Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley says UK capital is a place to ‘live, work and enjoy yourself’
The Metropolitan police commissioner has described London as a “fantastically safe” city as the force announced a drop in homicide rates last year.
Sir Mark Rowley said the capital was a place to “live, work and enjoy yourself” as he visited a boxing gym in Ilford, east London, on Thursday.
Continue reading...Specialisms such as dentistry have shortages and EU exit still causes issues with medicines in Northern Ireland, thinktank finds
NHS trusts in England have increased recruitment from low-income “red list” countries to make up for the post-Brexit loss of EU staff, despite a code of practice to safeguard health services in those developing countries.
A report by the Nuffield Trust thinktank also identified shortages in vital specialist areas since Brexit, including dentistry, cardiothoracic surgery and anaesthesiology.
Continue reading...Annalena Baerbock makes appeal as she holds talks in London with UK foreign secretary James Cleverly
Disputes over implementation of the Northern Ireland protocol have become “the achilles heel” of the EU’s relations with the UK, the German foreign minister said on Thursday as she held talks with her UK counterpart in London.
Annalena Baerbock’s appeal to find a solution to the deadlock over the protocol came during wide-ranging and much delayed talks with James Cleverly in London, which also covered the war in Ukraine and the state of Anglo-German relations.
Continue reading...Legislation will allow bosses of key public services to sue unions and sack employees who refuse to work
Rishi Sunak’s new anti-strike legislation to enforce “minimum service levels” in key public sectors including the NHS and schools has drawn a furious reaction from unions as the prime minister scrambles to get a grip on industrial disputes.
The law, which the government plans to introduce in the coming weeks, will allow bosses in health, education, fire, ambulance, rail and nuclear commissioning to sue unions and sack employees if minimum levels are not met.
Continue reading...Labour will not ‘spend its way out of the mess’ but will a more pragmatic approach persuade the core support the party still stands for something?
Keir Starmer was looking assured, shirt sleeves rolled up and cracking jokes, as he stood in front of a giant orange robotic arm in an east London design lab to make his new year speech.
Just 24 hours earlier Rishi Sunak had given his own address on the state of the nation at the building next door, prompting the Labour leader to quip: “I won’t tell the prime minister where I’m going on holiday this year just in case I find him there as well.”
Continue reading...Latest updates: Labour leader to say he plans to move away from the ‘sticking plaster politics’ of short-term decision making
Mick Whelan, the general secretary of Aslef, which represents train drivers, told the Today programme this morning that he did not think the anti-strike legislation proposed by the government (see 8.48am) would make life harder for his union.
He suggested the law would lead to unions like his having to organise strikes across more localised units, instead of nationally.
If we’ve got to sit down in 15, 20 or 30 different undertakings and agree different levels of [minimum service], all it means is that we put more strikes on to pick up the shortfall, create greater strife, the connectivity of the railway falls apart, the logistically it’s impossible.
There have been minimum [service] levels in European countries for several years. They have never been enacted because they don’t work.
Continue reading...Overworked staff allocated extremely short care calls by local authority struggling to meet users’ needs
Care workers are taking as little as three minutes to help vulnerable people in their own homes, the social care ombudsman has found, after discovering a council was allocating extremely short visits to hundreds of people.
Amid chronic staff shortages and rising unmet care needs nationwide, a homecare worker commissioned by Warrington borough council sometimes stayed for just three minutes, despite the family paying for the full visit. The council was found to have allocated 15-minute care calls to more than 300 people in the region, despite national guidance stressing these were “not usually appropriate”.
Continue reading...Ministers missed crucial opportunities but should use energy windfall tax to speed up insulation efforts, committee says
A national “war effort” on energy efficiency is required to cut energy bills, reduce climate-heating emissions and ensure energy security, according to a cross-party committee of MPs.
Boosting efficiency in homes and businesses is the fastest way to cut energy use but the government missed a “crucial window of opportunity” last summer, the report from the environmental audit committee (EAC) said. The energy bills crisis was sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, while political turmoil in the UK resulted in three prime ministers in office between July and October.
Continue reading...PM makes five pledges for public to judge him against, but gives little detail or timescale
Rishi Sunak has asked the public to judge him on results as he revealed his strategy for the run-up to the next general election, hinting at pay rises in the public sector next year and vowing to get the economy growing.
The prime minister staked his premiership on a five-point plan to get through to polling day, expected in the autumn next year, admitting that the government could then be judged to be “delivering for you or not”.
Continue reading...Prime minister urges public to judge him on whether he delivers on new pledges but Labour says most ‘were happening anyway’. This blog is now closed
Lucy Powell, the shadow culture secretary, has issued a statement welcoming the government’s proposal to abandon the privatisation of Channel (without actually putting it in those terms). She says the government should never have floated the plan in the first place, and that it has been a “total distraction” for the broadcaster. She says:
The Conservatives’ vendetta against Channel 4 was always wrong for Britain, growth in our creative economy, and a complete waste of everyone’s time.
Our broadcasting and creative industries lead the world, yet this government has hamstrung them for the last year with the total distraction of Channel 4 privatisation.
Continue reading...PM plans a ‘no tricks’ reset but with an inflation fall already expected this is more about hanging on at an election
In his first big speech since taking over at No 10, Rishi Sunak promised “no tricks, no ambiguity” as he announced his five promises to reset the government after a difficult year.
The prime minister said he would be focusing on halving inflation, growing the economy, reducing debt, cutting NHS waiting lists, and stopping small-boat crossings to the UK.
Continue reading...Exclusive: DHSC alleges gowns were not sterile, could not be used within NHS ‘for any purpose’, and technical labelling was ‘invalid’
The UK government has accused a company linked to the Conservative peer Michelle Mone of supplying defective gowns that could have compromised the safety of patients had it been used in the NHS.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) paid the company, PPE Medpro, £122m for 25m sterile surgical gowns under a contract awarded in June 2020 after Mone first approached ministers offering to supply PPE. However, the DHSC has alleged the gowns were rejected because they were not sterile, their technical labelling was “invalid” and “improper”, and they “cannot be used within the NHS for any purpose”.
Continue reading...Commission opens ‘regulatory compliance case’ after complaints that the charity is politically partisan
The Charity Commission has said it is “assessing concerns” about the Campaign Against Antisemitism, which was at the forefront of antisemitism allegations against Labour under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
The commission has opened a regulatory compliance case against the CAA, after complaints including that the charity is politically partisan.
Continue reading...People with disabilities more likely to cut back on energy use and food, Resolution Foundation says
Disabled people in the UK are much more likely to struggle to heat their homes and cut back on food this winter, according to a report highlighting “massive” income gaps amid the cost of living squeeze.
Research from the Resolution Foundation found people with disabilities had an available amount to spend that was about 44% lower than that of other working-age adults, exposing them hugely to the rising cost of essentials.
Continue reading...Downing Street says NHS is receiving funding it needs despite Royal College of Emergency Medicine saying ministers are in denial
Earlier today the vice president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine said ministers were in denial over the extent of problems facing hospital A&E departments. (See 11.19am.) At the Downing Street lobby briefing this morning the prime minister’s spokesperson tried to avoid sounding complacent, but he did claim the NHS has the funding it needs this winter. He told journalists:
We are confident we are providing the NHS with the funding it needs, as we did throughout the pandemic, to deal with these issues …
We have been upfront with the public, long in advance of this winter, that, because of the pandemic and the pressures it’s placed in the backlog of cases, that this would be an extremely challenging winter. And that is what we are seeing.
We have continued to put billions of pounds of additional funding into the NHS – £7.5bn for adult social care and for delayed discharge over the next two years. And there’s £14.1bn in additional funding to improve urgent and emergency care and tackle the backlogs.
This is certainly an unprecedented challenge for the NHS, brought about by a number of factors.
Could Johnson really win a parliamentary ballot? Or might Conservative members impose him on unwilling Tory MPs (which proved less than successful in the case of Truss)? Above all, is it likely that he would stand in the first place? For all his reputation for recklessness, Johnson has a prudent streak. Both last year and in 2016 he decided not to stand, bruising the feelings of some of those who had invested hope in his candidacy …
It’s possible that a reinstalled Johnson could confound his critics, as he has done so many times before, and win the Conservatives a fifth term. Let Sunak do the hard work, Johnsonians will say – the tax rises, the spending cuts. Then their man can breeze in with his unquenchable optimism, cut taxes and cheer Britain up. Really?
Continue reading...Chief negotiator says better communications could sway union members, as first of five days of rail strikes begins
A deal to stop strikes is “in touching distance”, the chief negotiator for Network Rail has claimed, as drivers and staff began the first of five consecutive days of national rail strikes.
Tim Shoveller, Network Rail’s chief negotiator, suggested the pay offer would not be improved but claimed that better communication of the deal would begin to win over union members.
Continue reading...Irish PM says he understands unionists’ concerns and he will be ‘flexible and reasonable’ on matter
The Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, has said mistakes were made on all sides in the handling of Brexit, vowing to be “flexible and reasonable” when attempting to solve issues with the Northern Ireland protocol.
“One thing I have said in the past is that, when we designed the protocol, when it was originally negotiated, perhaps it was a little bit too strict,” the taoiseach said, speaking in Dublin.
Continue reading...Officials confirm new policy for England will begin on Thursday but say they are still working on final details
Ministers are yet to set out details of a Covid testing regime for arrivals from China that comes into force this week, including whether it will apply to people flying from Hong Kong or to those who travelled to the UK indirectly from China.
Downing Street confirmed that people flying to the UK from China would need to take a Covid test before travelling, and would not be allowed to travel if they tested positive for the virus.
Continue reading...PM has reinstated ‘boring government’ but smooth relations with backbenchers are unlikely to last
At the end of one of the most tumultuous years of politics in decades, Rishi Sunak is confident he has successfully managed to calm Tory MPs and – in the words of one senior aide – “bring back boring government”.
He has sought to kick some controversial pieces of legislation into the long grass, performed quick U-turns and managed to satiate a parliamentary party with a seemingly unquenchable thirst for regicide.
Continue reading...Proposed law requiring 20% of rail service during strikes could extend across public sector including NHS
Unions are expected to take legal action against anti-strike laws being prepared by Rishi Sunak amid reports the curbs will be unveiled when parliament returns this month.
The legislation being looked at by Sunak would extend plans already announced by ministers to enforce minimum service levels on public transport – meaning 20% of regular rail services would need to continue during strike action.
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