Election latest: Minister facing questions after another poll suggests Conservative wipe out on 4 July (2024)

Trevor Phillips is now speaking to transport secretary Mark Harper.

They are speaking after another poll showed the Tories are on the way to electoral wipe out.

Trevor repeatedly asks Mr Harper if the Conservatives do believe they can win.

The minister says his party are "fighting for every vote".

"I know what all the polls say, but it's about what people do when they're actually voting," Mr Harper says.

Mr Harper adds that he is "very much up for this fight".

When asked if the Conservatives talking about a Labour "supermajority" is an admission of defeat, Mr Harper says the polls are saying Labour will win a "very large majority" - and that it is "reasonable to point out" that this scenario will give Labour a "blank cheque".

He says voting for smaller parties will lead to Labour getting a bigger majority.

Trevor Phillips asks Labour's shadow health secretary Wes Streeting if their claim that income tax will not go up is a "con".

He bases this point on the fact that Labour wants to keep income tax bands frozen - meaning more and more people are having to pay the higher tax rate on their wages.

Mr Streeting says "it isn't" a con, and that the position is a "reflection of the fact that the public finances are in a state".

But the Labour politician does concede that the party is "not comfortable" with more and more people being dragged into higher tax brackets.

He says the shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves "has said she wants to reduce the burden on working people".

"But it comes back to the fundamental test of our manifesto - everything in it has to be a promise we can keep and a promise the country can afford.

"Of course, we would like to go further on so many fronts, but we are dealing with a fundamentally weak economy."

As we reported at 7.48ama thinktank has claimed both Labour and the Conservatives would see the NHS face spending cuts harsher than under austerity.

Asked about this on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, shadow health secretary Wes Streeting says he disagrees with the analysis.

Mr Streeting says the Labour manifesto is not "the grand sum total of any future budgets" and spending reviews.

He goes on: "Where Labour is making the fundamental argument at this election is, we've got to get the economy back to growth.

"Because if the economy had grown under this government at just the same rate it did under the last Labour government, there'd be tens of billions of pounds more to either invest in our public services or to put back in people's pockets."

He adds that NHS spending would go up "if conditions allow" in the next parliament, should Labour take over.

Mr Streeting says his party cannot do what the last Labour government did and say national insurance will go up by one pence as "families can't afford it".

Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting is calling on junior doctors to cancel their strikes during the election period.

Newly qualified medics are set to take industrial action from 27 June to 2 July.

They are campaigning for full pay restoration to the level they had in 2008 - equivalent to a 35% rise.

Speaking to Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Mr Streeting says: "This government is incapable of resolving the dispute before polling day on 4 July.

"I don't think there's anything to be achieved by having strikes in the election campaign - the only thing we will see is more untold misery inflicted on patients who see their appointments and procedures delayed, and also junior doctors out of pocket."

Mr Streeting says that if Labour enters government, he will call the junior doctors' union on "day one" to begin talks to resolve the issue.

He adds that Labour "can't deliver" on the 35% as the money isn't there - but they are willing to negotiate.

It's 8.30am, and Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips is underway.

Coming up this morning:

• 8.30am: Labour shadow health secretary Wes Streeting;
• 8.55am: Conservative transport secretary Mark Harper;
• 9.20am: Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay;
• 9.30am: Labour peer Lord Mandelson.

We'll also be hearing from our panel throughout the show.

Today, this consists of former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi, former head of Channel 4 News Dorothy Byrne and FT columnist Miranda Green.

Covering a general election campaign as a journalist can largely be summed up in two words - battle bus.

Not too dissimilar to the coaches that rockstars use for their tours, battle buses are the vehicles each political party uses to transport their leaders, candidates, and advisers around the country during the election campaign.

Sky's political correspondents have each been following a different party - often joining them on their battle buses.

Here we take you behind the scenes on the campaign trail this week for the Conservatives, Labour, and the Liberal Democrats.

Watch our political correspondents, Serena Barker-Singh, Darren McCaffrey, and Matthew Thompson below.

Both the Labour and Conservative plans for the NHS have come under criticism from the Nuffield Trust, a health-based thinktank.

A report from the groups says the funding challenges facing the health service are set to continue.

It criticises all the main political groups, saying that "sadly, none of the parties have thus far chosen to be transparent" about the funding of the NHS.

The reports adds: "Instead, each has published costings documents alongside their manifestos purporting to set out planned 'extra' funding for health and social care by 2028/29, but without any information on the baseline spending level this 'extra' would come on top of."

The trust says it has calculated how each party's pledges on the NHS would impact spending.

It said: "Applying the listed "extra" spending pledged by each party to a real terms base case for total health spending annual growth of 0.8% would result in the next four years being the tightest in NHS history under the Conservative and Labour pledges – tighter even than the coalition government’s 'austerity' period, which saw funding grow by just 1.4% real terms a year between 2010/11 and 2014/15."

Funding for government departments is facing pressures from inflation, and also the reduction in tax from the Conservative's national insurance cuts.

You can read about the various party's policies here:

By Adam Boulton, Sky News commentator

There are still two and a half weeks to go.

The most overused simile of this campaign so far is about the challenge facing Sir Keir Starmer to lead Labour safely to victory in this general election. Politicians and pundits simply mention the "Ming vase" for short.

This is a reference to the 1997 election campaign and the last time a Labour leader held in his grasp the possibility of ending a long period of Conservative rule.

The analogy was coined by the ex-Labour Grandee Roy Jenkins who amused a Liberal Democrat dinner by likening Tony Blair to a curator nervously carrying a priceless gossamer-thin Ming vase across a newly polished and treacherously slippery museum floor.

Blair pulled off the trick - in spite of almost believing it could not be done.

"We usually lose" is the perennial warning from Pat McFadden who was a Blair advisor then and is now Starmer's campaign chief.

When he got to examine the election result, Lord Jenkins found that the porcelain treasure was not to his liking. He had hoped for a narrow win necessitating a progressive realignment bringing together Labour and the Liberal Democrats.

But Labour won such a big majority there was no need for coalition partners.

Starmer is just as delicately poised today. Opinion polls and academic analysts suggest he may be on course for a victory at least as big as Blair.

The Labour leader and his closest confidants may be the last people in the political world to agree.

This is not just rejecting complacency. As he reminded his supporters at Labour's manifesto launch, only the general election counts.

Read Adam's full piece here:

By Alexandra Rogers, political reporter

Two polls spell bad news for Rishi Sunak, with one showing a drop of four points and the other that his party is on course to pick up just 72 seats.

A poll by Savanta for The Sunday Telegraph showed the Tories down four points to just 21% of the vote - the lowest by that pollster since the dying days of Theresa May's premiership in early 2019.

In a boost for Nigel Farage, the poll showed Reform UK up three points with 13% of the vote.

A separate Survation poll for Best for Britain, published by The Sunday Times, predicted the Tories would win just 72 seats in the next parliament, compared with 456 for Labour.

The result would give Labour a majority of 262 seats - far surpassing the landslide Labour achieved by Sir Tony Blair in 1997 - while the Liberal Democrats would pick up 56 seats, Reform seven and the Greens one seat.

The Savanta poll, which was carried out from 12-14 June and involved 2,045 adults aged 18 and over, also showed Labour up two points on 46% of the vote.

Read the full story below:

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has spoken to The Sunday Times about his faith and how it guides him.

He said: "In Hinduism, there's a concept of duty called dharma, which is roughly translated as being about doing your duty and not having a focus on the outcomes of it.

"And you do it because it's the right thing to do, and you have to detach yourself from the outcome of it."

Mr Sunak says he felt it was his dharma to serve the nation.

He adds that it was "not an easy thing to do", but it is "something I was raised with".

"And that is also something that gives me the strength to deal with [the challenges], because I get fulfilment from just doing what I believe is right.

"And as you say, work as hard as you can, do what you believe is right, and try, and what will be will be."