From a 2023 editorial in The Week, we learn that German politicians used the word Zeitenwende (meaning epochal shift) to describe the effect of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While that was well justified, it seems to me that in the UK we’re getting our own version in the form of the alarmingly deluded Rwanda Bill passing its third reading in the Commons (albeit with plenty of absurd Tory theatrics), reinforcing the new Alice in Wonderland politics, and further appalling revelations coming thick and fast in the Post Office Horizon scandal. How either of these situations came about just beggars belief but major factors in the Rwanda Plan are the low calibre of a government populated by Brexiteers and having no mandate, and in the Post Office case serial dishonesty over years, unquestioning group think, poor project management and zero oversight of the PO’s right to prosecute. Another key factor highlighted in The Week is that the principle of these Arms Length bodies is that they must be run like a business, where profit and efficiency are prioritised over accountability.
To my mind one of the most alarming aspects of the Rwanda Plan has been the PM’s and some ministers’ preparedness to disregard international law and their disrespect for the second chamber. During the Rwanda debate Robert Jenrick spoke at length and said ‘the law is our servant, not our master’: this is a clear attack on our constitution and a step into totalitarianism. Sunak and his immigration sidekick Tom Pursglove have been on the airwaves ‘urging’ (even ‘warning’) the Lords to get on with passing this legislation and ‘not to obstruct the will of the British people’ when a) it’s not even the ‘will’ of the Conservative Party as a whole and b) they have no right to undermine the legislative process in this way. The Lords are there to scrutinise and amend draft legislation, as they see fit, not to do the government’s bidding. It was good to hear Lord Carlile voice his concerns about the government’s stance, because many will just take on board that perverted Tory version of the Lords’ function.
The Independent usefully expands on this theme. ‘The PM said his controversial deportation plan is an “urgent national priority” and told the upper chamber it is “now time to pass this bill”. But peers described his comments as “vacuous” and said that they showed he did not understand the role of the Lords, as they warned him not to try to “ram” his legislation through. In a sign of the depth of opposition the prime minister faces, leading lawyer and crossbench peer Alex Carlile denounced the bill as “a step towards totalitarianism”. The former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation also accused ministers of trying to place themselves “to an unacceptable level above the law”, as he warned that the integrity of the legal system was “under attack because of internal political quarrelling in the Conservative Party”.
Former child refugee and Labour peer Alf Dubs reinforced these arguments, calling the PM’s exhortations ‘outrageous’, and superbly, ‘Lord Dubs said Mr Sunak was “politically illiterate” for piling pressure on peers, adding that it is not a matter of “party politics” but one of “basic constitutional principles”. We have to hope that the Lords will firmly stick to their guns and won’t be cowed by this government’s cynical attempt to undermine them. It wasn’t all doom and gloom in the Commons, though: some mirth resulted from Therese Coffey trying to get one over Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who’d alluded to the ‘Kigali’ government. What a fool Coffey made of herself – a former minister appearing not to know that Kigali wasn’t a different African country but the capital of Rwanda.
The constitutional issues are alarming enough but so are some details of the Bill. ApparentlyHome Office staff removing asylum seekers will be told to implement last-minute injunctions from the European court of human rights only if ordered to do so by a minister. This is a disgraceful position to put civil servants in and the attack on democracy represented by this bill is a further threat to the nation’s mental health.
It’s come much too late and we have to seriously question whether so much of the Horizon scandal wrong doing would have occurred if the media had been on top of this from the start, but now they’re covering the Post Office Inquiry it’s been shocking what’s come to light. We saw last week with one particular PO employee (‘I’m not technically minded’ Steve Bradshaw) evidence of an apparently widespread underlying belief that the subpostmasters were guilty. This week we heard the astonishing admission, denied up till now, that Fujitsu knew about the bugs and errors in Horizon from the start. The systematic denial and cover up has meant 20 years of persecution for the victims. A tweeter observed: ‘The problem with Horizon wasn’t “bugs, defects and flaws” – all software has those. On Fujitsu’s side it was bad basic design and dishonesty. On the Post Office/government side it was inability to manage a complex contract, overweening self-importance and dishonesty’. We now have to wonder if and when former Fujitsu CEO Michael Keegan (husband of Cabinet Minister Gillian) will be summoned to give evidence but so far there’s been mainstream media silence on this.
The Conservatives have been keen to scapegoat Sir Ed Davey, who was the Post Office Minister from 2010-2012, who initially refused to meet campaigner Alan Bates and who, astonishingly, has maintained to the BBC that his busy diary won’t allow time to be interviewed. Not only this, but apparently Davey subsequently became a consultant, earning fees of £275,000, at Herbert Smith Freehills who were the lawyers defending the Post Office and where his brother is a partner. But clearly, many more ministers and politicians have been culpable. It was exciting to hear that a former Post Office worker, Yvonne Tracey, has announced her intention to stand against Davey at the next election. How many more might stand? This could be something really big because the scandal epitomises so much of what is wrong with our politics and corporate conduct and many members of the public would support them if funding the deposit was an issue.
People are now rightly wondering what exactly will happen about the exoneration and compensation Rishi Sunak talked up last week. This government has form on promising compensation but not delivering it, for example with the infected blood and Windrush victims, very few of whom have been compensated. But last week there was a misleading headline in the Metro: ‘Fujitsu’s boss: we will pay up’, when what Paul Patterson actually said was that they had a ‘moral responsibility’ to pay. Not the same thing at all. John Crace picks up on the sickening degree of attention MPs are suddenly giving to this scandal when most of them have totally ignored it for years. The worst examples are MPs like Priti Patel, who have themselves photographed with victims, claiming to have supported them all along. I wonder how many victims wrote to their MPs for support over the years but were ignored or fobbed off.
‘The government is just about the last handful of halfwits who believe that the new legislation to exonerate post office operators would have been rushed through this week regardless of the ITV drama. Only on Thursday morning, the delusional energy secretary, Claire Coutinho, was telling BBC Breakfast that the whole thing was a total coincidence. That justice for post office operators had been at the top of Rishi Sunak’s inbox since – “Ooh, let me think” – well before Christmas. The rest of us live in the real world….The country is seized with indignation. An indignation all the more righteous for most of us having taken our eyes off the ball. People want those responsible for perpetuating one of the worst miscarriages of justice over a period of 25 years to be named and shamed’.
What I find interesting as well is that the Commons Business Select Committee is having a hearing at the same time as the public inquiry. It sounds rather like another belated attempt to create a narrative that these people cared all along. Or are they just thinking of their seats ahead of the election?
Speaking of public inquiries, we see that Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, who was granted absence from the Covid Inquiry due to his extended sick leave, is back at work. Many will be wondering when he will give evidence. He’s been involved in so many dubious interventions in recent years that it would be a travesty of justice if he’s just let off.
Again signifying the alternative universe ministers inhabit, Pinocchio Hunt is once again talking up tax cuts even though the country can ill afford them with public services crumbling and inflation spiking. Another desperate carrot being dangled by the Conservatives as they try to claw back some authority. ‘With polls predicting electoral disaster for Tories, Chancellor says ‘economy would be more successful if we had more competitive taxes’.
Meanwhile, we see more terrible PR on the part of Rishi Sunak, prompting us to wonder who’s advising him and who’s writing the current Tory script. Besides pathetically trying to maintain the myth that the government has ‘a plan’, one of the latest contents is the ‘going back to square one’ under Labour. The clever dick who thought this up clearly hasn’t reflected that things were a lot better back in 2010 – you could get a GP appointment, people didn’t need food banks and public services weren’t run into the ground. But surely what could be Rishi Sunak’s Gordon Brown/Gillian Duffy moment came on Friday during a visit to Winchester, when Sunak laughed in the face of a woman engaging him about the state of the NHS before then walking off.
When Michelle Mone and Doug Barrowman of PPE fraud fame did their car crash interview with Laura Kuenssberg they may well have initially thought (like Prince Andrew with Emily Maitlis) job done. But no – since then opprobrium has grown and with even more cause now. It’s emerged that companies associated with Barrowman were offering tax avoidance schemes which, following investigation by HMRC, have led to ‘an estimated 61,000 contractors facing life-changing bills for unpaid taxes, sometimes totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds. The promoters, however, were not pursued by the tax office…. Experts say the material raises questions about whether the companies in question – and those connected to them – should be investigated for any role they played in providing misleading information to HMRC about tax affairs’. One victim (or avoidant!) owing thousands of pounds after HMRC closed this loophole in 2016 said: ‘HMRC have behaved very poorly in this matter. They’ve chased us hard but seem to be ignoring the purveyors of this snake oil’. The difficulty for Barrowman is that he’s lied and hidden so much that it leads us to suspect any defence he tries to mount.
Another example of opacity in the NHS relates to the increasing use of so-called ‘physician associates’ in place of experienced GPs, a measure which was the subject of legislation under the radar last week. ‘Around 4,000 physician associates work in the NHS in England. Ministers and health chiefs plan to increase the figure to 10,000 to help plug widespread gaps in the NHS workforce. However, there is widespread confusion among the public about their role and relationship with fully trained medics. Prof Partha Kar, a leading diabetes specialist, recently warned that the rollout of physician associates had been “an unqualified mess” and that their “vague” remit meant their use by hospitals and GP practices was “questionable at best and dangerous at worst”.
Many patients won’t know if they’re seeing a PA (their training is just 2 years and they’re not regulated, unlike doctors regulated by the GMC), alarming errors have been made by them and it appears there’s been no effort to inform patients. A lot of good work to publicise this situation has been done by Dr Matt Kneale (@drmattuk on Twitter) and Keep our NHS Public. ‘Physician’ isn’t even a descriptor we would use in the UK and a survey showed that 57% had never heard of PAs. Needless to say, NHS England struck a defensive stance: ‘Physician associates are an important part of clinical teams across the NHS, providing support to thousands of patients with appropriate supervision every day, while freeing up other clinicians to care for those patients who need their expertise the most’. Sounds reassuring, doesn’t it, but it’s anything but. Something to keep an eye on and let others know about.
Still on the NHS, and another area lacking transparency, we hear that drug shortages notified to DHSC and the Health Secretary months ago have still not been rectified. The one currently under the spotlight is a motor neurone disease drug called riluzole, but we’ve heard similar complaints about shortages of HRT and of drugs for ADHD. ‘The health secretary, Victoria Atkins, has been accused of failing to ensure the supply of the only drug that can lengthen the lives of motor neurone disease sufferers by months despite officials being alerted to a shortage last autumn’. She might say that she wasn’t the minister at that time but she’s also ignored a December letter from the Motor Neurone Disease Association and, as we know, has still refused to talk to the striking junior doctors. Some reassurance appears to be given by Martin Imms, senior director and country manager for the pharmaceutical company Glenmark, who said: ‘A number of manufacturers have withdrawn from the UK market – that has led to a shortage of stock in the UK. This issue was flagged to us by the DHSC, following which we have worked hard with various teams internally including our integrated supply function to meet this product demand’.
Perhaps less reassuring is his management-speak: ‘We should now be in a position to support the full market volume demand for the foreseeable future and will continue to work closely with the DHSC to monitor the situation and mitigate the impact of any subsequent issues arising’. Let’s hope it’s resolved soon: it’s stressful enough having challenging conditions in the first place without worrying about where the supply of essential drugs is going to come from.
There’s some good news for those who understandably complain about lack of electric vehicle charging points. We’ve become so used to the thousands of BT green street cabinets that we might not even register them. Used to house connection points for the copper wires underpinning phone and broadband services, they’re expected to become redundant with the further rollout of fibre optic cabling. The idea is to convert these cabinets to charging points, starting with East Lothian. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for these to come to our local areas.
Finally, something uplifting amid the gloom, in the form of this being the day when the first displays of snowdrops are expected. The scientific name Galanthus apparently means milk flower – very apt. This website below alerts you to 70 of the best places, though it’s worth bearing in mind that some great places never make it into lists. Happy viewing!
Politics and mental health - the missing link? 