BREAKING NEWS: Fiona Bruce was OUTRAGEOUS on Question Time
Fiona Bruce was not impressed on Question Time.
Fiona Bruce was quick to shut down Jonathan Reynolds (Image: BBC)
Labour MP and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds was shut down by BBC presenter Fiona Bruce on the latest episode of Question Time. The latest edition aired from Cambridge, where Reynolds was joined by Tory MP Helen Whateley, political commentator Ash Sarker, Lib Dem MP Josh Babarinde and broadcaster Andrew Neil. The show started off with a debate on whether the state should control how people should spend their benefits, with one man in the audience asking Reynolds a question.
He asked: “How can we get people wanting to pay into the system? How can we encourage people to want to pay into the system?” Reynolds replied: “I mean, you can tell how old you are by how many times you’ve heard Tory MPs announce this policy before. Iain Duncan Smith announced this, Helen, I’m pretty certain William Hague might have mentioned it.
Jonathan Reynolds was quick to blame the Conservatives (Image: BBC)
“The reason you never do it is that, frankly, there’s no evidence to suggest unemployed people spend all their money on fangs and booze, so it just isn’t there.”
He continued: “It will never happen and it’s just a way of you saying you don’t like poor people and frankly you’ll succeed in that Helen.
“You say the system’s out of control, here are some real costs in the system, you don’t say who designed it, and it was yourselves.”
A taken-aback Fiona quickly jumped in, bluntly asking, “Hang on, you’re in charge now,” and adding, “So what are you going to do?”
Jonathan stuttered as he replied: “The point I’m trying to make for you is that all the time these changes came in, they were all done, all of the system today, it was done to save money, and it hasn’t worked, which tells you when you design policies just to kind of appeal to maybe emotions and prejudices rather than do it properly, you won’t get it right.
“The thing we have to do to get that bill down, right, someone mentioned foreign nationals. Foreign nationals who haven’t paid into the system are, by the way, eligible for UK benefits. EU nationals who settled under the post-Brexit arrangements, that’s the people you’re counting it towards. But on this point about what works, it’s getting those people into work.”
After going into more detail, he concluded: “This kind of politics, I don’t like it, I don’t think it’s pleasant, but fundamentally it doesn’t work, and I think people can see through it because they’ve seen this time.”
