Election latest: Starmer incredulous over latest Tory attack line | Politics News

Still in Oxfordshire, the prime minister is now taking questions from the audience. 

One woman says she’s waited three years for an autism and ADHD diagnosis for her son and eventually ended up going private anyway. 

She asks how the prime minister can tackle the waiting lists and support those with diagnoses. 

Rishi Sunak says he’s introduced a scheme that allows people to access the private sector via the NHS if the wait times are too long. 

“What I tell the NHS is: ‘Look, if there’s a private provider that can do whatever it might be, whether it’s an assessment or a hip replacement, and they can do it at the same tariff rate, then people should be able to choose where to get their treatment and get it done there’,” he says. 

He says this “because I don’t have any ideological disagreement with the private sector”, in an apparent stab at Sir Keir Starmer, adding that is one of the differences between the Conservatives and Labour. 

He then references the “pharmacy first” policy which should also help cut GP waits, before adding that six million NHS referrals were not carried out during the pandemic, slowing wait times further. 

“We’re now starting to see waiting lists come down,” he says. 

As for why he can be trusted, the prime minister repeats that he was right when warning of the dangers Liz Truss posed, and “that’s why you can trust me now when I’m warning you about the dangers of what Labour would do if they were in power”.