Promising to 'rebuild trust' by meeting the pledges, he tells nation: 'I ask you to judge us on the effort we put in and the results we achieve'
Mr Sunak refused to put a timescale on the other pledges, but noted that NHS waiting times are already predicted to come down in a staged process, with one-and-a-half-year waits “practically eliminated” by April, and one-year waits by spring next year, with overall waits falling.
On the final promise to introduce laws to curb small boat crossings, Mr Sunak said the speed of legislation, which is expected early this year, was in the gift of MPs and Lords – although the Government controls the parliamentary timetable and has a working majority of 69 in the Commons. He declared that the country needed to “change our mindset” to deliver change, including a “rejection of pessimism and fatalism”.and a deep crisis in the NHS, Mr Sunak insisted: “We can reverse the creeping acceptance of a narrative of decline.”
Responding to the speech, Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner described Mr Sunak as the “do-nothing Prime Minister”, who was “too weak to stand up to his party or vested interests”.
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