Starmer pledges ‘raw honesty’ and does not commit to reverse two-child cap

Keir Starmer has pledged to approach the problems facing the country with a “raw honesty”, saying his government will have to take “tough decisions”, as he again said he could not commit to axing the two-child benefit cap.

In his first news conference as Prime Minister earlier today, Starmer told reporters: “I said some tough things in the campaign because I meant them.

“And I wasn’t going to do what others have done, which is to say sweet things on the way in only to do a press conference like this two days later or three days later saying we can’t do any of that.”

On Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s comments on Friday about the NHS being “broken” and whether he is prepared to take “tough decisions” quickly including on raising tax, Starmer said: “We’re going to have to take the tough decisions and take them early – and we will.

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“We will do that with a raw honesty. And that’s really what sat behind Wes Streeting’s description yesterday of the NHS as being ‘broken’. It is. Everybody who uses it and works in it knows that it is broken.

“And we’re not going to operate under the pretence or language that doesn’t express the problem as it is, because otherwise we won’t be able to fix the problem as quickly as we need to.”

The Prime Minister added: “We’ll continue in that vein. There are other issues – prisons would be an obvious example – where other parts of the system are broken. And we’re going to have to approach that with a raw honesty as well.

“And we will take the tough decisions. But that is not a sort of prelude to saying there’s some tax decision that we didn’t speak about before we’re about to announce now. It’s about the tough decisions to fix the problem.”

READ MORE: Keir Starmer news conference: Live updates and stream as PM faces press

Asked whether he could give a guarantee that he intends to scrap the two-child benefit cap, Starmer said his stance on the cap was an example of one of the “tough things” he said in the election campaign that he “meant”.

He told reporters: “Difficult decision. Absolutely understand how difficult it is, how important it is. And I’m not shying away from that. But we intend to have economic stability. We intend to ensure that we stick to our rules, and that is why I can’t make the commitment on the two-child benefit.

“What I can say is this: we have and we’re already setting out the child poverty strategy, which will deliver a reduction in child poverty. I’m determined to do that. It will be a measure of what this Labour government does.”

He said he will share details of the party’s strategy “as soon as we’re able”, adding: “The fact that I can’t make the commitment on the two-child benefit does not mean that we’re parking the strategy on reduction of child poverty. On the contrary, it makes it all the more urgent.”

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