Starmer claims NHS is ‘broken’ and not safe under Tories, as he says he is unconcerned about poll lead falling – UK politics live

According to the Politico poll of polls Labour’s average lead over the Conservatives has fallen to 15 points

Good morning. Today we have got the first PMQs since the Easter recess and the first involving Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer for almost a month. Sunak has been relatively successful in recent weeks (that “relatively” is important – his predecessor was Liz Truss) and it appears that his ratings are helping his party’s. According to the Politico poll of polls, Labour’s average lead over the Conservatives has fallen to 15 points. Two months ago it was ahead by over 20 points.

But Labour is still in a strong position. This week we learned that Sunak does not spent much time in the morning reading the newspapers. At his press conference on Monday he had to admit he did not know anything about the story about the Brecon Beacons being “renamed”, and at the subsequent lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson was evasive when asked what papers Sunak does actually read in the morning. It is rumoured that he only bothers with the Wall Street Journal and the FT.

I think the NHS is broken. There’s been one way of doing things for the last 13 years, and this is where we’ve ended up now with the NHS.

If you had the hypothesis that the government was seeking to destroy the National Health Service, if that were your hypothesis, all the data that we’re seeing are consistent with that hypothesis.

They may say no, no that’s not what we’re seeking to do. But if you look from 2010, waiting lists have started to increase, not just the pandemic, not just the war in Ukraine, from 2010. In the period pre-2010, waiting lists came down, satisfaction with the NHS was high, spending on the NHS went up at about 3.8% per year, up to 2010.

If they carry on like this, it can’t survive – the biggest risk to the NHS is another Tory government.

The way I look at it is my task is to take the Labour party from the worst-ever general election result since 1935 back into government within a five-year period.

Lots of people said that’s impossible to do. I’ve never believed that. Therefore the trajectory I’m interested in is that trajectory. And measuring ourselves against that I am confident as we go into these local elections.”