Could that be because Michael Gove hasn’t got Simon Jupp writing his scripts for him?

A year ago Simon Jupp jumped on Liz Truss’ bandwagon and was rewarded by becoming PPS to right-winger Simon Clarke when she appointed him Secretary of State for Levelling-up, Housing and Communities. 

After Fizzy Lizzie’s defenestration, Rishi Sunak sacked Clarke and appointed Michael Gove to replace him. As PPSs are personal appointments by the minister, Simon Jupp was out on his ear as well. Gove didn’t re-appoint him.

This looks like the moment Jupp’s political career started to go downhill.

His subsequent appointment as PPS to Mark Harper at  Transport represents a significant demotion in the “pecking order” of ministries. 

Richard Foord Liberal Democrat Spokesperson (Defence)

Local authorities are struggling to retrofit ageing rural council housing stock, which has allowed mould to set in. What will the Minister do to avoid councils having to spend huge sums of council taxpayers’ money on positive input ventilation units to provide mould-free homes?

Michael Gove Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Minister for Intergovernmental Relations

The scourge of damp and mould, particularly but not exclusively in the social and private rented sector, is an issue that the Government recognise that we need to tackle. That is why we are providing additional support to local government and to housing associations in order to deal with that issue. I look forward in particular to dealing with the hon. Gentleman to assess the situation in Tiverton and Honiton.

Or is the Secretary of State for Transport playing Simon Jupp’s game of trivial point scoring? – Owl

Richard Foord Liberal Democrat Spokesperson (Defence)

I welcome sincerely the news of the Secretary of State’s support for Cullompton railway station. It is not new, given that my predecessor as MP for Tiverton and Honiton, Neil Parish, secured restoring your railway funding for Cullompton station two years ago. At that time, Neil said that

“construction could take place as early as 2024”; will the Secretary of State tell my constituents whether Cullompton station is still on track to open in this Parliament?

Mark Harper The Secretary of State for Transport

It is very important, when projects are promised, that we have the funds to pay for them, and it is by cancelling the second phase of HS2 that we are able to fund that important project, which I am glad the hon. Gentleman welcomes. I do not think that the rail Minister and I, in the time we have been in post, have had any communication from the hon. Gentleman campaigning for the station, whereas my hon. Friend Simon Jupp has campaigned for it assiduously, as has my hon. Friend Rebecca Pow.

The voters deserve better than this.

Or as the Daily Mail has it:

The number of people paying higher-rate income taxes is set to more than double from 4.4 million to 9 million by 2027 under the government’s £52 billion stealth tax raid, analysis finds. www.dailymail.co.uk

Despite this colossal rise in the tax take the IFS says the government cannot afford to cut taxes in the autumn statement.

www.theguardian.com Politics Live

The Conservatives have fought every election at least since the 1980s as the party of low taxation. But, as the IFS report suggests, that is no longer plausible. It says that Rishi Sunak’s decision to freeze the income tax personal allowance at its 2021-22 level for four years in his March 2021 budget, and Jeremy Hunt’s decision last year to make that a six-year freeze, not a four-year freeze, is now set to raise £52bn by 2027-28 – the same as a 6p rise in basic rate and higher rate income tax. The IFS says:

“If we instead calculate revenue based on the latest inflation forecasts from the Bank of England (August 2023) and assuming that beyond 2026Q3 inflation remains at 2%, it looks like the freeze to both income tax and NICs thresholds is now on course to raise £52bn in 2027–28 (or £43bn if subtracting the cost of the increase in the point at which employees and the self-employed pay NICs)

This is a huge tax rise. To give a comparison, the biggest single tax-raising measure in recent history was the June 2010 budget decision to increase the main rate of VAT from 17½% to 20%, which is estimated to raise £21bn in 2027–28. Or, to put it another way, other ways to raise roughly £52 bn of revenue include increasing both the basic and higher rate of income tax by 6p, or increasing the main rate of VAT from 20% to 26%.”

Despite this colossal rise in the tax take (a consequence of what is known as “fiscal drag”), the IFS also says the government cannot afford to cut taxes in the autumn statement.

Labour says this shows the Tories have crashed the economy. Darren Jones, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said:

“After 13 years of chaos and instability, the Conservatives have crashed our economy and left working people worse off.

Successive failures by Conservatives ministers have left us with low growth, high tax and national debt at the highest level in generations. Britain cannot afford another five more years of the Conservatives.”

And Sarah Olney, the Lib Dem Treasury spokesperson, said:

“This research lays bare the sheer scale of economic vandalism by the Conservative party.

Ministers have condemned the UK to sluggish growth, high inflation and soaring interest rates. It is hard-working families who are left to pick up the pieces, shouldering a huge burden of unfair tax rises and seeing our public services on their knees.”

Seatonmatters.org

www.midweekherald.co.uk/news/23859905.wing-seaton-hospital-demolished-save-nhs-money/

When the Conservatives allowed the removal of Seaton Hospital’s beds to go ahead in 2017, it looked as though the next step was the complete closure of the hospital, which the government was giving incentives for at the time. The resolute community opposition to the whole scheme derailed this plan. Now it’s back in a new form – the partial demolition of the hospital.

The League of Friends, Re:store, Richard Foord MP and Paul Arnott, Leader of EDDC, are already on the case. But the local community will need to act. The NHS managers we fought last time have obviously moved on and the new ones don’t know what the Seaton community is made of. They’re in for a big surprise. I’ve spent some of my ‘retirement’ researching the history of protest movements and I now know a lot about direct action. If the NHS has any sense they’ll drop this idea pronto.

Two Seaton charities and Honiton MP Richard Foord have raised concerns over plans to demolish a large part of Seaton Community Hospital.

Adam Manning www.midweekherald.co.uk

Seaton & District Hospital League of Friends and Re:store are instead calling for the space to be repurposed as a new ‘care hub’ to support local people. 

The cottage hospital opened in 1988 to serve Seaton and the surrounding areas. In that time, fundraising by the community has raised more than £1 million pounds to build, maintain and support the facility. 

Proposals from the Devon Integrated Care Board (ICB), include demolishing the whole wing of the hospital to reduce the cost of maintaining the facilities. The space is currently rented by the Devon ICB from NHS Property Services. The wing, set across two floors, has gone largely unused since 2017, when the hospital saw the removal of several wards and beds. The level of care available at the hospital site was then reduced. However, several offices across the second floor are home to the palliative nurse team and other teams. 

Seaton & District Hospital League of Friends and Re:store has now joined with MP Richard Foord to propose the disused hospital wing is used for a new ‘care hub’, which would offer a wide range of services. 

The space used to increase support for people affected by dementia and frailty – including their families. It would be used to provide the very best care at the end of life, and it would offer bereavement support. There is also scope to develop the space for exercise and groups that promote physical and mental wellbeing. To make these plans viable, they are urging NHS Property Services to classify the space as non-clinical and review the rental arrangement for community groups and local charities. 

This would enable savings for the NHS and could potentially reduce the cost to other parts of the NHS, as local charities would use the hospital to work for our communities. The charities believe that Seaton Hospital is the ideal space to run these services, as it currently has an unoccupied wing adjacent to the NHS outpatient and therapy departments. By bringing these services under one roof, they believe there will be opportunities for individuals to access multiple relevant services, without difficult, costly travel.  

Liberal Democrat MP Richard Foord said: “Seaton Community Hospital is a much-loved community asset. Local people are passionate about protecting their hospital and keeping services local, with organisations like the League of Friends and others having helped to raise huge sums of money to support the hospital. 

“We’ve seen in recent years the damage that can be caused when vital healthcare facilities like this are scaled back; it can leave people struggling to get the care they need and puts extra pressure on staff working at the RD&E or out in the community, as people have nowhere else to turn. 

“Seeking to demolish a large part of the hospital’s current premises feels like a step towards getting rid of some of our community hospitals altogether. It’s a short-sighted move that fails to take into account the huge benefit that could be delivered if the space was repurposed for the benefit of the community. 

“I fully support the plans to revive the space and turn it into a new ‘care hub’ to offer a new range of specialist services to support our ageing population and ensure the long-term future of the hospital as a whole is protected. 

“I shall be writing to NHS Property Services about this situation, to see if we can come to an arrangement that will enable these innovative plans to go ahead. I urge the local community and voluntary groups to get involved and help develop this new vision for care in Seaton.” 

Dr Mark Welland, chair of trustees for Seaton & District Hospital League of Friends, said:  “Proposals to demolish a whole wing of Seaton Hospital are deeply concerning. Seen from a distance it could be seen as financially sensible to demolish an unused hospital wing in order to reduce the cost of maintaining the space. However, seen from the local level it clearly is nonsense to destroy a local asset and weaken access to care for an ageing population.  

“The current arrangement, which sees Devon’s Integrated Care Board rent the space from the NHS, simply doesn’t work for rural areas like ours. It is the product of an NHS business model designed for the large scale, but which has become a barrier at the small scale to providing services responsive to local community needs.  

“Local charities and organisations are already demonstrating their ability to work alongside the NHS to enhance local services. Examples in Seaton are the work of Re:store in providing mental health support, balance classes, and the League of Friends commissioning nursing support at the end of life.  

“We are now asking NHS property services to change the rental arrangement and recognise the wider cost savings that our services will provide, by enabling local charities to use the full potential of Seaton Hospital to work for our community.”

The number of hospital beds in England has fallen by almost 3,000 since ministers promised 5,000 before winter, prompting warnings that patients are being “warehoused” in emergency departments.

Kat Lay www.thetimes.co.uk 

Nurses are run ragged dealing with the equivalent of a full ward of patients waiting in casualty departments due to a lack of beds , and patients are receiving “less good care, in the wrong place”, the UK’s top A&E doctor said.

Emergency medicine leaders have said they feel let down by a lack of progress since the prime minister and health secretary joined NHS chiefs in January to announce a “recovery plan” for urgent and emergency care, promising “5,000 more staffed, sustainable beds in 2023-24”.

Analysis of NHS England data by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) showed that between January and September, bed numbers in major acute hospitals fell from 100,046 to 97,332.

Announcing the target at the start of the year Rishi Sunak said: “Our plan will cut long waiting times by increasing the number of ambulances, staff and beds — stopping the bottlenecks outside A&E and making sure patients are seen and discharged quickly.”

NHS England said the baseline for its promise was the 94,500 core hospital beds it had planned to have available last winter, before pressures led to the opening of extra escalation beds across the country. It is still aiming to have 99,500 core beds by winter.

Adrian Boyle, president of the RCEM, said a lack of beds meant “patients who need to be admitted end up stuck in the emergency department”.

He said: “Most emergency departments are lodging or warehousing the equivalent of three quarters and a full medical ward inside the emergency department, while trying to look after all the new arrivals.”

He said emergency department nurses were not trained to provide the kind of inpatient and continuing care that those patients needed. He said: “People are getting less good care, in the wrong place.”

Boyle said the college was disappointed with the lack of progress, which he feared was driven by financial concerns and budget deficits in many areas.

It was unconscionable that hospitals where patients are being warehoused were closing beds, he said. “We feel we supported the urgent and emergency care recovery plan in good faith — and we feel let down.”

Officials said core beds are always lower in September than over winter and increase as pressures rise.

The number of core beds reported last month was 95,171, with a further 2,161 “escalation beds” — a total of 97,332, 93 per cent, of which were occupied. Last September there were 96,668 core beds, with 94 per cent full.

While the NHS can increase the number of beds quite quickly when needed, this often resulted in “providing not very good care in less than ideal clinical areas”, Boyle said. “The fact that people have had six months to build that capacity but appear not to have [done so] is cause for concern.”

The college had suggested 5,000 beds would not be enough to reduce capacity down to a safe, 85 per cent, operating level. It wants political parties to commit themselves to increasing the number of hospital beds in manifestos for the next election.

Siva Anandaciva, chief analyst at the King’s Fund, said: “The UK has fewer hospital beds per person than many comparable countries and this is a key reason for why the NHS comes under serious pressure every year and waiting times for patients reach eye-watering levels.”

A lack of beds has ripple effects through the rest of the system, he said, meaning A&E departments filled up with patients who needed admission and ambulances could not transfer patients into A&E and get back on the road.

He warned: “Hospitals can only open more physical or virtual beds if they have the clinically trained staff to run them. And due to a combination of staffing shortages that are only now being slowly reversed and industrial action on an unprecedented scale, the NHS is heading into winter with bed occupancy levels that are far higher than they should be to ensure timely care for patients.” The NHS has hit a target of opening 10,000 beds on virtual wards before winter. Virtual wards allow patients to be treated at home using technology such as apps and wearables to let clinical staff monitor the patient’s recovery.

An NHS spokeswoman said: “We know that the NHS is already under considerable pressure as we head into winter with continuing high demand for services and the impact of industrial action, but thanks to the hard work of staff and the measures outlined in our urgent and emergency care recovery plan there are hundreds more hospital beds open now compared to this time last year.

“Our focus has been on ensuring the NHS is more resilient coming into winter with more beds available on a regular basis, and work continues towards delivering our recovery plan commitment of 99,500 core beds to help manage pressures, boost capacity and to provide the best quality care for patients.”