Keir Starmer reveals his 7th question to Boris Johnson at PMQs

1 October 2020, 08:31

Sir Keir Starmer's 7th question for Boris Johnson

LBC can exclusively reveal Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer's seventh question to Boris Johnson at Prime Minister's Questions.

Prime Minister's Questions is a regular feature of the Parliamentary calendar where the PM answers questions and trades barbs with other MPs.

Once a week the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is the first to question the Prime Minister before other MPs have their chance to hold Mr Johnson to account

But Sir Keir has previously warned LBC listeners to watch out for one tactic deployed by Boris Johnson at the weekly session.

"At Prime Minister's Questions, we have six questions and on the sixth question Boris Johnson descends into insulting me."

The Labour leader says the reason Boris Johnson does this on the sixth question was that it is "the only question that I can't get back up and answer him."

It is a feature of PMQs that the Leader of the Opposition is only allowed to ask six questions before the floor is passed to other MPs.

Now LBC can exclusively reveal what Sir Keir's seventh question would have been had he been able to stand up and ask the Prime Minister one final query.

Read more: Boris Johnson accuses Sir Keir Starmer of 'sniping from sidelines' over Covid-19

On Wednesday in Parliament Sir Keir asked the Prime Minister about the structural inequalities that black people in society face on a daily basis, such as black women being five times more likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth than white women.

"That is truly shocking," he added, before asking: "Will the Prime Minister commit to addressing this and launching an urgent investigation into the issue."

In response, Mr Johnson said: "The right honourable gentleman knows full well this government has launched an urgent investigation into inequalities across the whole of society.

"We will certainly address them in a thoroughgoing way and I'm amazed that he seems ignorant of that fact."

Mr Johnson then turned the conversation to Covid-19 comments that Shadow Education Secretary Kate Green made about Labour taking political advantage of the pandemic.

"One moment he's supporting the restrictions, the next moment he seems to be opposing them," he said.

"One day they are theoretically marching side-by-side with the rest of us trying to defeat coronavirus the next moment they're off in the undergrowth firing from the sidelines.

"I must repeat it was the Shadow Education Secretary who really revealed what Labour is all about, she said this was a good crisis which they intended to exploit.

"We see this as a moment for the nation to come together and we are taking the tough decisions that will get this country forward".

He added: "Once again all [Labour] want to do is snipe from the sidelines."

But now LBC can exclusively reveal what Sir Keir's seventh question would have been.

The Labour leader told Nick Ferrari his final question would have been: "Prime Minister, I asked you a really serious question that people wanted an answer to, and all you did was effectively read out a pre-prepared rant yet again on question six.

"And just at the moment with infection rates going up, death rates going up, hospital admissions going up, people are really concerned.

"And so the question is at the moment, have you got a strategy for dealing with reducing the infections?

"When are you going improve communications, which have been all over the place and confusion has been the byword this week, and when on earth is Test, Trace and Isolate going to be fit for purpose?"