Seven party leaders and representatives took the stage for ITV's second General Election debate on Thursday evening, addressing issues such as taxes, immigration, and the cost of living. On stage were Penny Mordaunt from the Conservatives, Angela Rayner from Labour, Stephen Flynn from the SNP, Daisy Cooper from the Liberal Democrats, Rhun ap Iorwerth from Plaid Cymru, Carla Denyer from the Green Party, and Nigel Farage from Reform UK. The debate was moderated by Julie Etchingham of ITV News, who asked questions on key topics selected by the public ahead of the event. Report by Blairm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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NewsTranscript
00:00Let's meet the seven politicians vying for your votes.
00:08I was born around the time that the NHS was founded.
00:12It was an amazing thing, but unfortunately, now it is on its knees.
00:18So many public services are not working as they used to.
00:23Do any of you have any ideas that are big enough to make things work again?
00:29The NHS in particular is an active face for the people of this country.
00:33They want to be able to rely on it.
00:36But since the Covid pandemic, the caseload that our healthcare professionals are dealing with has gone up by 43%.
00:44The only way that we can reduce those waiting lists is to keep the NHS budget strong.
00:51That we have done, that we will continue to do.
00:54The only party on this platform that has ever cut the NHS budget is Labour.
00:58They have cut it three times in Wales.
01:00The NHS is one of our proudest achievements and it will be come Labour that we will have to fix it again.
01:05Before I was an MP, I was a Unison rep and I was a home care worker.
01:08And in 2010, the Tories, aided and abetted by the Lib Dems, created austerity.
01:13Which meant many of our workforce were made redundant and now we have got the crisis in the NHS.
01:18So we have got to fix the workforce problem and we have got to invest.
01:21That is why we have done the non-dom tax status so we can put 40,000 new appointments.
01:26And we will use up private sector to bring down those waiting lists but the NHS will remain a public service under Labour.
01:33The elephant in the room is the fact that it is not migration that is the problem, it is the fact that we need more people coming in.
01:39To work in our hospitals and to work in our social care sector which has been decimated by your Brexit.
01:44Isn't the point, all we want is for it to be free at the point of delivery.
01:47That is what matters.
01:49And actually, Labour are quite right to say let's use the private sector to try and reduce some of the waiting lists.
01:54Why not actually give people tax relief on paying money into private insurance to relieve more of the pressure?
01:59One of the problems we have had over the last few years, as you know, is that the Conservatives have absolutely gutted primary care.
02:06Some people go to see their GP, your party promised 6,000 more GPs, we now have fewer per head.
02:11We have dentists fleeing the NHS and working privately because the dental contract is so broken and has not been fixed.
02:18Boris Johnson stood on the steps of Downing Street and promised to fix social care once and for good.
02:23And he hasn't and it's now in crisis.
02:25So our plan is to fix the front door with more GPs and dentists and to fix the back door by fixing social care.
02:31And that is exactly what we are doing.
02:33We have grown the number of healthcare professionals.
02:36We have 70,000 more nurses.
02:40We have a dental recovery plan.
02:43Just taxing the rich doesn't solve this.
02:46And everyone here is talking about more money, more investment.
02:50I am telling you we have massively increased investment in the NHS for a worse return.
02:54It's not just about money.
02:56I will introduce some facts to this debate.
03:00When the rules on non-dom status were changed in this country in 2017, there was no difference in who was leaving the country
03:09amongst those that were affected by that change and those who weren't.
03:14I was a home care worker.
03:16We gutted out home care services.
03:18It costs so much more money now that people are stuck on trolleys in A&E for 40 hours plus.
03:24These are our elderly relatives that are treated really poorly and it costs us more money.
03:29So if we put the money in the right place, we can actually make savings.
03:34I did that when I was a home care and trade union rep.
03:37I know we can do it again.
03:39At the moment we are hemorrhaging money because the money is being used in the most inappropriate way
03:44and people are not getting the care they deserve.
03:47I keep hearing migration levels are too high and getting higher and it's a strain on public services.
03:54But I understand we as a country need some foreign workers.
03:58What are you going to do?
04:00What we need at the moment is a skills strategy.
04:02We have not had an industrial and skills strategy.
04:04What we have had is we have been over-relying on our economy from overseas workers to fill our skills gap.
04:10They have done a tremendous job in doing that and we have needed that.
04:13But what we really need, as unemployment levels have gone higher again,
04:17is we need to really match those skills and give people opportunity to take those jobs.
04:21It's funny Angela Rayner says that because Labour today launched their six key priorities for the general election
04:27and didn't mention the single most important issue affecting the lives of everybody in this country,
04:32namely the population explosion caused directly by migration.
04:37The problem is we don't have enough migrants because Scotland has a declining working age population.
04:43So we need people to come.
04:45The problem we have is that Nigel Farage here has been on a dog whistle tour of the UK
04:50for many, many years and exploiting the anxieties that people have
04:54and we really need to change the way that we talk about this issue.
04:58The reason we voted Brexit and the reason Penny's Party got the massive majority in 2019
05:04is we voted to reduce the numbers coming in and the numbers have exploded.
05:09Honestly, unbelievable.
05:11One in 30 people walking on the street out there has come in the last two years alone.
05:17The answer is we have to have net migration at zero.
05:21It means skilled workers can come, we can go work abroad,
05:25we have to have a freeze on the total numbers of those coming in.
05:28Please raise your hand if you think the net level of legal migration,
05:33that is the additional number of people coming to the country to work and live, needs to fall.
05:40Please raise your hand.
05:42The number needs to fall.
05:44Nigel Farage, Penny Mordaunt...
05:46It's due to fall anyway.
05:48Daisy Cooper, Angela Rayner.
05:50The Westminster Status Quo.
05:52That's the Westminster Status Quo.
05:54Of course it is. The four main parties...
05:56No, it isn't.
05:58I welcome immigration because I think that people come here
06:01and they're more likely to prop up our public services and work in our public services
06:06rather than they are to put a drain on our public services.
06:08So I welcome immigration in this country because they contribute to our public service
06:12but the numbers are due to come down anyway.
06:16We have to build one new home every two minutes
06:21just to cope with legal net migration under this Conservative government.
06:26It is literally impossible.
06:28And as for the numbers coming in, I would respond to this.
06:3150% of the three quarters of a million who are coming in a year are dependents.
06:36They're not wealth creators.
06:38And mass migration is making us poorer.
06:41The problem that we have in higher education now is that changes in visa requirements
06:45means that family members aren't able to come and study
06:48to accompany students to universities.
06:52That is causing major problems in terms of revenue for our higher education universities.
06:56You should bring your mum.
06:57You come to university in Britain, you can't bring your mum, can you?
07:00Nigel Farage tells you all that migrants are making you poor
07:04and they're the problem.
07:06Don't believe him.
07:07Do you want to know the biggest problem facing the UK economy right now?
07:10His pet project of Brexit.
07:12£40 billion worth of tax receipts.
07:17And do you want to know what makes it worse?
07:20The Labour Party back Brexit as outlined by their manifesto today.
07:24Shameful.
07:25What are you going to do with illegal migrants when they come here, Angela?
07:28We have said that we will fill our skills gap with an industrial strategy...
07:33You brought it on to illegal migration.
07:36You're not letting me finish.
07:38Your leader was asked a specific question at the manifesto launch today
07:42and your leader couldn't answer it.
07:44We think it's shameful when some politicians scapegoat the people
07:48who become our neighbours, our friends, our colleagues
07:52to distract from their chronic underinvestment in public services.
07:57Britain is a rich country.
07:59I've worked in housing for 32 years.
08:02Why am I working every day with individuals and families
08:05who never thought they'd struggle but now rely on food banks
08:09and are at serious risk of homelessness?
08:11Because people are getting poorer.
08:13It's quite simple.
08:15I mentioned a few moments ago that GDP, wealth per capita,
08:20has fallen for the last six consecutive quarters.
08:24You know what the public can't afford, Penny, is any longer.
08:27One single day more of a Conservative government
08:30which is completely out of touch with the reality.
08:33The fact is that the cost-of-living crisis has been made so much worse
08:37by the mini-budget which blew a hole in the public finances
08:41and made people's rent and mortgages go absolutely sky-high
08:44and people have felt that hit and they are still trying to recover now.
08:47People have lost faith in politics.
08:50We feel disconnected from our representatives
08:52and sceptical that you will deliver on your promises.
08:55The public simply doesn't trust our system any more.
09:00What one change can you make to restore trust in politics?
09:04Bringing back integrity and ethics into our politics,
09:07which is what Keir Starmer will do in Labour,
09:10is exactly what we need to do because people cannot go around,
09:13as they have done, breaking the rules and think they can get away with it.
09:16The Prime Minister did, the previous Prime Minister has done,
09:19and I think that's undermined all of us as politicians.
09:22Well, we're at the dawn of a new Parliament
09:25and I think if we want integrity back,
09:27then people need to be honest about their manifestos.
09:30The only party on this platform that is going to cut your taxes
09:34is the Conservative Party.
09:36A vote for any other party will increase your taxes.
09:39Higher taxes, higher taxes, higher taxes, higher taxes...
09:42What are you on about?
09:44There's no wonder people are fed up.
09:47It's the PPE corruption,
09:50it's the Downing Street parties during Covid.
09:53We need to hold politicians to higher standards
09:55than we've seen in recent years.
09:57Thank you very much indeed.