitism. She says people will be disappointed to see the Lib Dems adopt a candidate with a questionable record on anti-semitism.
Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP MP, asks May if she agrees that those who refuse to take their seats (Sinn Fein) and who are refusing to form a government in Northern Ireland are not serving their constituents.
May agrees. She says she wants to work for the restoration of a government in Northern Ireland.
Peter Lilley, the Conservative, says he is standing down because of Theresa May. He says he has confidence that she will deliver Brexit properly. And we must accept that no deal is better than a bad deal. To deny this would be to admit that no price would be too high. That would be the worst possible deal, he says.
May thanks Lilley for everything he has done, not just as an MP, but as a minister in government. She says it is right to get on with delivering Brexit. The only way to ensure that is to get a Conservative government elected.
PMQs – Snap verdict: At PMQs you can deploy the sniper’s rifle or the shotgun, and today we saw Angus Robertson try one, and Jeremy Corbyn use the other. They were both effective in their way, although Theresa May’s shield of slogans and talking points managed to protect her quite adequately. It did not feel as if anyone secured a great triumph.
But in the circumstances, and with polling organisations pouring humiliation over Corbyn by the hour, that probably amounted to something of a win for the Labour leader. He asked about a range of topics, resorting to the “here’s a question from a viewer” formula that he used frequently in his first PMQs outings and neatly skewering May over her reluctance to take questions from members of the public. It was not flashy or eye-catching, but it was honest and solid and his points were strong. In response, May resorted to carpet-bombing Corbyn with the “strong and stable” leadership stuff. Her message discipline is outstanding, and conventional wisdom has it that you cannot repeat these slogans too often (although May seems to be testing that theory to destruction.)
Angus Robertson, the SNP leader at Westminster, asks for a clear and unambiguous commitment to keeping the triple lock for pensioners.
May says she has been very clear that pensioners have benefited to the tune of £1,250 a year. Under her pension incomes will continue to increase.
Ben Howlett, a Conservative, asks if May agrees that his voters should give him a renewed mandate to improve traffic around Bath.
May agrees. A vote for any other party is a vote for wrecking the economy.
Corbyn says millions of women will have heard that answer. Labour will guarantee the triple lock. And it won’t move the goalposts. Sybil, who witnessed the founding of the NHS, said she is 88. She has had wonderful service from the NHS. But now she is scared of going into hospital. With more delayed discharges, isn’t she right to be frightened.
May says the NHS is treated more people than ever before. But that is only possible with a strong economy. She says she will defend her record. She says Diane Abbott has been directing her followers to a website “I like Corbyn but ..”. It addresses questions about Corbyn not being able to pay for his policies and being a terrorist sympathiser. Even Corbyn’s supporters know he is not fit to run the country.
Corbyn says the last Labour government delivered a decent homes standard for every council in the country. House building has fallen to its lowest level since the 1920s. Children are being held back by cuts. Laura, a teacher, said she was seeing less cash every year to pay for children, and more reliance on parent funding. Is May still denying funding per pupil is being cut.
May says record levels of funding are going into schools. People will have a choice, she says. The government has delivered more good school places. Corbyn believes in a one-size-fits-all, take-it-or-leave-it approach to education.
Corbyn says Andy is concerned about how his children are being held back. All three of his children, in their mid 20s, cannot afford to move out of the family home. Don’t we need a housing strategy to deal with it?
May asks what happened under Labour. Under Labour, house building starts fell by 45%. And the number of social homes fell. Under the Conservatives more than twice as much council housing has been built as under Labour.
Jeremy Corbyn says this is the last PMQs of this parliament. It would be appropriate to pay tribute to MPs who are leaving, he says. And he thanks the speaker for presiding over these exchanges.
He says when he became leader 18 months ago he said he wanted people’s voices to be heard in parliament. So, instead of just speaking to handpicked audiences, will May today answer questions from the public. Christopher wrote to him this week saying hus husband had only a 1% increase in wages. But their buying power had gone down 15%. So where is his share in the stronger economy.
Richard Drax, a Conservative, asks about a leftwing campaign for socialist victory that proposed disbanding M15. Would May allow anyone like that to draft her manifesto?
No, says May. She says the plan to disband MI%, disarm the police and scrap the deterrent was endorsed by Jeremy Corbyn’s policy chief, Andrew Fisher. Corbyn is “simply not up to the job”, she says.
Theresa May starts by answering a closed question from the Conservative MP Michael Fabricant about the economy in the West Midlands. It is doing well, she says. And so are public services, because you can only have those with “strong and stable leadership”.
Fabricant says the country needs “strong and stable leadership”.
This is from the Daily Mail’s Jason Groves.
More Labour MPs in for #PMQs than there have been for a while – some taking a last look around?
Very loud cheers for Theresa May as she enters Commons chamber for #PMQs
Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.
#PMQS LIVEBLOG: These lucky MPs will be grilling the PM from 12. Follow all the action here – https://t.co/B8kBRMA48K pic.twitter.com/mTlwnKdOKL
This is from the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.
This Parliament has only sat for 299 days – and had 61 PMQs – for some MPs, today’s the leaving do! Election will decide which ones
PMQs will start in 10 minutes. It is the last of this parliament.
And it is also only the second, and last, election TV debate between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn (counting last week’s PMQs as the first.)
Ipsos MORI has more good news for the Conservatives on the polling front. As Joe Murphy reports in the Evening Standard, Theresa May has the best ratings on “best PM” since the firm started polling on this in the 1970s. Here’s an extract from Murphy’s story.
Theresa May’s leadership score has soared higher than either Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair enjoyed in their best years, an exclusive poll reveals today
The Ipsos MORI survey shows the Conservatives on 49 per cent, with an extraordinary 23 per cent lead over Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour who are on 26 …
Mahatma Gandhi was one of the great figures of the 20th century. He led India to independence and championed a form of non-violent civil disobedience that inspired campaigners around the world. It is hard to think of a modern equivalent, but the Ukip leader Paul Nuttall has suggested a possible candidate: himself.
Nuttall did quite put himself in the same league as the great Gandhi, but in an interview with the Wolverhampton Express and Star suggested they had something in common and the paper’s website has headlined the story: “I’m like Gandhi, says Ukip leader Paul Nuttall in Wolverhampton.” This is what Nuttall told the paper:
Raising issues of equality, women’s rights, and FGM are the issues other parties don’t want to tackle.
Ukip will lead on these and as I said in our press conference I feel as if we are a decade ahead of our time – a bit like we were a decade ahead of our time on getting out of the EU, and on mass immigration.
YouGov has released some new polling this morning. Since February, Theresa May’s net favourability rating has gone up (from +6 to +10) and Jeremy Corbyn’s has gone done (from -40 to -42).
Peter Lilley, the Conservative former social security secretary regarded as one of the Eurosceptics cabinet “bastards” once denounced by John Major, is standing down, the Guido Fawkes blog reports. In a statement announcing his decision Lilley said:
Now we have in Theresa May an outstanding Prime Minister in whom I have great confidence.
I profoundly hope she will be returned with a strong mandate to complete the process of leaving the EU and to seize the opportunities which regaining control of our laws, border, money and trade will give our country.
Lib Dem leader Tim Farron is continuing his tour of remain seats with Brexiteer MPs, after vowing to unseat Labour’s Kate Hoey in Vauxhall. His stop today is St Albans, where more than 62% of voters backed staying in the EU but Conservative MP Anne Main campaigned for leave.
Farron used the campaign stop to highlight the risk to the economy of leaving the EU and tell businesses they should stop funding the Conservatives while they pursue a hard Brexit.
My message to business is this – dump the Tories. Every penny you give them will hurt you; you are funding your own funeral. The success of British business matters. Strong British businesses mean more jobs and a stronger society.
With this disastrous hard Brexit the government is hurting businesses, both big and small, costing jobs and hitting families. All this means fewer jobs, higher prices and spiralling costs of things like fuel. This is a Brexit squeeze affecting millions of people.
.@timfarron visits the National Pharmacy Association in St Albans with @libdemdaisy talking about the #NHS & care pic.twitter.com/ZImwhVQEX1
The Conservatives have also produced a briefing accusing Labour of spending the money it proposes to raise from corporation tax over and over again. The Lib Dems cited 10 examples, although two items on their list were essentially the same. (See 9.09am.) In a note for journalists a few days ago, the Tories cited 11 examples. Most of the Tory ones were the same as the Lib Dem ones, but the Tories had three examples not on the Lib Dem list. Here they are, as set out in the Tory briefing.
Scrapping university tuition fees. Jeremy Corbyn said:‘At the moment what we’re doing is asking students to fund universities rather than the public to fund universities. I would rather move in to the other way around, with public funding of it … It would be largely on levels of corporate taxation’ (Victoria Derbyshire Labour Leadership Hustings, 17 August 2016).
Reversing changes to Universal Credit. John McDonnell:‘Universal Credit. We’re hoping on Wednesday the government will reverse that … If you had a fair taxation system, you weren’t giving the tax giveaways to corporations and to the rich, if you seriously tackle tax evasion and tax avoidance, if you grew the economy we’d be able to afford – we’d be able to afford our public services’ (The Andrew Marr Show, BBC One, 21 November 2016).
Tuition fees will be scrapped and maintenance grants brought back, the Green party are announcing as key features of their election manifesto.
Co-leaders Jonathan Bartley and deputy leader Amelia Womack will also say in a speech today that students and universities will be protected after Brexit if the Green party were in power.
The Green party is the only party standing up for students and putting young people at the heart of its campaign.
Education is a right not a commodity to be bought and sold, and we need a level playing field so everyone has the chance to go to university or college.
If the referendum result had gone the other way David Cameron – remember him? – would be in Downing Street this morning preparing for PMQs. Instead he happens to be in Bangkok, where he has just finished speaking at a tourism conference. My colleague Oliver Holmes was there and he has sent me the highlights.
Here are some of the key points he made.
Let me be optimistic … It’s very good that we are having this election, because I think if Theresa May is successful, she’ll actually have a larger majority and, potentially, more time to deal with Brexit and its consequences.
Arguably, you could say, looking at the state of British politics, the Conservative party having accepted the referendum result and got on with the process and responsibly delivering it, is probably the most healthy mainstream political party anywhere in western Europe.
It was a legitimate cause of populist concern, that Britain was a member of this organisation, the organisation had changed a huge amount over the last forty years, it had gained more powers, it had passed more treaties, it had become more important in more areas. And yet in spite of the fact that the British people were occasional offered a referendum by their leaders, most famously by Tony Blair, they never got a referendum.
If you want to address the causes of populism, it was necessary, in my view, to have a referendum.
But I think it was the right thing. The lack of a referendum was poisoning British politics and so I put that right.
These terrorists and their apologists are trying hijack a great religion and twist and pervert it for their own ends. We must not play into their hands. And that was to me, the biggest problem with President Tump’s travel ban. It would be seen, could be seen, as labelling whole countries as extreme and dangerous because they were predominately Islamic. It’s not a clash between civilisations that we face. That is what the extremists want us to think. This is if you like a war within Islam.”
There would have been a big lesson learn. I thought it was misconceived from the very outset.
Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, told the Today programme earlier that Labour would have to raise “significant extra sums” to fund its plan to give NHS staff a pay rise. He said:
Each 1% on pay, just 1%, costs half a billion pounds each time. It’s not possible to say from what the Labour party have said quite how much more they intend to spend on the NHS.
If you are going to do that over the next two or three years you will also clearly need to raise significant extra sums in tax revenue.
Norman Lamb, the Lib Dem former health minister, told the Today programme that he agreed with Labour about the need for NHS staff to be paid more. He said the current 1% cap on NHS pay increases was unsustainable.
In effect we are asking very many staff across the NHS to just, year on year, take a pay cut in real terms in order to sustain our NHS. And I don’t think that’s acceptable. I think ultimately it’s dangerous. We are seeing widespread vacancies … Actually people will vote with their feet and leave if you don’t maintain wages at least in real terms.
The problem with the Labour position is their proposal just isn’t credible … The money from corporation tax increase has been spent about 10 times over.
Labour have already committed to using funding from an increase to corporation tax ten times since the last general election:
1. Bringing back the education maintenance allowance and university maintenance grants.
Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, will announce his guarantees for NHS staff in a speech to the Unison conference in Liverpool. According to extracts released in advance he will say:
NHS staff have been taken for granted for too long by the Conservatives. Cuts to pay and training mean hard working staff are being forced from NHS professions and young people are being put off before they have even started. Now Brexit threatens the ability of health employers to recruit from overseas.
What is bad for NHS staff is bad for patients too. Short staffing means reduced services and a threat to patient safety. Labour’s new guarantees for NHS staff will help keep services running at the standard which England’s patients expect …
In his Today interview earlier Jeremy Hunt admitted that Brexit would have an impact on the NHS.
There’s no point saying that Brexit and the Brexit negotiations won’t affect the NHS. This is absolutely critical for our public services.
Q: Are you saying you will give the NHS whatever it needs?
Ashworth says the NHS has not had what it needs.
Good morning. I’m taking over from Claire.
Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, is on Today now.
We will outline what level corporation tax will be in our manifesto when we publish it in the coming days … The whole programme that the Labour Party will be putting to the country in this election campaign will be costed.
I’m now handing over the live reins to Andrew Sparrow, who’ll take you through the rest of the day’s political news.
A quick reminder: you can sign up for the Snap, our daily election briefing email, here.
In a video for the Guardian, Paul Mason pushes back against the argument from the Daily Mail and others that those who oppose the government and its Brexit plans are “saboteurs”. Meaningful opposition to the Tories is necessary for the country and for democracy, he argues:
Meg Hillier, the Labour MP who chairs the cross-party public accounts committee, has been talking about its free schools report.
We will consider the recommendations carefully and respond in due course.
As well as Labour’s own NHS pledges, we might expect Jeremy Corbyn to press Theresa May on this damning MPs’ report on free schools when the two leaders meet for the final PMQs of this parliament at noon.
In the – so far – planned absence of televised head-to-head debates during the campaign, today could be the last time we see May and Corbyn take each other on ahead of 8 June.
The DfE is spending well over the odds in its bid to create 500 more free schools while other schools are in poor condition. Many free schools are in inadequate premises, including many without on-site playgrounds or sports facilities …
The department is in a weak negotiating position and commonly pays well in excess of the official valuation. On average, it has paid 19% over the official valuation, with 20 sites costing over 60% more.
Leaders in Europe will demand that Theresa May respects the right of EU nationals who have lived in the UK for five years to acquire permanent residence, Daniel Boffey and Lisa O’Carroll report:
In a sign of growing anger over the perceived bureaucratic hurdles being put in their way, the call will be made at a summit on Saturday, where the leaders of the 27 other EU member states are set to sign their negotiating guidelines.
The guidelines were amended by officials on Monday to strengthen demands over Britain’s €60bn divorce bill, open the door to further cooperation on EU-UK foreign policy and law enforcement, and add a call for transparency during the talks.
Such guarantees must be effective, enforceable, non-discriminatory and comprehensive, including the right to acquire permanent residence after a continuous period of five years of legal residence. Citizens should be able to exercise their rights through smooth and simple administrative procedures.
Related: Brexit: EU leaders to demand May respect citizens’ residency rights
Pressed on the issue of social care – which Theresa May has pledged to “stop ducking” – Jeremy Hunt is similarly reticent about what the not-ducking will look like:
We need a long-term sustainable solution.
You’ll have to wait and see what manifesto says … I’m not going to speculate on what the contents of our manifesto are.
And here’s Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, who’s popped up to defend his record against the Labour claim that staff are “ignored, insulted, undervalued, overworked and underpaid by this Tory government”.
I think they are working harder than they’ve ever worked before … You see a government that’s responding to that.
We will be able to train record number of nurses.
Applications do then recover.
You’ll have to wait and see what the manifesto says.
Labour will be attempting to shift the debate today on to the NHS, with shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth making a number of pledges:
Related: Labour will give pay rise to ‘overworked and underpaid’ NHS staff
Jonathan Bartley, co-leader (with Caroline Lucas) of the Green party, has been updating Radio 4’s Today programme on the progress of the progressive alliance, their proposed anti-Tory electoral pact.
The response from Jeremy Corbyn and Tim Farron, says Bartley, has been
very disappointing … they haven’t responded.
On a local level, people are talking to each other …
We want people to vote Green [but] we will support whatever the local party wants to do. But it has to be a reciprocal arrangement.
Good morning and welcome back to another day on the campaign marathon.
I’m Claire Phipps, bringing you this morning’s essential – should your morning be incomplete without news of constituency selection battles – briefing, and steering the live blog until Andrew Sparrow joins us later.
Remember, the opinion polls were wrong in the 2015 general election; they were wrong in the referendum; and Jeremy Corbyn himself has said that he was a 200-1 outsider for the Labour leadership in 2015 – and look where that got him.
In effect, this is EU Referendum 2. This is the chance for those who didn’t vote/couldn’t vote, to come out. It’s a chance for Remainers to convert more people, help their friends to see the catastrophe that Brexit is …
‘My own constituency voted Remain,’ Theresa May announced in the Commons as an example of her adhering to the ‘will of the people’. But if everyone in Maidenhead who voted Remain backed the Lib Dems in June, the PM could lose her seat.
The Labour party will need more than a wish list and a collection of grievances. I’ll offer three topics for starters. How do we ensure a fair intergenerational settlement? How can our education and tax system respond to the changes of the world of work and employment? Where do we anchor democratic accountability in a world of global flows of goods, money and people?
Planning for parliamentary deadlock and pacts with other parties might be tempting. But these are the methods of counter-insurgents. If Labour instead wants to be a party of government, it has to go into the 2017 election fighting for every vote.
The gap between first- and second-place party in 2015, 2010 or earlier, as well as any byelection result, is not the only factor. Strategists are having to look at how many people in a given seat voted leave or remain in last year’s EU referendum. This information is especially crucial for the Liberal Democrats …
A 30- to 40-point improvement (that is, a 15% to 20% swing that went entirely from the first-placed party to the Lib Dems) would do the job in seats where a majority voted remain – but that is an incredibly ambitious target.
I do not want the people of Scotland to think that English eurosceptics put their dislike of Brussels ahead of our bond with Edinburgh and Glasgow.
It took two months but Trudy Harrison’s first speech as MP was good. “Who knows if you’ll be back,” SNP MP replies in praise. “Or any of us”
Everyone knows that after seven years of neglect from the Conservative government, the NHS is undergoing a serious crisis of funding and staffing. The last thing needed is more uncertainty. That is exactly what the NHS faces with Brexit.
On Wednesday Theresa May will trigger article 50 and later this week health bosses publish the updated Five Year Forward View. It is time for the prime minister and the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, to give the NHS and its patients the certainty needed through the Brexit process. May has already turned her back on the promise of £350m a week for our NHS and now she is walking away from her responsibilities to protect the health service through a turbulent Brexit process that will hit it hard.
The complacency in government is astounding. Last week Hunt published the department of health’s Mandate to NHS England to set “the government’s objectives and any requirements for NHS England”. Amazingly, the 24-page document made no mention of Brexit whatsoever.
It should come as no surprise that the NHS is not a priority for the government. Hunt isn’t even a member of the cabinet committees managing the exit strategy. Yet Britain’s health and social care system is dependent on tens of thousands of European staff, many of whom have settled and built lives here while caring for our sick and elderly. Safeguarding the future of these staff should be an absolute priority in the Brexit negotiations. But in the House of Commons last week Hunt failed to offer any reassurance that he’s prepared to stand up for this essential section of the workforce he oversees.
Will health professionals from other EU countries be able to come to work in our NHS after Brexit, or will there be a cap on their numbers? As long as the issue is left unclear, more and more EU workers are voting with their feet and leaving on their own terms. In a recent survey, 42% of European health staff working here said they are now thinking of leaving the UK. Almost 5,500 have left since the Brexit vote according to NHS Digital, a 25% increase on the 2015 figures. And others are being put off from coming here at all: only 96 European nurses registered to work in the UK in December – that figure was 1,304 for last July.
So our first test of the government plans will be whether they deliver a right of remain for the 140,000 EU nationals working in the NHS and social care system. Secondly, on funding, we know that the EU’s Horizon 2020 scheme is due to invest £7.5bn in health research across the EU over the next five years, and the UK will be by far the largest recipient of those funds. We also receive EU funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative, the European Cooperation in Science and Technology programme, and the Active and Assisted Living programme for older people.
This long-term funding is vital in giving security to those medical institutions and universities planning major research projects. They cannot just wait and see what will happen after 2019. So we need to know whether access to these funding streams will continue after Brexit. If not, how do the government propose to make up the shortfall?
Our third test is on reciprocal healthcare arrangements. It is a key principle that British citizens can obtain free healthcare elsewhere in Europe, just as they would at home. That is an important safety net for British holidaymakers, and for UK citizens living elsewhere in Europe. Does the government intend to maintain those arrangements? If not, how will it address the increased insurance costs for UK holidaymakers?
Our fourth test is on EU healthcare collaboration. Working effectively with our European partners, on everything from infectious disease control to the licensing and regulation of medicines, has been vital for the NHS in recent years. The sector desperately needs to know whether it’s the government’s intention to maintain the UK’s participation in pan-European public health initiatives after Brexit. Will the UK continue to participate in the centralised marketing authorisation procedure for the licensing, sale and regulation of medicines, governed by the European Medicines Agency? The government needs to be clear about how Brexit will affect the UK pharmaceutical industry when exporting medicines to other member states in future.
These are difficult and detailed questions, but they are all of absolute importance to the future of our health service and of our medical research sectors. There is no reason why May should refuse to give us the answers. That will allow us to understand with greater clarity what the impact of Brexit will be on the NHS – and most importantly, it will allow patients and staff the opportunity to scrutinise the government’s plans closely over the next two years.
The NHS is already in crisis over funding and staffing. But Brexit has the potential to tip those crises into disasters. Patients and NHS staff should not be bargaining chips in May’s hard Brexit negotiations. They want a world-class NHS delivering the best quality healthcare. As article 50 is triggered, the very least the public deserves is clarity and certainty from its government.
Theresa May will pave the way for a new generation of grammar schools on Wednesday, as her chancellor uses the budget to push ahead with a controversial policy that is seen as a key priority for the prime minister.
Philip Hammond will plough £320m into expanding the government’s free school programme, creating 70,000 places in 140 schools, which will be free to offer selective education after the government passes legislation.
May’s pledge to end the ban on grammars during this parliament means that many of the new schools, which are largely due to open after 2020, could opt to choose pupils based on academic merit.
The chancellor will underline the government’s focus on selective education by also extending free public transport for the poorest children to grammar schools, covering those within two to 15 miles of their homes.
The news triggered an immediate backlash from groups representing teachers, asking why the money wasn’t going to existing state schools. They claimed that a funding crisis meant children faced being taught in bigger class sizes, with limited resources and fewer teachers.
Labour accused the government of “throwing more good money after bad” while the Liberal Democrats described it as an unbelievable decision in the face of “devastating cuts to school budgets”.
The policy comes alongside plans, expected to be announced on Wednesday, to put aside rising tax revenues to help build up a £60bn reserve to deal with Brexit-related uncertainty.
Hammond is also likely to react to a Conservative backlash over the government’s business rates reforms by offering more transitional relief to companies and to put money towards plugging a massive funding gap for social care.
But the decision to place the possibility of more grammar schools at the heart of a budget that will be seen as the chancellor’s chance to steady the ship before article 50 is triggered underlines a determination to drive forward what many consider May’s flagship education reform.
The prime minister insisted that the proposals would guarantee more choice for parents. “For too many children, a good school place remains out of reach with their options determined by where they live or how much money their parents have,” she said. “Over the last six years, we have overseen a revolution in our schools system and we have raised standards and opportunity, but there is much more to do.”
Hammond insisted that the core schools budget – which stands at more than £40bn a year – would be protected and that the policy would help to ensure that children could access quality education whatever their background.
“Investing in education and skills is the single most important thing that we can do to equip our children for the future,” he said.
The policy will also see £216m of investment into school infrastructure to help rebuild and refurbish existing schools, which the Treasury said would be on top of £10bn to be spent on the condition of schools. It said that 1.8m more pupils were being taught in good or outstanding schools – now making up 89% of the total – but argued that more than 1m were still in under-performing institutions.
The new schools will come on top of 500 free schools already in train for 2020, with 110 of the 140 expected after the next election. Examples of successful free schools provided by the Treasury included Tauheedul Islam boys’ high school in Blackburn, Exeter mathematics school and the London Academy of Excellence.
While not all the new schools will choose to become grammars, officials made clear that the new money was to support the proposals in the green paper called schools that work for everyone in which the notion of expanding selective education was key.
Dr Mary Bousted, the general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said teachers and heads would be dismayed to see Hammond throwing money at free schools and grammar schools when others were facing big real terms funding cuts.
“These spending pledges are totally insufficient to tackle the funding crisis the government is inflicting on schools by forcing them to make over £3bn of savings by 2020. Bigger class sizes, fewer learning resources and fewer teachers with greater workloads are the likely consequences,” she said.
She argued that “funding the expansion of selective education is a mistake that will result in a small minority benefitting at the expense of the vast majority of the country’s young people”.
The shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner, said free schools were being opened in areas where they were not needed. “This is now throwing more good money after bad. It will do nothing to address the shortage of available school places,” she said, pointing to £3bn of funding cuts.
The Lib Dem education spokesman, John Pugh, said: “This is unbelievable. Two weeks ago, the free schools programme was shown to have overspent to the tune of £9bn, at the same time as existing schools struggle to pay for books, cut teachers and their buildings decay around them.”
But Toby Young, director of the New Schools Network said: “I’m delighted that the government has renewed its commitment to free schools. It’s a recognition that free schools are the most cost-effective way of providing much-needed new places, as well as popular with parents and more likely to be ranked ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted than any other type of school.”
The policy comes as Hammond is being urged to scrap cuts to inheritance, corporation and income tax in order to plough money into benefits, as figures reveal the extent to which living standards are going to be squeezed by rising inflation.
Analysis by the Resolution Foundation shows a “double whammy” for lower-income working families who the government has said it wants to target.
It finds that real wages could start falling by the end of the year while the government’s welfare freeze will inflict far more pain than has been predicted, taking £3.6bn more than expected from some of the poorest people in the country by 2020.
Torsten Bell, the thinktank’s director, warned that the pattern of external forecasts since November suggested that the Office for Budget Responsibility could revise up its inflation forecast to 2.6% this year and next. He said the impact on wages could be catastrophic.
Hammond will respond to concern over the deterioration of social care in England by announcing a £1.3bn emergency boost for those services, Whitehall sources say. The money will be made available over the next two financial years, starting next month, but is unlikely to appease critics such as the Local Government Association and Age UK, who claim the sector needs at least £2bn a year more giving rising costs and the growing elderly population.
Hammond is expected to say that the money should directly benefit the NHS by reducing the number of patients who end up stuck in hospital despite being medically fit to leave because social care in their area is unavailable.
It is likely to be directed at schemes that aim to tackle what the NHS calls delayed transfers of care, or bedblocking, and the risk of mainly older patients being admitted or readmitted to hospital.
However, Hammond is set to face down demands from Labour, the British Medical Association and many NHS bodies by refusing to increase the health service’s budget beyond the sums already agreed.
The BMA has called for an extra £10bn a year for the NHS, while Labour has demanded £12bn for health and social care.
But he is expected to make an extra £200m available for NHS capital projects in 2017-18, after warnings from NHS England chief Simon Stevens that his planned “transformation” of the health service in England would struggle unless local NHS bodies had more money to spend building and repairing premises.
Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, controversially moved more than £1bn from the NHS’s capital budget to its revenue budget in an attempt to give hospitals more money to spend amid an unprecedented financial squeeze.
Lib Dem MP Norman Lamb has organised a cross-party group of 28 MPs who have met the prime minister to urge action on the issue. They are calling for £2bn for social care over 2017-18, £1.5bn for the NHS focused on out of hospital care and £500m dedicated to mental health.
There was a time when Theresa May cared that the public considered the Conservatives to be the “nasty party”. That time has long past. Now Theresa is ruler of all she surveys. She has created the world in her own image and it is good. With Labour posing little threat and surrounded only by flatterers, the prime minister has absolute power.
And with that absolute power has come an absolute lack of self-criticism. She no longer notices nor cares what people think. She even imagines that saying the word “Inc-red-i-ble” in the manner of a 1970s comedian on the sex offender register is funny. Prime minister’s questions has come to this.
Jeremy Corbyn had chosen to use all six of his questions on the prime minister’s decision to override a court judgment to extend personal independence payments to people with mental as well as physical disabilities. It should have been a good call on the Labour leader’s part, as picking on people with dementia and mental illness is not generally a good look for a government. Theresa, though, was outraged that anyone should dare question her judgment.
“No one is going to see a cut in their payments,” she said, wilfully missing the point that the real issue was the 120,000 people who wouldn’t now be getting the money that the judiciary had said they should have.
Corbyn then accused her of trying to sneak the changes in legislation through parliament without consultation. The prime minister narrowed her eyes. How dare he talk to her like that? How very dare he? Any member of her cabinet who took that tone would be out of a job.
“We made a written ministerial statement to the house last Thursday,” she replied, her voice pure ice. “And the work and pensions secretary left a message on a voicemail.” She didn’t sound entirely sure whose. Or when.
By any normal standards a written statement and a dodgy voicemail could count as sneaking, so Corbyn had another go. “The government has over-ridden an independent court decision,” he repeated. Theresa shrugged. So what? What was he going to do about it? She wasn’t that bothered what the Labour leader did or didn’t think.
Yes, it had been a bit unfortunate that her policy chief had appeared to rubbish people with mental health issues as pill-popping timewasters who sit around at home all day, but he probably had a point. There were too many people moaning and droning about feeling depressed and anxious who just needed to do a decent day’s work. Far better to cut inheritance tax rather than add to disability handouts. Anyone could see that.
As it dawned on him that the prime minister wasn’t in the slightest bit interested in people with mental health issues, Corbyn began to lose some of his focus; the normal rules of human interaction clearly no longer applied and he had no frame of reference. Most people would at least be a little embarrassed at having their indifference shown up, but Theresa was now borderline sociopathic.
Theresa drummed her fingers on the dispatch box. She was tired of talking about people with disabilities. What she wanted to talk about was her fantastic byelection victory in Copeland. Could someone ask her why she was so marvellous? There were any number of Tory sycophants only too willing to oblige.
Andrew Bridgen got in first. Did she agree with him that the Tory success in Copeland was entirely down to the prime minister’s own brilliance? This was much more like it. “Yes,” she replied. It was entirely down to her own magnificence. The idea that winning the byelection might have more to do with Labour being completely useless was just absurd.
But even talking about herself wasn’t enough to conceal her sense of boredom. She wasn’t the only one. As she went on to yawn her way through a tough question from the SNP’s Angus Robertson on devolved agriculture and fisheries powers, large gaps began to open up on both benches. PMQs used to play to a packed house, but May and Corbyn have turned it into something entirely missable.
A few months into my first job in the NHS, some 38 years ago, I watched Prime Minister Jim Callaghan being interviewed, on his return to the UK after an international mid-winter summit in the Caribbean, about the strikes in public services that have come to be known as the winter of discontent. I and pretty well everyone working in the NHS, and most of the population, knew there was a crisis. Callaghan’s dismissive comment were famously reported as “Crisis, what crisis?” They didn’t go down well, he didn’t act, and he went on to lose the impending election.
Today, can it really be that our current prime minister is the only one who doesn’t realise there is an NHS crisis?
The comment by the British Red Cross chief executive that there is a “humanitarian crisis” upped the ante, but at prime minister’s questions Theresa May said he was crying wolf. However, the fact is that, humanitarian or not, crisis means crisis, and if she carries on with her current denial – and inaction – the NHS will soon cease to be able to cope.
There have been three further NHS crises since 1979: in 1987-8, as the NHS ran out of money and failed to cope with the winter pressures it faced; in the early 90s, when the sickest patients were left waiting on trolleys in corridors for days; and in 2006, when the NHS overspent across the board because it couldn’t do the limitless amount the Blair government expected of it. Each crisis began to be sorted only when the government of the day finally accepted there was problem, and that ministers had to play a leading part in solving it. And so will this one.
Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn clash over NHS at first PMQs of 2017
My own experience taking on and turning round three different “failing” hospitals taught me that failure occurs when those responsible for poor performance can’t or won’t face up to the reality and instead present it as merely “challenging”. This government describes a service that is being financed as requested, struggling to meet surprising “record” demand but “mainly” coping reasonably, as (it thinks) NHS England confirms, and which would cope well if the resources diverted to thoughtless people who aren’t very ill were used to support the truly needy.
The reality is starkly different. Senior NHS staff know it but keep quiet because they risk being sacked if they speak out. Demand is rising steadily, in line with long-term predictions, at up to 5% a year, so there is no justification for any surprise. On the other hand, waits are rising up to 20 times as fast, which should be cause for alarm. NHS England’s most recent quarterly figures for major A&Es show an increase in attendances of under 5% and an increase of over 70% in waits of more than four hour in a year. Astonishingly, that the numbers waiting more than four hours increased by more than the number of patients, so fewer patients were seen within four hours than a year previously. If these rates of decline continue, the NHS will simply keel over.
Jeremy Hunt: up to 30% of people using A&E departments do not need emergency care
What capacity exists is increasingly silting up as patients are unable to move from one part of their care to the next because there is no room. Because they are stuck where they don’t need to be, they prevent the next (sicker) group of patients from getting the care they need promptly, a classic downward spiral. To make matters worse, capacity is actually being reduced in social care and the NHS – the result of a financial settlement for this parliament with minimal growth and an assumed £22bn of savings. As his Commons appearance last week revealed, the NHS England chief, Simon Stevens, now realises the settlement was insufficient from the outset.
The capacity shortfall has little to do with the “thoughtless 30%” so excoriated by Jeremy Hunt for turning up unnecessarily at A&E. May’s suggestion, making already overwhelmed GPs work longer hours, completely misses the point, and suggests she does too. It would obviously help a bit if some of the 30% didn’t turn up unnecessarily, but it wouldn’t create capacity where it is currently lacking. The real problems relate to blockages in treating those who are really ill and in immediate need of treatment, and those who need further support in their own home or a care home, to make their discharge from hospital possible. These are the problems May must turn her mind to.
The best report on the NHS in the last 30 years, chaired by Sir Roy Griffiths, memorably said: “If Florence Nightingale were carrying her lamp through the corridors of the NHS today she would almost certainly be searching for the people in charge.” Yet today, three decades on, no one is in charge of the NHS. So much time is spent buck-passing and cost-shifting for problems that require concerted action.
In the meantime, ballooning wait times prejudice safety everywhere, on occasion with disastrous and fatal consequences. This is what “mainly” coping really means. And as the delays increase, so will these consequences.
