Corbyn pledges "fat cat" tax, while May is confronted by angry voter
That concludes our live coverage. Here’s a summary of the day’s events.
-
The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is to lay out his plans for a “fat cat” tax that would hit big businesses, city banks and Premier League clubs who pay huge salaries.
-
The leader of the Scottish Conservatives, Ruth Davidson, used her platform at the Orwell Foundation to attack the nationalism she says the SNP espouses.
- The DUP has been accused of sexism after its leader, Arlene Foster, described Sinn Féin’s Stormont head, Michelle O’Neill, as “blonde”.
- Channel 4 News and Sky announced they will host an election programme on Monday 29 May featuring Jeremy Paxman interviewing Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn.
- May has been berated by a voter with a learning disability who has suffered cuts to her benefits.
- Incoming Conservative MPs are considerably more Eurosceptic than their predecessors, according to new analysis that challenges the widespread assumption that a large Tory majority would lead to a softer Brexit.
-
Corbyn has told nurses they are underpaid, overworked and that their jobs are too stressful.
You can read a fuller rundown of the day’s major news political new stories here.
Corbyn promises "fat cat" tax
My colleagues Anushka Asthana and Severin Carrell report that Jeremy Corbyn will lay out plans for a “fat cat” tax under which big businesses, city banks and Premier League clubs will have to pay a levy if they offer workers hefty pay packages.
The full Labour manifesto, to be published on Tuesday, will include a proposal that aims to disincentivise excessive pay by charging companies a 2.5% levy on earnings above £330,000, and 5% on those above £500,000.
Labour will justify the move – which will hit employers rather than workers and be calculated on the basis of basic salary, shares, bonuses and pensions rolled together – by claiming that inequality is damaging society. Those who designed the policy believe it will deter companies from paying excessive amounts.
The rates mean that companies will have to pay £4,250 extra for every worker receiving £500,000 in pay and perks. For a person earning £1m a year, that would rise sharply to £29,250.
The policy will be accompanied by Corbyn unveiling a plan to raise £4.5bn by increasing income tax for those paid over £80,000, with experts suggesting a 45% rate.
Some more on those comments from Clive Lewis, who has told reporters at the Progressive Alliance campaign launch that first-past-the-post rules were “shoe-horning a multi-party system into a two-party electoral system”.
There are lots of people who are accepting that tactical voting is a reality. It’s always been a reality, it doesn’t take me or the people here today to tell anyone how to tactically vote.
People can see if they want to stop Theresa May on 8 June - they understand, they are sensible, they can work it out. So let’s see what happens.
Addressing the audience, he said:
Our society is more complex, our social allegiances less fixed, our identities less certain than they were when the Labour party was born. Other progressive parties now speak to parts of our country where we are no longer heard.
And that means that just as you cannot thrive without us, so we cannot thrive without you.
Updated
Labour’s Clive Lewis has said his support for a cross-party alliance is not an act of defiance against leader Jeremy Corbyn, despite Labour’s rejection of such a deal.
The former shadow cabinet minister voiced his support for the Progressive Alliance at the campaign’s launch in London. The group is encouraging people to vote tactically in a bid to defeat Conservative candidates in key seats in next month’s general election.
Lewis, the party’s candidate for Norwich South, said:
It’s not an act of defiance. It’s about understanding there are lots of people, hundreds and thousands of people, who actually want to see politics done differently. Jeremy Corbyn came in on the platform of doing politics differently. This is about doing politics differently in a constructive way and I think that’s a good thing.
Updated
Conservative HQ has launched a wave of digital attack adverts targeting Jeremy Corbyn into voters’ Facebook feeds, a snapshot of the opening stages of the online election campaign reveals.
Labour’s response meanwhile largely avoids mention of its party leader, according to a sample of more than 77 adverts sent out by party HQs to more than 2,000 Facebook users that have been collected by a new initiative called Who Targets Me.
The two main parties are expected to spend well over £1m between them during the 2017 general election by exploiting Facebook’s ability to target specific voter groups with tailored messaging.
Updated
A Conservative plan for changes to workers’ rights would leave low-paid staff worse off by more than £2,000, Labour has claimed.
Theresa May has unveiled new protections for employees including a commitment to further increases in the “national living wage”. But Labour said the small print revealed the planned hikes were being watered down.
The party claimed the changes would leave the average full-time worker on the minimum wage £2,283 worse off by 2020. It said plans for the wage to reach 60% of median hourly earnings had been changed to “in line with median incomes”, which would mean lower payments.
Ian Lavery, Labour’s national campaign coordinator, said:
Theresa May is taking working people for fools. This morning, she claimed she was standing up for working people. But, hidden in the small print of her announcement, is a cut to working people’s incomes.
The changes announced by May also included a statutory right to leave for those who need to care for a family member, protections for workers in the gig economy, such as drivers for Uber and internet delivery firms, and representation for workers on company boards.
May said:
We are committing that the national living wage will continue to rise in line with median earnings, yes, that people will be able to request time off to care for a relative, and we want to support and encourage returnships.
A Conservative spokesman said:
Our ambition in the last parliament was for the national living wage to reach 60% of median earnings by 2020 subject to sustained economic growth. We intend to meet that commitment by 2020 - and then continue with a national living wage linked to 60% of median earnings.
Updated
Theresa May’s belated attempts to engage directly with members of the public ran into difficulties when she was berated during a walkabout in Abingdon in Oxfordshire by a voter with a learning disability who has suffered from benefit cuts.
Cathy Mohan told the prime minister, who has been accused of hiding from the electorate, that she was forced to live on £100 a month in benefits after being denied help with the extra costs of coping with a learning disability.
“Do you know what I want? I want my disability living allowance to come back... I can’t live on £100 a month. They just took it all away from me,” Mohan said in a scene that was captured on camera.
The confrontation occurred after May’s campaign shifted strategy to allow more contact with voters. Her team changed tack after becoming acutely sensitive to claims the prime minister was avoiding ordinary people by holding invite-only events for Conservative party activists and employees in their workplaces.
May tried to defend her record, saying that the government had “a lot of plans for people with mental health [problems] in particular” but Mohan continued to challenge her, reminding her that people with learning disabilities needed more help, too.
The leader of the Scottish Conservatives, Ruth Davidson, is talking about the difference between nationalism and patriotism, using her platform at the Orwell Foundation to attack the Scottish National party (SNP).
Nationalism, she claims, is a form of “identity politics” and, in light of its recent propagation, she says she cannot blame voters for feeling “bullied and hectored” into backing the SNP.
The truth is that the nationalist politics identified by Orwell - the attempt to classify and label human beings into groups marked ‘good’ and ‘bad’ - has become a key part of our political practice in Scotland.
And it has to be said that this has been pursued quite deliberately, so that many people who do not subscribe to the loudly advanced, so-called ‘good’ side of the argument feel voiceless and helpless.
Because, in Scotland, political nationalism has introduced the idea that only one side of the constitutional divide can be the authentic voice of ‘the people of Scotland’. That only it has the right to be heard. That other voices are, by their nature, illegitimate and phoney.
Davidson quotes the comedian Billy Connolly, who said: “I love Scotland. But I hate the way nationalists think they own the place.”
As a result of such politics, she says “the implication hangs in the air - those who are not orthodox, or do not follow the right way, are foreign, we are alien, we are other... This technique has, for a long time, been effective. If people feel bullied and hectored into supporting SNP, I don’t blame them”.
The SNP’s candidate for Edinburgh North and Leith, Deidre Brock, accuses Davidson of “double-think”, saying that the Scottish Conservatives’ leader’s “own political message could not be more tribal”.
It is Orwellian to lecture others on nationalism when she’s the one who drapes herself in a flag and drives around in a tank.
Her claim to the moral high ground is totally undermined given that the SNP’s vision of an independent Scotland is inclusive, outward-looking and internationalist, while Ms Davidson supports a Brexit Britain turning its back on its nearest neighbours and trying to make enemies of our European allies.
Updated
There can be no place for sexism, Sinn Féin’s Stormont leader has said, after the DUP leader, Arlene Foster, referred to her as “blonde”.
Michelle O’Neill said political leaders in Northern Ireland had a responsibility to lead by example.
A Democratic Unionist spokesman clarified nothing that was said was offensive or intended to be so. But O’Neill said:
There can be no room in our society for sexism, misogyny, racism, homophobia or any form of discrimination.
There is no right or wrong way to look and women are in positions of leadership because we belong, representing everyone equally.
Foster used the word blonde to describe O’Neill during a word-association game in a newspaper interview. The DUP said:
Nothing that was said was offensive or intended to be so and Sinn Féin have a cheek demanding an apology.
Indeed they would be better served examining some of their own recent words and deeds and the impact they have had on people in Northern Ireland.
Updated
Afternoon summary
- Channel 4 News and Sky have announced they will host an election programme on Monday 29 May featuring Jeremy Paxman interviewing Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn. (See 5.21pm.)
- May has said that voters would not learn much from seeing her debate Corbyn. (See 5.14pm.)
- May has announced that the Tories will force big firms to publish data on racial pay gaps. (See 2.40pm.)
- Incoming Conservative MPs are considerably more Eurosceptic than their predecessors, according to new analysis that challenges the widespread assumption that a large Tory majority would lead to a softer Brexit.
That’s all from me for today.
My colleague Kevin Rawlinson is taking over now.
Updated
Newsnight’s Chris Cook has published an interesting an analysis of the seats that Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn are targeting for visits. He says that May is obviously focusing on seats the Tories hope to win, but that Corbyn’s schedule is harder to explain.
Here’s an excerpt.
Mr Corbyn is holding events in safe Labour seats and in Tory seats which, the polls suggest, are very unlikely to be won. But he is not doing much in the zone in between, where seats are most likely to change hands. Why?
The simplest answer is that Mr Corbyn’s team simply think the polls are wrong. They think the Tory seats he’s going to are going to go red - and the Tories are wasting their time fighting in seats that will stay with Labour. We will see. A less simple answer is that his campaign has chosen not to take him to the front line. Several Labour MPs in those seats have made it clear that they think his presence will not help them persuade swing voters.
This pattern has been noticed by some of his critics who wonder if this is about life after 8 June. Mr Corbyn, some Labour insiders say, is visiting safe seats where Labour activists are over-represented to bolster his place in the next Labour leadership race. Two Labour MPs suggested to me he is trying to maximise the popular Labour vote to help bolster his argument for staying on in the event of a defeat.
Broadcasting, though, is a factor to consider in all this. ITV audiences in target seats may not notice exactly where he is. Mr Corbyn has been getting into the TV regions - and it is possible he is generating better pictures, addressing big crowds, by visiting safer Labour seats.
Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian
When Cathy Mohan confronted Theresa May in Abingdon, she asked the prime minister about people with learning disabilities. May responded by talking about mental health. This has angered campaigners.
Ismail Kaji, Mencap’s parliamentary affairs support officer, said:
I have a learning disability and I have disability benefits. Like Cathy, many people with a learning disability are scared of changes to their disability benefits and are understandably angry.
I was really worried to hear Theresa May keep talking about mental health, when Cathy said she has a learning disability, which is not anything to do with mental health. That makes me think that Theresa May is unclear on the difference, and that is very worrying.
Here is Ian Lavery, Labour’s co national election coordinator, commenting on Theresa May’s encounter with the Oxfordshire voter angry about disability benefit cuts. He said:
This is what happens when Theresa May meets real people.
The Tories have failed to support disabled people and those with learning difficulties, while changes to personal independence payments will deny 350,000 disabled people the support they need.
Updated
May and Corbyn to be interviewed by Paxman on 'May v Corbyn Live' election programme
Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn are going to take part in a joint Channel 4 News/Sky News election programme. They will be interviewed by Jeremy Paxman and then take questions from a studio audience, moderated by Sky’s political editor, Faisal Islam. But they won’t be going head to head.
Here is an excerpt from the news release for what they are calling May v Corbyn Live.
On Monday 29 May at 8.30pm, Channel 4 and Sky News will broadcast a live 90-minute programme in which the chief contenders for prime minister - Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn - will be interviewed, for the first time in front of a live studio TV audience.
Channel 4’s election night anchor Jeremy Paxman will interview both May and Corbyn individually; allowing viewers to hear directly from the two party leaders. Sky News political editor Faisal Islam will moderate as questions from the audience are put to the two leaders.
The programme will be produced by Sky News live from a London venue and broadcast simultaneously on both Channel 4 and Sky News. The debate will be available to view live on Channel 4’s on-demand platform All4.
At the end of that week, on the Friday before the general election, May and Corbyn will both be appearing on the BBC’s election Question Time, although, again, they will not be going head to head.
Updated
Theresa May's Facebook Q&A - Summary
According to the Press Association, a counter on the website at the time of Theresa May’s Facebook Q&A suggested that around 400,000 people logged on for at least part of the event, with up to 15,000 people watching at any particular point.
Users fired off 9,900 “angry face” emojis during the webcast, compared with 4,300 “thumbs-ups” and 1,200 heart-shaped “likes”.
Here are some of the main points.
- May said viewers would not learn much from seeing her debate with Jeremy Corbyn. In response to a question submitted by Corbyn himself, who asked why she would not have a debate with him, May replied:
What I think is more important is actually that I and he take questions directly from the voters. I don’t think people get much out of seeing politicians having a go at each other, I think people want to hear directly.
- She claimed that she had been the victim of “nasty” fake news videos circulated online during the Conservative leadership contest. Admitting that fake news could be a problem, she said:
During the Conservative party leadership campaign, we started to see some pretty nasty videos being sent round about me.
I didn’t actually see any of them but I’m told it was in the realms of claims that weren’t accurate. So it is a concern.
- She hinted that the Conservative manifesto would propose extra spending for the NHS. (See 3.13pm.)
- She rejected claims that employment tribunal fees stop people pursuing valid claims. (See 3.09pm.)
- She said she had never personally been foxhunting.
Updated
Omar Khan, director of race equality think tank the Runnymede Trust, has welcomed Theresa May’s plans to force firms to publish data on ethnicity pay gaps. (See 12.40pm.) He said:
Theresa May is absolutely right to call the ethnicity pay gap an injustice and we’re pleased to hear her intention to require companies to publish data to tackle the problem.
Her commitment applies to firms with 250 or more staff. We believe this should apply to firms with 50 or more staff, as recommended by the government’s own review by Baroness Ruby McGregor-Smith.
Data monitoring alone is not a silver bullet. Getting results requires joined-up government to unblock barriers to getting a job in the first place, progressing at work, and opening up boardrooms to diversity.
For workers to get recompense in the face of ongoing discrimination they also need unfettered access to tribunals.
Updated
Thousands of Jeremy Corbyn supporters have turned out for huge rallies in West Yorkshire as the Labour leader made his final campaign stops before preparing to launch the party’s manifesto, the Press Association reports.
A crowd of around 3,000 people packed a courtyard, road and parts of a park opposite Brudenell Social Club in Leeds, 20 minutes before Corbyn was due to arrive.
The popular underground music venue is in Hyde Park, which houses many of the city’s students.
It is in the constituency of Leeds North West, held by Liberal Democrat Greg Mulholland.
NEWS: Thousands of people - many students - have turned out at Brudenell Social Club where Jeremy Corbyn is due. Full story at 6 #OnTheAire. pic.twitter.com/IaT55i2Ld0
— Made in Leeds TV (@madeinleeds) May 15, 2017
Sir Vince Cable, the former Lib Dem business secretary who is trying to win back his Twickenham seat, had a Diane Abbott moment on TV this morning. Interviewed on ITV’s Good Morning Britain in his capacity as the Lib Dems’ economics spokesman, he got into trouble when trying to explain how many people would be affected by the party’s plan to lift the cap on public sector pay rises.
You can tell it was bad because the Conservatives have sent out what seems to be an entire transcript. Here’s an excerpt.
Susanna Reid: Ok so let me put the catch in which is that – how many people would this give a pay rise to?
Vince Cable: Well this is across the public sector, you know – the military, civilians ... (Interrupted)
Susanna Reid: And how many people is that?
Vince Cable: Well we’re talking, you know, probably a million? But the core public sector, you know teachers, nurses, public sector workers. No we’re not making….
Susanna Reid: So about one million people? five million people?
Vince Cable: It’s probably about a couple. I would guess. Yeah?
Susanna Reid: A couple of million? So two million people.
Vince Cable: Roughly. Yeah.
Susanna Reid: And so how much would that cost if you’re going to give a pay rise to two million ... (Interrupted)
Vince Cable: Well we’re talking about £1.4bn in the first year and subsequently obviously it will depend on the rate of inflation.
Susanna Reid: Ok, so according to the latest statistics, the total number of public sector workers as of December last year was 5.4m people.
Vince Cable: Right. Well there’s a whole lot of people in the public sector who are subcontracted, but the core public sector is I thnk as I suggested, but we’re suggesting that everybody who is on the, you know, who is covered by public sector pay agreements, which is what we’re talking about, subject to public sector pay bargaining, should be covered by this agreement.
Susanna Reid: So is that 2m people or 5.5m people?
Vince Cable: Well of course it depends how much the public sector pay bargaining bodies cover. And their subcontractors and other relationships they would then have to negotiate that as well.
Susanna Reid: And how many people is that?
Vince Cable: Well, we’re talking therefore about the extra 3m on top of that core.
Susanna Reid: So actually this is, I mean, because there’s obviously a big difference in cost if you’re going to give a pay rise to 2m people than if you’re going to give a pay rise to 5.5m people.
Vince Cable: Well we costed the whole package at £1.4bn.
Susanna Reid: Which covers 2m.
Vince Cable: It covers the whole of the public sector and on Wednesday morning we’ll be setting out in detail exactly how this works and who goes to pay for it.
Updated
Here is the ICM write-up of today’s Guardian polling. And here are the tables (pdf).
Tonight Labour are showing a party political broadcast directed by the leftwing director Ken Loach. It will be shown on BBC1 at 6.55pm, on ITV at 6.25pm and on Channel 4 at 7.55pm.
It features Jeremy Corbyn talking about his love for Britain. He says:
I love this country; I love the history, the beauty, the diversity of this country. But people are not at ease. There’s inequality, there’s injustice, there’s anger.
There’s anger because people can’t get on; there’s anger because people can’t get anywhere to live; there’s anger because young people are not getting the jobs they want.
Let’s do it differently; where we work from the principle that the role of government is to give everybody a decent chance. To have public services that are there for us; to have an economy that works for all.
Surely the effort of a government that works for all, and encourages society to work together, has got to be better than a government that works for the few.
The Scottish Labour leader, Kezia Dugdale, has blamed a continuing rise in food bank use in Scotland on both the Tories in London and Nicola Sturgeon’s government in Edinburgh, with emergency parcels from the largest charity hitting a record 146,000 in the last financial year.
On a campaign visit to a food bank in South West Glasgow, the seat currently held by SNP MP Kirsty Blackman, Dugdale said the two parties should be ashamed of the figures from the Trussell Trust because of their cuts in welfare payments and public services, suppressed wages and a systemic failure to tackle poverty.
The charity said use of emergency three-day food parcels had jumped from 14,332 in 2011/12 to 146,000 in 2016/17; nearly 489,000 had been handed out over those six years. The SNP insists Tory benefit cuts have driven up food bank use; the Royal College of Nursing says nurses have used them too because of pay restraint policies.
Dugdale said:
This isn’t about benefits. The reality of food poverty in Scotland, which should shame both the Tories and the SNP, is we have working families relying on food banks. The answer to that is a real living wage of £10 an hour, which would lift working people out of poverty in Scotland.
Updated
The two-child cap on family benefits should be scrapped, the Liberal Democrats have said. A Lib Dem spokesman said:
The ‘rape clause’ is bureaucratisation of the unacceptable, and no decent government should force those of its citizens who have been victims of a traumatising crime like rape to go through this kind of process.
Because there is no way to enforce a two-child policy without something like a ‘rape clause’, and because the policy leads to an increase in child poverty as families are punished for their decisions, which may well have been taken in different circumstances when they were employed, the Liberal Democrats would abolish the two-child limit.
Updated
Jeremy Corbyn had to deliver his campaign speech in Hebden Bridge twice today, because there was not enough room in the town hall for everyone who wanted to hear him.
And here is the queue of people trying to get in.
Voters do not see election as being about Brexit, poll suggests
Back to the Guardian/ICM poll. We also asked respondents which issues they saw as being most important in the general election, and whether they trusted Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn most to handle them.
Most important election issues
On election issues, voters were asked how important these nine issues would be when they came to vote. People replied on a scale, and these are the net scores, those saying the issue was either very or quite important minus those saying it was quite unimportant or not important at all.
The question is not ideal, because people are not inclined to say an issue is unimportant, but a clear hierarchy emerged. Here are the results.
Managing the economy properly: +87
Protecting and improving the NHS: +87
Protecting people from threats at home and abroad: +82
Improving public services generally: +80
Negotiating a good Brexit deal for the UK: +78
Making Britain a fairer country: +76
Protecting the interests of pensioners: +75
Ensuring pupils and students get a good education: +71
Controlling immigration: +59
- The economy and the NHS are seen as the most important election issues, the poll suggests. The poll was carried out over the weekend, when the cyberattack on the NHS was in the headlines, and this may help to explain why the NHS features so prominently.
- Brexit is not seen as the most important election issue, the poll suggests. Even though Theresa May has sought to cast the election as one about Brexit, and her need to get a strong mandate for the negotiations, our poll suggests it is just seen as a middle-ranking issue. (Our poll asked how important people viewed issues when deciding how to vote. YouGov regularly asks people what they think are the most important issues facing the country, and when the question is put like this, Brexit easily comes top. See here - pdf.)
- Immigration is seen as the least important issue, the poll suggests. This is surprising, considering the overwhelming importance immigration played in the EU referendum last year, although it may be that people think the vote to leave the EU means the issue has, to some extent, been addressed.
Best leader on key issues
We then asked people whether they trusted Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn to do the best job on the nine challenges mentioned above. Here are the results.
Managing the economy properly
May: 44%
Corbyn: 16%
Best: May (+28 - her lead over Corbyn)
Protecting and improving the NHS
May: 29%
Corbyn: 32%
Best: Corbyn (+3)
Protecting people from threats at home and abroad
May: 44%
Corbyn: 14%
Best: May (+30)
Improving public services generally
May: 29%
Corbyn: 31%
Best: Corbyn (+2)
Negotiating a good Brexit deal for the UK
May: 47%
Corbyn: 13%
Best: May (+34)
Making Britain a fairer country
May: 29%
Corbyn: 30%
Best: Corbyn (+1)
Protecting the interests of pensioners
May: 29%
Corbyn: 28%
Best: May (+1)
Ensuring pupils and students get a good education
May: 31%
Corbyn: 27%
Best: May (+4)
Controlling immigration
May: 42%
Corbyn: 13%
Best: May (+29)
I have left out the figures “neither” and “don’t know” replies for these questions, but they were quite high - combined, around the 40% level.
- May has an overwhelming lead over Corbyn on four election issues, the poll suggests. Those issues are the economy and protecting people (two of the most important issues for voters), Brexit (a middle-ranking issue) and immigration (a relatively unimportant issue). May also has a very small lead over Corbyn on education and pensioners.
- Corbyn is more trusted than May on three election issues, the poll suggests. They are the NHS, the joint equal most important issue, according to our poll, making Britain fairer and public services generally. This may be what you would expect from a Labour leader, but other polls, like this one, have shown May ahead on the NHS and on fairness.
ICM Unlimited interviewed a representative online sample of 2,030 adults aged 18+ on 12 to 14 May 2017. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults. ICM is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.
UPDATE: Here is the ICM write-up of today’s Guardian polling. And here are the tables (pdf).
Updated
Q: Won’t you guarantee the rights of EU citizens here?
May says she wants to do this, but that Britons abroad must have their rights respected too.
Q: If you win the election, how long will you remain as prime minister. And will you stay until Brexit is sorted.
May says she will serve her full term. The UK will leave after two years. Then there will be an implementation period.
She says she thinks a trade deal can be reached within two years.
But the new parliament will run until 2022.
She will be around, she says.
And that’s it.
I will post a summary soon.
Q: What have you done to end tax avoidance and tax evasion?
Quite a lot, says May.
Several billion pounds has been recouped.
But you always need to look at what more can be done, she says.
Q: Will you stop sharia law from taking root?
May says there is only one law in this country: UK law.
She says, as home secretary, she set up a review into sharia law. That is still going on.
Updated
Peston says the number of questions is now up to 33,000.
Q: Over 60% of PIP (personal independence payments) are overturned on appeal. Doesn’t that show the system is brutal?
May says it would not be right to abolish the assessment process.
Q: Why are schools losing money?
May says record amounts of money are going into schools.
There is a new formula for school funding. People accept the current system is not fair, she says.
Q: Why won’t you legalise cannabis?
May says it is because she has seen the impact of cannabis. It is stronger now than it was, and it can lead people into hard drug use.
Updated
Q: The number of food banks has increased by 7,000 since the Tories have been in power.
May says food banks have been around for some time. When she was in opposition, she tried, unsuccessfully, to get the Labour government to get benefit staff to publicise them. That now happens, she says.
Updated
Q: Animal welfare cases are not dealt with properly by the courts.
May says the courts make independent judgments.
Updated
Q: Why won’t you ban the burqa?
May says women should be free to wear what they want.
Updated
Q: Why are carers paid so little?
May says carers do an amazing job. The welfare system must decide how money is allocated.
Q: Can you do something to help former servicemen now the subject of a witch hunt in Northern Ireland?
May says these legacy cases must be dealt with in a fair way.
Updated
Q: When will you bring back the permanent jobs that went under Margaret Thatcher?
May says the Tories have done something about exploitative zero-hours contracts, the ones with an exclusivity clause. They have been banned.
She says, generally, she wants to encourage more high-skilled jobs.
She has a plan for a stronger Britain, she says.
May mentions the need for strong and stable leadership. Peston says this is the first time she has used the phrase, even though she has been going for half an hour. He congratulates her on her restraint.
Q: There is concern about the use of data to target people in the EU referendum. Is social media campaigning fair?
May says it is important that people do campaign in new ways, as she is doing now.
But there can be problems with fake news, she says.
Q: What if fake news is fed to people who are susceptible to it?
May says that during the Tory leadership campaign some quite nasty videos started circulating about her.
- May says fake news on social media can be a problem in election campaigns.
- She says she was a victim herself during the Tory leadership campaign, when nasty videos about her started circulating on social media.
Updated
Peston says they have had 22,000 questions. He has been rattling through them, but even at this rate is not going to manage them all.
Q: Why did you change your position on Brexit?
May says she was opposed, but that it was a balanced judgment.
If people are to feel they can trust politicians, parliament needs to respect the vote, she says.
Updated
Q: Will your increase spending on mental health provision?
May says she has introduced parity of esteem for mental health.
She wants to ensure schools have staff properly trained to deal with mental health issues.
Q: What are your NHS plans?
May says record amounts of funding are going into the NHS. But you need a strong economy to be able to do that. Labour’s “nonsensical economic policy” would wreck the economy, she says.
Q: Why is a leader, like you, who would be willing to launch a first-use nuclear strike stronger than one, like Corbyn, who will protect the world from genocide?
May says she is committed to the nuclear deterrent.
Updated
Q: Why don’t you introduce higher taxes for the rich?
May says people who are richer do pay more. The top 1% are paying a higher percentage of tax than they did under Labour.
Q: Why don’t you buy British? Why are we using foreign steel in British submarines?
May says she understands that Britain does not produce the type of steel they need for submarines.
Updated
Q: Can you reassure people that the genuinely disabled, who cannot work, will be properly supported?
May says the government has been focusing payments on those most in need.
She says the government wants to ensure the assessments carried out are right.
Q: Why are nurses paid so little compared to company bosses?
May says average nurses’ pay is £31,000. She can only fund the NHS if there is a strong economy.
She says she has put forward plans to tackle irresponsible bosses.
Q: Why are you pressing ahead with corporation tax cuts when they don’t make people richer?
May says she wants firms to create more jobs. Cutting corporation tax encourages that.
She says, since corporation tax has been cut, the revenue from it has gone up.
Q: Why didn’t you go to the RCN conference?
May says it is because she has been doing other things.
Q: A lot of people feel strongly about foxhunting. Isn’t it a throw-back to crueller days?
May says people feel differently.
Q: Have you been hunting?
No, says May.
She says some other ways of dealing with foxes can be cruel.
Updated
Q: Crime is at horrific levels. The police blame lack of funds.
May say overall figures show that crime is at record low levels.
Q: Can you promise there won’t be a second Scottish independence referendum? If so, you will get my vote.
May says she thinks now is not the right time for a referendum. The SNP said the last one would settle the matter for a generation.
May claims a TV election debate would not be helpful to voters
Peston reads out a question from Jeremy Corbyn from Islington.
Q: Don’t people deserve to see a debate?
May says she does not think people get much out of watching politicians argue with each other.
- May claims a TV election debate would not be helpful to voters.
Updated
Q: As a diabetic, I am delighted a diabetic is becoming prime minister. What type of diabetic are you?
May says she is a type 1 diabetic. She says she has to inject herself four or five times a day with insulin.
Q: Has your love of fashion inspired young women to go into politics?
May says she met a young woman in the Commons who said her shoes had inspired her into politics.
Her advice to women would be, be yourself.
May hints that the Tory manifesto will propose extra spending for the NHS
Q: Will you put more money into the NHS on top of what is already promised?
May says more details will be in the manifesto. But by 2020 the government will be spending half a trillion pounds on the NHS.
Q: So is that a hint that you might give it extra money?
May says it’s a hint that we should wait for the manifesto.
- May hints that the Tory manifesto will propose extra spending for the NHS.
Updated
Q: Will you promise to reduce child poverty?
May says child poverty has reduced.
Q: What are you going to do to help the Waspi women (women against state pension inequality)?
May says the government has taken measures to help, but the pension age has to go up.
Q: What will you do to bring down train fares?
May says the government has been trying to simplify train fares.
May rejects claims that employment tribunal fees stop people pursuing valid claims
Q: Will you give Nigel Farage a knighthood.
May laughs, and does not answer.
Q: How can people afford to take a year off to care for someone?
May says the plan announced today is for unpaid leave.
There are other measures in the package that could help, such as the plan to help people return to work.
Q: The increase in fees for taking a case to a tribunal makes it impossible for people to enforce these rights. (See 11.32am.)
May says there has to be a balance. She says if people have genuine cases, they will take them to tribunal.
- May rejects claims that employment tribunal fees stop people pursuing valid claims.
Updated
Q: I can’t vote for you until you guarantee the rights of EU nationals in the UK.
May says she cannot put a date on when this will be sorted, but she thinks goodwill is there to get a solution.
Q: What do you say about knife crime?
Overall it has been coming down, but there have been some worrying incidents, she says.
She says the government has introduced new offences.
Updated
Theresa May takes part in Facebook live
ITV’s Robert Peston is hosting the Facebook live Q&A with Theresa May.
Peston reads out the questions.
Q: You don’t have young people’s interests at heart.
May says this election is about young people’s futures.
She tells Matthew, who posed the question, that if he wants his voice to be heard, he should register to vote.
Q: Why do you want to bring back foxhunting?
May says she is promising a free vote.
Q: Why do you spend so much on aid when people are hungry in this country?
May says we do this for moral reasons. But, she says, it is important to spend money on aid to tackle problems like terrorism.
Updated
Corbyn says there is a story in the papers about the Tories becoming the friends of the working class.
But, he asks, would you describe a government that allows 6 million people to earn less than the living wage as being on the side of working people? Or a government that has 1 million people on zero-hours contracts? Or a government that charges fees when people take a case to an employment tribunal?
Updated
Jeremy Corbyn is speaking now in Hebden Bridge. He says there are two campaigns under way. There is the one people read about in the press, full of negativity and criticism. And then there is the one he experiences on the ground, he says, where he is struck by how positive people are about Labour’s message.
Updated
Lib Dems propose 5p charge on disposable coffee cups
The Liberal Democrats would introduce a 5p charge on disposable coffee cups, the party has said, as part of a “Zero Waste Act” which would include a legally-binding 70% recycling target.
Fewer than 1 in 400 of the 2.5bn disposable cups thrown away each year in the UK are recycled.
The party said its manifesto pledge would build on the success of the plastic bag charge introduced during the coalition government, which it said had seen a reduction of 85% in bags used.
Lady Parminter, the party’s environment spokeswoman, said coffee cups are “the next logical step” after the bag charge. “For the Liberal Democrats protecting our environment and tackling climate change is a priority,” she said. “We can and must act.”
The 5p fee for a paper cup would go to charities, in line with the plastic bag charge, which raised £29.2m in England alone during the first six months.
Councils in England would also be legally-bound to recycle 70% of waste, the party said.
Labour’s draft manifesto also commits the party to tackling waste, though not a coffee cup charge, including setting guiding targets for plastic bottle deposit schemes.
Updated
After his speech to the Royal College of Nursing’s conference in Liverpool today, Jeremy Corbyn was asked by one local journalist about the row over how Labour selected its candidate for one of its safest seats, Liverpool Walton — recently vacated by Steve Rotheram, when he won the first election to become the mayor of the Liverpool City region, my colleague Sian Mills reports. She writes:
Joe Anderson, the mayor of Liverpool (a different post), had hoped to be selected and was furious to be overlooked in favour of Dan Carden, an assistant to Unite union boss, Len McCluskey.
Corbyn said it was a shame the selection process was so rushed and suggested it was nothing to do with him.
He said: “Joe’s a great man and mayor of Liverpool and we were faced with the urgency of an election the national executive of the party had to take decisions and at that point candidates by selection process. A panel was drawn up of NEC (national executive committee) members. I was not a member of that panel. A shortlist was drawn up candidates were interviewed and decision was made and Dan was selected. It would have been better if there was a longer period leading up the election. That was the system the NEC had.”
Anderson had vowed to never work with Carden and called his selection “an insult to democracy” — a phrase Corbyn described as an “unfortunate use of words”. Corbyn went on: “We are all a member of the union. I’m a member of Unison. Unions are part of the Labour party. A selection was made. Dan was selected and I’m very sure that Dan, Joe and Steve are all going to work together in the future for the good of the people of Liverpool.”
Updated
May harangued by angry voter over disability cuts
Theresa May has been harangued by a voter in Abingdon who complained angrily about cuts to disability benefits. The woman, Cathy, was particularly angry about the replacement of disability living allowance (DLA) with the personal independence payment (PIP), which for many claimants has been less generous.
May said she wanted to focus support on those most in need, but Cathy did not seem impressed by what she had to say. HuffPost has an account of the exchange here.
Updated
Conservative candidates across the country have been privately giving Ukip assurances that they will push for a decisive Brexit in order to get their rivals not to field a candidate, my colleague Rowena Mason reports.
Here is her story.
And here is the key quote, from Ukip’s economics spokesman, Patrick O’Flynn. At a news conference this morning O’Flynn said:
Our branches have had conversations with sitting Conservative members, Labour members as well, in the case of Kate Hoey and Kelvin Hopkins, and Conservative candidates where a Brexit-supporting candidate is a narrow second to a remain MP.
They have been given assurances and I would suggest we’ve put our country before our party in standing aside in those seats. It does place a very heavy burden of responsibility on the people who will benefit from that to stay true to the agenda and meet the assurances they have given. We could see a big swing of opinion a few years down the line if people who’ve been stood aside for don’t remain true to what the left describe as a hard Brexit and what the rest of us describe as Brexit.
There has been a lot of discussion during this campaign about the effectiveness or otherwise of the progressive alliance (or the Progressive Alliance, the organisation promoting the concept).
But, actually, what its opponents would call the regressive alliance - or the Brexit alliance, the impact the 2015 Ukip vote going over to the Tories, hastened by Ukip standing down in so many seats - may actually turn out to be far more significant.
Updated
While she was campaigning in Abingdon, Theresa May also received an earful from a pensioner, the Press Association reports.
As the prime minister stopped off at a pet food stall, she was questioned by pensioner Duncan Macarthey 83, who lives in Abingdon, on why high earners were able to take advantage of government schemes to buy new homes.
He said: “Rich people jumped on the bandwagon of that and got houses that they shouldn’t have got.”
May replied: “Help-to-Buy is working because tens of thousands of young people have been able to get on to the housing ladder.”
Macarthey told the Press Association: “I fought for my country and I’m very annoyed. I could have asked her a lot of other questions about the expenses and all that, and that gets me.”
May says Tories will force firms to publish data on racial pay gaps
Rather confusingly, the Conservatives’ 11-point plan on workers’ rights (see 9.39am) has just become a 12-point one; the party has just announced that it will require firms to publish data on “racial pay disparities” if it wins the election.
The government has already introduced a law forcing big firms (those with more than 250 workers) to publish information about the gender pay gap (the difference between what men are paid and what women are paid) by April next year. There are details here.
In a news release, the Conservatives said this would be extended to cover ethnicity, “to expose the pay gap that exists for people from ethnic minorities”.
The law on gender pay reporting will also be beefed up too, so that firms have to publish more information on the pay gap at different grades of staff and different ages.
In a statement Theresa May said:
The fact that different ethnic groups are being paid less for doing the same jobs is an injustice which cannot be allowed in 21st century Britain.
Soon after May became prime minister she announced the establishment of a racial equality audit to investigate differences in the way people from various ethnic backgrounds are treated by public services.
Updated
While Theresa May was campaigning in Oxfordshire, she also claimed that Labour would not be able to implement its plans to increase NHS funding (see 10.21am) because it would mismanage the economy. She said:
We see more doctors in the National Health Service, we see more midwives, more GPs, more nurses in the NHS. The thing about the Labour party’s proposals is that you have to ask the question: where would the money come from? Because you can only fund the NHS, you can only ensure we have a first class NHS, if we have a strong economy to have the funding to put into the NHS.
Guardian/ICM poll suggests Conservatives have 20-point lead over Labour
The latest Guardian/ICM polling figures are out, and although they show a very modest reduction in the Conservative lead over the last seven days, the overall picture remains the same: the Tory lead remains massive.
Here are the figures.
Conservatives: 48% (down 1 from Guardian/ICM a week ago)
Labour: 28% (up 1)
Lib Dems: 10% (up 1)
Ukip: 6% (no change)
Greens: 3% (no change)
Conservative lead: 20 points (down 2)
And this is what Martin Boon, ICM’s director, is saying about them.
In a week when the eagerly awaited but already much discussed manifestos drop, Theresa May can head into it confident that her poll lead is largely impregnable. While other polls of late have seen Labour increase its share into the 30s, (beyond the share that both Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband secured), ICM still puts Jeremy Corbyn’s party on 28% (which is up one point compared to the Guardian’s last poll earlier this month).
The question as to why ICM has consistently lower Labour shares than other pollster is fairly easy to identify – our turnout weighting mechanism is doing exactly the job we intended it to, reducing the power in the sample of those historically less likely to vote in general elections, and doing the reverse for those typically most likely to vote. Other methodological adjustments do, of course, leave their own imprint – sometimes underpinning and sometimes counter-balancing the turnout weight, but turnout weighting is undoubtedly pivotal to our headline numbers.
ICM also asked respondents about what they saw as the key election issues, and whether Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn were most trusted to address them. I will post those figures soon. And, once they are up, we will post the full tables.
ICM Unlimited interviewed a representative online sample of 2,030 adults aged 18+ on 12 to 14 May 2017. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all adults. ICM is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.
UPDATE: Here is the ICM write-up of today’s Guardian polling. And here are the tables (pdf).
Updated
Theresa May was told she was the “best of a bad bunch” as she went on a walkabout in an Oxfordshire market town, the Press Association reports.
The prime minister was quizzed about housing and mental health as she toured the centre of Abingdon. May chatted with stallholders on the market during the 11-minute visit. One member of the public told her she was the “best of a bad bunch”.
“I’ll take that as flattering,” May replied.
Updated
During his speech to the Royal College of Nursing, Jeremy Corbyn had a dig at Theresa May for shying away from TV debates. I asked him afterwards whether he would appear on ITV’s election debate this Thursday without the prime minister. He replied:
I want to debate with Theresa May and I don’t think she should be allowed to get away with not being engaged with other parties, including us. And so I think it’s up to everyone else to say to Theresa May: you come along and debate with us.
I think that’s a no, then.
Jeremy Corbyn has taken questions from journalists following his speech to the Royal College of Nursing’s annual congress.
I asked about ex-communist Andrew Murray joining Corbyn’s election team. He is temporarily leaving his job as chief of staff to Unite’s general secretary, Len McCluskey, to help out the Labour leader. Murray was a member of the Communist party until December and has praised Stalin and North Korea. In 2015 he told the Guardian he wouldn’t be joining Labour anytime soon because of his deep-set communist views. I asked: What message does it send to voters that Labour’s campaign is being supported by a man who has praised Stalin and North Korea?
Corbyn replied:
Andrew Murray is a member of the Labour party and he is an official at Unite and he is temporarily helping us with the campaign. He is a person of enormous abilities and professionalism and is the head of staff of Unite the union. To manage a very large union and a large number of staff takes special skills and Andrew has them.
I asked if he was worried that Murray was essentially a Stalinist. Corbyn replied:
I don’t believe that Andrew is anything other than a democratic socialist and member of the Labour party like me.
Updated
David Allen Green, the FT’s legal commentator, has also been tweeting about the Conservatives’ employment rights plans.
Tories promising workers rights when their imposition of, and hikes in, tribunal fees mean few can afford to enforce those rights.
— David Allen Green (@davidallengreen) May 15, 2017
Clever.
Any political journalists following: please ask Tories what purpose is of workers' rights when tribunal fees means rights are unenforceable.
— David Allen Green (@davidallengreen) May 15, 2017
Rights which are not enforceable are not really rights at all.
— David Allen Green (@davidallengreen) May 15, 2017
Tories could promise twice as many workers' rights, safe in the knowledge that hikes in tribunal fees mean the rights cannot be enforced.
— David Allen Green (@davidallengreen) May 15, 2017
Am not an employment law blogger but this is such an utterly obvious point, sad that it is not put to the Tories more often.
— David Allen Green (@davidallengreen) May 15, 2017
No good answer.
Labour is committed to abolishing employment tribunal fees.
Greens describe Tory workers' rights proposals as 'empty promises'
The Green party says the Tory proposals on extending workers’ rights (see 9.39am) are “empty promises”. This is from the Green co-leader Jonathan Bartley.
The Conservative credibility gap on workers’ rights couldn’t be wider. It is almost laughable that the Tories are trying to pitch themselves as a party that stands up for workers’ rights. The Conservative government tried to bring in anti-strike laws, oversaw a huge increase in zero-hours contracts and attempted to shut down trade unions.
Leaving workers in a precarious position, unsure if they’re going to have enough money to pay their rent or food bills, and trying to silence their collective voice is no way to create a happy, healthy workforce. Today’s empty promises will not make us forget how the Tories have treated workers with total disdain during their time in government.
Updated
Labour’s Melanie Onn, who is seeking re-election as the MP for Great Grimsby, says that, although the Conservatives are promising to keep EU employment rights after Brexit (see 9.39am), Tory MPs blocked a private member’s bill she put forward that would have done precisely that.
She also points out that the government’s Brexit white paper would import EU employment rights into UK law using secondary legislation (which is easy to amend) not primary legislation (which is more robust), and that senior figures, such as Liam Fox (here) and Boris Johnson (here), have hinted that they favour relaxing employment legislation.
In a statement, Onn says:
The Conservatives are asking people to trust Liam Fox, the man who thinks it’s too difficult to fire people in this country, to negotiate our trade deals, while Boris Johnson, who just two months ago backed a campaign to scrap the working time directive, is our representative to the world.
These are the same old Tories who want you working longer for less.
Updated
Nicola Sturgeon has fueled speculation about an independent Scotland’s currency options after telling BBC Radio Scotland: “The starting point is we would use the pound until we decided to do something else.”
The first minister was quizzed on Good Morning Scotland about a future currency after emphatically ruling out joining the euro after independence, during an interview on the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday.
The question is key to Scotland’s economic future, since Scotland would require a new central bank and independence would affect rates of government borrowing, its debt repayments and its relations with the rest of the UK and the Bank of England. The first minister told BBC Radio Scotland:
The starting point for an independent Scotland is we would use the pound; it’s our currency. Look, when we come to an independence referendum – if we come to an independence referendum – these issues will be subject to the greatest of scrutiny.
Retaining sterling is the orthodox Scottish National party stance: before the 2014 referendum Alex Salmond said an independent Scotland would “share” sterling after independence, but Scottish Labour said the SNP had latterly been in disarray over the issue.
It said John Swinney, Scotland’s deputy first minister, refused six times in a recent radio interview to answer the basic question about currency, while the former SNP deputy leader Stewart Hosie had signalled that the party wants to ditch the pound.
Jackie Baillie, Scottish Labour’s economy spokesperson, said Sturgeon’s currency plans “are a shambles”, adding:
The currency we use really matters. It’s about how much money we have to spend on schools and hospitals, what money wages and pensions will be paid in, and will determine how families pay the bills. The nationalists want to drag Scotland out of the UK but haven’t even worked out the basics like currency.
Updated
The RCN live feed has gone down, so I’m going to miss the rest of the Q&A.
Corbyn suggests Labour would allow people with stressful jobs to retire early
Q: [From a nurse] I am now expected to work in this demanding job until I am 68. Is this acceptable? If not, what will you do about it?
Corbyn says he thinks 68 is too late. He asks the questioner to be patient for another 24 hours.
- Corbyn suggests Labour would allow people with stressful jobs to retire early.
This seems to be a reference to this plan in the draft of the Labour manifesto leaked last week.
Pension age is due to rise to 66 by the end of 2020. Labour rejects the Conservatives’ proposal to increase the state pension age even further, and will commission a new review of the pension age, specifically tasked with developing a flexible retirement policy to reflect both the contributions made by people, the wide variations in life expectancy, and the different nature of working lives.
UPDATE: A reader has pointed out that a similar law, called “la pénibilité au travail”, operates in France.
Updated
Q: What will Labour do for mental health?
Corbyn says Labour would have a dedicated mental health minister. This has to be chased all the way through the system, he says.
He says the stigma attached to mental health is horrible. This needs to be addressed. He says he has spoken to young people who are frightened of talking about it. Some take their own lives. We need to change attitudes to this, he says.
Q: How will your party pay for the extra NHS funding?
Corbyn says all his proposals are fully costed. They rely either on changing spending plans or on higher taxes for corporations and the very rich. He says 95% of people will pay no extra tax.
Updated
Corbyn's Q&A
Corbyn is now taking questions from nurses.
(Sky News has stopped showing the event, but there is a live feed on the RCN website.)
Q: Why should we vote for you?
Corbyn says he believes in the NHS being free at the point of use. He supports nurses. He would lift the cap on pay increases in the NHS. And Labour would introduce proper staffing ratios for hospitals.
He says stress levels for staff are too high. Hospitals need proper funding, he says. Labour would deliver that.
Updated
Corbyn says Labour will publish its manifesto on Tuesday. You may think you have read it, but the real one will come out tomorrow, he says.
Updated
Corbyn says he will reinstate bursaries for trainee nurses. As my colleague Helen Pidd reports, this goes down well.
Whoops and cheers for Corbyn as he pledges to reinstate nurses' training bursaries @theRCN
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) May 15, 2017
Corbyn says the RCN vote for a ballot on strike action yesterday shows how angry and frustrated nurses are about the 14% real terms cut in pay they have had.
Corbyn says he is determined to establish parity of esteem between mental and physical health and to have a properly funded mental health service.
Corbyn asks his audience to imagine what would happen if the NHS carried on with this level of underfunding for another five years.
The NHS would become unrecognisable, he says.
Updated
Corbyn jokes about Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, not being willing to defend his record on the NHS. (Hunt has been off the airwaves this weekend, even though the NHS cyberattack was headline news.) This gets a large round of applause.
Corbyn says the UK is the sixth biggest economy in the world. It cannot be right that people are leaving nursing because of low pay, or that tax giveaways for the rich are being put ahead of investment in the NHS.
He says he wishes he could have a public debate with Theresa May about this, but she refuses to have that discussion.
Updated
Corbyn says many people are waiting to hear about Labour’s plans. People work in the NHS as a privilege, he says.
The NHS is a service that checks your blood pressure, not your bank balance, he says. He says he is always astonished when he speaks to people from the US where it works the other way.
Updated
Corbyn says the Health and Social Care Act has extended privatisation in the NHS.
Aneurin Bevan once said the NHS would only last as long as there are folk ready to fight for it. Remember those words, Corbyn says. He says he has been involved in campaigns to protect the NHS all his life. Labour is here to carry that on, he says.
Updated
Jeremy Corbyn starts by thanking nurses for what they do.
He says he understands the stresses nurses go through. He says in the past he was worked with unions in the NHS.
Labour is ready to step in and save the NHS from cuts and privatisation.
He says Labour’s HQ in London is decorated with posters from the NHS saying Labour’s health service covers everyone. The Tories voted against it, he says.
He says the health service is being dismantled by stealth. A&E services are struggling, waiting lists are increasing, and hospitals have been left vulnerable to cyberattack.
He says this weekend’s attack must have put staff under extra pressure.
He says the cyberattack is “highway robbery against all of us”.
Jeremy Corbyn's speech to the RCN conference
Jeremy Corbyn is about to speak at the RCN conference.
For the record, here is a summary of the proposals in Labour’s “new deal for the NHS” announced today.
Give the NHS an an extra £37bn over the course of the next parliament, including £10bn of capital funding to make sure that NHS buildings and IT systems are fit for the modern day.
Take one million people off NHS waiting lists by the end of the parliament, by guaranteeing access to treatment within 18 weeks.
Guarantee patients can be seen in A&E within four hours.
Create a new £500m winter pressures fund to help ensure patients never have to experience a winter crisis like the one of recent months.
Deliver the cancer strategy for England in full by 2020, helping 2.5 million people living with cancer.
Updated
On the Today programme this morning Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, said that much of the money for Labour’s proposed extra health spending would come from increasing income tax on those earning more than £80,000. (See 7.39am.) He said this would raise up to £4.5bn.
Further money for the NHS would come from increasing corporation tax, he said. And another £10bn would come from Labour’s capital investment fund.
This morning PoliticsHome says Labour is planning to increase tax for those earning more than £80,000 by lowering the threshold at which people pay the 45% top rate of income tax from £150,000 to £80,000.
PoliticsHome also says that, when he was on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Ashworth seemed to confirm that Labour would re-introduce a 50% top rate of tax (perhaps for those earning more than £150,000?).
Updated
Nicola Sturgeon has confirmed an independent Scotland could first join the European free trade area (Efta) or European Economic Area (EEA) instead of seeking full membership of the European Union, and would have to pay for single market access without a direct say over EU policy.
With opposition parties accusing her of hypocrisy, she admitted there was no guarantee an independent Scotland would seek full EU membership if there was a yes vote, even though the Brexit vote to leave the EU was the pretext for another independence referendum.
The first minister told BBC Radio Scotland there were significant economic benefits, including free trade, which flowed from single market membership, which would follow if Scotland joined the EEA. It would cost Scotland about £100m a year to access the single market.
Adding more detail to her admission of a “phased return” to EU membership on yesterday’s Andrew Marr Show on BBC1, Sturgeon told Good Morning Scotland:
I’m not in charge of the Brexit process so it’s possible, not necessarily desirable, that for a period Scotland would be in Efta or the EEA. The bottom line though is our single market membership would be protected.
Kirsty Hughes, from the new thinktank the Scottish Centre for European Relations, said Sturgeon’s stance was reasonable. In a blogpost following Sturgeon’s Marr interview, Hughes said:
An independence referendum after March 2019 would certainly mean that Scotland would have to apply to re-join the EU, a process that would take time - and so ‘a phased approach’ is a reasonable description of that process.
[The] key question is whether an independent Scotland would apply immediately for EU membership – the route to that membership would then be discussed with the EU. So far, joining the EU not the EEA remains SNP policy. Unless the SNP policy is or becomes one of delaying its EU membership application in favour of joining the EEA, there is no fudge, just a recognition that instant EU membership after March 2019 is not possible.
Updated
Details of the Tory proposals to extend workers' rights
The Conservative party’s overnight news release about what Theresa May is claiming would be “the greatest extension of rights and protections for employees by any Conservative government in history” mentions 11 specific proposals. For the record, here they are in full.
1 - Protection for all workers’ rights currently guaranteed by EU law. The Conservatives will guarantee all rights that workers currently enjoy as we leave the European Union.
2 - A commitment to increase the national living wage in line with median earnings until the end of the next parliament in 2022.
3 - New protections for ‘gig’ economy workers, following the Matthew Taylor review that Theresa May established in one of her first moves after becoming prime minister.
4 - Representation for workers on company boards, under the Conservatives’ wider reforms to corporate governance.
5 - A new statutory right to receive information about key decisions affecting your company’s future, subject to reasonable safeguards, and in keeping with but not exceeding the rights of shareholders.
6 - A new statutory right to request leave for training purposes, to help workers gain the skills they need to retain good, well-paid jobs.
7 - A new statutory right to leave to care for a family member, in line with other countries.
8 - New rules to protect workers’ pensions from irresponsible behaviour by company bosses, like unsustainable dividends and takeovers that put the future of the pension scheme at risk.
9 - Reforms to the Equalities Act [sic - it’s the Equality Act] to extend protections from discrimination to those suffering fluctuating or intermittent mental health conditions.
10 - A statutory right to child bereavement leave, for those who suffer the tragedy of losing a child.
11- The introduction of new returnships for people returning to the labour market from a period of absence, including from parenthood and elderly care.
Updated
FSB gives cautious welcome to Tory plan to let workers take unpaid leave to care for relative
Business organisations tend to react badly to proposals to give employees more rights, but on the Today programme this morning Craig Beaumont, the head of external affairs at the Federation of Small Businesses, was reasonably positive about the Tory plan to give workers the right to take unpaid leave to care for an ill or disabled family member.
He said laws like this could create difficulties for employers.
Small employers find employment regulations really the toughest ones to grapple with, so for us the point is really about the cumulative effect of all of these extra regulations adding to a morass, and also constant shifts of expectations.
When asked specifically if the Tory plan made sense in general terms, he replied:
If it is brought in correctly, yes ... Let’s look around the world and see how other countries do it.
But he said that, if the government was imposing new regulations on businesses, it should also give them guidance and help to enable them to comply.
Updated
Farron says Tories treating NHS staff 'like dirt'
Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, will tell the Royal College of Nursing conference that the Tories are treating NHS staff “like dirt”, according to comments released by the Lib Dems in advance. He will say:
Nurses have been treated like pawns by the Tories for far too long.
Longer hours, more stress and more pressure put on the NHS.
The Conservatives are treating staff like dirt. Theresa May doesn’t seem to care that the system is underfunded and heading towards collapse.
This is why the Liberal Democrats have pledged £6bn in funding, per year, for our NHS.
In his Today interview Damian Green, the work and pensions secretary, rejected claims that Theresa May has watered down her promise to ensure workers are represented on company boards. (See 8.21am.) The government was just looking at the best way of implementing this, he said.
But most commentators do believe the pledge has been watered down.
For the record, this is what May said in a speech in Birmingham during the Conservative leadership contest. (She made the speech shortly before Andrea Leadsom announced she was withdrawing from the contest, so it did not receive as much attention as it warranted, but it is probably about the most leftwing speech she has ever made.) She said:
I want to see changes in the way that big business is governed. The people who run big businesses are supposed to be accountable to outsiders, to non-executive directors, who are supposed to ask the difficult questions, think about the long-term and defend the interests of shareholders. In practice, they are drawn from the same, narrow social and professional circles as the executive team and – as we have seen time and time again – the scrutiny they provide is just not good enough. So if I’m prime minister, we’re going to change that system – and we’re going to have not just consumers represented on company boards, but employees as well.
That clearly implied that she envisaged workers sitting on boards.
But, in its corporate governance green paper (pdf) published at the end of last year, putting workers on boards (or “individual stakeholder representatives”, as the document put it) was just one of four options proposed. The others were creating advisory panels, designating directors to represent employee interests or just more “stakeholder engagement”.
Updated
Kamal Ahmed, the BBC’s economics editor, is now doing the post-interview analysis on the Today programme.
He says this election will only be the third since the second world war where a government is going into an election with incomes falling in real terms. The other two were in 1945 and 2010.
Ahmed has tweeted a link to a good blogpost from Torsten Bell, the director of the Resolution Foundation, that goes into this in more detail.
This is only third election since 1945 where real incomes are falling - by @TorstenBell https://t.co/ZMGpg1w4oH #squeeze
— Kamal Ahmed (@bbckamal) May 15, 2017
Here’s an excerpt from Bell’s blog.
It’s not just that elections don’t go well for governing parties in years with poor earnings growth – it’s the not unrelated fact that elections tend to not take place in those years, particularly since the Second World War. Since then the average annual increase in pay during election years is 3 per cent and the average in non-election years is 1.9 per cent. Now maybe having a general election causes such an outbreak of positive energy that wage growth jumps 50 per cent… or maybe the causation runs the other way and Prime Ministers don’t do the whole Turkey and Christmas thing, unless five years is up and they have to (as was the case in 2010).
Now obviously wage rises, or the lack of them, are only part of the living standards story and other elements of it do more to favour an election this spring. The number of people actually earning those wages matter hugely too and, despite a plateauing of employment growth this year, Britain is enjoying record employment levels. Big benefit cuts that risk seeing income levels for low and middle income families actually fall in the coming years have only just started to bite, with many families seeing the biggest losses later in the decade.
But the fundamental fact remains that, in the middle of a simply catastrophic decade for earnings – one which, according to OBR forecasts, will be the worst in over two centuries – a prime minister has called an election by choice at exactly the point at which it is confirmed that voters pay packets are shrinking not growing. These are odd times, for our politics and our economics.
And here is another chart from the blog.
Updated
Q: What workers really want is a decent income. Yet you can’t guarantee that incomes will continue to rise.
Green accepts that. But he says incomes went up by more than prices in recent years, although he acknowledges that is not happening now.
He says the Tories are also planning guaranteed rises in the minimum wage.
And that’s it. The interview is over.
Q: Why have you watered down your plan to put workers on company boards?
Green says this has not been watered down.
He says Theresa May said she wanted workers’ voices to be heard on boards. The government is looking at how that can be done. It could be done by having workers on boards, or directors there to represent them, or works councils representing them.
Q: That is not what Theresa May promised last summer. She talked of workers being on boards.
Green says he does not accept that there is a difference.
He says May, in her speech during the Tory leadership, spoke about workers’ voices being heard on boards.
Q: She was talking about an individual representing workers being on the board.
Green says the government set out how this could happen in its green paper earlier this year.
Green says the government wants to ensure people can do apprenticeships in the middle of their careers, not just in their teens or 20s.
Updated
Q: Workers will benefit. But what about companies, especially small ones?
Green says firms will not pay people while they are off.
Q: But there will still be disruption.
Green says firms work best when they have contented and happy workforces.
What the government is proposing is that people have the rights they deserve.
Q: But you have not answered the question about how firms will manage. This will add to red tape for firms.
Green says, in practical terms, companies cope with things like short-term sickness. They can employ people on a short-term basis, or redeploy staff.
All the evidence shows that, if workers are happy, firms do better, he says.
Q: Firms may think twice about employing someone in their 40s or 50s.
Greens says the need to care for someone can affect anyone.
He says the Tories are also proposing that workers will have the right to request leave for training. This could help many workers, particularly people who are at risk of finding their job replaced by new technology.
Updated
John Humphrys is interviewing Damian Green.
Q: How will the plan to allow workers to take a sabbatical to look after elderly relatives work?
Green says people would be allowed to take unpaid leave. This works in Ireland, where people can take between 13 to 52 weeks of unpaid leave.
People would have the right to go back to work when caring responsibilities end.
He says this is just one part of a wide-ranging package of rights.
Q: But carers benefit is just £62 a week.
Green says that is not meant to be a benefit you can live on. It is designed to top up other income. And it is means-tested.
He says people worry about giving up a job, and not being able to return.
Updated
Damian Green's Today interview
Good morning. I’m taking over from Claire.
Damian Green, the work and pensions secretary, is about to be interviewed on the Today programme about the Conservatives’ plans to boost employment rights.
Andrew Sparrow is now picking up the live blog for the rest of the day’s campaign action.
I’ll be back tomorrow morning – and if you’d like the Snap email briefing to arrive in your inbox, do sign up here.
Lib Dems promise repeal of snooping powers
The Liberal Democrats have promised to scrap the “Orwellian nightmare” of mass snooping powers if elected.
The Investigatory Powers Act passed into law in November, giving British intelligence agencies and police the broadest surveillance powers in the western world.
The law significantly extends the scope of police forces by allowing them to collect and store 12 months’ worth of all UK residents’ web histories, which the Lib Dems describe as a “full-frontal assault” on civil liberties.
Their manifesto will include proposals to end the indiscriminate bulk collection of communications data and of internet connection records.
The Lib Dems would tackle security risks by investing in targeted surveillance and increased policing in the community, Alistair Carmichael said. “Instead of spying on the entire population’s web histories and undermining the encryption that, for example, allows us to bank online safely, Liberal Democrats would put money back into community policing and concentrate on intelligence-led, targeted surveillance.”
The party has also committed to fighting Conservative attempts to undermine encryption, which it warned would put people’s online security at risk.
Updated
As the Press Association notes here, four national newspapers – the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, the Times and the Daily Express – lead today on Theresa May’s (or just “Theresa”, if you’re the Mail) announcement that workers would be allowed up to a year off to care for a relative.
None of them finds room in the headline to mention that the 12-month sabbatical would be unpaid – something that would surely have a strong bearing on how many people actually take it up.
Theresa May's pledge to give workers unpaid leave to care for sick relatives makes the splash for four newspapers pic.twitter.com/VVVt0nkMwn
— Press Association (@PA) May 15, 2017
Updated
Ashworth says much of extra money for NHS will come from raising tax on those earning more than £80,000
Ashworth moves on to the £37bn extra in NHS funding that Jeremy Corbyn will announce today in his speech to the Royal College of Nursing conference in Liverpool.
Ashworth tells the Today programme that the sums do add up:
The substantial amount of that money comes from increasing the tax take from those earning above £80,000 … Every penny piece of that should go into our health service.
There are other taxations changes also … and £10bn for capital comes from the capital investment £250bn fund.
He says that when the Labour manifesto – the official, non-draft, non-leaked version – is published on Tuesday, it will show details of tax bands, and says people will be “reassured when we see John McDonnell’s sums tomorrow”.
Updated
Labour says NHS infrastructure budgets 'have been repeatedly raided'
Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s shadow health secretary, is on the Today programme. He says Corbyn was fair to point the finger at government cuts to the NHS budget as a factor in how many hospital trusts have been affected by the ransomware cyberattack.
He says £1bn has been shifted from capital budgets to plug gaps in the day-to-day running of the NHS:
The infrastructure budgets … have been repeatedly raided.
Hospital trusts have not been able to spend the money on upgrading IT systems.
They have had to use that money to pay wages and balance the books in the wider NHS.
Ashworth calls it the “biggest financial squeeze in the NHS’s history”.
It is unquestionable that capital budgets have been raided … If you are reducing your capital budget then you cannot invest in your infrastructure.
Updated
Jeremy Corbyn becomes the latest party leader to be interviewed for the ITV leaders series, to be broadcast on ITV1 at 8pm this evening.
Preview snippets show him endorsing the line pressed by Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, that the end of Britain’s membership of the EU also means the end of freedom of movement.
In the interview, Corbyn says:
Clearly the free movement ends when we leave the European Union but, there will be managed migration and it will be fair.
As the leaked draft manifesto suggested, Labour will not put a number on those coming to the UK:
There would be immigration, there would be emigration … because we have skill needs and skill shortages, there are family reunion issues.
I’m not going to put any figures on it … Theresa May has done that for, this is now the third general election she’s promised figures, none of which she’s come anywhere near to achieving.
The Conservative manifesto is expected to repeat the target of the 2010 and 2015 manifestos to cut net migration to the tens of thousands. The target has never been met.
Updated
Theresa May will spend Monday morning at a workplace in south-east England, where she will announce plans for new statutory rights to unpaid leave for carers and bereaved parents, fresh protections for workers with mental illness and safeguards against pensions mismanagement. Under the proposals, workers will be allowed to take up to 12 months’ unpaid leave to care for family members with an illness or disability.
The pledges are the latest step in the prime minister’s deliberate strategy of rebranding the Tories as the party of working people in an attempt to seize seats across a swath of traditional Labour territory.
The Conservatives will also commit to increase the “national living wage” each year in line with average earnings over the course of the next parliament. That is likely to be significantly less generous than Labour’s pledge to raise the minimum wage for all workers, not just the over-25s, to £10 an hour.
Many of the Tory proposals are likely to be regarded by the right of May’s party as imposing burdensome “red tape” on businesses, but the prime minister has rejected the laissez-faire approach of David Cameron, urging Conservative members in her party conference speech last October to “put the power of government squarely at the service of ordinary working-class people”.
Updated
The Lib Dems are quick out of the blocks with a response to Theresa May’s bold claims that her manifesto on workers’ rights is “the greatest extension of rights and protections for employees by any Conservative government in history”.
Vince Cable – described in the party release as “Liberal Democrat shadow chancellor”; he’s aiming to win back his Twickenham seat – says:
The Conservatives tried to ban workers from striking and were blocked by the Liberal Democrats in government.
It’s clear they aren’t the party of workers’ rights and that you can’t trust them to care about you and your family.
Theresa May knows the bad Brexit deal she is pursuing will harm workers’ living standards and jobs for many years to come, but she doesn’t care.
Updated
The Snap: your election briefing
Welcome back to the election campaign live blog as we hit (official) manifestos week.
I’m Claire Phipps with your daily breakfast catchup and the best of the early politics news. Andrew Sparrow will be along later. Catch us in the comments below or on Twitter @Claire_Phipps.
What’s happening?
The Conservatives – sorry, Theresa May’s Team – continue to try to elbow their way into Labour heartlands with today’s fresh-out-of-the-packet policy on extending workers’ rights. In a bid to capture the votes of “ordinary working people” (the PM’s phrasing, not mine, don’t @ me), May will promise to hang on to EU protections for workers, up the national living wage, offer a statutory two weeks’ leave for bereaved parents, and initiate 12-month (unpaid) sabbaticals for those needing to care for relatives, including elderly parents. Writing in the Financial Times today, the PM labels it:
the greatest extension of rights and protections for employees by any Conservative government in history.
While the suspiciously red-tapey-sounding new rules might frighten some in her party, the Daily Mail seems cock-a-hoop at what it’s calling a “revolution in the workplace” (one of those genteel, non-Marxist revolutions, obviously).
This new appeal to “ordinary” folk follows Saturday’s effort – a promise of more social housing – which Labour scorned as “spin with no substance” after it turned out there would be no extra money for it. Revolutions don’t come cheap, you know.
On which note, Labour has its own Monday announcement, if you pretend not to have seen the massive spoiler alerts that came with the leak of its draft manifesto last week. Jeremy Corbyn will promise an extra £37bn over the course of the next parliament for the NHS, reducing waiting lists by a million patients, and restoring the four-hour target for A&E. There will be extra money for this, Labour says: from income tax rises for those earning £80,000+ and upward nudges in corporation tax.
Plus, with many hospitals still hobbled by the ransomware attack that spread on Friday, expect questions over why some were still using outdated – and vulnerable – Windows XP software. Extra money might rear its head here too…
There’ll also be more from the Labour leader in an interview with ITV News this evening. Sneak previews reveal he’ll be talking about Brexit:
Clearly, free movement ends when we leave the European Union. But there will be managed migration and it will be fair.
About whether he considers himself wealthy:
I consider myself well paid for what I do and I am wanting to say to everyone who’s well off, make your contribution to our society … I’m not wealthy because of where I put the money, but I’m not going into that.
And – according to an ITV tease – his beard. Which I’m sure will be just as fascinating as the never-ending questions about May’s shoes.
At a glance:
- Lib Dems promise to scrap mass snooping powers if elected.
- Emily Thornberry accused Michael Fallon of talking “bollocks” over the Falklands – and reminded him of his meeting with Bashar al-Assad.
- Nicola Sturgeon: independent Scotland may need ‘phased’ return to EU.
- Nurses vote in support of strike ballot over low pay.
- Jobs market will suffer a Brexit slowdown, say experts.
- Business leaders want next government to build two more runways.
Poll position
A flurry of Sunday polls to digest. The Tories have a 15-point lead on Labour, according to yesterday’s Observer/Opinium poll: 47% (+1 on the week before) v 32% (+2). ORB for the Sunday Telegraph also pegged Labour on 32%, with the Conservatives on 46%. Though the edging-up is only by a point or so, that 32% is, according to the FT poll tracker, the highest score Labour has recorded in the last six months. It’s also a smidgen above the 30.4% vote share the party secured in the 2015 election.
But a couple of other polls gave the Conservatives more of an edge: Comres for the Sunday Mirror and the Independent had them on 48% to Labour’s 30%; in YouGov for the Sunday Times it’s 49% v 31%. The Lib Dems continue to plod along in a remote third, on 8%-10% in the weekend polling.
Diary
- This morning Ukip reveals its economic policy.
- The Royal College of Nursing conference continues in Liverpool, with Jeremy Corbyn and Tim Farron both speaking. The Conservatives have been invited but have not yet put anyone forward.
- At 3pm, Theresa May continues her “I love talking to real voters” drive with a Facebook Live interview with ITV News’s political editor, Robert Peston. Post your questions here.
- At 6.30pm, Ruth Davidson gives the Orwell prize lecture in London, titled “Nationalism should not be confused with patriotism”.
- At 7pm, also in London, it’s the launch of the Progressive Alliance campaign, with Labour’s Clive Lewis, Green Sian Berry, Sophie Walker of the Women’s Equality party and Claire Sandberg, who worked on Bernie Sanders’ campaign.
- And at 8pm, it’s back to ITV, this time for its televised interview with Corbyn.
Talking point
“Young people don’t vote” headlines and motivational tweets are part of any election campaign. But analysis by the Electoral Reform Society suggests 2017 could be a year when it matters more than most, with the number of school-leavers on the electoral roll crumbling by more than a quarter in three years – and by more than a third in Scotland.
Theresa May has rejected suggestions that 16-year-olds should get the vote. But Labour and the Liberal Democrats are snaffling for that youth endorsement. The Lib Dems’ Sarah Olney said Harry Styles, of One Direction, should be casting his ballot for them after he said he’d vote for “whoever is against Brexit”. Corbyn’s push involved handing over his Snapchat to grime star Jme. Young people: you can stop all this by registering to vote.
I met @jeremycorbyn today, and explained why bare of us don't vote. I forgot to ask for a pic, so here's one I borrowed 📸 pic.twitter.com/9X62jU8pQg
— Jme (@JmeBBK) May 14, 2017
So, if you’re a young person reading the Snap … first of all, HELLO and thanks, young and intelligent, news-aware person. Second, if you’ve signed up for a daily email about the election campaign, I strongly suspect you’re already registered to vote. But you could pass this link to a less clued-up friend.
Read these
In the New Statesman, Chris Deerin questions if Nicola Sturgeon is really focused on her day-to-day job:
Critics will argue that ‘running the country’ is a less apposite description of what Ms Sturgeon is about than ‘gaming the country’ – that the purpose of her premiership is proving to be little more than cattle-prodding Scotland towards a second independence referendum. And I must say that more and more often these days, the school-gate political chat I hear is likely to contain a frustrated variant on the first minister’s own phrase: ‘I wish she’d just get on with running the country.’
Isabel Hardman, in the Spectator, wonders if the PM’s Ronseal slogan – “it does what it says on the tin” – really fits:
The Tories are trailing manifesto pledges on council house building, while last week they promised more mental healthcare workers. Housing and mental health enjoy the same rather miserable status as being issues that everyone has got rather good at describing as ‘in crisis’, before proposing modest solutions that won’t come anywhere near solving that crisis – and which they don’t implement anyway.
One of the things that has most frustrated May’s Cabinet ministers has been the way she curbs their enthusiasm for radical policies. Her allies say this is because she wants to promise things that will actually happen and that she has had such difficult parliamentary arithmetic that proposals must necessarily be modest. But after a Tory landslide, she’ll have a tremendous opportunity to be radical.
Chris Hanretty, on Medium and with both graphs and gifs, assesses the polls:
We are at the point at which polls rapidly become more informative about final-day polling. Maybe that’s because this is the point at which people start paying attention to the election. Maybe it’s because this is the point at which parties’ policy offer crystallises (the publication of manifestos is expected [this] week). Or maybe it’s because this is the point at which we run out of ‘game-changers’, or ‘dead cats’, or other such stuff and nonsense.
Revelation of the day
“To avoid disappointment”, Labour supporters have until midnight tonight to snap up a “limited edition Labour tote bag”. But which design to choose? “Most people are picking our Jeremy Corbyn tote bags,” an email to members nudges. How very on-message.
The day in a tweet
Theresa May, revealed pic.twitter.com/1NdpwY9s14
— Henry Mance (@henrymance) May 14, 2017
And another thing
Would you like to wake up to this briefing in your inbox every weekday? Sign up here!
Updated
