Clive Efford
Main Page: Clive Efford (Labour - Eltham and Chislehurst)Department Debates - View all Clive Efford's debates with the Cabinet Office
(3 years, 2 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend is right consistently to campaign in the way in which he does for low earners. We are increasing the threshold for which people can be liable for paying anything at all from £14,000 to £20,000, which is a benefit that has not really come out properly in the conversation. People need to understand that we are lifting the minimum assets for which people can be liable from £14,000 to £20,000; that helps people on low incomes. As my right hon. Friend knows, we are also increasing the living wage. I am pleased to see that one of the effects of the current rebound in the economy, which I know he will be studying, is that wages are now starting to rise again—in exactly the way that some of us who campaigned for Brexit wanted to see.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
When I was first elected to this place in 1997, one of the first people who came to see me in my surgery was the wife of a man who had been waiting two years for open heart surgery, and we are back there again with the waiting lists. There was no righteous indignation from the Tories when the list reached 2 million before the pandemic hit. Will the Prime Minister commit today to hitting the 18-week target for waiting lists, and to clearing the backlog by the end of this Parliament?
The Prime Minister
I think what the Labour party needs to do is come up with any type of plan at all. Every day in this country, plan beats no plan. We are putting record investment into the NHS. We have a plan to clear the backlogs—to reduce the backlogs as fast as we possibly can with this levy. What would Labour Members do? Answer comes there none: they have no plan.