“Sir Humphrey” speaks – Owl

By Jim Dunton www.civilserviceworld.com

Former cabinet secretary Gus O’Donnell has told the Covid 19 Inquiry that the difficulties his successors faced during the early months of the pandemic made him thankful for his own relationship with No.10 during his time as the nation’s top civil servant.

Lord O’Donnell told the public inquiry that he had talked to current cab sec Simon Case about intense cabinet-level disagreements about the best course of action in relation to the pandemic during the autumn of 2020.

Inquiry lead counsel Hugo Keith KC read out an extract from the diaries of former government chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance at today’s session. Dated 11 November 2020, it read: “Simon Case says No.10 at war with itself. A Carrie faction with Gove and another with spads… PM caught in the middle.

“He has spoken to all of his predecessors as cabinet secretary and no-one has seen anything like it.”

O’Donnell, who was cab sec from 2005 to 2011, confirmed he had spoken to Case at the time – when Covid infections were rising and tiered restrictions were being introduced.

The ex-cab sec said he believed Case’s motivation for levelling with Vallance would have been driven by chief scientific adviser’s need to “understand how to operate” when “the top is not functioning as well as you would like it to”.

O’Donnell said the backdrop would have been ensuring that the best decisions were made for the country despite cabinet-level turmoil.

“That means that sometimes you have to be clear with the key officials, like Patrick Vallance [and chief medical officer] Chris Whitty, that there are problems with these relationships and that therefore things might not happen as quickly as you would like,” he said.

O’Donnell said the primary focus of the cabinet secretary’s role is to maintain relationships between No.10, the cabinet and departments, and ensure that decision-making is effectively supported.

“I look back on this and think I was blessed,” he said of his time as cab sec. “I actually had a relatively easy time. All of the prime ministers I worked with, I think there was that sense of mutual trust and respect and ability to get prime ministers to focus on the decisions that they needed to make and the information and evidence they needed.”

He said the evidence appeared to suggest that mutual trust, respect and focus “was clearly an issue” in No.10 during the pandemic.

O’Donnell said there were always disagreements in cabinet, but that Case faced an extreme situation when he became cabinet secretary in September 2020.

“Simon Case was dealing with a far, far more difficult situation than I ever had to face,” he said.

O’Donnell was also asked about his knowledge of the breakdown in relations between Case’s predecessor as cabinet secretary, Sir Mark Sedwill, who resigned as cab sec in June 2020 and left the role in early autumn.

He said Sedwill had tried to make sure that the damage from a change of cabinet secretary at a time of crisis “was as small as possible, given the behaviour of other participants in it”.

“If a cabinet secretary and a prime minister ultimately can’t work together – and from what we’ve heard about the prime minister’s style from what other witnesses have said, I can understand why that might be very, very difficult – then, you can understand why there’s a decision for that cabinet secretary to go and for a new one to come in,” O’Donnell said.

“The other side of it is when prime ministers should go, which is either decided by a general election or their own party.”

O’Donnell added “that was done”, in an evident reference to Boris Johnson’s ousting from No.10 by his own MPs last year.

Civil service ‘reflex to slowly manage ministers’

Lead counsel Keith read another extract from the Vallance diaries. It recorded that in December 2020, a permanent secretary had become annoyed that Vallance and Whitty had told the prime minister about a new variant of Covid.

The KC said Vallance wrote: “Sounds familiar. Really, we had no choice and he needs to know. The civil service reflex to slowly manage ministers is really awful.”

O’Donnell spoke in defence of senior civil servants managing the flow of information to ministers, particularly when advice on how they should proceed in light of the new data was not readily available.

“You need to work with what you’ve got in terms of ministers,” O’Donnell said. “And you need to understand how the machine can help those ministers make the right decisions, which may well mean that you often pause for a second before you give them some new piece of data.”

Elsewhere in today’s session, O’Donnell spoke of his belief that the UK government should create a National Security Council-type structure that that could sit above the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies in future medium- and long-term crises. 

“The people you will want around the table will depend on the nature of the crisis,” O’Donnell said.

“Each crisis I would want to sort out the structure but based on it being very clear strategic objectives of what we are trying to achieve and that feeds down to what committee structure you need, what experts you need around that table.”

The former cab sec said SAGE lacked clear strategic direction.

Meanwhile the current Covid infections continue to rise – Owl

Sir Keir Starmer will pledge to build Georgian-style townhouses in urban areas and a string of new towns as he sets out plans for a decade in power.

Steven Swinford, Chris Smyth www.thetimes.co.uk 

The Labour leader will use his conference speech today [Tuesday] to announce a “new generation” of large towns and suburbs in areas with high growth.

They will be developed by state-backed companies with compulsory purchase powers, with a cap on what landowners can charge, to free cash for local amenities. Doctors’ surgeries, schools, transport links and other infrastructure would be “hardwired” into the plans, Starmer says in the speech.

Labour will run a six-month consultation to identify suitable sites for new towns with potential for high economic growth and “areas with significant unmet housing need”. The Times has previously been told that they could include Cambridge and the M1 corridor around Milton Keynes, with dozens of potential sites being considered.

Developers will be given “planning passports” to build on brownfield land if they meet the new design standards, with a “stronger presumption in favour of permission”. Guidance will specify a focus on “gentle urban development” emulating five-storey townhouses built during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Promising “a big build”, Starmer would also allow low-quality green belt such as scrubland and car parks to be released for development. The party has branded the areas “grey belt” and will specify that half of homes built are to be sold at affordable prices.

The first new towns were created by the postwar Labour government, which designated areas for building and set up development corporations to oversee settlements such as Stevenage, Crawley, Basildon and Milton Keynes.

Three million people now live in such towns and Labour will promise a similar model to create “entirely new, large-scale housing settlements”, insisting it can overcome inertia that has prevented previous attempts to revive the idea.

Referring to his childhood home, Starmer says in the speech: “That pebble-dashed semi was everything to my family. It gave us stability through the cost of living crises of the Seventies, served as a springboard for the journey I’ve been on in my life. And I believe every family deserves the same.” He promises a “decade of national renewal”, suggesting that his party would be in power until the mid-2030s, after previously telling activists it would take more than one parliament to achieve his goals.

He acknowledges that voters need a reason to back Labour at the next election and says the “tide is turning” towards his party and away from the Tories and the Scottish National Party.

Starmer promises “a Britain strong enough, stable enough, secure enough for you to invest your hope, your possibility, your future” where “things will be better for your children”.

He says: “People are looking to us because they want our wounds to heal and we are the healers. People are looking to us because these challenges require a modern state and we are the modernisers. People are looking to us because they want us to build a new Britain and we are the builders.” Labour would be “totally focused on the interests of working people”, he says.

A Labour victory would give the chance to “turn our backs on never-ending Tory decline with a decade of national renewal” and give the British people the “government they deserve”.

Following his shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves’s speech setting out plans to reform the “antiquated” planning system so that new infrastructure gets built, Starmer contrasts the approach with Rishi Sunak’s decision to abandon the northern leg of HS2.

He pledges Labour would “get Britain building” and “the winner this time will be working people, everywhere”. Promising a “big build” for the country, he says: “What is broken can be repaired, what is ruined can be rebuilt.”

Starmer signals that he would resist tax rises while living standards are squeezed and tells activists: “We should never forget that politics should tread lightly on people’s lives, that our job is to shoulder the burden for working people — carry the load, not add to it.”

He says: “That’s what getting our future back really means. It boils down to this: can we look the challenges of this age squarely in the eye and amid all the change and insecurity find the hunger to win new opportunities and the strength to conserve what is precious.”

The damage caused by the climate crisis through extreme weather has cost $16m (£13m) an hour for the past 20 years, according to a new estimate.

Damian Carrington www.theguardian.com 

Storms, floods, heatwaves and droughts have taken many lives and destroyed swathes of property in recent decades, with global heating making the events more frequent and intense. The study is the first to calculate a global figure for the increased costs directly attributable to human-caused global heating.

It found average costs of $140bn (£115bn) a year from 2000 to 2019, although the figure varies significantly from year to year. The latest data shows $280bn in costs in 2022. The researchers said lack of data, particularly in low-income countries, meant the figures were likely to be seriously underestimated. Additional climate costs, such as from crop yield declines and sea level rise, were also not included.

The researchers produced the estimates by combining data on how much global heating worsened extreme weather events with economic data on losses. The study also found that the number of people affected by extreme weather because of the climate crisis was 1.2 billion over two decades.

Two-thirds of the damage costs were due to the lives lost, while a third was due to property and other assets being destroyed. Storms, such as Hurricane Harvey and Cyclone Nargis, were responsible for two-thirds of the climate costs, with 16% from heatwaves and 10% from floods and droughts.

People wait to be rescued from their home in Houston, Texas, after the area was flooded by Hurricane Harvey in August 2017. Storms areresponsible for two-thirds of the climate costs. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The researchers said their methods could be used to calculate how much funding was needed for a loss and damage fund established at the UN’s climate summit in 2022, which is intended to pay for the recovery from extreme weather disasters in poorer countries. It could also rapidly determine the specific climate cost of individual disasters, enabling faster delivery of funds.

“The headline number is $140bn a year and, first of all, that’s already a big number,” said Prof Ilan Noy, at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, who carried out the study with colleague Rebecca Newman. “Second, when you compare it to the standard quantification of the cost of climate change [using computer models], it seems those quantifications are underestimating the impact of climate change.”

Noy said there were a lot of extreme weather events for which there was no data on numbers of people killed or economic damage: “That indicates our headline number of $140bn is a significant understatement.” For example, he said, heatwave death data was only available in Europe. “We have no idea how many people died from heatwaves in all of sub-Saharan Africa.”

Extreme weather: glacial flooding, wildfires and hailstorms cause havoc across the world – video

There has been a sevenfold increase in reported losses from extreme weather disasters since the 1970s, according the World Meteorological Organization. However, separating the effect of global heating from population growth, urban migration and better reporting of disasters is difficult.

The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, took a different approach based on how climate change had exacerbated the extreme weather events. Hundreds of “attribution” studies have been done, calculating how much more frequent global heating made extreme weather events. This allows the fraction of the damages resulting from human-caused heating to be estimated.

The researchers applied these fractions to the damages recorded in the International Disaster Database, which compiles available data on all disasters in which 10 people died, or 100 were affected, or the country declared a state of emergency or requested international assistance.

The central estimate was an average climate cost of $140bn a year, with a range from $60bn to $230bn. These estimates are much higher than those from computer models, which are based on changes in average global temperature rather than on the extreme temperatures increasingly being seen in the world.

The years with the highest overall climate costs were 2003, when a heatwave struck Europe; 2008, when Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar; and 2010, when drought hit Somalia and a heatwave hit Russia. Property damages were higher in 2005 and 2017 when hurricanes hit the US, where property values are high.

skip past newsletter promotion

after newsletter promotion

The analysis used a statistical value of a life lost of $7m, an average of the figures used by the US and UK governments. “A lot of people are very uncomfortable with the idea that we put a price tag on a life,” said Noy. “But this is very standard economic practice and comes about because, ultimately, we need make decisions about [the value of] investments in various things.”

Heatwaves, flood and fire: what it’s like to survive 2023’s extreme weather – video

Noy said that only considering the economic damage caused to infrastructure would heavily skew the cost estimates to rich countries, despite much of the damage from extreme weather hitting poorer ones. He contrasted the $140bn damage estimate with the $100bn promised by rich countries to poorer ones, but yet to be delivered in full, and noted that 90% of that money was for cutting emissions. The figures also contrast with the subsidies of $7tn a year enjoyed by the fossil fuel industry.

At the UN climate summit Cop27 in 2022, countries agreed to set up a loss and damage fund to help poorer ones rebuild after climate-related disasters. “You can use our methodology to start putting numbers on how much money we need in the fund,” Noy said.

Ideally, he said, a quick attribution study on an extreme weather event would estimate the climate-related damage and lead to a rapid delivery of funds: “It would be a kind of insurance scheme for countries.” The methodology might also be useful for determining damages in climate lawsuits, he said.

Dr Stéphane Hallegatte, at the World Bank and not part of the study team, said: “The key message is that climate change is visibly increasing global economic losses from disasters. This has been a topic of controversy, with some claiming that climate change effects are negligible compared with other factors like economic growth and urbanisation.

“This study looks at the attribution for the physical event – it’s much simpler, robust, and it provides a convincing case. It is an emerging field and uncertainties are really large. One lesson of the study is that global research centres – mostly located in rich countries – need to work more on what is happening in poorer countries.”

[Sasha Swire perceptively described Hugo’s succcessor as “Jumping Jupp Flash”].

Now Claire Wright has had to correct young Jupp’s spelling of “Cullumpton”.

Simon Jupp has been making grandiose claims for the part he played in securing (if that’s the right word) funding for the reopening of Collumpton station. While his rival, Richard Foord the incumbent MP, has paid tribute to all those who have worked on the project including his predecessor Neil Parish.

Who are the adults in the room?

Link to Claire

Devon MPs claim victory in rail success

Alison Stephenson, local democracy reporter www.radioexe.co.uk

Two Devon MPs, who will be battling for the same seat in the next general election, have both claimed victory in the campaign to get the railway station reopened at Cullompton.

Simon Jupp, Conservative MP for East Devon and Liberal Democrat MP for Tiverton and Honiton Richard Foord say they have both championed the cause in parliament for a ight cordirect rail link from the expanding town to London Paddington.

Last week the Tories announced they are abandoning plans for the northern section of the HS2 rail project  to focus on transport improvements across the country, and Devon is getting some funds to boost infrastructure.

Stations will reopen at Cullompton, Wellington and Tavistock 60 years after they were closed during the Beeching cuts.

It’s going to be all-change for Cullompton at the general election. In futrue, the town will fall under the new Honiton and Sidmouth constituency because of a boundary shake up which will see the abolition of Mr Foord’s Tiverton and Honiton seat, and Mr Jupp’s East Devon area.

They will go head-to-head to become the MP for Honiton and Sidmouth. Hence the battle to take credit for improvements in Cullompton.

Welcoming the HS2 announcement, Mr Jupp, who as parliamentary private secretary in the Department for Transport is a member of the government, said he had campaigned to improve connectivity and economic opportunity across the area by introducing a direct rail link between Cullompton and London.

He said his campaign included meetings with the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, and two people in the department he works in, transport secretary Mark Harper and rail minister Huw Merriman.

“I warmly welcome the fantastic news that under this Conservative government, Cullompton will get its own dedicated train station,” he said.

“I recently conducted a transport survey in and around the town and I’m delighted we are delivering what local residents want. By improving the link to London Paddington and Exeter, we can boost our local economy whilst better connecting our communities.”

For his part, Mr Foord said he built on the work of former Conservative MP for Tiverton and Honiton Neil Parish by co-chairing the board that brings together Network Rail, Great Western Rail, and Mid Devon District Council.

He wrote: “I have been pleased to champion the cause in parliament and I am delighted that it seems the government in Westminster has given way under the pressure of local campaigners.  I would like to thank those people who did not give up on the project – including those from Cullompton Town Council, who have been very invested in it.”

Mid Devon District Council ‘s cabinet member for planning and economic regeneration Cllr Steven Keable (Lib Dem, Taw Vale) said it is important work on the new station begins quickly.

“This significant jigsaw piece for the future of Cullompton can happen in 2025 and we now urge the government to formally confirm funding and get spades in the ground. This announcement rewards the local community for their hard work over a number of years.”

He continued: “Without this suite of planned interventions, the Culm Garden Village, to the east of the M5, will not be able to provide the planned local new homes and extensive community facilities, nor will Cullompton see the levelling up opportunities pledged by the government.”

A total £6.5 billion from the HS2 savings of £36 billion will come to the south west. In Devon the mainline rail route will be made more robust at Dawlish and money will be spent on new road schemes and road resurfacing.