Early evening summary
Kemi Badenoch has urged Keir Starmer to “be honest with MPs” about the cost to the UK of the deal with the Mauritius over the Chagos Islands. (See 5.05pm.) Britain is transferring sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius, but retaining the right to run a joint airbase with the US on Diego Garcia, and a report today suggests this could cost the UK £18bn. Government sources are saying the figure being reported is not accurate, but No 10 is not denying the claim that the cost will be significantly higher than the £9bn previously agreed. (See 4.32pm.) Other Tories have been even more damning, with Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary and runner-up in the leadership contest, calling the deal “traitorous” and Starmer a “Quisling”. (See 4.47pm.) Nigel Farage, whose Reform UK party has overtaken Labour for the first time in a leading national opinion poll (see 9.30am) said on social media:
This is a dreadful decision by Starmer.
Our relationship will be in tatters when the USA wakes up to what our Prime Minister has done.
Updated
Benn says 53% of NI patients wait more than year for 1st consultant appointment, because NHS reform ignored for years
Hilary Benn has delivered a damning verdict on the state of the NHS in Northern Ireland, saying that 53% of people waiting for a first consultant appointment there wait more than a year.
The Northern Ireland secretary quoted the figure – which contrasts with 4% of people in England waiting for a first consultant appointment waiting more than a year – as an example, not just of failures in the health service, but of wider problems with public services.
And he argued that the problem was not lack of money, but the lack of public sector reform in Northern Ireland over recent years.
Benn was giving a speech to commemorate the first anniversary of the revival of Stormont and its power-sharing executive.
Under devolution, the executive is supposed to be in charge of service like health and education in Northern Ireland. But since the Good Friday agreement it has been suspended many times, sometimes for years at a time, because of disputes between unionists and nationalists.
In his speech Benn said:
The challenge for public services is particularly acute in Northern Ireland, and nowhere is this more urgent or obvious than in health.
The facts are frankly shocking.
Waiting time performance against cancer care targets continues to deteriorate, corridor care is becoming more frequent and it is striking how many people in Northern Ireland are now going private.
More than a quarter of people in Northern Ireland are on a waiting list. That is more than double the figure in England.
53% of people waiting for a first appointment with a consultant are waiting for more than a year in Northern Ireland.
In England, that figure is 4%. That’s right, 53% compared to just 4%.
Benn said he agreed with recent comments from Michelle O’Neill, the Sinn Féin first minister, who recently said that the state of the health service in Northern Ireland was “dire and diabolical”. He went on:
And this is despite UK Treasury data showing that spending per head on health is nearly £300 a year higher in Northern Ireland than it is in England.
It is absolutely not that health and social care staff are somehow not doing all they can.
On the contrary, they are working really, really hard to treat patients, but they are doing so in a system that clearly isn’t working.
And why isn’t it working? Because – over many years – the decisions necessary for systemic and not piecemeal reform to the health and social care system in Northern Ireland simply haven’t been taken.
Benn said the challenge for the executive was to “take the difficult collective decisions” to enable health minister Mike Nesbitt to reform health services.
He went on:
I frequently hear it said, however, that more funding is required from the UK government and that that is the reason why public services are in such a state.
But given the needs-based formula that is now in place, and given the increase in funding that the government has given, a lack of funding is not the impediment to public service transformation.
The real impediment has been the failure to reform the system.
The many missed opportunities to take decisions, or to apply lessons, from other parts of the UK where reform has happened.
After the speech Sinn Féin accused Benn of promoting a “Tory austerity agenda”.
Caoimhe Archibald, the Sinn Féin MLA (member of the legislative assembly) who was yesterday appointed economy minister in the executive, said:
Rather than advocating for the people of the north of Ireland, as his title suggests he should, [Benn] has become an apologist for a Tory austerity agenda which his own government has now adopted and which has stripped our public services to the bone.
Updated
