Devon MP Anthony Mangnall, who submitted a letter of no confidence in Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday, has admitted he is “terrified” for his political future as a result.
But, he said: “I did not come into politics to lie to people, and I did not come into politics to be lied to by colleagues.”
The Conservative MP for Totnes and South Devon, whose constituency covers Brixham and parts of Torbay, was speaking on the Telegraph’s “Chopper’s Politics” podcast.
He became the 12th Conservative MP to submit a letter of no confidence in the Prime Minister to the influential 1922 Committee.
It takes 54 letters to trigger a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister, whose position is becoming increasingly fragile in the midst of claims of parties being held in Downing Street while the rest of the country was in lockdown.
“His actions and mistruths are overshadowing the extraordinary work of so many excellent ministers and colleagues.”
A report into the so-called “Partygate” by senior civil servant Sue Grey pinpointed “serious failures of leadership and judgement” from the Prime Minister.
Mr Mangnall told the podcast: “I think we have to have a real conversation about standards in public life, about making sure our elected representatives are not just adhering to the rules but actually leading by example.
“Unfortunately I don’t see that to be the case at the moment.”
He said Mr Johnson’s handling of the Sue Grey report had been “below par”, and had been the latest in a series of problems to come out of 10 Downing Street.
He said he supported the Government and was a “Conservative through and through”, but the catalogue of problems around the leadership could not continue.
“It’s a question of the Prime Minister’s judgement, and whether he is the right man to be leading this, and I’m not sure that he is,” he said.
“I’m not questioning my place within the Conservative Party. I’m questioning how we are led.”
The Totnes MP admitted he was “terrified” and “incredibly emotional” about what his action might mean for his own political future, but added: “It is not about me. It’s about how we govern in this country.
“I’m sorry to him personally, but I’m not sorry for the course of action I have decided to take, because my party and my country matter.”
Mr Mangnall is one of the so-called “Class of 2019” who won their seats in the last General Election. He took over the reins at Totnes from another controversial MP, Dr Sarah Wollaston, whose strong opinions on Brexit led her to leave the Conservatives, stand briefly as an independent and then join the Liberal Democrats.
Mr Mangnall took the seat from her with a majority of almost 13,000 votes.
Cllr Bell follows Cllr Owen Martin who resigned from the Allerdale Conservative Group last week
Another councillor has defected from the Conservative Party over the Downing Street parties scandal and the Prime Minister’s controversial comments about the leader of the opposition.
Councillor Carmell Bell, who represents Crummock and Derwent Valley, has left the Conservative Party but will remain on Allerdale Borough Council as an Independent.
Cllr Bell feels she can not remain in the Conservative Party due to the recent actions of Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Evidence has emerged recently that Downing Street hosted a number of parties, seemingly breaching the Government’s own lockdown rules.
Cllr Bell follows Cllr Owen Martin who resigned from the Allerdale Conservative Group last week.
Councillor Bell said “For some time now I have been unhappy in the Conservative Party. The recent behaviour of the Prime Minister and the unapologetic defence of his position by many within the party has convinced me it is time to leave.”
Mr Johnson has been under further scrutiny recently after making controversial comments at the despatch box, suggesting that Labour leader Kier Starmer failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile.
Cllr Bell said: “During the pandemic I was employed as a housing support officer for a housing charity. It was my job to work with vulnerable people at risk of homelessness. This was a difficult time for many and I saw first hand the impact that lack of resources and cuts has had, not least on our stretched police and mental health services within Cumbria.
“I don’t believe the government has a handle on this situation and hearing the stories coming from Downing Street, I’m not sure they care.
“I wish my colleagues in the Allerdale Conservative group well and look forward to representing my ward as an independent over the coming months”.
Alan Williams, 78, previously financed First’s X53 service between Bridport and Weymouth in 2019 and has chosen to do so again.
This year, he has arranged for the service to be extended to Lyme Regis because he believes the route is ‘important’ to people who use it.
The amount he has paid First has not been disclosed.
Mr Williams said: “I just want to give the community their bus service and to encourage people to use it more.
“I hope it also encourages bus companies to keep such services.”
He added: “People still need to travel on Sundays. Some people have got places to be or they have to work and don’t have cars so this service is a lifeline.”
Operator First had been running four services on Sundays but these were stopped for the winter on January 16 with the service resuming in March when the summer timetable launches.
Mr Williams opted to step up and fund the service to fill the gap out his own pocket. Two services are now running each Sunday until March.
Mr Williams said: “I have seen the regulars still using the service now as well as new people.
“Public transport in general needs to be improved to get around especially now with the train timetable changes and the issues it causes with buses.
“The company have indicated they would start running the services from the March when their summer timetable starts.”
Transport lobby group West Dorset Western Area Transport Action Group (WATAG) welcomed the move.
WATAG chairman Bob Driscoll said: “The Sunday service X53 will continue, but reduced from four to two round trip journeys between Weymouth and Lyme Regis, as a result of Mr Alan Williams agreeing to support this service financially.
“First Wessex intended to withdraw the Sunday service last September with the introduction of the winter timetable.
“Mr Williams suggested that if they did he would support a service between Bridport and Weymouth as he did in 2019.
“Subsequently, First Wessex decided to run the four services until 16 January, when the service would cease.”
Mr Driscoll added: “I hope as many people as possible will use the service for a day out, thereby helping us prove the need for a bus service seven days a week all year round.”
A spokesperson for First said: “We can confirm a west Dorset resident funds a limited Sunday X53 service between January and March.
“We fund the service for the rest of the week and year. On the rare occasions where we are unable to run a service, we are always happy to work with members of local communities to find solutions to meet a community’s needs.’”
“Lesley Horn, who worked in the the Future Inn hotel in Plymouth for two months told the Guardian she feared people were being “warehoused” in temporary care hotels, which health officials have been instructed to use amid an acute shortage of care packages.”
A care worker at a hotel used to relieve pressure on NHS beds has claimed vulnerable people have been “failed”, with problems including stinking clinical waste being stored in a bathtub and a lack of accessible showers.
Lesley Horn, who worked in the the Future Inn hotel in Plymouth for two months told the Guardian she feared people were being “warehoused” in temporary care hotels, which health officials have been instructed to use amid an acute shortage of care packages.
More than 500 care homes are closed to new admissions because of outbreaks of Covid among residents and many more closed because of staff testing positive. There are also shortages of homecare workers so “care hotels” have been set up in places including Bristol, Norwich and Newquay. But there are rising concerns about their suitability.
Horn said a bathroom on the residents’ floor was periodically used as an overflow for clinical waste with bin bags filled with faeces and urine-soiled materials stacked up.
“You can imagine – you open the door and it was oh, my God, you are kidding me?” she said. “The smell. And this was not according to the infection control guidelines. It’s not on.”
Current NHS England guidance states that care hotels are supposed to be used for “days, rather than weeks” but Horn, who worked at the Plymouth hotel from late October to early January, said some residents stayed as long as two months. Care hotels are not regulated as care homes by the Care Quality Commission regulator, but they are recorded as locations where domiciliary care is being provided. CQC is currently undertaking a risk-based inspection of the Plymouth hotel.
Horn said there were only two walk-in showers for more than 30 of the residents and these were located on a different floor to their rooms. She alleged there were not always enough hospital-style beds and there was sometimes a lack of appropriate equipment such as commodes.
Devon NHS clinical commissioning group, Plymouth city council and the private operator, Abicare, defended the arrangements, said they did not agree with some of Horn’s claims and said “safety and quality of care are always our main priorities”.
They conceded there had been issues with a waste contractor, but said these were now solved and patient care was unaffected. They denied equipment shortages and said it was normal for hospital patients to walk a short distance to access a shower. Long stays were only in a very few cases where, because of homelessness or safeguarding concerns, discharge was difficult.
“Feedback from the people who have used the centre has been overwhelmingly positive and staff have been touched by the many cards and messages,” said Darryn Allcorn, Devon’s lead chief nurse, and Craig McArdle, strategic director for people at the council.
“The care hotel is just one of the many measures health and care partners have put in place to support the city’s main hospital during a period of unprecedented pressure when capacity in the care sector is challenged by the effects of the pandemic.”
The need to accelerate the discharge of hospital patients has been acute. Derriford hospital in Plymouth recently declared a level 4 alert, which means patient safety could be compromised.
But domiciliary care operators have warned that “care hotels … may not be equipped to meet [the] needs” of older and disabled people.
“It should never have come to this,” said Jane Townson, the chief executive of the Homecare Association. “We call on the government to invest properly in home-based support and care, so we can enable people to live well at home … take pressure off the NHS and reduce costs for the health and care system.”
Last month the daughter of a resident at a care hotel in Bristol complained her father hadn’t been seen by a nurse for a week. Linda Slade told the BBC: “He has a stoma bag, they didn’t know anything about stoma bags or what to do.”
Kate Terroni, CQC’s chief inspector of adult social care said the regulator would “engage providers to ensure high quality care for people in these settings” and “inspect in response to concerns”.
Horn, who has worked in healthcare for 40 years, said conditions of some residents being discharged were worse than she would usually see in care settings. Health officials countered that all discharges had been deemed medically appropriate.
Horn said it felt as though people were being “warehoused” and said: “They are put in our hands to give them the best care we can and this is where I feel we were put in a corner … It was difficult for us.”
The providers said these were the opinions of one person but that they strongly disagreed with them.
Most rooms had conventional baths, which are not accessible to many people in care settings, but there were two walk-in showers on the fourth floor, one in a room stacked so high with furniture that it was impossible to turn the main light on, Horn said. It required care staff to take residents up in a lift, usher them through the darkened room and give them a shower.
“It’s horrible,” Horn said. “This isn’t the type of environment you take somebody in.”
The Department of Health and Social Care said it had made £3.3bn available to assist timely hospital discharge since the pandemic began, with funding due to continue until March.
On the same day that Michael Gove published his “Levelling Up” paper, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published its first attempt at developing statistical indicators to help understand the strengths and weaknesses in local communities.
This first iteration covers a core set of indicators grouped in three broad categories (boosting living standards, spreading opportunity and improving public services, and restoring local pride). This aligns with some of the metrics selected to measure the progress of levelling-up, where data is available.
From the interactive tool, East Devon has three significant weaknesses which are interesting in the light of the article below:
Public transport or walk to large employment centre
Cycle to large employment centre
Drive to large employment centre
New greenfield housing forcing people to use cars, report finds
New greenfield housing developments are locking residents into car dependency, making everyday journeys impossible without a vehicle, a new report has found. Meanwhile, pledges for walking, cycling and public transport are often left unfulfilled.
The group Transport for New Homes (TfNH) visited 20 new housing developments in England, finding that while those on urban brownfield sites generally lived up to sustainable transport pledges, greenfield sites were often far from shops and amenities, without public transport, cycling links or even pavements, and the homes themselves were seemingly designed around car parking.
Surface transport is responsible for 22% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions, and the Climate Change Committee says reducing demand for car travel is key to meeting emission reduction targets. Campaigners say housing pledges in the “levelling up” white paper, launched last week, will do little to achieve this and that planning reform is urgently needed. The government aims to build 300,000 new homes a year to meet growing demand.
The report, Building Car Dependency, which follows research from 2018, says greenfield housing “has become even more car-based” in recent years, adding hundreds of thousands of additional car journeys to our roads.
Steve Chambers, a campaigner at TfNH, told the Guardian: “We have found places where you can’t do anything without getting into a car; you literally cannot do anything. There is nothing within walking distance, there’s nothing within safe cycling distance, and for work, for going to the shop; for everything you can imagine, you need to get in the car.
“The impact of that is that houses are being designed around two and three parking spaces with tiny back gardens, no front gardens whatsoever, and that poor design obviously crowds out walking, cycling, and basically good homes.”
“There isn’t even the most basic public transport in a lot of places. There isn’t even a bus route, which is clearly an issue.”
The report did identify a few cases of greenfield developments with sustainable transport links, such as Hampton Park in Peterborough, Poundbury in Dorset and Derwenthorpe in York, but otherwise found “the internal road layout, the car access on to major roads with bigger junctions to take the traffic, the sheer quantity of residential car parking, all told the story”.
During the pandemic, residents of such estates reported being unable to walk anywhere because the surrounding roads lacked footpaths.
While car access was built first, TfNH say walkable elements such as a high street, a children’s centre or community facilities arrived after driving habits were formed. At Chapelford Urban Village, on a former RAF site north-west of Warrington, a new railway station finally opened in 2019, 15 years after the first homes were sold.
“Quick wins” such as footpaths to nearby shops or park-and-rides failed to link up or led nowhere. In one case, shops adjacent to a retirement home were rendered inaccessible to less mobile residents by an ankle-high fence. Some front doors opened directly on to car parking spaces. In Cranbrook New Town, near Exeter, a road was too narrow for buses to reach a new bus stop.
Exceptions were at brownfield sites like Bath Riverside and Trumpington Meadows in Cambridge, the former where “the public realm is shaped around walking” with car parking “limited and mostly out of sight”.
Steve Gooding, chair of the steering group for Transport for New Homes, told the Guardian: “There’s no evidence coming through in the report that at scale we’re managing to deploy new housing in a way that really promotes the government’s parallel objectives of promoting active travel, public transport and alternatives to the private car. And unless we do that, then it shouldn’t surprise any of us that the car is going to be the default choice for the vast majority of trips that people make.”
Among the report’s recommendations are that new housing is “recast around sustainable travel”, with compact, mixed-use developments such as European-style apartments above business premises. In addition, less parking per home would reduce sprawl and make use for pavements, green space and a network of Dutch-style cycle routes. Authors also want devolved powers for things like local rail and bus rapid transit systems, with funding diverted from road-building to provide walking and cycling links.
Chambers added: “We’ve found everything from developers planning applications, through to the local plans of local authorities, right up to the National Planning Policy Framework have incredibly warm words about walking, cycling, public transport, and ‘creating vibrant walkable places’, and what we have shown through our visits and our documentary evidence, hundreds of photographs, it simply isn’t being delivered.
“There’s no reason to believe that what’s presented in the levelling up white paper – which make no changes to the planning system, and crucially includes no new funding whatsoever – will have different outcomes.”
Rosie Pearson, chair of the Community Planning Alliance, said: “Developers are building in the wrong place, with the wrong design and the wrong layout. This locks in car dependency from the outset, leading to persistent traffic jams, dangerous conditions for pedestrians and cyclists, and air pollution. It’s time for change.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said: “We welcome this report and agree that new development should be less dependent on cars. By 2030, we want half of all journeys in towns and cities to be walked or cycled and are investing £3bn into bus services.
“National Planning Policy is clear that significant development should give priority to pedestrians, cyclists and public transport, and we will be updating guidance later this year to promote street design that favours walkways and cycle paths over motor traffic.”
A review is being carried out by East Devon District Council (EDDC) on how the people of Colyford are represented.
And it could see the village gain its own parish council, which would have the power to collect money from the council tax to spend on local schemes.
Now, anyone living in the area covered by Colyton Parish Council is being asked to share their views on the draft proposals before a deadline of 5pm on May 4.
The aim of the ‘Community Governance Review’, which was requested by the Colyford Village Residents Association, is to find the most suitable arrangement to represent the village.
Once EDDC has received responses, it will consider the results of the consultation and publish a proposal in spring 2022, which will then be subject to further consultation.
If a separate parish council is set up for Colyford the aim is that it would be in place in time for elections to take place in May 2023.
Councillor Sarah Jackson, EDDC’s portfolio holder for democracy, transparency and communications, said: “It is important that different communities are able to operate with autonomy to decide how best to make use of their resident’s council tax and ensure that decision making is both democratic and in the interest of their particular community.
“It is important that you feel properly represented by the parish you live within. In this instance, Colyford may well have a different set of requirements and separate identity from Colyton.
“Separating the area into two parishes could well be in the best interest of both communities, but we need to hear from you first to understand if this is indeed the prevailing view.
“If you are a resident living in Colyton Parish I encourage you to engage with the consultation and to take this opportunity to tell EDDC what you think.”
Town and parish councils are the most local tier of government and have two roles; community representation and local administration.
People registered to vote within the Colyton Parish Council area will soon receive a consultation pack in the post, including a short questionnaire inviting residents to have their say.
If you’re not on the electoral register and need a copy of the consultation on paper or in any other format email colyford@eastdevon.gov.uk or call 01395 517569.
East Devon Watch 