Sunday shows: “This is not a moment to play it safe,” Graham tells Labour

Sophy Ridge on Sunday

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said that the public need “straight talking”, not people “dancing around their handbags”. She declared that Labour has a “real opportunity” and that now is not the moment to “play it safe”.

• On Jeremy Hunt: “Jeremy Hunt is not the answer to what is happening here. Jeremy Hunt, if you heard him yesterday, was talking about a second round of austerity… We have another incident that is not the fault of workers, it’s not the fault of communities, yet they will be asked to pay the price.”
• Asked whether Liz Truss can stay on as Prime Minister: “She will because she’ll try to cling on. She either will or they’ll try and replace her. Turkeys aren’t going to vote for Christmas. So whilst I think that there should be a change in government, I have to say that I don’t think there will be a change in government and probably they’ll be clinging on right to the very end.”
• On Labour: “Labour have a real opportunity now, and they need to take that opportunity. There’s clear blue water opened up on the political horizon, there’s no doubt about that. But this is not a moment to play it safe… This is the moment to take this by the scruff of the neck, say this is what we need to do to come out with solutions to these problems and really lay out what Labour’s stall is.”
• On the difference between Labour and the Conservatives’ policy stances: “There is a difference… But I don’t think it is acceptable to just sit on the sidelines and have just a little bit of difference. You can’t get in just because you’re a little bit better than the other lot.”
• On what she would like to see Labour do: “I’d like Labour to really come out fighting really, to say we are on the side of workers and communities… There is already a party for the business lobby: it’s called the Tory Party, they are the business lobby party. And what we now need is to see the party for workers and communities.”
• On Keir Starmer: “Well I won’t talk about personalities… The policy’s too timid… what people need now is straight talking. They don’t want people dancing around their handbags, they want straight talking.”
• On whether co-ordinated strike action could be imminent: “Yes, I’ve said yesterday that I think there could be up to a million people on strike very, very soon. I mean, what we’re seeing, I think we just have to take this back as to why people go on strike, is that they can put all the anti-trade union legislation in they want.
• She added: “This is about anger, anger in workplaces within the public sector and the private sector. So of course, if I’ve had the same decision-maker, an employer that’s the same decision-maker, where members are in another union, of course, we will come together and we’ll talk about how we can get the best pay for workers.”
• On a ‘general strike’: “Nobody wants to have a strike, nobody wants to have the general strike. But you’ve got to see that this is pure anger that’s happening. And if there are a number of strikes happening at the same time, people can call it what they like quite frankly.”
• Pressed on whether the country could see general strikes this winter: “You could see multiple strikes this winter. What people call it is really up to them.”
• On the potential for a strike in the NHS: “We are looking at this being a very real option… I feel quite embarrassed really that we are in a situation in our country where these people… they went out when everybody else was in their homes, all these key workers… and they took risks, they didn’t know what was out there. They’ve come back and told you’re going to take a pay cut.”
• She added: “At the same time, they’ve told bankers you can have a pay rise. There is something drastically wrong with our economy if we allow that to happen.”

Shadow Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said any spending cuts the Tories make will be “solely on them and their incompetence” and stressed that there are “real-world consequences” to the “irresponsibility” seen from the government.

• On Jeremy Hunt and Liz Truss: “The damage has been done already. Whatever moves we see from the Conservative Party, whoever gets the chance of being Chancellor this month, whoever frankly is Prime Minister by next week, people’s mortgages are higher than they needed to be, business investment will be lower than it otherwise would have been and government expenditure and the pressures on that will be worse because of decisions that were made.”
• Asked whether Labour is talking to Tory MPs who are opposed to the government’s approach: “We’re always open for conversations, but quite frankly, what this country needs is not conversations in Westminster. It needs a general election.”
• On Labour’s stance on the basic rate income tax cut: “Our position has always been that personal taxes in the UK are high because growth has been so dismal for the last 12 years… I need the OBR [Office for Budget Responsibility] forecast in order to make any kind of assessment around that.”
• Asked whether a Labour government would spend more on public services: “We’d only spend more on day-to-day public services where we can identify additional revenue that would pay for that.”
• On whether taxes will go up under Labour: “No, it doesn’t mean the tax will go up. It means additional sources of revenue as I say… We will always identify where revenue will come from where we will increase day-to-day spending.”
• Asked whether Labour’s additional sources of revenue are enough to cover the shortfall: “I can only make those decisions based on real information from the OBR and other forecasts.”

Sunday with Laura Kunessberg

Shadow Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds told viewers that Labour has a “completely different economic philosophy to this government as to how growth happens but also on how you pay for things”.

• On the government following the sacking of Kwasi Kwarteng and his replacement with Jeremy Hunt: “I’m not even sure what this government’s economic policy even is at the moment, I’m not sure which parts of the Budget apply and I don’t know what we will hear next week.”
• On public spending cuts that the government is expected to announce: “Any cuts the Conservative Party brings forward are entirely of its own making, entirely of its ow incompetence.”
• Asked whether there would have to be spending cuts or tax rises under Labour: “In the plans we have already put forward, we are always clear that where we wish to increase day-to-day spending we will increase the revenue that comes in to pay for that.”
• He added: “So, for instance, we’ve said we would abolition the non-dom rule, that would bring another £3bn. We have said we would tax private equity. We have said private schools would not be charities.”
• On increasing spending: “We will always identify the expenditure for that. We are absolutely committed to the fiscal rules that Rachel Reeves has put forward where we will not borrow on day-to-day expenditure.”
• On a Labour government: “We have a completely different economic philosophy to this government as to how growth happens but also on how you pay for things. We don’t agree with what they’ve done, borrowing money for tax cuts. And if there’s any doubt, it is the fiscal rules that will win out.”
• On whether Labour would back the cut to the basic rate of income tax announced in the ‘mini-Budget’: “We will have to see what they bring forward. Again, we honestly don’t know what will happen. We will have to see what the [Office for Budget Responsibility] say.”
• On Keir Starmer’s commitment that Labour would support its reduction from 20% to 19%: “That was before the Conservative Party set fire to the British economy.”
• On Labour’s offer for the electorate: “We can be confident that growth under Labour would be high, because it was high under the last Labour government. Our plans for the economy are about driving up long-term business investment, long-term industrial strategy, fixing business rates, improving our trading relationship with the single market. All things real and practical.”
• On what the public expects from a Labour government: “They expect a government with a serious plan for growth, which we have. They expect a government being committed to fiscal responsibility, which we are. They don’t expect all the problems to be turned around overnight.”

UNISON general secretary Christina McAnea told viewers that it is “immaterial” whether Labour MPs and frontbenchers join striking workers on picket lines, arguing that it would not make the “slightest difference”.

• On UNISON’s ongoing strike ballot: “Strikes are the symptom of a problem. They don’t cause the problem, they’re actually a symptom… It’s people who take strike action and they do so once they jump through loads of hoops because we have very strict legislation.”
• On the ask from UNISON members: “We’re asking for pay to keep pace with inflation or at least to give people a decent pay increase that means they can live.”
• She added: “My members who work in the NHS… have been given £1,400 flat rate. That’s nothing for most of them. If you’re in the main band or group of professional staff… that’s about 4%.”
• On funding public services: “This idea that somehow public services are a drain on the economy is so untrue. Public services help to revitalise the economies in local areas, because if you give who work there money they’ll spend it in Tesco.”
• Asked whether she would want the “Labour Party and the frontbench to be with you on the picket line”: “I don’t think it would make the slightest difference… I’d like them as a party to be with us and I think they will be in terms of fighting for better pay. Whether they’ll physically turn up on a picket line is immaterial.”
• She added: “When you go on strike and you’re on a picket line, it’s not a game. You’re not there for a photo opp. It’s there because people are trying to make a point and get decent pay.”

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said “spending is not going to increase by as much as people hoped and, indeed, we’re going to have to ask all government departments to find more efficiencies than they had planned” and that “taxes are not going to go down as quickly as people thought and some taxes are going to go up”.

Asked whether the financial markets are “holding the UK hostage”, Hunt said “no government can control the market, no Chancellor should seek to do that”. Asked whether the government might U-turn on further tax cuts in the ‘mini-Budget’, he said: “I’m not taking anything off the table.”

He refused to give specifics on spending cuts, insisting that people would have to wait until his fiscal statement in parliament at the end of the month, but said “every government department” would be asked to find “efficiency savings”.

Asked whether the coming years will see a more severe austerity programme and cost-of-living crisis than during the 2010s, the Chancellor said: “I don’t think we’re going to have anything like that this time.”

Defending Liz Truss, he said: “She’s listened. She’s changed. She’s been willing to do that most difficult thing in politics, which is to change tack.” On her stated aim of ‘growth, growth, growth’, he said the government will show “not just what we want but how we’re going to get there”.

“She has changed the way we’re going to get there. She hasn’t changed the destination, which is to get the country growing,” he added.

“I think she’s right to recognise in the international situation, market situation, that change was necessary but she is absolutely determined to deliver that economic growth that’s going to bring more prosperity to ordinary families.”

Former Health Secretary Matt Hancock urged the Prime Minister to make changes in her approach to government, including enacting a reshuffle to bring “the broad Conservative Party” into her team.