Afternoon summary
Veteran SNP MP Angus Brendan MacNeil has been suspended for a week following a row with the party’s chief whip at Westminster. The Na h-Eileanan an Iar MP said he accepted the decision following a reported clash with whip Brendan O’Hara over MacNeil’s attendance record.
Treasury minister Andrew Griffith has told the Financial Conduct Authority that he wants it to act swiftly to ensure that banks are not closing people’s bank accounts because they are politicians.
No 10 says parliament “has a long way to go and a lot of work to do to” to prevent incidents of sexual harassment after BBC’s Newsnight broadcast a report saying that it remains rife in Westminster.
Downing Street insists its asylum policy is “fair and compassionate”, rejecting criticism from Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, and other faith leaders of its illegal migration bill.
No 10 said in its post-PMQs briefing that it’s committed to cutting NHS waiting list, but cutting long waiting times takes priority.
The Cabinet Office is expected to learn on Thursday whether it has won its legal challenge to the UK Covid-19 inquiry chair’s request for Boris Johnson’s unredacted WhatsApp messages, notebooks and diaries, according to PA Media.
Oliver Dowden and Angela Rayner went head to head at PMQs while Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer attended a service in Westminster Abbey to commemorate 75 years of the NHS. Mhairi Black, the deputy leader of the SNP at Westminster, got the most laughs for suggesting that Dowden was also likely to be leaving parliament at the next election.
John McDonnell accused Keir Starmer of being on a “search and destroy” mission against the left in his party in an interview with BBC’s Newsnight.
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Veteran SNP MP suspended for a week
Veteran SNP MP Angus Brendan MacNeil has been suspended for a week following a row with the party’s chief whip at Westminster.
The Na h-Eileanan an Iar MP said he accepted Westminster leader Stephen Flynn’s decision following a reported clash with whip Brendan O’Hara over MacNeil’s attendance record.
“Stephen has his views and I have mine, but as leader he has his own pressures to balance and I accept the decision he has taken,” he said.
Guido Fawkes, the online blog, reported a public row in the division lobby when MacNeil called O’Hara “a small wee man” several times before throwing official letters about missed Commons votes back at him and storming off.
MacNeil, who is one of the SNP’s longest-serving MPs, has been an outspoken critic of the party leadership in recent years, in particular over what he considers its timid independence strategy, and is known to be a close ally of former first minister Alex Salmond.
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A proposal to give communities more say over installing speed cameras on dangerous roads was heard in a ten minute bill earlier today.
Conservative MP Mark Eastwood’s safety cameras bill calls for a series of reforms to existing guidance, including changes to the site selection criteria for cameras, PA reports.
The MP for Dewsbury said 65 people died and more than 5,000 injuries were recorded on West Yorkshire’s roads in 2022, with excessive or inappropriate speed being one of the most common factors.
Eastwood said the criteria for installing speed cameras should be more preventative and require fewer serious accidents before a camera is allowed in any location.
Eastwood asked for his bill to receive a second reading on 24 November but it is unlikely to progress in its current form because of a lack of parliamentary time to consider backbench proposals.
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Treasury minister tells FCA to act quickly on concerns about politicians' access to banking, following Farage claims
Andrew Griffith, a Treasury minister, has told the Financial Conduct Authority that he wants it to act swiftly to ensure that banks are not closing people’s bank accounts because they are politicians.
Under money laundering rules, banks are supposed to apply stricter checks to people deemed a “politically exposed person” (PEP). The rule is designed primarily to stop political figures from corrupt regimes laundering money in the UK, but some British politicians say they have been affected. Dominic Lawson recently revealed that his daughter had difficulty opening a bank account because her grandfather was Nigel Lawson, the former chancellor, who counted as a PEP.
This issue has become prominent after Nigel Farage, the former leader of Ukip and the Brexit party, suggested last week that his bank account was being closed for this reason. But Coutts, the bank involved, does not accept this. The account was closed because it did not have enough money in it, it has been reported.
Farage’s claims were widely and sympathetically reported in the Tory papers, and Griffith has published the text of a letter has written to the FCA about the issue. The FCA is reviewing the PEP rules away. Griffith has told them to speed this up.
In his letter he says:
While I recognise the importance of ensuring that appropriate measures are in place to prevent money laundering, it is crucial that an appropriate balance is struck and that these measures do not unduly burden or prevent democratically elected individuals, public officials, or their respective families from access to essential banking services. It has been made clear to the government throughout the passage of the Financial Services and Markets Act that some financial institutions may be failing to strike the right balance of taking a proportionate approach based on a careful evaluation of the actual risk. This is why we took action through the Act to require an FCA review into the extent of this issue.
The government is clear that domestic PEPs should be treated in a manner which is in line with their risk, and that banks should not be closing individuals’ accounts solely due to their status as a PEP. Given the strength of concern on this issue, I would expect that the FCA will prioritise this important review over the coming months, and if there are ‘easy wins’ along the way will implement those expeditiously.
Banks should not be closing people’s accounts solely due to their status as a Politically Exposed Person
— Andrew Griffith MP (@griffitha) July 5, 2023
I've written to @TheFCA - asking them to prioritise their review on this issue 👇 pic.twitter.com/2kvugoXdPF
Farage, who retweeted Griffith’s tweet about this, is likely to see this as vindication of his complaints.
My colleague Emily Dugan is now taking over the blog.
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Parliament has 'long way to go' on dealing with sexual harassment, No 10 says
Last night BBC’s Newsnight broadcast a report saying that sexual harassment remains rife at Westminster. It was based on evidence from six people working in parliament, including a 25-year-old woman who recalled being asked to sit on an older, male MP’s lap. Newsnight says the MP in question, whom it has not named, has been suspended over separate allegations.
Asked about the problem at the post-PMQs lobby briefing, the PM’s spokesperson said:
Parliament has a long way to go and a lot of work to do to ensure we’re not seeing these incidents taking place.
But, when asked if Rishi Sunak agreed with the SNP Mhairi Black, who said yesterday that she was standing down at the next election partly because she found the Commons “toxic” and “poisonous”, the spokesperson said:
No, not fundamentally, but we recognise some individuals have had difficult times.
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No 10 insists government's asylum policy is 'compassionate', in face of criticism from archbishop
Downing Street has rejected the suggestion from Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, and other faith leaders that its illegal migration bill is not compassionate. (See 10.11am.) Asked about their letter in the Times today, the PM’s spokesperson told journalists:
I’m not going to get into responding to individual views of which there are many on this issue.
But the prime minister has been clear that stopping the boats, stopping the cruel cycle of vulnerable people being exploited by criminal gangs, is the fair and compassionate thing to do.
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No 10 says it's committed to cutting NHS waiting list, but cutting long waiting times takes priority
At the post-PMQs lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson defended what Maria Caulfield, the health minister, said about NHS waiting lists and waiting times this morning. (See 9.15am.) Like her, he hinted that waiting times were more important than the overall number of people on the headline “waiting list”.
The spokesperson said that Rishi Sunak was committed to cutting the overall waiting list (the main benchmark on health in his five pledges), but that the initial focus was on patients waiting the longest for treatment. He said:
We are rightly focusing on those waiting the longest – so those waiting two years, 18 months and now one year, and we are making progress on all of those.
At the same time, as I think we acknowledged coming out of Covid, we knew that waiting lists would increase before they came down.
But we are committed to reducing waiting lists overall, but rightly focusing on those who have been waiting the longest.
PMQs - snap verdict
Many people find it hard to see the point of PMQs. With DPMQs, it is even more of a mystery. Most key decisions in government end up on the desk of the prime minister and, even if he does not say anything very revelatory in the Commons, at PMQs at least MPs and viewers get some clues as to his thinking (non-answers can tell you a lot, if you know how to interprate them properly), and make an assessment of character.
With Oliver Dowden standing it, it was a bit like listening to the minister for paperclips doing the morning broadcast round and having to field questions from Kay Burley or Nick Robinson on private thinking within No 10 on party strategy, battlefield developments in the Ukraine war, and the intricacies of pensions policy. The minister for paperclips resorts to waffle and some anodyne line to take, but as a journalist I listen knowing that I would get much more informative answers from colleagues in the office.
PMQs was a bit like that today. The speaker might have been better off suspending the sitting for an hour, and sending all the MPs off to join Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer at Westminster Abbey. From the government’s point of view, with no other strategy succeeding at the moment, at least prayer might help.
It wasn’t that Dowden was terrible (he needled Angela Rayner quite effectively at one point about her relationship with Starmer); it was just that he did not have much to say, and so largely he resorted to partisan bromides. In so far as we did learn anything from him, it was that he seems to think banging on Liam Byrne’s “no money left” note is still a winning argument.
Rayner went on housing issues, consolidating the attack line used by Starmer last week. She embarrassed Dowden with two questions that he would not fully address: whether buy-to-let mortgages are included in the mortgage support package (she was arguing that they should be, because “most renters live in homes with buy-to-let mortgages”), and whether the government will finally ban no-fault evictions. It was not a vintage performance, but she was more convincing than Dowden, and so it did the job.
There was one obvious winner today, though, and that was Mhairi Black. As usual, her two questions were spiky, but she brought the house down with a terrific retort to Dowden’s opening answer. (See 12.20pm.) Most of the jokes you hear at PMQs are pre-scripted and rehearsed. That does not necessarily stop them being funny, but spontaneous wit is more impressive and that (almost certainly) was what we heard today from Black. She triumphed.
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Cabinet Office to learn on Thursday if it has won legal challenge against Covid inquiry over WhatsApp messages disclosure order
The Cabinet Office is to learn whether it has won its legal challenge to the UK Covid-19 inquiry chair’s request for Boris Johnson’s unredacted WhatsApp messages, notebooks and diaries, PA Media reports. PA says:
High court judges are expected to hand down their decision over the government’s judicial review of Heather Hallett’s order at 2.30pm on Thursday.
The Cabinet Office has refused to provide the documents, arguing the request is “so broad” that it is “bound to catch” a large amount of irrelevant material.
Lawyers for the department say the inquiry does not have the legal power to force ministers to release messages and records it claims cover matters “unconnected to the government’s handling of Covid”.
However, Hugo Keith KC, for the inquiry chairwoman, has said the idea that the Cabinet Office could decide which aspects were relevant “would emasculate this and future inquiries”.
And Lord Pannick KC, on behalf of the former prime minister, argued there is a “real danger” of undermining public confidence in the process if the department wins its bid.
The government took the highly unusual step of launching the challenge in June, in a move which attracted criticism after days of public wrangling between the Cabinet Office and Hallett’s probe.
The former prime minister handed over his unredacted WhatsApp messages, diaries and 24 notebooks to the Cabinet Office in late May.
Johnson himself is backing Hallett, who rejected the argument that the material was irrelevant in a May ruling, in opposing the legal challenge over the request.
Lord Justice Dingemans and Mr Justice Garnham are expected to hand down their decision on Thursday.
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Dowden's claim Labour policy would add £1,000 to cost of average mortgages not supported by research, MPs told
Dawn Butler (Lab) raises a point of order. She says at a previous PMQs Oliver Dowden said that Labour’s plan to spend £28bn a year on green energy plans would put an extra £1,000 on mortgages. That figure came from a Daily Mail article, that attributed it to the Treasury. But when the UK Statistics Authority looked into this, it found that this was not based on any proper Treasury analysis. She says this has been confirmed by LBC. She asks if Dowden will correct the record.
Sir Linday Hoyle, the speaker, says that ministers will have heard the point, and that he is sure Dowden will want to correct any mistake as quickly as possible.
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Sarah Jones (Lab) says Rishi Sunak behaved like a “stroppy schoolboy” at the liaison committee yesterday. He has bitten off more than he can chew.
Dowden says that was more of a rant than a question.
And that’s it. PMQs is over
John Baron (Con) says, with employment at a record high, can Dowden explain why the Labour party has such a bad record on unemployment.
Dowden says he remembers the “no money left” note left by Labour in 2010. That should never happen again, he says.
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Paul Howell (Con) welcomes Fiona Hill (the former White House Russia expert, not Theresa May’s former co-chief of staff), as chancellor of Durham University. Dowden welcomes the appointment too.
Gerald Jones (Lab) asks about sarcomas. Awareness of these is low. What can the government do to address this?
Dowden says he has a great awareness of this. It is important to raise more awareness, he says.
Henry Smith (Con) says the chief minister of Gibraltar is in the gallery. Will the government protect the right of Gibraltarians to remain British as negotiations with Spain continue?
Dowden says he is happy to give that assurance.
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Kim Leadbeater (Lab) says she had the usual stack of emails today from constituents who cannot get proper care. Does Dowden agree that the NHS faces “managed decline” under the Tories. She refers to the letter from three thinktanks.
Dowden says he does not agree. He says under the Tories the NHS has “record funding. record doctors, record nurses, record scans and record operations”.
(Dowden may be right about these “record” numbers, but they are a function of inflation and population growth, not meaningful measures in real terms, or proportionately.)
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Aaron Bell (Con) says the government should open new dental schools. There is a place in his constituency that would make a good site for one, he says.
Dowden says the government has an “open mind” on the need for more dental schools.
Holly Mumby-Croft (Con) asks about the steel industry, and urges the government to take further measures to ensure the UK has a long-term, sustainable steel industry.
Dowden says Mumby-Croft is a champion for the industry. Tata and British Steel have had “meaningful offers of support”, he says.
Angela Crawley (SNP) asks if the government will hold an election now.
Dowden attacks the SNP’s record in government.
Maggie Throup (Con) asks about VAT on sunscreen. She says it should be removed, to save lives.
Dowden says, as as fair-headed person with a fair-headed family, he is very aware of the need for sunscreen, and the dangers of melanoma. But this is an issue for the Treasury, he says.
Sir Edward Leigh (Con) asks about a plan to move the grave of Guy Gibson’s dog at RAF Scampton, where migrants are being housed.
Dowden says he is sure that Home Office ministers will have heard this point.
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Mhairi Black, the deputy leader of the SNP at Westminster, quotes someone saying we should be comfortable using the private sector more. And another said we should use the private sector more. Which was the PM, and which was the leader of the opposition?
Dowden starts by saying he is sorry Black is standing down. He says he and Black joined the Commons at the same time. And he says he knows Black will want to celebrate King Charles getting his Scottish regalia in Edinburgh today.
It’s a joke. Black is a republican, and she seems to find it funny.
Black says she and Dowden joined the Commons at the same time, “and I’m pretty sure we will be leaving at the same time”. She asks
That’s the best joke of PMQs so far, and it generates a lot of laughter.
She asks Dowden to acknowledge the damage Brexit has done to the NHS.
Dowden says the NHS is doing well under the Tories.
UPDATE: Here is the clip from the Scotsman’s Alexander Brown.
You can tell how good this @MhairiBlack line is because Oliver Dowden's colleagues can only laugh along with it #PMQs pic.twitter.com/rcogn3xdxZ
— Alexander Brown (@AlexofBrown) July 5, 2023
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Rayner says it is obvious what needs to happen. More homes need to be built.
Dowden says she did not listen to what he said. The government is building more homes than Labour, he says. He says Rayner is in the pocket of the unions.
Rayner says the housing minister yesterday claimed people in temporary accommodation were not her responsibility. Whose responsibility is it?
Dowden claims house building is at record levels.
Rayner says people at risk of eviction will not be assured by that answer. She cites a family at risk of eviction, and asks what the government is doing to help them.
Dowden talks about non-eviction measures that might help low-income families.
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Rayner asks if the PM will finally ban no-fault evictions.
Dowden says Rishi Sunak will not take lectures in weakness from Keir Starmer. The last time Suank tried to sack Rayner, she got a promotion.
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Key event
Rayner says the only thing not going up is Dowden’s gags, which are “getting cheaper by the minute”.
Are buy-to-let properties included in the mortgage support package?
Dowden says the government is trying to help mortgage holders and renters.
He avoids the question about buy-to-let.
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Angela Rayner starts by welcoming what was said about the NHS. She also pays tribute to Lord Kerslake, who has died.
She says the fact that Dowden is here, and next week too, suggests the Tories have given up.
Do they still claim to be the party of home ownership?
Dowden also praises Lord Kerslake.
She says it may be a surprise to Rayner, “but some leaders trust their deputies to stand in for them”. He says he supports the Bank of England taking necessary measures to control inflation. The IMF has backed this, he says. But Labour would borrow £28bn a year, pushing up inflation. And it would cut domestic energy production, also pushing up inflation.
Stephen Metcalfe (Con) says he met residents last Friday who raised a petition to keep the last bank in their town open. Is the government supporting campaigns like this?
Dowden says Metcalfe is right to raise this issue. Banks are a cornerstone of the high street. Ultimately these are commercial decisions. But banks should take into account the views of communities. He says he trusts the bank will take appropriate action.
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Oliver Dowden starts by saying he is here because Rishi Sunak is at the service for the NHS. He welcomes Hoyle’s comments, and says the NHS is still a “treasured national institution”.
Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker of the Commons, starts by making a statement about today being the 75th anniversary of the NHS. He says Aneurin Bevan sent a message to health workers days before saying the birth of the service had been difficult. But he urged them to work together. Today the NHS still faces challenges, but it treats 1 million people a day, and is worth celebrating, he says. On behalf of the Commons, he expressed his thanks to NHS staff. And he says the creation of the NHS shows the value the Commons has in creating legislation.
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Oliver Dowden to face Angela Rayner at PMQs
Oliver Dowden, the deputy prime minister, will be taking PMQs shortly. He is facing Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader. Dowden is at the dispatch box because Rishi Sunak is at Westminster Abbey for the service for the NHS.
Sunak is missing next week’s PMQs too (because of a Nato summit), and he currently has the worst attendance rate at PMQs for a PM since 1979.
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This is from my colleague Polly Toynbee, who is at Westminster Abbey for the service to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the NHS. She says there was loud clapping when Keir Starmer arrived, but only a smattering of applause for Rishi Sunak.
Interesting. Here in Westminster abbey for the NHS 75th loud claps for Keir Starmer walking in, but bare smattering and much silence for Sunak. In the pews conflicting emotions: Dean of W’minster aptly says “Here is courage tested to its limits”.
— Polly Toynbee (@pollytoynbee) July 5, 2023
Health minister rejects Sajid Javid's call for royal commission on future of NHS
Yesterday Sajid Javid, the Tory former health secretary, called for the creation of a royal commission to consider the future of the NHS. He argued that this would take the debate about the future of the service out of the realm of party politics, and, in an article in the Times, he said that in private politicians believed that the NHS was unsustainable in its current form. He said:
Of course, as we approach that next general election, political parties will energetically debate the future of the NHS. But behind closed doors, they know the current set-up is unsustainable. Saying that publicly is much more difficult.
In an interview this morning Maria Caulfield, the health minister, dismissed the idea. A royal commission would take “an awful long time”, she told Times Radio. She went on:
We are investing now and building a workforce for the future. So I’m very confident that in 25 years time, the NHS will be thriving.
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Sunak should be apologising for state of NHS, not celebrating it, says Wes Streeting
Rishi Sunak should be apologising to the country about the state of the NHS, not celebrating it, Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary said today.
Speaking on GB News, he said:
I don’t begrudge NHS staff past and present celebrating the enormous contribution they make and the NHS has made to our country over the last 75 years.
What I do begrudge is the prime minister and other government ministers out celebrating, because when you look at the state the NHS is in today objectively we have the worst crisis in its history, the shortest or the lowest patient satisfaction ever and the highest waiting lists on record.
That’s really not something I think this government should be celebrating. If anything, they should be apologising to the country for the state that they’ve left the NHS in.
Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images
Sir Julian Hartley, chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents NHS trusts, said the organisation was under “intense pressure” on its 75th birthday.
Speaking on Sky News, Hartley said:
I’ve worked in the NHS 30 years and I think this is perhaps the most pressurised I’ve seen it in terms of all of the challenges, in terms of recovering from Covid… urgent and emergency care demand is hugely significant, and then, of course, all the background issues around ageing population and so on.
But it is important to remember that it wasn’t just the pandemic – from 2010 to 2019 the NHS spent 18% less than 14 other European countries, so in terms of investment in the NHS, and indeed social care. Those are critical issues to resolve.
Just over half of adults in Britain are satisfied with the healthcare system in the UK, PA Media reports. PA says:
According to new figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), 53.9% of people surveyed between May 17 and June 11 said they tended to be satisfied, dropping to 46.6% among 25-34 year-olds.
The age group with the highest level of satisfaction was people aged 75 and over, at 59.3%.
Across the regions of England, satisfaction was lowest in the West Midlands at 44.7% and highest in Yorkshire & the Humber at 61.0%.
In Wales the level was 53.3% and in Scotland it was 61.4%.
It is the first time the ONS has asked this question as part of its regular opinions and lifestyle survey, which means there are no previous figures for comparison.
The Guardian has been given exclusive access to the health service in Tredegar, the south Wales town that forged the NHS. The NHS was launched in 1948 by the Labour MP Aneurin Bevan, inspired in part by the Tredegar Medical Aid Society in his birthplace and constituency. It has since saved the lives of millions and inspired health systems around the world.
Seventy-five years on, the Guardian found residents, patients and staff still proud of Bevan’s legacy, but anxious about the future of the NHS.
John McDonnell accuses Starmer of being on 'search and destroy' mission against Labour's left
John McDonnell, who was shadow chancellor when Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader, has accused Keir Starmer of being on a “search and destroy” mission against the left in his party.
He made the comment in an interview with BBC’s Newsnight, in which he urged Starmer to be more tolerant of alternative views.
For months there have been complaints about how leftwingers in the party are being refused to the right to stand as candidates, or otherwise obstructed in internal selection contests. Some Corbynites have been expelled.
Concern about this trend escalated last week when Neal Lawson, head of the centre-left pressure group Compass, was told he was at risk of being expelled. Lawson is not a leftwinger in Labour terms, but he is a long-term advocate of pluralism and electoral reform (a cause not supported by Starmer).
Lawson faces being thrown out of the party because he retweeted approvingly a tweet two years ago from the Lib Dem MP Layla Moran about Green/Lib Dem cooperation in council elections. He says he was just making a general point about his support for progressive parties cooperating, but his tweet has been interpreted as Lawson not backing the Labour candidate in the contest referenced by Moran.
McDonnell told Newsnight:
I think what [Starmer has] allowed to happen is a rightwing faction become drunk with power and use devices within the party almost on a search and destroy of the left.
They seem to be more interested in destroying the presence of the left of the party than in getting a Labour government.
McDonell also said this did not happen under Tony Blair.
Under Tony Blair we didn’t have mass expulsions like this or anything like that.
We didn’t have the withdrawal of the whip unless it was something very extreme. There was an atmosphere of tolerance but actually respect as well.
In response, a Labour spokesperson said:
The public need to know that if someone is a Labour candidate that is a mark of quality they can rely on. It’s absolutely right that we have high standards for those who are going to represent the Labour party at election time.
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Justin Welby and other faith leaders urge Sunak to take lead in finding 'compassionate' international answer to refugee crisis
Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, and other faith leaders have criticised the illegal migration bill on the grounds that it lets down “the most vulnerable” and “fails to meet the basic test of an evidence-based and workable policy”.
In a letter to the Times, they say an international approach to the refugee crisis is needed and they urge the government to take a lead in finding one. They say:
With more than 100 million people displaced around the world, this crisis will not be solved without significant collective endeavour.
To improve the bill, we support an amendment requiring the government to produce a ten-year strategy, collaborating internationally to stop the boats here and globally, and tackle refugee crises and human trafficking.
The UK should take a lead in setting out a just, compassionate approach, ensuring that people seeking sanctuary are protected, claims decided quickly and justly, human traffickers are punished, and the root causes of mass migration are properly addressed.
Welby has tabled amendments to the bill to achieve this, and he is expected to speak about them in the debate in the Lords this afternoon.
The Times letter has also been signed by representatives of the Salvation Army, Progressive Judaism, the Hindu Forum of Britain, the Network of Sikh Organisations UK, Makkah Mosque and the Scottish Ahlul Bayt Society.
Tony Blair urges expanded role for private sector in NHS
The Tony Blair Institute, the eponymous thinktank run by the former prime minister, has published a report today setting out how he thinks the NHS should be reformed. As Denis Campbell reports, it advocates greater use of private healthcare firms to provide services for NHS patients (something Blair championed when he was in office).
The report is not about charging patients. It says being “free at the point of use and funded through general taxation” should remain the principle at the heart of the health service, and it warns that if the NHS does not reform, the private sector will benefit.
But it does suggest using the NHS app, and NHS “personal health accounts” (which it advocates), to make it easier for people to access certain health services for which they might pay. In his forward to the report, Blair writes.
There should be active encouragement of new providers to enter the system, particularly for high-volume, low-complexity services, many of which can now be provided digitally. The NHS App is creating a vibrant marketplace for digital providers to enter the NHS centrally in ways that were not possible before, creating opportunities for greater choice and competition; and for partnership between the private health sector and the NHS. This can include the availability of co-payment options to expand more rapidly or offer additional features.
By “high-volume, low-complexity”, Blair is referring to services like dermatology and physiotherapy.
In an interview with Sky News this morning, Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, was asked if he favoured people paying to access some health services. He rejected the idea, saying:
I think we’ve already got a two-tier system in this country where people who can afford it are paying to go private and those who can’t are being left behind.
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NHS waiting lists could go up even more, health minister says on 75th anniversary
Good morning. The NHS is celebrating its 75th anniversary today, but “celebrating” might not be the most appropriate word. There are strong grounds for believing it’s in a grim state, and they have been set out this morning in a powerful letter to political leaders from three leading health thinktanks.
In the letter, the King’s Fund, the Nuffield Trust and the Health Foundation say the NHS is “in a critical condition”. They acknowledge that public support for the institution is “rock solid”. But they say that, unless it gets investment and reform, it faces “managed decline that gradually erodes the guarantee of safety in place of fear it was designed to create”.
The full letter is here. And here is an extract:
The NHS has endured a decade of under-investment compared to the historic average, and capital spending has been well below comparable countries. As a result, the health service has insufficient resources to do its job: fewer hospital beds than almost all similar countries, outdated equipment, dilapidated buildings and failing IT. Despite long-term objectives to reduce reliance on acute hospitals and move care closer to people’s homes, spending continues to flow in the opposite direction. Long-term thinking is essential to meet the challenges ahead – from responding to changing health needs to harnessing AI and new technology …
Long-term political action is also needed to address the fraying health of the UK population. The NHS was not set up to go it alone. Protecting and improving people’s health depends on a wider system of services and support that includes local government and social security. Yet people are falling between the cracks of public services and the NHS is often left to pick up the pieces …
Persisting with the current addiction to short-termism and eye-catching initiatives will risk the health service being unable to adapt to the huge challenges ahead and reach its centenary. It is time to move away from quick fixes and over-promising what the NHS can deliver and give it the tools it needs to succeed.
This morning Maria Caulfield, a health minister, has been giving interviews. She was asked about the recent figures showing that a record 7.4 million people in England are on an NHS waiting list, and she said the figure could go up. Speaking to Sky News, she said:
To patients, what matters is how long they’re waiting. They’re not really worried about who else is on the waiting list. They want to know when their procedure or operation is happening, and we’ve significantly reduced that delay. We’ve virtually eliminated a two-year wait.
Asked again about the 7.4 million figure, she said:
That probably will go up higher because we are offering more procedures.
This was interesting, for two reasons.
First, and most obviously, Caulfield was admitting that Rishi Sunak is currently not on track to meet his pledge to reduce waiting lists. This is obvious to anyone who has looked at the figures, but getting ministers to admit the obvious is not always straightforward.
Second, and more interestingly, Caulfield seemed – intentionally or not – to be redefining the pledge. In his announcement in January Sunak said: “NHS waiting lists will fall and people will get the care they need more quickly.” Asked to explain it at his press conference, he refused to set a timescale for when he expected the number of people on the headline waiting list to go down.
But he also mentioned subsidiary targets, reducing the amount of time people spend waiting for an operation, and he did set deadlines for these targets. He said he wanted waits lasting more than 18 months to be eliminated by April. (This target was narrowly missed.) By next spring he wanted waits of more than a year to be eliminated, he said.
Today Caulfield seemed to be saying that these are the targets that matter most. “To patients, what matters is how long they’re waiting. They’re not really worried about who else is on the waiting list.”
She may be right. But this is not what Sunak told the nation in January.
Here is the agenda for the day.
11am: Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer are among those attending a service at Westminster Abbey to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the NHS.
12pm: Oliver Dowden, the deputy PM, faces Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, at PMQs.
1pm: Claire Coutinho, the education minister, gives a speech on free speech to the Policy Exchange thinktank.
After 3pm: Peers begin the third day of the report stage debate on the illegal migration bill.
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