Swire’s priority:
“Sir Hugo Swire, a Conservative, asks if May will back the first ever meeting of Commonwealth trade ministers.
May says the government applauds this and is looking for trade deals with the Commonwealth. It wants to make a success of Brexit.”
And what a WASTE of a question! Was May REALLY likely to say: “The government thinks this is really daft and it wants to sabotage Brexit”?
No, it was one of those brown-nose, planted questions to make the government look good.
Jeremy Hunt has accused local health chiefs who are rationing treatments after running out of money of making “easy” choices.
The Health Secretary dismissed recent controversies – involving hip and knee replacements, eye surgery and fertility treatment – insisting it was perfectly possible to both “improve care and make efficiencies”.
The comment came as Mr Hunt came close to admitting that Theresa May had told him the NHS will receive no extra money in this Parliament.
The NHS had been given all the money it asked for – admitting it was only enough to “get going” on a restructuring plan.
Meanwhile, the Commons Health Select Committee was also told that funding-per-head in England will actually be cut in 2018-19.
The committee heard evidence from both Mr Hunt and Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, amid growing concern about a gathering storm in the health service.
The National Audit Office has warned that, without proper funding and tough efficiencies, “the result will be some combination of worse services, fewer staff, deficits, and restrictions on new treatments”
In recent months, there have been protests that patients are waiting up to 15 months for cataract surgery, that IVF treatment is being axed in many areas, and similar controversies about orthopaedic care.
Sarah Wollaston, the committee’s Conservative chairman, pointed out to Mr Hunt that there were “numerous examples of rationing”, adding: “This is happening on a widespread scale.”
But the Health Secretary said: “I don’t accept that, in order to make those efficiency savings, you have to make changes that will have an impact negatively on patient care
“There is of course an easy way to make savings – which is to reduce the availability of care for patients
“But there is a harder way, but the right way, which is to find ways that improve care and improve efficiency at the same time.”
Mr Hunt insisted the Department of Health did not allow rationing that made care worse for patients, telling the committee: “We step in.”
Last month, Mr Stevens warned that much of a promised extra £10 billion each year for the NHS has been “back-ended to 2020”, which made tough choices inevitable in the intervening years.
It was only in 2016-17 that the NHS was getting “broadly what we asked for” – which meant that, between 2017 and 2020, the Government was providing less cash than requested.
Yet ministers had repeatedly dismissed warnings of a crisis on the basis that the NHS had been “given the money it asked for” – and that the cash injection was “frontloaded”.
Today, Mr Hunt changed tack, acknowledging the NHS had only been given the cash “they said they needed to get going” – to “kick-start” the five-year transformation plan.
Emphasising the hard years ahead, Mr Stevens said there would be “negative per person funding” – a per capita cut – in the financial year 2018-19.
At the weekend, it was reported that Theresa May insisted there would be no extra cash for the NHS in next month’s Autumn Statement.
Asked if that was correct, Mr Hunt replied: “It was a private meeting.”
“Community Voice on Planning (CoVoP) held its first conference in Leeds on Saturday 15th October – with the conference title being “NIMBY – reality or slur”. I attended – not to find out if I am one, but to explore the background as to why e.g. media, so immediately, and regularly, calls on those concerned with current planning matters to defend themselves against being NIMBYs.
The conference had a diverse content, which explored fully the mess that is the current planning system, and the very poor outcomes generated by planning law that is simply not fit for purpose.
An opening letter was read from Clive Betts MP, chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee. This committee has nothing to do with government, but acts as scrutineer of the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) re policies, administration and spending. One of their recent calls has been for Gavin Barwell MP (new Housing and Planning Minister) to respond the the DCLG-commissioned Local Planning Expert Group’s recommendations on planning. This includes a statement that Leeds’ and Bradford’s Core Strategy housing targets are more than 500 houses per year over-provisioned.
Andrew Wood from CPRE presented some complex ideas about greenbelt use for housing and seemed to be suggesting a deal-based planning arrangement where housing needs were met by very selective use of greenbelt sites where fully assessed and sustainable use and requirement had been carried out. He developed the idea that greenbelt is one of the last planning policy tools that local authorities have to control patterns of development, but stated the obvious threats to existing greenbelt boundaries.
Jenny Unsworth from Congleton asked the question “Does the National Planning Policy Framework 2012 (NPPF) work?” Through a well presented summary of planning milestones, leading towards the position in her own area, Jenny demonstrated that planning reality in Congleton is the same in Leeds and Bradford – and very much anywhere else in England. Her key point was that the workings of the NPPF and Localism were at opposite ends of the planning spectrum. She also reminded us that excessive and undelivered housing numbers were resulting in 5-year land supply failure, leading to local authority plans being automatically out of date. It therefore followed that planning had become an ad hoc system defined by appeals, rather than a plan-led one, as sought by the NPPF. No surprises to find her answer to the question to be “No”.
Julie Mabberly, Chair of CoVoP, and planning activist in Oxforshire, ridiculed the extraordinary basis for setting housing numbers that is the Objectively Assessed Housing Needs system. She described the system as from the pages of “Alice in Wonderland” and demonstrated through various slides that a finger-in-the-air figure for housing need became inflated (and totally un-achievable) through a series of speculative additions to housing need, that also included double-counting. Her summary was that OBJECTIVE housing needs assessment was anything but that.
Dr Quentin Bradley, from Leeds Beckett University set out the controlling influence of developers, and in particular the significance of land price and hoarding of land, in respect of affordable housing provision. Dr Bradley suggested that the current structure of both the land and housing markets contribute to a shortage of housing being built, and the affordable housing build ratio that comes out of that. He argued that with the present structure in place, building more homes alone will not solve the crisis.
Dr Hugh Ellis from the Town and Country Planning Association set out the significant role planning has played in the formation of the nation’s built housing since the Association’s formation some 120 years ago. In particular Dr Ellis considered the outcomes of the planning of garden cities in comparison to the broken system that is currently in place.
A pleniary session concluded the conference, introduced by WARD chair, Dr. David Ingham. He referred to the stimulation given to the WARD group in respect of the old order, from DCLG, based on the adoption by Bradford of its flawed Core Strategy, some of the policies of which have been written by the very Inspector who declared it sound. Dr Ingham also called for more MP input at Westminster to change planning law, and thanked in particular, Greg Mulholland MP, for his long support to WARD over the last 7 years of campaigning and for his work in Parliament to change planning law.
The panel of 3 MPs, which also included Paul Sherriff MP and Jason McCartney MP, showed their understanding of a broken planning system and their attendance at this conference, with Greg Mulholland, is proof of that.
My view from this remains unchanged, and that is before I went into the conference I was sure the current planning system is not fit for purpose. I came out with more evidence that that is exactly the case. With an appeal-led planning system for the largest housing sites now in place, the NPPF has totally failed to deliver the housing that is needed, or of the right type and in the right places. The result of this is the great threat to the precious greenbelt. If protecting that makes me a NIMBY then I am proud to stand up and be labelled as that.
Martin Hughes, Treasurer of WARD, Chair of Yorkshire Greenspace Alliance”
http://wardyorkshire.org/latest-news/ward-attends-leeds-covop-conference
“The cost of a room in a care home, presently about £750 a week, will be £1,000 a week by 2020, experts warn.
However, with Britain facing a nationwide care funding crisis, even that figure could soar.
“A report by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) last week found services for the elderly were nearing breaking point.
The care watchdog warned of a wave of home closures if staff and funding gaps are not filled, adding that in the past six years 1,500 homes had closed.
The firms running care homes will try to plug the gap by raising fees, experts say. Valuing Care, a respected care fees analyst, predicts they will rise 8 per cent a year ‘for the next decade’.
That would mean the average fee reaching £1,020 a week by 2020, or £53,040 a year and that accounts only for a place in a residential care home. Fees for elderly people needing specialist medical care may be even higher than that.
Most people will have to pay this themselves as local authorities currently cover your care bills only if you have less than £23,250 in savings, investments, properties and other assets (£26,250 in Scotland and £24,000 in Wales).
… Most people think a care home stay will be relatively short but the typical stay is eight years.”
This Friday … Exeter University … usual suspects … best place to do business … opportunities … vision … spin … more spin … puff … more puff … and:
“After the summit, the aim is to develop a South West Growth Charter, backing Local Enterprise Partnerships with a strong business voice to complement the work being done by local government leaders. This will be presented to government ahead of the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement next month, where he will set out the government’s economic plans.”
Ah, yes … now Owl gets the idea! A re-brand for our LEP to make it look more democratic … good luck with that one.
Excellent summary
Owl only had time to make quick notes on what Swire said about the NHS in Devon in the Parliamentary debate this afternoon. It will appear on BBC iplayer later so you can see for yourself.
Martyn Oates, Spotlight reporter, gave an overview of the afternoon with a few short clips of the debating chamber.
North Devon MPs said there was a crisis, especially in their area, there was not enough funding. Tory MP Cox said it funding was inadequate.
The ?Minister of State (Dunne) admitted it was a “challenging situation”.
Swire began by saying he thought the Minister was in a difficult situation as the plan is out for consultation [so why organise the debate if the Minister can’t say anything!] but it was good to see the Devon MPs there.
He said “we are where we are” [duh!] and “we have to make do” and it is a “process of change”, continuing with “we need a genuinely 21st century NHS”.
He toed the party line that the NHS had already been given an extra £8 billion for the year and then an extra £2 billion extra and Mrs May has said there is no more money.
Martyn Oates asked him for a comment on what Neil Parish MP had said [a flattering direct quote from Owl earlier this week on this blog] who said they should not be pitting themselves against each other hospital by hospital but fighting for them all.
Swire said that it should not become a “Dutch auction”. That was a bit difficult to understand for Owl, as a Dutch auction is one where the price (in this case number of hospitals) goes down and down till a buyer is found (or in this a minimum number is reached?) for what remains of them. As Swire IS championing keeping only Sidmouth hospital beds open, not keeping all Devon’s beds open, he is actually guilty of making it into what he says it should not be – some sort of auction – Dutch or Double-Dutch, who knows?
But Swire is an ex-auctioneer, so maybe he can explain that to us!
He then made what Owl considered a very snide remark about Parish being OK as, whatever happened, the 24 bed Tiverton hospital in his constituency would remain whilst saying NOTHING about the fact that Parish’s constituency is definitely losing beds at Honiton and could lose those at Seaton leaving his part of East Devon with no beds at all – Axminster already having list theirs).
He said there is a role for ” much-loved” hospitals but what that role is remains to be seen [double duh!].
He then finished with what he keeps repeating and which we must challenge: he said it is NOT true that a hospital without beds us not a hospital.
EAST DEVON: we MUST get this constituency out of this man’s hands.
Another BBC Devon Live post:
“An application to redevelop a former hotel site near Ilfracombe was refused by North Devon Council because of concerns about the impact on the local area, the authority has confirmed.
Developers had applied to demolish the former Lee Bay Hotel and build 20 homes, a cafe and toilet block, and create an open space.
Members of the planning committee voted last Wednesday against recommendations for approval. The council said it was because the “benefits of redeveloping the site did not outweigh the impact of the proposed new development on the character of the area and landscape”.
Just imagine, instead of a hotel you had Sidford Fields industrial estate, Ilfracombe!
BBC Devon – Martyn Oates repeats Swire tweet:
“East Devon MP @HugoSwire: “We are using the NHS as a very expensive social care service and then asking it to make efficiencies”.”
1. It’s you, not we – you, Mr Swire will rarely if ever need to use the NHS as you can easily afford private health and social care.
2. THIS IS WHAT YOU VOTED FOR IN PARLIAMENT AND YOUR BLOG SAYS EFFICIENCIES ARE POSSIBLE.
Copied in full, too important to precis.
Expect trouble. On Tuesday, health secretary Jeremy Hunt and NHS England head Simon Stevens appear before the Commons health committee. Sarah Wollaston, GP and chair, has already said she wants no one quoting the mythical “£10bn extra” the government pretends the NHS has received, yet Hunt brazenly used it again on the Today programme.
Thankfully, Stevens is unlikely to indulge in the same delusional fantasies about the state of his service. He already warned the public accounts committee in September of this “incredibly financially challenging period”, and “incredible” is the word he should cleave to. As every trust is forced to produce a financial plan that balances on paper, most – in private – admit these are fairy-tales; Chris Hopson of NHS Providers makes plain these pigs won’t fly. Hunt relies on threats and micro-managing. Just yesterday he put another three debt-ridden trusts into “special measures” to warn others their heads will be on Whitehall spikes. But there’s safety in numbers: he can’t sack them all.
Theresa May has said there is no more money: the NHS must save £22bn by 2020, despite three quarters of trusts being up to their ears in debt and missing waiting targets by miles. If she could cut police costs by 20%, why can’t the NHS, she asks. Because crime has dropped like a stone over recent decades while NHS need heads skywards, with growing numbers of the old, and collapsing social care. She risks a brutal brush with NHS reality before long.
But that’s not all. By Friday all 44 areas have to produce a sustainability and transformation plan (STP), unleashing vehement local protest against any mergers or closures.
After Lansley’s catastrophic 2012 act blew the NHS into myriad competing fragments, this re-reorganisation was meant to repair the damage and glue the fractured parts together again – a good idea. Stevens devised STPs to bind each area into a single unit, combining GPs, mental health and hospital services in one budget as a coherent whole. That might mean amalgamating maternity or A&E departments, rationalising stroke or cardiac care. Good idea, in theory.
But these plans collide with the £22bn “savings”, so how will local people trust the good intentions of these plans? NHS England has rightly taken fright: the Health Service Journal reveals there have been orders requiring each area to send every STP announcement to the headquarters communications team to make sure they “articulate tangible benefits for patients” in language that is “clear and compelling”. But it may take more than “compelling” language to assuage local fears.
Few of these plans have yet been agreed, allowing rumours and fears to fester – and when they do emerge, the government can expect no backing, not even from their own MPs and councillors. Expect every politician, irrespective of party, to dash to join the local “Save Our Hospital” demo. Any who pause to suggest some plans might be good for patients will be mown down in the stampede. Bandwagon campaigners will join every protest, regardless.
A cluster of hospital protesters went to Downing Street and the Commons last week, with petitions about closures from Barnstaple, Dewsbury, Chorley, Huddersfield, Grantham and St Helier. Each has their own circumstance, so it’s well-nigh impossible for local people to know which units should be “saved” and which rightly closed.
Among them were protesters about the Horton hospital in Banbury. At last week’s prime minister’s questions, the Tory MP for North Oxfordshire, Victoria Prentis, asked an impassioned question: “Does the prime minister share my sadness that the majority of Banbury’s babies cannot be delivered, as I was, at the Horton general hospital? Will she join with me to put pressure on the trust to reopen the unit?” The PM replied: “Every effort is being made …”
Horton swears they’ve moved heaven and earth to hire doctors but none would come: there’s a 24% vacancy rate
The Horton maternity unit closed abruptly this month after failing to hire middle-grade doctors, leaving a midwife-led unit. Part of the Oxford University Hospitals, its HR director swears they have moved heaven and earth to hire doctors but none would come: there’s a 24% vacancy rate in the district. The Horton obstetric unit lost its validation for training doctors as too few babies were being born there to qualify, so junior doctors won’t apply. They are still advertising, promising to reopen if they can recruit. Managers spell out the situation in painstaking detail, answering every possible query. But all this is to no avail.
A vociferous local Keep the Horton General campaign gathered 5,000 people to hold hands round the hospital, amid longstanding suspicions that it might be axed despite a plan to rebuild it. Every party supports the protest, with their Tory MP as militant as the rest. She says she doesn’t trust the management: “They make decisions about us without us.” She and the campaigners mistrust whatever they are told.
The Banbury Guardian relishes the story, as the local press always does. “It’s lovely how the community has come together,” Prentis says. Banbury businesses are offering any obstetric doctor recruited free shirts, free beer, cheap accommodation and discounted fees at a local private school. A packed meeting roasted NHS managers about the journey time for mothers in labour to travel to the John Radcliffe in Oxford. Nothing creates such feelgood community cohesion as a local NHS threat.
Talking to both sides, I am inclined to believe the managers’ good faith. But with deeper cuts scheduled for the years to 2020, can anyone know for certain where they might fall? At the Witney byelection, the Horton and other Oxfordshire NHS closures feature prominently. How Tory MPs get away with it beats me: they voted for these NHS cuts.
Watch this pattern repeated around the country as STP plans unfold. “Clear and compelling” language may not be enough when the NHS professionals, even the doctors, struggle to be believed. In the fog of war, with suspicions rife, local people have no way of detecting the good plans from dangerous cuts. As Stevens warned MPs: “Let’s be clear, there are going to be significant challenges, there will be choices, there will be controversies.”
The tragedy is that STPs were a progressive way to reunite NHS community, hospital, GP and social care services. But with no capital for rebuilding and even less for day-to-day spending, they risk wreckage. The cuts dig deep. How long before Simon Stevens decides to walk away?”
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/18/jeremy-hunt-cant-fix-nhs
“The number of people waiting more than half-an-hour to be transferred from an ambulance into hospital emergency departments in the South West has gone up by about 50% in the last three years.
The figures, from a Labour party Freedom of Information request, showed that in 2013/14, about 17,000 patients were made to wait up to 30 minutes. In the last year, that’s gone up to about 26,000. However, the number of people waiting more than an hour has gone down.
The South Western Ambulance Service declined to comment, saying it was an NHS issue.”
BBC News, Devon Live
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-england-devon-37624865
Motion to full Council on 26 October
“That this Council register its extreme concern at the impending loss of 71 Community beds in this part of Devon.
It is a well-known fact, particularly in coastal Devon, that there is an above average population of elderly people. Older people take longer to recuperate from illness, hospital admission and operations.
Community services are already overstretched and there is an acute lack of appropriate carers to care for people in their own homes.
Our District General Hospitals increasingly find it difficult to keep up with demand due to the fact that they cannot discharge people when they are ready because of the lack of community services.
All the Government advice has been to encourage the care of people close to their homes. So we therefore urge our 2 local MPs to consider the plight of Devon and speak on our behalf to reconsider this ill thought out decision which has come about only for financial reasons.”
Proposed by Councillor Peter Burrows, seconded by Councillor Douglas Hull and supported by Councillors Eileen Wragg, Pat Graham, Brenda Taylor and Steve Gazzard.
“Opposing Brexit should be made an act of “treason” and be punishable by life in prison, a Conservative councillor has suggested in a petition to Parliament.
Guildford councillor Christian Holliday’s petition, on the House of Commons website, calls for an amendment to the Treason Felony Act to make supporting UK membership of the European Union a crime.
He has since been suspended by the leader of Guildford Borough Council.”
Owl has just two questions:
How the heck did he become LEADER? Is the gene pool so bereft of talent in a place as big as Guildford, people such as him rise to the top?
and
If it can happen in Guildford – in how many other places is it happening and being covered up by Whips? Hhhmmm!
… the only way left to save the health service is NOT to vote Conservative.
There IS money for HS2, a new airport runway, Hinkley C, subsidies to farmers, even talk of a new Royal Yacht …
… but no money for the health service.
This IS Conservative policy. If you value the NHS then think long and think hard about your choices AT EVERY LEVEL of government now – from local to national.
You can change policies but you will have to change government to do so now.
If you want a chilling view of Conservative policies for the NHS, read:
https://www.hugoswire.org.uk/news/blog-hospital-beds-and-social-care
and:
Back to Chomsky:
“That’s the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.”
…
“Waiting times in A&E units in England this summer have been worse than every winter for the past 12 years bar one, figures show.
The colder months have traditionally been the most difficult for hospitals.
But pressures have grown so much that this summer saw one in 10 patients wait for over four hours in A&E during June, July and August.
Only last winter saw a worse performance since the target started in 2004, figures from NHS England showed.
During the summer months 90.6% of patients were seen in four hours. Hospitals are meant to deal with 95% in four hours.
The data also showed hospitals are missing a number of other key targets for cancer, routine operations and ambulance response times.
And the delays hospitals experienced in August discharging patients reached a record high. There were over 188,000 days of delays – a 30% rise on the same month the year before.
These delays occur when there are no services available in the community to care for frail patients on release.
Dr Mark Holland, president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said the figures once again showed the NHS was locked in an “eternal winter”.
“The NHS is on its knees and, this winter, areas will implode around the country. There is no reserve left.
“Over the coming weeks and months, if we see a major increase in admissions due to flu or bed closures due to norovirus, we will collapse.” …”
“The property rental market is booming at the expense of the sales market, making it look as if house-buying will be outstripped for the first time in eight decades next year, as home-buyers face a continued struggle to find properties they can afford.
Activity in the sales market has cooled since June’s Brexit vote and a lack of property for sale combined with rising prices are set to lead to more new lets than purchases, the UK’s largest estate agency chain, Countrywide, said.
Johnny Morris, research director at Countrywide, said: “As some would-be buyers and sellers sit on their hands, Brexit-induced uncertainty has continued to boost the rental market … September saw record activity, with increasing numbers of lets agreed and tenants choosing to renew their contracts. On current trends 2017 could be the first time since the 1930s that more homes are let than sold.”
Separate reports suggest that affording a new home is becoming increasingly difficult for would-be buyers, with asking prices rising since the summer and borrowers having to find bigger deposits than in 2015.”
“In the first report into the effect of bank branch closures on small and medium-sized businesses, seen exclusively by The Mail on Sunday, the Federation of Small Businesses has demanded greater communication from banks over reductions in services and protection for the ATM network.
Its report, Locked Out: The Impact Of Bank Branch Closures On Small Businesses, authored by policy adviser Ben Baruch, is to be revealed tomorrow following focus group meetings across the UK between July and September.
FSB policy director Martin McTague said in the study: ‘Our report shows the disproportionate impact branch closures are having in some parts of the UK and particularly in rural areas. This is concerning as evidence strongly suggests that closure programmes are both expanding and accelerating.’ …
… And the FSB said there were instances of villages and towns ‘literally running out of money’. It complained that business banking services at some Post Office branches and franchises were ‘too limited’ and that the high cost of small electronic transactions was putting some small firms off investing in new payment technology.
Gwyn Evans, chairman of FSB North Wales, said in the report: ‘Unlike in urban areas, if a branch closes in rural Wales, the business owner may face a 20-mile or more round trip to bank cash. Also, when you run a business dealing in cash, you cannot pay in a bag of change over the internet or through a smartphone app – there are limitations to even the most advanced technologies. In addition, online banking is not always easily available in rural areas.’ …
…. Malcolm Harrison, who runs Crazy Horse Coffee Shop in Invergordon in the Highlands, took part in a focus group and accused Royal Bank of Scotland of leaving the town ‘high and dry’ after it closed the last bank branch there.
He said: ‘I have not been too badly affected, but I have been here 12-odd years and am part of the furniture. Two or three businesses have closed since RBS went – a jeweller and another coffee shop, and a gift shop moved to another location.’
He said a lot of business custom moved to the next town when the branch closed, but added: ‘The biggest problem is where to get change from. Even if I put £100 to one side, it affects cash flow and I can get through that in a couple of hours. I then have to drive to the next town, leaving the shop a person down.
‘What was particularly upsetting was that the bank put a lot of effort into marketing online banking, and that affected footfall in the Invergordon branch.
‘We had an idea there was something afoot but the bank denied it was closing it. It has really been underhand in the way it has gone about this.
‘It changed its policy about not closing the last bank branch in town very quietly and left a town already suffering economically high and dry.’
“Whilst our audit work on the financial statements and VFM conclusion is almost complete, as set out above, we have received a formal objection from a local elector.
We are in the process of considering this objection, which relates to the Council’s approach to recording and obtaining receipt of monies due to it from developers through agreements under s106 of the Town & Country Planning Act 1990.
If we are able to conclude this work before the end of the month then, subject to the outcome of this, we anticipate issuing our audit report by the 30th September for the Council to publish audited financial statements.
If, however, the work extends beyond this timescale then we will have to withhold our audit certificate within the audit report until the work on the objection has been completed.”
Click to access 220916-agenda-item-8-combined-reports.pdf
(pages 121 and repeated on page 131)
Almost certainly related to this:
https://eastdevonwatch.org/2016/09/13/eddc-and-its-section-106-black-hole/
“Cancer rates in a Somerset town close to a nuclear power station are up to six times higher than average.
Burnham-on-Sea will be named this week as the most significant ‘cancer cluster’ so far discovered near a British nuclear plant. The revelation will provide fuel for anti-nuclear campaigners who say the industry pollutes the environment and is potentially lethal for people living nearby.
The residents of Burnham, which lies five miles downwind of the Hinkley Point plant, have demanded an official inquiry into the figures, which were compiled by Dr Chris Busby, a government radiation adviser.
The study will be presented to locals on Thursday – the first anniversary of the death of Burnham resident Jo Corfield from breast cancer. Corfield’s mother, Geraldine Trythall, 86, who survived breast cancer five years ago, said yesterday: ‘We want to know exactly what is causing all these cancers. We have a right to know.’
Some residents are even moving away from the area. The parents of 18-year-old David Lidgey, who contracted leukaemia three years ago, strongly suspect the power station is to blame for his illness. Susan and Rob Lidgey said they are in the process of moving a mile inland from Burnham in a move to avoid further health effects.
Campaigners believe that radioactive discharge from Hinkley Point into the sea could explain the resort’s high cancer rate. Busby, also a member of the Government’s committee on depleted uranium, believes dangerous material from Hinkley Point is contaminating tidal sediment around power stations.
When the mudflats off Burnham are exposed at low water, he believes that radioactive particles are carried away on the wind and inhaled by residents. Of the 95 people diagnosed with cancer in Burnham since 1989, more than half took part in sea-based activities such as watersports or bait-digging. Only one in five cancer sufferers was a smoker.
‘We have known since the 1960s the mechanism by which radioactive particles come ashore, and we will be worrying about this problem for a few hundred years to come,’ said Dr Vyvyan Howard, senior anatomy lecturer at Liverpool University and an expert on the effects of toxins on human tissue.
The study, which investigated cancer cases in Burnham since 1998, found residents are 5.95 times more likely to get kidney cancer. The probability that this is coincidental is just one in a thousand.
It also found that cases of cervical cancer are 5.6 times higher than the national average, while leukaemia rates are more than four times above the norm. Women from Burnham have more than double the risk of breast cancer, with a one in 2,500 probability the figures are chance, according to cases over the past six years.
It is the first time both adults and children living near a nuclear plant have been examined for such a broad range of cancers and the first attempt to examine the incidence of the illness rather than deaths.
‘We see a picture confirming my fears that Hinkley discharges are responsible for severe health problems. All the epidemiology points to that conclusion,’ said Busby, who is a member of the Independent Advisory Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment. Busby urged similar research to be carried out at sites across the UK.
The range of cancers examined in the report have all been linked to the effects of radiation from studies on Hiroshima survivors. However, no scientific link has yet been established between low-level radioactive discharge of the type from Hinkley Point and cancer.
Last year Busby identified a leukaemia cluster near Chepstow on the banks of the Severn near Oldbury power station, north of Burnham. Another study in Seascale, close to the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria, observed cases of leukaemia in children under 14 between 1950 and 1983.
A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘No known health effects have been shown to be associated with radioactive discharges from current nuclear sites.’
BNFL, which is decommissioning one of the reactors at the Hinkley site, dismissed Busby’s findings, adding that his previous work had been ‘heavily criticised’ by health experts.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/jul/14/greenpolitics.science
“Theresa May has told the head of the NHS that it will get no extra money despite rapidly escalating problems that led to warnings this week that hospitals are close to breaking point.
The prime minister dashed any hopes of a cash boost in next month’s autumn statement when she met Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, senior NHS sources have told the Guardian. Instead she told him last month that the NHS should urgently focus on making efficiencies to fill the £22bn hole in its finances and not publicly seek more than the “£10bn extra” that ministers insist they have already pledged to provide during this parliament.
She told him the NHS could learn from the painful cuts to the Home Office and Ministry of Defence budgets that she and Philip Hammond, the chancellor, had overseen when they were in charge of those departments, according to senior figures in the NHS who were given an account of the discussion.
Senior Whitehall sources have confirmed that Hammond’s statement on 23 November will contain no new money for the NHS, despite increasingly vocal pleas from key NHS organisations and the public’s expectation of extra health spending if Britain voted to leave the EU.
NHS Providers, which represents 238 NHS trusts, last week accused ministers of perpetuating “a bit of a fantasy world” on how well the NHS is doing after the worst-ever performance figures for key waiting time targets for A&E care, planned hospital operations and cancer treatments led to warnings that it was starting to buckle under the strain of unprecedented demand.
Health experts warned that the NHS would have to ration treatment, shut hospital units and cut staff if it gets no extra money soon.
Nigel Edwards, chief executive of the Nuffield Trust health thinktank, said: “If the government has firmly decided not to revisit NHS funding, this underlines that the health service faces four very difficult years. In particular, balancing the books in 2018 and 2019 when funding will flatline looks all but impossible with the current level of services.
“If more money from tax or borrowing is ruled out, the only choices left may be even less attractive, including reducing access and services, closures and reductions in staff,” he said.
Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, and Jim Mackey, the chief executive of the health service’s financial regulator, NHS Improvement, also attended the 8 September meeting, which was Stevens’ and Mackey’s first encounter with the prime minister.
“No 10’s message at the meeting was quite blunt and stark, that there will be no more money. Theresa May and Philip Hammond say that they presided over big efficiency programmes at the Home Office and MoD and didn’t whinge about it. Their view is that the NHS is already doing very well, but that’s head in the sand stuff,” said one NHS insider who was among those briefed on the meeting.
NHS leaders privately fear that May’s remarks indicate that she will be much tougher on the service’s pleas for more cash than David Cameron and does not appear to appreciate the extent of its deepening problems. She is said to be sympathetic to the view of many senior Treasury officials that, as one NHS source put it, “always giving the NHS more money is throwing good money after bad, like pouring water on to sand”.
May’s stance raises questions over the future of Stevens, who is preparing to give evidence on the NHS’s finances to the Commons health select committee on Tuesday. The NHS boss, who had a close relationship with Cameron and George Osborne, has recently irritated No 10 by publicly questioning the accuracy of the government’s claim – which May repeated at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday – that the NHS will receive £10bn extra by 2020.
He told the public accounts committee last month: “The government would record it as £10bn. The health committee recorded it a little differently. There is an apples and pears issue there.”
Stevens has welcomed the fact that the £8bn boost Osborne pledged during last year’s general election campaign was “frontloaded” to give the NHS £3.8bn more this year, a rise of 1.7%, as he had requested. But he highlighted that the service had not got the sums it needed for 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20. On current plans, it is due to receive increases of just 0.6%, 0.2% and 0.1% respectively, even though demand for core NHS services such as A&E care is rising at 3% or 4% a year.
Chris Ham, chief executive of The King’s Fund thinktank, said that any policy of providing no more money was unwise, “simply not credible” and would threaten standards of NHS care. “If these accounts are true, then it is clear that Downing Street does not yet fully understand the impact on patients of the huge pressures facing the NHS.
“The view from the top of government appears to be that the NHS has been given the extra money it asked for and should deliver what is expected of it. But this misses the point that demand for services is rising rapidly and the NHS is managing with the lowest funding increases in its history,” he said.
A Downing Street spokesman said he could not comment on what May, Stevens and Mackey had discussed because it had been a private meeting .”
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