At the Labour party’s post-PMQs briefing Keir Starmer’s spokesperson defended the plans set out by Wes Streeting, the shadow health spokesperson, for an overhaul of the way GPs operate.

In an interview with the Times, published on Saturday, Streeting said that he was considering ending the current partnership model for GPs, where they are not employees of the NHS but instead work as self-employed independent contractors. Streeting said:

The truth is that the way that GP practices operate financially is a murky, opaque business. I’m not sure that people can honestly say exactly how the money is spent or where it goes. And from my point of view, as someone who wants to be a custodian of the public finances as health secretary, that would not be a tolerable situation.

I’m minded to phase out the whole system of GP partners altogether and to look at salaried GPs working in modern practices alongside a range of other professionals.

Streeting also said that GPs should no longer be the only gatekeepers to the NHS. He said that he would like to see pharmacies play a bigger role, and that in some cases people should be able to refer themselves directly to a specialist, without having to go through a GP.

Referring to this at PMQs, Rishi Sunak, whose father was a GP, said

We have a very clear plan to bring the waiting lists down and it is one that the NHS supports.

I tell you what the NHS doesn’t need, what they don’t need is Labour’s only idea, which is for another completely disruptive, top-down, unfunded reorganisation buying out every single GP contract.

After PMQs Starmer’s spokesperson rejected Sunak’s criticism, saying that under the Labour proposal no GP would be compelled to become a direct employee of the NHS. Instead, after consultation, the plan might be phased in over a generation, as new doctors are hired, the spokesperson said.

Rishi Sunak will head to France for a major summit with Emmanuel Macron on Friday 10 March, PA Media reports.

The two leaders will meet in Paris for talks covering issues including security, the economy and measures to tackle the small boats carrying migrants across the English Channel.

It will be the first UK-France summit since 2018 and marks the two leaders’ efforts to repair relations which have been strained by Brexit and disputes over the Channel issues.

Relations between Sunak and Macron appear to be much more cordial than those between the French president and his predecessor Liz Truss.

During her campaign to be Tory leader and prime minister she said “the jury’s out” when asked whether Macron was “friend or foe”.

Labour has criticised the Conservative party for only withdrawing the whip from Andrew Bridgen today, when he has been circulating misinformation about the safety of Covid vaccines on social media for several weeks now. In a statement Anneliese Dodds, the Labour chair, said:

For the Conservative party to delay action until now demonstrates, yet again, Rishi Sunak’s weakness among his own MPs.

Andrew Brigden has been spreading dangerous misinformation on Covid vaccines for some time now. He could have been disciplined weeks ago.

To invoke the Holocaust, as he did today, is utterly shameful, but it should never have reached this point.

Health unions will not submit joint evidence to the NHS pay review body about the rise staff should get in 2023-24, in a move that threatens the system by which most health service pay is decided, my colleague Denis Campbell reports.

No 10 refuses to say if Sunak uses NHS GP he’s registered with, or if he might use private healthcare in future

Pippa Crerar

At the post-PMQs lobby briefing Rishi Sunak’s press secretary responded to questions from reporters about his private healthcare cover with this statement:

The PM has set out his details in the house. [See 12.04pm.] In principle he believes that the personal health details of individuals should remain private.

But given the level of interest, and in the interests of transparency, he has set out that he is registered with an NHS GP, and has always been. He has used private health care in the past.

She confirmed that Sunak is no longer registered with a private GP, but refused to tell us when this happened, or whether it had been since he became prime minister in October. “As far as I’m aware, he is only registered with an NHS GP,” she said.

However, there were quite a few follow-up questions she refused to answer. She didn’t say whether he had actually used his NHS GP. And she wouldn’t say whether he would be using private healthcare in the future.

Nor would she say why he stopped using his private GP, prompting questions about whether it was because the Guardian had revealed the situation.

Given that Rishi Sunak is leader of a party where, after 13 years in power, a majority of people believe that “nothing in Britain works any more” (according to polling by GB News, not by any strecth a leftie outfit) and hundreds of people could be dying unnecessarily every week because the NHS is not functioning properly, that PMQs went reasonably well for him. The Tories who were cheering him on did not seem 100% convinced, but he landed some blows and did not get slaughtered, which in the circumstances counts as a result.

In news terms, the main point was Sunak’s admission that he has used private healthcare in the past. This will come as no surprise to anyone, but it is the first time he has admitted this and – more significantly – this blows away the line that he used during his interview with Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday that his healthcare arrangements are a private matter. His health conditions are a private matter. But whether or not he uses NHS doctors to deal with those conditions is a legitimate question, and Sunak has now opened the door to a further set of questions. If he is registered with an NHS GP, does he actually use that GP? Or is he still going private?

In strategy terms, the exchanges also underlined just how determined Sunak and the Tories are to use the anti-strike bill published yesterday as an electioneering weapon. In his first response to Starmer, he said:

[Starmer] simply doesn’t have a policy when it comes to this question. He talks about wanting to end the strikes. The question for him is simple then: why does he not support our minimum safety legislation?

We all know why … it’s because he’s on the side of his union paymasters, not patients.

Sunak kept this line going, using an attack line also splashed on the Daily Mail front page.

Does this work? Not really. All the polling suggests that people do not believe that Labour is to blame for the strikes, and anyone who watched Chris Loder put this theory to the rail unions at the transport committee this morning (see 10.08am) will have seen why it’s unconvincing.

But some of the other Sunak messaging was more robust. He was right to have a go at Labour for letting Wes Streeting unveil what sounded like a massive NHS reorganisation strategy while thinking aloud in an interview with the Times. (Streeting’s plan may have some merit, but it would be costly too, and there is a reason why Labour politicians are normally cautious about making comments that allow CCHQ to expands its tally of opposition “unfunded spending commitments”).

Sunak was entitled to say minimum service level legislation is commonplace in the rest of Europe. Those laws are not the same as Grant Shapps’, and they are in countries where unions have more rights than they do in the UK anyway, but Labour has done a lousy job of trying to explain this in public.

And the claims about Starmer being “inconsistent” and “unprincipled” do seem to resonate with voters (at least, according to focus groups). In truth, Starmer is probably no more inconsistent than most people at the top of politics – Sunak himself has abandoned much of what he was saying in the summer leadership contest – but if this mud sticks, then you can see why Sunak is slinging it.

That said, Starmer still had the best of it, quite easily. The NHS is always strong territory for Labour, and with the A&E in the appalling state it is, it would have been hard for him to fail, but Starmer made his case effectively. He neatly mocked Sunak’s announcement about his healthcare.

I heard the prime minister saying he’s now registered with an NHS doctor, so he’ll soon enjoy the experience of waiting on hold every morning at 8am to get a GP appointment.

He exposed the hollowness of Sunak’s promise to reduce waiting list, challenging him to say whether he would reduce them to pre-Covid levels, or the much lower levels they were when Labour were in power, and he repeatedly stressed how much better waiting times were under Labour.

PMQs can look easy, because it just seems to involve saying that the other side is rubbish. But to summarise political arguments in language that is precise and pithy and convincing is hard – much harder than it looks – and Starmer’s PMQs scripts are first class. Like when he said this:

When I clapped nurses I meant it.

Or this:

The simple truth is you can’t legislate your way out of 13 years of failure.

Or this:

He’s not promising that cancer patients will get urgent treatment as they did under Labour. He’s not even promising an NHS that puts patients first like they did under Labour. No, he’s promising the one day, although he can’t say when, the record high waiting lists will stop growing. That’s it.

After 13 years in government, what does it say that the best they can offer is that at some point they might stop making things worse?

Sunak is clever, hard-working and fluent (although perhaps a bit too eager-beaver to be really authoritative at PMQs), but he has that “13 years of failure” round his ankle like a ball and chain, and there is little he can do about it.

At the Labour party’s post-PMQs briefing Keir Starmer’s spokesperson defended the plans set out by Wes Streeting, the shadow health spokesperson, for an overhaul of the way GPs operate.

In an interview with the Times, published on Saturday, Streeting said that he was considering ending the current partnership model for GPs, where they are not employees of the NHS but instead work as self-employed independent contractors. Streeting said:

The truth is that the way that GP practices operate financially is a murky, opaque business. I’m not sure that people can honestly say exactly how the money is spent or where it goes. And from my point of view, as someone who wants to be a custodian of the public finances as health secretary, that would not be a tolerable situation.

I’m minded to phase out the whole system of GP partners altogether and to look at salaried GPs working in modern practices alongside a range of other professionals.

Streeting also said that GPs should no longer be the only gatekeepers to the NHS. He said that he would like to see pharmacies play a bigger role, and that in some cases people should be able to refer themselves directly to a specialist, without having to go through a GP.

Referring to this at PMQs, Rishi Sunak, whose father was a GP, said

We have a very clear plan to bring the waiting lists down and it is one that the NHS supports.

I tell you what the NHS doesn’t need, what they don’t need is Labour’s only idea, which is for another completely disruptive, top-down, unfunded reorganisation buying out every single GP contract.

After PMQs Starmer’s spokesperson rejected Sunak’s criticism, saying that under the Labour proposal no GP would be compelled to become a direct employee of the NHS. Instead, after consultation, the plan might be phased in over a generation, as new doctors are hired, the spokesperson said.

Rishi Sunak will head to France for a major summit with Emmanuel Macron on Friday 10 March, PA Media reports.

The two leaders will meet in Paris for talks covering issues including security, the economy and measures to tackle the small boats carrying migrants across the English Channel.

It will be the first UK-France summit since 2018 and marks the two leaders’ efforts to repair relations which have been strained by Brexit and disputes over the Channel issues.

Relations between Sunak and Macron appear to be much more cordial than those between the French president and his predecessor Liz Truss.

During her campaign to be Tory leader and prime minister she said “the jury’s out” when asked whether Macron was “friend or foe”.

Labour has criticised the Conservative party for only withdrawing the whip from Andrew Bridgen today, when he has been circulating misinformation about the safety of Covid vaccines on social media for several weeks now. In a statement Anneliese Dodds, the Labour chair, said:

For the Conservative party to delay action until now demonstrates, yet again, Rishi Sunak’s weakness among his own MPs.

Andrew Brigden has been spreading dangerous misinformation on Covid vaccines for some time now. He could have been disciplined weeks ago.

To invoke the Holocaust, as he did today, is utterly shameful, but it should never have reached this point.

Health unions will not submit joint evidence to the NHS pay review body about the rise staff should get in 2023-24, in a move that threatens the system by which most health service pay is decided, my colleague Denis Campbell reports.

No 10 refuses to say if Sunak uses NHS GP he’s registered with, or if he might use private healthcare in future

Pippa Crerar

At the post-PMQs lobby briefing Rishi Sunak’s press secretary responded to questions from reporters about his private healthcare cover with this statement:

The PM has set out his details in the house. [See 12.04pm.] In principle he believes that the personal health details of individuals should remain private.

But given the level of interest, and in the interests of transparency, he has set out that he is registered with an NHS GP, and has always been. He has used private health care in the past.

She confirmed that Sunak is no longer registered with a private GP, but refused to tell us when this happened, or whether it had been since he became prime minister in October. “As far as I’m aware, he is only registered with an NHS GP,” she said.

However, there were quite a few follow-up questions she refused to answer. She didn’t say whether he had actually used his NHS GP. And she wouldn’t say whether he would be using private healthcare in the future.

Nor would she say why he stopped using his private GP, prompting questions about whether it was because the Guardian had revealed the situation.

Given that Rishi Sunak is leader of a party where, after 13 years in power, a majority of people believe that “nothing in Britain works any more” (according to polling by GB News, not by any strecth a leftie outfit) and hundreds of people could be dying unnecessarily every week because the NHS is not functioning properly, that PMQs went reasonably well for him. The Tories who were cheering him on did not seem 100% convinced, but he landed some blows and did not get slaughtered, which in the circumstances counts as a result.

In news terms, the main point was Sunak’s admission that he has used private healthcare in the past. This will come as no surprise to anyone, but it is the first time he has admitted this and – more significantly – this blows away the line that he used during his interview with Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday that his healthcare arrangements are a private matter. His health conditions are a private matter. But whether or not he uses NHS doctors to deal with those conditions is a legitimate question, and Sunak has now opened the door to a further set of questions. If he is registered with an NHS GP, does he actually use that GP? Or is he still going private?

In strategy terms, the exchanges also underlined just how determined Sunak and the Tories are to use the anti-strike bill published yesterday as an electioneering weapon. In his first response to Starmer, he said:

[Starmer] simply doesn’t have a policy when it comes to this question. He talks about wanting to end the strikes. The question for him is simple then: why does he not support our minimum safety legislation?

We all know why … it’s because he’s on the side of his union paymasters, not patients.

Sunak kept this line going, using an attack line also splashed on the Daily Mail front page.

Does this work? Not really. All the polling suggests that people do not believe that Labour is to blame for the strikes, and anyone who watched Chris Loder put this theory to the rail unions at the transport committee this morning (see 10.08am) will have seen why it’s unconvincing.

But some of the other Sunak messaging was more robust. He was right to have a go at Labour for letting Wes Streeting unveil what sounded like a massive NHS reorganisation strategy while thinking aloud in an interview with the Times. (Streeting’s plan may have some merit, but it would be costly too, and there is a reason why Labour politicians are normally cautious about making comments that allow CCHQ to expands its tally of opposition “unfunded spending commitments”).

Sunak was entitled to say minimum service level legislation is commonplace in the rest of Europe. Those laws are not the same as Grant Shapps’, and they are in countries where unions have more rights than they do in the UK anyway, but Labour has done a lousy job of trying to explain this in public.

And the claims about Starmer being “inconsistent” and “unprincipled” do seem to resonate with voters (at least, according to focus groups). In truth, Starmer is probably no more inconsistent than most people at the top of politics – Sunak himself has abandoned much of what he was saying in the summer leadership contest – but if this mud sticks, then you can see why Sunak is slinging it.

That said, Starmer still had the best of it, quite easily. The NHS is always strong territory for Labour, and with the A&E in the appalling state it is, it would have been hard for him to fail, but Starmer made his case effectively. He neatly mocked Sunak’s announcement about his healthcare.

I heard the prime minister saying he’s now registered with an NHS doctor, so he’ll soon enjoy the experience of waiting on hold every morning at 8am to get a GP appointment.

He exposed the hollowness of Sunak’s promise to reduce waiting list, challenging him to say whether he would reduce them to pre-Covid levels, or the much lower levels they were when Labour were in power, and he repeatedly stressed how much better waiting times were under Labour.

PMQs can look easy, because it just seems to involve saying that the other side is rubbish. But to summarise political arguments in language that is precise and pithy and convincing is hard – much harder than it looks – and Starmer’s PMQs scripts are first class. Like when he said this:

When I clapped nurses I meant it.

Or this:

The simple truth is you can’t legislate your way out of 13 years of failure.

Or this:

He’s not promising that cancer patients will get urgent treatment as they did under Labour. He’s not even promising an NHS that puts patients first like they did under Labour. No, he’s promising the one day, although he can’t say when, the record high waiting lists will stop growing. That’s it.

After 13 years in government, what does it say that the best they can offer is that at some point they might stop making things worse?

Sunak is clever, hard-working and fluent (although perhaps a bit too eager-beaver to be really authoritative at PMQs), but he has that “13 years of failure” round his ankle like a ball and chain, and there is little he can do about it.