Ministers in denial over extent of A&E crisis, says Royal College of Emergency MedicineAt the weekend Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said that between 300 and 500 people were dying every week because of delays in A&E. Today his RCEM colleague Dr Ian Higginson, the college’s vice-president, claimed ministers were in denial over the extent of the problem. He told Times Radio:
There’s been a remarkable lack of what I would call meaningful engagement for quite some time from many political leaders. And what we tend to hear trotted out is the same old stuff rather than any acceptance that what myself on behalf of my colleagues within emergency medicine, what other colleagues in other parts of the health service are saying, is real.
There seems to be almost a battle of machismo and denial going on. And this is a real problem for the NHS. [If we get] ourselves into a situation where the staff are trying to say how it is on the front line, and the organisations and political leaders who have the power and the ability to make change are simply trying to push back and for whatever motivation not accept that, there’s a real problem.
We all need to work together on this, and I don’t really see evidence of that.
Key events
And while we are on the subject of Boris Johnson, a column in the Times about him by Paul Goodman is attracting a lot of comment this morning. Goodman edits the ConservativeHome website and the article appears under the headline “Brace yourselves for a Johnson comeback”, which is probably intended to alarm Guardian readers, and others.
But the headline is misleading because the subeditors inadvertently left out the word “Don’t” at the start, which would have led to it giving a more accurate account of what Goodman is saying. In the article he weighs up carefully the prospects of a Johnson comeback, does not 100% rule one out, but ends up arguing that it is unlikely. Here is an extract.
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?
For what drove those cuts and rises, after all? The war, certainly. And yes, Covid, on both of which Johnson chalked up real achievements. But the Truss collapse exposed an inconvenient truth: that Britain’s credit is weak in the markets and that Johnson’s appetite for higher spending was a cause. One can’t escape the conclusion that he views economics as a form of entertainment. What reason is there for believing that he would change?
There are fewer crises under Sunak. To put it another way, life is more dull. But while many Tory MPs are unconvinced by the prime minister, some appreciate the change. “Ring out the old, ring in the new,” Tennyson wrote of the new year. Perhaps Johnson’s time will come again one day. But for the moment, it’s time to move on.
My opening diatribe about the terrible state of public services in the UK may have been over-generous to Boris Johnson, Mysticnick argues in the comments below the line. I said Johnson may be right about Britain being a good place to go to the pub. (See 9.35am.) But Mysticnick points out that, in the third quarter of last year, pubs in England and Wales were closing at the rate of 50 a month.
Ministers in denial over extent of A&E crisis, says Royal College of Emergency MedicineAt the weekend Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said that between 300 and 500 people were dying every week because of delays in A&E. Today his RCEM colleague Dr Ian Higginson, the college’s vice-president, claimed ministers were in denial over the extent of the problem. He told Times Radio:
There’s been a remarkable lack of what I would call meaningful engagement for quite some time from many political leaders. And what we tend to hear trotted out is the same old stuff rather than any acceptance that what myself on behalf of my colleagues within emergency medicine, what other colleagues in other parts of the health service are saying, is real.
There seems to be almost a battle of machismo and denial going on. And this is a real problem for the NHS. [If we get] ourselves into a situation where the staff are trying to say how it is on the front line, and the organisations and political leaders who have the power and the ability to make change are simply trying to push back and for whatever motivation not accept that, there’s a real problem.
We all need to work together on this, and I don’t really see evidence of that.
Tory MP Virginia Crosbie says she wears stab-proof vest at constituency surgeries in response to threatsAn MP has revealed that she wears a stab-proof vest when holding constituency surgeries following the murder of her colleague David Amess. Virginia Crosbie, the Conservative MP for Ynys Môn (Anglesey), told GB News in an interview that she thought MPs were now getting even more abuse online than in the past, and that it was routine for her to get threats before breakfast. She said:
I have been in difficult situations. I do face-to-face surgeries where I wear a stab jacket, obviously following the murder of David Amess. And also, I have security protection as well.
I think it’s important I have direct contact with my constituents. And unfortunately, this is one of the things I have to do to ensure that I can actually do the job that I was elected to do.
Crosbie said that social media companies should be doing a lot more to prevent online abuse, and that Twitter accounts should be properly verified.
The full interview, with the presenter Gloria De Piero, will be broadcast in full on Sunday.
In various interviews before Christmas, and in his appearance before the Commons transport committee, Mark Harper, the transport secretary, refused to deny claims that the government scuppered chances of a deal to resolve the rail strike by insisting on the inclusion of clauses that would force the RMT to accept the extension of driver-only operation for trains. But in an interview with Sky News this morning, when asked if the government had intervened to block a deal, he said that “absolutely isn’t true”. He went on:
In fact, since I became transport secretary a couple of month ago I met all the union leaders, I tried to change the tone of the discussions and I said that ministers would help facilitate the trade unions and the employers, that is the train operating companies and Network Rail, getting around the table.
But Mick Lynch, the RMT general secretary, told the same programme that Harper was wrong. He said:
[Harper] is not telling you the truth, because we had a document with the train operating companies that did not include driver-only operation. It was taken away for approval in Whitehall at the Department for Transport and they inserted about eight or nine bullet points that completely undermined the negotiations. That was a direct intervention of government ministers, we know that to be true.
If he is saying that didn’t happen, he is simply not telling you the whole truth.
Mick Lynch with RMT members at a picket line at Euston station in London this morning. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PAAccording to a story in the Sun today, ministers are considering trying to resolve public sector strikes by sticking to the pay deals on offer but making other working conditions more generous. In their story Harry Cole and Ryan Sabey report:
Ministers are seriously considering offering increased holiday allowances, pension benefits and bonuses.
Whitehall sources say the government will “hold firm” over pay with healthcare and transport unions believing additional benefits could break the deadlock.
This is the sort of face-saving compromise that often leads to the resolution of a strike. We’ll see what No 10 has to say about the story later.
Cole and Sabey also say that next year’s pay negotiations could be brought forward to February or March in a bid to resolve the dispute.
Deal to stop UK train strikes ‘in touching distance’, says Network RailA deal to stop strikes is “in touching distance”, Tim Shoveller, the chief negotiator for Network Rail has claimed. My colleage Jessica Elgot has the story here.
UK faces worst recession in G7, economists sayIn his new year’s message Boris Johnson said he was confident about 2023 because the economy was “going to start to turn around”. But leading economists have a much more gloomy take, because they believe recovery will take longer in the UK than elsewhere, according to the Financial Times. The FT has surveyed more than 100 leading economists and their prognosis for the UK is grim. In their story Delphine Strauss and Valentina Romei report
The UK will face one of the worst recessions and weakest recoveries in the G7 in the coming year, as households pay a heavy price for the government’s policy failings, economists say.
A clear majority of the 101 respondents in the FT’s annual poll of leading UK-based economists said the inflationary shock caused by the pandemic and the Ukraine war would persist for longer in the UK than elsewhere, forcing the Bank of England to keep interest rates high and the government to run a tight fiscal policy.
More than four-fifths expected the UK to lag its peers, with GDP already shrinking and set to do so for much or all of 2023.
The result is expected to be an intensifying squeeze on household incomes, as higher borrowing costs add to the pain already caused by soaring food and energy prices.
And here is an FT graph showing one of the findings from the survey.
Survey of economists Photograph: FTTransport secretary admits proposed legislation won’t offer solution to current rail strikesGood morning, and happy new year. You’ll be glad to hear that I haven’t recorded a new year’s messsage for you all, but if you’re missing out you can try Rishi Sunak’s first one (which was even more banal than these things usually are, and included the claim that he became PM three months ago, when it is more like two months), his second one (which was an improvement, and may have been recorded as a repair job), Keir Starmer’s (which was more prime ministerial, and had enough union jack presence to match a Liz Truss video), or Boris Johnson’s, which in some ways was the most interesting of the lot.
As usual, the former PM was peddling boosterism and, as well as saying he expected the economy to recover and Vladimir Putin to lose in Ukraine, he said 2023 would be the year when the UK would “finally start to take advantage of all our new freedoms, lengthening our lead as the best place on earth to invest, to start a business, raise a family, or just hang out in the pub”.
He may have been right on his final point, because pubs are British institutions, and so you would expect them to be particularly good here. But when he spoke about “new freedoms”, Johnson did not even mention Brexit (perhaps conscious that it is increasingly seen as a mistake) and, as he ran through his “best place on earth” spiel, he seemed to be finding it hard to conceal his awareness of how hollow this sounded.
Britain may be good for visits to the pub. But if you were looking for somewhere that might be the best place on earth to call an ambulance, catch a train, schedule a GP appointment, secure an above-inflation pay rise, heat your home at a reasonable cost, get seen by a doctor at A&E, ensure families don’t need to visit food banks, export to the EU, afford to buy your first home, get the police to catch a burglar, recruit staff to work in hospitality, find decent adult social care, obtain affordable childcare, secure a rape conviction or even book a driving test – then obviously you would avoid Britain at all costs.
As my colleague Gwyn Topham reports in his overnight story, this week’s episode of Britain isn’t working is dominated by the rail strikes.
Two of the main protagonists in the dispute, Mick Lynch, the RMT general secretary, and Mark Harper, the transport secretary, have both been giving interviews this morning. But neither of them have been saying anything very new, and both continue to accuse the other side of intransigence. “What we need to hear now from the government is exactly what it is they are going to propose to us,” Lynch told Sky News. “I think it is time that the RMT got off the picket line and round the negotiating table to try and hammer out a deal with the train operating companies and Network Rail,” Harper told Times Radio.
Rishi Sunak has promised to bring forward legislation this year that would limit the ability of the rail unions to cause disruption by requiring minimum service levels to be maintained while strikes are on. In an interview with the Today programme, Harper said that, while this might help commuters in the future, it would not be a solution to this dispute. He said:
For the disputes that are going on at the moment, the way we’ve got to sort those out is by getting people back around the table and resolving the dispute.
Minimum service level legislation may well be something that will help for the medium term, but it isn’t going to be a solution for the rail strikes that are going on at the moment.
Parliament is not sitting this week, but we have got a No 10 lobby briefing at 11.30am, and so we should get some fresh lines from the government then on rail, the crisis in A&E departments, and the many other problems facing the country as it heads into 2023.
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