Quote of the day

 Insider’s Henry Dyer has an absolutely classic Cox quote from his work on the BVI inquiry: “Let me be quite candid. There are real drawbacks to open registers. It becomes a political tool for every — many, many frivolous complaints are made. It is a profound invasion into a legislator’s private life because what happens is, as you can imagine, stories get written, minor infractions are written up to be morally shameful or even impute dishonesty. I accept the need for registers — of course I do; every legislator must — but there are perfectly understandable reticence to invite that kind of onslaught that that can sometimes mean.” Why on earth might such a “distinguished” figure, as he modestly described himself in yesterday’s statement, be so wary of public registers shining a light on legislators’ interests? We can only speculate.

Patient safety in the NHS in England is being put at “unacceptably high” risk, with severe staff shortages leaving hospitals, GP surgeries and A&E units struggling to cope with soaring demand, health chiefs have warned.

Andrew Gregory www.theguardian.com 

The health service has hit “breaking point”, the leaders say, with record numbers of patients seeking care.

Nine in 10 NHS chief executives, chairs and directors have reported this week that the pressures on their organisation have become unsustainable. The same proportion is sounding “alarm bells” over staffing, with the lack of doctors, nurses and other health workers putting lives of patients at risk.

Sajid Javid, the health secretary, has come under fire for recently claiming, at a No 10 press conference, that he did not believe the pressure on the NHS was unsustainable.

But the survey of 451 NHS leaders finds the health service already at “tipping point”. The results of the poll, conducted by the NHS Confederation, which represents the healthcare system in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, show that 88% of the leaders think the demands on their organisation are unsustainable, and 87% believe a lack of staffing in the NHS as a whole is putting patient safety and care at risk.

The survey of the most senior executives running hospitals, ambulance services, mental health providers, community services, primary care and integrated care systems comes hours before new performance figures for the NHS in England are due to be published.

The number of people waiting for hospital treatment in England has hit a record high of 5.7 million as the NHS struggles to clear the backlog of care that has been worsened by the pandemic. Updated figures are expected on Thursday.

The greatest areas of concern for NHS leaders are primary care, and urgent and emergency care, according to the survey.

Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: “Almost every healthcare leader we’ve spoken to is warning that the NHS is under unsustainable pressure, and they are worried the situation will worsen, as we head into deep midwinter, unless action is taken. They are also sounding alarm bells over risks to patient safety if their services become overwhelmed, on top of a severe workforce crisis.

“The health and social care secretary says the NHS is not under unsustainable pressure, but NHS leaders are clear that we have reached a tipping point. Frontline providers across all parts of the NHS are under intolerable pressure.”

A hospital trust chief executive in the south-east said: “Systems are at breaking point and risk is unacceptably high [for] some cohorts of patients, be that in emergency, primary care, cancer or elective care [or elsewhere]. But where is the honesty and openness about this?”

An ambulance leader revealed that pressures were so severe they were hampering the organisation’s “ability to respond to immediate life-threatening calls” and meant “some patients will die”.

Taylor said that while the NHS was approaching winter with more than 90,000 vacancies, the “number one measure” ministers could take now to stop the NHS plunging into crisis would be providing emergency funding for social care, which had even greater numbers of unfilled jobs.

The Guardian revealed last month that the NHS was facing a mounting beds crisis because care homes with unprecedented staff shortages had to stop taking in patients from hospitals.

Health leaders are trying to free up space in the NHS to tackle the backlog of 5.7 million people – equivalent to almost 10% of the population of England – awaiting treatment. But efforts to speed up the discharge of patients into the community are being hampered by care-worker shortages.

The most endorsed recommendation by health leaders in the NHS Confederation poll was for ministers to provide urgent extra support for social care. This should be targeted at ensuring effective discharge arrangements so that people can live more independently in care homes or in their own homes, health leaders said.

The NHS beds crisis is now so serious that as many as one in five beds in some hospitals are occupied by patients who are medically fit to be discharged, the Guardian was told. In most cases that is because there is no care package available to enable them to leave hospital.

Taylor said the required extra support for social care services should include more money to increase care assistants’ wages to help fill staffing vacancies, and to increase the staff’s fuel allowance so more people could be persuaded back into the sector.

He added: “We welcomed the government’s recent extra investment in the NHS, but we cannot immediately buy our way out of this potential crisis due to the 90,000-plus vacancies in the NHS. It would be better to allocate more immediate funding, from the recent funding settlement, to social care services, as boosting the numbers of care staff will have much greater impact on reducing pressures on hospitals and other parts of the NHS.”

He just doesn’t get it (yet) – owl

www.independent.co.uk

Boris Johnson has insisted that Britain is not “remotely a corrupt country” amid continuing fallout over the conduct of some MPs, scrutiny over politicians’ second jobs and concerns over sleaze in politics.

But Labour claimed that the prime minister’s failure to apologise for his role in undermining public trust in politics proved that “he doesn’t care about tackling corruption that has engulfed Downing Street, his government and the Conservative Party”.

And there were signs of growing fears among Tory MPs that the wave of negative publicity could deliver lasting damage to the party’s reputation, with one angry backbencher telling The Independent that the former attorney general Sir Geoffrey Cox had “taken the f***ing p***” by raking in hundreds of thousands of pounds in outside earnings at a time when many voters are facing financial difficulties.

The prime minister’s remarks on Wednesday followed the decision last week to order his MPs to prevent Owen Paterson’s suspension for breaking lobbying rules by creating a Tory-dominated committee – a move that provoked outrage at Westminster.

Despite accusations of “corruption” and the Conservatives dipping in the opinion polls, Mr Johnson twice declined to apologise for his role in the politically toxic row when tackled on the issue at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow.

“I genuinely believe that the UK is not remotely a corrupt country, nor do I believe that our institutions are corrupt,” he said.

“We have a very, very tough system of parliamentary democracy and scrutiny, not least by the media. I think what you have got is cases where, sadly, MPs have broken the rules in the past, may be guilty of breaking the rules today. What I want to see is them facing appropriate sanctions.”

Mr Johnson, who said he would not comment on individual cases, stressed that MPs found to have broken standards rules “should be punished”.

He warned them directly: “The rules say the two crucial things: you must put your job as an MP first and you must devote yourself primarily and above all to your constituents and the people who send you to Westminster, to parliament.

“And they also say that you should not use your position as an MP to lobby or otherwise intervene on behalf of any outside commercial interest. It is not only that you have to register those interests – you can’t lobby or make representation while an MP on behalf of those interests.

“Those are the rules and they must be enforced and those who don’t obey them should, of course, face sanctions.”

Despite the prime minister’s attempt to draw a line under the sleaze row, one senior Tory backbencher told The Independent: “I don’t know anybody who thinks the last week has been well handled – and that includes government ministers who were involved in what was done.

“Of course there is reputational damage, some of which is about not looking competent and some of which is a — mostly unjustified — sense that there is some ill-defined idea of sleaze connected to the party. It doesn’t look good and I think we all know that.”

The Conservative MP Bob Neill said: “MPs do feel very let down. This is a reminder that the prime ministers and his advisers in Downing Street must not take the parliamentary party for granted.”

Earlier, Labour demanded an investigation into Sir Geoffrey after it emerged that he appeared to conduct lucrative work advising the government of the British Overseas Territory on a corruption case from his Commons office in September.

In a statement issued earlier, Sir Geoffrey said he “does not believe” he breached MPs’ rules, and also revealed that the Tory chief whip had advised him it was “appropriate” to vote via a proxy on a separate occasion in April while advising the British Virgin Islands from the Caribbean.

Several media reports claimed on Wednesday evening that Sir Geoffrey has made at least £5.5 million from a second job while he has been an MP.

While Mr Johnson declined to comment on the case, one Conservative MP highlighted the unease in the parliamentary ranks, telling The Independent: “A lot of people are p****d off and, ultimately, the buck stops with Boris, so this is not doing him any good.”

A second backbencher also deployed an expletive when summing up the current situation, saying they were furious Sir Geoffrey had “taken the f*****g p**s”, provoking public fury about all MPs.

“When Covid started, I was volunteering to support the NHS and vulnerable people and there he was taking off for the British Virgin Islands for a month and bringing us all into disrepute,” the MP added.

Extract from www.dailymail.co.uk 

Sir Geoffrey Cox rents out his London home while claiming £1,900 a month for a second property, it was reported last night.

The former attorney general even claimed £3,800 in taxpayer cash for his second London property for two months while he was working abroad in the Caribbean.

While not against Commons rules, an ex-standards chief said MPs earning cash overseas while claiming from taxpayers is ‘totally wrong’.

Sir Geoffrey rakes in around £1,000 a week for the home he rents out in Battersea, south London, The Daily Mirror reported.

He and his wife bought the property as a second home for £535,000 in 2004 and claimed £82,298 in mortgage interest payments over four years……..

More on sewage discharges from Nicola Daniel:

I am deeply disappointed that the government has passed such a weak compromise amendment to the Environment Bill on raw sewage discharge into our waters. There is no time scale or an increase in penalties. No one, including SWW seems in a hurry to rectify the situation. If SWW are “totally committed to supporting beaver habitats”, I would like to see their plan of action.

The lower saltmarsh area of the Otter is designated a SSSI and part of this area is a Marine Conservation Zone as well.

The River Otter cannot wait. The beavers and the otters cannot wait.

The river Otter is 44 km. long and the Tale, its main tributary, is 14 km., a total of only 58km (36miles).There is agricultural run-off in these rivers and also permitted sewage discharge from us humans.

There were: 7,229 hours of permitted sewage outfall in 2020 from 891 episodes! This is from just one small river and its tributary in East Devon.

(I have taken these figures from the Rivers Trust sewage network discharges map. https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/e834e261b53740eba2fe6736e37bbc7b/) 

I hate to think what the pollution level has been in the sea off Budleigh Salterton with the flooding we have experienced in the last weeks. What goes in the river ends in the sea plus whatever is discharged by those living in seaside communities.

In the case of Budleigh residents added a further 623 hours from 83 episodes and also, with a good westerly breeze and tidal flow, more is added to the bay from Straight Point where the Maer Lane Sewage works discharged, 850 hours, from 59 episodes.

A total of 8,702 hours from 1033 episodes (20 per week on average).

The Prediction board is not functioning on the Parade.

If it seems that there is no immediate or even future solution to pollution in our seas and rivers what can we do? We cant wait. Do we follow the example of Cornwall County Council who are working with Natural England, the Environment Agency and South West Water due to the high phosphate levels in the river Camel. The river Camel is part of a Special Area of Conservation. This has resulted in all planning and development proposals in the area being put on hold.

It is clear that in East Devon sewage treatment capacity is failing to keep up with development.

Anyone for a swim?