Dealing with financial mess has been ‘really hard’, says Liz Kendall

We spoke to the Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall.

We began by asking her why Labour has watered down promises they made on growth and clean energy during the election campaign and if governing was harder than expected.

Liz Kendall: That has not been watered down. Our absolute ambition to be the fastest growing economy in the G7 is in the document…

Cathy Newman: It’s an ambition, not a promise?

Liz Kendall: It is not a downgrading on clean home-grown energy. 95 per cent or above is absolutely what that would be. But is being in government hard? Yeah, it absolutely is.

Cathy Newman: Is it harder than you expected, did you not have a plan as worked up as you perhaps should have done?

Liz Kendall: We did. I tell you what has been really hard, is trying to deal with the financial mess. That has been really tough. But if you come in to run any business or any organisation and you’re spending more than you earn, you can’t make big changes unless you sort that out. And that was the first step. And this is now showing what people will be able to judge us on.

Cathy Newman: Should they vote you out if you don’t meet these pledges?

Liz Kendall: If we don’t deliver, they will have every opportunity to vote us out.

Cathy Newman: So let’s talk a little bit more about the economy, because that pledge on disposable income rising, what does that actually mean?

Liz Kendall: That people will have rising living standards. But it is also not just real household disposable income. Second part of that, clearly in the document, is rising GDP per capita in every region as well as nationally. We can overcomplicate politics, but people have got to feel better off.

Cathy Newman: How big a pledge is that, really? When disposable income rose during the last parliament, when there was war and there was Covid, if you can’t get it to rise this time it would be pretty pathetic.

Liz Kendall: If you spoke to any of my constituents or people across the country and said ‘rising living standards, you feeling better off, would that be a big change?’ They would say yes.

Cathy Newman: Let’s talk about health, because that’s a big part of these missions…

Liz Kendall: It’ll be a key issue on which we will be judged, I have no doubt.

Cathy Newman: So where is the mission, the milestone, the pillar, call it what you like, on social care? Because there wasn’t a single word of that in the prime minister’s speech today, and that’s one of the biggest challenges that we all face.

Liz Kendall: It really is. And the truth is you won’t get waiting lists coming down unless you tackle the problems in social care, because we’ve got too many people ending up in hospital because they can’t get the care they need at home. I am under no illusions that we need more money in the system and we have put £22 billion extra into the NHS. But you also need reform. You need to stop…

Cathy Newman: You keep saying you need reform. But there’s no details. All those big decisions on social care and welfare kicked into the long grass.

Liz Kendall: Definitely not on welfare. We’ve set out the biggest reforms to employment support in a generation. Overhauling our job centres, the youth guarantee. Let me come back to your question about social care and the NHS. You will see in the ten year plan on the NHS a big focus on shifting from hospitals into the community, preventing people from getting ill in the first place, joining up that support locally so you don’t have to end up going in a hospital. The measure out there is about waiting lists, because that’s what most people care about. But in order to deliver it, you’ve got to have a much wider reform in the rest of the system.

Cathy Newman: How useful are targets? There’s a warning from senior people within the NHS that that’s going to have a knock on effect and damage operations in A&E and other vital services.

Liz Kendall: Targets are important to galvanise action, to galvanise the whole system of government, to focus on what matters.

Cathy Newman: Why not in immigration then? You’re sort of saying targets in one, is it because you think you won’t make them on immigration?

Liz Kendall: The Tories picked targets, plucked them out of thin air and that didn’t work. They did it for a headline-grabbing exercise.

Cathy Newman: And this isn’t that for the NHS?

Liz Kendall: No, it isn’t for the NHS. There is a clear requirement in the NHS constitution for 92 per cent of patients to be seen within 18 weeks. I think that is a really galvanising point.

Cathy Newman: So why not galvanise things on immigration, as well?

Liz Kendall: We have been very, very clear that we’ve got to get net migration down.

Cathy Newman: But not by how much.

Liz Kendall: We’ve got an absolutely clear plan sorting that out. Setting up border security command, having more officers in the National Crime Agency, having more returns, 9,600 I think, 30 per cent more than were under the Tories.

Cathy Newman: The two child benefit cap has been axed by the Scottish government. Will you enable them to implement that policy or are you going to block it? Because they need your cooperation to do it.

Liz Kendall: We will work constructively with them, because we believe in devolution to give them all the data that they want. I don’t think they’ve set aside a single penny from the £4.9 billion that was given to Scotland in the biggest ever devolution settlement in the budget. But we will of course work constructively with them and we are taking forward our own bold cross-government strategy to tackle child poverty.