MNHQ here: Got a question for Rishi Sunak?

[RhiannonEMumsnet]

Hi there,

We’re pleased to tell you that next week, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will be answering questions from Mumsnet users in a written Q+A.

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 make sure we cover the topics that we know are important to Mumsnet users. As it’s a written Q+A without a chance for follow ups, please do include as much detail as you’d like in your questions.

We'll be closing this thread at 1pm on Sunday, so do get your questions in before that - and watch this space to hear the PM’s responses!

Thanks,
MNHQ

I'm excited my question made the cut! Less excited by the answer however. Claims the Tories have made the NHS better...pull the other one 😆

I'm actually disgusted by this. Such poor cherry picking of questions in the first place and then no fact checking, letting him get away with responding with lies.

How can you do this, @mnhq ? You have published his answers without challenging his lies. Just the second question is enough - publishing his lie about the £2094 labour tax hike.

I'm really disappointed in how this has been handled. Do you really not care?

Wow. Are you ok? Genuinely. This came across as hysterical which I’m sure you didn’t mean.

Well that was tedious to read. Almost like he got ChatGPT to write it using the manifesto and scripts from all the leaders debates.

Imo this format doesn't work @RhiannonEMumsnet it doesn't feel like he's engaged with the thread at all.

Several posters including me asked about this government's behaviour towards disabled people. The questions were legitimate and well phrased, none in this vein were asked. Cowardice?

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Aside from all that I'm surprised someone apparently good at maths can't work out that we know you can't blame what's happened in the past 4 years for the cock ups they've made for 14 years.

Maybe he struggles with counting beyond 10 as much he he does with the truth (or simple things like using money and petrol stations)

Why do you wear those juvenile friendship bracelets

would they not be Hindu blessing bracelets (apologies if not the right term), so part of his religion. Don’t think he’s a Swiftie anyway 😁

Given the current security climate why is there no proper plan for civil defence or appropriate military funding? And forced (ie not voluntary) national service is a disgusting answer. It's no answer.

Of course I'm not hysterical. I'm disgusted. Other people seem to have understood.

He answered my question but he didn’t answer my question. I don’t need him to tell me that the Tories plan to invest in the armed forces now, it’s too little too late. DH was on nights when the whole lot of them were sent home early so all the squadrons could go in the next day to be told they were retiring the Harrier fleet early. He was on the redundancy list twice. That was under David Cameron’s watch when they slashed the armed forces, like they slashed everything. DS1 is still waiting for the vehicles they were promised before he joined up in 2014.

National Service is a ridiculous gimmick that helps no one. It’s a waste of time, effort and money. We all know it, and young people shouldn’t be forced into doing something and having financial penalties imposed on them if they refuse.

The format of this Q&A doesn’t work because Sunak could give absolutely rubbish answers which don’t add up, or address the points asked. I remember the old days when we could ask questions to politicians, live. Yes, they didn’t like some of the questions but at least they knew how we felt and we had comeback.

I know the pm can't answer all the questions but would of been nice if he answered mine it was about my son who has asd and he Goe,s to special needs college. It relates to all children with disabilities.

I bet Sunak didn't even see the questions. They were probably answered by some hapless 21 year old SpAd with a list of lines to take.

Repeating the tax lie was pathetic.

Being angry that the person whose salary we pay does not have the decency to actually answer our questions and not lie to us is "hysterical"?

Well then, I am also "hysterical".

Women have historically been told they were hysterical as a way of ignoring their opinions. It's a form of misogyny.

I really didn't expect Mumsnet to pander to someone like Rishi like this. What was the point?

I know.

When the UKs largest parenting forum panders to the person in charge of systematically making childcare and education worse, healthcare worse, social care worse (and the rest!) all disproportionally affecting woman and children you have to wonder what the point of doing the q and a was?

Unless their aim was to highlight what a waste of time and space he is?

That's a very good point @itsgettingweird
I'm fact I'm so curious to know if it has had any impact on anyone that I've started a post in AIBU to try and find out.

@mnhq
And @RhiannonEMumsnet

Could you just confirm that it was actually, definitely Rishi Sunak that read and answered the questions please?

It is really important to know whether the Prime Minister himself answered these or whether it was an aide.

And if you don't know for sure, can we also know that please?

Thank you very much!

My question wasn't answered - never mind!

MNHQ says somewhere that they will present him with 10 questions, so it is they who chose the questions - but his answers were rubbish anyway so it doesn't really matter.

Well that was a load of waffle and bollocks.

Mate.

Keep pressing the tax lie. Because if I had known I could have got rid of you and your ghastly party for only £2k, then it's a steal; it's a deal; it's sale of the fucking century.

Where oh where is the fact checking @MNHQ?

If you're going to let him (or any other political representative from across the political spectrum) answer just a few questions in their own time and without any interaction with real users, the least you can do is do a modicum of fact checking. Or like X/Twitter does, have "readers added context"

Otherwise it's just a Party Political Broadcast by another name, where Sunak is allowed to repeat the tropes that he has already been called out for by the ONS and devalues the thought and consideration that MNers put into the questions that they wanted properly answered

And if as a minimum Starmer and the leaders of the other main parties in the UK don't get a similar opportunity, then it very much gives the impression that MN is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Tories

Clearly Mumsnet has become a Tory mouthpiece, there is no time to ask any other party as it took week to do this waste of time thread.

If Mumsnet wanted to be impartial they could have put the questions to all the parties, so we could least compare the answers. Instead we got the usual lies about the 2k tax and the same crappy quotes from Sunak's imaginary plan that he thinks is working.

The only Plan Sunak seems to have is to see how badly you can an election.

Well those answers were a whole heap of not much weren't they?

I shall echo a PP, £2k (over 4 years, per household, so about £43 a month) to get rid of Sunak, his party and the horse they rode in on? AND have the chance of public services working? Doctors? Dentists?

Deal.

What a waste of time and a badly conceived concept. 🙄