Election latest: Most people support NHS funding increase - even with tax rises, poll suggests (2024)

Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, has been speaking to broadcasters this morning.

During the coalition years, Sir Ed Davey was the minister responsible for the Post Office, while the Horizon scandal was still happening.

Asked about campaigner Sir Alan Bates being made a knight in the King's Birthday Honours, the Lib Dem leader said: "Well I want to congratulate Alan Bates - this is thoroughly deserved."

He added that it is an honour "not just for him, but on behalf of subpostmasters - and that's really good news".

Sir Ed said the "system" lied to people - including "MPs and ministers of all parties". He says it also lied to "the court".

Sir Alan deserves "all credit" for "determinedly fighting the system".

Asked if, as a former Post Office minister, he should apologise, Sir Ed said he has said sorry to Sir Alan for not meeting him shortly after taking office in government.

He said that he asked questions Sir Alan had to the Post Office - but they lied to him.

By Dr Hannah Bunting, Sky News elections analyst, and Joely Santa Cruz, data journalist

This week, the leaders were selling their visions to voters as they launched their manifestos, and Sunak and Starmer went head to head in Grimsby at the Sky News live election special The Battle For Number 10.

Watch their journeys in the latest week in our animated map below.

This campaign is being fought on new electoral boundaries, with many constituencies undergoing significant changes since 2019.

For the purposes of this analysis, we use notional results based on calculations by Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, Honorary Professors at the University of Exeter, which estimate the 2019 election seat results if they had taken place on the new constituency boundaries.

Read the full piece below:

By Alexandra Rogers, political reporter

The Conservatives have raised just 10% of the donations they managed to collect in 2019 under Boris Johnson in the first week of the election campaign.

Electoral Commission data released today shows the Tories raised £574,918 in the period 30 May to 5 June, compared with the £5.7m they received from 6-12 November five years ago.

The figures show political parties reported £3.2m in donations in the first week of the election campaign.

Mr Sunak's party raised £574,918 through donations alone, on top of £22,453 that came from public funds.

Meanwhile, Labour generated £926,908 from donations alone and £652,411 from the public funds that are given to opposition parties with more than two MPs.

They show a complete turnaround in Labour's fortunes from the 2019 election, when the party raised just £218,500 in the first week of that campaign.

This time round, the single biggest donation given to Labour totalled £500,000 from film company Toledo Productions.

Read the full story here:

Our live poll tracker collates the results of opinion surveys carried out by all the main polling organisations - and allows you to see how the political parties are performing in the run-up to the general election.

So far, only one poll has shown Reform ahead of the Conservatives - the Tories are currently an average of 7 points ahead of Nigel Farage's party.

Read more about the tracker here.

Rosie Duffield, who is Labour's candidate for the Canterbury seat in Kent, has pulled out of a hustings saying she does not feel safe.

Ms Duffield has campaigned in support of women's rights and female-only spaces, and has also clashed with the Labour leadership on various occasions.

It was previously reported that she spent £2,000 on bodyguards while campaigning.

Writing on social media on Friday, Ms Duffield said: "The constant trolling, spite and misrepresentation from certain people, having built up over a number of years and being pursued with a new vigour during this election, is now affecting my sense of security and wellbeing.

"The result is now that I feel unable to be focused on giving a clear presentation of the Labour Party's manifesto commitments."

A Labour Party spokesperson described the right to campaign as a "vital" aspect of British democracy.

"It is vital to our democracy that prospective parliamentary candidates are able to campaign freely," the spokesperson said.

"We completely condemn any intimidation tactics towards candidates of any party."

The full list of candidates in Canterbury is:

• Luke Buchanan-Hodgman, Social Democratic Party;
• Rosie Duffield, Labour Party;
• Louise Harvey-Quirke, Conservative and Unionist Party;
• Bridget Porter, Reform UK;
• Henry Stanton, Green Party;
• Russ Timpson, Liberal Democrats.

Liz Kendall, the shadow work and pension secretary, is speaking to Sky News this morning.

She is asked about how much Labour plans to invest in the NHS.

Ms Kendall refuses to give an exact figure, and instead talks about the health service needing "reform".

She does say that there are "clear" plans for how Labour wants to fund 40,000 extra appointments - through scrapping tax "loopholes" like the non-dom status.

The Labour frontbencher says the kind of reform Labour is targeting is an increase in scanners and using private capacity to reduce waiting lists.

But again she cannot say how much this would cost.

Asked about a poll suggesting most people back tax rises to increase NHS funding, Ms Kendall says her party will not increase income tax, national insurance or VAT.

Asked directly if taxes will be raised to fund the NHS, Ms Kendall only rules out tax rises for "working people".

On other policies, Ms Kendall says her party cannot promise to remove the two-child benefit cap because they cannot find the money for it.

And she seems to turn down Sir Keir Starmer debating Nigel Farage one-on-one - as the Reform UK chief wants.

Instead, Ms Kendall says Sir Keir "wants to debate the man he's up against" - i.e. Rishi Sunak.

New polling from Ipsos suggests 61% of people want NHS funding to increase - even if it means taxes have to go up.

Taxation rates have been a central plank of the election, with the Conservatives saying they will cut levies with taxes at their highest levels in decades.

They have also attacked Labour for not ruling out various tax rises.

According to Ipsos, some 61% of people backed NHS spending going up regardless of if this meant taxes going up - with 16% opposing it and 15% backing neither option.

The next highest policy area was education, with 44% backing a spending increase regardless of tax rises, 22% opposing and 24% backing neither option.

In total, 40% of people supported government spending in general going up even if it meant taxes rising - with 27% opposing and 24% backing neither option.

In total, 1,131 adults were asked for their views between 7 and 10 June for their survey.

Gideon Skinner, senior UK director of Politics at Ipsos, said: "Our research has shown the high levels of public concern over the state of public services, reflected in this polling suggesting some public appetite for increased spending, even if it means higher personal taxes.

"This is particularly high among Labour and Lib Dem voters, and among older people – although younger generations are less keen on increasing their personal tax bill.

"No matter who ends up in Number 11 Downing Street on 5 July, there is also a clear majority for increasing spending on the NHS – an issue which consistently ranks among the top issues that Britons say matter to them the most.

"With rising waiting lists and declining public satisfaction, party pledges on the NHS are likely to be a critical factor for many voters."

Veterans minister Johnny Mercer is speaking to Sky News this morning.

Asked about his party lagging an average of 20 points in the polls, he says the election this year was "always going to be tough after 14 years in power".

He says the campaign has "been up and down" - but that he hasn't heard the polls reflected on the doorstep.

Mr Mercer attacks Labour over their record on education - saying that the number of children in good or outstanding schools "halved" in his area of Plymouth when there were Labour MPs in the area.

The Conservative candidate is also asked about some of his campaign literature, which appears to avoid too much explicit Conservative branding (read more here).

Mr Mercer responds that "it's blue, it's got me on it, I am talking about my record in government.

"So, which part of it is not clear that I'm in the Conservative Party?"

He says more scrutiny should be put on Labour's campaign - claiming they are not being challenged on their prospective tax and spend policies.

Overnight, Labour went on the attack against the Conservatives over the state of the NHS.

They claim that, if the Tories stay in government for the next five years, waiting lists could rise to around 10 million appointments.

The overall NHS waiting list climbed to an estimated 7.57 million treatments at the end of April, affecting 6.33 million patients, according to NHS England figures released on Thursday.

But there are doubts over the veracity of Labour's claims - which are reached by extrapolating the growth in appointments under various periods while the Conservatives have been in power.

They do not use the data from the pandemic.

In May, Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) economist Max Warner said the 10 million figure was "highly unlikely".

Mr Warner said Labour's commitment to eliminating elective waiting times above 18 weeks by the end of the next parliament "would represent a major improvement, undoing nearly a decade of worsening in NHS waiting times in just five years".

He said: "Delivering on all these promises would be expensive: it would almost certainly require real-terms funding growth upwards of 3% per year.

"Beyond some small amounts of 'additional' funding, the Labour manifesto provides no detail about the overall funding the NHS will receive in the next parliament."

Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said: "If the Conservatives are given another five years in charge, waiting lists will hit 10 million, and more and more patients will be forced to pay to go private to get treated on time.

"That's the choice for patients under the Tories: pain or private? Patients face double taxation on health: they pay their taxes, and then pay the Tory health tax if they want to be treated on time."

By Professor Will Jennings, Sky News elections analyst

Even a poll-obsessive like me would have to admit that during election campaigns we often spend too much time focusing on the election 'horse race' - who is up and who is down in the polls - on an almost hourly basis.

Even in this election, where Labour has been well ahead of the Conservatives from the outset, the focus has been on how much.

Figures for the Labour lead span a huge range from 16 to 25 points. And now there's talk of "crossover".

Has Nigel Farage led Reform past the Tories into second place for the first time in a general election campaign?

There's a 10-point difference between pollsters in the figures reported for Reform UK starting at nine points and reaching 19.

The unprecedented nature of what the top end of these results suggest means we could be heading for a seismic reordering of the political landscape on 4 July. Alternatively, many pollsters could end up with egg on their faces.

What lessons can we learn from polling at previous British general elections?

Perhaps the most fundamental thing is that polls become more informative about the result as election day nears.

Read the full analysis below: