Comments by "Helen Trope" (@heliotropezzz333) on "Ian Hislop and Carol Vorderman explain why the Tories lost the election | LBC" video.

@Confessionofteenagenuns Well that probably because you only read Tory press. The Blair/Brown government reduced child poverty through child benefits and working tax credits and helped families with under school age children with Sure Start Centres. Pay was higher under Labour and we got minimum wage and paternity leave and better maternity leave. Equalities legislation helped women and the disabled among others. The NHS had the lowest ever waiting lists and the best ever results in the patient satisfaction survey. N Ireland got peace. Scotland and Wales got devolved governments. They also actually built and renovated hospitals instead of pretending to like the Tories and put more investment into education.. They created education maintenance allowances for 16-19 year olds to help them afford to stay at school for A levels which benefited working class kids. Students did not have to pay back their student grants. There were more leisure centres and youth centres for teenagers so they had safe meeting places rather than hanging around the streets. There were fewer homeless people. I'm sure there's more.
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@Confessionofteenagenuns A decade ago Labour was not in power and could not do anything against a Tory government with a huge majority.
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@Confessionofteenagenuns No I'm not locked into partisan thinking. I accept what you say and Labour made mistakes but I was answering a comment that said Labour abandoned the working class so I was listing evidence to show they did do things to benefit the working class. As for privatising the NHS. Yes Labour agreed short term contracts with private health sector to quickly reduce waiting lists on operations such as cataracts and hip replacements but it was the Coalition government (Tories and Lib Dems) who introduced routine privatisation of the NHS through the Health and Social Care Act 2012 which required the NHS to invite the private health sector to bid for any health contract going. The private health sector only wanted to cherry pick profitable areas of NHS services though. The unprofitable parts were left to the NHS. I was born in 1954 to a working class family and I've worked in the health sector and seen all the changes.
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