Jacob Rees-Mogg is asked about My Little Crony interactive map in the Commons. [Watch video on metro web site and investigate the “my Little Crony”  interactive map, link below – Owl]

Sian Elvin metro.co.uk

An MP has called for a public inquiry after a web of connections between Tory politicians and companies being awarded Government contracts was uncovered.

The ‘My Little Crony’ map shows how large numbers of contracts have been handed out to Conservative Party political donors, family members and employers during the coronavirus pandemic.

It uses reporting from the Byline Times, openDemocracy and other outlets to visually reveal what it calls the ‘scale of cronyism’ in Number 10.

For example, it was reported in September that Globus (Shetland) Limited, which has donated more than £400,000 to the Conservatives since 2016, won a £93.8 million Government contract for the supply of respirator face masks.

Shadow Commons leader and Walsall South Labour MP, Valerie Vaz, called on the Government to publicly investigate the contracts awarded and their connections to the Tories.

Ms Vaz said: ‘I don’t know if [Mr Rees-Mogg] is aware of the interactive map “My Little Crony”, which has been created by Sophie Hill.

‘I raised all of the contracts that have been handed out to those connected to the Tory party last week and I didn’t get an answer – but it is well worth a look.

‘Because [Mr Rees-Mogg] will know that I think it might be time for a public inquiry, particularly on the £670,000 that has been allocated by the vaccine tsar for public relations.

The ‘My Little Crony’ map shows a web of contracts between the UK Government, the Conservative Party, MPs and family members.

Shadow Commons leader Valerie Vaz has called for a public inquiry into the contracts awarded by the Conservative Party.

‘Now if you look at the “My Little Crony” interactive map, it will link directly to the special, special adviser’s relation.’

She is referring to the news this week that head of the Vaccine Taskforce, Kate Bingham, spent £670,000 of taxpayers’ money hiring PR consultants through a firm called Admiral Associates.

And the secretary of the firm is a long-time business associate of chief advisor Dominic Cummings’ father-in-law.

‘It is interesting to know what they do because they are actually based in BEIS (the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) of which there are 100 communications staff,’ Ms Vaz added.

‘But if it is something about a vaccine, I’d rather [deputy chief medical officer] Dr [Jonathan] Van-Tam tell me about it than a public relations so-called expert.’

Boris Johnson’s chief advisor, Dominic Cummings, reportedly has personal links to those who have won Government-awarded contracts.

Sophie Hill, a British PhD student in Government at Harvard University, created the map.

She wrote on Twitter: ‘The cronyism in this Tory government is so out-of-control that I honestly couldn’t keep track… so I combined my two main skills (puns and Rstats) to create this interactive visualisation.

‘We all understand that the Government had to act quickly during the pandemic. But that is no excuse for cronyism and incompetence.’

She told Metro.co.uk: ‘I created “My Little Crony” because I couldn’t keep up with all the news stories about Government outsourcing during the pandemic.

‘I hope people will explore the map and decide for themselves about whether this government is acting in the best interests of the country.’

A Government spokesperson said in response to the map: ‘Our sole focus has been to deliver vitally needed medical supplies and keep the public informed throughout the pandemic.

‘As part of an unprecedented response, the Government has drawn on the expertise and resources of a number of public and private sector partners.’

They did not respond to Metro.co.uk’s query about whether a public inquiry would be held into the matter.

Globus Limited reached out to Metro.co.uk to add it has also been awarded contracts by Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP-led Government to produce PPE for Scotland, and the Department of Health and Social Care.

A spokesperson said: ‘Globus Group has over 25 years’ experience producing PPE for healthcare workers and across industry and is among Britain’s biggest manufacturers in the sector.

Boris Johnson’s Government has been accused of offering a number of pandemic-related contracts to political donors and others connected to the Conservative Party.

‘We’re proud to be doing our bit to help NHS frontline staff fighting Covid-19 across Scotland and England do their jobs safely.

‘In both cases we followed the bidding process we were asked to follow. We are comfortable with any tendering process that Scottish or English Government choose to put in place because we are confident in our 25 years’ PPE experience and long track record for delivering quality and value for all of our customers.’

They added the firm has created ‘hundreds of new jobs’ as a result of the contracts, and all its political donations are ‘fully, transparently and properly’ declared.

‘Corruption and cronyism’

It comes after last month, Labour MP for Liverpool Walton Dan Carden accused the Government of ‘corruption’ and ‘cronyism’ in a powerful speech.

He said: ‘The anger and frustration isn’t just that the response is failing, but that it’s failing because the Government refused to enable and invest in local authorities and public health teams and instead chose to pump billions into scandal-ridden Government contractors that have a record of failure.

‘Under the cover of this pandemic, billions of public money handed to faceless corporations, including Tory-linked firms, without competition or transparency, without democratic accountability, or any accountability for that matter, to the public.

‘This is money that should’ve been invested into our National Health Service, that should’ve left a legacy for the British people by building up properly-funded public services that we can all rely on in the future.

‘But instead it was siphoned off.’

At the time, health secretary Matt Hancock defended the use of private firms like Serco, saying ‘private companies have been absolutely critical’ in operating the contract tracing system.

‘The test and trace system at a national level makes the immediate and very rapid first attempt at contact and if no contact is made then the local teams can go in. It’s the combination of the two that works best,’ he said in the Commons.

‘But I really think the opposition is making a mistake trying to divide people between public and private whereas actually people are working very hard to deliver, and to deliver the control of this virus.’

Mr Hancock added: ‘The private companies have been absolutely critical in the working and making sure the whole testing system can be built at the scale that it has.’

Labour Party leader Keir Starmer further slammed Boris Johnson at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, claiming £130 million has been spent on Government PR while charities have been struggling during the pandemic.

www.thetimes.co.uk /

Morten Morland Sunday Times cartoon: November 15, 2020

Plans to unleash a new generation of homes across England using an “ill conceived” algorithm are being overhauled amid the threat of a seismic rebellion by Conservative MPs.

By Edward Malnick, Sunday Political Editor  www.telegraph.co.uk

The Sunday Telegraph understands that a formula used to produce targets for each area is being “rebalanced” to focus on building homes in urban areas, following a major backlash by senior Tories, including Theresa May.

The move represents a significant climbdown by Boris Johnson and Robert Jenrick, the Housing Secretary.

Mrs May had warned that the proposed building formula “flies in the face” of the Government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda and would lead to more investment in London and the South East.

Analysis suggested that many of the homes needed to meet the annual target of 330,000 would be built in Conservative heartlands such as Surrey and Kent.

Separately, this newspaper understands that Mr Jenrick is planning to move a proportion of the Ministry of Housing to the West Midlands, as part of an attempt to shift government focus away from the South.

The change to the planned formula is expected to be announced within weeks. Sources said the shift was designed to help the Government to “re-imagine” town and city centres hit by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Covid has been driving the biggest change in city centres since the end of the Second World War and there are massive opportunities for the repurposing of office and retail buildings for mixed use,” said one source.

It comes after Mr Jenrick said there was “scope for compromise” on where the target of 330,000 homes are built each year.

A Ministry of Housing source said: “The Prime Minister and the Housing Secretary have been listening to Conservative colleagues.

“We are working on a fairer formula, which still meets our housing targets but is rebalanced so that more homes are built in urban areas, particularly in the Midlands and the North.

“We are going to revitalise these town and city centres and make them great places to live and work, driving investment and new jobs.”

Mr Jenrick is understood to have pinpointed Wolverhampton as a possible base for a Midlands branch of the Ministry of Housing, which would include offices in which the department’s ministers and senior officials would be expected to spend a proportion of each week.

Those seeking an appointment with the Housing Secretary would then be “just as likely” to see the minister in Wolverhampton as Whitehall.

If you want to build your dream home in an idyllic spot overlooking a pristine beach, first try joining the local council. Even better, be the chairman.

[All sounds very familiar but is this really “normal” for Cornwall? – Owl]

Ben Webster, Environment Editor, The Times, Saturday

That is the suggestion of conservationists in Cornwall, who are bringing a High Court challenge against Chris Wilton, a parish council chairman and farmer, and the permission he has been granted to build a house at Rame Head overlooking Whitsand Bay.

Rame Head, to the west of Plymouth, is an area of outstanding natural beauty, which normally makes planning permission out of the question.

Mr Wilton has won approval for his plans by arguing that he needed to build an “agricultural worker’s dwelling”. Campaigners say that a home of potentially six bedrooms, three bathrooms and double garage is “certainly not a normal agricultural dwelling”.

More than 250 people, including a visitor from Canada, have given £11,000 for a legal challenge over the decision.

A High Court judge ruled this week that there were grounds for a judicial review into claims by the Rame Protection Group that the county council had breached its duty to give adequate reasons for its decision, and failed to demonstrate that the home accorded with its development plan.

County councillors, who have the final say on the proposal, voted seven to six to approve the home, despite the officer for Rame Head area of outstanding natural beauty and the principal planning officer recommending it was refused because of the negative impact on the protected landscape. New homes in open countryside in Cornwall are permitted only in “special circumstances”, including when a farm worker has to live in a specific location.

Rame Protection Group said: “If this is allowed, there will be nothing to stop any farmer who owns a plot of land in a beauty spot using this case as a precedent to secure permission to build in any of Cornwall’s beautiful locations, regardless of protective landscape and environmental legislation.”

Mr Wilton expects the home to cost £120,000 to build but the group said that it could be worth up to £1 million. The group claimed that Maker with Rame parish council had shown “favouritism” to Mr Wilton by not holding a public meeting before expressing support for his plans.

Mr Wilton, 46, said that campaigners were motivated partly by envy. “Unfortunately it stems from jealousy … the location has lovely views.” He claimed that most were green campaigners who resented he had voted against a proposal for the parish council to declare a climate emergency. He said the council was not allowed to consult the public owing to coronavirus restrictions.

Maker with Rame council said it had “reached an unbiased decision on the application as the councillors felt the impact to the AONB was minimal”.

Cornwall council said that the decision would be “robustly defended”.

Boris Johnson may want to build back better but he better not build in his own backyard, Conservatives in his constituency have warned.

George Grylls, The Times, Saturday 14

The prime minister and Robert Jenrick, the housing secretary, are facing revolts over plans to give developers approval to build huge numbers of new homes. Tory councillors responsible for planning in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Mr Johnson’s constituency, and Newark, Mr Jenrick’s seat, have said the reforms are “worryingly naive”. One said that he initially thought the proposals were a joke.

About 80 Tory MPs plan to oppose the reforms, which will limit the ability of residents to block developments. They have denounced a “mutant algorithm” which allocates where homes will be built. The formula demands increases in housebuilding in rural areas and London, while development in many northern cities will shrink.

Keith Burrows, head of planning at Hillingdon council, in Mr Johnson’s constituency, said that the plan was “one of the worst pieces of planning legislation we’ve had for a long time”. He added: “We always have legislation come out of central government and some of it makes sense. Unfortunately, this one doesn’t. This one is so out of the field, I don’t know whether the person [who came up with it] was just bored.”

Mr Burrows said that when he was presented with the plans “I actually thought somebody was pulling my leg”.

Under the reforms 446 new homes a year will need to be built in Mr John son’s west London constituency. Mr Johnson has previously been critical of housebuilding in the area. Last year he objected to a scheme for 514 flats.

In Mr Jenrick’s constituency Roger Blaney, of Newark and Sherwood district council’s planning committee, said that the algorithm’s focus on the southeast contradicted the government’s “declared intention of levelling up”.

A housing ministry spokesman said: “We’re reforming the country’s planning system to deliver the high-quality, sustainable homes communities need.”

Dominic Cummings arrived in Downing Street with big plans, and the stated intention to only stay long enough to get them rolling. So what has Boris Johnson’s chief adviser and policy touchstone actually achieved?

Peter Walker www.theguardian.com

Reforming the civil service

Perhaps Cummings’ most resonant quote from No 10 – albeit delivered at second hand – was the idea of a “hard rain” landing on complacent civil servants. Revolutionising a hugely complex organisation of more than 400,000 people was never going to be simple, especially within a year of a pandemic. The main changes have been at the top, with a series of permanent secretaries – the lead official in a department – being ousted, along with Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary and head of the civil service.

Verdict: not achieved.

Centralising authority in Downing Street

Many of the Conservative MPs who cheered the news of Cummings’ departure in the hope it will result in a more open No 10 would certainly agree this has happened. Much of the tighter grip has been based on centralising advisers, all of whom had to report to Cummings, an innovation that led to Sajid Javid resignation as chancellor. Given this revamped operation has presided over a series of mishaps and U-turns, whether it can be deemed a success, or will last, is another matter.

Verdict: yes, but at a cost – and could be reversed by a successor.

A data-led government

Another obsession of Cummings, who – while a history graduate – is known for lamenting the grip of dilettante generalists on government. In an unusual recruitment drive, Cummings used his personal blog in January to appeal for data scientists and other “assorted weirdos” to sign up. Government data is yet another area brought into No 10 under Cummings, and in July it advertised for a data expert to set up a largely autonomous data “skunkworks”.

Verdict: some change achieved.

Finalise Brexit

As one of several Vote Leave veterans inside No 10, Cummings had arguably less direct impact here than in other areas, instead being more part of a consensus. It is fair to say that his presence helped keep Johnson’s feet to the fire in terms of threatening Brussels over a UK walkout without concessions on a trade deal from the EU, even if the PM’s allies argue this would have happened anyway. Could Cummings’ departure see Johnson again achieve a deal by suddenly giving ground but nonetheless claiming a great victory? Perhaps – but then again, this might have happened anyway.

Verdict: he has played a role in the UK’s tough Brexit stance

Operation Moonshot

Allies of Cummings say that the main reason he is staying at No 10 until Christmas is to oversee the rollout of mass coronavirus testing, based around innovative and near-instant tests. The most ambitious iteration of this would see millions of daily tests, meaning that even before the mass rollout of a vaccine, people could be certified Covid-free before going to work, or mass events such as at sports stadiums. A first try-out, in Salford, was some way from being a success, but ministers are more bullish about the new version, kicking off in Liverpool.

Verdict: needs work – and could be overtaken by a vaccine.

Planning reforms

While successive government have talked up the need to liberate planning processes so more homes can be built, they have generally done little. Cummings’ experience illustrates why. A planned change to the system, based on an algorithm to allocate new homes to certain areas, has prompted open revolt among many Tory MPs, who argue the scheme is overly blunt and will dump large numbers of badly-built homes in the wrong places. Nimbyism is ubiquitous in planning matters, but the Cummings proposal has prompted genuine anger, and would very possibly struggle to get through parliament.

Verdict: unlikely to happen, as it stands.

Chief aide accuses Prime Minister of ‘dithering’ as he is ordered out of Downing Street.

[Torygraph source so Owl gives this “great weight”]

By Gordon Rayner, Political Editor 13 November 2020 • 9:00pm www.telegraph.co.uk

Dominic Cummings was ordered out of Downing Street for good on Friday night after being accused of briefing against the Prime Minister.

Mr Cummings, until now regarded as Boris Johnson’s most trusted adviser, left with a broadside against his boss, telling allies Mr Johnson was “indecisive” and that he and Lee Cain – who resigned as director of communications earlier in the week – had to rely on the Cabinet Office minister, Michael Gove, to make decisions.

Mr Johnson’s chief adviser cleared his desk after a lunchtime meeting in Number 10 and left the building for the last time carrying his possessions in a cardboard box. Mr Cain was also asked to leave in the same meeting. 

Both men had intended to stay in Number 10 until the end of the year to see out the Brexit project that had brought them and Mr Johnson together, but the last straw reportedly came after Mr Johnson heard claims that the faction headed by Mr Cummings and Mr Cain was briefing against him and his fiancee, Carrie Symonds.

They will remain employed until mid-December, with Mr Cummings expected to complete some work on mass testing, but neither is expected to set foot in Number 10 again.

Multiple sources claimed Mr Johnson had accused the two men of being behind negative briefings, but Mr Cummings called the claims “invention”, adding: “We had a laugh together.”

Mr Cain described the meeting as “warm” and said Mr Johnson had said it would be better for “morale” if there was a clean break. He later posted a picture on social media of a pair of Brexit boxing gloves he said the Prime Minister signed for him after the meeting.

It came after a fortnight of highly damaging leaks and poisonous briefings that have culminated in an ongoing Cabinet Office inquiry into who passed secrets of discussions about the second coronavirus lockdown to the media.

After Mr Cummings resigned on Thursday evening, allies had complained of “dithering” by Mr Johnson, saying they had to go round him to Mr Gove to get decisions made.

They are also known to have spread rumours that Mr Johnson had lost his powers of concentration after being hospitalised with coronavirus earlier in the year, and that Ms Symonds “bombards” him with texts setting out her opinions on policy up to 25 times per hour.

Sources said Mr Johnson was particularly riled by newspaper reports of Ms Symonds being referred to by nicknames including “Princess nut nuts” by Cummings loyalists.

Sources loyal to the Prime Minister accused Mr Cummings of “trying to blame everyone but himself” for his demise, saying his complaints of dithering by Mr Johnson were simply “the occasions when the PM won’t do what he wants him to”.

One source said: “The truth is that Dom will pay no attention to something for months, then he will get interested in it and expect it to happen in two or three days. That’s not how Government works. When he says Boris is indecisive, what he actually means is that Boris won’t do something he wants. That’s not the same thing – it’s just the Prime Minister saying no to him.”

Mr Cummings had formally resigned on Thursday, a day after his closest ally Mr Cain had also handed in his notice. It came after Ms Symonds and Allegra Stratton, Mr Johnson’s press secretary, vetoed the promotion of Mr Cain to chief of staff.

The departure of the Prime Minister’s two most long-standing aides marks not only the rancorous end to a relationship forged in the Vote Leave campaign five years ago but also a new beginning for Mr Johnson’s premiership.

Lord Udny-Lister, his chief strategic adviser, was on Friday installed as interim chief of staff while Mr Johnson searches for a permanent incumbent for a job originally offered to Mr Cain.

Whoever becomes his permanent right-hand man or woman will play a major role in shaping the Johnson Government between now and the next general election, while Ms Stratton wants a “reset” of Downing Street’s relationship with the public and the media.

Ms Stratton, who emerged as the winner in a bitter power struggle with Mr Cain, is determined to soften the image of the Government and supports Ms Symonds’ determination to push the green agenda alongside the core aim of “levelling up” the country.

Mr Johnson’s decision to keep Mr Cummings and Mr Cain employed until mid-December means he will still exert some measure of control over them while the Brexit trade negotiations play out.

Dominic Cummings walks along Downing Street after leaving Number 10 Credit: Yui Mok/PA

There had been fears among some of the Prime Minister’s supporters that Vote Leave alumni could attack the Government from the sidelines if a Brexit trade deal that they do not agree with is signed.

It is also likely to mean the Cabinet Office will retain access to both men if they want to take evidence from them for the ongoing leak inquiry. Mr Cain is understood to have been cleared of blame for the leaking of the Government’s plan for a second lockdown, but the inquiry continues.

Although both men are expected to do some work from home in their final weeks of employment by Number 10, one source said: “We don’t expect to see them back in the building.”

On Friday, Downing Street hit back at suggestions that the Prime Minister’s Brexit stance would soften in the final days of trade negotiations as a result of Mr Cummings and Mr Cain leaving Number 10.

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “Absolutely not. The Government’s position in relation to the future trade agreement has not changed. We want to reach a deal, but it has to be one that fully respects the sovereignty of the United Kingdom.

“Time is in very short supply. We are clear the transition period will end on December 31, there’s no doubt about it. We would like to get a deal. If we’re not able to reach a free trade agreement, then we will leave on Australian-style terms.”

The new reality is that, in the middle of a pandemic, Labour-run Croydon has become only the second council in 20 years to issue a section 114 notice – meaning it is in effect insolvent. It has a £67m hole in its budget, and a projected overspend next year of £47m. It has just £10m in reserves, and holds almost £2bn in capital loans – many tied up in risky property investments.

Patrick Butler www.theguardian.com 

As beleaguered Croydon council declared effective bankruptcy on Wednesday afternoon, its interim chief executive, Katharine Kerswell, sent an ominous wake-up-call memo to staff: “Too many of us are still operating like business as usual,” she warned, “and are not facing up to our new reality that we are actually in a financial crisis.”

The methodical drip-drip erosion of council budgets in recent years had maybe inured some to the scale of the challenge now facing the south London borough. Bankruptcy came suddenly, but the origins of the council’s woes go back years, driven by heady dreams of making Croydon a major housing developer, and hampered by a culture of lax financial controls and poor governance.

The new reality is that, in the middle of a pandemic, Labour-run Croydon has become only the second council in 20 years to issue a section 114 notice – meaning it is in effect insolvent. It has a £67m hole in its budget, and a projected overspend next year of £47m. It has just £10m in reserves, and holds almost £2bn in capital loans – many tied up in risky property investments.

It now faces the ignominy of having to implement its own drastic mini-austerity programme to meet its legal obligation to balance the books. “We will need to make decisions that will be very difficult, very challenging, and will have implications [for staff and services], no question,” the new leader of the council, Cllr Hamida Ali, told the Guardian.

Despite the shock of the section 114 notice, observers say Croydon had been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy for months. In August its former chief executive Jo Negrini left, allegedly with a £440,000 severance package. Weeks later, the council’s finance director drafted a section 114 notice but it was never issued. The council leader, Cllr Tony Newman, resigned in mid-October after six years in charge.

In late October, a devastating report by the council’s own auditors, Grant Thornton, savaged the council for “collective corporate blindness”. There were lax financial controls, despite a series of formal audit warnings, and a corporate culture of failing to challenge or scrutinise financial decisions made by the leadership.

The auditor’s report said Croydon’s finances had been deteriorating for years. The huge costs of overhauling the council’s failing children’s services after a critical Ofsted report in 2017 had resulted in huge rolling budget overspends that had never been properly addressed – and indeed their impact had been masked by accounting tricks.

At the same time, Croydon borrowed £545m over the last three years to buy a shopping centre and a hotel and to set up a property development business. Corporate oversight of these deals was feeble, the auditors said, and despite the vast sums invested, the council has yet to receive any significant return. Servicing the loans is said to cost millions a year.

The final straw seems to have been the coronavirus pandemic. As costs spiralled, Croydon’s income from council tax and business rates collapsed. Government compensation schemes failed to cover outgoings. “The council’s fragile financial position and weak underlying arrangements have been ruthlessly exposed by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic,” noted Grant Thornton.

The council’s public services – already battered by a decade of austerity funding cuts – face another hammering as it tries to bring its finances back on track. All non-essential spending has been frozen, more job losses are expected, and there are rumours of staff being put on to a four-day week. The future of so-called non-core services, from libraries to parks, looks fragile.

Ali and her cabinet will present a fresh budget to the council in three weeks that she hopes will stabilise the finances over the next two years. She will not say what services will be cut or shrunk but she does not seek to downplay the seriousness of what is required. “We are looking at everything,” said Ali.

Steven Downes, the editor of the independent Inside Croydon website, which has reported the council’s financial woes in forensic detail, said the savings are likely to be painful. “Two-thirds of Croydon’s libraries have been closed since March because of Covid. It may be they never reopen. They have got rid of most of the ‘nice-to-have’ services in recent years. The parks service is already basically two men and a dog.”

The council has been forced to go cap in hand to the government for a financial bailout to see it through the next two years. The secretary of state for housing, communities and local government, Robert Jenrick – who accused Croydon’s ruling Labour group of being “dysfunctional” – has already despatched a taskforce of experts to oversee the day-to-day running of the council.

Chris Philp, the Conservative MP for Croydon South, told the Guardian he believed the audit report showed the council’s downfall was down to its uniquely reckless leadership. “It’s not a government funding problem, it’s a problem manufactured by the Labour clique running the council.”

Steve Reed, Labour MP for Croydon North and the shadow secretary of state for communities and local government, disagreed: “Croydon council’s serious financial challenges have deep roots through a decade of austerity and administrations of different parties and have been greatly worsened by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic”.

The council’s new leadership is under no illusions about its future. Ali has admitted that while austerity and Covid-19 have had a huge impact they do not excuse the failings highlighted by auditors. Mistakes were made, she said, and “swift and decisive action” will follow. For Croydon, she warned, there are “difficult decisions ahead”.

There is something rotten in the government’s culture. Less than a year after Boris Johnson led his party to an 80-seat majority, ethical standards are routinely compromised and the principle of transparency is under attack.

Richard Vize www.theguardian.com

The mishandling by the communities secretary, Robert Jenrick, of the £3.6bn towns fund typifies this casual abuse of power – a shoddy piece of work that barely pays lip service to basic principles of openness and objectivity. Established in July 2019 to support the economies of struggling towns, the fund selected 101 places, 40 based on need and the other 61 chosen by ministers. Tory seats and targets were the big beneficiaries, leading to Labour concerns that the money was used to win votes.

An excoriating report by the cross-party Commons public accounts select committee accuses the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government of dishing out billions based on vague justifications, scant evidence and sweeping assumptions. One town, Cheadle in Greater Manchester (Conservative, majority 2,336), was given cash despite being ranked by officials as the 535^th priority out of 541 towns.

The department refused to disclose its reasons for selecting or excluding towns, offering risible excuses that have fuelled accusations of political bias and that has, according to the report, risked the civil service’s reputation for integrity and impartiality. The MPs were riled by the refusal of the permanent secretary, Jeremy Pocklington, to publish his formal assessment that the scheme met Treasury requirements for managing public money.

To deflect criticism over the summer, the department misrepresented an investigation by the National Audit Office by falsely claiming it had shown that the selection process had been “robust”. Pocklington said he did not know about these press statements.

Jenrick has not even explained what the towns fund is expected to achieve, how it fits with other government funding programmes, when he expects to see the benefits, and how he will measure success.

This comes just six months after Jenrick was forced into conceding that he had acted unlawfully in overruling Tower Hamlets council and the Planning Inspectorate to grant approval for a housing development by Tory donor Richard Desmond.

A culture of secrecy and denial is becoming pervasive. It is now established government practice simply not to publish documents that should be exposed to public scrutiny.

The same day as the PAC report, Lord Evans of Weardale, the former head of MI5 and now chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, called for the government to publish the investigation into allegations that the home secretary, Priti Patel, bullied staff, which Johnson has been sitting on for months. As the guardian of the Nolan Principles of standards in public life, Evans warned that the failure to publish could undermine public trust.

And just the day before, the Good Law Project accused the government of breaching its legal duties by failing to publish any information about £4.6bn of Covid-related contracts to private companies, with suspicions that a number have been secured through Tory contacts.

The failure to release the Patel report, the formal assessment of the towns fund or the details of the Covid contracts leaves more than a whiff of impropriety. If the government has nothing to hide, why not publish?

All this is within months of that massive election win. Johnson’s government hasn’t even troubled itself with good intentions.

In the runup to the 2010 election David Cameron talked about sunlight being the best disinfectant, while Tony Blair set himself up for a fall by stressing the importance of being “whiter than white”. The current administration has been twisting the rules from the beginning, and has compromised the integrity of the civil service along the way. If that is how far standards of integrity can fall in a year, how much further they could go in five.

• Richard Vize is a public policy commentator and analyst

Leaders say service needs cash to tackle surgery backlog and mental health demand

Denis Campbell www.theguardian.com

NHS leaders are urging Rishi Sunak to fulfil his pledge to give the service “whatever it needs” to respond to the coronavirus crisis, by boosting its budget by £4bn next year.

NHS services need the money to tackle the huge backlog of patients waiting for surgery and the sharp increase in people needing mental health care as a direct result of the pandemic.

Patients will suffer if the money for those problems does not arrive, they claim.

NHS Providers, which represents trusts in England, wants the chancellor to unveil a major financial boost for the service in his comprehensive spending review on 25 November. It will set departmental budgets across Whitehall for 2021-22 at a time when the government has committed to spend at least £210bn to deal with the Covid public health emergency.

The plea comes amid fears at high levels of the NHS that, with public finances under intense pressure because of the huge costs of the pandemic, it will not get as much money as it has been seeking. “We’re hearing that it’s not going to be as much as we need,” said one NHS source.

The letter to Sunak reminds him that on 11 March, as the pandemic was unfolding, he told the House of Commons that “whatever extra resources our NHS needs to cope with coronavirus, it will get … whether it’s millions of pounds or billions of pounds … whatever it needs, whatever it costs, we stand behind our NHS”.

NHS Providers’ letter acknowledges that “the current public expenditure position is difficult” and that the Treasury does not want to revisit the five-year funding deal which the then prime minister, Theresa May, unveiled in 2018 to mark the service’s 70th birthday.

However, it warns that two “urgent, new problems” – the many people unable to access care in the spring and the extra pressure on mental health services – require a rethink and the provision of an extra £3bn-4bn.

Acute hospitals need to pay for more diagnostic equipment, such as scanners, while mental health trusts need to increase their capacity to treat those in need, says the letter from Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers, and Saffron Cordery, his deputy.

“Trust leaders are deeply concerned that if the spending review fails to allocate the extra money to fund this capacity in 2021-22, the health and wellbeing of hundreds of thousands of patients is at risk,” they add.

As a result of May’s deal, the budget for the Department of Health and Social Care was due to rise to £139.8bn this year, with NHS England getting £129.9bn of that. However, since then, the Treasury has had to spend £31.9bn more on the NHS than planned. Of that money, more than £15bn went on personal protective equipment for NHS staff, £10bn was earmarked for the controversy-mired test-and-trace programme and more than £1bn on extra ventilators. It has also allocated another £5.5bn to pay private hospitals to treat NHS patients.

A government spokesperson said: “This government has put never-before-seen levels of investment into our NHS, both before and during the pandemic.

“We confirmed £31.9bn extra in July for health services to tackle coronavirus, with £3bn specifically to support the NHS during winter and to upgrade A&E facilities.

“Alongside this we have provided £2.3bn of extra mental health investment a year by 2023-24 as part of the NHS long-term plan and £10.2m in funding to mental health charities to support adults and children affected by the pandemic.”

The government body has a legal duty to protect the environment, but says its standards have slipped because it is running out of money.

By Madeleine Cuff November 13, inews.co.uk

England’s most precious patches of wildlife habitat are being left unmonitored and unprotected due to a funding shortfall at the nature conservation body Natural England.  

Chair of the agency Tony Juniper revealed Natural England has been forced to dramatically scale back its conservation work because it has not been given enough money to run by government.  

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Much of this conservation work, which includes regular monitoring of Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and assessing the environmental impact of planning applications, is legally required of Natural England.  

“Natural England’s current funding is below the level required to deliver all of our statutory duties to a good standard,” Mr Juniper admitted today in a letter to MPs. He warned the agency could face legal challenges for its inaction.  

Natural England is now only doing the legal minimum to maintain National Nature Reserves, like this one in Northumberland (Photo: Geography Photos/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Crowdfunding for cash

Natural England has been in dire financial straits for some time. Its baseline grant from the government has been cut by 45 per cent since 2014. Last year it even set up a crowdfunding page for the public to make donations to fund its work, before the government stepped in earlier this year and awarded the body an additional £15m. 

Lack of cash means planning applications that could harm local wildlife or habitats are going unchecked and management of national nature reserves has been dramatically scaled back, Mr Juniper admitted.

Most seriously, the rarest natural habitats are not being regularly monitored, resulting in officials failing to spot serious problems like pollution or rapid population declines of rare wildlife.  

Mr Juniper said Natural England will struggle to carry out its duties effectively until it can get a long-term settlement generous enough to fund its essential activities. He estimates the body will need at least £322m next year and £389m the following year to fulfil its duties.  

“This is a vital moment for the natural environment,” he said. “There are some very encouraging signs to look towards for the future – things we know work and we know how to approach them. The ability to make a difference is within our grasp.”

A government spokesperson said: “We are currently assessing the budgets for our arm’s length bodies as part of the Spending Review process and will update on this in due course.

“This government is committed to restoring and enhancing nature, introducing the first new Environment Bill for 20 years and setting ambitious goals in our 25 Year Environment Plan.

“We recognise the ongoing pressures on the country’s biodiversity and many of our native species are in decline, which is why we must continue to act to restore and enhance nature.”

Latest ONS figures show “R” number falling but still above 1. The King’s College Covid symptom tracker is more optimistic. This app certainly correctly “called” the start of the turnaround at the peak of the first wave before anyone else.

covid.joinzoe.com

According to the ZOE COVID Symptom Study UK Infection Survey figures based on swab tests up to four days ago, the number of daily new COVID-19 cases is now declining across the UK.

Key findings from ZOE COVID Symptom Study UK Infection Survey this week: 

• There are currently 35,963 daily new symptomatic cases of COVID in the UK on average over the two weeks up to 01 November (excluding care homes) 
• This compares to 42,049 daily new symptomatic cases a week ago
• The Midlands is the only region where the numbers are still going up, with the numbers now reaching the same levels are the North East and Yorkshire and overtaking the North West
• The number of new cases in the worst affected area, the North West, is now at the same levels they were at the beginning of October and have an R value of 0.8
• The number of daily new cases in the South East and South West have now stopped rising but have yet to start declining. These regions still have significantly less cases than the North West, North East and the Midlands (see full table of regional results and graph below)
• The UK R value is 0.9 
• Regional R values are: England, 0.9. Wales, 0.9. Scotland, 0.9.
• Age: Again this week, infections nationally have stopped increasing in most age groups apart from modest increases in the over 60s group, which needs to be monitored closely (see graph below)

The ZOE COVID Symptom Study UK Infection Survey figures are based on around a million weekly reporters and the proportion of newly symptomatic users who have positive swab tests. The latest survey figures were based on the data from 13,460 recent swab tests done between 25 October to 08 November 2020. 

If you’d like to receive the full daily report for the ZOE COVID Symptom Study app head to: https://covid.joinzoe.com/your-contribution 

Tim Spector, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King’s College London, comments: 

“Having peaked at the end of October, cases coming down across most areas of the UK, is good news but the numbers are still high in most areas, and with a prevalence of over 500,000 infected people there is still a lot of virus in the population. Yesterday, we reported that the R value was below 1 across all UK nations for the first time and we need this trend to continue. A caution is that rates are still increasing in the Midlands for reasons that are unclear. We aren’t out of trouble yet, but with numbers falling and the news of a vaccine, it feels like the end is in sight.”

An historic site with agricultural significance in the heart of Honiton could be demolished to make way for a multi-storey retirement home complex, if plans get the go-ahead.

Hannah Corfield honiton.nub.news

Honiton Livestock Market

Architect illustration of the proposed development. Picture: Churchill Retirement Living

A redevelopment proposal for Honiton Livestock Market, located just off Silver Street, was submitted to planning authorities at East Devon District Council (EDDC) on November 6.

Churchill Retirement Living seeks permission for ‘demolition of existing buildings’ to build a block of ’57 retirement apartments including communal facilities, access, car parking and landscaping’.

It comes after Churchill held a public consultation in Mackarness Hall back in March of this year to speak to locals affected by the town centre redevelopment plans.

Many residents have expressed strong objections to the proposals; citing impractical vehicular access down a small one-way road and close proximity to a high school and sports facilities used by families, among other reasons.

Historic site

Planning documents include a description detailing the historic significance of the Cattle Market.

It states: “The site is located just outside the historic core of Honiton. Forming part of a wider agricultural hinterland from the medieval period onwards, its immediate environs were subject to industrial and residential expansion and development in the later post-medieval and modern periods.

“From the early twentieth century onwards the site was utilised as Honiton Livestock Market and it has been subject to several phases of reorganisation and development associated with this use.”

Objections

So far, three people have commented on the planning application posted on the EDDC website – all objecting to the proposals.

Mr Hennessey wrote: “The destruction of Holyshute House and the adjacent, historically important toll house should serve as a warning of what happens when large, aggressive retirement companies are not subject to proper planning process.”

Mrs Howe, highlighting the issue of traffic, said: “The one-way system of traffic from the High Street via Silver Street, St Cyres Road and Dowell Street is so constrained as to make this proposal utterly nonsensical.

“Although the proposal is for sheltered accommodation and one may assume that the residents will not be major car users, the staff, visiting services and relatives will present a considerable addition to the existing traffic.”

In support of the plans

Managing Director of Churchill Retirement Living in-house planning consultancy, Stuart Goodwill said: “There is a compelling overall housing need in Honiton, especially for older people.

“Our proposed development will go some way to increasing access to this type of housing for local residents.

“By meeting this rising demand, we can allow older people to downsize and free up under occupied houses in the local area for families.

“The site is excellently located on previously developed land within easy walking distance of the town centre.

“As well as meeting the need for high-quality retirement apartments, the development will bring benefits to the local economy.

“Owners will be within easy walking distance of shops, restaurants and other amenities in the town, helping to boost local businesses.”

“If you’re going to be successful in politics you need to build alliances and bring people with you,” one ally said. “This lot just makes enemies.”

Oliver Wright | Steven Swinford www.thetimes.co.uk 

It is only a short walk down the stairs from Carrie Symonds’s Downing Street flat to the “shop” below where the prime minister’s advisers work but it may as well be a trip between different worlds.

Those worlds collided spectacularly this week as Ms Symonds helped to engineer the departure of Lee Cain, her fiancé’s communications chief. She also came close to claiming the scalp of Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s chief adviser.

Allies of Ms Symonds have been known to refer to the prime minister’s political advisers as “the mad mullahs”, indicating the depths of the ructions that have divided No 10.

With a briefing war in full flow and dark threats of further resignations, such things can be dismissed as palace intrigue. But at its heart, it is an ideological as well as a personal and political battle for the direction of the government.

Ms Symonds’s allies insist that she is trying to free Mr Johnson from the overbearing influence of former Vote Leave operatives who hold many of the key posts in Downing Street. She blames them for isolating him from his own MPs, turning the media against the government and for overseeing a series of missteps on the pandemic that have squandered his political capital.

“If you’re going to be successful in politics you need to build alliances and bring people with you,” one ally said. “This lot just makes enemies.”

Those in the Vote Leave camp under Mr Cummings and Mr Cain insist that Ms Symonds is the destabilising influence, working on Mr Johnson to unpick decisions and trying to create a separate power structure in No 10.

“Part of the problem is that everyone comes to an agreement then he goes upstairs to No 11 at night and it all changes,” a source in the camp said. “He talks to Carrie, he talks to her friends, and his position moves.”

At the centre is the prime minister, who bounces between the two sides. At the same time, however, insiders say that Mr Johnson often changes his mind and puts off difficult decisions.

“Boris agrees with one group of people and says he is going to do one thing,” one insider said. “Then he agrees with another group of people that he’s going to do another thing. That’s difficult for everybody.”

The present ruction centres on the decision to install Allegra Stratton, the former ITV journalist and a former aide to Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, as the new public face of the government, fronting daily press briefings.

Mr Cain came up with the original idea for an on-screen personality. Ms Stratton did not even apply for the post.

Yet Mr Johnson approached her directly. He asked her to apply and then offered her the job. She agreed, but not without conditions.

She said that she would take the role but would answer only to the prime minister and not to Mr Cain as director of communications.

She wanted to set a different tone and did not want to be forced to defend positions set by Mr Cain over which she had no control. Mr Johnson agreed to all her terms.

Allies of Mr Cain saw the hand of Ms Symonds behind the whole operation and said that it left him in an impossible position.

“He felt undermined,” one friend said. “Allegra was imposed upon him and then he was told she wasn’t going to report to him. He felt he didn’t have a choice but to resign.”

The prime minister, trying to placate both sides, suggested a new role of chief of staff who would take a strategic overview of the entire Downing Street operation. But to Ms Stratton and Ms Symonds, herself a former Conservative Party director of communications, this merely exacerbated the existing problem. This was not a reset — it was an attempt by Mr Cain and Mr Cummings to exert even further control.

The leaked news of the potential appointment was widely attributed to Team Carrie as what turned out to be a successful attempt to prevent Mr Cain from taking the job. This version of events is disputed by allies of Ms Symonds, who have suggested that the news was leaked by her opponents as part of an attempt to bounce Mr Johnson into appointing Mr Cain.

Mr Cain resigned on Wednesday, resulting in a furious response from his Vote Leave allies. Several sources said that Mr Cummings came close to following him out the door and threatened to quit during a tense meeting with Mr Johnson that evening.

Ms Stratton has not commented publicly on the furore. On Wednesday, however, she ventured to Twitter to like a message by Susie Dent, the Countdown presenter. “Word discovery of the day is ‘stiffrump’,” Dent’s tweet said. “An obstinate and haughty individual who refuses to budge no matter what.”

Mr Cummings has chosen to stay but allies think it is likely that he will leave in the new year.

“He’s determined to complete Operation Moonshot [the mass testing programme] and get Brexit done,” an ally said. “But he’s very unhappy. Lee was his key in implementing his agenda. I would be surprised if he stays beyond Christmas.”

Mr Cummings is said to be pushing for Cleo Watson, a senior No 10 adviser with whom he worked in Vote Leave, to take the role of chief of staff.

There were suggestions that Lord Frost, the chief Brexit negotiator who worked with Mr Cain in the Foreign Office, could also quit. The peer is said to have gone “bananas” about the suggestion because of concerns that it could destabilise the final stages of talks with the European Union. He is believed to have met Mr Johnson last night and assured him that he had no plans to leave.

Oliver Lewis, Lord Frost’s deputy, is said to have seriously considered quitting, however. Mr Lewis worked alongside Mr Cain at Vote Leave. He also had a private meeting with Mr Johnson and decided to stay for the time being. “There are a lot of people who are very bruised,” one figure said.

“A lot of his team are very loyal to Lee and felt very strongly about the way he’s been treated. Dom has decided to stay for now because he is very involved in all the Operation Moonshot work but I don’t know how long that will last.”

Why does it matter? In short because the centre of gravity in Downing Street has shifted significantly. Relations between Mr Johnson and Mr Cummings are said to be tense and the prime minister now regards the whole Vote Leave team, on whom he used to rely, with a degree more suspicion.

“The PM has other people who he is depending on now,” one insider said. “He is using Allegra and others — that’s just the way he does business.”

Mr Johnson is understood to have suggested bringing Henry Newman, a senior aide to Michael Gove, into a senior policy role. “The prime minister really likes him,” a government source said. “He thinks there’s a role for him.”

Mr Newman is understood not to be aware of the approach and his friends have dismissed the claims as false, suggesting that they are part of a campaign to undermine him.

One source said that Mr Johnson wants to reset the government and make it less adversarial, ending the “culture wars” against institutions such as the BBC. The prime minister wants to focus on environmental issues, never a big priority for Brexiteers, and reset relations with his increasingly fractious parliamentary party.

Much will depend on who gets the job as chief of staff, which is the one thing that both sides can agree is badly needed to bring some sort of semblance of order to decision making.

Others are less than optimistic that the tensions will be resolved. One critic said: “The lack of decisiveness at the top . . . that’s the fundamental problem we’ve seen play out this year of indecision and flip flopping. If you can’t even stand by your most loyal trusted people and undermine them and box them in, in a way that they feel they have to go. It’s not good.”

Sir Jonathan Jones, the government’s former chief legal adviser, who resigned in September over Brexit, was even more caustic.

He posted a picture of a cocktail on Twitter with the caption: “This cocktail is bang up to date. No 10 gin. Highly corrosive acid (lime juice). More heat than light (ginger liqueur). Shake chaotically over shards of ice until meltdown. Add media froth (champagne). Garnish with tears and (wasted) thyme. Do suggest names.”

As the council prepares to make major savings in the wake of declaring bankruptcy it will be looking back on financial decisions made in the past few years.

Tara O’Connor www.mylondon.news

These include property deals, made with the intention of making money for the cash-strapped council.

The Croydon Park Hotel was bought in August 2018 with the aim of bringing in £1 million profit a year for the council.

But the hotel in Altyre Road went into administration in June this year and is currently being used as temporary accommodation for homeless people while the council decides what to do with it.

The decision to buy the hotel was highlighted by auditors Grant Thornton in a report in the public interest, published last month, which recommended that the purchase be reviewed.

It was a ‘leader decision’ by then council leader Tony Newman and not reviewed by cabinet and the overview and scrutiny commission until a month later.

The auditors report will be discussed at an extraordinary council meeting on Thursday (November 19).

The council’s medium-term financial strategy (2018-2022) established what it called an ‘asset acquisition fund’ of £100 million to invest in property as an ongoing income stream.

This fund was increased to £200 million in December 2019.

The Colonnades Retail Park, Purley Way, was the first purchase after the asset acquisition fund was approved.

The council bought it in November 2018 for £53 million, at the time it hoped that it would provide an annual income of £1.4 million. Auditors noted that the income of the retail park had been badly hit by the Covid-19 pandemic.

In December 2019 Croydon Council announced it had bought two more properties.

These were builders’ merchants Selco in Imperial Way, Waddon, and medical supplies specialist Alliance Healthcare at Vulcan Way in New Addington – at a combined cost of £14 million.

At the time it was thought the annual income from the tenants, which employed 300 people, would be £330,000.

But a damning report into the financial state of the council, published by Grant Thornton, deemed the investments “inherently flawed”.

It said: “The investments in The Colonnades and Croydon Park Hotel were not

grounded in a sufficient understanding of the retail and leisure market and have again illustrated that the council’s strategy to invest its way out of financial challenge rather than pay attention to controlling expenditure on core services was inherently flawed.”

Croydon Council has commissioned an independent review into properties the authority has bought which is expected to be published this month.

Recommendations off the back of this report will be presented alongside a budget review in February 2021.

Council leader councillor Hamida Ali said: “As a council we are fully committed to implementing the changes and improvements to address the recommendations made by the auditor as swiftly as we can, and to learn from our mistakes.

“First we must come together as a whole council, to address the serious criticisms contained within the auditors’ report and agree a way forward to ensure that this can never happen again. It will be an extremely important step on our improvement journey.”

Just as we are struggling to read the nuance, if any, between a Ben Ingham (Independent) and a Ben Ingham (Conservative). The party he rejoined is fragmenting into groups and factions.

The new schism isn’t as simple as in the Thatcher era when Tories could be divide into the “wets” and the”dries” – far from it.

It seems that members of some of the traditional groups such as “The One Nation Group” and the “Free Market Group”  can still be identified.

But new ones are forming with euphemistic titles such as “The Common Sense Group” and “The Covid Recovery Group”. Remember how the “Brexiteers” became “The European Research Group”? Very Orwellian.

MPs seem to be hedging their bets by joining more than one, creating parties within the party.

Wonder which groups our intrepid Neil Parish and Simon Jupp belong to?

Thinking more parochially, are we going to have to pigeonhole our local Tories? Where to start? Owl

Jessica Elgot www.theguardian.com

Conservative MPs who see the government as remote or lacking a policy agenda are flocking to backbench pressure groups in the hope of forcing Downing Street to listen to their concerns.

After the success of the European Research Group in shaping Brexit policy, a string of new groups have been set up in recent months with a remit on issues from migration to criticism of “the woke agenda”. They claim they have their finger on the pulse of the subjects which voters in the party’s treasured new “red wall” seats care about.

One MP who is a member of two of the new groups told the Guardian: “I would say we are ready for a culture war, and we are confident that our policy agenda will help win it.”

The latest of the groups, the Covid Recovery Group (CRG), was announced on Tuesday and appears to pose the most direct threat of rebellion over the government’s policies on lockdown. It is led by the ERG veteran Steve Baker, who one member said was “the best whip in Westminster”.

It launched with 50 members and at least 10 more have joined its ranks in the last 24 hours, the Guardian understands.

The Common Sense Group, which launched quietly in the summer with about 40 members, was the subject of a front-page story in the Daily Telegraph this week after it accused the National Trust of being “coloured by cultural Marxist dogma” and in the grip of “elite bourgeois liberals” over a report acknowledging links between its properties and slavery.

It now has 59 MPs and 7 members of the House of Lords in its ranks.

Sir John Hayes, the founder of the group, told the Guardian: “The ERG has served an important role, but it has very largely done its work. The government has to decide what its defining purpose is beyond Brexit. There’s a thirst in the party to have an open debate about what the direction should be now. There’s a different kind of Conservative family emerging.”

One member of the group, Jonathan Gullis, posted a “CULTURE WAR ALERT” on Facebook last month telling his followers that research by Greenwich Maritime Museum into the Royal Navy’s links to slavery was “leftwing ideological nonsense”.

Members have met with Priti Patel to discuss their views on immigration. “We had a Zoom meeting with Priti within two or three days of forming, and I hope we did have some influence, help to shape the thinking,” Hayes said.

On Wednesday, members of the Northern Research Group (NRG) used a Westminster Hall debate to call on the government to set out a “northern economic recovery plan”. One member, Southport MP Damien Moore, told the minister Kemi Badenoch: “We can’t just hope our way out of this crisis.”

Henry Hill, news editor at the Conservative Home website, said that the groups had formed because “whereas with Thatcher or Cameron you had a coherent ‘-ism’, with Johnson you don’t really have one of those. There are just whole areas of policy where Johnsonism isn’t a thing.”

The CRG has been modelled on the ERG, which was tightly organised, commissioned in-depth reports, had official briefings for journalists and MPs, and employed a staff researcher who handled communications.

The new group has already engaged the services of Ed Barker, a seasoned Tory PR professional and former parliamentary candidate who worked for the pro-Brexit group Global Britain and for Esther McVey’s short-lived leadership campaign.

Ben Bradley, the MP for Mansfield, who was one of the first “red wall” group of Tories to be elected, in 2017, is a member of the Common Sense Group and the NRG.

He said the spate of new groups reflected the priorities of a new kind of Tory MP, drawing comparisons with some of the thinktanks that emerged under Theresa May, like the free-market group Freer, and Onward, run by former May advisers Will Tanner and the MP Neil O’Brien.

“When we got in in 2017, there was this proliferation of new groups,” Bradley said. “In 2019, there are also a lot of new ideas coming from seats that have new priorities, levelling up the north, immigration.

“This is a mechanism of getting that across. But this time there is senior leadership who are invested too, big guns on the backbenches like Jake Berry, around John Hayes in Common Sense, there’s Esther McVey in [another group] the Blue Collar Conservatives. It’s very much a 2019 viewpoint that has found a wider reception.”

Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, cautioned against groups “being amplified because if a mouthy backbencher is said to represent something it lends them legitimacy”. But he said the “turning of the page” from Brexit had helped create space for such voices. “The energy almost needed somewhere else to go within this closed system,” he said, noting of the CRG that “the journey from Euroscepticism to lockdown scepticism is fairly easy ”.

A Tory MP who is part of the CRG said that the new groupings were all viewed as “adversarial” by Downing Street. “The fundamental reason for this is that No 10 is so dominant,” they said. “It’s clear that if you want to be heard, you have to shout. Johnson has no views beyond Brexit. We’re in a particularly odd place where access is limited to a very narrow faction and so it’s hardly surprising if real conservatives are trying to find a way to act.”

Some backbenchers on the left of the party are concerned about a new factionalism. One who is aligned with the One Nation Group of soft-right Conservatives said they feared the emergence of multiple “parties within a party”.

The MP added: “I’m wary of some of these endeavours, given the grief they wrought on the party last year. But it should be said that you don’t have to be a headbanger to think that the sphere of influence in No 10 is too small and that groups that put pressure on things that Tory voters care about is not necessarily a bad thing.”

Unbelievable! – Owl

Posted on November 12, 2020 seatonmatters.org 

Today’s Health and Adult Care Scrutiny meeting painted a grim picture of the situation in Devon, with leadership which is just not meeting the needs of the situation:

Shortages of hospital and ICU beds – the SW has the fewest in the country (and the UK almost the fewest in Europe) meaning that – despite our Covid level being the lowest – the two lockdowns have been necessary to save our hospital system.

‘Physical space constraints’ due to the pandemic are restricting the restoration of ‘elective’ surgery – after improving more slowly than planned, this is now going backwards because of more Covid cases. 4,500 people and rising have been waiting over a year!

There are bed shortages in mental health units, too – as well as staff shortages, which are also affecting 111 and after-hours call-outs, with weak governance in both services.

Yet in the midst of all this, Devon CCG are saying that they must go back to implementing £400m financial savings (planned before the pandemic) in 2021-22.

They also want to proceed with the planned closure of Teignmouth hospital, although we have insisted that Scrutiny will look at the consultation results (which were not ready today) and send our views to the CCG before it makes a decision.

WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! The pandemic will not end on 31st March, so EMERGENCY FUNDING MUST CONTINUE NEXT FINANCIAL YEAR. And we need to plan now for a post-pandemic new deal:

• Centralise Covid services in the acute hospitals, disperse other services to more sites, restore proper intermediate (step-down) care outside the care home system.
• Recognise that we have been badly caught out by Covid – we need to permanently maintain a larger hospital system, with more beds, so that we are ready for the next pandemic (which experts say could be worse).
• Make full use of our community hospital system, so that people can be treated safely, closest to home wherever possible. Drop the Teignmouth closure programme.

Devon CCG and DCC must go and tell the Government, which is splashing out tens of billions on testing, that it must find a billion more for Devon’s NHS and adult care services. Cancel the cuts and invest in a viable future plan. WILL M.P.s AND COUNCILLORS OF ALL PARTIES JOIN ME IN PUSHING FOR THIS?

There are more patients in Devon hospitals now, after a positive Covid-19 test, than at the peak of the pandemic – with that number set to rise until the end of November.

Daniel Clark sidmouth.nub.news 

Dr Paul Johnson, chairman of Devon Clinical Commissioning Group, presented the stark picture that the NHS is dealing with to Thursday’s Local Outbreak Engagement Board meeting.

He told the board that there were currently 219 patients in hospitals in Devon – although not all were admitted for Covid-19 – and that it wasn’t until the end of November that they expected to begin seeing the impact of the second lockdown and patient numbers begin to reduce.

Dr Johnson said: “Lockdown coming when it did was very good news for us as if cases kept rising beyond the end of November, then the NHS wouldn’t have been able to cope.”

In presenting the issues and pressures the NHS are facing, Dr Johnson said that the South West does have problems that could have seen it run out of beds quickest, due to geography, an older population and a relatively lower proportion of beds, which made the region vulnerable even with a lowest number of cases.

He said that there three pressures that hospitals were now facing they were not the case in April and May that means they are under more stress now than back in Spring.

The board heard that in April and May, elective referrals from GPs to hospitals were only at 40 per cent of the usual figures as people stayed home, but as of September, that was nearly back up to 100 per cent, with Dr Johnson saying: “Unlike the first wave when we had breathing space from routine elective activity, we are not seeing that this time.”

He added that in the first wave, cancer referrals in April fell to around a quarter of their usual levels, only returning to normal by June, adding: “That gave us breathing space, but was a worry that people with cancer symptoms were not coming forward and missing the chance for an early diagnoses.

“We are still waiting to see if that is the case and referrals have picked up and back at the high level and we are confident we are picking up the diagnoses now but have the added pressure.”

And he said that accident and emergency admissions fell to around 40 per cent of usual levels in the spring, but they have also returned to just below normal levels, but it felt more pressured due to the extra infection controls that need to be taken.

Dr Johnson told the board that normally the NHS aims to only have a maximum of 90 per cent of beds occupied in hospitals to ensure they have capacity to deal with any ‘surge events’ but that in the spring, only 45 per cent of beds were being used after emptying hospitals of patients to ‘deal with what could have been the worst case scenario’.

He said: “Thankfully we didn’t see it but we had the capacity to deal with it.”

The board heard that around 93 per cent of beds in Derriford Hospital, 91 per cent in Torbay Hospital, 90 per cent in Exeter, and 82 per cent of beds in North Devon Hospital were currently occupied by patients who were in hospital for a variety of reasons, not all Covid-19 related.

But he said: “The number of Covid-19 patients in hospital has exceeded the peak in the first wave, which gives us problems in hospitals.

“Some operations have had to be cancelled and we are having to close some wards as people who when admitted tested negative initially have in subsequent screenings tested positive and when happens, they are usually on a non-covid ward so that had implications around discharges and bed occupancy.

“We are not see a slowing yet and it usually around four to five weeks before any impact on hospital admissions from measures so we won’t see anything from the lockdown until the end of November, and we expect to see more of a rise for the next two and a half weeks, and then a drop as we see the impact on the lockdown.

“We are making plans to optimise the use of beds and to get people home quickly, but if it keeps rising beyond the end of November, then the NHS wouldn’t have been able to cope, so lockdown coming when it did was very good news for us to cope.”

Dr Virginia Pearson, director of Public Health for Devon, said that it was more important than ever that the public interventions of social distancing, hand washing, and wearing face coverings were adhered to do in order not only to protect ourselves but the NHS as well.

She added: “We can see the spread of the virus leading to increase in case in older age groups, which parallels with pressure with the NHS.

“There is some encouraging info from the North which suggests that they have peaked and but we will see the pressure going up for a couple of weeks, so need to expect some disruption to services.”

The meeting heard that in terms of the latest figures around coronavirus cases for Devon, the numbers were ‘relatively flat’ but there was an increasing level of ‘background noise’,

Simon Chant, public health specialist, said that the infection rates for Devon were 104 per 100,000 population, which was well below the figures for Plymouth and Torbay, and significantly below the England average of 245 per 100,000.

Figures for Exeter, East Devon, North Devon and West Devon were just over the 100/100,000 mark, with lower numbers in Teignbridge, South Hams, Torridge and Mid Devon.

Dr Pearson added that the underlying backdrop was of a gradual increase in case numbers, but that the amount of testing in Devon has increased phenomenally, from around 8,000 tests a week back in September to over 20,000 tests a week now.

She said: “Partly there are more cases because of more testing, but there is also more spread, and the pattern is small numbers scattered across the whole of Devon. There is more testing availability in Devon with the number of national labs increased, but also people are recognising that important if have symptoms to get tested.

“We want to know what is out there and it is important to understand the spread of the disease and there is no substitute for being able to get rapid data and take rapid action around self-isolation.”

Since the second lockdown began last Thursday, figures showed that traffic on Devon’s roads was down 30 per cent on weekdays and 40 per cent on weekends, but that compared to a 70-80 per cent during the first lockdown.

Dr Pearson added: “The big difference is that in the first lockdown, schools were closed, so some of the transport is school traffic. This will give us an idea of the extent how much younger people are impacting the spread. There has been an impact in schools, but not huge or a significant issue, so we will keep a close eye on the incidence, where it is, and what age groups as we go through the lockdown.”

Man you’ve never heard of resigns from job you never knew existed – it doesn’t sound the most exciting of headlines.  Except, that is……..

Ross Clark 12 November 2020 • 12:11pm www.telegraph.co.uk 

Man you’ve never heard of resigns from job you never knew existed – it doesn’t sound the most exciting of headlines.  Except, that is, when it affects a man everyone has heard of and indeed who many believe has the most important job of all as the real leader of the country. So forget Lee Cain and Carrie Symonds – the spat between them is like all those proxy wars in Korea, Afghanistan and so on during the Cold War. The real battle is between the superpowers – Dominic Cummings on the one hand and Tory MPs on the other, with the Prime Minister, like Berlin, sandwiched in the middle.

It is the same battle which seems to rage in all modern governments: between ministers and MPs on the one hand and unelected advisers and Downing Street spokesmen on the other. Remember Alan Walters vs Nigel Lawson in Thatcher’s day, Alastair Campbell vs anti-war Labour MPs in Blair’s day, Nick Timothy vs Tory MPs under Theresa May? It is effectively the same old battle, but getting more vicious with each passing administration. Prime Ministers like small bands of trusted advisers whom they can keep close at hand;  MPs, still less ministers, think they are the ones who should be wielding power and do not like being sidelined.

But no adviser has ever gained quite the profile of Dominic Cummings. For a man who doesn’t much like talking to the press, he attained from the beginning a remarkable public profile. Which other government adviser ever had reporters regularly stationed outside their house? Cummings has attained mythical status as much by fascinating people as by doing things. He is an Eric Cantona of government. He doesn’t much speak to us, but somehow we know him anyway. We know he doesn’t much like Tory MPs and that he holds the civil service pretty well in contempt.

If you are the unrecognised, unknown minister for paperclips all this must be pretty galling. You spent long years on the rubber chicken circuit, speaking to local people about buses, notching up brownie points to impress Conservative association selection panels. You worked your way up via parliamentary assistant to some junior minister. And yet still you are blocked from the Prime Ministerial ear by Cummings, who seems to have spent long years doing nothing at all, other than scribbling an impenetrable blog.   

Cummings was never likely to last a full Parliamentary term at No 10. The wonder is that he has lasted this long. For Boris Johnson the case for keeping him is that he has some super-insight into the minds of voters whom others ignore – a reputation he gained from his role in Vote Leave and in last year’s general election. We don’t, though, know the counter-factual. Maybe Britain would have voted to leave the EU without him – no-one can say for sure that the country wouldn’t have voted 53 percent to 47 percent, rather than 52 percent to 48 percent, had Cummings not offended some people with his £350 million a week claim on the side of the battle bus.

But one thing is for certain: while Cummings may possibly help to win referendums and elections, he certainly can’t help win Commons votes – only MPs can do that. What precipitated this week’s crisis at No 10 was last week’s vote on a second lockdown, where the Government’s 80-seat majority all but evaporated. Cummings, despite his jaunt to Barnard Castle, is a lockdown fanatic. Lee Cain is blamed by many for leaking the lockdown plans which led the Prime Minister to bring forward his announcement of the new restrictions, and to the hurried press briefing with the dodgy graphs.

There are still four years to go before an election – where Cummings could show his greatest usefulness. Commons votes, on the other hand, are going to come around with increasing rapidity. That is why Cummings is hanging by a thread and likely to lose the battle for his job: right now, the Prime Minister needs Cummings’s many enemies more than he needs the man himself.

Let’s face it. Government by unelected and unaccountable SPADs has been a costly failure (and a delicious PR disaster). Time for Dominic Cummings to spend more time with his family in Durham? Lockdown would be a good time to make the journey. – Owl

Steven Swinford, Deputy Political Editor | Oliver Wright, Policy Editor | Eleni Courea, Political Reporter www.thetimes.co.uk 

Even by the tumultuous standards of Boris Johnson’s government the rise and fall of his trusted aide Lee Cain has shaken those around the prime minister.

On Tuesday Mr Cain was Mr Johnson’s presumptive new chief of staff, having loyally served him long before he entered Downing Street. But by last night he was gone — losing not only the job he wanted but also resigning from his present role as the prime minister’s director of communications.

His departure, and the events that led up to it, reveal a fractured top team around Mr Johnson that has pitted his Brexit allies against the prime minister’s own fiancée in a battle over what kind of prime minister he should be.

It is a row that has engulfed the highest levels of No 10 and could prove to be a decisive moment for the direction of the government.

The enmity between Mr Cain and Carrie Symonds, herself a former director of communications for the Conservative Party, has long been simmering under the surface but became public yesterday after The Times disclosed Mr Johnson’s intention to promote Mr Cain to a new role.

If he had got the job the appointment would have cemented the influence of Downing Street’s Vote Leave faction around the prime minister, Mr Cain having worked for Dominic Cummings during the EU referendum campaign.

Yesterday, until his resignation, allies of Mr Cain had been insisting that he was the right man for the role, having been acting as the prime minister’s de facto chief of staff for some time.

“His instincts and the prime minister’s instincts are the same,” one government source said. “They have a tight bond. The point of a chief of staff is that they can provide direction and clarity on behalf of the prime minister. Lee can do that.”

Ms Symonds, however, believed that elevating Mr Cain would be damaging.

“She knows he runs the operation in an uncollegiate way where few people can get to him,” one friend said. “There’s not a diversity of opinion, he is not getting good advice. His top advisers are running him into the ground.”

Mr Cain’s potential promotion was always a bit tenuous. Last week he is understood to have tendered his resignation amid suggestions that he risked being marginalised by Allegra Stratton, who was chosen by the prime minister to front daily press briefings.

Ms Stratton has extensive broadcasting experience and previously worked for Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, as his director of communications.

Mr Cain is said to have objected to her appointment. “She was not his first choice, it was very much the prime minister’s call,” a Downing Street source said. “It has not gone well.”

According to Downing Street sources, the pair had not spoken since Ms Stratton moved to No 10 a fortnight ago. “Allegra has made no secret of the fact she wants to do things differently,” one No 10 staffer said.

“You had someone [in Boris] who was the most popular politician in the country who is now one of the least popular. She wants No 10 to be much more open, to take people with it. Both the party and the country.”

Mr Johnson, however, wanted to keep both Mr Cain and Ms Stratton. After Mr Cain suggested he could quit, the prime minister is understood to have “wined and dined” his aide and urged him to stay.

The role of chief of staff was discussed, with Mr Cummings and Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, both of whom are said to have pushed strongly for Mr Cain’s appointment. Two sources familiar with the matter said that Mr Cain had been verbally offered the role. Another disputed this and said that Mr Johnson had not made up his mind.

Either way, Ms Symonds was intent on stopping the appointment. “She didn’t think he was the right person to do it,” an ally said. “Why would the prime minister make the person who ran government communications during the pandemic his chief of staff? It doesn’t make sense.”

Some of Ms Symonds’ allies are concerned she will be “smeared” as a Lady Macbeth figure for intervening in political matters.

“She’s allowed to have a view. It’s a critical decision for the prime minister,” the ally said. “She is deeply political and has extensive experience.”

But Ms Symonds was not alone in her concerns. Ms Stratton is understood to have made clear to the prime minister that she believed Mr Cain’s appointment would have been a mistake.

Munira Mirza, head of policy at No 10, was also said to have concerns, though allies have rejected the claim.

Ms Stratton wants a change of tone. The treatment of Sonia Khan, a former Treasury adviser who was led out of Downing Street by armed police after being accused of leaking, still rankles.

“[Allegra’s] uncomfortable with how we’ve communicated with the public and the treatment of journalists and special advisers,” a No 10 staffer said.

However, one figure who worked with Mr Cain and Mr Johnson in Downing Street said he was one of the few people who could get the prime minister to take a decision. “Boris has a tendency to put off making difficult calls but Lee gets into a place where he is prepared to take a decision. There are not many people who can do that.

“Unlike Dom, Boris doesn’t see him as having an agenda. Lee is the prime minister’s man. He created him. Unlike many people he owes everything to Boris.”

Until now Mr Cain had made a remarkable ascent. He was a special adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and briefly at No 10 under Theresa May before working for Mr Johnson in the Foreign Office. One source said that Mr Cain beat Ms Symonds, who was a special adviser herself, to the role.

Mr Cain stuck with Mr Johnson after he left Mrs May’s government, and was instrumental in the Tory leadership campaign that followed. He was rewarded for his loyalty with the role of director of communications.

But Mr Cain’s appointment caused consternation among some Tory MPs who were concerned by the influence of the Vote Leave faction in No 10. And that may be what eventually did for him after the news leaked prematurely.

One said the party would regard it “with some horror” and that it could increase rifts between the No 10 operation and backbenchers. In the glare of publicity Mr Johnson ultimately decided that the risk was not worth taking.

Mr Cain’s previous role will now be filled by James Slack, a civil servant, who has a close relationship with Ms Stratton and previously worked for Mrs May. It signals a less adversarial approach to Downing Street communications.