Brexit
Telegraph
Eurosceptic Tories and Democratic Unionists are to force a parliamentary debate on controversial plans for new border control posts at Northern Ireland’s ports.
The move will send alarm bells ringing in Number 10 because it is the first time that the groups have taken concrete action to challenge post-Brexit policy, at a time when the UK is involved in delicate talks with the EU over the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Last month, the Government introduced legislation in the form of a statutory instrument that would let it build border control posts for agrifood checks at Northern Irish ports.
Ministers said that the infrastructure is required irrespective of whether a deal is done with the EU because checks would need to be carried out on goods destined for the Republic of Ireland, even if No 10 proceeds with a Bill to override the Protocol.
However, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has been incensed by the move, which it sees as an attempt to implement the current Protocol by stealth.
The party has teamed up with leading figures in the European Research Group (ERG) of Conservative MPs to challenge the statutory instrument through a parliamentary tactic known as a “prayer motion”.
While it is unlikely they will succeed in annulling the legislation, it will force a debate on the issue.
David Jones, the deputy chairman of the ERG, told The Telegraph: “The point about this is that these are checks not on goods coming from outside the UK, but from goods coming from within the UK. So in other words, two parts of our country are being treated as if they were separate countries.”
He suggested that moving forward with the border posts risked undermining the Government’s negotiations.
“If you’re adopting a robust negotiating position and you’re threatening to push the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill through the Lords, which is where we are ostensibly, it does look rather odd to be complying with an EU regulation,” he said.
Guardian
Rishi Sunak’s plan to scrap thousands of EU laws by the end of this year risks triggering a full-scale trade war between the UK and Brussels, senior figures in the European Union have warned.
Letters from leading EU politicians, seen by the Observer, reveal deep concern that the UK is about to lower standards in areas such as environmental protection and workers’ rights – breaching “level playing field” provisions that were at the heart of the post-Brexit trade and cooperation agreement (TCA).
In retaliation, EU leaders in the European Commission, the European parliament and the council of ministers are preparing what they call their own “unilateral rebalancing measures” in secret meetings in Brussels. Sources say these are certain to include the option of imposing tariffs on UK goods entering the EU single market.
The dispute, caused by the Sunak government’s determination to scrap thousands of EU laws in order to demonstrate that he is “getting Brexit done”, now risks souring EU-UK relations just when progress appeared to be being made on the thorny problem of the Northern Ireland protocol.
The prospect of a trade war with the EU comes amid growing evidence that Brexit is inflicting serious damage on the UK economy. Last week the International Money Fund (IMF) said it expected Britain to grow at a slower rate than any other of the G7 leading industrialised countries, including Russia, which is being economically drained by its war with Ukraine.
Pre-payment meters
Mail
British Gas defied warnings from its regulator five years ago about forcing its way into the homes of struggling customers to install pre-pay meters.
The energy giant is under fire after it emerged last week it had sent debt collectors to break into the homes of vulnerable customers who had fallen behind on bills.
But The Mail on Sunday can reveal that Ofgem, the industry watchdog, issued a strongly worded directive in 2018 to British Gas and other suppliers instructing them to install meters by force only as an ‘absolute last resort’.
It said it had evidence that energy giants were ‘using such tactics too often’ and singled out British Gas as one of the worst offenders, forcibly installing meters twice as often as rival firms.
Ofgem director Rob Salter-Church said at the time he would take ‘tough action’ if British Gas failed to improve.
However, the company ignored Ofgem’s clear instructions. Its forced entries peaked in 2018 when more than 80,000 homes were affected.
Figures from the Ministry of Justice obtained by The Mail on Sunday show that the firm, which has nine million customers, is still conducting hundreds of thousands of forced installations.
Last year it installed 20,000 meters by force.
BBC News
Energy companies have until Tuesday to decide what action they will take for customers who may have had prepayment meters wrongfully installed.
Business Secretary Grant Shapps said energy suppliers need to refocus their efforts on the consumers “at the end of this abhorrent behaviour”.
It follows a series of reports about the forced installation of prepayment meters in people’s homes.
Regulator Ofgem said it shares Mr Shapp’s shock at the revelations.
BBC News has learned that magistrates courts in England and Wales were advised to approve bulk applications by energy companies allowing them to forcibly install prepayment meters into people’s homes.
According to a leaked document, magistrates were told that it was “irrational” to refuse such warrants and that rules requiring them to question the applications were “disproportionate”.
While The Times found debt agents for British Gas had broken into vulnerable people’s homes to fit meters.
Ukraine
Express
Vladimir Putin is plotting “maximum escalation” to mark the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine, said one of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s advisors.
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defence Council, said Moscow is “obsessed” with dates and would be focusing on February 24, the day the 70-year-old Russian leader began his so-called “special military operation”. The warning comes as his forces try desperately to secure more territory before Western battle tanks arrive in Ukraine.
Mr Zelensky said yesterday Russia is accelerating operations in eastern Ukraine.
Military analyst Yevhen Dikiy said forces are pushing from both the north and south to encircle Bakhmut, using superior troop numbers to try to cut it off.
Mr Zelensky said his country would fight to hold on to the city for as long as it could.
He urged the West to supply long-range weapons to help Kyiv push Russia out of the Donbas region.
Truss
Telegraph
Liz Truss is breaking her silence as she blames a “powerful economic establishment” and her own Conservative Party for her downfall.
The former prime minister says that she stands by her radical policy agenda but “the forces against it were too great” for it to succeed.
In an exclusive 4,000-word essay for The Telegraph, she admits that she is not “blameless” for the premature end to her time in Downing Street, but believes was “not given a realistic chance” of seeing her policies through.
She criticises Whitehall’s “strength of economic orthodoxy and its influence on the market”, and condemns Treasury officials for blindsiding her over the collapse of the pension market which preceded her resignation.
In an implicit rebuke to Rishi Sunak, who she does not mention by name, she doubles down on her opposition to corporation tax increasing from 19 to 25 per cent, branding the policy “economically detrimental”.
She goes on to say that she wanted to become prime minister to change things, not to “manage decline or to preside over our country sliding into stagnation”.
ITV News
Liz Truss has said she was never given a “realistic chance” to implement her radical tax-cutting agenda by her party and by a “powerful economic establishment”.
In her first detailed comments since she was forced out of No 10, the former prime minister said she had not appreciated the strength of the resistance she would face to her plans.
While she acknowledged that she was not “blameless” over the way her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s infamous mini-budget catastrophically unravelled, she still believed her approach to driving growth was the right one.
Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, she said: “I am not claiming to be blameless in what happened, but fundamentally I was not given a realistic chance to enact my policies by a very powerful economic establishment, coupled with a lack of political support.
BBC News
Liz Truss has said she was never given a “realistic chance” to implement her radical tax-cutting agenda by her party.
In a 4,000-word essay in the Sunday Telegraph, Ms Truss stood by her plans to boost economic growth, arguing they were brought down by “the left-wing economic establishment”.
They are the first public comments the ex-PM has made on her resignation.
But she said she was not “blameless” for the unravelling of the mini-budget.
Ms Truss was forced to quit after she and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s £45bn package of unfunded tax cuts panicked the markets and tanked the pound to a record low.
Her brief time in power – 49 days – made her the shortest-serving prime minister in UK history.
Defence
Mail
The Ministry of Defence spent £230 million on accommodation and travel over the past three years as top brass enjoyed five-star hotels, documents reveal.
Meanwhile, soldiers and their families endure appalling conditions in military homes.
The taxpayer-funded outlay includes hundreds of senior officers and officials staying in luxury hotels in exotic locations, documents obtained in a Freedom of Information (FoI) request reveal.
These include the Kimpton Seafire Resort and Spa in Grand Cayman, set on the Caribbean island’s Seven Mile Beach, where rooms cost up to £500 a night.
Education
Mail
The ‘war on woke’ escalated last night after a senior minister accused education officials of ‘abandoning’ teachers opposed to pupils changing gender too young.
Despite clear advice being issued by the Attorney General six months ago, making it clear that teachers can, for example, refuse to allow a biologically male child, who identifies as a trans girl, to wear a girls’ uniform, or to stop the same child from participating in girls’ single sex sporting activities, school staff have complained to Whitehall that they are being barred by schools from doing so.
The minister told the Mail on Sunday: ‘Many teachers feel that they want to do more to push the stop button when they see children questioning their gender, and it is clear that they have the legal right to do so, but they feel under pressure to keep quiet. They are being abandoned.’
It comes amid growing tensions in both the Tory and Labour parties over transgender rights, and against the backdrop of a row between Westminster and the SNP after the UK government blocked controversial Scottish laws making it easier for people to legally change gender.
The legal position on ‘gender reassignment’ was set out last August by Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who was then the Attorney General, in which she made clear that teachers were not under an obligation to treat children who questioned their gender ‘according to their preference from preferred pronouns to use of facilities and competing in schools’.
BBC News
Universities in Wales face an unsustainable financial future which could see job losses, cutbacks, and teaching quality suffer, a vice-chancellor has warned.
Prof Colin Riordan, of Cardiff University, said universities could not afford to “continually lose money”.
He said fixed tuition fees, less public money and high inflation had contributed to the situation
The Welsh government said it had invested significantly in universities.
But Prof Riordan insisted universities in England were better funded, and had been “for a long time”.
In Wales, tuition fees have been capped at £9,000 per year, but the vice chancellor said it was closer to £7,000 in real terms.
In other parts of the UK students can be charged up to £9,250 per year for a full-time undergraduate course.
Analysis in 2019-20 showed universities contributed more than £5bn to the Welsh economy.
Universities will get nearly £5m less from the Welsh government in the next financial year.
NHS
Guardian
The head of the UK’s biggest nursing union has issued a last ditch appeal to Rishi Sunak to agree a compromise over pay, to prevent the worst strikes in the NHS’s history from causing massive disruption to patients across England on Monday.
In a letter to the prime minister, Pat Cullen, the general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said she was “appealing directly” to Sunak for the first time as she asked him to match offers made by the Welsh and Scottish governments, both of which have led to strikes being suspended.
Suggesting she would call off strikes planned for Monday and Tuesday if the government offered 3% more (in addition to the 4% already awarded for this year) Cullen said it was not too late to prevent the huge planned escalation of action, which will affect 73 trusts, half of the total, in England.
Cullen told Sunak: “Yesterday, the Welsh government made an offer of an additional 3% for the current financial year. Consequently, we cancelled our strike action in Wales for Monday and Tuesday.
“In Scotland, negotiations continue over additional funding for the current year too and there are no planned strikes. Your government looks increasingly isolated in refusing to reopen [talks about pay for] 2022/23.”
BBC News
In a letter seen by the BBC, head of the Royal College of Nursing Pat Cullen said she was “appealing directly” to Mr Sunak for the first time.
Citing pay negotiations in Wales and Scotland, she said a renewed offer or fresh talks could halt the action.
Health Secretary Steve Barclay said the action was “regrettable”.
Monday is thought to be biggest day of strike action in NHS history.
Nurses in England and ambulance staff in England and Wales have coordinated action for the first time in an ongoing row about pay and working conditions.
Staff from both services will strike on Monday, and nurses will also strike on Tuesday. Ambulance staff are also poised to take part in walkouts on Friday.
In a letter to the prime minister, Ms Cullen wrote that a “meaningful” pay offer from the government could still avert strike action.
She drew a comparison with his swift action in sacking Conservative Party chairman Nadhim Zahawi after he was found to have breached the ministerial code in relation to his tax affairs.
Telegraph
A surgeon wrongly blamed for the deaths of dozens of cardiac patients has accused NHS chiefs of misleading health ministers over a crucial report into the fatalities.
Professor Marjan Jahangiri told an inquest that NHS Improvement (NHSI) had given ministers inaccurate information about its Independent Mortality Review of deaths at St George’s Hospital.
The review, conducted by consultant surgeon Michael Lewis, concluded that cardiac surgeons at St George’s, in south London, had caused the deaths of 67 patients, leaving their reputations in tatters.
Professor Jahangiri said NHSI had wrongly told health ministers that the review was not about laying individual blame on clinicians and that it would not form the basis for any referral to the GMC or other professional bodies.
But following the publication of the Lewis Review, St George’s NHS Trust suspended Professor Jahangiri and her fellow surgeon, Dr Justin Nowell.
The I
People should take care when using online primary care services due to “significant concerns” over patient safety, the health regulator has warned.
Care Quality Commission inspectors found some companies were too quick to sell medicines without doing enough to check whether they were appropriate, meaning that patients could be at risk of harm.
Although the CQC does say that well-run services can offer a convenient and effective form of treatment, it is calling on people to act with caution when using internet services.
In a joint statement, four regulatory bodies – CQC, the General Medical Council, the General Pharmaceutical Council, and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency – have reminded providers and healthcare professionals working for these services that they must provide safe and effective care, including following professional guidelines.
The statement says: “Technological advances have brought opportunities to deliver healthcare in new ways, including online primary medical services. Potentially, this innovation allows patients easier access to care and treatment when they need it.
“We share a joint commitment to ensure that the same safeguards are in place for patients whether they attend a physical consultation with their GP or seek medical advice and treatment online.
“We will continue to work closely together to share intelligence where we have concerns and take action where necessary to protect patients. We will ensure providers and clinicians are clear on their responsibilities to protect people who use their services and deliver safe, high quality care.”
Guardian
Only a quarter of the 40 hospital construction projects that were at the heart of Boris Johnson’s 2019 general election manifesto have secured full planning permission, the Observer can reveal, amid angry claims from NHS figures that there is no chance the schemes will be delivered on time.
Ministers have repeatedly claimed that the hospitals will be delivered by 2030, despite concerns from health chiefs and economists that “woefully insufficient” funding and rising costs will scupper the plan and put NHS capacity at risk.
However, an investigation by the Observer has revealed that only 10 of the 40 projects have the full planning permissions they need to go ahead. Those involved in some of the projects said they had already faced lengthy delays, leaving them with decrepit and often unusable buildings.
“There’s a 0% chance there’s going to be 40 new hospitals by 2030,” said the boss of one of the NHS trusts awaiting a new hospital. “We’ll be moderately lucky to have eight. At the moment we’re doing loads of maintenance work on an ongoing basis, trying to sort out roofs and theatres and all those things. Some hospitals are literally falling down.”
Mail
Arthritis experts are calling for NHS patients to be offered a knee-realignment operation that could spare them from needing costly and invasive joint-replacement surgery.
Almost 100,000 knee replacements are carried out privately and on the NHS each year, but surgeons say one in ten patients could have a knee osteotomy – a cheaper and less invasive operation that improves movement.
The procedure involves grafting a small piece of bone, less than a third of an inch thick, into the top part of the lower leg bone, the tibia. This relieves pressure on the knee, reducing arthritis pain – but leaves the joint largely intact.
There are 550 private/offshore banks in Grand Cayman, I have been scuba diving there. Whilst the hoi poloi and clergy do very well out there, the indigenous people struggle to survive during normal times. There is a small village called Hell which caters very well for the tourist trade.
Two questions about the customs arrangement FOR THE EU
1 why are the British tax payers paying for these posts demanded by the EU
2 why are the agricustoms posts being built on British soil when it is the Republic that need them
Truss resigned without a struggle. The lack of debate and the general silence from her own MPs was puzzling. The ‘economic establishment’ that wanted Sunak and Hunt is convenietly vague. Liz was incompetent, rash and out of her depth. However, I do think her policy ideas were her own. Question is whose policy ideas are Sunak and Hunt following? I don’t think that ‘powerful economic establishment’ talked about is even resident in the UK. Time for Liz to spill the beans? Who runs Britain?
Matt up North. If Liz was ‘incompetent, rash and out of her depth’ – well who wouldn’t be, wanting to do urgently what the country needed urgently. Yes, the general silence is puzzling. I agree the ‘powerful economic establishment’ is not necessarily within the U.K.. I don’t blame Truss for not yet ‘spilling the beans’.
She definitely needs to get talked about more if her book ‘Trussed’ is to be successfully launched this year. An appearance on ‘I’m a celebrity ‘ may get her back in the spotlight.
I smell a book deal Pauline.
I worked in the NHS (now retired). Back then,medical staff striking was unthinkable.
We now have a situation when greed overcomes principle. The feeble excuse that they also want more money for the NHS is an obvious lie, they’re offering to go back for 3% increased offer.
These medics departing for other countries need to be made to repay for their training at public expense. We can’t afford brain drains these days. Around £30,000 should cover it.
Then we come to the military staying in posh hotels. I can’t think of a single reason as to why they should be in Grand Cayman in the first place except for holidays. It seems to be yet another case of greed/entitlement syndrome.
Something fishy there too. Hotels of this sort have double/family rooms. Are these high rankers taking family with them too?
Maintaining hospitals is something I know about.
All buildings need maintenance, no surprises there. Some hospital where I worked were 200 years old. (They were less of a problem than the newer ones). Hospitals are constantly re-purposed as technology moves along.
Technology devised in the last fifty years is amazing in what it can do for people and amazingly expensive too. However it doesn’t always need new buildings.
Harold. You did not work IN the NHS, you have tol us you worked around the fringes of the NHS. Sometimes though you do say something sensible.
Jeremy Hunt, 4 October 2016. “It costs £230,000 to train a doctor in England and proposals set out in a consultation launched today (14 March 2017) include plans to obtain a return on this investment.”. Department of Health, 14 March 2017. “It costs the taxpayer £230,000 to train a doctor, over and above fees paid by individuals.”.
On top of the training comes £64,300 in student loans, most of which the government gets back. Other cost comes in possible grants for tuition (£9,000 / year), living costs and clinical placements.
And according to Government statement, most of the dregs of the World arriving in rubber boats are doctors and nurses together with well qualified artisans.