While Neil Parish and his committee says the government must set tougher targets to lower air pollution if it hopes to reduce the health inequalities that have been laid bare by the coronavirus pandemic, the Government backtracks on other Green Policies.

For instance:

The much trumpeted £27bn roads plan is in doubt after  after documents showed the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, overrode official advice to review the policy on environmental grounds.

It has been a legal requirement to take into account the environmental impact of such projects since 2014. Shapps appears to have pressed ahead despite the advice of civil servants in his own department.

This is likely to be challenged legally.

Also:

Ministers are withdrawing hundreds of millions of pounds from a green home improvements scheme championed by Boris Johnson as a key element of the government’s net zero strategy.

These two example are neatly put together in this extract from the print edition of an article yesterday by Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent, The Guardian

… the central point [is] that major infrastructure decisions must take account of the UK’s binding climate obligations was affirmed. Campaigners want to use the same argument to force a review of the government’s £2bn road-building scheme, which they say would bust the UK’s carbon target and is incompatible with the obligation to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

Mike Childs of Friends of the Earth said: “We need to see a conclusive end to the damaging fixation with new fossil fuel-heavy projects. It’s hypocritical having a government that is happy to talk the talk on climate change, but then spends billions of pounds on roads.”

…….Road-building pledges are a staple of governments to show business-friendly credentials through infrastructure that supposedly creates jobs and boosts enterprise, and this seems to be the current motivation. Yet ministers show little interest in other projects that have a better chance of achieving this while reducing emissions.

The government has admitted its green homes grant scheme – central to the “build back better” pledge will have most of its £2bn funding withdrawn. Applicants have waited months for money, meaning most of the £2bn remains unspent. Yet that funding will not be rolled over after March, so the scheme is essentially over. In the light of the pandemic, miles of new motorway may be less essential to the way people work than a boost to broadband connectivity in rural areas. That would also create “shovel-ready” green jobs and equip the UK for a low-carbon and digital future. That seems as far away as ever. [Owl emphasis]

We all know, alas, that “shovel-ready” has a very literal meaning to the Government (and our LEP) – Owl

A committee chaired by local MP Neil Parish has said the government must set tougher targets to lower air pollution if it hopes to reduce the health inequalities that have been laid bare by the coronavirus pandemic.

Francesca Evans seaton.nub.news

The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee has put forward a report on air quality.

In presenting the report, Mr Parish, who represents the Honiton & Tiverton constituency, said: “Every year, an estimated 64,000 deaths are linked to air pollution disproportionately affecting disadvantaged communities.

“In rebuilding after the pandemic, we have a moral duty to put improving air quality at its core.”

The report summary stated: “Cleaner air and clearer skies were one of the few positives that many people experienced following the first COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020.

“However, as the pandemic progressed evidence also began to emerge that air pollution might be playing a role in people’s susceptibility to, and increased mortality from COVID-19.

“Air pollution is the largest environmental risk to UK public health and is linked to as many as 64,000 early deaths a year. It is an issue that our predecessor committees returned to several times, concluding the government had failed to address the scale of the challenge.”

The committee has revisited air quality in light of the pandemic and has presented its key findings as follows:

▪ Lockdown restrictions from March 2020 led to less traffic and changing travel patterns and many people experienced better air quality. But by September 2020, most towns and cities saw a return to pre-lockdown levels of air pollution.

The temporary improvement in air quality does not mask the need for faster progress on air pollution.

▪ Although there is a link between poor air quality and COVID-19 mortality and morbidity; a strong and established case already existed for taking action to reduce health inequalities from air pollution, and the government’s Clean Air Strategy should be amended to include measures to reduce these long-term health inequalities.

▪ The Environment Bill should also be amended to include a health inequalities target; require the Secretary of State to take account of human health considerations when setting or reviewing air quality targets; and include a duty on all government departments and local government to work together to deliver these targets.

▪ The Environment Bill does not provide the robust legal framework needed given the scale and urgency of the challenge. It should be amended to include a specific target to reduce the annual mean concentration of PM2.5 to under 10μg/m3 by 2030, in line with World Health Organisation-guidelines.

The Secretary of State should also use his discretionary powers in the Bill to set additional long-term air quality targets for the other key pollutants that harm human health.

▪ The Clean Air Strategy relies too much on local authorities, delegating most responsibility for delivering air quality improvements to them without providing sufficient competencies and resources to deliver. 

The duties related to local “air quality partners” in the Environment Bill should apply to all levels of government and public bodies; and the Government should commit to a long-term funding structure for local authorities to underpin their new duties in the bill.

▪ Reducing the use of public transport was necessary during the pandemic, but action is needed to prevent a permanent shift in public attitudes towards it as well as to maintain momentum in increasing active travel. 

As restrictions are lifted, the government should work with local authorities and providers to reassure the public that public transport is safe and to promote its use. The government should also match its rhetoric on active travel with sufficient funding.

Click here to read the full report form the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.

---

The Lansley reforms of the National Health Service in England, embodied in the Health and Social Care Act 2012, failed. More than 500 pages long, and often opaquely expressed, the legislation stripped control of the NHS from national and local government, and thus from the public, creating a large new bureaucracy to manage healthcare, drive competition and build a regulated internal market.

Owl recalls that, at the time, these reforms were expressed in language so opaque that only the author seemed to understand them. Reason enough for a strong Prime Minister to call a halt. “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough” – Albert Einstein. Such opacity was contagious and was even infecting EDDC around 2015.

The Guardian view on NHS reorganisation: the need to integrate 

Editorial www.theguardian.com 

Few would dispute that the Lansley reforms of the National Health Service in England, embodied in the Health and Social Care Act 2012, failed. More than 500 pages long, and often opaquely expressed, the legislation stripped control of the NHS from national and local government, and thus from the public, creating a large new bureaucracy to manage healthcare, drive competition and build a regulated internal market. Coming amid fierce spending austerity, the reforms were often seen as the enabler of a programme of cuts and privatisation. “I could and should have stepped in earlier,” David Cameron admitted in his memoir.

Disastrous though the reforms have been, and clear though the case is for replacing them, a new attempt at reorganisation would be destabilising, mid-pandemic, without strong support within the NHS that it can be implemented sympathetically. Matt Hancock embarked on such an attempt on Thursday, in his Integration and Innovation white paper. His proposals unquestionably cut with the grain of much that NHS England has been advocating to improve integrated care in the past two years. But Mr Hancock will have to make a strong case over the coming weeks if the public is to be persuaded that this reorganisation is the right priority in health policy.

That’s because the context is at least as tough today as it was in 2010-11. The NHS is in the midst of the biggest public health crisis it has ever faced. Staff are exhausted and there are large numbers of vacancies. Waiting lists for essential interventions are lengthening alarmingly – nearly quarter of a million people are now waiting more than 12 months for treatment. The care crisis is getting worse and there is no clear plan for reform and financing. The economy is on life support, with public money likely to be very tight for years. Ministers mess with the NHS at their peril.

Exactly why this is the right or necessary time to launch a structural reorganisation of the NHS is not obvious. Higher spending seems a much more immediate and practical response. Mr Hancock says that lessons from the pandemic point towards the need for his new approach. That may well be true. Covid has cruelly exposed some of the multiple fragmentations in the health service – not just between health and care, but between proactive and reactive health services, between hospitals and GPs, and between physical and mental health. Nevertheless, Mr Hancock was very selective in the lessons he cited to MPs. Nor were the lessons he mentioned new discoveries.

It is true that the Covid-19 crisis shows the need for better integration. This is something for which NHS England has been pressing, in the form of what it calls integrated care systems. But the largest single example of the current fragmentation – the relative neglect of care homes in relation to hospitals – will remain unaddressed until there is a proper spending programme, which forms no part of the white paper.

The past 12 months have exposed several ways in which the health department and NHS England have struggled to respond as effectively as they should. But it is far from obvious that these would have been better handled by Mr Hancock taking more powers from the NHS England chief executive, Simon Stevens, as he proposes to do. It is not clear that an empowered Mr Hancock would have avoided many of the most significant failures of the pandemic to which he conspicuously did not refer in the Commons on Thursday. These include major failures of equipment provision, staffing shortages, lack of proper training for the Nightingale hospitals, poor coordination, IT deficiencies, the abortive test-and-trace system, and the appointment of inadequately qualified cronies to management roles. After the immense efforts and sacrifices made by NHS and care workers, Mr Hancock needs to proceed with a humility that his tin-eared predecessor failed to show a decade ago.

Old Owl concludes

A million hits – third and final part

So, after parts 1 and 2, here we are.  It is December 2019.  Ben Ingham (formerly Tory, then Independent, then Leader of East Devon Alliance and now Independent again – but not for long as he moves back to his original Tory home soon …) is now Leader of East Devon District Council.  He has steadfastly refused to allow any East Devon Alliance independents to join his cabinet or committees and instead he has allied himself with various Independents, quasi-Independents, “really-not-very-independent-at-all-but-I probably-wouldn’t have-got-in-if-I-still-called-myself-Tory” independents, and real Tories – and all is not well.

There are many rumblings about his management style, his hard-to-uncover motivations and plans.  Eventually these erupt into open disagreement and defections.  By March 2020 it seems common sense prevails and those not allowed into the corridors of power have realised that they now have to desert a sinking ship and/or work together to defeat the current regime, which is anyway falling apart.  Owl describes the situation in February and March 2020 here:

https://eastdevonwatch.org/2020/02/11/breaking-news-cllr-paul-millar-joins-east-devon-alliance-independents/

https://eastdevonwatch.org/2020/06/19/east-devon-district-council-the-pendulum-swings/

By May 2020, things have sorted themselves out – hurrah!  Although, it has to be said, the sorting out was frustrated again and again by various quasi-independent and Tory councillors, particularly the Chairman of the Council, Stuart Hughes who manipulated the office (with the help of CEO Mark Williams and other old guard Tories) to delay the inevitable changeover of power as much as possible:

https://eastdevonwatch.org/2020/05/page/2/

However, as it has done recently in the USA, democracy prevailed and a coalition of many different independents and smaller parties rose into the ascendent and in May 2020, Councillor Paul Arnott, Leader of East Devon Alliance was made Leader of the Council:

https://eastdevonwatch.org/2020/05/29/east-devon-elects-new-leader-at-second-attempt-after-chaotic-meeting/

Immediately the new power group made a controversial (but highly popular) decision – it withdrew East Devon District Council from the much-hated Greater Exeter Strategic Plan – which would have seen East Devon take most of Exeter’s overflow housing into the west of the district, as Paul Arnott explains here:

https://eastdevonwatch.org/2020/08/31/council-leader-paul-arnott-explains-the-reasoning-behind-the-change-of-policy-of-withdrawing-from-gesp/

Tory councillors, who had fought long and hard to see much more development in East Devon were not happy!

Since then, it has to be said, there has been a much more calm, co-operative, transparent and collegiate way of doing democratic business in East Devon – which like all other councils has been torn asunder by the ravages of Covid-19.

Throughout all this time, East Devon Watch has fulfilled its brief – to keep its beady eye on the ramifications of decisions about how East Devon should progress into the future and how that progress should happen.  It has been the source of many scoops, has been loved by many and hated by quite a few (not least our current and past MPs who have never, and will never, escape accountability for what they do and say).

EDW finds East Devon in much safer hands but in much more fragile times and will be reporting on and commenting about the matters that we all need to know about – prodding, pushing, investigating, reporting, criticising (without fear or favour) so that you, the constituents and voters have a better idea of what is going on and who is moving and shaking events.

Soon, if Boris Johnson is to be believed (hhhmmm…) there will be elections to County Council in May 2020 and probably by-elections and elections again in East Devon.  EDW will be on the case.

During its lifetime, this Old Owl retired and handed on the baton (twig, branch) to New Owl who is doing a magnificent job of keeping its fresh, beady eye on the district.  Long may it continue!

And Old Owl feels confident in saying the next million hits will be just as interesting (or even more interesting) than the first million!