Ed Davey did his Conference interview with Laura Kuenssberg this morning. Speaking from the top of the Brighton Centre after arriving at the Conference by jet-ski yesterday, he was quizzed about whether we were going soft on Labour. Were we actually going to challenge them.

Ed was keen to point out that we already had on issues like the Winter Fuel Payment, and we’d do it more effectively than the official opposition.

We will challenge them when we disagree with them. We’ll be a better opposition than the Conservatives who are going further to the right

We are keeping people’s trust by talking about the issues they care about – the NHS and cost of living.

He said that the Government had already made mistakes on both of those things.

Being constructive means you have a different tone. You don’t do the yah-boo politics that people are sick of.

We are trying to put forward our own ideas.

Kuenssberg suggested that Labour don’t have to listen to us. Ed replied

You have to do opposition in a particular way to get heard. We’ll put forward ideas we championed at the election and our MPs will be champions for our constituents and we will get our voices heard.

Kuenssberg continued with this line of questioning by asking if we would  be tough enough? She suggested, wrongly, that we’d not challenged Rachel Reeves on her plan to kick reforming social care into the very long grass.

Ed said:

We have criticised the Government and we want to see a budget for the NHS and social care in the budget on October 30th.

We have to get the right type of reform and we are the only party  arguing that social care is the most important part of that reform.

He added that we can’t sort out the problems in hospitals without more care homes, more staff  and we will be banging the drum for carers and social care.

He was then challenged on the costs of free personal care – our estimate  is £2.7 billion while other experts say 6 or 7 billion.

Ed said he is happy to discuss with their experts but our figures our right. But if you do do free personal care you save the NHS  3 billion per year.

He explained that the biggest problem at his well-run local hospital is getting care packages and care homes for people so that you can then free up beds in the hospital.

He finished by reminding  us that the Liberal Democrats actually passed legislation to fixed this in 2014 and the Conservatives junked it the minute we were out of the picture. He says that many people who would have got care have been denied it because of the Conservatives’ failure.

All in all it was a good, strong, positive interview.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social