Deborah Mattinson, a founding partner of research and strategy consultancy BritainThinks, has written in the Observer that very little seems to be getting through to voters in the election campaign so far.
“What have you picked up about the election so far?” I asked a focus group of undecided voters last week. Although they had plenty to say about policies, parties and politicians, their confident chatter died away fast. Eye contact was avoided. No one could think of anything that related to the campaign.
A recent poll found a similar lack of engagement. Four thousand voters were asked what “incidents, events, stories etc” they had noticed. The winning score, at 42%, was for “none ”. In second place came the 5% mentioning Jacob Rees-Mogg’s Grenfell remarks. Just 2% mentioned “Brexit” and 1% NHS funding.
The shadow home secretary has responded to comments by Michael Gove inthe Mail on Sunday. He wrote:
Under EU rules, European nationals arriving here have preferential access to free NHS care whereas other migrants have to wait until they’ve paid into the system and secured settled status, a process which typically takes five years . It’s unfair that people coming from European countries can access free NHS care without paying in while others make significant contributions.
Abbott points out that EU workers pay taxes like everybody else, so it is wrong to say they aren’t “paying in”.
Diane Abbott(@ HackneyAbbott)
Michael Gove is completely wrong to say people from EU are accessing the NHS without ‘paying in’.
EU workers pay taxes.
The NHS is not a contributory system.
This is how it begins – the Tory project to undermine the NHS, by bashing and blaming migrants first.
Here are some highlights from this morning’s political broadcast interviews.
- Jeremy Corby told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show that he would want his government to allow “a great deal of movement” of people if he became the next prime minister. Asked whether Labor would pledge to end free movement in its election manifesto – as it did in its 2017 manifesto – the Labor leader said we would have to wait until the document is unveiled on Thursday.
A lot of EU nationals have made their homes in this country and made a massive contribution to our society. A lot of British people live in different parts of the EU and many of those families have been through unbelievable stress. So they absolutely must have the right to remain and bring their families here.
- Foreign secretaryDominic Raabtold Andrew Marr that it was now “not remotely likely” that the UK would leave the UK without a deal. “Could we leave without a deal?” Said Marr. “I think it’s, no, … I don’t think it’s remotely likely,” Raab responded.
We have not offered any deals to anybody. I think what’s rather surreal with this conversation, not least of all is the fact that actually as chairman I removed Ann Widdecombe’s membership of the Conservative Party because she had joined the Brexit Party – that’s completely in breach of our constitution – but also because we ‘ re the party saying we need to get a clear Conservative majority, we are fighting these seats to get Brexit done and deliver for people.
- Labor’s shadow health secretaryJonathan Ashworthrefused to say whether immigration would increase or decrease under a Labor government.
We want a balanced approach to immigration and what that means for the NHS is if a hospital trust thinks that a surgeon or a nurse or a midwife is qualified enough to come to our country to care for our sick and our elderly and offers them that opportunity, then they should be allowed to come to our country to care for our sick and our elderly.
Here are some more details on Labour’s dentistry announcement.
The party has pledged to scrap band one dentistry charges, giving everyone a free teeth MOT with their dentist, including checks for oral cancers. They say this will save money in the long run, taking pressure off GPs and hospitals.
The British Dental Association has estimated that the measures would cost £ 450 m per year. Here are some key passages from the announcement:
Charges put people off from going to their dentist, and actively undermines prevention – nearly 1 in 5 patients delay going to the dentist because they can’t afford to see one …
The current system is also putting pressure on the wider NHS. Around 380, 000 patients with toothache are choosing to head to their GPs who cannot provide dental treatment, costing the NHS over £ 20 million a year. Around 135, 000 patients per year are also estimated to attend A&E units with dental problems, at a cost of £ 18 million.
Today’s measures are also aimed at improving children’s oral health. More than 100 children a day have rotting teeth removed in hospital, when nine in ten cases could have been prevented. Tooth decay remains the leading reason for hospitals admissions among 5 to 9 year olds, and are more than double those for tonsillitis.
Corbyn says that their proposals for re-nationalization are “very, very modest”. The water companies are failing and so is Royal Mail.
He finishes the interview by saying he is “determined to win it and looking forward to winning it on (December).
On the party’s pledge to give people free dental check-ups, Corbyn says that the measure would actually save money because it would prevent more expensive – and painful – problems emerging. “You should look at expenditure as investment in the future,” he says.
Asked if he agrees with army chiefNick Carter‘s comment that NATO was the most successful military alliance in history, Corbyn says he wouldn’t define it as that but as “a product of an attempt to bring people together after the second world war”.
On Trident, Corbyn says the nuclear deterrent would part of “nuclear non-proliferation discussions” if he became prime minister. The real insecurities in the world are not the same as they were in the Cold War, he says, they are more to do with cyber-security.
Corbyn is asked about the SNP’sIan Blackford‘s insistence that his party would insist on a Scottish independence referendum in the first year of a Labor government. Corbyn says he cannot promise that. “We are not doing deals with anybody, we are not forming coalition,” he says.
The issue of an independence referendum should not come “in the early years of a Labor government”, says Corbyn. He says the SNP will have a choice between bringing in a Tory government with all its austerity measures and a progressive Labor government.
Corbyn: wait for the manifesto for Labor’s policy on freedom of movement
We paid £ 11 bn into the EU budget last year to access the bloc’s market. Would Corbyn agree to that, says Marr. The Labor leader says it depends how much they were asking for but that we need to maintain access to EU markets.
Corbyn is asked if the Labor party’s manifesto will repeat its 2017 promise to end free movement.
“You’ll have to wait until Thursday [when the Labour manifesto will be unveiled] to find out the wording of it,” says Corbyn. A lot of EU nationals have made their homes here and make a massive contribution to this society, he says. They should be able to remain.
Marr asks the Labor leader about his party’s conference motion to “extend free movement”. Corbyn says he thinks the movers of the motion had in mind “family reunion”, so allowing people to bring members of their family to the UK from outside the EU. (The Conservative party is interpreting the motion as meaning the extension of free movement to other countries.)
Will free movement end if we leave the EU? “There will be an awful lot of movement,” says Corbyn.
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Corbyn refuses to say if he wants the UK to stay in the EU or leave
Corbyn is on Marr. Asked if he wanted the UK to leave the EU or not, he said he would put that choice to the British people and that he wanted “a close relationship with the EU”.
“We will negotiate a credible option of leaving and put that along side remain and put that to the British people,” he said, adding that negotiations with the EU would start as soon as they entered government .
Marr points out that most of the senior members of the shadow cabinet have said they would campaign to remain in any second referendum. “You don’t know who I’m going to take with me into those negotiations,” said Corbyn.
“However people voted in the referendum, they didn’t vote to loose their job, they didn’t vote for a deregulated society,” he says.
A Labor-negotiated deal would be put to the party’s conference as well as to parliament, he says.
Labor would back a customs union with the EU. “We have to be realistic about where British trade is at the moment”, says Corbyn, and about half of UK trade is done with the EU.
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Raab says migrants should pay into the NHS
Asked about the previous target of getting immigration down to 10 s of thousands, Raab says that – speaking as the son of a refugee – he thinks that immigration can be very beneficial, but that people coming to the UK should have to wait five years before they can claim benefits and that they should pay into the NHS.
His party has said that the “vast majority” of migrants will need a job offer to come to the UK to work if they form the next government, regardless of where they are from in the world. They say there will be a small number of exceptions, including high-skilled scientists and those who want to come to the UK to start a business.
Asked what groups of migrant workers the party wanted fewer of in the UK, Raab said he didn’t want to stigmatise groups. He said he wanted to invest in innovation so that the UK was more productive and he wanted to reduce the need for cheap labor from abroad.
The Conservatives have pledged that access to benefits will be equalised between EU nationals and those from the rest of the world, meaning non-UK citizens will typically need to wait five years before they are able to claim benefits. Under current rules, EU migrants can access welfare and services after being in the UK for three months.
The party said it would put an end to the practice of child benefit being sent abroad to support children who do not live in the UK and that it would increase the immigration health surcharge from £ (to £) . They said the change will raise more than £ 500 ma year.
The surcharge was introduced in 2015 in a clampdown on so-called “health tourism”, and has previously been doubled from £ 200 to £ 400.
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Good morning and welcome to Politics live.
Prince Andrew’s bombshell interview with Emily Maitlis for BBC’s Newsnight last night is likely to dominate this morning’s news agenda. The Duke of York claimed that he could not have had sex with a teenage girl in the London home of British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell because he was at home after attending a children’s party at Pizza Express in Woking. You can read the full storyhereand some analysishere.
In politics news, the US businesswoman Jennifer Arcurihas told ITV’s Exposurethat Boris Johnson brutally cast her aside “like some one-night stand”, leaving her “heartbroken” since he became prime minister and the controversy over their four-year relationship became public. The full interview will be aired on ITV’s Exposure this evening.
Writing in the Observer, Jeremy Corbyn has said the Labor government will pass an emergency “NHS protection” law if it wins the general election, to ensure that powerful US pharmaceutical companies cannot infiltrate the health service and dramatically force up the price of drugs. The party has also pledged to provide free NHS dental check-ups for everyone in England this morning. Corbyn said that over half of adults and 40% of children haven’t been to the dentist in the last year.
If you don’t go to the dentist for check-ups, you end up storing up problems in the long term. Over 100, 000 are admitted to hospital every year because of problems with their teeth.
The Labor leader is due on the Andrew Marr show shortly. I’ll bring you the latest from that.
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