Chancellor and PM have both defended decision not to pay compensation to Waspi women
Keir Starmer is back in London today after a two-day trip to Norway and Estonia. In Estonia yesterday he gave an interview to Nick Ferrari from LBC, which was broadcast this morning, and Ferrari told the PM that he had been away from the UK for 31 days since he took office, equivalent to six working weeks, or one in five days. He asked Starmer why he needed to travel so much.
Starmer replied:
I travelled here today because our work with Nato is so important to our country.
If you think about the impact that the conflict in Ukraine has had back at home on our country, it’s been huge. If you think just for a moment, about the risks to the subsea infrastructure in Norway. We had a high-level briefing on the work we’re doing in relation to the cabling of the pipelines that are under the sea and the risk. I have to make sure and be assured that we’ve got the capability to meet the risks to our country.
It’s about spending money that we already have more effectively to deliver better outcomes. So, on elective recovery in the waiting list, for example, we see across the NHS teams that are using different ways of organising their clinics to deliver more productivity, more patient throughput, within within the resources that we currently have within the NHS. That is the approach I want to see right across the NHS.
As I’ve said before, if all I did as the secretary of state was to take the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS, I’ll have done a hell of a lot of good.
