No 10 refuses to say if Sunak uses NHS GP he’s registered with, or if he might use private healthcare in future
Pippa Crerar
At the post-PMQs lobby briefing Rishi Sunak’s press secretary responded to questions from reporters about his private healthcare cover with this statement:
The PM has set out his details in the house. [See 12.04pm.] In principle he believes that the personal health details of individuals should remain private.
But given the level of interest, and in the interests of transparency, he has set out that he is registered with an NHS GP, and has always been. He has used private health care in the past.
She confirmed that Sunak is no longer registered with a private GP, but refused to tell us when this happened, or whether it had been since he became prime minister in October. “As far as I’m aware, he is only registered with an NHS GP,” she said.
However, there were quite a few follow-up questions she refused to answer. She didn’t say whether he had actually used his NHS GP. And she wouldn’t say whether he would be using private healthcare in the future.
Nor would she say why he stopped using his private GP, prompting questions about whether it was because the Guardian had revealed the situation.
Key events
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Labour says Tories should have withdrawn whip from Andrew Bridgen earlier
Labour has criticised the Conservative party for only withdrawing the whip from Andrew Bridgen today, when he has been circulating misinformation about the safety of Covid vaccines on social media for several weeks now. In a statement Anneliese Dodds, the Labour chair, said:
For the Conservative party to delay action until now demonstrates, yet again, Rishi Sunak’s weakness among his own MPs.
Andrew Brigden has been spreading dangerous misinformation on Covid vaccines for some time now. He could have been disciplined weeks ago.
To invoke the Holocaust, as he did today, is utterly shameful, but it should never have reached this point.
Health unions say they will refuse to submit evidence to NHS pay review body for 2023-24
Health unions will not submit joint evidence to the NHS pay review body about the rise staff should get in 2023-24, in a move that threatens the system by which most health service pay is decided, my colleague Denis Campbell reports.
The decision to suspend the Conservative whip from Andrew Bridgen means there are now 15 independent MPs in the Commons, one more than the number of Liberal Democrats, PA Media reports.
My colleague Peter Walker wrote a good article about this eclectic group, most of whom are MPs accused of personal misconduct, a few days ago.
No 10 refuses to say if Sunak uses NHS GP he’s registered with, or if he might use private healthcare in future
Pippa Crerar
At the post-PMQs lobby briefing Rishi Sunak’s press secretary responded to questions from reporters about his private healthcare cover with this statement:
The PM has set out his details in the house. [See 12.04pm.] In principle he believes that the personal health details of individuals should remain private.
But given the level of interest, and in the interests of transparency, he has set out that he is registered with an NHS GP, and has always been. He has used private health care in the past.
She confirmed that Sunak is no longer registered with a private GP, but refused to tell us when this happened, or whether it had been since he became prime minister in October. “As far as I’m aware, he is only registered with an NHS GP,” she said.
However, there were quite a few follow-up questions she refused to answer. She didn’t say whether he had actually used his NHS GP. And she wouldn’t say whether he would be using private healthcare in the future.
Nor would she say why he stopped using his private GP, prompting questions about whether it was because the Guardian had revealed the situation.
PMQS – snap verdict
Given that Rishi Sunak is leader of a party where, after 13 years in power, a majority of people believe that “nothing in Britain works any more” (according to polling by GB News, not by any strecth a leftie outfit) and hundreds of people could be dying unnecessarily every week because the NHS is not functioning properly, that PMQs went reasonably well for him. The Tories who were cheering him on did not seem 100% convinced, but he landed some blows and did not get slaughtered, which in the circumstances counts as a result.
In news terms, the main point was Sunak’s admission that he has used private healthcare in the past. This will come as no surprise to anyone, but it is the first time he has admitted this and – more significantly – this blows away the line that he used during his interview with Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday that his healthcare arrangements are a private matter. His health conditions are a private matter. But whether or not he uses NHS doctors to deal with those conditions is a legitimate question, and Sunak has now opened the door to a further set of questions. If he is registered with an NHS GP, does he actually use that GP? Or is he still going private?
In strategy terms, the exchanges also underlined just how determined Sunak and the Tories are to use the anti-strike bill published yesterday as an electioneering weapon. In his first response to Starmer, he said:
[Starmer] simply doesn’t have a policy when it comes to this question. He talks about wanting to end the strikes. The question for him is simple then: why does he not support our minimum safety legislation?
We all know why … it’s because he’s on the side of his union paymasters, not patients.
Sunak kept this line going, using an attack line also splashed on the Daily Mail front page.
Does this work? Not really. All the polling suggests that people do not believe that Labour is to blame for the strikes, and anyone who watched Chris Loder put this theory to the rail unions at the transport committee this morning (see 10.08am) will have seen why it’s unconvincing.
But some of the other Sunak messaging was more robust. He was right to have a go at Labour for letting Wes Streeting unveil what sounded like a massive NHS reorganisation strategy while thinking aloud in an interview with the Times. (Streeting’s plan may have some merit, but it would be costly too, and there is a reason why Labour politicians are normally cautious about making comments that allow CCHQ to expands its tally of opposition “unfunded spending commitments”).
Sunak was entitled to say minimum service level legislation is commonplace in the rest of Europe. Those laws are not the same as Grant Shapps’, and they are in countries where unions have more rights than they do in the UK anyway, but Labour has done a lousy job of trying to explain this in public.
And the claims about Starmer being “inconsistent” and “unprincipled” do seem to resonate with voters (at least, according to focus groups). In truth, Starmer is probably no more inconsistent than most people at the top of politics – Sunak himself has abandoned much of what he was saying in the summer leadership contest – but if this mud sticks, then you can see why Sunak is slinging it.
That said, Starmer still had the best of it, quite easily. The NHS is always strong territory for Labour, and with the A&E in the appalling state it is, it would have been hard for him to fail, but Starmer made his case effectively. He neatly mocked Sunak’s announcement about his healthcare.
I heard the prime minister saying he’s now registered with an NHS doctor, so he’ll soon enjoy the experience of waiting on hold every morning at 8am to get a GP appointment.
He exposed the hollowness of Sunak’s promise to reduce waiting list, challenging him to say whether he would reduce them to pre-Covid levels, or the much lower levels they were when Labour were in power, and he repeatedly stressed how much better waiting times were under Labour.
PMQs can look easy, because it just seems to involve saying that the other side is rubbish. But to summarise political arguments in language that is precise and pithy and convincing is hard – much harder than it looks – and Starmer’s PMQs scripts are first class. Like when he said this:
When I clapped nurses I meant it.
Or this:
The simple truth is you can’t legislate your way out of 13 years of failure.
Or this:
He’s not promising that cancer patients will get urgent treatment as they did under Labour. He’s not even promising an NHS that puts patients first like they did under Labour. No, he’s promising the one day, although he can’t say when, the record high waiting lists will stop growing. That’s it.
After 13 years in government, what does it say that the best they can offer is that at some point they might stop making things worse?
Sunak is clever, hard-working and fluent (although perhaps a bit too eager-beaver to be really authoritative at PMQs), but he has that “13 years of failure” round his ankle like a ball and chain, and there is little he can do about it.
Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, asks Sunak if he agrees that the comments from Andrew Bridgen this morning (whom he does not name) have no place in the Commons.
Sunak condemns Bridgen’s comments “in the strongest possible terms” and says he is determined to tackle antisemitism.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Con) asks if Sunak will intervene to help the media tycoon Jimmy Lai, who is being prosecuted by the Chinese. Lai has British citizenship.
Sunak says he is engaged in this issue.
Marsha de Cordova (Lab) asks if Sunak will back her bill to give people easier access to eye specialists.
Sunak says the government is keen to improve access. He says De Cordova has a meeting with a minister on this.
Douglas Ross (Con) asks Sunak to confirm his support for Scotland’s energy industry.
Sunak says the UK will need hydrocarbons for decades to come. Using Scottish gas and oil is better than importing it, he says.
Simon Lightwood (Lab) asks about a constituent who cannot get an NHS dentist for his daughter. Many five-year-olds in Wakefield already have tooth decay, he says.
Sunak says he will look into this. But the NHS dentistry contract has been reformed, and that should make a difference.
Carolyn Harris (Lab) asks Sunak if he agrees there should be an investigation into problems with the delivery company Evri.
Sunak says ministers have looked into this.
Sunak says a Defra investigation has concluded that “natural causes” were the main cause of the deaths of crabs and other sealife off Teesside. But it has ordered a further investigation.
Sunak says the government is committed to delivering “dozens” more hospitals by 2030.
He does not use the figure 40, which was the number Boris Johnson said he would open.
Alex Davies-Jones asks about the impact of the misogynist Andrew Tate on boys at school.
Sunak says the online safety bill will improve protections for teachers.
David Duguid (Con) asks Sunak to confirm that the government is still committed to carbon capture and storage in Scotland.
Sunak says the govenrment will spend up to £1bn on carbon capture and storage in four locations, including Scotland.
Liz Saville Roberts, the Plaid Cymru leader at Westminster, says the impact of strikes is “as nothing” compared to the impact of 13 years of Tory cuts. She says the Westminter funding system perpetuates poverty.
Sunak says the NHS is under pressure in Wales, as in Scotland and England, in large part because of Covid.
Stephen Flynn, the SNP leader at Westminster, says the Tories have brought a long recession, Brexit, inflation and high interest rates. If people do the maths, won’t they conclude the union does not add up?
Sunak accuses the Scottish government of not supporting the energy industry.
Flynn says Scotland is energy rich, but fuel poor. He says Boris Johnson has made more than £1m from speeches, while the Tories are trying to stop people striking for fair pay.
Sunak says “I don’t think we need to talk about our predecessors”, but he says one of Flynn’s predecessors worked for Russia Today.
Starmer says that people cannot even get an ambulance on non-strike days. He says Sunak’s NHS promises just amount to saying “at some point they might stop making things worse”.
Sunak says the choice people face is between “the Conservatives on the side of patients, Labour on the side of their union paymasters”. And he accuses Starmer of being inconsistent.
