Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg interview

What we want to see is that people who work harder don't get punished uh for doing so. If you earn a hund a pound over £100,000, you could lose 1020,000 worth of child care. And we don't want people to stop working because of that. Uh there are some families where uh one partner decides uh to to work a bit less and and the other has to work more when that's not necessarily fair. What we want to see is more people in work and not taking the wrong decisions or the wrong choices and it doesn't matter whether they're earning 10,000 or 100,000.

Uh what matters is that people are out there working and I want them to know that conservatives support them.

As I said, uh it doesn't matter what you earn. We don't want you to be punished for earning, uh for working harder. What we're trying to do is grow our economy. We don't want making we don't want people making choices that are actually stopping them from working. And I've been speaking uh today uh to the staff at this nursery and they're saying that this impacts everybody, that the more people who they can get coming in actually makes it easier for them and for the other parents.

It's the right thing to do.

Well, this cliff edge is at 100,000. The kind of people that we're really targeting are a deputy headteer who wants to become a headteer. She goes from 85 to 110,000. She's got three kids. All of a sudden, she's losing tens of thousands of pounds.

You've got to help store have a taper rather than just removing the whole thing. So lots of people listening will will will be familiar with that cliff edge. You suddenly lose it all

So so I believe that the number of people who have very small children uh who are earning tens of millions of pounds is negligible. What I think we need to focus on is the reality of most people out at work today. And what you're going to see at this conference is how we're having policies for everybody. Whether you don't earn, whether you earn a little, whether you earn a bit, whether you earn a lot, we want everyone in this country to know that if you are out there working, the Conservative Party has got a plan for you. And we're going to get Britain working again.

This policy is about people at that cliff edge. What is not a good use of taxpayers money is paying thousands and thousands of people who can work not to work. That is where most of the waste is going on. Getting people out there working so they don't lose their tax-free um uh uh child care is actually not the thing that's going to be getting millions of uh you know millionaires rushing out.

There are good people on all sides who have arguments about the triple lock, but our policy is to keep it. And the reason why is because what is going wrong in our economy is not lots of elderly people earning 1012,000 a year on the state pension. It is the huge number of people who can work who don't work. In 2010 when the conservative coalition started what we saw was a lot of pension and poverty. That policy was brought in to fix that.

Uh Andy Bernham has not explained how changing the triple lock funds um his policy.

Well, we've had different policies at different times. We go with what the leader does. I am the leader now. And what I am saying is that our economy is not growing. Changing and moving around the triple lock does not create growth.

In fact, if we were growing at 2 3%, nobody would be talking about the triple lock.

Because what that document also says is you start with the root cause. The reason why government has been going wrong is because we keep tackling the symptoms. Going after the triple lock is simply moving money around. I am talking about growing the economy, getting people into work, making us more productive, bringing back the link between savings and growth. What we're doing with this argument about the triple lock is a ledger on the budget line.

There are more fundamental problems that need to be tackled.

She is not wrong about growth if we're not growing.

But why is she saying that? Because we're not growing. We keep avoiding the fundamental question about growing the economy. The fact is the triple lock and pensions are things that people have contributed to. Conservatives believe that if you have contributed then you deserve to get your state pension.

What we don't want to see is people going after the elderly chasing after vulnerable and disabled people and then the extremely large cohort of people who can work who are not working are left alone.

The triple lock is our policy. We believe that this is the right policy for pensioners. That is what we have planned for that. That is what we have promised. There is nothing that has happened that has made me change my mind.

That is our policy.

So what we have seen I don't have exact figures uh for you but what we have seen is an explosion in the number of people who are claiming for low-level uh uh conditions which they can work with uh ADHD anxiety these are conditions that work would actually help them with uh we are seeing uh because of the stopping of face-to-face assessments during COVID understandable reasons people have worked out how to game the system I don't believe that that's right

and that's a number that I'm sure that we can send to you. The um my team have done the have have done the research. I don't have those figures to hand

if I could finish if I could if I could finish the point saying that people are in work working 4 hours 6 hours 8 hours that's that's not enough that's not enough we want people working to grow our economy everybody that we take off welfare is not just less money that we're paying on welfare they are paying taxes that contribute to the rest of the economy and I know some people will disagree some people will disagree but I want them to know what I think and what I believe is that the best form of welfare is a well-paying job.

I'll give you I'll give you I'll give you one statistic uh which I saw the other day that the increase um in disability uh claimments has been higher in the UK than it has been in Ukraine where they're actually at war. That cannot be possible. We have now one in four people in our population uh self-reporting as disabled. That cannot be right. Something is going wrong.

can I can I'm sure I can send that I'm sure I can send that to you. I don't have every single figure to hand. What I do know is that we have done this work. My shadow welfare secretary, my shadow chancellor, we have done all of this work. I am here to explain to people the overall principle the overall policy the detail of that I will make sure that you are sent.

I do think prison works. I do think prison works. And we want a state that is strong. That's what we want. A huge big state that's getting everything wrong that can't deliver public services where satisfaction keeps dropping and people are unhappy is not worthwhile.

We want a state that does the things want government to do the things that others can't do for themselves. People cannot create their own prisons. Government has to do more. And we did not do enough. We built about 14,000 uh I think places when we were in government but by the time you looked at the number of places that closed net net there wasn't enough.

That's the point I'm making between what we opened and what we closed. What I'm doing, you know, with this paper I've written and what we're saying at conference is here are some of the things that happened when we were in government. These didn't go well. So, we've got a plan to fix them.

So I fundamentally disagree with David Gawk's approach and I think the report uh which he wrote on prison sentencing actually had given up uh before it started. What I want to see is some honesty from politicians. Yes, of course we want to see rehabilitation. But there is no magic rehabilitation machine that people go into and come out rehabilitated. In fact, we do see quite a lot of people reoffending.

And they don't just reaffend, they hurt people, they kill people. We saw uh with um Karma's early release uh uh that happened I think last year. Someone went out and killed uh within 24 hours. He had to be put back in. I don't want to play with people's lives.

I meet victims, the parents and the children of people who have been killed by criminals. And what I my priority is is public safety. I'm not going to be gambling with people's lives. Quite frankly, I'm sick and tired of chattering classes and people who are never at the end of these decisions making choices that have a horrible impact on other people's lives.

It's about It's about It's about half. Well, we've got to play catch-up. What we can't do is say, "Oh, well, it's all too difficult, so we won't even bother." This is a this is an ambitious target. We have found the money. We've explained where the money is coming from.

We've been looking at the prison estate and we've also been looking at what went wrong. And one of the things that actually slowed prison building down was planning. And this is another area where we're going to be looking to see how we can speed up the system.

Uh so uh a man uh an exir uh member has uh plead guilty to threatening to kill me and he was sending messages not just to me but also to uh my family members and I just think that whether it's Nigel Farage or even Karma who had his uh you know his home uh firebombed that there is a threat uh to politicians that is increasing and we just need to crack down on this uh you know let's build the prison spaces so that we can put people who are making these threats in and and threatening politicians. But what I want the public to know is that my priority really is their safety. Uh MPs um you know, one of my heroes, Ary Neve, you know, was blown up uh by the IRA. MPs have often been threatened in this way, but we must not let that stop us from doing our jobs. And we are elected uh to make sure that we protect national security, to look after public security.

Um and that is my priority.

Uh, it it's really tough, but you just have to get on with it. Um, you know, every person who sends an abusive message, you know, they think that they're just getting something off their chest, but the cumulative impact uh puts a lot of people uh off politics, but I'm not going to be put off.

It's the common sense party. That's what we're doing. And quite frankly, if we were uh doing so well the old way, then why did we have such a terrible defeat in 2024? I'm a classic old school conservative. Uh I believe in common sense.

uh people working hard and um and being rewarded for that effort. We look after those who can't look after themselves. Uh welfare should be a safety net, not a lifestyle. But this is an amazing country and I want us to to look at the to the future and see what we can do, not just hawk back to to the past.

the right way.

But this isn't 1980s conservatism.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Old school. Because the principles and the values never change.

Personal responsibility is not a 1980s idea. These are the things that keep us going and we need that the principles are timeless.

Um Andy Andy Bernham is the cheesy uncle. I think [laughter] he's cheesy uncle who does who does all the uh the dad jokes. And what am I? Someone else has to do that. Um it's very difficult.

They probably they probably see me um you know as the nononsense mom. [laughter]

probably me.