PMQs: Tories preparing for opposition, Rayner tells Dowden

The Conservatives are preparing to leave office, Labour's deputy leader Angela Rayner has told MPs, as she accused the government of failing on the NHS and child poverty.

Ms Rayner faced Deputy PM Oliver Dowden at PMQs while Rishi Sunak is away.

She said the Tories were on a "conveyor belt of crisis" and more focused on a right-wing conference than governing.

But Mr Dowden defended the government's record and said the "British people will never trust the Labour Party".

In a Prime Minister's Questions littered with banter and party-political attacks, Mr Dowden filled in for Mr Sunak while he attends a G7 summit in Japan.

He suggested there was friction between Ms Rayner and Labour's leader, Sir Keir Starmer, saying they were "at each other's throats" behind the scenes.

"Mr Speaker, they're the Phil and Holly of British politics," Mr Dowden said, comparing them to the hosts of ITV's This Morning programme, whose relationship has reportedly come under strain.

In Ms Rayner's opening question, she reminded the deputy prime minister that he had resigned as Conservative Party chairman last year following by-election losses.

Now, following the loss of more than 1,000 Tory councillors in this month's local elections, Ms Rayner asked, "who does he think is responsible now?"

Mr Dowden did not answer the question directly; instead, he said he had expected to face the Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Ed Davey, who he called "the Labour leader's choice for the next deputy prime minister if they win the election".

In recent weeks, the Conservatives have been accusing Labour of plotting a coalition with the Lib Dems and other parties ahead of the next general election.

Hitting back, Ms Rayner said it was "absolutely amazing that while the Labour Party is preparing to govern with a Labour majority, his party is starting to prepare for opposition".

She referenced several speeches by Tory MPs and cabinet ministers at the National Conservatism Conference, an event organised by a right-wing think tank from the United States.

The conference has brought conservative thinkers, politicians and journalists to Westminster and has heard speeches from senior Tories, including Home Secretary Suella Braverman and former Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Ms Rayner described the conference as a "tribute act" to former US President, Donald Trump.

The Labour MP used several of her questions to draw attention to child poverty and NHS waiting lists, including the record backlog of people waiting for hospital treatment in England.

Ms Rayner claimed the Conservatives had "taken a wrecking ball to measures by the last Labour government to eradicate child poverty".

But in reply, Mr Dowden - an MP since 2015, who ran Mr Sunak's Tory leadership campaign last summer - said "this comprehensive school boy is not going to take any lectures from the party opposite about the lives of working people".

The deputy prime minister claimed his party had had "taken one million working age people out of poverty altogether", having increased the national living wage.

Brining her questions to a close, the Labour deputy leader: "And while his colleagues spout nonsense at this carnival of conspiracies, I want to know: when will his party stop blaming everybody else and realise that the problem is them?"

Mr Dowden said he would proudly defend the government's record on crime, employment and the national living wage.

"And what's their record - four general election defeats, 30 promises already broken, and one leader who let antisemitism run wild," Mr Dowden said, referring to former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

"That is why the British people will never trust the Labour party," Mr Dowden said.

Meanwhile in Westminster, the National Conservatism Conference continued as MPs gathered in the House of Commons for PMQs.

The conference has seen some former cabinet ministers criticising Mr Sunak's government on a number of issues.

David Frost, the former Brexit minister, told the conference the Conservatives will not win the next general election as the party of "the self-satisfied and entitled".

He said the conference had been "brilliant" and seemed to have sent "our opponents" into "paroxysms of rage, to a quite ludicrous extent".

Lord Frost said "our opponents are completely out of touch", adding: "They are completely deranged by perfectly normal and widely supported ideas, and that is a very good thing to have demonstrated to the British people."

Other speakers at the conference included Tory MP Danny Kruger, who said marriages between men and women were "the only possible basis for a safe and successful society".

LGBT+ Conservatives said they "wholeheartedly" disagreed with Mr Kruger's opinion.