By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk
Now that the leadership contest is over, our much loved “In the race” feature has been put out to pasture. But don’t be too disappointed – every weekday evening we’ll be bringing you the best of the Labour comment from the day’s media interviews in our new feature “Party Lines”.
The first instalment features commentary on George Osborne’s conference speech, and Andy Burnham’s latest attack on Andrew Lansley.
Yvette Cooper reacted to George Osborne’s plans to end child benefit for individuals earning over £44,000 per year, telling BBC News:
“We’ll wait and see what this particular proposal means.”
More broadly, Cooper was critical of Osborne, saying:
“There’s something very dangerous about what George Osborne is setting out here. What he’s at risk of condemning us to is a decade of low growth.”
“If everybody gets trapped into the language of the only thing that matters now is to cut everything back we will see what happened in Ireland.”
Liam Byrne accused the government of “singling out Britain’s children” to bear the brunt of the government’s cuts. Speaking to BBC News he said:
“What a lot of families will be asking themselves is ‘We didn’t cause the crisis, why are we being hit…why did we hear so little about why banks should be paying more in order to cut down the deficit.”
However, speaking to Sky News later this afternoon, Byrne was cautiously supportive of the coalition’s plans:
“I quite welcomed what Mr Osborne had to say about some of the welfare reform plans that he wants to see coming down the track… We had some plans of our own to deliver that.”
“It’s a good idea to reform welfare so there’s a bigger incentive for those not in a job to get back into work and paying taxes.”
Andy Burnham attacked Andrew Lansley after the Royal College of Nursing said that NHS reforms are ‘untested’ and ‘pose a significant risk to the future of the NHS’:
“On Friday it was doctors. Today it is nurses. Andrew Lansley is looking increasingly isolated; his reforms have few friends. How many times must the Government hear that their plans pose a ‘risk to the future of the NHS’ before they will listen? There is a consensus forming that the plans are rushed, untested, and could damage our health service. Today, the Royal College of Nursing and Unison have backed up calls from GP groups for a rethink. The message is coming across loud and clear – a top-down reorganisation costing up to £3bn is the last thing the NHS needs right now.”
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