Afternoon summary
Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister and housing secretary, has said the employment rights bill will be good for growth. Speaking during the opening of its second reading debate, she said an impact assessment published by the government today (see 3.48pm) made it clear the bill would have “a positive impact on growth and more than 10 million workers will benefit from Labour’s plan in every corner of this country”. She went on:
And the money in their pockets will go back into the economy and will support businesses, in particular, those on the high street.
But many Tory MPs pointed out that the official analysis said the impact of the bill on growth was uncertain, and that even if there was a positive effect, it would be small. (See 4.41pm.) They also highlighted figures saying the cost to business could be close to £5bn a year.
Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting have launched a consultation on the future of the NHS. (See 9.13am.) In a post on social media, Streeting joked about some of the less serious responses already submitted.
Thanks to @JackElsom for sending this idea for Wetherspoons in every hospital.
— Wes Streeting MP (@wesstreeting) October 21, 2024
Great idea, but sadly vetoed by the Chancellor during Budget negotiations.
Thanks also to the person who suggested I be fired out of a cannon to raise money for the NHS. No.https://t.co/KErAXPrURG pic.twitter.com/wXav0TFv08
Thanks to @JackElsom for sending this idea for Wetherspoons in every hospital.
Great idea, but sadly vetoed by the Chancellor during Budget negotiations.
Thanks also to the person who suggested I be fired out of a cannon to raise money for the NHS. No
Downing Street has said that Keir Starmer will not be offering reparations or an apology for Britain’s role in slavery at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting this week. (See 12.56pm.)
The Serious Fraud Office is investigating the construction of a hotel and conference centre owned by the Unite union, the BBC is reporting.
Updated
A Sinn Féin spokesperson has said that a party employee has resigned due to involvement in an incident where a DUP portrait was damaged at Belfast City Hall, PA Media reports. PA says:
An investigation was launched after the official portrait of former DUP lord mayor Lord Browne of Belfast was damaged during an event at the weekend.
A Sinn Féin spokesperson said: “Today, 21 October, a Sinn Féin employee, who works in the Assembly, made the party chief whip aware of their involvement in an incident regarding a portrait in Belfast City Hall which took place on Saturday 19th October.
“The employee was immediately suspended, and we have notified the PSNI today.
“The employee has now resigned from their employment and their party membership.”
Updated
Labour's anti-smoking bill will be 'more ambitious' than Rishi Sunak's, Streeting says
Wes Streeting, the health secretary, has said that the government’s anti-smoking bill will be “more ambitous” than the version introduced by the Conservatives before the general election.
Rishi Sunak’s government published a tobacco and vapes bill that would have banned anyone born after 1 January 2009 from legally smoking by gradually raising the age at which tobacco can be bought. It did not become law because it ran out of time.
Labour supported the Sunak bill, and in the king’s speech it promised to revive it. But Streeting is now considering using it to ban smoking in some outdoor public spaces, like pub gardens.
In an interview earlier today, Streeting said the bill will be published before Christmas. He went on:
When the smoking bill is introduced, it will be more ambitious than the bill introduced by the previous government.
Keir Starmer has declined to comment on King Charles being heckled in Canberra by an Indigenous Australian senator. In an interview earlier today, when he was asked if this was '“disgraceful”, Starmer replied:
Look, I think the King is doing a fantastic job, an incredible ambassador, not just for our country, but across the Commonwealth … and we should remember in the context of health, that he is out there doing his public service notwithstanding, you know, the health challenges he himself has had – so I think he’s doing a great job.
Cleverly claims giving Taylor Swift police protection will lead to foreign VIPs demanding similar treatment
James Cleverly, the shadow home secretary, has claimed that that the decision to give Taylor Swift police protection for concerts in London will encourage foreign VIPs to demand the same treatment.
Speaking during Home Office questions in the Commons, Cleverly said:
Having been home secretary I have on numerous occasions had to deal with a request from foreign VIPs for a level of protection that they demanded or requested but that we did not feel was appropriate.
Does [the minister] recognise the difficult position that she has put her own foreign secretary into when those future requests come in and they have to be denied? When those individuals will pray in aid the protection package put in place for a rockstar.
Jess Phillips, the Home Office minister who was responding to the question, defended the Swift decision, saying that her concerts were “cancelled in Vienna because of a terror threat that the CIA identified could harm tens of thousands of people”.
Cleverly also repeated Tory claims that the Metropolitan police gave Swift an escort only because of pressure from ministers, and that ministers got free concert tickets as a thank you. Ministers have rejected these claims, saying ultimately the Met had the final say over a police escort.
Referring to the role Swift’s mother was said to play in the negotiations with the Met and the government, Cleverly said:
After the appalling results from recent negotiations with the BMA, the RMT and Mauritius, has [the minister] considered recruiting Taylor Swift’s mum as a government negotiator?
Phillips said she would like to see Swift’s mum standing to be next Tory leader, because she would “really offer something that is not currently available”.
Updated
At the afternoon Downing Street lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson defended the employment rights bill. Asked about figures showing it would increase direct costs for business (see 3.48pm), the spokesperson said:
What this bill represents is an investment by businesses, by employers into their employees.
For too long, poor productivity, insecure work and broken industrial relations have held back the economy.
Last year we saw the highest number of working days lost to strikes since the 1980s, costing the economy billions of pounds.
Employment rights bill will have small but positive impact on growth, government analysis claims
Angela Rayner, the deputy PM and housing secretary, is opening the debate on the employment rights bill. She said the impact assessment published by the government today says the legislation will be good for growth.
But, in an early intervention, the Conservative MP Graham Stuart said that document just said the measures might be good for growth. And, if there was a postive impact on growth, it would be small in magnitude according to the document, Stuart said.
In the executive summary of its economic analysis, the government says:
We conclude the package could have a direct and positive impact on economic growth, but we expect this to be small.
And here is the more considered conclusion, from paragraphs 168 and 169.
On balance, we believe the impact on growth could be positive (i.e. the positive channels above outweigh the offsetting effects) but the direct impact would be small in magnitude. This is because the package is well targeted at low-paying sectors meaning that many of the channels covered above are less applicable for a large part of the economy. In addition, the evidence between employment rights and growth in the UK is limited, but where we do have strong, policy-specific evidence it often indicates that the policy has had a negligible effect on growth. For example, the national living wage, which has imposed a similar magnitude of costs on a similar part of the labour market in recent years as we expect the bill to have, has had a limited impact on productivity and participation (and by extension growth) in either direction. It is right that there is evidence linking flexible working to stronger productivity and this change will boost productivity for some workers and some employers, but the increase in uptake of ‘making flexible working the default’ is relatively small compared to the number of people employed and therefore, at a macroeconomic level, the impact on average productivity will be small.
Whilst we conclude that the direct impact would be small, it is likely that by boosting protections and the quality of work for the poorest in the labour market, the package will enhance lower-paid workers’ share in the benefits of growth and boost equality in work. This is more than just good for equality; it could be good for the economy too as there is evidence that equality is important for ‘sustainable’ growth over the long-term. For example, the OECD note that higher inequality can lead to underinvestment in human capital and weaker adoption of technologies. They estimate that as a result of rising inequality between 1990 and 2010 output in the UK was almost nine percentage points lower than it could have otherwise been. As a result, by increasing the security, quality and equality of work, it’s possible that the bill could also indirectly support the government’s mission to grow the economy beyond a small direct impact, helping to raise living standards across the country.
Braverman sent government documents to personal email address 127 times as attorney general, FoI case reveals
Suella Braverman forwarded government documents to her private email accounts on at least 127 occasions when she was attorney general, according to a story by George Greenwood at the Times.
The Attorney General’s Office disclosed the figure after a lengthy Freedom of Information battle culminated in a tribunal finding against the government. Braverman, who became home secretary after serving as attorney general but who was sacked from the Home Office for sending a government document from her personal email address, did not respond to a request from the Times for comment.
Greenwood said that sending documents to her personal email address when she was attorney general may have been a breach of the ministerial code. He says:
A Freedom of Information request submitted by The Times has now revealed that [Braverman] was forwarding such correspondence routinely while serving as the government’s top legal officer between 2021 and 2022. The 127 emails had at least 290 documents attached.
Ministers are banned from sharing sensitive emails and documents about government business with their private accounts because weak security provisions put them at greater risk of unauthorised access.It is not known whether Braverman forwarded sensitive or official documents to her personal account. The Attorney General’s Office (AGO) did not respond to a request for comment.
Updated
Commenting on the economic analysis of the employment rights bill published by the government today (see 3.48pm), Paul Nowak, general secretary of the TUC, said:
Despite repeated attempts to paint this bill as bad for business, this rigorous impact assessment shows that the business costs are negligible and are more than offset by the wider economic and social gains.
These changes will mostly affect those companies whose business models have been built on low-paid, insecure employment.
Decent employers will welcome these measures and the improvements they will bring for their businesses and workforces.
Employment rights bill will cost firms almost £5bn per year, but overall gains will justify this, government analysis claims
The Department for Business and Trade has said the benefits of the employment rights bill will justify the costs it will impose on business amounting to nearly £5bn per year.
It has set out this assessment in an economic analysis of the bill, published alongside 24 regulatory impact assessment setting out the direct costs of the measures included in the legislation.
The bill, which is getting its second reading in the Commons this afternoon, has been described as “the biggest overhaul of workers rights in generations”. It will significantly strengthen workers’ rights.
In its economic analysis, the government says that some of these new regulations will impose new costs on business.
We expect the policies covered within the bill to impose a direct cost on business equivalent to low billion pounds per year. If we take the top-end of the range from our broad order of magnitude cost to business estimates in tables A3, A4, and A5 to get the maximum likely cost this sum to £4.5bn [sic]. As such, we are confident that the total direct cost to business will be less than £5bn annually. This represents a cautious assessment, and we expect the total cost to business to be refined downwards as our evidence improves and the policy development continues
Nevertheless, to contextualise the size of this impact, total wage costs in the UK were £1.3 trillion in 2023 in nominal terms, meaning that an annual cost of up to £5bn is equivalent to an uplift of the UK’s total pay bill of up to 0.4%. This cost will be concentrated on employers in lower paid sectors, but even if we assumed all of this cost falls on such sectors, then hypothetically the equivalent uplift in the wage bill for that part of the economy would be up to 1.5%.
The report says the empirical evidence about who would pay the cost of stronger employment protections is “ambiguous”. It says firms might pass on higher costs to customers. If they cannot do that, they might cut investment or training costs, or cut employment costs, it says.
But the report says giving workers more rights will cut the number of days lost to stress, depression and anxiety, which it implies will more or less compensate for the increase in direct costs. It says:
There will be further benefits for those in work from better job satisfaction, as well as improved wellbeing and health, which could be amount to billions of pounds a year. This will benefit their employers too as 17.1 million working days were lost due to stress, depression or anxiety in 2022/233 , equivalent to over £5bn of lost output.
And the report says, overall, the impact of the bill will be positive.
There are clear, evidence-based benefits of government action through the bill. Not acting would enable poor working conditions, insecure work, inequalities and broken industrial relations to persist.
The bill will strengthen working conditions for the lowest-paid and most vulnerable in the labour market, increasing fairness and equality across Britain. It will have significant positive impacts on workers who are trapped in insecure work, face discrimination, or suffer from unscrupulous employer behaviour like ‘fire and refire’ practices. [See 2.52pm.] Many policy changes in the bill will target the issues identified by the independent Taylor review of modern working practices.
Workers in adult social care, those covered by collective bargaining agreements, those grieving a loss of a loved family member, and those struggling to make work fit in around other commitments will also be notable beneficiaries …
The package will be significantly positive for society (i.e., the benefits will outweigh the costs) if policy implementation is well-targeted, and the risks of unintended consequences are mitigated through consultation and policy design. We intend to refine this assessment as policy development continues.
Updated
Inspectors have raised serious concerns about the care provided to child asylum seekers who arrive in the UK on small boats, including babies who have had their fingerprints scanned and lone children left to sleep on mats on the floor.
A report published today by HM Inspectorate of Prisons on short-term holding facilities in Kent, including Manston, Western Jet Foil and two Kent Intake Units, found that overall there had been improvements and improved management of new arrivals.
However serious concerns are flagged about the welfare of the new arrivals, especially children.
Detainees are given wrist tags with QR codes and fingerprints are repeatedly scanned including babies. The Home Office did not always keep correct records of the length of time people were detained, with one person held for 106 hours incorrectly recorded as detained for 51 hours. New arrivals are supposed to be held for a maximum of 24 hours.
One ten year-old Afghan boy asked for a phone so he could call his mum but was told that would not be possible while a 15-year-old girl who said she had been sold to traffickers was interviewed without an appropriate adult. Some Border Force staff and cleaners working on the frontline had not been DBS checked and one contractor was sacked for aggressively pulling a sleeping child to their feet and making disparaging comments to them.
There were examples of children being woken up at night to be interviewed with one child interviewed at 1.20am.
Inspectors said that at Kent Intake Unit in Dover some of the lone child arrivals were very young ‘and had obviously been fitted on arrival with wrist tags with QR codes”.
Here is our latest Politics Weekly podcast. It features Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey talking about the NHS consultation, and about next week’s budget.
Workers in lowest-paid, insecure jobs could gain £600 a year from measures in employment rights bill, government claims
Workers in some of the lowest-paid and most insecure jobs could gain an extra £600 a year from the measures in the employment rights bill being debated later, the government claims.
In a news release, the Department for Business and Trade says:
Poor productivity, insecure work, and broken industrial relations have been holding back the British economy for too long. Last year the country saw the highest number of working days lost to strikes since the 1980s – costing the economy millions of pounds. This has entrenched a culture of brinkmanship that only serves to damage public services, public finances, and public faith in institutions. Today is a significant step in putting an end to that – as the Employment Rights Bill reaches its second reading, alongside a package of consultations to help inform its next steps. This includes a consultation on our new approach to Statutory Sick Pay, where the Bill will be removing the waiting period and the Lower Earnings Limit.
The Bill is expected to benefit people in some of the most deprived areas of the country by saving them up to £600 in lost income from the hidden costs of insecure work. Around 2.4 million people in the UK work irregular patterns like zero or low hours contracts or agency jobs, where insecure hours can mean forking out on expensive childcare or transport to cover last-minute shifts - or losing out altogether if work is changed or cancelled at short notice.
New protections like guaranteed hours and giving reasonable notice or compensation for lost work will help shift workers keep up to £600 a year, including workers in the North and Midlands where irregular work is highest.
For a cleaner working night shifts on an average annual wage of £21,058, a £600 saving would be worth over £250 more a year than the last two national insurance cuts.
MPs will debate the second reading of the employment rights bill later this afternoon. To coincide with the debate, the Department for Business and Trade has published more than 20 impact assessments relating to the bill.
I will post more on what they say shortly.
Health chief says consultation exercise will produce 'great ideas' as joke ideas included in early responses
A “maximum BMI for nurses” and an “NHS TV channel” are just some of the suggestions put forward as officials launched a national consultation on the future of the health service, PA Media reports. PA says:
Hundreds of suggestions were put forward in the hours after the consultation was officially launched by ministers on Monday.
Billed as “the biggest national conversation about the future of the NHS since its birth”, members of the public will be able to share their views online via change.NHS.uk until the start of next year.
Topics of conversation include streamlining management, providing better pay for NHS workers, improving access to dentistry and social care, among others.
One contributor called for an NHS TV channel “for patients to access physiotherapy exercise sessions for various conditions”.
Another called for free parking in hospitals while others suggested that the service should prescribe gym memberships to help tackle the nation’s obesity crisis.
Some of the suggestions need to be taken with a pinch of salt, such as one contributor calling for all doctors to be given “Doctor Who” name badges.
One contributor called for free cinema tickets “on the NHS”.
Another said that staff “should lead by example” as they said that the NHS should introduce a maximum BMI score for nurses.
There are other examples of joke responses at 1.29pm.
In an interview with Sky News, NHS England’s national medical director Prof Sir Stephen Powis defended the consultation exercise. Asked about previous public engagement activities, such as the public poll which saw Boaty McBoatface emerge as the winning choice for the naming of a polar research ship (it was vetoed and named RRS Sir David Attenborough instead), Powis said:
I’m really confident that patients and staff often have the solutions to problems.
I visit many, many health organisations, whether it’s in general practice or in hospitals, every week and I’m always struck that staff and patients have ideas, they have great ideas.
Our job is to capture them, to test them, and where they work, to ensure that we roll them out as quickly as possible.
So I’m very confident that there will be a lot of great ideas coming out of this listening exercise.
No 10 says making anonymised NHS data available to firms for medical research could provide significant benefits for patients
At the Downing Street lobby briefing the prime minister’s spokesperson was asked about the plan for digital “patient passports”, and what would be done to stop random NHS employees being able to read the records. Stephen Kinnock, the care minister, came under pressure when asked about this on the Today programme. (See 9.43am.) Asked about the same issue, the spokesperson said:
The data bill will introduce strong security protocols to protect data, and all NHS organisations have got strong governance arrangements in place.
But what this data bill will also do is transform patients’ experience, and that is obviously putting patients at the heart of our reforms.
But the spokesperson also said that any data shared with organisations outside the NHS for medical research purposes would be anonymised. There would also be security protocols too, he said. He went on:
But we do think that there is significant opportunity in this space, within those parameters and with those strict controls, to drive research and game-changing innovations that will ultimately be a benefit to patients in the NHS.
Some journalists have been monitoring responses to the NHS consultation launched by Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting this morning, and they’re noting that not everyone is engaging seriously.
From the Times’s Chris Smyth
So already this morning we’ve had maximum BMI for nurses, mandatory euthanasia and putting Tony Blair back in charge
— Chris Smyth (@Smyth_Chris) October 21, 2024
But now the NHS consultation website has been infiltrated by Big Waffle pic.twitter.com/4oMJ3lMhAf
From Katy Balls at the Spectator
More ideas rolling in on the government’s NHS consultation
— Katy Balls (@katyballs) October 21, 2024
Steerpike: https://t.co/xZjwpHQAac pic.twitter.com/2tv9sND4JG
From Christian Calgie at the Express
Just checking in on the responses to Wes Streeting's public NHS consultation pic.twitter.com/5pHTXPFffN
— Calgie (@christiancalgie) October 21, 2024
And these are from James Ball from the New European
I’d imagine somewhere in the Department of Health there is a civil servant currently feeling *extremely* vindicated over their attempt to explain why consultation responses aren’t usually just immediately made public.
(Among the many reasons is that they’re extremely game-able by pressure groups, who think flooding them with similar responses is in any way useful, etc)
No 10 ducks question about whether Britain historically guilty of genocide in Australia
At the Downing Street lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson was also asked if Keir Starmer agreed that Britain was historically guilty of genocide in Australia, as an Indigenous Australian senator said when she hecked King Charles at Parliament House in Canberra. Lidia Thorpe told Charles:
You committed genocide against our people. Give us our land back. Give us what you stole from us – our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people.
Asked if Britain was guilty of genocide in Australia, the spokesperson said he would not be drawn on comments made in relation to royal matters. But he said Britain’s relationship with Australia was “fantastic” and that it was a key ally.
No 10 says Starmer won't be offering reparations or apology over Britain's role in slavery at Commonwealth summit
As Eleni Courea reports, Keir Starmer is under pressure from Labour MPs and Caribbean governments to open the door to reparatory justice when he travels to Samoa this week.
At the Downing Street lobby briefing, the prime minister’s spokesperson said the government remained opposed to the idea of paying reparations for Britain’s historic role in the slave trade. The spokesperson also said there would be no apology at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm) this week.
He said:
Reparations are not on the agenda for the Commonwealth heads of government meeting. The government’s position on this has not changed, we do not pay reparations.
The prime minister’s attending this week’s summit to discuss shared challenges and opportunities faced by the Commonwealth including driving growth across our economies.
Asked about an apology, the spokesperson said:
The position on apology remains the same. We won’t be offering an apology at Chogm, but we will continue to engage with partners on the issues as we work with them to tackle the pressing challenges of today and indeed for the future generations.
Updated
Voters overwhelmingly in favour of employers' NICs going up if money going to NHS, polling for Labour thinktank suggests
Most voters will back a rise in employers’ national insurance contributions if the money goes towards the NHS, according to polling commissioned by a Labour thinktank.
The YouGov polling suggests that, when people are just asked if they approve or disapprove of a rise in employers’ NICs, they disapprove by 40% to 30%.
But when people are asked if they would approve this tax going up to fund healthcare and the NHS, they are in favour by 69% to 18%.
People who voted Labour at the election are even more supportive, with 85% of them approving of the idea, the polling suggests. And people who voted Labour in the 2024 election having voted Conservative in 2019 are also 82% in favour.
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has strongly hinted that employers’ NICs will go up in the budget. She has said that this tax was not covered by the Labour manifesto promise not to put up national insurance generally.
The polling was commissioned by Labour Together, a thintank and campaign group partly set up by Morgan McSweeney, who is now Keir Starmer’s chief of staff. It is focused on prompting policies that will help the party to carry on winning elections.
YouGov also explored what other reasons might make people support a rise in employers’ NICs. Extra money for health was by far the most powerful motivator, but people would also back employers’ NICs going up if told the money would be used for education, for tax cuts or for the police.
But if told the money was going on defence, on cutting the national debt or on giving public sectors a pay rise, they were not in favour.
Matt Upton, director of policy at Labour Together, said:
Time and time again in polls and focus groups, voters across the country have told us that Labour must deliver on their key priorities: the NHS and cost of living. If it doesn’t, it faces prompt dismissal at the next election.
This polling shows that voters are overwhelmingly willing to back a potential tax rise like this on business, if the money is spent on the things they care most about.
Crucially for Labour strategists, support for this is even higher among those who switched from the Tories in 2019 to Labour in 2024.
This group, though small in number, were decisive at this election and will be again at the next one if Labour is to win a second term.
Robert Jenrick, the Tory leadership candidate, has called for manadory life sentences for members of grooming gangs. In an interview with GB News, he said:
The public want action now. They are sick of this. This is a moral stain on our country, that thousands of children have been abused in this way and public officials have turned a blind eye to it.
What we need is action now to try to eliminate this, because only a fool would believe this isn’t happening today on our streets somewhere in our country.
What I want to see are mandatory life sentences for these despicable predators, so that you’re not out in 14 years, as the current law suggests, or less, but actually you’re never out of prison again.
I want those of these predators who are not British citizens to be removed from our country with compulsory deportations, and the public officials who turn a blind eye for fear of racism or community relations, I want them to be prosecuted and barred from working in the public sector ever again.
Ex-council chief executive who had to apologise for anti-monarchy comment becomes SNP's acting chief executive
A former council chief executive who had to apologise for attacking monarchists as bigots and xenophobes has been appointed the Scottish National party’s acting chief executive.
Carol Beattie, the former chief executive at Stirling council, was given the post by the SNP national executive on Saturday less than a day after Murray Foote, suddenly quit as the party’s chief executive.
Beattie sparked controversy after criticising an article about Kate Middleton’s return to public duties following her cancer diagnosis by claiming “intelligent people don’t support the monarchy”. Those that do, she added, “use them as symbols of their bigotry or xenophobic values”.
Her tweets emerged last month after Beattie stood as the SNP’s candidate for a byelection in Falkirk, which was held last week, only six months after she stood down as Stirling council’s lead official. The SNP has consistently stayed clear of republicanism, to avoid alienating pro-monarchy votes.
She said: “I apologise for any offence caused by the language I used and have removed the tweets.”
Keith Brown, the SNP’s deputy leader, said:
She brings considerable experience to the role and her appointment will continue the work, under John Swinney’s leadership, to ensure a professional, modern, dynamic election-winning organisation.
The SNP remains the dominant political force in Scotland, and Carol Beattie’s appointment will ensure we remain equipped for the tasks ahead.
Beattie narrowly lost the Falkirk South byelection to Labour’s Claire Aitken last Thursday. It had been called after the incumbent, Euan Stainbank, was elected as a Labour MP in July – the party’s youngest Scottish MP at 24.
Scotland uses proportional voting in council elections. In a signal that Labour support is being hit by the winter fuel payment cuts and the controversies over Keir Starmer’s clothes and glasses donations, Beattie gained the most votes in the first round of voting, 1,043 – 29 votes more than Aitken. Aitken took the seat in the seventh round of voting.
Craig Hoy, the Scottish Conservative chair, said:
The murky appointment of Carol Beattie highlights the level of chaos unfolding within the scandal-ridden SNP. Despite saying he would stay on until a permanent replacement was found, Murray Foote obviously couldn’t leave fast enough from the turmoil of the SNP.
In the past the weirdest budget tradition was the convention that the chancellor is allowed to drink alcohol while delivering the budget speech. But since no chancellor has taken advantage of the rule since the 1990s (and no one expects Rachel Reeves to be quaffing on Wednesday week), this tradition is probably best viewed as lapsed.
But Sam Coates from Sky News has discovered another weird budget ritual. On his Politics at Jack and Sam’s podcast, he says:
Someone messaged me to say: ‘Did you know that over in the Treasury as they’ve been going over all these spending settlements, in one of the offices, its full of balloons. And every time an individual department finalises its settlements, one of the balloons is popped.’
Streeting revives claims that some patients facing avoidable 'death sentence' due to current NHS failings
Wes Streeting, the health secretary, has revived claims that some patients are receiving a “death sentence” because of the problems with the NHS.
Speaking at a health centre in east London, where he was launching the consultation on the future of the NHS (see 9.13am) alongside Keir Starmer, Streeting said:
There couldn’t be a more important time for us to have this conversation.
The NHS is going through what is objectively the worst crisis in its history, whether it’s people struggling to get access to their GP, dialling 999 and an ambulance not arriving in time, turning up to A&E departments and waiting far too long, sometimes on trolleys in corridors, or going through the ordeal of knowing that you’re waiting for a diagnosis that could be the difference between life and death.
Worse still, receiving a prognosis that amounts to a death sentence that could have been avoided because the NHS didn’t reach you in time.
That is, I’m afraid, the daily reality in the NHS today.
Streeting also said the consultation was important because the best ideas for NHS reform would not come from Whitehall. He said:
We feel really strongly that the best ideas aren’t going to come from politicians in Whitehall.
They’re going to come from staff working right across the country and, crucially, patients, because our experiences as patients are also really important to understanding what the future of the NHS needs to be and what it could be with the right ideas.
Streeting has used the term “death sentence” before in relation to patients’ experience of the NHS (normally in relation to cancer, because some cancer survival rates are worse than in comparable countries). It has been reported that some NHS leaders don’t like this language because they worry it will deter patients and undermine staff morale. But in his speeech to Labour’s conference Streeting doubled down, claiming it was important to tell the truth because otherwise he would be “killing [the NHS] with kindness”.
Jenrick says Tory candidates at next election will have to support ECHR withdrawal if he becomes leader
Robert Jenrick, who is seen as the underdog behind Kemi Badenoch in the Tory leadership contest, has said that if he wins, Conservative candidiates at the next election will have to support his plan for Britain to leave the European convention on human rights.
In an interview on Radio 4’s Westminster Hour last night, he said:
If we were lucky enough to win the next general election, then this would be part of our manifesto. So yes, it would be Conservative party policy, and those choosing to stand at the election would have to support it, as they do any other important policy that’s part of the manifesto.
Jenrick has already said Tory MPs would have to back the policy if they wanted to take a post in his shadow cabinet. Requiring candidates at the next election to declare in favour of ECHR withdrawal goes even further, and would probably be a step too far for some current Conservative MPs.
In his Westminster Hour interview, Jenrick also criticised Badenoch’s decision not to announce policy plans at this point. Badenoch says that there is no point announcing policy so far ahead of the next general election, and that it is more important for the party to decide its values and principles. (This has not stopped her saying she would reverse Labour’s imposition of VAT on private school fees.)
Commenting on Badenoch’s approach, Jenrick said:
I think it’s disrespectful to the members and the public to ask for their votes without saying where you stand on the big issues facing our country today.
A plan today is what I offer. A promise of a plan at some point in the future is what my opponent offers, and I don’t think that’s the way to rebuild the public’s trust and confidence in us.
Starmer tells NHS staff they have 'once-in-generation' chance to reshape NHS for future
Keir Starmer has defended plans to digitalise records in the NHS.
Speaking at an event in east London to launch the consultation on the future of the NHS (see 9.13am), he said:
There are some obvious things that I think we do need to do. We need to go from analogue to digital, we need to use much better technology, whether that is in the ambulance service, in our hospitals, in our neighbourhoods, making much more use of technology.
He also said NHS workers had a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to reshape the service for the future.
Addressing claims that the government should be starting NHS reform now, instead of consulting, Starmer told health staff:
We want to hear from you and from as wide a number of people as possible, both in the NHS and people who are using the NHS, because this needs to be the once-in-a-generation opportunity for you to put your fingerprints on the future – literally to craft the service that you are working for.
This is a really important conversation to create that NHS of the future, a moment in our history.
Tory former mayor Andy Street hints he might not vote in leadership contest because there's no moderate candidate
Andy Street, the Conservative former West Midlands mayor, has hinted that he may decline to vote for either of the two candidates left in the Tory leadership contest.
Kemi Badenoch, who is seen as the favourite, and Robert Jenrick are both now firmly on the right of the party. Street, who was West Midlands mayor for seven years until he was narrowly defeated by Labour in May, is on the opposite wing of the party, and is seen as a “moderate” or “centrist”.
In an interview on the Today programme, asked if he would say who he was backing in the leadership contest, Street replied:
I’ve got my ballot paper. But you’re not going to get me to do that, I’m afraid.
I was clear before the previous two rounds that I wanted a candidate from the centre, the moderate part of the party. I backed Tom Tugendhat publicly. I’m not going to back anyone publicly now.
Asked if he would be backing either of the two candidates privately (ie, voting for one of them), Street replied:
I will decide that myself. The answer to that is private.
Asked if he thought either Badenoch or Jenrick could represent the future of the party, he replied: “Maybe.”
If Street does boycott the contest, he won’t be alone. As Jessica Elgot reported last week, polling suggests 15% of Conservative councillors won’t vote in the contest because they do not like the choice on offer.
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Here are social media posts from two journalists about the plan for digital “patient passports” in the NHS.
From John Burn-Murdoch, the Financial Times’ chief data reporter
Everyone saying “no we can’t let the NHS use a proper joined up digital patient database, it’s all part of a plot to privatise British healthcare and sell your data” should be forced to read the dozens (hundreds?) of case studies like these
Everyone saying “no we can’t let the NHS use a proper joined up digital patient database, it’s all part of a plot to privatise British healthcare and sell your data” should be forced to read the dozens (hundreds?) of case studies like these https://t.co/8VvouoDGY3 pic.twitter.com/qpJEXQaRaG
— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) October 21, 2024
From Jim Waterson, the former Guardian journalist who now writes the London Centric newsletter on Substack
I hate doing personal posts but: When my mum was dying last year, NHS data sharing failures and prioritising GDPR over pain relief repeatedly left her in agony. In desperation I began to build a Google Doc of her records linked to a QR code for doctors to scan. System’s broken.
Acting Alba party leader says no decision yet taken over whether Sturgeon will be invited to Salmond's memorial service
Claims that Nicola Sturgeon has been banned from attending Alex Salmond’s memorial service have been rejected as “premature” by Kenny MacAskill, the acting leader of Alba, the former first minister’s nationalist party.
The Sunday Mail reported at the weekend an Alba source saying there was “not a chance in hell” that Sturgeon would be invited, given the pair’s incendiary split over the allegations of sexual misconduct against Salmond.
Sturgeon and Salmond have not spoken since the allegations emerged following a Scottish government inquiry in 2018. Salmond had repeatedly accused her aides of orchestrating a smear campaign against him – claims Sturgeon has consistently dismissed.
In a statement rejecting the Sunday Mail’s claims, MacAskill said:
Now is the time for Alex’s family to be given the privacy and time to grieve the loss of a beloved husband, brother and uncle.
An announcement will be made in the coming days about arrangements for a private funeral to be attended by his family and close friends.
There will be time in the coming weeks to celebrate his life and commemorate his achievements in a memorial service, the family have yet to make any arrangements for that. All other speculation is premature.
Salmond’s family are expecting to hold a private funeral for the former first minister in his home village of Strichen, Aberdeenshire, next week, where he will also be buried. No date has yet been fixed for a memorial service, though some allies have suggested St Andrew’s Day on 30 November.
It remains unclear whether Sturgeon would expect to be invited. Salmond told a BBC Scotland documentary which aired last month: “It’s a big regret that Nicola and I are no longer on speaking terms and I seriously doubt if it’s going to improve.”
Health minister plays down privacy fears about digital 'patient passports', saying it'll be like 'online banking'
Stephen Kinnock, the care minister, was giving interviews this morning on behalf of the government. He was promoting the consultation on the future of the NHS, but many of the questions he took were about the government’s plans for a digital “patient passport”, ensuring people’s medical records are all available in one place, through the NHS app. Pippa Crerar and Denis Campbell explain that here.
Kinnock sought to play down concerns that people’s data would be at risk. But, in an interview with Mishal Husain on the Today programme, he was could not give her firm assurances on this point.
When Husain asked if people’s patient records would be available to all 1.5 million NHS employees under the government’s plans, Kinnock said the protocols would be set out in the forthcoming data bill. He went on:
We’re absolutely committed to protecting data, and we need the cyber security in place. Of course, one of the problems is the NHS uses Excel XP which is not conducive to the most modern cyber security techniques. We’ve got to modernize the tech.
Husain said protecting data from cyber attacks was a diferent matter, and she again asked if all NHS employees would be able to access someone’s medical records. Kinnock replied:
What we’re proposing is no different to online banking apps. So this is definitely more NatWest than it is Star Trek. This is a system that is going to be based on common sense, on enabling a single patient record.
In the end, if we don’t modernise the NHS, make it more efficient and productive, you can have the best data protection rules in the world, but you not going to have a health and care system that actually works.
Husain tried twice more to get a clear answer about the restrictions on NHS staff accessing individuals’ records. Kinnock did not say in detail how the system would work, but he said ultimately it was a matter of balance.
You’ve got to have a system that works and that enables the hugely important interface between GPS, hospitals and patients, and to create that single patient record.
That has to be balanced against water tight data protection, and that is the balance that we’re going to strike.
But if you constantly just say, we can’t do this because of data protection concerns, you’re just going to have the status quo going on and on and on, and you’re going to have a system that doesn’t work.
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Michael Gove says personal attacks on ex-wife Sarah Vine ‘hurt so much’
Michael Gove has said that the most hurtful part of his political career was the attacks on his former wife, Sarah Vine, Peter Walker reports.
Starmer and Streeting invite ‘entire nation’ to contribute to consultation on reforming NHS
Good morning. When the Labour government came into power, Wes Streeting, the health secretary, declared on his first day in office “the policy of this department is that the NHS is broken”. The government is going to publish a 10-year health plan to fix it, and it is due to be published next spring.
Streeting has said the plan will involve three main elements: moving from analogue to digital; more focus on primary care, not hospital care; and more focus on prevention. Keir Starmer explained them in a speech on the NHS in September.
But today the government is asking people who work in the NHS and use it – the “entire nation”, as the Department of Health and Social Care puts it in its news release – to contribute to a consultation how health service should change. The DHSC explains:
Members of the public, as well as NHS staff and experts will be invited to share their experiences views and ideas for fixing the NHS via the online platform, change.nhs.uk, which will be live until the start of next year, and available via the NHS App.
The public engagement exercise will help shape the government’s 10 Year Health Plan which will be published in spring 2025 and will be underlined by three big shifts in healthcare - hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention …
Bold ambitions for the NHS can only be achieved by listening to the expertise and knowledge of its 1.54 million strong workforce. Their understanding of what’s holding them back from performing at their best will help us bring down waiting times and provide the world class care the public deserve.
The government has already taken immediate action to address challenges in the health service and deliver an NHS fit for the future. Whether that’s agreeing a deal with resident doctors within weeks, securing a funding increase for GP practices to manage rising pressures or hiring an extra 1,000 GPs into the NHS by the end of this year, there are both short- and long-term reforms working hand in hand.
Streeting has posted a link to the online consultation page on social media.
Our NHS is broken, but not beaten.
— Wes Streeting MP (@wesstreeting) October 21, 2024
We want your help to fix it.
Today the Prime Minister and I are launching the biggest consultation in NHS history!
Calling all patients, staff and partners - share your views and experiences for our 10 Year Plan 👇🏻https://t.co/KO12G6CK4d pic.twitter.com/YhB7XaXHLm
Governments launch consultations for various reasons. Clearly, when ministers are making big changes to large, important institutions, it makes sense to find out first what the public think, and occasionally these exercise throw up ideas overlooked by the thinktank, policy-making world. But that is not the only, or even the main, function of these initiatives like this. Ensuring people feel consulted can be just as important as finding out what they think.
More importantly, this is also about pitch-rolling – persuading people that an issue matters, and that change is needed. The public don’t need to be told that the NHS needs rescuing; it is regularly at or near the top of problems that people say matter to them most, according to polling. But we are less than two weeks away from a budget that is set to raise the tax burden by a record amount in cash terms (not necessarily as a proportion of GDP) and it is very, very important for the government to convince people that this is happening for reason (like fixing the broken NHS) and not just out of profligacy. Gordon Brown was the master of this; when he put up national insurance to raise money for the NHS, it turned out to be one of the most popular tax rises ever. Today’s NHS consultation is probably more about budget framing than about a scramble for ideas to pad out next year’s 10-year plan.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting, the health secretary, are visiting a health centre in London to launch their public consultation on the NHS’s future.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
2.20pm: Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
After 3.30pm: Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister and housing secretary, opens the Commons debate on the second reading of the employment rights bill.
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