Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg interview

Would someone who earns a million pounds a year get free childare under a conservative government?

But at a time when a lot of people are genuinely worried about putting food on the table, about paying their energy bills, why is it the right thing to say to someone earning a million pounds a year that they can have free child care paid for by ordinary taxpayers?

but you could taper in the support or you could bring in a means test. Wouldn't that be the right thing to do?

But even if you think the amounts wouldn't be that big, is it a good use of taxpayers money to subsidize incredibly wealthy, high earning people to help them pay for looking after their own children that they chose to have?

When your shadow foreign secretary has said it's unsustainable, when the former Conservative Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has said it's unaffordable and immoral, why not back the prime minister's suggestion to alter the triple lock that guarantees very expensively pensioners incomes?

Let's just stick on this because you're right there. There are different issues around working age welfare and we'll come to that. But I do want to stick on this. Pensioners get 55% of all social security expenditure. The cost is enormous. So why not look at this? In 2017, you were elected as an MP on a platform to change the triple lock. So don't you agree with your former self?

The growth of the bill for this is potentially absolutely huge. And you've written a 100page document saying you want to be careful with public money. Why not look at this?

It's not a ledger a number on the the ledger or a number on the balance sheet. It's an enormous amount of money. 177 billion pounds goes on social security for pensioners. Your shadow housing secretary, Katy Lamb, who's someone you've praised as an up and cominging star in the party, said, "I just think the whole system can't stand for very much longer." Is she wrong?

This is on the triple system. Is she wrong about that?

But just on this point about the protecting pensioners incomes in this way because changing the triple lock is not about taking away people's state pensions. It's about slowing down the rate at which the bill is forecast to increase which is enormous. So are you saying today no ifs, no buts? You will never touch the triple lock.

We have talked about your ambition on to on on child care and it's very well known. We've talked about it before that you really want to cut back on benefits for working age people. You've said in another interview u in the last couple of days that people are cheating the system. How many people do you think are cheating the benefit system?

but around 10 million people of working age are on benefits. Many many of them are in work and the reason they get benefits is to make up for their low wages. So if you're going to make an accusation that people are cheating the system, I think people would want to know roughly how many of those 10 million people are you talking about

but do you have a sense is it most people is it

The point I'm trying to get from you is when you say as the leader of Her Majesty's opposition that people are cheating the system, people will, I think, expect you to have a sense of how many people you're referring to, are you referring to a tiny group of people who are taking the Mick and and you're right, that drives other people working hard round the twist. Absolutely. Or are you thinking well actually yes it might be 20% or 30% of people who are

Can you give us a sense of the proportion of which you

Okay. Um, you want a smaller state, smaller tax bills, but significant new extra numbers of prison places, which is in itself a big expansion of the state. If you build 50,000 extra prison places, it's a very dramatic departure. Do you think prison works?

I mean, there really wasn't there really wasn't enough according to to the numbers. I mean, overall, you only added 500 places to the overall estate.

There's also though a departure in the I suppose the sort of philosophy around prison. So, a former conservative justice secretary, uh, David Gawk wrote a a big review looking at all of the evidence said that when it comes to custody in prison, the evidence all suggests there should be much more focus on rehabilitation and just locking up more and more people, increasing the population, which sometimes politicians like to do because it can sound popular with members of the public. That doesn't work. So, why have you moved away from that?

Why should anybody believe though that a Conservative government would be able to deliver such a dramatic expansion, 50,000 extra spaces? That's more than half the existing number of spaces in England right now.

Um, one of the unattractive features of modern politics is that there are dangers sometimes to politicians themselves. Not just that the debate can be quite brutal but there are also dangers and risks of politicians with themselves. We have seen in the last 24 hours that Nigel Farage um had a terror threat against um a terror threat was made against Nigel Farage by the man who's been uh held over the killing of Anne Whitaker. I understand that you yourself have recently had experience of somebody who was threatening you. Can you just tell us about that?

But how do you deal with that as a, you know, you're a a a mother, you're a leading politician, you're, you know, in a hugely pressured political environment, but you also have a a family, people who care about you and people you care about. How do you cope with that?

If we stand back for a minute, whether it's sending more people to prison or accusing some people of cheating the benefit system or have introducing tougher rules for young people on benefits, some it sounds quite 1980s. Sounds like some of the things that in your party some of your colleagues worry about that. They think it might sound a bit like the return to what Theresa May once called the the nasty party. What do you say to them?

The right way. When you're smaller than reform in Scotland and Wales and you've lost seats to the Liberal Democrats in England and lost lots of council seats. Is 1980s conservatism really what's going to get people back to you?

But you just said you're happy to be old school.