“Lists will fall and people will get the care they need more quickly” – Rishi Sunak, January 2023. 

NHS waiting lists have hit a new record high despite a pledge by Rishi Sunak to bring them down.

Jon Stone www.independent.co.uk

An estimated 7.6 million people were waiting to start routine hospital treatment at the end of June – up from 7.5 million in May, NHS England said.

The figure is the highest number since comparable records began in August 2007.

The prime minister made cutting waiting lists one of his priorities for 2023, pledging in January that “lists will fall and people will get the care they need more quickly”.

But far from cutting waits, lists are still growing to a level never seen before, the latest numbers suggest.

Last week, Mr Sunak blamed industrial action by doctors for his failure to close the gap.

The latest backlog figures come as junior doctors are set to walk out again for their latest four-day strike on Friday, with the stoppage ending on Tuesday morning.

Doctors have had their real wages cut in recent years and are asking for their salaries to be restored, in part to stem a recruitment and retention crisis in the health service. The government says the demand is unaffordable.

Labour has accused the government of making “excuses” for failing to tackle waiting lists by blaming doctors.

Health think tanks including the King’s Fund and Health Foundation, as well as groups such as NHS Providers, which represents hospitals, have consistently said the health service needs more funding to make improvements.

The government and NHS England have set a target to eliminate all waits of more than a year by March 2025.

By this narrower metric, there has been slight progress, with the number of people waiting more than a year for treatment down from 385,022 at the end of May to 383,083 people at the end of June.

But at the current rate of change, this target will not be reached.

An even narrower target, to eliminate waits of 18 months or more for NHS treatment, was missed in April this year. A total 7,177 were waiting longer than 18 months in June 2023, down from 11,446 at the end of May.

Last week, health minister Maria Caulfield said the government expected waiting times to go up before they went down, telling LBC radio that the numbers would “peak in the next few months”.

The government has said it will draft in spare capacity from the private sector to try and cut waiting lists, including the use of eight new privately-run diagnostic sectors.

Ministers also say they are changing the rules to make it easier for the NHS to buy in private services, by altering the so-called “provider selection regime”.

Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, a Labour shadow health minister, said the government had no plan to turn the situation around.

“One in eight people are now waiting for NHS treatment, more than ever before. Patients are waiting in pain and discomfort for months or even years,” she said.

“Rishi Sunak has no plan to turn this around, he only offers excuses. He blames hard-working doctors and nurses, yet he hasn’t lifted a finger to stop the strikes.

“The last Labour government delivered the shortest waiting lists and highest patient satisfaction in history. The next Labour government will provide the staff and reform the NHS needs, so it is there for us when we need it once again.”

Living the life of a “Hedgie”? – Owl

Rishi Sunak has used RAF jets and helicopters for domestic flights more frequently than the UK’s previous three prime ministers, the BBC can reveal.

By Joshua Nevett www.bbc.co.uk

Ministry of Defence data show he took almost one such flight a week during his first seven months in office.

The prime minister has been accused of hypocrisy for flying short journeys domestically, given his pledges to curb planet-warming carbon emissions.

But Mr Sunak has said air travel was the “most effective use of my time”.

In response to Freedom of Information requests, the BBC was told the number of domestic flights on Command Support Air Transport aircraft broken down by prime minister between July 2016 and April 2023.

The RAF division – known as 32 Squadron – operates two Dassault Falcon 900LX jets and a helicopter to transport the PM and other ministers domestically.

In total, Mr Sunak boarded 23 domestic flights on these aircraft in 187 days, which is one every eight days on average.

Two caveats to bear in mind are the brevity of Ms Truss’s time in Downing Street, and the limitations on Mr Johnson’s travel during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The BBC initially requested data on the number of flights each UK prime minister since Tony Blair had taken using a military aircraft to travel domestically. But the MoD rejected the request on cost grounds and advised asking for data on those flights since Mrs May.

The prime minister sometimes has access to an RAF Voyager plane for overseas trips, and the government also charters private flights on aircraft operated by Titan Airways.

Separately, Mr Sunak has accepted more than £70,000 worth of private jet and helicopter travel to Conservative Party events from political donors this year.

High politics

Mr Sunak’s use of flights for UK engagements has come under intense scrutiny, with critics questioning why he had not used the train instead of RAF aircraft for relatively short trips to Newquay, Dover and Leeds this year.

Last month, Mr Sunak said those who say “no one should take a plane” in their approach to climate change were “completely, and utterly wrong”.

Labour said the PM was “developing an expensive habit of swanning around on private jets courtesy of the taxpayer”.

The party’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, suggested Mr Sunak had breached the ministerial code, which states he is supposed to use scheduled flights, unless “it is essential to travel by air”.

In his speech at the COP27 climate summit last year, Mr Sunak said it was “morally right to honour” the UK’s promise to reduce carbon emissions.

The UK has set a legally binding target of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, as part of the global effort to avert the worst effects of climate change.

Flights produce greenhouse gases – mainly carbon dioxide (CO2) – from burning fuel, and these emissions contribute to global warming.

Emissions per kilometre travelled from domestic flights are significantly worse than any other form of transport, and private jets typically produce more CO2 than commercial flights.

But carbon emissions vary considerably depending on the size of the plane, how efficient its engines are, and how many passengers it carries.

In 2019, before the pandemic struck, international and domestic UK aviation accounted for 8% of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

PM’s priorities

Anna Hughes, whose Flight Free UK campaign urges people to fly less for the sake of the climate, said Mr Sunak’s transport choices were “frustrating”.

She said if leaders demonstrated “the kind of behaviour that we all need to adopt to avert the climate crisis, it communicates that it’s serious and real”.

“You can’t just say I’m the prime minister, I’m too busy and important,” she added.

One former official with knowledge of ministerial travel prior to Mr Sunak’s premiership said transport choices “were based on time”, adding the train would be used “nine times out of ten”.

The former official, who did not wish to be named, said they “had access to the PM’s diary and every single minute of every day is accounted for”.

“In order to achieve a long visit, the only way was to use an aircraft,” they said.

A Downing Street spokesperson said ministers “sometimes require the use of non-commercial air travel”.

“This is a standard practice for governments around the world and this has consistently been the case under successive UK administrations of all political colours,” the spokesperson said.

“Value for money, security, and time efficiency is taken into account in all travel decisions and all flights are carbon offset.”

Although we have the number of domestic flights Mr Sunak has taken up to April this year, we don’t know the details of all those journeys, and what aircraft he used.

We did ask for that information, but the MoD said the “RAF does not retain records for air miles flown by aircraft”, and withheld data on the PM’s trips.

That means we can’t calculate the overall carbon footprint of Mr Sunak’s domestic flights during his first seven months in office.

What we can do is estimate the carbon emissions of some individual flights, using information in the public domain.

For example, on 19 January, the prime minister flew from RAF Northolt in west London to Blackpool Airport on a Dassault Falcon 900LX.

A number of aviation websites say the Falcon has a fuel consumption of about 260 gallons per hour. The flight from London to Blackpool took 41 minutes, which means approximately 178 gallons, or 805 litres, of fuel was consumed.

Based on the government’s fuel-to-emissions conversation rates, the flight would have produced about two tonnes of CO2.

Falcon jets typically have 12 seats. So if we assume the plane was full for the Blackpool trip, two tonnes of CO2 would be 166 kg per person.

To put that into context, the International Energy Agency estimated that the global average energy-related carbon footprint was about 4.7 tonnes of CO2 per person in 2021.

In contrast to Mr Sunak’s flight, a train journey from London Euston to Blackpool North would produce 14.31kg of CO2 per passenger, according to a LNER carbon calculator..

The Trainline website says it takes an average of three hours and 43 minutes to travel from London Euston to Blackpool by train.

Additional reporting by Mark Poynting, BBC climate researcher

Ooops! How does that compute with “Spreadsheet” Sunack, former partner in a couple of Hedge Fund firms? Small change?- Owl

Labour says losses to Treasury bond fund costing £8,900 for every UK household

A Treasury bond fund has careened from an asset to a liability, with losses so profound that each UK household now faces a staggering burden of £8,900, Labour has said.

Martina Bet www.standard.co.uk 

Figures show the Treasury fund, originally devised to capitalise on the Bank of England’s quantitative easing programme, has been rapidly eroding over the past three years.

According to Labour, the fund’s decline turned it into the most substantial liability on the Treasury’s balance sheet by the close of March 2023, culminating in a £251 billion loss.

The party says in terms of losses for the taxpayer, it represents a cost of £8,900 for every household in the UK and is 76 times the amount that was lost on Black Wednesday in 1992, when the UK was forced out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism.

It also claimed it is equivalent to 10% of the UK’s gross domestic product in 2022, or the entire GDP of Scotland and Wales combined.

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said: “Families are already feeling the squeeze from what feels like an endless Tory cost-of-living crisis. Now they face yet another hit thanks to the Conservatives’ catastrophic mistakes in managing this fund.

“This Tory bond black hole will land working people with another astronomical bill for years to come.

“And it leaves them paying the price for the failings of successive Tory chancellors: the hubris of George Osborne thinking this fund was a one-way bet, the complacency of Rishi Sunak ignoring the warning signs in the bond market, and the recklessness of Kwasi Kwarteng turning a crisis into a disaster.

“All of them are guilty of putting their short-term political ambitions ahead of the long-term economic interests of the country.

“That will only change when we have a Labour government in place, determined to rebuild the foundations of economic responsibility, and give Britain the more secure, more resilient economy it needs.”

This Tory bond black hole will land working people with another astronomical bill for years to come.

Labour additionally pointed out that the Treasury’s assessment of taxpayer returns over the entire fund’s existence has changed from a net profit of £128 billion by the end of March 2021 to a net loss of £58.8 billion by the end of March 2023.

Established in January 2009 as part of the Bank of England’s quantitative easing effort to aid the UK’s recovery from the global financial crisis, the Asset Purchase Facility (APF) acquired significant sums of Government bonds and other assets from banks, pension funds and finance firms, providing vital liquidity to a stagnant market.

As the economy rebounded and interest rates remained low, Government bonds regained appeal among corporate investors, leading to an increase in the Bank’s asset portfolio’s value.

In 2013, Labour noted, former Tory chancellor George Osborne revised the rules for the APF, ensuring that future profits from the Bank of England’s investments would be directed to the Treasury.

Ms Reeves, who at that point was shadow Treasury minister, warned Mr Osborne at the time that his short-term cash grab from the Bank was no substitute for a proper strategy “to create the jobs and growth we need to get the deficit down”.

The figures were published in the Treasury’s annual accounts for 2022/23 on July 20.

Treasury minister Andrew Griffith said: “The only black hole facing the British people is the £90 billion unfunded spending splurge that Labour would slap on families across the country.

“There’s a world of difference between movements in a long-term bond portfolio versus the certainty of a Labour government spending other people’s money until there is no money left.

“Meanwhile, we are making progress on the British people’s priorities – halving inflation, growing our economy and reducing debt.”

Yeh, like it was the only way to fix underinvestment investment in the water companies! – Owl

A former Conservative Party advisor has called for the NHS to be fully privatised in order for it to function properly.

Jack Peat www.thelondoneconomic.com 

Buildings across the health service “are in a very bad way and getting worse”, it has been reported this week, with the Government being warned that patients “deserve better”.

It comes after an investigation by the Liberal Democrats found evidence of chemical leaks in patient areas at a number of hospitals in England, as well as broken fire alarms in some facilities.

Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, said: “Keeping patients and staff safe is vital. High-quality care depends on having reliable buildings and equipment.

“Too many NHS buildings and facilities are in a very bad way and getting worse.

“Trust leaders have warned long and loud about the eye-watering cost of trying to patch up creaking infrastructure and out-of-date facilities. The multibillion-pound repairs bill is growing at an alarming rate.”

Data from one Freedom of Information (FOI) request made by the party revealed there had been 115 chemical leak incidents at NHS hospitals between June 1 2022 and May 31 2023.

It has raised more concerns over the funding of the NHS, which were discussed on Jeremy Kyle’s show on TalkTV last night.

Former Tory advisor Leon Emirali said the answer to “fixing” the NHS is “full privatisation”, adding:

“Joanna made a point about free at the point of access. We can still have that with a level of privatisation, where we have private suppliers of healthcare – but for those who need it most, we can means test access to the NHS where those who need it the most in society get their healthcare for free and those who can afford to pay for it do.”

Can you believe this? The government has privately asked water companies to explore saving money on future water supplies by assuming unrealistically low levels of climate change.

On sewage: the Environment Agency appears to ask companies [in a letter] to stick to the bare legal minimum on environmental efforts to save money. “You are expected to explore opportunities to phase non-statutory commitments including net zero to future price review periods where appropriate.”

Angling and river groups, including the Rivers Trust, warn the government that pushing back schemes to 2030 would “delay essential environmental action and, ultimately, increase costs to consumers”.

Separately, the Liberal Democrats accused water firms of a “scandalous cover-up”, after the companies said they either did not know or would not hand over data on how much sewage they were spilling into rivers and seas.

(And can you believe this? Regulators do not instruct water companies to monitor volume of sewage, only the duration and number of times it is discharged. Last year there were more than 300,000 spills.)

So how many gallons of poo (or Olympic sized swimming pools) were discharged, for example, in the 3,252 hours of spillage from Honiton and Gitisham into the Otter, or from the 1,077 hours from Woodbury into the Exe in 2022?

Not forgetting the direct discharges from all the coastal towns directly into the sea. – Owl

Water Firms can assume “climate change will be low” to cut costs

Adam Vaughan www.thetimes.co.uk 

Water firms are required to publish “water resources management plans” every five years for how they will ensure the water supply for the next 25 years, including new reservoirs and transfers from wet to dry parts of the country.

Amid rising government concern about how environmental targets will push up consumer water bills, the Environment Agency wrote to water companies in July to ask them to ensure their plans “protect your customers from adverse bill impacts”.

The agency said Thérèse Coffey, the environment secretary, had asked it to “investigate the scale of investment needed” in the context of “many families and individuals struggling to pay their utility bills”.

The regulator said companies should see how they could minimise costs from 2030 onwards, while meeting legal requirements. One option given was to see if money could be saved by assuming a “low climate change scenario”.

In the scenario, countries around the world would act dramatically to cut carbon emissions and ensure the global average temperature rose by only 1.6C above pre-industrial levels.

However, such a low level is considered unlikely. The United Nations has said countries’ climate plans put the world on track for 2.4C of warming at best and 2.8C at worst.

Earth has already warmed by 1.2C above the 1850-1900 average due to climate change and July was the hottest month on record.

“With hot tub temperatures at sea and many rivers still recovering from drought, the climate and nature crisis is clearly upon us. Yet the government is steering water companies toward the most optimistic warming scenarios,” said Eleanor Ward, policy officer at Wildlife and Countryside Link, an alliance of environmental groups including the National Trust and RSPB.

Climate change is expected to bring hotter, drier summers and warmer, wetter winters to Britain, putting pressure on water supplies. Even with an “exceptionally wet” July, parts of southwest England remain in drought. Devon and Cornwall remain under a hosepipe ban dating back to last summer.

The latest water supply plans include £14 billion of investment that would create seven new reservoirs, including at Havant Thicket near Portsmouth. Together they would provide an extra two billion litres of water a day, more than the 2.6 billion that the UK’s biggest water firm, Thames Water, provides today.

The Environment Agency asked water companies whether the “basic climate change scenario” would risk their water supply plans or if it might leave the firms “vulnerable to climate change”.

A spokesman for trade group Water UK said: “We strongly oppose the watering down of any plans that will help to safeguard water supplies in a changing climate. Last year’s record-breaking temperatures and the ongoing droughts across Europe are a reminder that investment in water resources must be a priority.”

In a separate letter to water companies, about the industry’s “national environment programme”, the Environment Agency appears to ask companies to stick to the bare legal minimum on environmental efforts to save money.

In one passage, companies are told: “You are expected to explore opportunities to phase non-statutory commitments including net zero to future price review periods where appropriate.” That implies ways of reducing carbon emissions — such as treating sewage with reedbeds rather than more carbon-intensive infrastructure at treatment works — could be delayed to 2030 and beyond.

Water industry figures think the government has realised how much its pledges on sewage pollution will push up water bills, and is now asking companies what they can cut to keep bills down. Normally, suggestions for what should be cut would come from the Environment Agency itself, but in this case firms are being told to look again at their plans for savings.

In a letter to Coffey’s department, environment, angling and river groups, including the Rivers Trust, warn the government that pushing back schemes to 2030 would “delay essential environmental action and, ultimately, increase costs to consumers”.

They added it put nature goals at risk. “This requirement on companies is out of step with the government’s commitment to halt and reverse the decline of nature by 2030,” the groups said.

Separately, the Liberal Democrats accused water firms of a “scandalous cover-up”, after the companies said they either did not know or would not hand over data on how much sewage they were spilling into rivers and seas.

However, regulators do not instruct water companies to monitor volume of sewage, only the duration and number of times it is discharged. Last year there were more than 300,000 spills.

The government was contacted for comment.