As Labour’s conference starts in Liverpool Starmer will be hoping to give voters a reason to be enthusiastic about his party

Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, is being interviewed by Trevor Phillips on Sky News now. When it was put to him that NHS staff were already feeling overworked, and he was asked why they would want to do more overtime, as Labour’s plan assumes (see 8.55am), Streeting said that staff would not have to do overtime if they did not want to, and that they would be paid fairly for the work they did.

This morning Labour is setting out plans to fund an extra two million hospital operations, scan and appointments in its first year in office by funding more overtime. Keir Starmer has been talking about the plans in an interview with the Sunday Mirror, and the party has just issued a news release with more details. It says:

The plan will enable the NHS to provide an extra 2 million operations, scans, and appointments in the first year. Labour is pledging to invest an extra £1.1bn to provide NHS staff overtime to work evening and weekend shifts, so procedures can be carried out.

Labour’s plan will see neighbouring hospitals pooling their staff and using shared waiting lists, so they are working more efficiently together and making the best use of available capacity. Patients will be given the choice to travel to a nearby hospital to get treated on an evening or weekend, rather than wait longer …