Got a question for Keir Starmer or Bridget Phillipson?

[RhiannonEMumsnet]

Hi all,

We’re pleased to tell you that later this week Justine will be sitting down with Leader of the Opposition Keir Starmer and Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson to ask them Mumsnet users’ questions.

If you have a question you'd like answering, you can post it below. Please stick to the usual guidelines - one question per user, keep it civil, and if one topic is dominating, please don't continue to post what's effectively the same question or point (we'll be deleting questions that are repeated multiple times). We'll be quite limited for time so do keep questions as short as possible so that we’re able to ask more of them - as always, we'll try to make sure we cover the topics that we know are important to Mumsnet users.

We'll be closing this thread at 5pm on Thursday, so please do get your questions in before that - and watch this space to hear the responses. If you'd like a reminder of the format you can see our interview with Boris Johnson here.

Thanks,
MNHQ

My question leads on from this at a different angle.

Nurseries are shutting because they can't find staff. And many of the staff they do have are pretty poor because nurseries are so desperate to have anybody. Why work long hours in a nursery and have loads of pressure when you can just get a job in a supermarket for more money? (rhetorical).

So how are you going to attract and keep good staff in the childcare sector?

Does Sir Keir Starmer realise how many votes he will lose if he doesn't support women, no mealy mouthed comments avoiding the topic are acceptable. Labour needs to accept men cannot identify as a woman and have access to women's spaces. Labour also needs to accept that 'transing away the gay' is real and children need protecting, that medicalisation and surgery in pre teen and teenage years needs to be banned for safeguarding reasons. So many of us want to vote Labour, but won't if they don't protect women.

I'm another ex-Labour voter and party member.

I would ask 'What is the diference between a woman and a transwoman, and which is more important, feelings or existing legal rights?'

On another topic entirely, opinion polls show that 56% of people now regret Brexit. What would Labour do to move closer to the Single Market and Freedom of Movement?

What are you going to do to fix our broken childcare system?

As others have outlined, the cost of childcare is crippling for parents on anything approaching a median income. This forces parents (women) out of the workforce.

The other side of the coin is that childcare workers (women) are not paid at a level that reflects their skills or diligence, nor the importance of their work. The woman who runs the baby room in my DC's nursery has had to take a second job as a carer in the evenings as her single full-time income no longer pays the bills.

It is overwhelmingly women paying the price for this broken system, how will you fix it?

Please don’t censor us.

You’ve invited people on here to ask KS and BP questions, so please let our posts stay.

Labour need to see how strongly people feel about this issue and that for people like me, it is the main thing stopping me from ever voting Labour again.

Keir, do you regret your part in attempting to try to get a second brexit referendum, when this stance lost so many former labour areas in the recent general elections?

Can't quote but agree with @LostThePot. Please don't censor the questions, Labour needs to see the strength of feeling.

For Keir:

How would you deal with the daily disruption caused by Just Stop Oil whilst still upholding the riot to peaceful protest?

Do you support another Scottish independence referendum, given how much has changed since the last one?

Why did you announce that a Labour government would not seek to join the single market or rejoin the EU? Surely its obvious we need to join the single market ASAP. 50% of the population are not being represented in this determination to continue with Brexit which has been hugely detrimental to the UK. Wouldn't joining the single market be a good compromise before things get even worse?

Tomorrow Scottish Labour have been whipped to vote in favour of the SNP's gender recognition reform bill which will remove all safeguarding from the process of obtaining a change of legal sex, massively increasing the population eligible for a GRC (from a small, tightly-defined group of severely dysphoric adults to anyone who wants one, including adolescents of 16 and 17). Legal experts disagree on the interaction between the Equality Act and the Gender Recognition Act, and the Scottish Government have treated women's well-founded and well-evidenced concerns with contempt.

This was an opportunity for Scottish Labour to demonstrate its commitment to women and to the proper operation of the Equality Act by voting against the Bill. What does Keir think about the party's decision to vote in favour? As a lawyer, how does he see the cross-border issues working out?

Keir, do you understand why so many women feel they can no longer vote Labour? Why do you not listen and hear? You cannot ignore the strength of feeling and hope it will go away, the Tories will certainly use it against you more and more.

I agree - you need to know how many of your respondents are asking the same questions to gauge strength of feeling. Please add me to your figures! Preventing men from self-ID-ing as women is my biggest political priority. This isn't a fringe issue, it's absolutely critical. If the material reality of our sexed existence is ignored then, in political terms, girls and women will cease to exist and in real terms we will face levels of oppression we thought we had got rid of decades ago. The problems are already here and if you think I am exaggerating..... Ask the young woman in Primark, traumatised and in tears after men accosted her in the 'gender neutral' changing rooms. Ask the woman (sexual assault survivor) whose life saving operation was cancelled because she asked for all-female care and was told this was an unacceptable request. Ask the woman who was arrested this weekend for challenging a man in a women's toilet. Ask the multiple women who have lost their jobs for declaring there are only 2 sexes. Ask the women who have lost medals and awards to trans women in their sports. Ask the women in prison who have been assaulted by trans women in the female estate. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Given how disappointing the Conservative government have been, if Labour do not succeed at the next GE, why does Keir Starmer think that would be?

Only came on to see how many self ID related questions there were 😆

if you delete them @mnhq you do a disservice to labour themselves. It should be helpful to see the level of discomfort with their current view?

Anyway, another topic is the NHS.

Kier says he wants more funding etc etc, but what’s the limit? What’s the view on ‘enough’ for the NHS? Is the NHS fit for purpose? If not, what exactly needs to change? Is more funding the only solution you have? And how do you propose paying for that?

Also, I’d like to know about views on the 45p tax rate….do labour think this encourages investment and entrepreneurship in the uk? Do we want to be known as a high tax nation? If so, why?

Thanks @YetAnotherBeckyMumsnet. I hope Keir will get that brushing this issue away or trying to sit on the fence won’t do Labour any favours here - I’m one of the many, many women who voted for them for years but now simply can’t.

Kier what 3 things do YOU think stop people from voting Labour, and what do you intend to do about them?

Wtf. Don't censor the thread. They need to know this is the number one biggest issue for a vast majority of women.

Dear Kier and Bridget,

I am extremely concerned with Labour’s suggested policy of charging VAT on school fees and removing charitable status for private schools.

The addition of VAT onto school fees will make it impossible for me to continue to send my two children to private school (inner London). I chose private school for my children as our local school is under resourced - it went from a 2 class intake to a 4 class intake with no additional buildings or space. The head teacher was passionate but honest about the school’s limitations.

Rather than bringing in income to the government, it has been projected that the policy will have a net cost to the government. One big reason is the already struggling state sector will have to find space for the pupils whose families can’t afford the hiked costs (like me). It’s clear that state schools are already underfunded and will not be able to cope with an influx of extra pupils, to the detriment of all of today’s children. It’s dragging standards down rather than pulling them up.

As well as not making sense economically or educationally for the current generation, the policy won’t bridge the divide between attainment. Those that can will continue to purchase expensive houses within catchment areas of good schools. Further, many private schools will also struggle to continue to offer bursaries to the brightest children from deprived areas.

So my question is why do you support this policy when it has been shown to be a cost to government?

Secondly, I would like you to reconsider this policy. There has to be a fairer way to help the most deprived children than depriving other children of opportunities.

@YetAnotherBeckyMumsnet whatever you do, please show this thread in full to Keir Starmer, he and the Labour Party need to see, listen, hear, and act.

Sorry for the spelling mistake. That should say Keir.

It's important to show the level of support for questions. It doesn't take much to see a repeated /similar question and add it to a tally rather than deleting. You can then weight questions when posing them. So on to mine....

Keir, what do you plan to do to save the culture of free debate we've known until recently in UK universities? Universities should be spaces where ideas are challenged, beliefs discussed, independent thought celebrated. Just this week at Gonville and Caius, some of the faculty has tried to steer students away from debate. Are we witnessing the death of critical thinking in our academic institutions?

How can you ensure that Labour Women's Declaration and their sister organisations, LGBA and FiLiA, are allowed stalls at next year's Labour conference?

If you are going to add VAT to private school fees, will you give us a rebate for all the tax we have already paid towards state education, because we haven't used it for years?

We are not magic money trees. I know that the Labour Party thinks that they exist but not everyone who sends their kids to private school are super rich.