General election: McDonnell says 95% of taxpayers won't face income tax or NI increases under Labor – live news – The Guardian, Google News

Meanwhile, in South Yorkshire, not everyone has been happy to see the prime minister …

Q: Under the ToriesNHSstaff have to ask patients at A&E for their passports to check they are entitled to treatment. Would you stop this?

Ashworth says this policy is “obnoxious”. Labor has asked for the impact assessment of this policy, but the government has not published it. He saysLaborwould suspend those regulations.

• Ashworth says Labor would stop hospital staff having to check the nationality of patients to be sure of their entitlement for free treatment.

(The Q&A is now over.

Q: Would you extend the sugar tax

Ashworth saysLaborwould expand it to milky drinks, milkshakes.

He says Matt Hancock thinks all you need to improve public health is a smartphone and an app. Ashworth says he does not agree with this.

He says A ”Future Generations Wellbeing Act” would make a big difference. There is something similar in Wales, he says. Legislation like this would force public bodies to get serious about public health.

He says Nye Bevan described theNHSas “socialism in action” when he set it up. But it has never addressed health inequalities. It is not right that people living in the constituencies that he and McDonnell represent will die 10 years on average before people in other places.

Q: Are you happy to have aLaborcandidate who posted a picture on social media of a gun being held to Theresa May’s head?

McDonnell says people can make mistakes, and learn from them. He says, as a Catholic, he was brought up to believe in redemption.

Q: Simon Stevens, the chief executive ofNHSEngland, used to work for a big US health company. People think he is a privatiser. Would you get rid of him?

Ashworth says Stevens also used to work for Frank Dobson. He says it is not right to comment on civil servants, but he says that he has worked well with Stevens and that he respects him.

Q: Under aLaborBrexit would you allow freedom of movement to continue?

Ashworth says his position is that trusts should be able to continue to recruit internationally.

Q: Will you reform doctors’ pensions ? The current rules are forcing doctors to retire early.

Ashworth accepts this is an issue.Laborwould review the rules urgently. There must be a fair solution, he says.

Q: What do you think of theBrexitparty standing down in Tory-held seats. And what will happen if they stand down in Labor-held seats?

McDonnell says this decision helps Labor, because it shows voters they are up against a Trump / Farage / Johnson alliance to sell off theNHS. He says Nigel Farage was only doing what Donald Trump said he should do in their LBC interview.

He says the public don’t like deals like this anyway.

I don’t think our people like these dodgy deals behind the scenes.

He says, when people go to vote, he wants them to be aware of the risk to the NHS from this alliance.

Q: Was Ashworth wrong to say theNHSwould not be covered by the four-day week?

McDonnell says Ashworth was destroying the “myth” put out by the (Conservatives) that the NHS would be destroyed by a four-day week coming in from day one.

He repeats the explanation of the Labor policy he went through earlier. (See11. 53 am.)He says he wants the economy to grow. That generates more in tax revenue. He says that would mean you could afford to hire more staff to compensate for the shorter hours being worked.

It is a 10 – year program he is proposing, he says. He says he wants to build a consensus and take people with him. That is howLaborintroduced the minimum wage. It would introduce a working time commission, he says.

Q: What would you do on social care, and on free movement?

Ashworth saysLaborwill be making an announcement about social care later in the campaign.

On free movement, he says if an (NHStrust thinks a doctor or nurse is qualified enough to care for the sick and elderly, they should be allowed in.

The Tories announced plans for an NHS visa. But that would still amount to a £ 400 nurses’ tax, he says.

John McDonnellandJonathan Ashworthare now taking questions.

Q: Are you worried that you might be raising expectations unreasonably?

Ashworth says this is “substantial investment”, not just for theNHS, but for related services.

He says the Tories last year announced more money for the NHS day-to-day health budget. But other health services, like sexual health services, continued to be cut. He says it has got to the point where maternity units are now finding babies with neo-natal syphilis because sexual health services have been cut back by so much.

Organizations like the (Health) Foundation are saying this is a big increase, he says.

Q: At (Labor) conference you said you wanted a four-day working week. You said you it would apply to everyone. But Ashworth said it would not apply to the NHS. Which is it?

McDonnell says he is proposing moving towards a 32 – hour working week.

He thinks this should be planned and negotiated over time.

As investment goes into the economy, it should be more productive. That wealth should be shared with workers. It can be shared in two ways: through higher wages, or a shorter working week.

The process of cutting working hours started in the 1860 s, he says.

But he says recently that process stalled. He wants further cuts. “We work to live, we don’t live to work,” he says.

He says he wants this process to apply to everyone.

He says what he is proposing would happen over a decade.

He says Ashworth was making the point this would happen gradually.

This will be popular, he says.

He says in his constituency parents work different shifts. Family life breaks down. He says what Labor is trying to do is change that.

Ashworth says he would be a health secretary who cares forNHSstaff, not one who picks fights with them.

We will increase the budget for training, development and education by £ 1bn a year. We will allow the NHS to recruit internationally ethically but without hindrance. We will bring back a training bursary for nurses, midwives and allied health professionals and we will expand GP training places to 5, 000 to recruit more family doctors in local communities providing 27 m extra GP appointments. Announcements on allocations for our national care service and free personal care will be made in the coming days.

Ashworth says addressing vaccination rates will be a particular priority.

Earlier this year we lost our measles free status. Measles is a horrible, life threatening disease and yet vaccination rates have fallen now five years in a row. This isn’t simply about anti vaxx propaganda on social media – as Mr Hancock claims – but the toxic combination of the ToryHealthand Social Care Act reorganisation, the squeeze on primary care and cuts to public health services. We are determined to restore our WHO measles free status, so as a start we will invest £ 35 ma year in improving vaccination uptake and we will recruit an extra 4, 800 health visitors and school nurses too.

Ashworth saysLaborwould address inequality through a Future Generations Wellbeing Act.

Rates of premature deaths including deaths linked to heart disease, lung cancers, COPD are two times higher in the most deprived areas of England compared to the most affluent. We see a higher rate of suicide in more deprived areas and higher rates of addiction.

We will relentlessly target health inequalities as part of our wellbeing strategy. We will legislate with a new Future Generations Wellbeing Act. We will commit to halving childhood obesity by 2030 and tackle the wider determinants of ill health such as banning junk food advertising before the 9pm watershed.

Ashworth pays tribute to Frank Dobson, the formerLaborhealth secretary whose death was announced yesterday. He goes on:

Frank said “inequality in health is the worst inequality of all. There is no more serious inequality than knowing you’ll die sooner because you’re badly off. ”He was so right.

Ashworth saysLaborwould prioritise mental health.

I don’t believe a comprehensive mental health service has ever been delivered. Yet today stress, anxiety and depression are the biggest cause of sickness absence in our society, responsible for 91 m working days lost every year costing the UK economy £ 99 bn a year.

Last year the number of prescriptions for anti-depressions hit their highest level – with over 70 M prescriptions dispensed . 100, 000 children and young people simply don’t get the mental health support they need.

We will as a government prioritise mental health and wellbeing like never before.

Ashworth explains what he expects to happen under theLaborplan.

Firstly, the money available for our primary and secondary care services will increase. The so-calledNHSEngland revenue budget will increase by 3.9 per cent. An increase on Tory plans.

We will invest more to relentlessly drive up performance and drive down waiting times …

Faulty and out of date equipment lead to cancelled operations and increasing delays for patients receiving diagnostic tests results. We will deliver our commitment that less than one per cent of patients should wait longer than six weeks for a diagnostic test.

And because we want cancer survival rates to be amongst the best in the world we will invest to deliver a shift in early cancer diagnosis from 2 in 4, to 3 in 4 cancer cases over the next decade .

So today we are committing an extra £ 1.5bn of capital for diagnostics. We have fewer MRI and CT scanners per capita than most OECD countries so will increase the numbers of scanners towards the international average.

Overall NHS capital expenditure will increase to meet the OECD average through public investment.

That will mean an extra £ 15 billion capital investment to rebuild crumbling hospitals and invest in the cutting-edge medical technology of the future … The NHS will be literally rebuilt under a Labor government.

We will honor confirming hospital rebuilds but future decisions on hospital rebuilds will be based on not on party political considerations as it is now under the Tories, but based on critical needs, be fully transparent and spread fairly across the regions.

We will institute a green new deal for the NHS to ensure trusts can access funding to reduce their carbon footprint and we will institute an NHS Forest with a million extra trees across the estate.

We will ensure an extra £ 2.5 billion investment to upgrade primary and community health facilities.