Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to key eventsSkip to navigation

Question Time leaders' special: May under fire over NHS and education –as it happened

This article is more than 6 years old

All the day’s campaign news, as the Conservative and Labour leaders appear on BBC1’s Question Time and the Guardian comes out for Labour

 Updated 
Fri 2 Jun 2017 19.26 EDTFirst published on Fri 2 Jun 2017 01.34 EDT
Key events

Live feed

Key events

Question 5 - Education

Q: State schools are underfunded, and teachers are overworked. So why are you putting money into grammar schools?

May says she wants every child to get the education that is right for them.

Q: In the school I work in, every child will get £898 less by 2020 than under Labour. Why do you care less than Labour?

May says she does care about education.

Share
Updated at 

Question 4 - Foreign aid

Q: I am voting Tory, but I’m not happy with the aid budget. Why are we giving money to North Korea?

May says it is right to help people in developing countries.

Q: But why North Korea?

May says it is not a paragon of virtue.

Q: Does North Korea get aid money?

May says she does not know the detail.

Q: It was £4m in 2015.

(The Daily Mail, of course, has all the details.)

A woman says it really concerns her that May seemed not to recognise the difference between learning difficulties and mental health when confronted by a woman earlier in the campaign.

May says the lady who spoke to her did raise mental health as well as learning difficulties.

A man says he has failed the work capability assessment on mental health grounds.

A woman says she has been waiting a year and a half for a mental health appointment. She has had problems with the work capability assessment as a result. She is partially sighted too. She was asked about suicide attempts at the assessment. She says she came out crying. She had been insulted.

May says she is not going to make any excuses. She knows the issue of mental health is especially difficult.

But she says again she will not make excuses. She says she is sorry.

Dimbleby asks if it is fair that nurses only get a 1% increase every year and some have to go to food banks.

May says some nurses get progression pay.

Q: Aren’t they a special case?

May says there are people all across the public sector working hard.

She says you may hear later on (from Jeremy Corbyn) that money can be spent on anything. It can’t, she says.

Share
Updated at 

Question 3 - NHS and pay

Q: As a nurse, why should I support you when you are not giving me a pay rise.

May says the government will put half a trillion pounds into the NHS over the next parliament.

Q: But my pay has not gone up.

A man next to the questioner says in real terms pay has gone down 14%.

May says she is being honest. There is not a magic money tree that can provide everything people want.

Q: You are cutting NHS spending. But you are cutting tax for the rich.

May says she is not cutting NHS spending.

Q: Why are we spending less?

May says more funding is going in.

May should remember Nicola Sturgeon's first rule of NHS questions: first emphasise how much you value NHS workers. #BBCQT #GE17

— Joe Pike (@joepike) June 2, 2017
Share
Updated at 

Comments (…)

Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

Most viewed

Most viewed