Penny Mordaunt, Angela Rayner and Nigel Farage were once again among the faces in the second seven-party debate of the campaign
Julie Etchingham, hosted the debate with tax, immigration and the health service among the key topics.
‘Exploding population’ putting pressure on NHS
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, blamed an “exploding population” for the increase in pressure on the NHS.
He said: “The NHS has two fundamental problems. One… caseloads up by 43 per cent. Why? Because we have an exploding population.
“All of our public services are under pressure because the population has increased by six million since the Conservatives came to power. It’s impossible to keep up.”
He said that the second problem was that Britain is getting worse returns on the money it invests in the NHS than other countries.
Penny Mordaunt, the Commons Leader, urged her rivals to keep “political dogma” out of public services amid a row over how much Labour would involve the private sector in the NHS.
She said: “I think we should just keep political dogma out of the public sector and public services. We’re all politicians up here, but most of the public don’t care what colour the cat is, they just want some mice caught.”
She also attacked Labour for cutting the NHS budget “three times” in Wales, insisting the funding must be kept “strong”.
Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, blamed the “crisis” on Tory austerity “aided and abetted” by the Lib Dems.
She denied that the party has suggested it will “hold the door open to the private sector”, insisting “that’s not true”.
Hidden taxes
Ms Mordaunt has accused Sir Keir Starmer of hiding three quarters of the tax rises that he is planning to introduce if it wins power from voters.
The Leader of the Commons said Labour was going to have to raise taxes “a lot more” to pay for what she said was a £38.5 billion black hole in his spending plans.
Ms Rayner hit back, saying that under Rishi Sunak the tax burden has hit a 70-year high and that “the country can’t afford another five years of the Tories”.
Ms Mordaunt said that the Labour manifesto, published on Thursday, included a £38.5billion “black hole” that would need to be filled with higher taxes.
“Because public spending is going to have to go up the only way to do that is to raise taxes,” the Commons Leader said.
“They’ve only declared about a quarter of the taxes they’re going to have to put up. They’re going to have to put up a lot more and they haven’t yet told you how they’re going to do that.”
She added that with the economy “now turning” a corner “this is not the time to suddenly rack up taxes on people”.
“Labour are going to do this, their leader has said that he’s going to do this,” she added. “What you haven’t been told is what taxes and on what people, but the average is £2,000 per working household in this country. People can’t afford that and it will choke off the recovery.”
Ms Rayner denied that suggestion and said the Tories were “promising tax cuts when you’ve already done that once and crashed the economy” under Liz Truss.
Both main parties have accused each other of having unrealistic spending plans that will require sweeping tax rises.
Labour claim the Conservatives have made £71 billion in unfunded commitments, most of which is the cost of the long term ambition to abolish National Insurance.
Mr Farage, the Reform leader, warned that “people are getting poorer” and that younger generations could no longer afford what people his age enjoyed.
“It’s very much a country in which the big corporates and the big banks and a certain group of people have become richer exponentially and everybody else has fallen behind,” he said.
He said the answer was to bring down net migration, to build more houses and to raise the income tax threshold to £20,000 to take millions of the lowest paid out of tax completely.
‘Crazy’ tax raid on private schools
Labour’s plan to launch a tax raid on private schools is “crazy” and will drive more children into the state sector, Ms Mordaunt has warned.
The Leader of the Commons said Sir Keir Starmer’s proposal “doesn’t serve anyone” and is “the kind of dogma we need to keep out of the public sector”.
Addressing Ms Rayner, she said that “what Angela and the Labour Party are going to do is, unbelievably, they are going to tax education”.
She added: “The result of that is some families will not be able to send their kids to the schools they’re currently going [to] but also they’ve admitted this week class sizes will go up as a consequence.
“It’s crazy and it doesn’t serve anyone and it’s the kind of dogma that we need to keep out of the public sector.”
Mr Farage said that adding VAT to school fees would mean that one in four private school children would move to already oversubscribed state schools.
“Those currently in private schools will then be a burden for state schools,” the Reform leader said. “It’s a self-defeating policy that removes parental choice.”
Ms Rayner defended the policy and suggested private schools should minimise the impact on the state sector by absorbing the costs of the tax raid.
She said: “Our state schools have had austerity and cuts. Those [private] schools could absorb some of those costs so they don’t have to pass it on.
“We cannot afford to give private schools a tax break when our state system cannot have the right teachers in the classrooms.”
Meanwhile, Daisy Cooper, the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, refused to say that her party still believed in free university tuition fees.
The Liberal Democrats had pledged to abolish tuition fees in the run up to the 2010 election, and faced criticism after joining the coalition government which put up fees from around £3,000 a year to £9,000.
When challenged on the point, she said: “On the point of tuition fees, we were punished for that, right?”
“In 2015, when we were out of coalition, the thing that the Conservatives did on their own is they removed maintenance grants, the grants that were there for the poorest students to give them a shot at going to university. And we have said that we would put those back in place.”
Migration plans lacking
Ms Mordaunt told Ms Rayner “you have no plan” to cut migration in a fiery exchange during the seven-way debate.
The Tory leader of the House of Commons and the deputy Labour leader traded blows as the panel clashed over how to deal with sky-high immigration.
Ms Rayner said Britain must have “an industrial and skill strategy” so “we can train and fill our skills gaps”.
Ms Mordaunt cut in, saying: “So why don’t you have one? You haven’t had to do anything else other than come up with these ideas.”
The Labour deputy leader hit back by pointing out the Tories have been in power for 14 years.
Ms Mordaunt pressed on, saying Labour did not have a proper plan. “We’ve got one, you don’t,” she said.
Later, when Ms Rayner was discussing Channel crossings, Mr Mordaunt said: “That is illegal migration, and again you have no plan to do [anything about] it.”
Mr Farage pointed out that cutting immigration is not in Sir Keir Starmer’s top six pledges.
“These people have lied to us repeatedly,” he said, adding: “Labour, it’s not even in your first six priorities for government. You haven’t got the will to do anything about it.”
Ms Cooper raised her hand when asked if she would like to see immigration go down.
Help for families
Mr Farage has said the two-child benefit cap should be lifted to encourage people to have families.
Asked whether he agreed with Suella Braverman, the former Tory home secretary, that the limit should be scrapped, he said: “I think we should encourage people to have families. I think we should encourage people to have children.”
Pressed on whether that was a yes to lifting the cap, he said: “Yeah, we’ve got to help people.” He also said married people should get some tax benefits.
Ms Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, refused to endorse the move. She initially dodged the question of whether she agreed with Mr Farage, insisting her party would not increase taxes on working people.
Rhun ap Iorwerth, Plaid Cymru leader, accused her of wanting to press ahead with a Tory policy, asking: “What’s happened to Labour?”
Pressed repeatedly on the point, she said Labour would not make “unfunded spending commitments”.
“Because unless we can identify where that one is coming from… That’s why housing responds to policy, so does people’s work,” she added.
Politicians put each other on spot
Ms Mordaunt refused to say whether she would welcome Mr Farage into the Tory party as she accused the Reform leader of being a “Labour enabler”.
The Commons Leader was grilled over her stance by Ms Rayner in a section of the debate where the participants could each choose one rival to pose a question to.
Ms Rayner, the Labour deputy leader, looked to twist the knife with Ms Mordaunt who has been tipped for a Tory leadership run after the election.
She asked whether Ms Mordaunt would welcome Mr Farage in to the post-election Tories, to which the Commons Leader replied: “I’m a Brexiteer. I believe that if you can’t reform European institutions you should be prepared to leave them. I set up a business before Parliament and I believe in rewarding personal responsibility.
“You might think I have a lot in common with Nigel, but what I’m standing against is letting you in and letting you tax the hell out of people. Nigel is helping you do that so we’ve got less in common than you might imagine.”
Ms Mordaunt in turn asked her question to Labour’s deputy leader, pushing her to rule out an increase in capital gains tax if her party wins the election.
She accused Ms Rayner, who has previously suggested the tax is too low, of planning to increase the cost to families of selling second homes.
Ms Rayner did not rule out an increase but insisted: “There is nothing in our manifesto which means that we have to raise capital gains tax.”
Meanwhile, Mr Farage challenged Ms Mordaunt on the Tory party breaking successive manifesto pledges to bring down levels of migration.
When she accused him of opening the door for Sir Keir and higher migration, he replied: “We are now ahead of you in the national polls - a vote for you is actually now a vote for Labour.”
Mr ap Iorwerth, the Plaid Cymru leader, challenged Ms Rayner on Labour’s refusal to lift the two-child benefit cap.
He asked whether it was that or what he described as £18 billion worth of cuts to public services that would exacerbate child poverty on her watch.
She replied: “You’re absolutely right to recognise that child poverty is a scourge, and that as someone who grew up in poverty, I absolutely know that we have to tackle it, and that’s why we’d have a strategic Number 10 unit that would look at tackling child poverty.”
Ms Rayner was also challenged on Labour’s position on the war in Gaza, with Stephen Flynn, the SNP Westminster leader, asking if the party would end arms sales to Israel on day one in government.
She replied: “What happened on October 7 was barbaric, and Israel had the right to defend itself. However, since then, the absolute loss of innocent lives, thousands of innocent lives, everyone in the House, everyone of all political persuasions have been pushing for a ceasefire, as well as our international counterparts.
“But if we were in government, we would immediately review, as we’ve been asking the Conservatives, the legal advice on arms sales to Israel, and we will comply with international law.”
Mr Farage said both main parties were “mushy, SDP parties in the middle”.
He said the House of Lords was an “abomination” and called to “change the voting system”.
He added: “Let’s give the people the ability to call more referendums so they can decide the biggest issue of their lives.”
