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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now it hasn’t been a great week for Ed Miliband, he’s come under attack again from senior figures on his own side, not least from former Labour Health Secretary, Alan Milburn, who hit out at Mr Miliband’s policy on the NHS.  Well the party will try to regain ground this week with an appeal to young voters but is it enough and does the infighting chip away at Labour’s chances of victory?  Well Lucy Powell is Labour MP for Manchester Central, she’s also Ed Miliband’s election chief and as you can see, joins me now from Manchester and a very good morning to you.  Let’s talk about that attempted appeal to young voters, how does Labour counter that thought articulated I suppose by Russell Brand for young people that there’s not much point in voting because you’re, all the parties, are part of a Westminster elite?

LUCY POWELL:  Well there’s a great deal of reasons for young people to vote and I think young people have been particularly hard hit by this government with the abolition of Educational Maintenance Allowance, the trebling of tuition fees, apprenticeships have gone down and changes to the education system which have left some of their futures uncertain, so they’ve been hit really hard by this government and what Labour is offering young people is promise and hope for the future and I think that’s what Ed will be setting out this week in part with his Sky debate tomorrow with Facebook.

DM: Beyond hope for the future, is there going to be something hard and fast in terms of tuition fees pretty soon, are we going to see a cut in those in the manifesto?

LUCY POWELL:  Well Ed has long said that he thinks the current system needs to change and a report out this morning, figures that we’ve gained from the House of Commons library this morning shows that the new funding arrangement with the increased tuition fees to £9000 a year is actually costing the taxpayer more because nearly half of those loans that people are having to take out won’t be repaid so we’ve got young people leaving university with £30,000, £40,000  worth of debt and nearly half of them won’t actually repay those loans so it’s costing the taxpayer more anyway and those same young people can’t get on the housing ladder because the cost of homes has gone up and if they are in the private rented sector they’ve seen their rents go up and up and up and tenancies being really insecure, so Ed’s going to be saying some really important things not just about higher education but about vocational education and also about housing and some of the issues, generation renters as we call them, all those issues for young people in the coming weeks.

DM: And to get those young people to listen you have to try other avenues to get their ear don’t you, particularly through social media?  

LUCY POWELL:  Absolutely social media but also where people are at.  I mean represent here in Manchester a particularly young constituency, I’ve got lots of young people living in private rented accommodation, many, many tens of thousands of students and really to speak to them, to engage with them in politics you have to go to where they’re at as well so it’s not just on social media but physically, on the campus or through finding out where they are in the pubs and the clubs and so on as well, so we have to be more creative about how we get in touch with young people.  I am particularly passionate about reducing the voting age to 16 as well, that’s something that will be in the Labour manifesto because I think that if we can engage young people while they are still at school in taking part in voting I think we will keep them going in that habit for many years to come.  

DM: And do you think they’re put off, indeed all voters are put off by personal attacks?  We hear that Labour during this campaign is not going to have any personal attack posters, you want a clean fight on the issues and the policies.  

LUCY POWELL:  We absolutely do.  I mean there is a great deal of cynicism about politics in this country at the moment and that’s why we want to be out on the doorstep having four million conversations or more with the electorate over coming weeks and months.  In fact yesterday we had thousands of activists out across the country taking part in those conversations because we know that the best way to overcome some of that cynicism that people see on their TVs and read in their newspapers week in week out, is to actually speak to them at their home or at their place of work and to really engage with them about the issues that matter to them and talk to them about why the Labour party has got a better plan for building the future of this country where we’ve got the economy that works for the kitchen table and not just the few sitting around the boardroom tables.

DM: But the weird thing at the moment, it must be going through head, is that it’s not the Conservatives or the Lib Dems or the SNP or whoever who is attacking Labour at the moment, a lot of it is coming from your own side.  Did you agree with Lord Prescott that some of those critics are Tory collaborators?

LUCY POWELL:  Well they  are certainly not helpful in what they’re saying and I think many Labour people made that clear at the time when Alan Milburn made his comments which actually I totally disagree with, we’ve got a very strong agenda about reforming the NHS to ensure that we keep people looked after at home rather than having to turn up at hospital unnecessarily.  So we’ve got a very strong agenda there but I think when I read some of the newspapers today, I think it says more about the agendas of some of those newspapers than really it does about how colleagues and how Labour activists are really feeling.  Yesterday in one of our big campaign days ahead of the election we had nearly every single one of our front benchers out knocking on doors with thousands and thousands of activists and I think colleagues actually are feeling pretty confident because here we are, just at the beginning of February, nearly three months to go until the election, this is our election to win.  We’re ahead in the polls and the Tories have played some of their big strategic cards already this year, their failed attempt to say that we had uncosted spending plans, we’ve had Cameron going over to talk to Obama, we had Merkel over to Downing Street, we’ve had posters being launched and all these side swipes at Ed Miliband.  The Tories thought that they would come of January ahead in the polls, they’ve played some of their big cards, they are far from ahead in the polls and we are in confident mood but we are not at all complacent, we know that this is going to be an incredibly tough election.  

DM: And of course you are playing your big card on the NHS, clear it up for us, you’re at the right hand as we say in terms of the election planning with Ed Miliband, did he use the word ‘weaponise’ about the National Health Service?

LUCY POWELL:  I’ve no idea but what I’m absolutely sure about is that I want this to be …

DM: So the Tories were wrong?  

LUCY POWELL:  I have no idea but what I do know is that we are unapologetic in our campaigning on the NHS because what is happening in the NHS at the moment, this crisis in the NHS – and it is a crisis, it’s not just a winter crisis – is because of the government’s policies, it’s of their own making.  They started the top down reorganisation, they’ve made it harder and harder for people to see their GP, they’ve made terrible mistakes on things like the 111 service and getting rid of walk-in centres, so more and more people, thousands, tens of thousands more people are having to turn up every week to A&E to get some kind of care so this is a political issue because it is those political decisions that the Tories have made that have left us with this crisis in the National Health Service and that’s why we’ve got a really big profound agenda for the NHS over the next ten years that we think can give it a future and rebuild the NHS that people want to see and it’s a really important issue at the election and we make no apology for that.

DM: Sorry, we’re nearly out of time but one last specific question, we mentioned there attack posters and you said you won’t run them and you took exception to the Conservative’s one which was a poster there with Alex Salmond, Ed Miliband and Gerry Adams from Sinn Fein outside the doors of Number Ten, all about potential coalition partners, can you confirm to us that anyone within Labour, senior Labour figures, have not been talking to Sinn Fein about their policy of absentionism?

LUCY POWELL:  It’s absolute nonsense, it’s an absolute nonsense story.  

DM: So no pact?  

LUCY POWELL:  It’s an absolute nonsense story, there’s no truth in it at all.  

DM: Good, that’s that cleared up then!  Lucy Powell, thank you very much indeed for joining us.  Lucy Powell there live from Manchester.