“Only a small minority of the tests it has bought have been registered as used……

“Research suggests that only a minority of people who have COVID-19 symptoms come forward for testing. It has no target for increasing this, the uptake of LFD testing or compliance with self-isolation…..

“Local authorities still struggle to get timely access to the data they need to deal with localised outbreaks of COVID-19…..

www.nao.org.uk

Test and trace in England – progress update

This is the second NAO report on government’s approach to test and trace services in England.

Report conclusions

The primary goal of NHST&T is to help break chains of COVID-19 transmission and enable people to return towards a more normal way of life. Since it was established in May 2020 there have been two national lockdowns and more than four million confirmed cases. In order to break chains of transmission, SAGE advises that it is desirable that no more than 48 hours should elapse between identification of an index case and their contacts self-isolating, and that 80% of these contacts would need to be reached. NHST&T now reaches around 85% of all contacts, and has reduced the elapsed time to trace contacts for in-person PCR tests. However, in‑person PCR tests make up a declining minority of tests, and it is less clear whether the wider system is operating as quickly as it needs to. Since November, it has rolled out a national asymptomatic testing programme to seek to identify those people who do not know they have COVID-19. Only a small minority of the tests it has bought have been registered as used, and NHST&T is now undertaking research to understand the reasons for this with a work programme underway to bring about improvements. The success of the test and trace programme relies on the public coming forward for tests when they have symptoms, carrying out asymptomatic tests when they do not, and complying with instructions to self‑isolate where necessary. NHST&T is responsible for driving up public compliance, but research suggests that only a minority of people who have COVID-19 symptoms come forward for testing. It has no target for increasing this, the uptake of LFD testing or compliance with self-isolation.

NHST&T was set up at speed with a workforce heavily reliant on consultants. It had planned to reduce its dependency on consultants but has not yet done so. NHST&T operates in an environment of high uncertainty, where demand for testing and tracing can be affected at short notice by new variants, case numbers and policy decisions (for example, national lockdowns). It is therefore challenging to forecast costs with precision. However, there is a very wide margin between the underspend of around 10% that NHST&T discussed with the Committee of Public Accounts in January 2021, and the 39% underspend of its 2020-21 budget that it reported two months later. It has taken steps to increase the flexibility of its contracts for contact tracing and future laboratory use and has generally improved its provision of data to and engagement with local authorities. However, local authorities still struggle to get timely access to the data they need to deal with localised outbreaks of COVID-19, and they are unclear on the planned operating model after July 2021. To achieve value for money NHST&T must be able to demonstrate both that the interventions it delivers are effective in achieving its objective, and that the mix of interventions is the most cost-effective use of public resources.

The Good Law Project has dropped its legal challenge to the government’s recruitment of Kate Bingham as chair of the vaccines taskforce, which had alleged it failed to follow a valid process and gave key roles in the pandemic to people well-connected to the Conservative party.

David Conn www.theguardian.com 

In the same legal action, the GLP is maintaining its challenge to the appointments of Dido Harding as head of NHS test and trace, and of Mike Coupe, who formerly worked with Harding at Sainsbury’s, as director of testing.

The government has defended the legal action, maintaining the appointments were all fair and lawful, and recently issued a detailed defence setting out the circumstances of the recruitment process, which led to the GLP dropping its action in relation to Bingham.

The government’s detailed defence document will not be made public until the case is heard – no date has yet been scheduled – but Jolyon Maugham, director of the GLP, said the process for appointing Bingham, while it did not follow an open advertising process, had been better than expected.

“We are not dropping the challenge or the point of principle that fair, open and transparent recruitment processes deliver better outcomes for the public,” Maugham said. “None of these recruitment processes during the pandemic were optimal; we are still unhappy with the government’s explanations relating to Dido Harding and Mike Coupe, but they have provided a better explanation regarding Kate Bingham, and it is responsible for us not to pursue that further.”

Bingham is managing partner of the venture capital firm SV Health Investments. Her appointment to the unpaid role of heading the UK’s efforts to secure Covid-19 vaccines was formally made by Johnson last May, and she reported directly to the prime minister.

Along with Harding, who was made a Conservative peer by David Cameron in 2014, her appointment led to claims they were part of a “chumocracy”.

The government has emphatically defended all its appointments, and praised Bingham for her achievements in investing in the manufacture of Covid-19 vaccines and securing 350m doses, saying in a public statement in November:

“Kate Bingham is uniquely qualified for the role of chair, having worked in the biotech and life sciences sectors for 30 years. While not specifically a vaccines expert, she is a proven drugs discovery expert with superb deal-making skills and an excellent global reputation, recently appearing alongside Bill Gates at the Gates Grand Challenge Conference.”

Earlier this month Bingham was given a damehood for her work on the vaccines operation in the Queen’s birthday honours list.

Last year more deaths than births were registered in the UK for the first time since 1976.

By Robert Cuffe Head of statistics www.bbc.co.uk

In total, just over 683,000 births were registered compared with nearly 690,000 deaths.

This was only the second time deaths have outnumbered births since the late 1890s.

The coronavirus epidemic led to a sharp rise in deaths last year but birth rates have also been falling for the last decade.

The coronavirus effect

The number of deaths in the UK has been rising in recent years, but part of that increase is due to the UK population increasing and getting older.

Last year’s 13% rise in that figure is attributed by statisticians to the coronavirus pandemic.

It was the largest jump in a single year seen since World War Two, bringing death rates, the chances of any single person dying, back to levels seen in 2008.

Figures published this morning by the Office for National Statistics suggest the first lockdown had not led to a baby boom.

Birth rates in December and January, nine months after lockdown started, were sharply down on the same months one year before.

But the pandemic has affected register offices, leading to problems with birth registrations, so the ONS “urges caution” when reading meaning into these figures.

It is perhaps unsurprising – and it should be a one off – but the provisional finding that the UK natural population shrank is stark all the same.

The spike in deaths above the number of births puts pandemic mortality into some sort of context.

But it also shines a light on the significant falls in the fertility rate in the past few years.

In 2012, the total fertility rate was 1.92 – close to the level where a population replaces itself.

In just eight years that has fallen below 1.6, much closer now to societies considered to be “ageing” such as Germany and Japan.

There are many questions to ask about whether this is linked to a significant squeeze on younger families.

These figures need not necessarily be a problem. However, if confirmed in the final figures, they do point to significant changes for British society and its economy too.

Falling birth rates

Part of the reason that deaths have outstripped births is that births have been falling steadily in every nation of the UK since at least 2015.

The Office for National Statistics says this is because we are having children later in life and fewer of them.

This trend has been happening for decades but it wasn’t apparent in the noughties as another trend was masking it.

Back then, younger migrants tended to have more children than UK-born mothers and so they propped up British birth rates.

But this is no longer the case and birth rates have been falling since 2011, feeding through into a lower total number of births by the middle of the decade.

When did this last happen?

The last time deaths outnumbered births was in 1976.

In that year, there were just under 681,000 deaths and about 5,000 fewer births.

The main driver was falling birth rates: the late 1960s and 1970s saw sharp falls in the number of live births in the UK.

There has been some relationship between the state of the economy and the number of births and the low levels in the 70s coincided with a faltering economy.

But the biggest reason for the sharp change was the widespread availability of contraception and the legalisation of abortion in the UK in the late 60s.

It is likely that more Britons died than were born during some years of the World Wars, with the smallest gap between the two in 1940, the year of the Blitz.

But deaths of military personnel who died abroad are not included in the UK death registration figures charted above.

Infections are increasing everywhere but Cornwall and Exeter have infection levels above average for England

BBC Local news Published 23 June

Here are the latest rates of cases of Covid-19 in Devon and Cornwall.

The figures show the number of coronavirus cases per 100,000 people in the seven days up to and including 19 June, with the week before shown in brackets for comparison.

The breakdown of the figures by local authority area is:

• Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly – 150 (up from 72)
• Plymouth – 68 (up from 32)
• Exeter – 110 (up from 53)
• Mid Devon – 78 (up from 26)
• East Devon – 33 (up from 13)
• Torbay – 29 (up from 15)
• Teignbridge – 34 (up from 22)
• South Hams – 30 (up from 15)
• West Devon – 20 (down from 23)
• North Devon – 39 (up from 17)
• Torridge – 86 (up from 9)

For comparison, the figure for England is 101.

“About twice as many local areas are classed as “education deserts” in the South West (6.4 per cent of local areas) and Yorkshire and the Humber (5.7 per cent) as in London (2.9 per cent).”

Nicola Woolcock, Education Editor www.thetimes.co.uk

More than 200,000 children live in an area with no good or outstanding primary schools, a report will reveal tomorrow.

One in every 25 primary age children — equivalent to 218,000 — lives in a local area containing only underperforming primary schools, according to research from the think tank Onward and New Schools Network, which supports new free schools.

It shows 306 areas across England where the only primary schools available are rated either inadequate or requiring improvement by Ofsted. The authors say this means that parents in these areas have far less choice, which limits their children’s educational opportunities.

The report will call on the government to “level up” opportunity by turning around school quality in these “education deserts”. It says that many have been underperforming for decades.

Using the nine statistical regions of England, it says that about twice as many local areas are classed as “education deserts” in the South West (6.4 per cent of local areas) and Yorkshire and the Humber (5.7 per cent) as in London (2.9 per cent). Among local authorities, the council areas with most deserts include Wellingborough, Arun, Ipswich, Cambridge and Scarborough.

In London and the South East, 86 per cent and 77 per cent of local areas contain only good or outstanding schools. This compares with 59 per cent in the East Midlands and 61 per cent in Yorkshire and the Humber, showing that good school access depends much on where families live.

There is one local authority with only underperforming secondary schools: South Derbyshire.

Rated 40th in the country for the proportion of pupils achieving five or more A*-C grades including English and maths in 1998, it has dropped 74 places in the past two decades.

Among local authorities, only Dorset has seen a greater fall in attainment ratings over the same period.

In a foreword to the report, Jonathan Gullis, the Conservative MP for Stoke-on-Trent North and a member of the education select committee, said getting schools back to where they were before the pandemic would be “nowhere near enough” and that a long-term, radical plan for school reform was needed.

“Levelling up has come to mean a wealth of different things, but ultimately it comes down to improving opportunity,” he said. “We all have talent but tragically opportunity is not distributed evenly. There is no part of society where this is more true, and more important, than in education.

“Progress scores in my constituency in Stoke-on-Trent, for example, are the seventh lowest in the country. This tells us that compared to their peers around England, young people in Stoke-on-Trent are falling behind.

“This isn’t their fault: out of the 15 mainstream secondary schools, only one is rated outstanding and a third are requiring improvement. Nor can ambitious parents or talented kids easily travel to attend a better secondary school near by.”

The Times Education Commission is consulting experts about whether substantial change is needed in the education system after the pandemic. It will release its full findings next summer.

Access to good schools across England

• The desert analysis uses “middle layer super output areas”, which are small units of geography. There are 6,791 of these areas in England, each with an average population of about 8,000 people. They have a median size of 3.04 sq km.

• The report shows what proportion of these areas in each region contain only good and outstanding schools and what proportion contain only schools that are inadequate or require improvement (RI). It revealed wide variations across the country:

East Midlands Good or outstanding 59%, RI or inadequate 4.7%

London 86%, 2.9%

East of England 66%, 4.6%

North East 76%, 3.7%

North West 75%, 3.3%

South East 77%, 4.4%

South West 63%, 6.4%

West Midlands 67%, 4.4%

Yorkshire and the Humber 61%, 5.7%

DOC WON’T SEE YOU NOW

THE number of NHS doctors retiring early has more than trebled since 2008, figures show.

It has gone from 401 to 1,358 in 2020/21 — with many citing pressure due to Covid as the cause.

Nick McDermott www.thesun.co.uk

Average retirement age fell from 61 to 59 in the period — but the overall number of doctors employed by the NHS jumped 35,000 to 176,000.

Almost half NHS trusts have seen staff leave early, a separate poll by NHS Providers revealed.

Saffron Cordery, its deputy chief executive, said “burnout” and the impact of the pandemic were among the reasons.

She said NHS staff were “incredibly tired”.

Dr Vishal Sharma, of the British Medical Association, said more than half GPs plan to retire before age 60 due to a “punitive” pension taxation system — and Covid had “made things worse”.

NHS chief Simon Stevens squirms and refuses to answer if he thinks Matt Hancock is ‘hopeless’ after Cummings claimed the Health Secretary ‘tried to throw Stevens under the bus’

And this – Owl

Thousands of leaseholders will be refunded unfair ground rents and allowed to buy the freehold of their property at a discounted price after a crackdown on property developers by the competition watchdog.

Jillian Ambrose www.theguardian.com

Persimmon Homes and Aviva have agreed to offer the refunds after the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) uncovered “troubling evidence” that leasehold homeowners and prospective buyers were overcharged and misled by the UK’s biggest housebuilders.

Campaigners described the new commitments as “life-changing” and a “massive milestone” in the battle to secure a fair deal for property buyers, and called for other developers and freeholders to follow suit.

Aviva, an insurance group that bought freeholds from developers, has agreed to remove ground rent terms that are considered unfair and repay homeowners whose rents doubled.

Persimmon has agreed to offer leasehold homeowners the opportunity to buy the freehold of their property at a discounted price, and will make repayments to some homeowners who have bought their freeholds.

Dean Finch, Persimmon’s chief executive, said the company would extend its right-to-buy scheme to cap the purchase price of a freehold at £2,000 for any house leases sold from 1 January 2000 until the end of 2026.

He added that buyers who had already acquired their freeholds from Persimmon under the existing scheme, and who still owned the freehold, could apply to be reimbursed for the difference between the price paid and £2,000.

The housebuilder has also agreed to extend the timeframe that prospective buyers are given to exchange contracts after reserving a property, owing to concerns that a short time limit could pressure buyers into making a purchase they would not have if given more time to consider.

Aviva said it would contact about 1,000 leaseholders to confirm the next steps.

The watchdog’s investigation into unfair leaseholds found in October that leasehold homeowners and prospective buyers were being “trapped” by developers that offered misleading terms and charged excessive fees.

The CMA identified a range of abuses including homeowners having to pay escalating ground rents, which in some cases were planned to double every 10 years, leaving people struggling to sell their homes. Some prospective leasehold homebuyers had been misleadingly told it would be cheap to convert a leasehold to freehold, only to find that the cost had increased by thousands of pounds, with little or no warning.

“Another massive milestone,” the National Leasehold Campaign said in a comment posted on Twitter. “Persimmon & Aviva have eventually done the right thing at last, now other developers and freeholders must follow.”

The inquiry has focused on the UK’s largest housebuilders, and investigations into Barratt, Taylor Wimpey and Countryside are ongoing. They could face legal action if they do not settle with the regulator.

Andrea Coscelli, the chief executive of the CMA, said the voluntary measures agreed by Persimmon and Aviva were “a real win for thousands of leaseholders”.

“For too long people have found themselves trapped in homes they can struggle to sell or been faced with unexpectedly high prices to buy their freehold. Now they can breathe a sigh of relief knowing things are set to change for the better,” he said.

“It is good that Aviva and Persimmon have responded positively to this investigation, enabling these issues to be fixed for leaseholders. But our work isn’t done. We now expect other housing developers and investors to follow the lead of Aviva and Persimmon. If not, they can expect to face legal action.”

Robert Jenrick, the housing secretary, said the government had introduced new legislation “that will protect future homeowners by restricting ground rents in new leases to zero”. He said he would “strongly urge other developers to follow suit in amending their historic practices”.

Owl was expecting Dominic Cummings to launch another broadside just before yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Questions. If it did happen it was another “damp squib”.

Why did Boris Johnson give him so much power?

Felicity Lawrence www.theguardian.com 

Dominic Cummings demanded senior civil servants pay half a million pounds to an external data team, according to leaked emails that show the prime minister’s then chief adviser urging officials to bypass government procedures.

On 22 March 2020, the day before Boris Johnson ordered the UK into full lockdown, Cummings instructed civil servants at NHSX, the government unit responsible for digital transformation in health, to grant the money to Our World in Data, a research project run by a not-for-profit organisation with Oxford academics.

“Someone please ensure that they have the 530k within 24 hours from now and report back to me it’s been sent,” Cummings wrote to the chief executive of NHSX. “No procurement, no lawyers, no meetings, no delay please – just send immediately,” he continued.

The funding request had the backing of the health secretary, Matt Hancock, who was copied in on the email chain at this point.

The emails, obtained as part of a joint investigation by the Guardian, BBC’s File on 4 and SourceMaterial, suggest it was Hancock who passed details of the proposed project to Cummings and other senior officials. “This is an NHSX lead. I support,” Hancock wrote.

The instructions from Cummings and Hancock caused disquiet among the civil servants tasked with carrying them out. Senior officials nevertheless felt compelled to act because the instruction had come from Cummings and Hancock, the emails show.

“My team can do this via DHSC and have the money in place by tomorrow, but it will mean your team waiving the normal grant-giving process. I don’t want to do anything untoward,” the NHSX chief, Matthew Gould, wrote to the second permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care, David Williams, asking for help and a “green light” to justify acting on the irregular request.

Cummings did not respond to a request for comment. He told a government committee last month that the national emergency justified circumventing normal procurement rules, arguing that “the procurement system is completely unfit for its purposes in Whitehall”.

After a flurry of communication between top civil servants, money for Our World in Data was approved within days and put on NHSX’s budget, the Guardian understands.

However, the emails suggest the proposed grant was neither urgent nor immediately necessary to save lives. And despite absorbing the attention of senior mandarins, the grant was not even wanted by the not-for-profit in the form being offered.

Following Cummings’ email, one civil servant wrote to Gould: “They are not keen for us to give them money urgently and have made clear they want to understand the implications of taking government money and agree it with their board of trustees.”

Another wrote to Gould: “I need your help please to progress this to a point where there is enough air cover to justify a decision to proceed,” adding that further checks were necessary before disbursing the grant.

“Ordinarily this organisation would not meet due diligence as they do not have a full year’s audited accounts ,” the civil servant wrote. “I’m sorry I couldn’t just ‘make this happen’, but I share your concern about doing anything untoward.”

The grant proposal was brought to Hancock’s attention by William Warr, a special adviser in No 10 who was previously based at Oxford University.

Our World in Data’s director Max Roser said he was contacted by Warr after the adviser saw a tweet about lack of funding posted by Roser on the evening of 19 March. Warr contacted him that day and by 22 March the proposal for the government to award a £530,000 grant was being pushed through by Hancock and Cummings on to NHSX budget.

Roser said he had never heard of Warr before and neither he nor his fellow researchers at Our World in Data had any previous connection with him. The group chose to follow its own due process and later applied formally to DHSC and was awarded a grant.

Jolyon Maugham, whose Good Law Project has successfully sued the government for acting unlawfully with other contracts, accused Cummings of “regarding the public purse as his private piggy bank”. Peter Smith, a former senior civil servant who specialised in government procurement, said: “There are good reasons for having rules and processes, whether it’s procurement or grants.”

He criticised Hancock and Cummings for putting senior civil servants in a position where they were required to break the rules and their code of conduct. “What a waste of time when we were at that position in the pandemic. I think it was unethical, immoral, and an abuse of power,” he said.

DHSC said Our World in Data had helped inform 100 million visitors to its website about Covid-19, and that officials carried out due diligence and followed appropriate processes before the grant was awarded.

Owl is catching up.

This is the latest follow up to Simon Jupp’s “promise” in the run up to the 2019 general election: “Exmouth will receive new funding from the Government’s new Future High Streets Fund. The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities & Local Government, Robert Jenrick, has confirmed that Exmouth will receive funding to help secure up to £20 million pounds from the Government’s new Future High Streets Fund“. See this post.

Remember that Exmouth was placed in the lowest tier for the last round of funding and the earlier bid for Axminster failed completely.

Owl understands that all bids have to be “shovel ready” and it looks like a desperate County Council is “spread betting” its support for bids across the County in order to get something – anything.

Tim Dixon www.exmouthjournal.co.uk 

Town centre improvements will go forward for funding bid

Plans for town centre improvements for Exmouth will feature in a package of countywide projects to be put forward in a bid to get nearly £100m of Government cash.

Devon County Council’s cabinet, when they met at County Hall in person on Wednesday morning, June 9, unanimously agreed with the recommendation to give approval for the council to work with the relevant district councils to submit bids to the Government’s Levelling Up Fund.

Announced at the 2020 Spending Review, the Fund aims to support communities in order to regenerate town centres, enable investment in cultural facilities or upgrade local transport infrastructure.

A programme of schemes in Devon have been identified which cover a range of transport modes and spread the bids over a wide geography, with each scheme demonstrating a net gain in biodiversity, a reduction in carbon and air quality improvements.

The five schemes identified are:

Exmouth – Completion of Dinan Way and town centre improvements

Teign Estuary Trail and associated cycle links

Lee Mill – Slip road and associated local improvements

Okehampton – new rail station & transport hub

Cullompton – Town Centre Relief Road

The schemes for Okehampton, Cullompton and Exmouth will be submitted in the first round of bids, with the Teign Estuary Trail and Lee Mill to follow in later rounds.

Dave Black, head of planning, transportation and environment, in his report to the cabinet, said: “All the schemes will have a valid permission which will demonstrate a net gain in biodiversity, a reduction in carbon and air quality improvements. There is a wide range of schemes including a rail station, two strategic multi-use trails and highway schemes aimed at reducing the impact of traffic on sensitive residential areas and town centres.”

Backing the plans, Cllr Andrea Davis, cabinet member for transport, said: “All the schemes have widespread support,” with her adding that the Dinan Way extension would now be a bid submitted by Devon County Council in order to free up capacity for East Devon District Council’s plan for Exmouth town centre.

She said that the new Okehampton stations would be known as the ‘West Devon Transport Hub’ and that while Torridge and North Devon are not mentioned in the report, it is because those councils will be submitting non-transport related schemes for improvements to Bideford and Ilfracombe respectively.

Cllr Rob Hannaford, leader of the Labour group, said: “These are very good solid bids and many of them long standing and historic and clearly they are much needed,” while Cllr Alan Connett, leader of the opposition Liberal Democrat group, added: “These are a wonderful set of proposals and many ready for submission and to go. Collectively they will have an enormous benefit for residents and visitors across Devon as we emerge from the pandemic.”

Cllr Stuart Hughes, cabinet member for cycling, added that the Teign Estuary Trail would be submitted in a later round for the fund in order for a stronger bid to be put forward if it has planning permission.

Devon County Council has been supported by Teignbridge District Council in preparing the proposals to develop a 5km section of multi-use trail between Passage House Inn in Newton Abbot and the A381 at La Roche Maurice Walk, east of Bishopsteignton.

The Trail will also include a shared-use path connecting from the A381 to the junction near Morrisons supermarket, at the western edge of Teignmouth. However further design work is being undertaken on this link which does not require planning permission.

A planning application has been submitted for the next phase of the Teign Estuary Trail, although it is yet to be validated on the relevant planning portal for public comment.

Cllr Hughes added: “This is another important step in the development of the Teign Estuary Trail, which will have a positive impact on the economy and environment of the local area as well as benefiting local people’s health and wellbeing. We’ve seen that the majority of the public who responded to last year’s consultation supported the route and we’re keen to progress this next 5km of the route.”

The total cost of the programme for the five schemes is approximately £92m, the report says, which would include £74.3m in capital grant from Government, £12m from other contributions and a contribution of £5.7m from Devon County Council.

EXMOUTH

A bid which includes the Dinan Way extension will be submitted by Devon County Council.

Dinan Way currently forms a partial ring road around Exmouth, but it lacks the final connection to the A376, and as a result, traffic from Dinan Way has to use unsuitable residential road, and furthermore, goods vehicles accessing the Liverton Business Park, surrounding employment & retail area and the road to Budleigh Salterton are signed to travel through residential areas and past the school on the periphery of the town centre.

The Dinan Way extension proposals, which secured planning permission in 2017, will provide an improved pedestrian/cycle connection to the Exe Estuary multi-use trail and has potential for better bus services to Exeter.

This will form part of a wider bid covering Exmouth, with East Devon District Council leading on other proposals focusing on the regeneration of the town centre, including interventions utilising district owned land to enhance the existing town centre assets which could include new mobility opportunities, better accessibility and wayfinding and leisure and cultural attractions.

Eileen Wragg writes in the Exmouth Journal  and recalls being told many years ago: “It’s going to take a long time to turn this ship around”         

Although the administration of EDDC changed last May, to the Democratic Alliance of East Devon Alliance, Liberal Democrat’s, Greens and some Independents, the only time that the council has had a physical meeting was on May 25 this year when the AGM was held at Westpoint, due to the social distancing, as required under the Covid rules.

It was with pleasure and pride that I nominated Cllr Paul Arnott to be the leader for the coming year, which was seconded by a Green, Cllr Oily Davey. I am delighted that the nomination succeeded by 29 votes to 21, with eight abstentions.

This past year has been a uniquely challenging one due to the pandemic, and all members and officers have had to adapt to new systems and ways of working.

The council has also had to continue with projects which had been started by previous administrations, notably Queen’s Drive Exmouth, Cranbrook and those associated with climate change, such as introducing electric vehicles to our fleet, and charging points in our car parks.

Bold decisions have also been made, such as the withdrawal from the Greater Exeter Strategic Plan (GESP), and consent to the Lower Otter Restoration Project, which has received national accolades. Under Cllr Arnott’s leadership, huge strides forward have been made. With his readiness to listen and engage, relationships with officers and members have improved. His natural abilities and good humour have helped steer our council through some choppy waters, with his hands firmly at the helm.

Many years ago, someone said to me ‘It’s going to take a long time to turn this ship around’. Well that is finally happening, we are now a forward thinking council, and have already agreed to engage a climate change officer, and a mental health officer. Both are important appointments, the latter having been brought into sharp focus, due to significant mental health issues caused by Covid.

I trust that members of the council will be able to put aside any political differences and work together for our constituents and in the best interests of all and our outstanding environment. We can now look forward to the next 12 months knowing that we are being led by a caring council leader who does just that, and who leads by example.

How big would our housing crisis be if it were not for second homes? It’s a question almost no one in public life wants to ask, let alone answer. But it becomes more urgent every day.

George Monbiot www.theguardian.com 

By a second home, I don’t mean one continuously rented to another household. I mean a property used either as a personal holiday home or as a place to stay while working away from your main home: in other words, a luxury that deprives other people of a necessity.

Before the pandemic, government figures show, 772,000 households in England had second homes. Of these, 495,000 were in the UK. The actual number of second homes is higher, as some households have more than one; my rough estimate is a little over 550,000. Since then Covid, Brexit and the growing realisation that you can monetise your extravagance by putting your second home on Airbnb when you’re not using it have triggered a gold rush.

Far from seeking to restrain this frenzy, the government has lavished subsidies and tax breaks on second-home owners. If you rent yours out as a “furnished holiday let” for part of the year (it should be “available” for 140 days but needs to be let for only 70), you no longer have to pay council tax, but can register instead as a business ratepayer. Then you apply for 100% small business rates relief, cancelling the entire bill. So while every other kind of housing is taxed, second homes, if you play it right, are tax-free.

Under the restart grant scheme, hospitality and leisure businesses registered for business rates are entitled to a gift of up to £18,000. This comes on top of the closed business lockdown payment, of up to £9,000, the small business grant fund, of £10,000, and the retail, hospitality and leisure grant: a further £10,000. The stamp duty holiday also applies to buying a second home, saving up to £15,000. Every sinew of the state is strained to reward and cosset those who deprive other people of a home.

All this has further fuelled a massive spending spree. On the coast, and in scenic areas inland, local people report that buying a home has become impossible. Rural prices over the past year have risen by an astonishing 14%: twice the rate of homes in cities.

The result is community death. A survey in Devon this month found villages in which between two-thirds and 95% of properties are second homes. In one village in Pembrokeshire, there are three remaining residents. In Cornwall last month, there were more than 10,000 properties listed on Airbnb for holidaymakers, but just 62 offered on Rightmove for rent to permanent residents. In the Newquay area alone, more than 500 people are reckoned to be homeless. While tourists surf, residents sofa-surf.

Homelessness and housing demand caused in one place can manifest in another. If people can’t find a home where they want to live, they have no choice but to move, and they might end up on the housing list in a less attractive borough. Displaced demand can ripple through the entire housing sector, as people bump each other along the chain.

The environmental implications are also massive. If you own two homes, another home has to be built to accommodate the household you’ve displaced. In other words, you’ve doubled your housing footprint. Prosperous people in the shires, rightly objecting to Boris Johnson’s proposal to rip down the planning laws, might ask themselves whether they have helped cause the problem he falsely claims to be solving.

So how much of the housing crisis is caused by second homes? Well, it depends which crisis you mean. Let’s start with its most extreme manifestation: homelessness. On one estimate, there are 288,000 households in England that are homeless or in imminent danger of becoming so. So on this measure, we discover something truly obscene: there are roughly twice as many second homes as homeless households.

Of course, this is by no means the whole story. There are 1.6 million households on the social housing waiting list. The level of unmet need could rise even further, now that the Covid eviction ban has been lifted.

But just as homelessness is the extreme and visible symptom of a much bigger problem, so are second homes. Though we need to build far more social homes, the underlying reason for high house prices is not the lack of supply. The number of dwellings in the UK has been growing faster than the number of households, and there are now more bedrooms per person than ever before. The problem is the grossly unequal distribution of space. Houses are unaffordable because of the purchasing power of landlords and speculators, and their use as investments. Government figures show that even if 300,000 new homes are built every year for 20 years, house prices will be only 6% lower in real terms than they would otherwise have been.

What we need, in all cases, is effective politics. We might decide, as a nation, that holiday lets are important enough to make other people homeless, or to trigger demand for new housing elsewhere. We do, after all, need holidays, and coastal and scenic communities want income from tourists. But good policy doesn’t happen by itself. As we proposed in the Land for the Many report, local authorities should be able to decide how many of the homes in a village or town should be permanent residences, and how many should be holiday lets. Any second home, existing or envisaged, would need planning permission for change of use.

In Wales, local authorities are able to charge double the rate of council tax for second homes. But, though this power is contained in Westminster legislation, it doesn’t apply to the rest of the UK. Even so, it’s of limited use, now that second homeowners have discovered that they can register as businesses, pay nothing at all, and be rewarded for it. We need a progressive property tax, based on value and payable by owners, not tenants. And second homes should be taxed at a much higher rate.

So why isn’t this urgent issue on the political agenda? Well, partly because almost everyone prominent in public life – including many MPs, editors and senior journalists – seems to own a second home. This is how we end up with a cruel, divided nation, in which wealth causes poverty and greed displaces need. It’s not enough to revolt against Johnson’s attack on the planning laws. We also need to fight a gross injustice.

Matt Hancock has promoted a healthcare startup whose shareholders have made donations to the health secretary and the Conservative party, the Guardian can reveal.

Felicity Lawrence www.theguardian.com 

The revelations about investors in Babylon Healthcare, a startup that offers smartphone-based NHS GP consultations and symptom-checker services, raise questions about possible conflicts of interest for Hancock.

Babylon, a company founded in 2013 by the British-Iranian former banker Ali Parsa, is in the process of a listing in the US, which is expected to value the company at $4.2bn (£3bn).

Hancock has repeatedly endorsed Babylon’s products publicly, and said he wants everyone in England to have access to them.

An investigation by the Guardian, the BBC’s File on 4 and SourceMaterial has established that shareholders in the company have included companies owned by two donors to the Conservatives, as well as an adviser on artificial intelligence appointed by Hancock.

While it has operations in several countries, much of Babylon’s success has been rooted in the UK, where it runs the GP at Hand app, offering rapid consultations for NHS patients who register with it as their GP. Its NHS service was launched in London in 2017 and has since been expanded to Birmingham, with around 100,000 patients now enrolled.

However, GP at Hand has attracted controversy. Some GPs have complained that it attracts younger, healthier patients who are cheapest to treat, leaving other GP practices with more complex cases.

Dominic Cummings acted as a consultant to Babylon on communications and personnel in 2018. Since departing Downing Street, Cummings – who did not respond to a request for comment – is understood to have been back working with Parsa.

The numerous links between Babylon and Tory figures and donors raise questions about possible conflicts of interest for Hancock, who has been an enthusiastic supporter of the company’s technology.

Shortly after becoming health secretary in July 2018, he told the House of Commons that he was a user of GP at Hand and that it was his personal GP. A few weeks later Hancock told the Daily Telegraph that “GP at Hand is revolutionary … I want to see it available to all, not based on their postcode.”

That same month, September 2018, Hancock went to an event to mark an investment round of $100m at Babylon’s London offices. A couple of months later Hancock gave an interview to the Evening Standard for a supplement sponsored by Babylon, in which he endorsed GP at Hand again.

One of Babylon’s significant financial backers is the Egyptian billionaire Nassef Sawiris, who also has stakes in Adidas and Aston Villa football club. A company he controls, OCI UK, donated £200,000 to the Tory party between 2017 and 2018. His shareholding in Babylon is held by another company he controls called NNS Holding. Sawiris did not respond to requests for comment.

Another Tory-linked backer of Babylon is the financier Ian Osborne, an informal adviser to David Cameron at the time of the 2010 election. Osborne was a shareholder in Babylon via his firm Longsutton until 2019, but has since exited his investment in the startup.

Osborne made a donation of £10,000 to Hancock’s Tory leadership campaign in 2019 via a subsidiary company, Connaught International. The Connaught donation is acknowledged in the health secretary’s declaration of financial interests.

Osborne said he had not donated to the Tory party, had no active dealings with Babylon and had never encouraged Hancock to endorse Babylon, adding that to suggest the political donation to him was linked to Babylon would be misconceived.

A third Babylon shareholder until 2019 with connections to Hancock is Demis Hassabis, a co-founder of the London-based artificial intelligence firm DeepMind, which was acquired by Google in 2014. Hassabis was made a government adviser on AI by Hancock while he was secretary of state at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in 2018.

Hassabis has also exited his investment in Babylon. A spokesperson said he was an early angel investor in the company but had no active role in it and had never had any discussions with the NHS, Hancock or any part of UK government about Babylon. There was no link between his passive investment in Babylon and his role as adviser on AI, she added.

Sir Alistair Graham, the chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life from 2004 to 2007, said an investigation should be launched by the relevant authorities to establish if, following donations, Hancock’s public endorsements of Babylon and its services constituted a conflict of interest and a breach of the ministerial code.

Graham said Hancock should have explained the Tory links to Babylon Healthcare when promoting the firm.

A source close to Hancock said the health secretary supported digital innovation, so it was not surprising that he talked about telemedicine services for the NHS. He rejected any suggestion he had acted improperly. Hancock does not know Sawiris, the source added.

Lawyers for Babylon said the company had never made political donations and that any political donations made by a few of its many shareholders were not linked to the firm’s success. They added that Babylon had no control or knowledge of donations to political parties or MPs made by shareholders.

They said Babylon had not benefited from special treatment, saying its innovative and highly valued service was the reason for its success. This service had understandably led to praise and interest from politicians across the political spectrum, the lawyers added, insisting there was no basis to attribute Babylon’s achievements to political donations by third parties.

Premier Inn has pulled out of plans for them to occupy a hotel in the centre of Teignmouth, it can be revealed.

Daniel Clark www.devonlive.com

The three storey 68-bed hotel and Beefeater restaurant, which was approved under delegated powers by Teignbridge District Council last year, was due to be built on the derelict Brunswick Street site.

Once completed, the Premier Inn was due to be the only branded hotel in Teignmouth offering affordable and high-quality accommodation for visitors to the coastal resort and boosting the local economy.

However, at Tuesday morning’s Teignbridge overview and scrutiny committee, leader of the council, Cllr Alan Connett, confirmed that ‘rumours’ over the future of the site were true and the hotel chain had withdrawn from the project.

CGI Artist impression of what the Premier Inn for Teignmouth would have looked like

He said: “There have been some setbacks and Premier Inn have notified the council they are withdrawing from the project. They have said they do want a presence in Teignmouth but not at this time,” adding that the coronavirus pandemic had meant that they had re-evaluated their investments in the short term.

Cllr Connett added that he had asked officers to re-evaluate the plans for the site.

Teignbridge District Council had agreed to construct the new hotel to Premier Inn’s latest specification, with the final building being leased to Whitbread, Premier Inn’s parent company, for a minimum of 25 years, but those plans are now in question following the hotel chain’s decision to withdraw.

It is unknown as to whether the council will still go-ahead with the construction of the hotel and look find a partner to lease it out to, or if the project will be paused until an alternative operator can be found.

After the meeting, a spokesman for the council added: “We are disappointed by the Premier Inn’s decision to withdraw and we are exploring alternatives for the site which will help to regenerate the town.”

A spokesperson for Premier Inn said: “Before the pandemic we were confident we could operate a 68-bedroom Premier Inn hotel and Beefeater restaurant on Brunswick Street in Teignmouth profitably.

“As a responsible publicly owned business, we reviewed the expected trading levels of all our pipeline developments to ensure these new hotels and restaurants are financially viable for us following the coronavirus pandemic.

“Regrettably, the proposed hotel and restaurant at Teignmouth town centre is no longer financially viable for Whitbread. We have therefore reluctantly withdrawn from the scheme.

“This difficult decision does not impact our commitment to any other of our trading or pipeline developments in Devon or elsewhere.”

The hotel, for which construction has yet to begin, was due to be built on the existing Brunswick Street car park site and the former Swanson workshop, as part of the wider regeneration of the area of the town.

A new health and wellbeing centre, which would include relocation of the town GP practices, will also be among the plans for Brunswick Street, as would be the refurbishment of the Teignmouth Arts and Community Group’s home in Northumberland Place.

Vital work on river pollution and flood defences is being stopped or cut back because the Environment Agency has been underfunded for years, freedom of information documents reveal.

Sandra Laville www.theguardian.com 

A shortfall in funding of tens of millions of pounds is having real world consequences for our rivers, according to a letter from Emma Howard Boyd, the chair of the EA, to George Eustice, the environment secretary. The letter was obtained by River Action, a campaigning body, under FOI laws.

The funding is also affecting the agency’s ability to protect thousands of homes from increased flooding as a result of climate change, the letter goes on to say.

Howard Boyd’s agency and the government are under growing pressure over the state of English rivers. The latest data shows every river in England is polluted, failing to meet minimum standards of water quality tests. No river has achieved good chemical status, suggesting pollution from sewage discharge, chemicals and agriculture are having a huge impact.

But government funding for the EA’s work on areas including river quality for 2021-22 has remained at just over £40m, which represents a continuing reduction in financial support for the agency, said Howard Boyd. Since 2010, funding for the EA’s work has been cut by nearly two-thirds, from £120m to the latest settlement of £43m plus £5m for new activity.

In her letter to Eustice, dated 12 April 2021, Howard Boyd wrote: “This money has to fund all of our environmental work: our monitoring of air and water quality, enforcement of the regulations that protect the environment, prosecutions, closing down illegal waste sites and tackling waste criminals … responding to environmental incidents.

“Over the last few years the drop in grant has forced us to reduce or stop work it used to fund, with real-world impacts (eg on our ability to protect water quality) for which we and the government are now facing mounting criticism.”

Howard Boyd said the agency was now forced not to respond to environmental incidents such as pollution, only attending to the most serious ones.

Serious shortfalls in the money provided by the government to protect communities from the increased risk of flooding were also challenged by Howard Boyd.

The grant for building and maintaining flood defences in the face of increased risk as a result of the climate crisis was tens of millions of pounds short of what was required and, she said, would put communities at risk.

“We had extensive exchanges with you and your officials on this funding,” wrote Howard Boyd. “We advised that to deliver the government’s commitments in FY 2021-22 the EA needed an additional £50m resource grant on top of what we had in FY 2020-21.”

The £50m extra would pay the £17m required for the new six-year flood defence scheme promised by the government and a large programme of maintaining existing flood defences, many of which are reaching the end of their life, which required £33m investment. “We advised that without this uplift we would not be able to maintain all our defences in the desired condition, putting communities at risk,” she wrote.

But Howard Boyd said Eustice had rejected their request. “You decided that we would receive an effective increase of £12m for both programmes.”

The shortfall would leave the EA struggling to maintain the country’s flood defences, she said.

EA data obtained by Unearthed, the investigative arm of Greenpeace UK, in January revealed the dire state of flood defences in England.

Howard Boyd called for Eustice to give the agency more money in the next spending review for flooding and environmental work, including on river quality.

She said: “That would make it possible for us to deliver the government’s ambition to make us the first generation to leave the environment in a better place than when we found it.”

Charles Watson, the founder and chair of River Action, which is calling for a doubling of budgets for environmental protection, said: “With the Environment Agency’s funding slashed by 75% in real terms over the past decade, it no surprise that polluters are able to act with impunity and that river health is declining drastically in front of our eyes.

“It is time for government to heed these warnings: none of its nature recovery plans can be a success if it does not provide the funding and capacity needed to underpin them with effective monitoring and enforcement.”

A government spokesperson said: “The government recognises the importance of protecting the nation’s natural environment and we are investing accordingly. Defra and its agencies received a £1bn increase in overall funding at the spending review so we can do more to tackle climate change and protect our environment for future generations.”

New development pressure group forms, but doesn’t comment. – Owl

Mark Kleinman news.sky.com

Some of Britain’s most influential company bosses are forming an industry group aimed at solving one of the country’s most protracted infrastructure puzzles: how to achieve a target of building 300,000 homes each year while sharply reducing carbon emissions.

Sky News understands that Nigel Wilson, the Legal & General chief executive, and David Thomas, CEO of Barratt Developments, will be among the members of a body called the Building Back Britain Commission, which will be launched later this week.

The new group will be chaired by Terrie Alafat, the chair of Riverside Homes and a former director at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), according to insiders.

It will present ideas to the government in the form of a report later this year that will address ministers’ long-held target of delivering 300,000 new homes annually by the middle of the decade, while demonstrating the value of the housebuilding sector to the wider economy.

The Commission will also publish a report ahead of November’s COP26 climate summit in Glasgow focused on ensuring that emissions from the UK’s residential building stock are rapidly reduced.

WPI Strategy, a consultancy which earlier this year oversaw a series of recommendations from the Covid Recovery Commission – another group of senior private sector figures – is understood to have set up the Building Back Britain group.

Its other members will comprise representatives from Mace, Thakeham Group and the National House Building Council.

One insider said the Commission’s reports would be written by Chris Walker, a former government economist who has previously worked in the Treasury and MHCLG.

An advisory group whose members will include the Green Finance Institute and Home Builders Federation will support its work, they added.

None of those contacted by Sky News would comment on Tuesday.

The government has denied the G7 summit is behind a rapid increase in Covid-19 cases in Cornwall, a rise that is raising significant concern about extra tourism pressures on the region in the summer weeks.

Nicola Davis, Jessica Elgot, Aubrey Allegretti print edition today’s Guardian

Recent seven-day case rates have risen rapidly for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, increasing from 4.9 per 100,000 people on 3 June to 130.6 per 100,000 people on 16 June.

Outbreaks among students, as well as the impact of people travelling to and from Cornwall during half-term, are believed to have contributed to the rise in cases.

There have been significant outbreaks in Carbis Bay – the area where the G7 summit was held – as well as nearby St Ives and Newquay West where many delegates stayed during the summit.

Rates are currently high in Ponsanooth, Mabe Burnthouse and Constantine, where the uptick has been linked to an outbreak at the Penryn campus that is shared by Exeter and Falmouth universities.

Andrew George, the former Lib Dem MP for St Ives who is now a councillor in Cornwall, said the government must publish its risk assessment for the summit, a request he said had been denied.

“The correlation between G7 and the tsunami of Covid-19 case-load in St Ives/Carbis Bay and Falmouth is undeniable,” he told the Press Association.

“It ought to drive public bodies to at the very least maintain an open mind about the connection between the two. Those who were responsible for that decision and for the post-G7 summit Covid-19 case management and assessment should be held to account for their decisions and actions.”

A spokesman for Boris Johnson yesterday denied a link between the event and the rise in cases.

“We are confident that there were no cases of transmission to the local residents. All attendees were tested, everyone involved in the G7 work were also tested during their work on the summit,” he said. “We always said, following the move to step three, that we will see cases rising across the country. That is what we’re seeing playing out.”

Concerns have been raised that those indirectly linked to the G7 summit could be associated with the rise, with police, hospitality venues and a protest camp in St Ives all reporting cases of the virus.

Rowland Kao, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh who contributes to the Spi-M modelling subgroup of Sage, said Cornwall was not an outlier for vaccination uptake nor levels of the Delta variant, suggesting other factors were behind the rise in rates.

These, he said, may include low rates of infection in previous waves – meaning those not yet vaccinated are also unlikely to have natural protection – as well as seasonal working patterns and increased mixing among locals.

“Of course any risks would have been exacerbated by the large numbers of people arriving in Cornwall both for the G7 summit and for recreational purposes,” he said.

Dr Michael Head, a senior research fellow in global health at Southampton University, also said a mix of factors was likely to be at play. “Whilst the arrival of the G7 attendees may have had some impact upon the numbers we are now seeing [in Cornwall], cases are predominantly among 15- to 24-year-olds. These populations will mostly be unvaccinated, and there may well have been a fair amount of travelling to tourist sites over the recent half-term?’

The increase in Cornish cases is likely to raise questions about the effect on other holiday hotspots in the UK with the public now being advised to avoid international travel.

Officials believe that a vaccination drive targeting younger adults, ahead of the school holidays, is now possible with the four-week delay to the final easing of lockdown restrictions.

The government has put sweeping changes to England’s planning rules at the heart of its plan to increase house building.

BBC News www.bbc.co.uk 

Ministers insist the current system needs a radical shake-up to ensure more homes and vital infrastructure are delivered.

But the proposals have prompted a backlash, with some Conservatives citing them as a factor in local and by-election defeats for the party.

What’s going on?

The government wants to make controversial changes to the rules that determine house building and land use in England in a new Planning Bill.

The legislation was outlined at the Queen’s Speech in May, with detailed plans expected to be published later this year.

Ministers say the current system, still largely based on laws passed after the Second World War, has become outdated and ineffective.

As a devolved issue, the planning rules in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are set by politicians there.

What are the new proposals?

Although ministers are still working on the exact plans, a blueprint for the overhaul was published by the government last summer.

It would see the current regime – where local planning officials assess applications case-by-case – replaced with new rules based on zones.

Councils in England would have to classify all land in their area as “protected”, for “renewal”, or for “growth”.

In protected areas, including areas of natural beauty, places at risk of flooding, and the green belt, development would generally remain restricted.

But councils would have to look favourably on development in “renewal” areas, whilst in “growth” zones, applications conforming to pre-agreed local plans would automatically gain initial approval.

Local residents would get a say on new 10-year plans underpinning the zones, but their ability to comment on individual applications would be curtailed.

Ministers argue this will speed up the planning process, and prevent viable developments being derailed by a “small minority” of vocal opponents.

They say zoning – as used in countries including Japan, Germany and the Netherlands – gives developers more “upfront” certainty of what can be built.

In addition, each council would have to plan for a share of homes from the government’s 300,000 annual house building target for England.

These quotas would be calculated by ministers and made binding – although how they would be enforced has not yet been specified.

Why have they been controversial?

Opposition parties say the plans would sideline communities from planning decisions – a criticism shared by many Conservative MPs and councillors.

They also argue that many developments that already have planning permission aren’t being built, and this should be more of a priority than changing the system.

In addition, Tory MPs in particular have expressed concern at government plans for calculating the binding local house building targets.

Although the exact formula has not been set out, ministers have said it will be based on a revised version of the algorithm currently used to estimate annual housing need in different areas.

That algorithm has already proved controversial among Tory MPs – with the government backing down in December on a previous plan to tweak it.

A number in southern constituencies had warned the changes, which gave a greater weight to affordability, would have concentrated house building in the party’s traditional heartlands.

How has the government reacted?

Following Tory MPs’ criticism, ministers unveiled a different tweak to the algorithm that placed a greater emphasis on building in urban areas and on brownfield sites.

According to planning consultancy Lichfields, it will see the planned allocation for southern England outside London drop from 137,000 to 113,700.

The capital itself will see a slight increase in its figure, with the biggest increases in Manchester, Leicester, Bradford, Derby, and Liverpool.

However, the change has failed to alleviate Tory backbenchers’ unhappiness on planning. Over 90 are said to be part of a WhatsApp group to share concerns.

Why is it a political problem for ministers?

The government will need new legislation to bring in its proposals, meaning it has to keep its MPs onside.

Some Conservatives also believe the plans were a factor in the party’s by-election defeat in the suburban seat of Chesham and Amersham, as well as notable losses in southern England at the May 2021 local elections.

But although changing course could bring some short-term respite for the government, it would also cause problems too.

Ministers have prominently argued their planning system is key to boosting house building, and “levelling up” the country through development in the Midlands and the north of England.

As well as being a key manifesto promise, this has emerged as a key plank of the party’s attempt to widen its geographical appeal.

And others in the party argue that unless more housing is delivered, the party could find it difficult in the long term to attract younger voters struggling to get a foot on the property ladder.

“The Liberals in particular are a classic nuisance party, one that has not won a general election on its own since women won the vote. The party should either disband or sit down with Labour and agree never to contest at least winnable seats, in return for an agreed role in government. This must be what the electorate would welcome and is being denied.”

Simon Jenkins www.theguardian.com 

Anyone who predicts the outcome of general elections from byelections should stick to the horses. This applies especially to periodic Liberal Democrat upsets such as last week’s at Chesham and Amersham in Buckinghamshire, where they overturned a blue majority. This was nothing to do with choosing a government, rather it was passing judgment on Johnson’s “algorithmic” deregulation of rural planning in the south-east. It was about “taking back control”, community politics not party politics.

The Lib Dems stand for nothing radical or recognisable, just a vaguely left-of-centre outlook on life. Local issues aside, they appeal to those who vaguely agree with Labour, but cannot quite vote that way. As across Europe, the effect is to split the left-of-centre vote and thus empower the right. Over the weekend, the Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, appeared to rule out any formal progressive pact. “We don’t need stitch-ups and deals,” he said. “I’m very sceptical about all that.”

Were Britain to be ruled by one-person-one-vote nationwide, it may well have returned a left-of-centre government in three of the past four elections. In the 2010 general election, the Tories won 36.1% of the vote, Labour and the Lib Dems together picked up 52%. In 2017, the Tories won 42.4% and Labour and the Lib Dems 47.4%. The last election in 2019, which was a Tory triumph in terms of seat numbers, saw the party win 43.6% of the vote, with Labour and the Lib Dems just ahead on 43.7%. In every one of these cases, the Tories still entered Downing Street.

First-past-the-post cannot be entirely blamed for this, though an additional member system as in the devolved assemblies in Wales and Scotland would partly redress it. The real cause is simply the refusal of the two major parties of the left to agree any form of alliance, local or national, against the right. The seismic upheaval of Brexit has seen a much-cited shift in the socio-economic underpinning of the left, of lower-income voters moving right and higher-educated voters moving left. In theory, that aids the Lib Dems, but it merely aids them in splitting the left.

Nationally, the Lib Dems are a Westminster club. When in the 2000s their leader, Charles Kennedy, pondered veering to the left of Tony Blair’s New Labour, he decided against it. But his party should then have set aside personalities, disbanded and thrown in its lot with Blair. A modern fusion of Labour and the Lib Dems should be forcefully capitalising on a Tory party steeped in corruption allegations.

If the Lib Dems are vacuous at Westminster, they are lethal at the constituency level. As has been pointed out, Labour’s red wall in the north has not stopped crumbling, while the idea that Chesham represents an equivalent blue wall failure is fanciful. All the Lib Dems (and Labour) are doing is ensuring the left-of-centre stays unrepresented in seat after seat where it enjoys an electoral majority. The Liberals in particular are a classic nuisance party, one that has not won a general election on its own since women won the vote. The party should either disband or sit down with Labour and agree never to contest at least winnable seats, in return for an agreed role in government. This must be what the electorate would welcome and is being denied.

At present Davey is simply determined to keep the Tories in power. He already has a knighthood. Johnson owes him an earldom.

us15.campaign-archive.com /

Good Law Project is now able to reveal the names of six more companies awarded PPE contracts through the controversial ’VIP’ fast-track lane for associates of ministers and advisers. These six firms landed nearly half a billion pounds of public contracts – all without competition – and were uncovered in documents prised from Government in the course of our litigation:

• Uniserve Limited is a logistics firm controlled by Iain Liddell. Prior to the pandemic the firm had no experience in supplying PPE, yet the firm landed a staggering £300m+ in PPE contracts from the DHSC and an eye watering £572m deal to provide freight services for the supply of PPE. The company shares the same address as Cabinet Minister Julia Lopez MP and is based in her constituency. Here they are together.
• Draeger Safety UK Ltd which is a subsidiary of the Germany-based Draeger AG, landed a direct award contract in July 2020 to supply FFP3 masks valued at £87m. 
• Urathon Europe Limited, a Wiltshire based supplier of wheelchair accessories, was handed two contracts worth £74m to supply face masks. Correspondence released during our recent PPE hearing revealed the Urathon contracts were ‘escalated through VIP Channel’. 
• First Aid For Sport Limited, SanaClis, and Global United Trading and Sourcing PTE Ltd were awarded contracts from the DHSC worth a combined total of £28.6m. 

The six companies revealed here are in addition to the six other ‘VIPs’ previously revealed by Good Law Project. In April we revealed documents showing P14 Medical, Luxe Lifestyle, and Meller Designs were fast-tracked down the ‘VIP’ route alongside Pestfix and Ayanda. P14 Medical, run by a Tory donor and ex-Tory councillor, was awarded £276m in PPE contracts. Meller Designs, run by another large Tory donor, David Meller, won more than £160m of PPE contracts. Luxe Lifestyle, a tiny recently-formed company with no staff and no experience in buying and selling PPE, was awarded a contract worth £26m after being referred to the VIP lane by an MP.

This followed our scoop last December that Government had handed PPE Medpro, a firm linked to an associate of a Conservative peer with mystery investors, £200m of PPE contracts via the ‘high-priority lane.’

It’s been months of battle to get here. Why is Government so determined to keep the names of VIPs hidden? At whose request did they get ushered through the VIP lane? Documents revealed during our High Court hearing last month show civil servants were “drowning” in referrals from politically connected individuals, which were “consuming bandwidth to progressing viable opportunities”.

The NAO says 47 companies received PPE contracts after being referred to the VIP lane. Our investigations and cases have so far revealed the names of 12 of those companies.  

With your help, we will get to the truth. The more people are aware, the more powerful we will be. Will you please share this update with your friends and family now?

Thank you,

Jo Maugham

Director of Good Law Project

Follow up to earlier post showing hot spots in Devon and Somerset.