‘We’ve got to give these people justice’: infected blood report could lead to prosecutions, minister says – UK politics live | Politics

Yesterday Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, forgot one of Labour’s new six pledges in an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg. Sarah Jones, a shadow business minister, did not make the same mistake this morning, but in an interview with Talk TV she got the detail of one of them wrong, claiming Labour was committed to “40,000 new appointments or operations every day”.

The Conservative party has put a gleeful press notice. It quotes Richard Holden, the Tory chair, saying:

A second member of Sir Keir Starmer’s top team has forgotten his latest batch of ‘pledges’. They change so quickly his own team don’t even bother to remember what they are.

But there are consolations for Labour, because these stories are a useful way of getting the pledges back into the news. Jones should have said 40,000 more appointments each week. Here is the health pledge in full.

Cut NHS waiting times with 40,000 more evening and weekend appointments each week, paid for by cracking down on tax avoidance and non-doms.

Last year the Labour party revealed that it was dropping plans to allow people to change gender (by obtaining a gender recognition certificate) through so-called “self-ID”, without having to obtain a medical diagnosis.

At the time Anneliese Dodds, the Labour chair and shadow minister for women and equalities, said Labour would still require medical evidence, but that the current process, which is long, complicated and seen as demeaning by trans people, would be simplified. She said transitioning would no longer have to be approved by a panel, and that “a diagnosis provided by one doctor … should be enough”.

In a story in the Times today, Geraldine Scott says Labour may allow a GP to approve an application for a gender recognition certificate. She says:

The Times understands that one option under consideration is that the doctor could be a GP. Labour would ­also ­remove the ability of a spouse to object to the change. A source said the party wanted to make the process “less medicalised” but added that the plans would retain the involvement of a doctor and would not allow people to self-identify in order to obtain legal changes.

They said it had not yet been decided whether the medical professional would be a GP or a gender specialist, with the issue likely to go to consultation if the party wins the next election.

The discussions centre on concerns that if the single doctor was a specialist, a GP would still need to make the ­referral, therefore retaining the two-step process that Labour wants to drop.

According to new polling from Ipsos, reported in the Standard, people are a lot less gloomy about the state of the economy than they were last month – but this has not had much impact on how they say they are likely to vote.

In his story, Nicholas Cecil reports:

The Ipsos survey for The Standard showed 33 per cent of adults expect the country’s economic conditions to improve in the next year, 37 per cent to get worse, and 25 per cent “stay the same”, giving an Economic Optimism Index of -4 for May.

The figures are noticeably better than in April when 21 per cent thought there were be an economic improvement, 52 per cent a deterioration, and 21 per cent “stay the same”, an EOI of -31.

But the Conservatives do not seem to be getting much credit. Over the same period, their support has risen by just one point. Keiran Pedley from Ipsos has the figures.

🚨New from @IpsosUK: Labour lead at 21 🚨

Labour 41% (-3 from April)
Conservative 20% (+1)
Lib Dems 11% (+2)
Greens 11% (+2)
Reform 9% (-4)
Others 8% (+2)

N=1,008. fieldwork 8-14 May

Tables & more to follow. Key trends on our elections website here

Good morning. We have not been short of news recently about scandals involving grotesque failings by state organisations, and decades-long attempts to cover them up, and today we are going to get the final report from the inquiry into one of the worst of them all, the process that saw more than 30,000 NHS patients being infected with HIV or hepatitis C because they were treated with contaminated blood imported from the US. Here is our preview story by Rachel Hall, Matthew Weaver and Peter Walker about what to expect.

And here is an explainer from Haroon Siddique with background about the scandal.

A lot of the coverage this morning is focusing on the apology that Rishi Sunak is expected to deliver later. Hillsborough was a disaster that happened in 1989, the Waspi women state pension age scandal originated in decisions taken in the 1990s, and the Post Office Horizon scandal is about prosecutions that mostly took place in the first decade of this century, but the infected blood scandal goes back to the 1970s and so Sunak will be apologising, on behalf of the state, for things that happened in some cases before he was even born.

John Glen, the Cabinet Office minister dealing with the scandal on behalf of the government, has been giving interviews this morning. The government is expected to approve a compensation package worth more than £10bn, but he told Times Radio this morning that the government would not be giving full details today because it wanted to ensure that today the media focus is on the report, and on what victims have to say.

But he did not rule out the report leading to criminal proceedings being brought against some of the perpetrators. Asked if people might be taken to court, Glen told LBC:

If there’s clear evidence and there is a pathway to that, then it’s obviously something the government will have to address. I can’t be sure, but we’ve got to give these people justice.

Here is the agenda for the day.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

12.30pm: Sir Brian Langstaff publishes the final report of the infected blood inquiry. Campaigners will hold a press conference immediately afterwards, and Langstaff himself is due to speak.

1.15pm: Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, gives a speech to the Education World Forum in London.

3pm: David Cameron, foreign secretary, gives evidence to the Commons European scrutiny committee about “the UK’s new relationship with the EU”.

After 3.30pm: Rishi Sunak is expected to make a statement to MPs about the infected blood inquiry report.

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