John
McDonnell MP, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, commenting on the revelations by Equality Trust that the average FTSE chief
executive earns 386 times more than a worker on the national living wage, said:

“These
shocking figures show that after seven years of Tory failure on the economy,
it’s the super-rich who’ve gained at the expense of the rest of us.

"It
also exposes the Tories’ rigged economy, where despite real earnings
still being lower than before the crash and public services like the NHS
experiencing their worst-ever crisis, they are handing out £70 billion in tax
giveaways to the super-rich and big corporations. At the same time the Tories
are cutting in-work benefits to the low paid.

"Only Labour will deliver a fair economy that doesn’t hold people back by
introducing a £10 an hour Real Living Wage, a fairer taxation system, and by
tackling excessive boardroom pay with fairer distributions of rewards
within companies.”

Richard
Burgon MP, Labour’s Shadow Justice Secretary, commenting on the Tory Government’s plans to build
four new prisons, said

“We need
modern prisons fit for the modern age. But simply replacing one prison with
another prison doesn’t deal with the overcrowding crisis. No amount of press
releases can distract from that.”

Barbara
Keeley MP, Labour’s Shadow Cabinet Minister for Mental Health, commenting on
the EPI report in to Child Mental Health Improvements, said:

“The
Prime Minister said in January that she wanted to ‘transform the way we deal
with mental health problems right across society’ but the findings in this
report show these were just warm words.

“With
nearly three quarters of Clinical Commissioning Groups failing to meet NHS
England’s improvement standards in children’s mental health, and more than two
thirds of these groups without fully-funded crisis care plans, it is clear that
the Prime Minister’s rhetoric on child mental health is not being matched by
reality.

“The
most worrying part of this report is the increase in the number of young people
being treated on adult mental health wards which shows an abject failure of the
Government to grasp the problems in the mental health system.

“The
Government need to make sure that frontline mental health services get the
money they need rather than using it to balance NHS budgets elsewhere.”