After the prime minister tops the polls for last night’s TV grilling by Jeremy Paxman, the Guardian’s politics team scoops up and analyses the fallout
- Ed Miliband vows Labour would cap profits of private health companies
- David Cameron’s TV interview - video highlights
- 2.6m people watched Cameron/Miliband TV showdown
- Catch up with our morning briefing
Labour has confirmed that its proposed profits cap on private NHS providers would only apply to clinical services.
Labour confirms its 5% cap applies only to clinical services: MT @LabourHealth We're talking about contracts for clinical services
Policy Q: does Labour's proposed 5% profit cap on private companies supplying NHS services cover pharmaceutical makers, chemists and GPs?
Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative health secretary, has claimed that Labour’s proposed cap on profits for firms with NHS contracts could lead to “chaos” for the NHS.
If you bankrupt the economy like Labour did last time, then you’ll put our NHS at risk. We can only have a strong NHS if we have a strong economy, but Ed Miliband doesn’t have an economic plan.
We all know Labour want to ‘weaponise’ the NHS but this is another policy from Ed Miliband that looks ill-thought through. It risks higher infection rates, higher waiting times and chaos for our NHS. This incompetence is exactly why Ed Miliband is simply not up to the job.
There were two key policy announcements in Ed Miliband’s speech.
· Doctors have raised concerns over private companies “winning contracts that have multi-million pound profit margins.” (Pulse, May 2014)
· The National Audit Office has called for greater use of profit controls in government contracts, saying “Excessive profits can undermine public confidence and contractors should not be able to make a profit by acting against their customer’s (the government’s) interest” and calling for the use of “gain-share mechanisms, claw-back of excess profits and post-contract reviews.” (National Audit Office, 2014).
Q: You have a poster about the Tories cutting health spending “to the bone”. But it has been protected. You are just scaremongering, aren’t you?
Burnham says the government has slashed spending on care. That is at the root of the NHS problems. Care cuts are effectively NHS cuts, he says.
Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, is being interviewed by Andrew Neil on the Daily Politics.
Miliband is wrapping up.
Addressing the Labour people in the audience, he says “the fight starts here”.
Q: Aren’t you scaremongering about the NHS? No one is being asked to pay.
Miliband says the Health Act was all about giving more role of the private sector. If the Tories get back in, there will be more of this. This is not the way forward, he says. He says the experts agree.
Q: Are you relaxed about fewer NHS contracts to private firms. Why not cap the involvement of private firms in the NHS?
Miliband says Andy Burnham has led on calling for an integrated service. A fragmented service cannot be an integrated service.
Miliband says he is just taking a couple of questions.
Q: Jim Murphy said today Scotland could pick the winner of the campaign. Are English voters being frozen out?
Milband at the top of The Orbit. pic.twitter.com/V0POQPCQ8s
Miliband confirms the profits cap:
And, for the first time, we will cap the profits that private health companies can make from our National Health Service.
The standard rule will be a five per cent cap.
Miliband says Labour would stop creeping privatisation within the NHS.
Privatisation of the NHS is no longer simply out of step with our principles, it is out of step with the needs of the time.
If the task of health care in the future is integrating services, bringing them together, the last thing we need is to fragment and privatise.
Miliband turns to the new health proposals unveiled today.
He says they amount to a “double lock” to protect the NHS.
With a Labour government there will be a new double-lock to protect our National Health Service.
Guaranteeing proper funding.
Miliband is now summarising Labour’s election pledges.
Miliband says Labour are the optimists in this campaign. And his opponents are pessimists.
We saw a rattled prime minister, running from his record.
And we heard a prime minister living in a different world.
Ed Miliband is just starting his speech now. He was introduced by Harriet Harman and a nurse called Agnes (I did not catch her surname).
And what was at the heart of those games?
A spirit of optimism.
Labour has sent out a briefing note with details of its policy announcement. The key elements are already in Patrick Wintour’s story. (See 11.16am.)
This is what Labour is claiming about the threat posed to the NHS about privatisation under the Tories.
David Cameron’s Health & Social Care Act imposes a market framework on the NHS, forcing services to be put out to tender even if doctors do not think they should be. As a result, more and more private sector contracts are being awarded:
· Private providers have secured a third of contracts for NHS clinical services since the Health & Social Care Act came into force (BMJ, December 2014)
@AyrGJH @AndrewSparrow not apply to dentists GP practices or pharmacists, according to Labour.
John Plunkett tells me that around 300 people have now complained to Channel 4 about alleged bias in the questioning of David Cameron and Ed Miliband by Jeremy Paxman and Kay Burley last night. That is on top of the 110 complaints to Ofcom (see 10.58am), taking the total number of complaints to more than 400. We are still waiting to hear about complaints to Sky.
A profits cap would be imposed on private health companies by an incoming Labour government, Ed Miliband will say today when he launches the party’s election campaign at the Orbit Tower at the Olympic Park in East London.
developing a more cost reflective tariff system to ensure that the prices paid better reflect patient complexity”.
There is a limited role for independent sector providers in providing services but that must be to support the NHS not to break it up.”
Ed Miliband has been tweeting from the Labour campaign launch, which is at the Olympics site in East London.
I'm in east London for the launch of our campaign this morning - voters have a big choice in this election. https://t.co/IfsNN53lIO
So, here’s a summary.
More from Patrick.
NHS commissioners would have power to lower/raise the 5% cap to take account of circumstance. Excess profits would have to sent back to NHS.
Labour says will introduce a more cost reflective tariff system to ensure that prices better reflect patient complexity. ps Easier said...
My colleague Patrick Wintour has a scoop from Labour’s campaign launch.
Labour to impose a profits cap on all outsourced NHS contracts over a value of £500,000 with default level set at 5 %.
My colleague John Plunkett has sent me more about last night’s Cameron/Miliband TV showdown. He’s got three new lines.
The media regulator Ofcom has received 110 complaints from viewers about “alleged bias” in the treatment of Ed Miliband and David Cameron in last night’s Channel 4/Sky News programme.
Certainly a lot of commentators - and instant Twitter reaction last night - thought Kay Burley was a lot tougher on the Labour leader, interrupted him more and asked more questions in the segment in which questions were put by the studio audience.
An Ofcom spokesperson said: “We are assessing the complaints before deciding whether or not to investigate.”
There’s no word yet from C4/Sky about complaints they may have received.
Last night’s leader interviews had another 322,000 viewers on Sky News (which simulcast it with Channel 4) giving it a combined audience including C4 of nearly 3m, a big hit for both.
Channel 4 peaked with 3m viewers, Sky with 371,000, way up on the news channel’s average ratings.
More details on the ratings. If Miliband’s decision to go second last night was an attempt to avoid a big TV audience, it failed.
More people were watching at 9.45pm when Miliband started (2.8m) than were watching when Paxo pounced on Cameron (2.5m) at the top of the programme at 9pm.
I posted a summary of Twitter reaction to last night’s Cameron/Miliband showdown here. And Guardian commentators posted their verdicts here.
Here are some of the other comment pieces I’ve seen about the event this morning that I found interesting.
Cameron always seemed reluctant to concede fault and mistakes during his watch. Miliband, in contrast, readily admitted to past failures on immigration and inequality – though not on the level of the fiscal debt in Labour’s later years in office.
But while admitting mistakes may seem more honest, it may not necessarily persuade voters that you have learnt from them.
The central weakness of the Labour party’s campaign — the sense that it cannot be trusted with economic policy — was left intact by this encounter. On the critical question, asked by Mr Paxman, of whether Labour borrowed and spent too much, Mr Miliband stuttered his way to the wrong answer. It is hard to go before the country and seek high office with an answer to vital economic questions that is still so far from credible. He also had a difficult personal moment on his “strained” relations with his brother. On immigration, the mansion tax and relations with the SNP, where Labour policy is again weak, Mr Miliband also struggled.
The instant verdict of an ICM poll was that Mr Cameron had won the debate 54-46. That probably reflects the substance rather than the style of the debate which will probably not settle the election but it did allow the two principals to exhibit their different conceptions of the problems that face Britain. There is a genuine choice on offer in this election and it was on display on prime time television. There was also one obvious winner last night: Jeremy Paxman.
As for David Cameron, he was wrong-footed and looked it. Jeremy Paxman portrayed him as a rich kid who breaks every promise he makes. Mr Cameron has for years avoided long-form TV interviews, not least under the advice of Andy Coulson (not sure he’s still quite as rich as Mr Paxman painted him – certainly he’s not as rich as Mr Paxman). Last night the rustiness that comes with hiding from folk like Jeremy Paxman showed.
Andrew Cooper, David Cameron’s former pollster, said the programme would not shift a single swing vote. He knows a thing or two about the TV habits and profile of swing voters.
Miliband’s response to the “could you stand up to Putin question” was painful: “Hell yes I’m tough enough.” No normal person in Britain talks like that. He also called the audience Q&A a “town hall meeting”. Perhaps his expensive American advisers had too much of an effect on him.
He also came up with some surprisingly crude anti-Americanism, however, claiming that he had stood up to Barack Obama, whom he mystifyingly called “the leader of the free world”, over Syria. This is a travesty of what actually happened, when Miliband was in favour in principle of strikes to punish Assad until he realised how unpopular they were.
Team Cameron was correct: the experience of watching the Labour leader can only beat expectations, which is why they were right to avoid a head-to-head debate. I thought Miliband’s guff about his brother was pitiful shlock, but Paxman’s sneering and drawling had the counter-productive effect of working the live audience round to Miliband’s side.
Of course a “debate” won’t win the election. It may have only the most marginal impact. It may be forgotten come election day, after a few more of these set piece events. But if it has an impact at all, it will be to remind those who have underestimated Miliband, who have traduced him, mocked him and written him off, that he’s a more than capable politician on his day. That’s not to ignore his flaws or excuse the mistakes that he has doubtless made. But a few more days like this in the coming weeks and he may just get to show he’d be a capable Prime Minister too, with a far more energised party behind him.
David Cameron has been doing a Help to Buy visit this morning.
As usual, he’s been in a hard hard and a high-vis jacket.
PM @David_Cameron in hard hat and hi vis again. pic.twitter.com/4n0yKSkgMj
Grant Shapps, the Conservative chairman, has just tweeted this.
When Obama beat McCain 54-46 in a head-to-head it was called a landslide. But for the BBC that's called "no clear winner". Odd!
We’ve just had the ratings for last night’s Cameron/Miliband TV showdown. My colleague John Plunkett has the details.
Ratings just in - Channel 4 had 2.6m viewers for Paxo’s grilling of Cameron and Miliband.
These are big numbers, beating ITV documentary The Triplets Are Coming! (1.7m) and, with an 11.7% share of the audience, around double what C4 typically gets in primetime. They will be delighted.
Here are today’s YouGov GB polling figures.
Update: Cons lead at 2 - Latest YouGov / The Sun results 26th Mar - Con 36%, Lab 34%, LD 7%, UKIP 13%, GRN 5%; APP-12 http://t.co/uRDMHyWTZE
According to the Daily Mail, Theresa May, the home secretary, wants to change immigration laws so that illegal immigrants are deported before they get the chance to appeal.
Illegal immigrants would be put on a plane before they get the chance to appeal under Conservative plans to rip up deportation laws.
Home secretary Theresa May wants to implement a new regime of ‘deport first, appeal later’.
If Theresa May is so worried about this, she’s been the home secretary for five years – I think your viewers will reasonably say: why is she announcing with six weeks to go to the general election a policy she could have implemented many years ago?
According to the Mirror, Ed Miliband was “punched and shoved” by a small group of protesters yesterday at noon, before last night’s showdown with David Cameron.
UPDATE AT 12.37PM: Earlier I said the incident happened after the TV showdown. I’ve changed that because it reportedly happened at noon, before the TV event.
Good morning. I’m taking over now from Claire.
What you saw last night is for the first time, the public got to see the real Ed Miliband – Ed Miliband unmediated by sections of the press who are out to get him and want to portray him as something that he isn’t. Last night was an opportunity for the public to see the real Ed Miliband and they liked that Ed Miliband and he came across much more strongly than David Cameron and I think he proved a lot of people wrong last night.
She also said that people were tired of questions about Miliband’s decision to stand against his brother in 2010.
My debate other half @BBCNews @Kevin_Maguire just announced David Miliband won the #cameronvsmiliband And who are we to disagree?
Douglas Alexander:
I think it [the interview] will have begun a process of reappraisal.
I think that speaks volumes … He’s run a mile from that debate.
Labour election campaign chief Douglas Alexander is on now. He says Miliband had not practised the “hell yes, I’m tough enough” line. He was just answering the question, Alexander says.
Tory party chairman Grant Shapps is on the Today programme now.
He says David Cameron last night sounded like a man with a plan for the country.
If Labour is elected, if Ed Miliband is prime minister, I think it would be pretty chaotic.
Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister and SNP leader, has just been interviewed by John Humphrys on the Today programme.
Quizzed on Alex Salmond’s recent comments that the party could “lock out” the Tories from forming a government after 7 May, she said:
We would in no circumstances support a Conservative government.
It’s a matter of simple arithmetic: if there are more anti-Tory MPs then we can lock the Tories out of government.
Of course he’s not going to say that [that Labour would work with the SNP] this side of an election.
He’s clinging to pretence he’s got some chance of winning a majority when everyone know that’s not going to happen.
We can beat them issue by issue … We would use our influence to try to pursue an alternative to austerity, the end of Trident … that’s the way minority government works.
If people choose to vote SNP, they’ll make sure Scotland’s voice is heard in Westminster.
SNP will have 'a lot of support from some Labour backbenchers for some things we want to do, like ending austerity', @NicolaSturgeon says
We’re not goiong to get another referendum by voting SNP in the general election …
It will be determined by the people of Scotland in the normal way.
It seems Grant Shapps will be making an appearance on the Today programme at around 8.20am to discuss the fallout from last night’s TV interviews.
The Tory party chairman has been keeping quite a low profile following Guardian revelations about his second life as millionaire online marketing expert Michael Green.
Ed Miliband – who, despite what many watchers thought was a creditable performance last night, did not topple Cameron in the post-interview polling – will be looking to bounce back this morning. Political editor Patrick Wintour sends this report:
Ed Miliband will launch his party’s election campaign this morning at the Olympic Park in East London with a promise he will fight an election campaign suffused with optimism and determined to show that Britain can do better. He will repeatedly claim Labour are the optimists and the Tories the pessimists.
The Labour leader will insist the spirit of optimism will be at the heart of a campaign intended to get the party back into Downing Street after five years in opposition.
Five million people paid less than the living wage. They say: this is as good as it gets. We say: Britain can do better than this.
A quick sweep-up of the day’s other business:
We can be categorical about this. Charles has absolutely no right to do any of this. It is an empty platitude, often heard, that Charles has as much right to his opinion as anyone else. So he does, but not everyone has an open line to ministers and his use of it explodes any notion that these letters are ‘private’ …
If he wants to be a private citizen, with the protection of privacy which is due, he knows what to do. Then, having abdicated, he is free to scribble spiders all day long and we’ll see how many of them get answered.
If it is accepted that the head of state is going to have opinions, and perhaps give them an airing for time to time, then – for a newspaper of principled republicanism, at least – the answer is clear. Not any longer to allow the job to be filled by accident of birth, but instead to select for the post by democratic means.
Perhaps that is a discussion for another day. But after Thursday’s ruling, the immediate point is simply that mail that comes on his majesty’s service must no longer be kept from his majesty’s subjects.
The reality is that most MPs – and especially those in ministerial and leadership positions – have punishing schedules …
The real question is this: Do we want the people making important decisions on our behalf to be well-rested and clear-minded, or should we keep them sick, stressed-out and exhausted?
One of biggest digital moments in British political history. The #Battlefornumber10 produced 246K. That's 2778Tweets a minute.
I have been played as a fool and when I go home tonight I will look in the mirror and see an honourable fool looking back at me, and I would much rather be an honourable fool in this, and any other matter, than a clever man.
How you treat people in this place is important. This week I went to the leader of the house’s leaving drinks. I went into his private office and was passed by the deputy leader of house yesterday, all of whom would have been aware of what they were proposing to do.
A two-part briefing this morning, as we first digest last night’s interviews, before turning to a light breakfast of the day’s other politics news.
How did Twitter react last night? Great analysis by @carljackmiller & co. Miliband clearly won but 1/4 as many tweets pic.twitter.com/bZ3lVI4UX8
It's the phil Collins mistake! vote labour, as often as possible pic.twitter.com/cbj7gCrTyJ
Thanks for 2 mentions, Ed Miliband. Only met once for all of 2 minutes when you embarrassed me with over the top flattery.
Farage tells me: "I might vote Labour."
If the people of Britain were allowed to go to the polls immediately after Cameron & Miliband: the Battle for Number 10, there’d a landslide. And our new prime minister would be Jeremy Paxman.
This was a man who’d clearly been straining at the leash since he left Newsnight; a man who’d spent too many months trapped indoors, fruitlessly barking questions at potplants.
Don’t Jeremy me,’ Jeremy salivated, while giving his trademark thousand-yard death stare. God, he had missed this. So had we.
‘Could you live on a zero-hours contract?’ Paxman demanded. ‘That’s not the question,’ Dave simpered. It was, though, and Paxman asked it again. And again.
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