Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride has said he is 'bemused' by Dan Poulter's comments that the Conservatives have become a 'nationalist party of the right'.
The former health minister and mental health doctor announced he would be defecting to Labour as he could no longer look his NHS colleagues, patients and constituents in the eye. Report by Alibhaiz. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
The former health minister and mental health doctor announced he would be defecting to Labour as he could no longer look his NHS colleagues, patients and constituents in the eye. Report by Alibhaiz. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00 I'm completely bemused. I mean I came into Parliament in 2010 with Dan, I get on very well with him, he's a nice guy.
00:07 But I totally disagree with his assessment of where we are with the National Health Service.
00:11 He sat in Parliament as I had. Firstly we ring-fenced health as only one of two departments that we did
00:18 in terms of fiscal constraints that we brought in in the 2010s.
00:23 We spend £165 billion on health today, that's up 13% in real terms in just the last year.
00:29 We've got more staff in the NHS than at any time in its history.
00:33 We've got 7,000 more doctors in the last year, 21,000 more nurses.
00:38 So I just simply don't recognise the reason why he says he's decided to move on.
00:43 We've got a really excellent Prime Minister. What we've got to do as a party now is stay united.
00:48 We've got to talk about the great successes we're having, bringing inflation down 11.1% to 3.2%,
00:54 cutting people's national insurance so they're £900 on average better off each year.
01:00 We've got real wage growth growing for each of the last nine months.
01:04 We're getting those backlogs in the NHS down 200,000 since last September, cutting crime.