'You've clearly failed': Voter heckles May on education funding
The PM faces difficult questions on "devastating" police cuts, NHS funding and her controversial social care plans.
Tuesday 30 May 2017 13:34, UK
Theresa May has been heckled by a voter quizzing on her education funding, with the PM being told: "You've clearly failed."
The exchange came as Mrs May was asked about protecting schools funding on the Sky News/Channel 4 programme The Battle For Number 10.
The Prime Minister and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn separately faced questions from a studio audience, followed by an interview with broadcaster Jeremy Paxman.
::
On education funding, Mrs May said "nobody can guarantee the real terms per pupil funding increase" - adding Labour's figures "don't add up".
She continued: "What we need to do is to ensure we will put those record levels of funding into schools, we need to ensure we get that better spread of funding in terms of the fair funding formula."
::
The PM also faced questions about the NHS, with a midwife from Devon asking her to justify what she said was the service's "chronic underfunding".
In her reply, Mrs May said: "We're making greater demands on the health service every year, the overall figure we're spending over the five years up to 2020 will be half a trillion pounds in total on the National Health Service, and we do need to make sure that money is being spent well.
"So we are increasing the funding to the health service and will increase funding to the health service in the future - and we're committed to that in our manifesto, both in terms of buildings and technology but also in terms of increasing the per head funding for the National Health Service in real terms every year."
Responding to Mrs May's comments, her questioner said: "I see a lot of efficiency savings that are actually cuts. I see hospitals closing. I see staff that are at their wits' end because they can't give the care that they want to give.
"I will believe it when I see it."
A serving police officer also confronted Mrs May about "devastating" cuts during her time as home secretary.
While she insisted she is giving police forces the powers and resources they need, Mrs May did not provide an answer to a request from the officer for a specific number of additional officers which she would recruit if re-elected.
In response to the policeman's question, Mrs May acknowledged that numbers in England and Wales had fallen by about 20,000.
But she said: "What we had to do when we came into government in 2010 was to ensure that we were living within our means and that was very important because of the economic situation we had inherited.
"It's not just about the numbers of police - people often focus on the numbers of police. It's actually about what the police are able to do and how they are being deployed on our streets.
"In counter-terrorism policing we have protected those budgets and we are currently protecting police budgets."
The policeman, whose name was given as Martin, responded: "I appreciate you are protecting the budgets, but we still need the staff to carry out the role of the police officer of keeping the public safe."
Mrs May was also put under pressure over her controversial reforms to social care, with one elderly audience member asking: "Why should we in my generation vote for you?"
The PM said: "It's about ensuring that nobody is going to have to sell their house to pay for care in their lifetime.
"It's about ensuring that £100,000 of savings and assets are protected to pass on to their family.
"We will put an absolute cap on the level of money that people have to spend on care.
"And I think what we're doing is ensuring we can have a sustainable solution for the long-term."
Asked about plans to means-test winter fuel payments, Mrs May said she did not want to "pull out a figure", but instead "listen to people, talk to people, to take people's views and then make a proposal as a government".
Mrs May dismissed a suggestion from one audience member that her boasting about being described as a "bloody difficult woman" risked taking the Tories back to their "nasty party" image.
She said that former chancellor Ken Clarke had use the term because "he saw me as somebody who stood by what I thought was right and was willing to fight for what I believe is the right thing to do".
Mrs May added: "That's what drives me. Doing what is the right thing by the country. Sometimes you have to be difficult in order to do that."
After accepting that she had backed down over proposed hikes on national insurance by the self-employed, Paxman said: "What one's bound to say is that if I was sitting in Brussels and I was looking at you as the person I had to negotiate with, I'd think 'she's a blowhard who collapses at the first sign of gunfire'."
Mrs May responded: "I think, Jeremy, you will find that what the people in Brussels look at is the record I had of negotiating with them in Brussels and delivering for this country on a number of issues on justice and home affairs which people said we were never going to get, and I got those negotiations."
The studio audience applauded loudly when it was pointed out that she and her spokespeople had promised there would not be an election before 2020 on six occasions.
Mrs May said that when she took office she felt the most important thing was to maintain "stability" in order to get on with Brexit, but that she had found that her opponents wanted to "frustrate" the process.
When asked how much the UK was prepared to pay Brussels, she said: "It isn't a question of what it's worth paying to get out, it's a question of what is going to be the right deal for us to leave the European Union, which will stop us from paying huge sums of money into the EU every single year, which will enable us to have control of our money, of our borders and our laws."
:: Watch the highlights of May v Corbyn: The Battle For Number 10 on Sky News at 4.30pm. Read Sky senior political correspondent Beth Rigby's verdict .