PMQs live: Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer clash over NHS and the justice system

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.

If so, someone will have to tell him this morning that Keir Starmer has given an interview saying the NHS is broken. So what, Sunak might think. That’s the sort of thing Labour always says. But what should make this worrying for him is that it’s the splash in the Daily Telegraph.

This is significant because the Telegraph is the house journal for Tory members and it means a) the paper is taking Starmer seriously and b) he is saying something that probably matches the experience of its readers.

Starmer told the paper in his interview:

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.

This is political rhetoric, but it might be true too. Last night Prof Sir Michael Marmot, one of the world’s leading public health experts, told Andrew Marr’s show on LBC that if the government wanted to destroy the NHS, they were going about it the right way. Marmot explained:

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.

That 3.8% increase per year went down to about 1% increase per year, waiting lists started to climb and climb and climb. 150,000 vacancies for doctors and nurses. The failure to pay doctors and nurses properly, it’s a recipe for making the NHS fall over.

That’s why I say if you had the hypothesis that this was as sort of a malicious undermining of the NHS, the data we’re seeing consistent with the hypothesis.

I have no special insight into what motivates ministers, but they’re not behaving as if they want to preserve our NHS.

And if you go back to the Commonwealth Fund, which does regular comparisons of health care systems in 11 countries, the NHS always used to be number one and we’re slipping down the rankings. It’s a tragedy.

In 1997 Tony Blair used the line during his election campaign that there were “24 hours to save the NHS”. In his Telegraph interview Starmer suggested he would be doing something similar, saying:

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

Starmer has also spoken to the i. In that interview he said he was not concerned about Labour’s poll lead falling, because the party was in a strong position. He said:

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.”

I think we’re probably making better progress than most people thought we could make. On the route, as in government so in opposition, there are lots of voices and opinion polls that are intended to knock you off course. But I’ve always been single-mindedly focused on this. My job is to ensure that we’ve got the Labour party into government.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Mark Harper, the transport secretary, gives evidence to the Commons transport committee.

10am: Oliver Dowden, the Cabinet Office minister, speaks at the Cyber UK conference in Belfast.

12pm: Rishi Sunak faces Keir Starmer at PMQs.

2.55pm: Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, speaks on the final day of the Belfast conference to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement. Bill Clinton, the former US president, Leo Varadkar, the taoiseach (Irish PM) and Sunak are also speaking later in the afternoon.

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