Daily Archives: 3 Oct 2023

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Planning applications validated by EDDC for week beginning 18 September

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Sunak fails to share pandemic WhatsApp texts to Covid inquiry – report

(He’s changed his phone a number of times in the past three years without backing them up, as you do – Owl)

Rishi Sunak has told the Covid-19 inquiry that he is unable to provide WhatsApp messages from his time as Chancellor during the pandemic because he failed to back them up, it has been reported.

Luke O’Reilly www.independent.co.uk

The prime minister wrote in his witness statement that he does “not have access” to the messages because he changed his phone several times, The Guardian claimed.

It comes as the second stage of the inquiry, led by Baroness Heather Hallett, begins on Tuesday and is set to examine key decision-making in Westminster between January 2020 and February 2022, when the final Covid restrictions in England were lifted.

Ministers and other government officials are expected to give evidence during the second module of the inquiry, titled “core UK decision-making and political governance”.

Previously, there was a delay in former prime minister Boris Johnson handing over WhatsApp messages from his time leading the country during the pandemic after he reportedly forgot the passcode to his old mobile phone, before they were recovered by technical experts.

According to The Guardian, Mr Sunak’s statement to the inquiry says: “Having changed my phone a number of times over the last three years, I do not have access to the WhatsApp messages that I sent or received during the relevant time, and neither were the messages backed up.

“My expectation would be that if the officials on those groups had considered that any information being communicated by WhatsApp message needed to be preserved to form part of the official HMT record, then those officials would have taken steps to ensure that happened.”

Earlier this year, the Cabinet Office tried to seek an exemption from providing information and messages it considered irrelevant to the inquiry’s work but it was dismissed by Baroness Hallett.

In response, the Government launched a legal challenge but it was struck down by the High Court in July, which confirmed the documents should be provided.

The inquiry is believed to now be in possession of unredacted WhatsApp messages between Mr Johnson and 40 colleagues, including former No 10 adviser Dominic Cummings, cabinet secretary Simon Case and former chancellor Mr Sunak.

In response to The Guardian report, Downing Street said it will not be commenting on “leaks” and was “concerned selective sections of evidence” had been “handed to the media”.

“The Government established the Covid Inquiry to transparently establish the facts and we have submitted more than 55,000 documents in support of their work,” a Government spokesperson said.

“To ensure the integrity of the inquiry is not undermined it is vital that any evidence submitted is heard in context and in full and so we will not be commenting on leaks.

“We are concerned that selective sections of evidence appear to have been handed to the media and all possible steps should be taken to guard against further leaks.”

In July, Mr Johnson’s spokesperson said his messages had been retrieved and handed over to the inquiry.

However, The Guardian reported that Mr Johnson has told the inquiry in his witness statement that he is unable to access messages during the first wave of the pandemic between 31 January and 7 June 2020.

According to the paper, his statement says: “With the assistance of a technical team, we have been able to retrieve messages from the old phone.

“There is a period for which messages were not retrievable (from 31 January to 7 June 2020 inclusive). The technical team has been unable to determine the cause of this.”

Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper said Mr Sunak failing to hand over his WhatsApp messages was “a disgrace”.

“It is a disgrace to hear that yet another Conservative has failed to send over their messages to this inquiry,” she said.

“This is straight from the Boris Johnson playbook.

“Rishi Sunak’s promise to govern with integrity has been left in tatters. The public deserve the whole truth instead of yet more Conservative cover-ups.”

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Next Covid Inquiry phase to ‘pay particular scrutiny’ to Boris Johnson’s decisions

Political decision making around lockdowns, travel restrictions and social distancing during the Covid pandemic are set be put under the microscope as the next phase of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry begins.

Ella Pickover www.independent.co.uk

The Government’s work during the crisis will be scrutinised over the coming weeks as the inquiry examines key decision-making in Westminster between January 2020 and February 2022, when the final Covid restrictions in England were lifted.

The inquiry, led by Baroness Heather Hallett, will also examine the decisions behind regional restrictions, also known as the “tier system; work from home orders; mask wearing advice and border controls”.

It will scrutinise modelling data by scientists, which gave estimates on transmission of the virus and death rates.

Ministers and other government officials are expected to give evidence during the second module of the inquiry, titled “core UK decision-making and political governance”.

Other witnesses will include expert advisers, including members of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), civil servants and health officials from the NHS, the Department of Health and Social Care and the now defunct Public Health England.

The inquiry has said it will “pay particular scrutiny” to the decisions taken by the then prime minister Boris Johnson and his cabinet.

A key piece of evidence is likely to include the WhatsApp messages of Mr Johnson.

The device he used during crucial periods of the Covid pandemic should contain messages relating to the ordering of three lockdowns in 2020.

The inquiry will also hold specific hearings on “the strategic and overarching issues” in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Public hearings for the second module of the inquiry will begin at Dorland House in London on Tuesday.

Opening statements will be read out on Tuesday and Wednesday morning.

On Wednesday afternoon, it is expected that the inquiry will hear from Joanna Goodman of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, Dr Alan Wightman of the Scottish Covid Bereaved and Anna-Louise Marsh-Rees of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru.

Catriona Myles of the Northern Ireland Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice, Professor James Nazroo, Professor Philip Banfield of the British Medical Association and Caroline Abrahams of Age UK will give evidence on Thursday.

On Friday, the inquiry will hear from Professor David Taylor-Robinson, former children’s commissioner Anne Longfield, Kate Bell of the Trades Union Congress, Ade Adeyemi of the Federation of Ethnic Minority Healthcare Organisations, Dr Claire Wenham and Rebecca Goshawk of Solace Women’s Aid.

Public hearings will take place across 35 days between 3 October and 14 December.

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Rishi Sunak’s Commons majority in peril as 60 Tories join Liz Truss group

Could the Tory party implode again? Election date may not now be something Rishi Sunak can control.  – Owl

Sixty Conservative MPs have joined Liz Truss’s Growth Group, imperilling the government’s majority in parliament, as Rishi Sunak was warned by former cabinet ministers “we cannot accept the status quo”.

Aubrey Allegretti www.theguardian.com 

At a packed fringe meeting during the Conservative party conference, Truss and her supporters held a rally where they pushed for the chancellor to cut corporation tax, build 500,000 new homes and resume fracking to cut energy bills.

Truss made her only public appearance during the gathering of activists in Manchester to suggest the Conservatives were no longer the party of business. She argued the state had become too big, with taxes and spending unsustainably high.

‘Lower the better’: Liz Truss calls for cut in corporation tax – video

Despite resigning from office nearly a year ago after her disastrous mini-budget, Truss showed no signs of contrition, saying Sunak should be willing to take tough decisions to help grow the economy even if they were unpopular.

Another former disaffected cabinet minister, Ranil Jayawardena, said the Conservative Growth Group of Truss’s allies had grown in size to include 60 MPs – the same size as the government’s majority in the Commons.

Jayawardena called for stamp duty to be scrapped on people’s principal homes, while Jacob Rees-Mogg also argued that what he called the “pernicious” inheritance tax should be scrapped.

The former home secretary Priti Patel said: “We cannot be timid any more, we cannot be risk averse and we cannot accept the status quo.”

It piles pressure on Sunak and his chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, before the king’s speech and autumn statement in November. Hunt acknowledged in his conference speech that “the level of tax is too high”, though added he was focused on tackling the “long-term” challenge of inflation first.

Despite more than 30 Tory MPs last week signing a pledge to vote against any moves to raise the tax burden, Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank said the chance for tax cuts was “very remote”.

“I don’t think there is space for tax cuts, unless we can think of some pretty radical ways,” Johnson told the Guardian at another conference fringe event in Manchester.

“It’s not just the immediate pressures that we’re seeing in public finances, but we know that we’re going to be needing to spend more on health and pensions, social care and everything going forward as a result of demographic change. So I think the chances of tax cuts are very remote.”

Jake Berry, the Conservative party chairman during Liz Truss’s premiership and one of those who signed the pledge to vote against further tax rises, said he was unafraid of standing up to Rishi Sunak’s administration.

“I think it’s pretty unlikely that the chief whip will kick people out of the Conservative party if they stand by their pledge, not least because there’s 33 who’ve signed already with more to come and that’s more than half of the government’s majority,” Berry told a rally of the New Conservatives group.

“You don’t have to have signed the tax pledge to be able to add up.”

However, new analysis compiled by Labour and shared with the Guardian showed that plans to scrap inheritance tax would benefit wealthy parts of the country.

Residents of two areas in west London – Kensington and Chelsea, and Hammersmith – were found to be liable for £201m in 2019-20 due to inheritance tax compared with just £61m in north-east England.

The next place to benefit most was Surrey West, where inheritance tax in the same year raised £157m. The area overlaps with Hunt’s own constituency of south-west Surrey.

Labour argued that with only 4% of people liable to pay inheritance tax, there were stark regional divides between who would benefit. London and south-east England account for more than 50% of the estimated inheritance tax take, compared with only 8% in the north-east and north-west, 5% in Yorkshire and the Humber, and 10% in the Midlands.

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Tactical Voting will be crucial locally – Where will the Claire Wright vote land?

Tactical voting is increasingly being adopted by supporters of minority parties as the only way to make their vote count in electoral outcomes under our “first past the post” system.

Locally, this has become apparent over the past three local district council election cycles.

Even if it is more by  accident than design, the resulting East Devon District coalition council has a membership about as representative of the electorate as might be achieved by a PR voting system.

In by-elections it is also becoming apparent just how sophisticated the electorate can be in working out which candidate is most likely to unseat an undesirable incumbent.

Our difficulty in East Devon is that the two constituencies covering our area have both been reorganised to a significant degree and we don’t have quite such an intuitive feel as to how the relative political parties rank.

In the last couple of parliamentary elections Claire Wright became a serious contender for what, historically, was the “safe as houses” Tory stronghold of East Devon commanding 26,00 votes (40% ) in 2019 and reducing Jupp’s legacy to a marginal 6,700 votes. 

Claire’s previous supporters almost certainly now hold the key to who wins in both constituencies.

Claire has already formally endorsed Richard Foord, Lib Dem, for Honiton and Sidmouth.

It remains to be seen whether any contender party for Exmouth and Exeter East selects somebody she can also endorse.

Owl’s view is that forecasting the result for these two constituencies can’t easily be read from national opinion polling.

Here is a summary of the constituency carve-up. 

New Exmouth and Exeter East Constituency comprises: 72.6% of Devon East ; 12.1% of Exeter and 2.3% of Devon Central
New Honiton and Sidmouth  Constituency comprises: 62.0% of Tiverton and Honiton and  26.5% of Devon East

Now for a look at the bigger picture.

Tactical Voting Poll September 2023

11 September 2023 www.electoralcalculus.co.uk 

Pollster Find Out Now and election experts Electoral Calculus have run a poll for the Independent to see how much tactical voting there might be at the next general election and who would benefit from it.

We asked 2,881 people about how they would tactically vote in the next general election. Our main findings are:

  • Supporters of smaller parties are most inclined to vote tactically
    • Sixty per cent of Green supporters say they are likely to vote tactically
    • Forty-eight per cent of Liberal Democrat supporters say the same
  • But only 37pc and 15pc of Labour and Conservative voters respectively would vote tactically
  • Tactical votes are mostly shared between Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens
  • Conservative voters mostly tactically vote for the Lib Dems, but the favour is seldom reciprocated
  • At a general election, tactical voting could cost the Conservatives 35 more lost seats – Labour gaining 28 and the Lib Dems 7

Read Archie Mitchell in the Independent on how Tactical voting could spell the Tories’ worst election in 100 years.

Polling Questions

1. First and second preferences

Respondents were initially asked for their first and second preference party in the hypothetical situation that all parties would have an equal chance of winning in their area, to try to measure their true party preference before any tactical considerations.

PartyFirst ChoiceSecond Choice Either 
Conservative Party21%10%27%
Labour Party34%24%50%
Liberal Democrats12%30%35%
Reform UK8%8%14%
Green Party19%21%35%
SNP4%2%6%
Plaid Cymru0%1%1%
Other2%3%4%

Table excludes those who refused to express a preference, and those who are unlikely to vote.

The smaller parties have more support under this question than they do with FPTP elections. The Greens have about 20pc support here, compared with about 5pc in voting intention surveys.

Regarding the second preference parties, around 50% of Green supporters have Labour as their second choice and 25% have the Liberal Democrats. This is broadly reciprocated by Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters. These findings suggest that tactical voting would likely benefit the Labour Party, Liberal Democrat and Greens far more than it would the Conservatives and Reform UK.

See Appendix 1 below for more details of voters’ first and second choices.

2. Likelihood to vote tactically

Then we asked respondents how likely they would be to vote tactically. The full question was “Suppose your first-choice party is unlikely to win the seat, but your second-choice party could. On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to switch your vote to your second-choice party?”.

About 35% of people answered 8, 9 or 10, which we took as a reasonable threshold for being quite likely to vote tactically. But supporters of minor parties were more likely to vote tactically.

First choicePartyFraction whowould vote tactically
Conservative Party15%
Labour Party37%
Liberal Democrats48%
Reform UK29%
Green Party60%
SNP / Plaid Cymru28%
Other23%
All voters35%

Our main finding was that supporters of the smaller parties were the most inclined to vote tactically. Around 60% of people whose first preference party is the Green party have said that they would vote for their second preference party in cases where they didn’t think the Greens would come first or second in their seat. This number is also high for Liberal Democrat supporters, 48% of whom would probably vote tactically.

As for the major two parties, our figures show that 37% and 15% of Labour and Conservative voters respectively would vote tactically.

3. Picking the right winners

For tactical voting to work, voters need a reasonable and consistent idea of which two parties are likely to be competitive in their seat. For example, if voters disagree on who the challenger to the Conservatives is, then tactical voting may not happen or might cancel itself out.

Normally, voters might look at the last election result to give them an idea of which parties are competitive in their seat. But this is complicated by two new factors:

  • There has been a massive change in public opinion since December 2019 and Labour have gained over 10pc in the polls. There could be many Conservative seats where the Lib Dems were in second place in 2019, but Labour are likely to be the challenger next time. That creates an alternative benchmark for tactical decisions.
  • The seat boundaries have been redrawn by the Boundary Commissions. In many cases, the political composition of someone’s new seat has changed. Fewer than 150 seats are mostly unchanged by the boundary review. This creates voter confusion, since there isn’t a definitive previous election result for most new seats.

To explore this issue we asked people which pair of parties they think are likely to come in first and second place (in either order) in their own seat.

To simplify the results, we only looked at respondents who were both likely to vote and likely to vote tactically, and who had a definite opinion about their own seat.

We checked to see how many people matched or did not match the top two parties coming from four different methods: GE result of old seats; Current prediction of old seats; Implied GE result of new seats; Current prediction of new seats. The answers are shown in the table below.

MethodMatchedTop-TwoUnmatchedTop-Two
GE result of old seat49%51%
Prediction for old seat53%47%
Implied GE of new seat49%51%
Prediction for new seat50%50%

Given the sample sizes are relatively small, it is hard to draw definite conclusions, other than to say that about half of tactically-inclined people have a good idea of which are the competitive parties in their own seat.

Electoral Impact

We can work out the likely effect of tactical voting if there were a general election. To do this, we make a few assumptions

  • The General election is conducted using the existing seats
  • Tactical voters all know which two parties are predicted to be in the top-two in their seat (the competitive parties)
  • Supporters of any uncompetitive party will vote tactically with a probability given by the table in section 2 above.
  • Tactical voters will switch from uncompetitive party A to competitive party B with the probability given in the Tactical Matrix (Appendix 1) for row A and column B.

With and without tactical voting, the election prediction is given in the next table:

PartyVote SharesPred SeatsNo TVPred Seatswith TVChangedue to TV
CON28%159124−35
LAB44%41444026
LIB11%26326
Reform7%000
Green6%110
SNP4%28313
Plaid1%440

The figures show that tactical voting could change the result in more than thirty seats, with Labour and the Liberal Democrats being the main beneficiaries. The SNP gains in Scotland are from Green supporters who vote SNP tactically, but more work is needed to confirm that trend.

Quotes

Chris Holbrook, CEO of Find Out Now: “The indication that tactical voting is being used as a tool to punish the Conservatives is the most important takeaway from our poll. More broadly, this poll give us an insight into how people are working within the First Past the Post system to express their dislike for the Tories.”

Martin Baxter, CEO of Electoral Calculus: “Our figures show that the next election is likely to see straightforward anti-Conservative tactical voting, compared with the pro- and anti- Brexit tactical voting that was seen in 2019. Many Conservative seats, particularly in the south of England, are at risk. But the new seat boundaries will add an extra complicating factor for voters who want to vote tactically.”

Technical Details

Find Out Now polled 2,881 GB adults online between 15–16 August 2023. The sample was weighted to be representative by gender, age, social grade, other demographics and past voting patterns. Regression techniques were used to infer projected seat results.

Find Out Now and Electoral Calculus are both members of the British Polling Council and abide by its rules.

Full Data Tables are available for download as an Excel spreadsheet.

Electoral Calculus

Electoral Calculus is a political consultancy specialising in quantitative analysis and modelling for electoral and other market research projects. Its pre-poll prediction for the 2019 general election was the most accurate published forecast. It was founded by Martin Baxter, its CEO.

Electoral Calculus is a member of the British Polling Council.

Find Out Now

Find Out Now gathers poll responses from Pick My Postcode, a daily panel from 2.8 million members. Highly profiled respondents can be targeted instantly, and at scale to deliver reliable results fast.

More than 124 million responses have been received to Find Out Now’s polls since it launched in November 2018. Find Out Now are Market Research Society Company Partners and a member of the British Polling Council.

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Why do we have to pay a second time? Water investment plan adds £84 to annual bills

“What happened to the money we have already given the water companies? Why are we being asked to pay for a second time for a service they didn’t get the first time around? The fact is some of these firms cannot afford to service their debts.” Feargal Sharkey

Tracey Boles, Adam Vaughan www.thetimes.co.uk

Water bills will rise by about £84 a year on average as companies in England and Wales pump a record £96 billion into improving environmental standards and securing supplies, after widespread criticism.

The planned investment, which is nearly double the £51 billion being put into infrastructure in the present five-year regulatory period, will feature in the companies’ latest spending plans, to be published on Monday. They will be submitted to Ofwat, the industry regulator, which has a year to review them before giving its approval and determining the level at which bills will be set.

The investment in infrastructure over five years from 2025 is designed to tackle sewage overflows and reduce leakage as well as avoid water shortages.

The proposed spending means that water and sewerage bills, which average £448 a year at present, are likely to rise from April 2025. In England the expected rise is £7 a month, or £84 a year, according to estimates from Water UK, the industry body.

Ruth Kelly, the chairwoman of Water UK and a former Labour MP, said: “Bill rises are never welcome, but in keeping bills low, the environment and the security of our water supply has been paying the price. Those issues now need to be confronted head on.”

According to Water UK, investors will put up the money and the costs will be paid back in increments each year through bills. The process is designed to keep costs down and protects customers against paying up front for the billions needed to improve the UK’s ageing infrastructure. Under the proposals, the number of households receiving support with bills will more than double, to 3.2 million.

Feargal Sharkey, the former Undertones frontman and a water campaigner, said consumers were being asked to pay again for services that they had already funded. He said: “What happened to the money we have already given the water companies? Why are we being asked to pay for a second time for a service they didn’t get the first time around? The fact is some of these firms cannot afford to service their debts.”

Poor water quality

Number of Times readers who describe the water quality of the river/waterway in their local area as poor

Chart: The Times and The Sunday Times

Thérèse Coffey, the environment secretary, said: “Major improvements are needed to deliver clean and plentiful water now, and in the future . . . I have been very clear with Ofwat that customers should not pay the price for poor performance and they should use the full powers we have given them on behalf of consumers.”

If the spending plans are approved, they will pave the way for the development of up to ten reservoirs and up to nine desalination plants. New cross-country pipes will carry water from the wetter north to the drier south.

The Times Clean It Up campaign has been calling for tougher regulation of water companies and has urged the government to sufficiently staff and resource its regulators.

David Black, the chief executive of Ofwat, said: “The water industry needs to deliver a step change in investment and performance to clean up our rivers and seas, while also helping to ensure that we can meet the challenge of climate change.

“Company business plans are an important first step in the price review process. Ofwat’s role is to forensically scrutinise their proposals, to ensure any increase in bills is justified, efficient and delivers significant improvements in river and bathing water quality. We will assess how companies are helping customers to afford any bill increase.”

Ofwat added that bills must be “fair” and that customers would pay only for future investment, “not past company mistakes”. The regulator is putting in place an incentive regime which rewards companies for effective delivery, but hits those that fail to step up to the challenge with larger penalties.

Ofwat said: “As we work through the business plans we will continue to monitor companies’ performance, hold them to account for delivering improvements and push them to build meaningful plans to change.”

Water UK said the plans would also help create more than 30,000 new jobs and 4,000 apprenticeships for the sector, supply chain and wider economy.

The Times is demanding faster action to improve the country’s waterways. Find out more about the Clean It Up campaign.

We haven’t always got it right but the cost of inaction is huge

Ruth Kelly is chairwoman of Water UK

The water industry stands at a crossroads (Ruth Kelly writes). On Monday, all water companies in England and Wales will submit their five-year investment plans to the regulator, Ofwat, for consideration. Combined, this amounts to a £96 billion programme of investment in our water infrastructure — the biggest in the sector’s history. This is investment designed to put on a firm footing the security of our water supplies and start making significant inroads into tackling some of the environmental challenges we face. These plans will also create more than 30,000 new jobs, a near 50 per cent increase of the current workforce, and 4,000 apprenticeships for the sector, supply chain and wider economy right across the country.

We know that the industry has not got this right in the past. Over the past 30 years since privatisation, investment has risen by 90 per cent and we now have among the cleanest and safest drinking water in the world, pipes now leak over a third less water than they used to and the proportion of beaches rated excellent has risen sevenfold. But much of our infrastructure dates from the Victorian era and is nearing the end of its useful life. Despite the fact that investment rose significantly, it did not keep pace with the challenges from an ageing infrastructure, population growth and climate change. Nor did it meet public expectations on the environment.

Our population has grown 18 per cent since the 1990s. No reservoir has opened since, and sewage treatment has not expanded fast enough. With less investment than we needed, we have had the benefit of relatively low water bills. They have fallen by nearly 20 per cent in real terms since 2010.

Bill rises are never welcome, but in keeping bills low, the environment and the security of our water supply has been paying the price. Those issues now need to be confronted head on.

Ofwat will be poring over the plans before determining what is allowed, and at what price, before announcing its conclusions in the run-up to Christmas 2024.

People will rightly want to see results from any increase in bills that Ofwat allows. That is what the proposals aim to deliver. If approved, they will allow the development of up to ten new reservoirs and up to nine new desalination plants. New cross-country pipes will carry water from the wetter north to the drier south. And in England, companies aim to triple the current level of investment to reduce storm overflows of sewage into waterways. If approved by Ofwat, the health of England’s rivers will improve enormously, with 90 per cent less phosphorous from water companies by 2027 than in the 1990s, in line with the Environment Act’s ambitious targets for the most damaging pollutants. These are the kinds of new projects that companies want to deliver, the country needs and the public rightly expects.

Importantly, the regulator will ensure bills are no higher than needed to fund each improvement and will only approve them if they agree they are new, necessary and represent value for money. If improvements aren’t delivered, bills will automatically be reduced.

Water companies are determined that nobody is left behind. Firms in England will provide nearly a million more households with help on bills, with packages of support ranging from reduced tariffs to payment breaks.

The need for investment to upgrade and expand our system is true across the UK. Whether the infrastructure is owned by the state, as it is in Scotland or Northern Ireland, or by a regulated company, as in England and Wales, the picture is the same.

As an industry, we have apologised for not acting quickly enough on sewage spills and are planning our largest ever investment to put it right.

Ultimately, it is up to the regulator and our politicians to determine the level of investment they will allow and the extent to which they too are willing to reflect the public’s concerns. We cannot afford to shirk these difficult decisions any longer.