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

Keir, how will your party solve the housing crisis, so that a single minimum wage earner, without parental inheritance, and without saddling themselves in extortionate debt (Tory 40 year mortgage)..can buy their own home?

Forgoing avocados and Netflix subscriptions isn't enough, Kirsty.

Keir, as much as you might dislike them, you've got to appeal to the middle class, the rural voters, the red wall, the middle ground Tory voters.....Make clear that you will protect female prisons, hospital wards from biological males (who have not undergone full surgery and hormonal treatment). Give the dogs their bone.

Make hard work pay. Minimum wage should be £20. Abolish regressive NI, just have one simple tax system, that taxes earned income and wealth assets the same. Abolish non dom loopholes and the like. Uber rich people can't hide the UK land and property they own in the Cayman Islands. Make it illegal to own property via Ltd companies etc. Crack but to let's to high heaven. Do all this tax revision, but don't broadcast it. Keep it quiet. Do it once you're in. Most people won't notice if their living standards increase. Just the ultra rich will notice, but their only 1% of the vote.

Just broadcast the trans issue, housing, wages. Appeal to the masses of right wingers, on social matters that they relate to.

84% of people arriving in the UK by dinghies are granted asylum, will Labour provide safe routes for asylum seekers in order to stop these dangerous and inhumane Channel crossings?

Will you provide Evusheld (and its successors) on NHS?

What will you do to make schools safer in respect of reducing transmissible disease?

Will you guarantee suitable provision, right up to A level, for DC with one of the most highly vulnerable people in their immediate household? So no-one has to choose between the education of all their DC and the life of one?

As a civil servant of over 15 years on barely-above-minimum-wage do you have any plans to treat MPs and Civil Servants the same when it comes wage rises? We have been offered 2% which is a gross insult. We are unable to recruit as no one is applying and can't even get temp staff!

Also can you please stop negotiating on a % basis? 2% of my salary is £440. 2% of my boss's is £3.5K. Fair?? So how about you give me16.5% and her 2%? Then we end up being able to buy the same amount of tins of beans.

More and more maternity services around the country and being shown to be horrifically failing women and babies. Women with severe, disabling endometriosis are being told the pain is in their heads. A women will typically receive less pain medication for the same condition than man. Thousands of women suffer severe injuries and incontinence following childbirth but are told it's normal and to get on with it.

What will Labour do to tackle these massive inequalities in health care provision for WOMEN?

Thanks Mumsnet HQ!

Hello Keir,

(Asking as a demoralised Remainer)
If you become Prime Minister in 2024 or before (which I hope you do!) how will you frame the UK's relationship with Europe?

What will you do regarding public sector pay? My family is dependent on a single wage from a senior and demanding public sector role. We live in a tiny 2 bed house, don't own a car, haven't had a holiday in over 10 years, and are having to put food shopping on a credit card. The equivalent of one week in 4 is being worked for free after 12 years of Tory. It is essential that all public sector salaries at the very least keep up with inflation - anything else is a real terms pay cut. Do you agree?

In 2020 Dame Vera Baird said that we were facing the decriminalisation of rape. Since then the pandemic means there have been waits of years for trials, and increasingly victims either aren't reporting rapes or are pulling out of prosecutions.

Sir, I know you were passionate about improving the prosecution process for victims when you were DPP so what are your suggestions for how this totally unacceptable state of affairs could be reversed if you became prime minister?

Similarly, today the BBC published an article about Only Fans being used as a way for abuse of children to be created and shared. The Internet is a wild,west for the abuse of women and children and i think it's causing misogyny and sexual violence to increase. Does labour have any thoughts as to how they would better protect people from online harms?

Thank you for asking this

So upsetting reading this.
I totally agree. We are concerned for ourselves, our elderly mothers, our daughters.

Why would you add tax onto private school fees? There are many parents on bursaries or doing without holidays/luxuries/cars to pay for fees that would then be priced out. Where do you propose these kids should go? As there won’t be enough state school places. And currently these kids do not need funding in the state schools so are saving govt. money? But then you’d have to build new schools? Have 40 in a class?
First step surely is to increase funding for teachers, more TAs, more training to make the state system better and slowly the divide between the two will close.

@FemaleAndLearning
I second this entirely. I am the mother of three teens between 17 &14 and I am incredibly worried about this situation.

I am so thankful my children are grown up. My daughter moved to Europe, having decided not to accept a place at a RG university. Health care and Further Education are so much better there. She has EU citizenship and has no intention of returning to the UK. I miss her, but she is safer there IMO.
Will you look at how Health and Education is organised in Europe in order to see how things could be improved here?

Hello Bridget and Kier,

Have you both read the Cass Review's interim Report?

What are your views on that?

You sabotaged the best hope this country had at a fair and kinder society.

#TheLabourFiles

When are you going to own up to the stitch up, step aside, and do the right thing? We don’t need BlairMarkTwo. Send that horror off to The Hague for us too, thanks, the Tory War Criminal.

I agree about the other issues mentioned but would like to highlight climate change.

Climate change is the overwhelming impending issue of the next three decades. It has been reported that we are a long way short of slowing down and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and very unlikely to achieve the target of 1.5 degrees temperature rise agreed at Paris. What do you think the UK needs to do to improve this, for ourselves, and on the world stage? How will you make sure it happens, in a way that is fair and does not excessively burden poor and vulnerable groups?

What are your thoughts on nationalising utilities such as gas and electric?
These companies are making huge profits whilst everyday families cannot afford enough food for the month. Nationalising would make bills more affordable during the cost of living crisis, potentially be better for the environment if more renewable energy were to be used, some profits could be made from this to fund things such as the NHS, welfare system and/or schools.

Yes, this! Will Labour commit to nationalising the rail system and bringing the ludicrous prices and poor service under control, which not fobbing off its workers?

Be socially conservative:
*Be tough on crime, including protecting women's rights; with the risk of self ID being abused by biological (trans) males, then having access to rape biological women in prisons, etc.

*Sustainable and selective immigration. Work skills based immigration

But be economically centre-left wing:

More funding for the NHS, education, especially state schools, green energy, nationalised energy, more social care funding, a large scale national level house building programme.

One tactic you can use to lure bigot Tory voters is: not letting non-resident overseas Russian and Chinese billionaires being able to own property in the uk. Why should they steal property stock away from UK residents in dire need of good affordable housing? This will appeal to them.

Do this without saddling future generations with debt (Truss) or asking low to average wage working people to pay (BoJo/Sunak).

I want to ask this question of Keir because I'm certain, if he were a woman, it would be asked in every interview he did - yet I can't recall having seen him asked it. How do you balance the demands of your incredibly demanding job with those of having a young family? Do you actually get to see your kids? Does your wife end up picking up the strain, and if so, does she mind?

Sir Kier,
will you reinstate women only shortlists? (Biological women.)

I'd like to know why you think it is that the Labour Party has never had a female leader. Is the Labour Party institutionally sexist?

If Labour won would you stop carers allowance being deducted from universal credit?

How will you encourage free speech in universities and avoid the reinforcement of groupthink due to “no platforming” those who wish to discuss politically sensitive issues?