The Race to Replace Rishi Sunak as the Tauri leader is well and truly underway. Kemi Badenock, James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick, Dame Priti Patel, Mel Stride, and Tom Tuganhart have been confirmed as the six contenders. I'm joined now by one of them, the Shadow Work and Pension Secretary, Mel Stride. Very good morning to you. Good morning, Anna. Nice to see you. I want to start off by asking you about what Sakeer Starmer said about smoking, because he's considering a ban on smoking in some outdoor spaces like pub gardens. I wonder what you thought of that.

Look, smoking is still a major problem in our country, 80,000 deaths a year. We were quite right back in the day to ban smoking in enclosed spaces such as bars. But I think extending this into pub gardens, for example, where the risks of passive smoking are minimal, is not the right thing to do. I think it's the wrong balance because I think it's going to damage business. I think it is a press against individual freedom that is unnecessary and the wrong thing to We say it's a press against individual freedom, but Richie Sunak, of course, you've worked with for a very long time, wanted to stamp out smoking.

He said he was prepared to take bold action as a Prime Minister. He brought in this Faye's tobacco ban, which sees this gradual rising of the age limit, at which he can buy cigarettes, which has been taken on by the government. So was he wrong as well?

No, he was right, and I would support that. And the distinction is that in that case, we're looking at people who have never been legally entitled to smoke. It's still taking away their freedoms, though, isn't it? Well, These are people that never had that freedom in the first place, in a sense, isn't it? Whereas what I think you're saying with those that are smoking in pub gardens is that you've been able to do it before, perfectly legitimately, and we're suddenly going to change that. Now, I would be persuaded of that if I could be persuaded there was a good public health reason for doing that. I know there's an argument about denormalising smoking, but I don't think that's a strong enough argument, given that smoking rates generally have been trending down, thankfully, over a long period of time.

Early opinion polls suggest the public's in favor of this. Yougov poll says 58% of the public support a proposed ban like this.

Well, that may be the case, and of course, that may or may not change through time as people explore these situations and businesses, for example, have an opportunity, hospitality sector to put its case. But I'm not here just to be led by opinion polls. I'm here to give you my view of what we should do, and I am very concerned about some of the proposals here.

Okay, I want to talk now about Kirstam was warning that there were some tough decisions to come in the budget. You said this week that Kirstam has exaggerated how bad things are. It is true, though, isn't it? That the NHS is struggling. That's one of the reasons that Kislam is putting forward ideas like smoking ban in outside spaces. Also, we've seen that prisons are overflowing as well, and there's barely any money to tackle any of these problems. Do the Tories need to be honest with people about the legacy they've left?

So this idea that there's this black hole of £22 billion that suddenly Labor has conjured up is a complete misnomer. They knew going into the last general election, and we pressed them hard on this, that they were going to be putting up taxes and cutting spending in areas where, frankly, they shouldn't be, such as the winter fuel payment for our pensioners who are now going to really struggle through this coming winter. Now, they have concocted this figure simply as a smokescreen in order to pitch roll for tax rises in the autumn on October the 30th, and I really don't think that was the right thing to do. I think when you talk about honesty, Anna, honesty is very important in politics. We have not seen it from the Labor Party that told us not to worry about tax increases. On the winter fuel payment, they actually gave us warm words, I'm saying that that was not something that was under consideration. Well, most people would have taken that as reassurance that they were not going to do anything with winter fuel payments. Of course, we're now going to see millions of pensioners, £300 or thereabouts, worse off this autumn.

Many of them earning or having an income of no more than about £11,500. I think that is entirely wrong.

Yet the Home Office has been accused this week of submitting what's been described as woeful budget figures under successive conservative ministers. The IFAS says that they repeatedly low-balled the budget estimates for the cost of asylum and illegal immigration spending. Doesn't that report vindicate, at least in part, Rachel Reeve's claim that the labor government inherited a worse situation than-Well, of that 22 billion, over 9 billion of it is simply the wage demands that this government has decided to meet.

But what about this issue of the Home Office? Well, it's coming to that. There are often in year pressures, as they're known, where budgets do go over that which was expected, and they are managed typically in year. We did have the government come forward with something called the Estimates to the House of Commons a few weeks ago, in which those numbers would have been within that. Nothing was said died at all, as far as I was concerned at that time. But I keep coming back to the point that all of this narrative that Labor is putting forward, that somehow things are far, far worse than they could ever have imagined, is simply a smokes screen. It is rolling the pitch for tax increases and actions like ripping away the winter fuel payment from pensioners that they must have planned all along, and they knew about in the run up to the general election, and they were not straight with the British people.

But is it fair to say that the Tories weren't straight either? The IFN US repeatedly said that neither of the main parties were completely honest about some of the tough decisions that would have to be made. If the Tories had won, they, too, would have either had to cut public spending or raise taxes.

So we went to the British People with a clear plan, and it was a costed plan, and part of that plan was, for example, getting on top of the Welfare Bill. Now, that was an area that I was responsible for. And in our manifesto, we put forward £12 billion worth of savings on the Welfare Bill, eminently achievable and because of the fundamental the forms that I was taking through at DWP at the time. That is the approach that means that we could have been cutting taxes, for example, rather than putting them up. Labor have said nothing at all about the Welfare Bill. They're prepared to let it spiral ever upwards, and people up and down the country are paying the price, including our pensioners.

A quick question about Margaret Thatcher's portrait. I asked this to Jackie Smith a little bit earlier. I don't know what your thoughts were as well. Yes. Kier Starmer's biographer has suggested that he's taken down Margaret Thatcher's portrait from her office, a study in number 10. There's a suggestion that perhaps he's moved it elsewhere. But have you got a problem at all with that?

I think it's a great shame. She was a great Prime Minister, and I think Richard Stone's portrait was a wonderful portrait. It had a Mona Lisa-type quality to it, very enigmatic as to understand exactly what she was thinking and what he was portraying. A very interesting portrait of a very great Prime Minister. It was Gordon Brown, of course, who commissioned that portrait, a Labor Prime Minister. I think it's a shame if we've now moved into an era where somebody's politics means that they need to be jettisoned.

Okay, well, Milstrow, we appreciate you coming in.Thank you very much.Thank you very much.Thank you for your time.Thank.

You, Anna.Thank you.