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Following the first leaders’ debate, where Sir Keir said he would not use private healthcare himself under any circumstances, Mr Robinson suggested there was some concern the Labour leader thought people who did were “queue jumpers”.<\/p>\n
“I’m not hostile in the slightest,” Sir Keir said. “I completely understand why people would go private… because they wanted to get an operation more quickly or get back to work or something else.”<\/p>\n
But he defended the NHS as the best performer on acute care saying it was “the very best place to be” for the treatment of life-threatening illness, adding that private hospitals “refer into the NHS for acute care” for that reason.<\/p>\n
On Brexit, Sir Keir was pressed on whether he wanted to re-join the European Union having campaigned for Remain and also calling for the option of a second referendum as Shadow Brexit Secretary, before ruling out a re-entry last year.<\/p>\n
The Labour leader ruled out re-joining, saying he respected the vote and that membership of the EU was “not a silver bullet”. <\/p>\n
The post-Brexit trade deals were “botched”, he said, and Labour would negotiate a better Brexit trade deal if it wins 4 July’s general election, but many issues around growth could be fixed without undoing Brexit. <\/p>\n
“I do think we can do better than the botched deal that we’ve got under Boris Johnson,” he said. “I think every business thinks that.” <\/p>\n
He added: “If you look at the problems for growth over the last 14 years, they were there, or many of them were there, before Brexit, so the idea that the sort of single silver bullet is simply the relationship with the EU is not something I accept.”<\/p>\n
At the G7, Mr Sunak said there was a clear choice between the two parties and he would “continue fighting very hard to make sure everyone understands the choice that’s ahead of them”.<\/p>\n
He claimed that electing Labour would give Sir Keir “a blank cheque” to hike taxes, whereas, if the Tories were re-elected, “we will be able to cut taxes for people at every stage of their lives”. <\/p>\n
Turning to the single opinion poll which put Reform ahead of the Conservatives, the Prime Minister said the only poll that mattered was the one on July 4th. Other opinion polls have put the Tories ahead of Nigel Farage’s party. <\/p>\n
Mr Sunak also pledged to stay on as an MP for a full five-year parliamentary term even if the Conservatives lost on 4 July. <\/p>\n
The BBC is interviewing all the major party leaders in the run-up to the election in The Panorama Interviews with Nick Robinson. You can watch the interview with Sir Keir Starmer at 19:30 on BBC One or BBC iPlayer.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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