Starmer says party conference an opportunity to give voters an answer to the ‘why Labour?’ question – UK politics live | Politics

Labour has consistently opposed the government’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, but generally it is done so on practical rather than moral grounds. Today, Keir Starmer continued to insist it was impractical, but he also said he would reverse it even if it were working – which sounded like a firming up of his position.

Victoria Derbyshire asked:

If the supreme court rules [the policy] is legal, and flights to Rwanda begin to take off, and the numbers crossing the Channel on small boats decline – ie, so it’s working – would you still reverse it?

Starmer replied:

Yes. It is the wrong policy. It’s hugely expensive. It’s a tiny number, a tiny number, of individuals who would go to Rwanda. And the real problem is at source.

What was interesting about this is that the obvious, and easy, answer for Starmer would have been to say that the policy won’t work. Politicians often refuse to answer hypothetical questions, and Derbyshire’s question included no less than three hypotheticals. But Starmer did not take evasive route out, and instead answered the question directly.

When Derbyshire said that promising to reverse the policy even if it were working did not sound very pragmatic, Starmer said he wanted to say “pragmatically” what he would do about this issue. He went on:

Nobody wants to see these crossings across the Channel. They will only stop if we smash the criminal gangs who are running this vile trade.

Now, before I was a politician, I was director of public prosecutions for five years. And that meant I worked with other countries coordinating a plan to smash terrorist gangs, to smash gangs that were people smuggling.

Those boats that are being used now are being made to order, they’re being transported across by gangs to the northern coast of France, and people [are] making millions of pounds, putting people in that boat. We have to break. I’m convinced we can.

You don’t start by what are you going to do at the end of the process when you’ve failed to control your borders. You start by controlling your borders.

Starmer also criticised the government for processing only 1% of small boat asylum claims from last year. He ended by saying.

As a pragmatist. I want a pragmatic plan that is actually going to fix this problem, not rhetoric, which has got this government absolutely nowhere.

In the past, Starmer has been criticised for refusing to say that Labour would repeal the Illegal Migration Act, which incorporates the Rwanda plan and gives it extra legal backing. But by willing to say today he would scrap the Rwanda policy even if it were working, he is being more robust.

That’s probably a sign of confidence. Previously some Labour strategists feared this was a Tory issue. But, as he demonstrated with the announcement of a new line on small boats during a visit to Europol last month, Starmer increasingly seems to view this as Labour territory.

Q: You oppose the Rwanda policy because you don’t think it will work. If the supreme court rules it is legal, and deportations start and it is seen to be working, would you still reverse it.

Yes, says Starmer. He says it is the wrong policy. It is very expensive, and it only affect only a small number of people. And the policy does not deal with the problem at source.

He says he wants to smash the people smuggling gangs at source. He is convinced this can happen. You don’t start at the end of the process, he says. People would be shocked to know that only 1% of people who arrived last year have had their claims processed.

Starmer says he is dealing with this “as a pragmatist”. The government is only interested in rhetoric, he says.

Q: Under your plans, if there is no growth, there will be no extra money for public services?

Starmer says he is confident he can generate more growth.He says investors say they will invest in the UK if the conditions are right. At the moment there is too much uncertainty.

Derbyshire says without growth there will be no extra money for public service.

Starmer says he is confident he will get the growth. She asks again, and he gives the same answer. He says generating more growth is central to his plan for government.

Starmer says it can take two years, physically, to build an onshore windfarm, but 13 years to do it allowing for getting planning permission. He would speed this up.

He says he is confident about being able to generate growth because he has had conversations with the experts who have told him what needs to be done.

Keir Starmer is being interviewed by Victoria Derbyshire, who is standing in for Laura Kuenssberg, on the BBC.

Starmer starts by condemning the attack on Israel, which he says is “an appalling act of terrorism”.

He says Israel has every right to defend itself, and that the perpetrators have pushed back the prospects for peace talks.

Using a line that he deployed in an interview with the Times yesterday, Wes Streeting told Trevor Phillips that the Conservative party had been taken over by “cranks, crackpots and conspiracy theorists”.

This morning, Labour is setting out plans to fund an extra 2m hospital operations, scan and appointments in its first year in office by funding more overtime. Keir Starmer has been talking about the plans in an interview with the Sunday Mirror, and the party has just issued a news release with more details. It says:

The plan will enable the NHS to provide an extra 2 million operations, scans, and appointments in the first year. Labour is pledging to invest an extra £1.1bn to provide NHS staff overtime to work evening and weekend shifts, so procedures can be carried out.

Labour’s plan will see neighbouring hospitals pooling their staff and using shared waiting lists, so they are working more efficiently together and making the best use of available capacity. Patients will be given the choice to travel to a nearby hospital to get treated on an evening or weekend, rather than wait longer …

The funding will be enough to make sure that every integrated care system can run a weekend or out of hours service equivalent to 100% of weekday activity for day case elective surgery, outpatient clinics and diagnostic investigations for 52 weeks of the year.

A Labour government will allocate the funding to integrated care boards, and set clear expectations of increased activity to ensure return on investment. The funding will be to pay staff overtime rates to work evenings and/or weekends and to increase hours at short notice through NHS staff bank networks.

Labour says there are several trusts where hospitals are pooling staff so they can plough through the operations backlog with extra working in the evenings or at weekends. As one example, it says the Northern Care Alliance NHS trust has introduced “super Saturday” weekend lists to carry out hip and knee replacements.

The party says the £1.1bn for this initiative will come from the revenue raised by abolishing non-dom status (estimated to be worth more than £3bn).

Last year, Labour said it would double the number of medical school places funded from the non-dom revenue. But, in an interesting example of how government plans provide the baseline for the government, Labour says that now that the government has introduced its own NHS long-term workforce plan, which it claims is funded under government spending plans, that non-dom revenue is now available for spending on other things (like the plan announced today).

Good morning. The Conservative party conference provided the nation with several blessings – an insight into factional infighting, and a glimpse of where the Tories are heading after the general election, a decision about HS2, a test for whether Rishi Sunak can present himself as a change candidate (answer – no), but what it didn’t provide was any boost for the party in the polls. The Labour conference formally opens in Liverpool today and Keir Starmer will be hoping that his event proves more successful.

The conventional wisdom is that Starmer has brilliantly persuaded the public that Labour has changed from the Corbyn years, and that he has made the case that the Conservatives do not deserve another term in office, but that he has not yet shown why voters should be enthusiastic about Labour. Parties do best when candidates and their supporters can convincingly answer the “I’m voting X because …” question in a clear, compelling sentence. In a interview with Andrew Rawnsley and Toby Helm for the Observer, Starmer says that his mission this week is to address that. He says:

This is the conference we wanted at this stage of the journey and this is where we intend to answer that question ‘Why Labour?’ with confidence and a coherent plan.

We’ll hear more from him on this shortly, when he gives the traditional pre-conference long sit-down interview to the BBC.

Here is the agenda for the day.

8.30am: Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, is interviewed on Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips.

9am: Keir Starmer is interviewed on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme.

11.10am: The formal conference proceedings opens. At 11.25am Angela Rayner, the deputy leader, will speak. There will also be speeches from David Evans, the general secretary, at 11.45am and Anneliese Dodd, the party chair, at 12.15pm. Delegates will debate party reports.

12pm: Speakers at lunchtime fringe meetings include Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, on innovation in the NHS; Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, at an event with Labour candidates; David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, on lessons from abroad for progressives; and Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader, on Labour’s spending priorities.

2pm: Pat McFadden, the national campaign coordinator, speaks in the conference hall during a session on winning the next election.

4pm: Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, speaks at an in conversation fringe event.

5.30pm: Streeting is interviewed by Katharine Viner, the Guardian’s editor-in-chief, at a fringe meeting.

5.30pm: John McDonnell, the former shadow chancellor, and other leftwingers speak at a fringe meeting on “socialist solutions to the Tory crisis”.

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