PM accused of 'breaking charities'

ODN

Sir Keir Starmer was accused of ''balancing the books off the back of children's hospices'' when appearing before the Liaison Committee. The prime minister said his government inherited a broken economy and broken public services. Report by Gluszczykm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn

Transcript

00:00We inherited both a broken economy plus broken public services.

00:04No government's inherited that combination for decades and decades and decades,

00:09and that's a very difficult working environment.

00:11Yeah, but you're now attempting to break our charities.

00:13I mean, just this month, Marie Curie Hospice in Liverpool closed their inpatient unit permanently.

00:19Your civil security covenant won't put charities on a good financial footing by itself.

00:23You need to offer them a carve-out for this national insurance rise.

00:27I mean, quite simply, it is breaking them.

00:2930% of them say they're cutting staff.

00:32Only 50% of them now feel positive about the future Prime Minister.

00:35Can't you do something?

00:36Well, it is important just to bear in mind why we had to do what we did on national insurance.

00:43We looked through the books and we found £22 billion missing.

00:46We had to do something about it because that's a serious problem.

00:49But you can't do that on the back.

00:50We addressed that at the budget.

00:52At the same time, we used the money from that NICS increase to invest hugely in our NHS.

00:59Hence, we promised 2 million extra appointments in the first year of the Labour government.

01:03We've done 4.5 million.

01:05That takes the pressure off many, many charities.

01:07I want to talk about charities.

01:09And you're basically balancing the book on the back of things like children's hospices.

01:12Can I also talk about...

01:13No, no, we're clearing up the mess of the last government.

01:15On the back of children's hospices.

01:17So let's do it.

Category

Transcript

Recommended