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Election debate: reaction and analysis after Jeremy Corbyn and party leaders spar – as it happened

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Q: Can you comment on the leaked document. And confirm that the UK will definitely leave the EU if the Labour wins?

Corbyn says the document leaked to the Telegraph was one discussed by researchers. He says Labour’s policy is in the manifesto.

The UK is leaving the EU, he says.

Q: You have ruled out a deal with the SNP. Would you rule out any sort of confidence and supply deal to keep the Tories out?

Corbyn says the questioner (George Eaton from the New Statesman) should get out of Westminster more. If he did, he would see that people want a Labour government. He invites Eaton to join him when Labour celebrates victory.

Q: Would you tell Nicola Sturgeon to take the demand for a second independence off the table if you needed to do a deal with SNP?

Corbyn says the Scottish parliament has taken a view.

He says he thinks the last thing Scotland needs is a second independence debate.

It would be “extremely wrong and unwise” to go into a referendum while the Brexit negotiations were going on.

Q: Did you every call for an IRA ceasefire?

Corbyn says he always wanted ceasefires. He supported ceasefires. He says we should pay huge tributes to Mo Mowlam for what she achieved.

He says many people like him met people on both sides they disagreed with.

He says “those of us” who took up cases of miscarriage of justice were right to do so.

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Jeremy Corbyn is now taking questions.

Q: [From the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg] How would your immigration policy work in practice? [That is prompted by this Telegraph leak.] And will you attend the BBC debate tonight?

On immigration, Corbyn says free movement would end when the UK leaves the EU. Labour would legislate immediately for EU nationals to have the right to stay in Britain.

Under managed migration, the right to come to the UK would be based on the needs of the economy and the rights of family reunion.

Employers would not be able to bring people to the UK to undercut workers.

He says he will not make false promises about immigration, as the Tories did in 2010 and 2015 and as Theresa May is doing now.

On the debate, Corbyn says it was “ridiculous” for him to go to Sky on Monday and be questioned by Jeremy Paxman, but not to have the chance to debate May, who was in the same building.

He challenges May, again, to debate with him tonight.

Q: [From 5 News’s Andy Bell] You have cited the IFS. But the IFS say you will not be able to get all the tax revenue you need from rich people and corporations.

Ashworth says Labour disagrees with the IFS.

And the IFS cannot do an analysis of the Tory plans, because the Tories have not published plans. And the Tories always put up tax after an election. They did that with VAT, he says.

He says the IFS recognise that Labour would put substantially more into schools and the NHS than the Tories.

Corbyn says he is very confident that Labour’s costings are robust. Some 95% of people would pay no more in tax and national insurance.

Q: [From the Mirror’s Jack Blanchard] A YouGov poll suggests there could be a hung parliament. What would you do in those circumstances?

Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, says she does not trust polls. We need a Labour government, she says. She says Labour would finish the work of the Attlee government and set up a national education system.

Corbyn says he never comments on opinion polls.

But this election campaign is going very well, he says.

And he says the average donation to Labour online is £22. That is because ordinary people want a change, he says.

Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, is speaking now.

He says the Tories thought they could glide through this campaign with trite claims about public services. But the public want proper answers, he says.

He says Jeremy Hunt said the day the Tory manifesto was announced that the party was promising an extra £8bn for the NHS. But this claim was rejected by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, he says.

He says the funding crisis has left the NHS weak and unstable.

That is why Labour is publishing a dossier on what would happen if the Tories continue as now.

Turning to infrastructure, he says the cyber-attack shows how vulnerable the NHS is.

He says in a hospital in south London patients using wheelchairs had to be seen outside, because a lift was not working.

He cites other examples from the dossier.

Here are some of the other examples in the dossier (including some mentioned by Ashworth).

South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust: The temperature of the ward was so cold that staff were working in their jackets and patients were sleeping in their jackets along with two blankets.

University Hospitals Coventry & Warwickshire NHS Trust: There was a leak from the ceiling onto the operating table. Patients had to be re-routed to other theatres. The affected patient had to have precautionary antibiotics.

Isle of Wight NHS Foundation Trust: There was a significant leak from decontamination waste pipe causing flooding on level A outpatient department. Endoscopy department out of action for 2.5 days resulting in 12 cancelled lists and fast track patient breaches.

Royal Cornwall Hospitals: There was a power cut in resus and back up power failed. Two patients in resus were acutely unwell. One patient was having airway support and seizures attempting cannulation at time of the power failure. The problem lasted for three and a half hours.

Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust: There was a failure of wards cold water pump/pressure system which resulted in total loss of water pressure to basins, toilets and showers. The ward was closed and patients were affected and had to be moved.

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Jeremy Corbyn is speaking now.

He says the state of the public services “is anything but strong and stable”.

That is because, at every turn, the Tories have chosen tax cuts, he says.

He says schools and hospitals are under intense pressure. Labour will invest in public services, and give public sector staff a pay rise.

He says Labour’s research highlights what would happen if the Conservative continue as now.

These are the key figures. I’ve taken them from the news release Labour has just sent out.

New analysis of the Tory threat has revealed that if the current rate of deterioration under the Tories continues, by 2022 our health and education services could be facing huge problems. It could mean:

In a Tory NHS and social care system:

5.5 million people on waiting lists in England, 1.8 million more than at present.

Almost 1.5 million older and vulnerable people with unmet social care needs.

In a Tory education system:

650,000 pupils crammed into primary classes of over 30.

Families left almost £450 worse off per child as a result of the Tories’ plan to scrap free school meals for 1.7 million children.

Jeremy Corbyn's press conference

Jeremy Corbyn is holding a press conference this morning on the NHS.

My colleague Peter Walker is there. He says Labour has handed out a 36-page briefing to help make its case.

At the Corbyn event we've been handed what you might call a dossier on the govt's public services record - 36 pages of it. pic.twitter.com/xQy6uSp86d

— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) May 31, 2017

The Labour party says it will announce around lunchtime who is representing it in tonight’s BBC debate.

Originally Jeremy Corbyn said he would not take part in any debates without Theresa May. She has refused to come. But there has been speculation, fuelled by his relatively strong performance in Monday’s Sky/Channel 4 leaders’ interviews with Jeremy Paxman, that he may make a surprise decision to turn up.

If Corbyn does give it a miss, Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary (who has stood in for him at PMQs) is expected to be chosen to represent Labour.

Q: Would a good Brexit damage the NHS?

Hunt says with a good Brexit we can go forward.

Q: The Times has a survey saying 1m more carers are needed. Where will they come from after Brexit?

Hunt says May has been honest about saying the current system does not work.

Q: You use the word honest. You told this programme, when the manifesto was published, that you were dropping plans for a cap on care costs. But then Theresa May announced she was bringing it back.

Hunt says he is being quoted out of context. He said that it was not fair to expect the younger population to pay for care in that interview. He says under May’s plans older people will have to contribute.

And that’s it.

Jeremy Hunt's Today interview

Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, is now being interviewed by Today.

Q: What is your 30-second pitch on the NHS?

Hunt says the government inherited the worst deficit since the war. But the NHS now has the highest cancer survival rates, and the biggest expansion of mental health care. You can only have a good NHS with a strong economy. And Brexit will be crucial. Theresa May will get the best Brexit deal, he says.

Q: But demand on the NHS is increasing at 4%. The NHS is not meeting that.

Hunt says governments can only fund the NHS if the economy is doing well.

And he says he thinks the Today programme’s coverage of the NHS today has been unfair. Outcomes are getting better, he says.

Q: But the staff are under real pressure.

Hunt says the NHS staff do a great job.

He says in the last three years the NHS budget has gone up by £7bn in real terms. That is close to the sort of increases you saw in the Blair years, he says.

Q: It depends where you start. Overall, increases have been much lower than in the Blair years.

Hunt repeats the point about extra money going in in the last three years.

This could happen because 2.8m extra jobs have been created, he says. You need jobs to generate tax revenue to pay for the NHS.

Q: Is Labour saying charities and not-for-profits should not be involved in providing healthcare.

No, says Ashworth. He says organisations like this have always been involved.

Q: So how will you decide what private firms should not be involved?

Ashworth says many private firms are not providing good quality healthcare.

Q: But where private firms are proving good care, should that carry on?

Ashworth says Labour wants the NHS to be the preferred provider.

Labour would get rid of the Health and Social Care Act, insisting on competition.

And that’s it.

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