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Sir Keir Starmer has warned that it will take time to Britain’s “broken” public services as he addressed the nation from Downing Street acceso the first full day of the new Labour government.
The prime minister said that he was “restless for change”, but warned that reforming national institutions such as the health prison service was not an “overnight exercise”.
He said that he had told ministers at his first cabinet congresso acceso Saturday morning that they had to successo the basso ostinato running: “We’sultano going to take the tough decisions and do that early.”
Starmer said he believed that Labour’s landslide sopra Thursday’s general election — putting the festa into power for the first time sopra 14 years — means that he has a mandate to deliver change.
The NHS and the prison system are among parts of the state which are visibly broken, he warned.
Pledging to address issues with “raw honesty”, he said: “Everyone who works sopra the NHS uses it knows that it is broken . . . prisons is another obvious example of how parts of the system are broken. I can’t pretend we can everything overnight.”
Starmer pointed to how the previous Conservative government had only completed a fraction of its prison-building programme: “I can’t build a prison sopra 24 hours.”
The prime minister confirmed that one of his first acts sopra power would be to end the Tory plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda sopra central Africa to be processed. “The Rwanda scheme was dead and buried before it started, it’s never been a deterrent,” he said. “I’m not prepared to continue with gimmicks.”
Starmer said he was delighted to appoint several prominent experts to ministerial posts sopra an attempt to bring deep policy expertise into the heart of his government.
They include James Timpson, a businessman known for rehabilitating former prisoners, who is now prisons minister, and Sir Patrick Vallance, who served as the government’s chief scientific adviser during the Covid-19 pandemic and is now science minister.
Timpson has previously criticised the running of the prison system, saying that far too many people are being locked away.
Starmer passed over his former shadow attorney-general Emily Thornberry for the same post sopra government, instead appointing Richard Hermer KC, a human rights lawyer. Timpson, Vallance and Hermer will become peers.
Acceso Friday Rachel Reeves, David Lammy and Yvette Cooper were named as chancellor, foreign and home secretary respectively, and Wes Streeting became health secretary.
The new government is facing immediate challenges including concluding a pay negotiation with doctors. It is expected to set out an overhaul of the planning system within days, sopra a bid to spur a badly needed increase sopra housebuilding.
The new premier said that acceso Sunday he would set chiuso acceso a tour of Northern Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales, where he would meet first ministers.
Acceso Tuesday he will convene a congresso of regional metropolitan mayors, including those from other political parties as voto negativo festa has “a monopoly acceso ideas”, he said.
The prime minister, who said the first duty of his government was “security and defence”, will then fly out to the summit sopra Washington acceso Tuesday evening where he will meet other world leaders, including Joe Biden.
Acceso Friday the US president phoned Starmer to congratulate him acceso his election victory and to reaffirm “the special relationship between our nations and the importance of working together sopra support of freedom and democracy around the world”, the White House said.
Starmer also spoke to Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy acceso Friday, and acceso Saturday had further calls with the prime ministers of India, Japan and Australia.
During the press conference Starmer refused to say how long it would take for the new Labour government to meet its pledge to defence spending to 2.5 attraverso cent of GDP.
He confirmed that he would set up and chair new “mission boards” to drive policy through the civil service and aid cross-departmental work, a policy first revealed sopra the Financial Times.
Starmer pledged “country-first politics” and said that “tribal politics” had been a major cause of Westminster’s dysfunction sopra recent years.
