People in Axminster are ‘queuing out of the door’ at their local pharmacy amid a warning that Devon’s pharmacy workforce are ‘on their knees’. Branch closures and staff cuts are impacting the service.

Lewis Clarke www.devonlive.com

Speaking in Parliament, Richard Foord, Lib Dem MP for Tiverton & Honiton said: “At the end of January, the Government launched the Pharmacy First scheme, which encourages patients to consult pharmacists rather than GPs, or at least to take pressure off GPs.

“While that is good in theory, the reality is that the community pharmacy workforce are on their knees, with levels of trained support staff having been cut by 20%.

“We are seeing the closure of pharmacies in rural and coastal towns such as Axminster and Sidmouth, with a constituent telling me yesterday that queues at the pharmacy in Axminster are out the door. Will the Government please make time for a debate on recognising the value of community pharmacies?”

Leader of the House, Penny Mordaunt said: “The Government do recognise the value of community pharmacies. There can be no Prime Minister better placed to recognise the importance of pharmacy.

“That is why we have not only enabled the Pharmacy First service to be stood up, but worked on it for a number of years. It is now available to all members of the public, but there were trailblazer programmes prior to that for people who were on benefits.

“Some 98% of pharmacies are now making use of the scheme, which also enables them to derive an income from it. That is progress to be supported and welcomed. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will promote the scheme in his constituency.”

Paul Arnott 

Many readers may have seen last weekend The Times Newspaper listing Exmouth as “One of The Best Places to Live 2024”.

The article included a superb quote from the Sideshore’s Ella Slade who said she thinks the town is “going places”.

“I love being by the sea,” Ella said, “and Exmouth is a great place with a great community. It feels really young. It’s got character and personality and everybody puts their oar in to make the businesses work and the community the best it can be.”

The bit of Ella’s quote I loved was that “everybody puts their oar in”, which is true but also can be read in two ways. In my experience of doing all I can for Exmouth as District Leader for four years that is spot on.

There are people breaking their backs to make the town blossom, and there are commentators on the sidelines (you find everywhere to be fair) for whom nothing is ever right. That’s democracy, and long may the two ways of putting your oar in live.

As the district council we get a regular kicking from some locals, which is expected of course. (Before I was a councillor I’d considered the daft plans for a seafront hotel at sea level quite potty too, and said so.) But taking that on the chin without complaining does justify a right to reply. Many will remember the superb Monty Python routine from Life of Brian called “What have the Romans ever done for us?”

So, I scribbled a few notes of new actions East Devon District Council has taken in Exmouth this year alone. Let’s start with a lovely one. With the leadership of a wonderful team of volunteers aged 3-96, our Parks and Gardens Team at EDDC been involved with the lovely Exmouth Tiny Forest Group planting 185 broadleaf trees creating three small copses to surround the new Tiny Forest at the Carter Avenue Green Space. In the same week, we opened 28 new parking spaces for bikes on the front by the RNLI Lifeboat Station and in Phear Park.

We also concluded a very long consultation process which has been going on for two years about Placemaking in Exmouth. Now, the sideline commentators always say “they won’t listen”, “it’s all rubber stamped already” and astonishingly, “it’s all been done behind closed doors”. In fact, since I put my own oar in four years ago, we set up an open Placemaking Group with representation from all sorts of interest groups in Exmouth, including the Town Council which – unlike the old days under the Conservatives – meets in public.

Indeed, those meetings are all there on YouTube to watch if you wish, and the agenda and minutes are on our website. I’d like to thank the nearly 700 hundred contributors who either attended public sessions at the Ocean or filled in the consultation document in recent weeks.

Of course, the biggest recent intervention is the £1.5 million funding to urgently rebuild the sea wall at Sideshore. We could have crossed our fingers and hoped it would hold up, but my Cabinet decided that the works must be done instantly. Thanks to all Exmouthians for your patience as the path in front of Sideshore becomes a bit of a building site for the next few weeks. Better than the seafront being swept into the sea I’d hazard.

What then have the Romans/EDDC done for us? Loads. Can we do better? Yes, everyone can always do better. But as long as I have a say, East Devon District Council has Exmouth’s back.

An MP has said that “too many” of their colleagues in Parliament are not playing by the rules, as a Bill was presented to make codes of conduct more binding.

Claudia Savage www.independent.co.uk

Labour MP Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) presented the Bill to the House of Commons on Wednesday, using a 10-minute rule motion, that would put rules about MPs’ behaviour on the statute books.

She told the Commons: “Too many people across our great country and nation states feel that the UK parliament, the MPs and ministers that sit in this place, that make new laws on behalf of them no longer represents them.

“People across the country feel that while they play by the rules, too often, too many of us do not.

“They’re engaged every five years or so at a general election but rarely in between and while they are struggling to make ends meet, public money is treated by some as a personal fiefdom to bestow on their chums and benefactors.”

She added: “When people lose faith in democracy they seek political extremes.

“Polling from the Institute for Government recently showed two thirds of our constituents said that they do not think the current Government behaves to high ethical standards.

“Likewise polling from the UK anti-corruption coalition found two thirds of voters believe UK politics is becoming more corrupt.”

The Standards in Public Life (Codes of Conduct) Bill would seek to provide a statutory code of conduct for Members of the House of Commons and Members of the House of Lords, as well as local councillors.

The Seven Principles of Public Life, known as the Nolan Principles, state that those holding public office should exhibit selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership.

Ms Abrahams said: “It’s absolutely right that under this the Nolan principles, currently guiding principles, also become codified.”

Ms Abrahams clarified that her Bill is “not party political”.

She said: “The reality is that when one party is seen as behaving in a way that lacks integrity, this does not affect just them, it affects the reputation of politicians on all sides.”

The member for Oldham East and Saddleworth concluded that by urging MPs from both sides of the House to support the Bill to “strengthen our standards in public life and to restore the public’s trust” in MPs.

The Bill is scheduled for further scrutiny by MPs on April 26 but is unlikely to make further progress in its current form due to a lack of parliamentary time to debate Bills tabled by backbench MPs.

[Worth mentioning that a “South Devon Watch” (now facebook based) had its origins at around the same time as “East Devon Watch”. Both aimed at driving revolutionary ideas forward and providing a critique of local Conservatism. (Use Georgina Allen in the EDW search to find relevant posts from around 2016 onwards.) 

The founders of the East Devon Alliance would also claim to have been part of this revolution by creating a mutual support group for like minded independents, pledging to follow the Nolan principles and seeking to become District Councillors. Within three electoral cycles the Tory stranglehold on East Devon District Council has been broken and the council is now run by a “rainbow” coalition.

The full history and evolution of change, including the pivotal role played by Claire Wright, was chronicled by “Old Owl” in three posts celebrating, in 2021, the first million hits on EDW. (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3). 

So revolutionary ideas of how to do politics have already taken root in other parts of Devon and are flowering. – Owl]

A revolution in the way Britain does politics has begun in Devon. Tory MPs should be afraid

George Monbiot www.theguardian.com

This is what democracy looks like: hundreds of people queueing in the rain, seeking to take back control of a political system that treats voters like an afterthought. Last weekend, a remarkable democratic experiment reached its first conclusion. A process that began here in South Devon and is now spreading to other constituencies has allowed voters to reclaim the initiative from centralised and self-interested political parties. It directly confronts our unfair electoral system.

Ours is one of many constituencies in the UK known as “progressive tragedies”: places in which most people vote for parties to the left of the Tories but which, thanks to our iniquitous first-past-the-post system, end up with Tory representatives. The Conservatives have ruled here since 1924, often without majority support.

The Labour and Conservative leaderships conspire to sustain this system, in the hope of absolute majorities. But it works, like other such truncations of democracy (think of our political funding arrangements) much better for the Conservatives than it does for Labour. As Neal Lawson of the democracy campaign Compass argues, of the 11 general elections since 1979, “eight were won by the Conservative party and only three by Labour. But cooperation among progressive parties could have averted all eight Conservative majority governments bar 2015.”

Both within the Labour party and in the country at large, there’s an urgent desire for a fairer system. Unfortunately, this desire is thwarted by the Labour leadership. The result? As Lawson points out, of the 15 wealthy nations surveyed by the ParlGov project, voters in the UK are the most left-leaning, yet suffer the most rightwing governments. Sometimes it seems that Labour strategists would rather possess control than power.

This is not going to change in the near future. All pleas to work for the greater good, even when Jeremy Corbyn was leader, have been met with stony refusal. As someone well-placed in the party told me, our undemocratic system, and the prospect it offers of gaining an absolute majority, “is like the ring in Lord of the Rings. You know it harms you, but once it’s within your grasp, you can’t give it up.”

The simple and brilliant idea of a group of people in the South Devon constituency was to take these decisions out of the hands of the parties and return them to the people. The UK’s first “people’s primary” involved seven meetings held around the constituency. Candidates for progressive or vaguely progressive parties were invited to explain to voters why they would be best placed to evict the Conservative. After each meeting, constituents voted by secret ballot to choose their champion. When the aggregate result was announced, everyone in the constituency could see who other people believed was the most promising challenger.

Without this help, we have to guess other people’s voting intentions, and we often guess wrong. The people’s primary overcomes the prisoner’s dilemma, ensuring we are less likely to waste our vote. The decision the constituents make doesn’t prevent the other parties from standing. But, by selecting a common champion, it reduces the chances of letting the Tory back in.

Labour, thrown into chaos by the leadership’s attempt to control their choice of candidates, has yet to field a contender, so was unable to participate. The party leadership would have blocked its involvement anyway. Their loss. The Liberal Democrat and Green candidates battled gamely across two weeks of meetings. The Lib Dem, Caroline Voaden, won decisively. So now we know that our best chance of helping to eject the dismal Tory MP is to vote for her.

I chaired the first of these meetings. Tickets sold out two days after they were issued. The questions were searching and pertinent. Whatever the results at the general election, this is already a victory of sorts: bringing people back into the political process, showing how democracy could become a living proposition, rather than a dry and curling parchment locked behind a portcullis with chains.

Now the process has begun in five other constituencies, including those represented by Kemi Badenoch and Danny Kruger. The South Devon pioneers have identified 57 progressive tragedies in which the Conservatives are still predicted to win and there is some uncertainty about who the most effective challenger is likely to be. They’ve offered to share their model with these constituencies, but not with those where one progressive contender is clearly ahead of the others. In those cases they recommend a different system: stopthetories.vote.

All the big political parties hate these primaries. The Tory response is understandable: they know they can’t survive a fair democratic process in a progressive constituency. Most shocking and self-destructive has been the reaction of Liberal Democrat party managers. After the South Devon process had begun, a letter to candidates from the Lib Dem chair in England instructed them: “Under no circumstances are you to take part … any candidate who ignores this instruction, and participates in a primary, risks having their approved status rescinded and the withdrawal of party support and resources.”

The letter revealed an almost comical misunderstanding of what the primary process is and how it is conducted. It claimed that the primary could put candidates in breach of election law on both process and expenses. In reality, the process has been closely scrutinised by the Electoral Commission, and applies a long list of safeguarding rules. The spending (which is very small, as the primaries are created and run by volunteers) takes place before the champion is chosen, so, as the Electoral Commission has confirmed, doesn’t eat into the candidates’ capped election budgets. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by such reactions: any process involving a transfer of control, however beneficial, will be fiercely opposed by those who are losing it.

Out of adversity comes better tactics. The Isle of Wight East constituency, after the refusal of both Labour and the Lib Dems to play, is designing a new process that doesn’t rely on their involvement.

The primaries won’t deliver a perfect system. We’ll still be stuck with a centralised and coercive politics, unmatched to the needs of the complex system we call society, based on the illegitimate concepts of presumed consent and remote decision-making. We will properly reclaim that power only when our representative politics are accompanied by participatory and deliberative decision-making.

But it’s a start: a small, slow revolution in a country whose people have long been deprived of their democratic rights. Enough of command and control. Enough of tricks and truncations. Enough of lies and evasions. While they dissemble, we assemble.