{"id":41475,"date":"2026-01-13T11:34:02","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T11:34:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=41475"},"modified":"2026-01-13T11:34:02","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T11:34:02","slug":"wes-streeting-criticises-labour-colleagues-who-blame-whitehall-for-blocking-reform-uk-politics-live-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=41475","title":{"rendered":"Wes Streeting criticises Labour colleagues who blame Whitehall for blocking reform \u2013 UK politics live | Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Davey says he would back partial ban on under-16s using social media, but claims Tory plan would go too far<\/h2>\n

Q: Would you support a total ban on under-16s having social media accounts?<\/em><\/p>\n

Davey<\/strong> says, as a parent, he thinks we have to have this debate. He thinks there has to be \u201csome sort of ban\u201d.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no doubt that we\u2019re going to have to put some sort of ban in place to keep them safe. So no doubt about that.<\/p>\n

The question is, how do you do that?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen some of the proposals from other parties. There\u2019s a danger that they will have some unintended consequences.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m really worried that the idea we\u2019ve heard from the Conservatives is that GCSE pupils will end up being banned from Wikipedia.<\/p>\n

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Davey<\/strong> says Tony Blair and New Labour were right to say that A&E waits should be reduced to a maximum of four hours. By and large they achieved that. The fact that that is no longer the case shows how far backwards the NHS went under the Tories, he says.<\/p>\n

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Q: Why are you doing so badly in Wales?<\/em><\/p>\n

Davey<\/strong> says the Lib Dems won a seat again in Wales at the last election. And he says he thinks they will improve their representation in the Senedd at the elections this year. He won\u2019t go beyond that, he says. He says, with Plaid Cymru, Wales has real multi-party politics.<\/p>\n

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Davey says, as opponent of assisted dying bill, he thinks it is ‘outrageous’ that Lords trying to block it<\/h2>\n

Asked about assisted dying, Davey<\/strong> says he voted against the bill. But he goes on:<\/p>\n

I personally voted against the assisted dying bill. And, though many of my colleagues didn\u2019t, I think the real issue at the moment is what the Lords is doing, and I think it\u2019s quite outrageous that that seems to be members of the House of Lords who are trying to kill the bill. And I say that as an opponent of the bill. But it\u2019s the democratic right of the House of Commons to pass bad law if it wants to.<\/p>\n

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Q: Before the election you said the problem with the NHS was Tory incompetence. Now you say it is Labour incompetence. Do you have a view as to what the underlying problem is?<\/em><\/p>\n

Davey<\/strong> says he is clear that the Tories are most to claim for the NHS crisis.<\/p>\n

But he says Labour has not been able to sort the problem out.<\/p>\n

He says the Lib Dem argument that is that social care must be transformed at the same time. That is what experts think, he says. And sorting out care would transformative.<\/p>\n

He says he set out this argument in his book last year, Why I Care.<\/p>\n

The Guardian wrote an editorial about this at the time.<\/p>\n

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Q: What is your approach to Labour? And, with all the challenges facing the Lib Dems this year, are you the person to carry on leading them?<\/em><\/p>\n

Davey<\/strong> says Labour have been a disappointment. And he says they are the party with a leadership problem; there are Labour MPs who want Wes Streeting to be leader. But Streeting needs to sort out the trolley wait problem first, he says.<\/p>\n

Referring to the Lib Dems, he says the YouGov poll today shows that are five parties within 10 points of each other.<\/p>\n

But the Lib Dems are doing well in actual elections, he says.<\/p>\n

He says in May last year the Lib Dems beat Labour and the Conservatives for the first time.<\/p>\n

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Davey says Labour have been ‘total failure’ on social care<\/h2>\n

Davey<\/strong> says he had hoped that Keir Starmer was serious about what he said during the election campaign about wanting a cross-party solution to social care. He goes on:<\/p>\n

I\u2019m afraid I\u2019ve been proved wrong. There has been total failure on social care, kicking it into the long grass. No real political push for it. Elongated timetables. So they\u2019ve been huge, disappointing.<\/p>\n

And they will not save our NHS unless they sort out care. I\u2019ve long said if you if you care about the NHS, you\u2019ve got to care about care.<\/p>\n

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On Iran, Davey<\/strong> says he would take Donald Trump\u2019s comments about stopping the murder of protesters more seriously if he were also willing to stop things like that happening in Minnesota.<\/p>\n

But he says he supports Trump in wanting to use sanctions to put pressure on Iran.<\/p>\n

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Q: What you are proposing would cost less than 1% of the NHS budget. Is this really about changing the NHS, or is it really about campaigning ahead of the local elections?<\/em><\/p>\n

Davey<\/strong> says this is about responding to \u201cthe pain and distress that people are feeling in every hospital A&E across the country\u201d, and showing that there is a political party that wants to do something about it.<\/p>\n

Responding to the claim that \u00a31.5bn is not a big enough sum, he says this shows that the plan is affordable.<\/p>\n

And he rejects the suggestion he is parking Lib Dems tanks on Labour\u2019s lawn. The NHS was a liberal creation, he says, citing William Beveridge.<\/p>\n

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Davey<\/strong> urges journalist at the press conference to visit hospitals themselves and examine what is happening in A&E.<\/p>\n

It is really quite astonishing. It\u2019s never happened before in my lifetime. And it\u2019s the untold crisis in the health service.<\/p>\n

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Key events Show key events only Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature Davey says he would back partial ban on under-16s using social media, but claims Tory plan would go too far Q: Would you support a total ban on under-16s having social media accounts? Davey says, as a parent, he thinks we<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[7332,9015,8290,7584,134,132,124,838,1225,1224,13430],"class_list":{"0":"post-41475","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-blame","9":"tag-blocking","10":"tag-colleagues","11":"tag-criticises","12":"tag-labour","13":"tag-live","14":"tag-politics","15":"tag-reform","16":"tag-streeting","17":"tag-wes","18":"tag-whitehall"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}