Afternoon summary
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Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, has told MPs that up to 30% of people using A&E departments do not need emergency care and that he would like some of them to be directed elsewhere. In a statement to MPs, he also said the four-hour A&E target was only supposed to apply to genuine emergencies - not to people using A&E unnecessary. (See 4.45pm.) He said that, to help some hospitals cope with the current demand, some non-urgent operations may be cancelled and GPs released for urgent care work. (See 4.58pm.)
Responding to him for Labour, the shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said:
I know La La Land did well at the Golden Globes last night - I didn’t realise the secretary of state was living there. Perhaps that’s where he has been all weekend. Can he now confirm that the NHS is facing a winter crisis and the blame for this lies at the door of No10 Downing Street? Does the secretary of state agree it was a monumental error to ignore the pleas for extra support for social care in the autumn statement a few weeks ago? Will he now support calls to bring forward the extra £700m allocated for 2019? Will he bring that forward now to help social care?
- Sir Oliver Heald, the justice minister, has told MPs that the government is “determined” to ban perpetrators of domestic abuse from cross-examining their victims in the family courts. He said:
The lord chancellor has requested urgent advice on how to put an end to this practice. This sort of cross-examination is illegal in the criminal courts, and I’m determined to see it banned in family courts too.
- Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP who chairs the Commons Treasury committee, has urged Theresa May to clarify her Brexit plans, particularly in relation to the single market, the customs union and a transitional plan. In a speech to a City dinner tonight he will say:
The prime minister rightly talked about securing a deal with the EU that commanded the support of both leave and remain voters. That matters a lot. There is almost certainly a majority in the country – and a cross-party majority in parliament – for a continued close economic and political relationship with the EU from outside. Safeguarding the economic wellbeing of the country probably requires a relationship that is considerably deeper than that provided for under WTO rules.
Given the need to build a broad-based support for its position, at home and abroad, the sooner the government can provide clarity, the better.
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
Updated
The Department of Health is saying that Jeremy Hunt’s comments about the four-hour target (see 4.45pm) were not intended to mean that it is being watered down. It is not. He was making the point that the target was only supposed to apply to people in A&E in a real emergency. This is from Huffington Post’s Paul Waugh.
DH insists Hunt is NOT scrapping or even amending 4hr A&E waiting target. But clear msg: non-urgent cases shd stay away cos skewing figures
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) January 9, 2017
Hunt says operations may be cancelled in some areas to reduce pressure on A&E departments
And this is what Hunt said in his statement about the emergency measures that may be taken in some areas to relieve pressure on A&E departments.
As of this weekend, there are signs that pressure is easing both in the most distressed trusts and across the system. However with further cold weather on the way this weekend and a spike in respiratory infections there will be further challenges ahead.
NHS England and NHS Improvement will also consider a series of further measures which may be taken in particularly distressed systems on a temporary basis at the discretion of the local clinical leaders. These may include:
temporarily releasing time for GPs to support urgent care work by extending the QOF [quality and outcomes framework] reporting period to the end of April
clinically triaging non-urgent calls to the ambulance service for residents of nursing and residential home before they are taken to hospital;
continuing to suspend elective care, including, where appropriate, suspension of non-urgent outpatient appointments;
working with the CQC [Care Quality Commission] on rapid re-inspection where this has the potential to re-open community health and social care bed capacity;
working with community trusts and community nursing teams to speed up discharge.
- Hunt says operations may be cancelled in some areas and GPs released for urgent care work to reduce pressure on A&E departments.
Hunt says up to 30% of A&E cases aren't emergencies and should be directed elsewhere
This is what Jeremy Hunt said about excluding non-urgent cases from the four-hour A&E target.
However, looking to the future, it is clear that we need to have an honest discussion with the public about the purpose of A&E departments. There is nowhere outside the UK that commits to all patients that we will sort out any health need within four hours. Only four other countries, New Zealand, Sweden, Australia and Canada, have similar national standards which are generally less stringent than ours.
This government is committed to maintaining and delivering that vital four-hour commitment to patients. But since it was announced in 2000 there are nearly 9m more visits to our A&Es, up to 30% of whom NHS England estimate do not need to be there. And the tide is continuing to rise.
So, if we are to protect our four-hour standard, we need to be clear it is a promise to sort out all urgent health problems within four hours, but not all health problems, however minor.
As Prof Keith Willett, NHS England’s medical director for acute care has said, no country in the world has a standard for all health problems, however small, and if we are to protect services for the most vulnerable, nor can we.
So NHS England and NHS Improvement will continue to explore ways to ensure that at least some of the patients who do not need to be in our A&Es can be given good alternative options, building on progress under way with the streaming policy in the NHS England A&E plan. This way we will be able to improve the patient experience for those with more minor conditions who are currently not seen within four hours, as well as protect the four-hour promise for those who actually need it.
- Hunt signals he wants to direct non-urgent cases away from A&E.
- He says up to 30% of A&E cases are not emergencies.
- He says four-hour A&E waiting target only meant to apply to urgent cases.
Updated
Hunt says the government must have an honest conversation with the public about A&E.
No other country has such high A&E standards.
But there are 9m more visits to A&E since the 4-hour time standard was set.
It is estimated that 30% of visits to A&E are not emergencies, he says.
He says the NHS will continue to explore ways of diverting people from A&E.
This will improve the patient experience for people who do not need emergency treatement.
Updated
Hunt starts by paying tribute to NHS staff. They have never worked harder, he says.
He says NHS planning for the winter has been better than ever before.
As a result on some days NHS A&E departments have treated a record number of people within four hours.
But in some trusts the situation has been “extremely fragile”.
He says diverts and trolley waits are particular problems in certain trusts.
As of this weekend there are some signs pressure is easing.
But, with further cold weather coming this weekend, there will be further challenges ahead.
So some measures may be taken in some areas, including releasing GPs for A&E work, triaging the elderly before they are taken to hospital and working to speed up discharges.
These actions will allow the NHS to take further measures when necessary.
Hunt's statement on the NHS
Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, is making his Commons statement now.
It covers mental health and the NHS generally.
He starts by summarising what Theresa May said in her speech this morning. He even includes a reference to the “shared society”.
On the NHS generally, he says demand was “unprecedented” after Christmas.
He will set out how the government intends to protect the NHS
Merkel says limits will be imposed on UK's access to single market if it does not accept free movement
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has reaffirmed her belief that, if Britain does not accept free movement of EU citizens, it will not be able to keep full access to the single market after Brexit. Speaking to civil servants in Cologne she said:
Access to the single market can only be possible on the condition of respecting the four basic freedoms. Otherwise one has to talk about limits.
LabourList has a useful list of people who are know to have applied to be selected as Labour’s candidate in the Copeland byelection. Applications closed today.
Martin McGuinness has been speaking to the BBC about his resignation announcement.
Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness talks about his sudden resignation, a possible election and whether he'll be well enough run in the election. pic.twitter.com/PAMiaVed2S
— Mark Simpson (@BBCMarkSimpson) January 9, 2017
The Ulster Unionists have accused Sinn Féin of letting Arlene Foster off the hook. This is from the UUP leader Mike Nesbitt.
Sinn Féin should have stayed, to hold the first minister to account, to force a public inquiry and to vote on the much-needed cost controls on the scheme.
Instead, they have prioritised self-interest, as always. This is Sinn Fein letting the DUP off the hook. The public mood clearly indicates they want the facts of the RHI debacle exposed. To move straight to an election without this taking place is farcical. They had a choice between the integrity of the institutions and electoral advantage and they appear to have chosen the latter.
Updated
This is one for those of you looking for some bedtime reading ...
Dominic Cummings has written a blog post about his role heading Vote Leave. It's 19,800 words long.https://t.co/AGJ1peDt0W
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) January 9, 2017
UPDATE: The Spectator’s James Forsyth is making good progress through it.
Boris would have announced an extra £100 million a week for the NHS in his 1st week as PM says @odysseanproject https://t.co/sBj7up29jX
— James Forsyth (@JGForsyth) January 9, 2017
Updated
Q&A on the Stormont crisis
Q: Why has nearly 10 years of power sharing between the old foes of Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist party been imperilled?
The irony about of this crisis is not that it centres not on traditional issues of dispute such as the constitutional status of Northern Ireland or even how the power-sharing government deals with the legacy of the Troubles and nearly 4,000 deaths. It has come crashing down due to a ‘cash for ash’ scandal.
Q: What is ‘cash for ash’?
In 2012 the DUP devised a green energy scheme called the Renewable Heating Initiative which was mean to encourage non-domestic consumers to use green energy such as wood pellets to heat farms, businesses and other enterprises.
Q: Why was it such a disaster?
The scheme offered £1.60 for every £1 spent by farmers and other non-domestic users if they signed up for the green initiative. It soon became apparent that there had been a massive miscalculation of the cost of the scheme, which some estimates now reckon will cost the taxpayer close to £500m in lost revenue.
Q: Why did it cause such a political furore?
Opposition parties ranging from the Ulster Unionists to Sinn Féin’s nationalist rivals in the SDLP called for an independent inquiry into the fiasco and for first minister Arlene Foster to stand down temporarily while it was held. Sinn Féin, the DUP’s sole partner in coalition government, came under intense pressure to act.
Q: Will an election clear the air?
If past results are replicated the DUP and Sinn Fein will still end up as the two largest parties but the game-changer would be if the republican party was larger than its unionist rival. In that case a Sinn Féin assembly member could be elected for the first time as first minister as the DUP may ship votes and lose seats to their Ulster Unionist competitors.
Q: Will an election naturally lead to a new power-sharing/cross-community government
Not necessarily, given the bitterness that now exists between Sinn Féin and the DUP. It may take a long series of post-election negotiations to rebuild trust and recast a new coalition government, which inevitably will involve the two largest parties.
Q: Will a collapse of power-sharing and a fresh election destabilise the peace in Northern Ireland?
While dissident republicans will rejoice, hoping to inflict some damage at the ballot box to Sinn Féin and claiming the dysfunctional relationship between Sinn Féin and the DUP proves Northern Ireland is a failed state, this crisis will not fatally undermine the peace process. The overwhelming majority of people on all sides in Northern Ireland support the peace settlement and do not want a resumption of Troubles-style 24/7 violence.
Updated
Guardian/ICM poll gives Conservatives a 14-point lead
There is a new Guardian/ICM poll out today. The Conservatives have a 14-point lead, which is unchanged from where they were in our last poll.
The most significant movement affects Ukip, who are down two points.
Here are the figures.
Conservatives: 42% (up 1 from Guardian/ICM in mid-December)
Labour: 28% (up 1)
Ukip: 12% (down 2)
Lib Dems: 9% (no change)
Greens: 4% (up 1)
Conservative lead: 14 points (no change)
ICM Unlimited interviewed an online sample of 2,000 adults aged 18+ on 6-8th January 2017. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to the profile of all GB adults. ICM is a member of the BPC and abides by its rules.
The BBC’s Mark Devonport has posted Martin McGuinness’s resignation letter on Twitter.
@M_McGuinness_SF letter page 1 pic.twitter.com/z1vlUgR0tF
— Mark Devenport (@markdevenport) January 9, 2017
@M_McGuinness_SF letter page 2 pic.twitter.com/nrORvuVE1Z
— Mark Devenport (@markdevenport) January 9, 2017
Martin McGuinness, Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister, has resigned from office in protest over his power sharing partner’s handling of a bungled green energy scheme.
McGuinness’ resignation means an election to a new Northern Ireland assembly, which will be expected to rancorous and divisive, is now inevitable.
Under the complex rules of power sharing in the region if either first minister or deputy first minister walks out of office the coalition government between unionists and nationalists falls.
The former chief negotiator for Sinn Fein during the peace process who once admitted to being an IRA commander at the Bloody Sunday tribunal said he was leaving the post because of first minister Arlene Foster’s refusal to stand down temporarily from her job.
He said the party’s ruling central committee had agreed on the strategy last night. It followed calls from Sinn Fein president for Arlene Foster to step aside from her post.
In a statement on Monday afternoon McGuinness said:
The first minister has refused to stand aside, without prejudice, pending a preliminary report from an investigation. That position is not credible or tenable,” he said in his resignation letter.
It is with deep regret and reluctance that I am tendering my resignation as deputy first minister with effect from 5pm on Monday, 9th January 2017.
Serious questions have been raised by opposition parties about the so-called ‘cash for ash’ scandal which is estimated is going to cost the taxpayer at least £400m in lost revenue.
The first minister has been under pressure to stand down for the duration of a proposed independent inquiry into the Renewable Heating Initiative.
Martin McGuinness to resign as Northern Ireland's deputy first minister at 5pm
The Press Association has just snapped this.
Martin McGuinness is to resign at 5pm today as deputy first minister of the Northern Ireland Executive in protest at the Democratic Unionist Party’s handling of a botched renewable energy scheme, Sinn Fein said.
Do read Henry McDonald’s post for background to this announcement. See 2.51pm. The resignation of McGuinness will mean the Northern Ireland executive is heading for collapse unless Arlene Foster backs down and agrees to stand down temporarily.
Updated
Embattled first minister of Northern Ireland Arlene Foster insisted today she won’t “blink first” over demands that she steps down from the post even temporarily while a ‘cash for ash’ scandal is investigated.
The Democratic Unionist leader came out fighting this morning after a weekend barrage of criticism mainly from her party’s sole partner in the regional government, Sinn Fein.
In a hard hitting message issued through her local Fermanagh newspaper, The Impartial Reporter, Foster dismissed threats from Sinn Fein that its leading figure and deputy first minister Martin McGuinness might resign in protest if she refuses to stand aside.
Under the rules of devolution in Northern Ireland McGuinness’ departure would trigger a fresh election to the Stormont assembly and plunge the institutions of power sharing into a deep crisis.
But in response to Sinn Fein warnings, Foster said:
If he [McGuinness] is playing a game of chicken, if Sinn Fein are playing a game of chicken and expecting me to blink in terms of stepping aside they they are wrong.
If there is an election, there is an election and we will be ready for that election as the DUP always are.
For clarity, I will not be stepping aside.
I will take my direction from the electorate, certainly not Sinn Fein.
Serious questions have been raised by opposition parties about the so-called ‘cash for ash’ scandal which is estimated is going to cost the taxpayer at least £400m in lost revenue. The first minister is under pressure to stand down for the duration of a proposed independent inquiry into the Renewable Heating Initiative. RHI offered huge and, its critics say, massively inflated financial incentives to farms, businesses and other non-domestic consumers to use biomass boilers that mostly burned wooden pellets, as well as solar thermal and heat pumps.
A whistleblower in February last year alleged the scheme was being abused and that one farmer at least had made £1m out of heating an empty shed with one boiler.
The first minister survived a vote of no confidence in the assembly just before Christmas.
However, questions continue to be raised over what Foster knew about the scheme which has been described as a “fiasco” and “the worst scandal since devolution was restored”.
There are now exactly seven days left to save the Northern Ireland assembly and the power sharing government from collapse. If a compromise is not reached between the two ruling parties - the DUP and Sinn Fein - by next Monday then the executive in Belfast is likely to fall.
With Foster resolutely refusing to stand aside even during an inquiry the odds on a collapse in power sharing have narrowed further on Monday.
Meantime for readers and viewers of the Politics Live blog old enough to remember this iconic 1970s TV advert, here is a unique Northern Irish take on it which satirical website The Ulster Fry have adopted to explain the RHI or “cash for ash” scandal.
The plot thickens in the Stormont #RHI scandal... pic.twitter.com/NXUjE4Y3Dd
— The Ulster Fry (@UlsterFryNI) January 5, 2017
Updated
Theresa May's social reform speech - Summary and analysis
This was really two speeches for the price of one. The second half was all about mental health policy. I posted a lengthy summary of the main points earlier (see 10.42am), and I will post some reaction from mental health specialists later, but here I will just focus on the first half of the speech - the “shared society” stuff.
All prime ministers feel the need from time to time to define what they are about and, although this was not the first speech from Theresa May setting out her political beliefs - the Birmingham leadership speech, her Downing Street statement on becoming prime minister, her “great meritocracy” grammar schools speech and her Conservative party conference speech, “The good that government can do” are the other four essential reads for anyone studying Mayism - this was the first one that included a catchphrase intended to summarise her political philosophy.
The main problem with the speech is that the catchphrase, the “shared society”, is mystifying. It is clearly intended to differentiate May from Margaret Thatcher (“there is no such thing as society” - a phrase quite widely assumed to mean that Thatcher did not believe in the individual’s responsibility to others, when in fact that is the opposite of what she was saying) and from David Cameron (“the big society” - a phrase that alternatively meant volunteering, or decentralisation, or austerity, and disappeared without trace.)
But, having read the speech several times, I still have no real idea what the “shared society” is apart from, well, society - which by implication involves reciprocal links and obligations. Over the weekend someone was briefing that this was about society’s responsibilities being shared between the public and government. But the term “shared society” doesn’t explain that. As linguistic shorthand, it’s hopeless.
Interestingly, May did not talk about the “sharing society”. That would have been more comprehensible - but would have sounded like a commitment to higher taxes.
But just because May’s phrase does not explain her philosophy, that does not mean she doesn’t have one. May certainly seems to believe more in the power of government than any of her predecessors as Conservative leader since at least John Major and that came out of the speech strongly. It also included a relatively strong attack on the failure of her political predecessors to avert the populist revolt that fuelled Brexit.
Here is the full text of the speech. And here are the main points.
- May effectively accused her predecessors - Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and even David Cameron - of contributing to Brexit by tolerating the injustices created by globalisation.
We see these fringe voices gaining prominence in some countries across Europe today - voices from the hard-left and the far-right stepping forward and sensing that this is their time.
But they stand on the shoulders of mainstream politicians who have allowed unfairness and division to grow by ignoring the legitimate concerns of ordinary people for too long.
Politicians who embraced the twin pillars of liberalism and globalisation as the great forces for good that they are, but failed to understand that for too many people - particularly those on modest to low incomes living in rich countries like our own - these forces are something to be concerned, not thrilled, about.
Politicians who supported and promoted an economic system that works well for a privileged few, but failed to ensure that the prosperity generated by free markets and free trade is shared by everyone, in every corner and community of their land.
- She said that Brexit gave Britain a “once-in-a-generation chance” to decided what country it wants to be.
An opportunity because Britain is going through a period of great national change, and as we do so we have a once-in-a-generation chance to step back and ask ourselves what kind of country we want to be.
- She said that a belief in responsibility towards others was her core political belief.
The central tenet of my belief - the thing that shapes my approach - is that there is more to life than individualism and self-interest.
We form families, communities, towns, cities, counties and nations. And we embrace the responsibilities those institutions imply.
- She said that she believed in “active government”. After explaining in her speech that she believed in responsibility towards others, she went on:
And government has a clear role to play to support this conception of society.
It is to act to encourage and nurture those relationships, networks and institutions where it can. And it is to step up to correct injustices and tackle unfairness at every turn - because injustice and unfairness are the things that drive us apart.
This means a government rooted not in the laissez-faire liberalism that leaves people to get by on their own, but rather in a new philosophy that means government stepping up ...
Because people who are just managing, just getting by don’t need a government that will get out of the way, they need a government that will make the system work for them. An active government that will help them share in the growing prosperity of post-Brexit Britain.
This will be seen as marking a break with Thatcherism, and potentially unpopular with some Tories, although in practice the number of Conservative MPs who believe in a minimalist state is probably relatively small.
- She said that she wanted government to focus not just on helping the very poor, but on those who are “just managing”.
Because government and politicians have for years talked the language of social justice - where we help the very poorest - and social mobility - where we help the brightest among the poor. But to deliver the change we need and build that shared society, we must move beyond this agenda and deliver real social reform across every layer of society so that those who feel that the system is stacked against them - those just above the threshold that attracts the government’s focus today yet who are by no means rich or well off - are also given the help they need.
So we will recalibrate how we approach policy development to ensure that everything we do as government helps to give those who are just getting by a fair chance - while still helping those who are most disadvantaged. Because people who are just managing, just getting by don’t need a government that will get out of the way, they need a government that will make the system work for them.
May said she did not want to stop helping “the most disadvantaged”, although it is hard to see how government can refocus resources on the moderately poor without having less available for the very poor.
- She said that it was government’s role to bring the country together and this involved the “shared society”.
That’s why I believe that - when we consider both the obvious and the everyday injustices in unison - we see that the central challenge of our times is to overcome division and bring our country together by ensuring everyone has the chance to share in the wealth and opportunity on offer in Britain today. And that starts by building something that I call the shared society.
The shared society is one that doesn’t just value our individual rights but focuses rather more on the responsibilities we have to one another. It’s a society that respects the bonds that we share as a union of people and nations. The bonds of family, community, citizenship and strong institutions.
- She said that she wanted government to tackle not just “obvious injustices” but “everyday injustices”. She started the speech by repeating some striking figures about injustices facing blacks, white working-class boys, state schools pupils, women, mental health sufferers and the young. (See 11.23am.) At first this sounded odd, as if she had picked up the wrong script, but in retrospect it was a powerful moment, because some facts are so important they are worth repeating. But then May made a distinction between these “obvious injustices” and what she called “everyday injustices”.
Governments have traditionally been good at identifying - if not always addressing - such problems. However, the mission I have laid out for the government - to make Britain a country that works for everyone and not just the privileged few - goes further. It means more than fighting these obvious injustices. It means acknowledging and addressing the everyday injustices that too many people feel too.
Because while the obvious injustices receive a lot of attention - with the language of social justice and social mobility a staple of most politicians today - the everyday injustices are too often overlooked.
But if you’re from an ordinary working class family, life is much harder than many people in Westminster realise. The injustice you feel may be less obvious, but it burns inside you just the same.
For you have a job but you don’t always have job security. You have your own home, but you worry about paying the mortgage. You can just about manage but you worry about the cost of living and getting your kids into a good school.
- She defended her decision to criticise so-called “citizens of the world” in her Conservative party conference speech. Mark Carney, the Canadian governor of the Bank of England, was one of those reportedly upset by the speech. Today she said:
A few months ago at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, I upset some by saying that ‘if you think you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere’.
But my point was simple. It was that the very word ‘citizen’ implies that we have responsibilities to the people around us. The people in our community, on our streets, in our places of work. And too often today, those responsibilities have been forgotten as the cult of individualism has taken hold, and globalisation and the democratisation of communications has encouraged people to look beyond their own communities and immediate networks in the name of joining a broader global community.
She did not address the point that people who identify with a wider community might also feel responsibilities to that community too. Global warming and international aid are too good examples.
Updated
Here’s Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, on Theresa May’s speech.
The prime minister has tried to make a pitch to the centre ground, but frankly, it won’t work. Her words are not matched by her actions.
Every time Theresa May opens her mouth on Brexit the pound falls further. It’s clear this government is taking us towards a destructive hard Brexit that would hurt jobs, increase prices and blow a hole in the budget.
But today’s speech was supposed to be mental health. This speech sounds a lot like the David Cameron’s before it. The Conservatives reheat these proposals more often than most people have microwavable meals.
Only the Liberal Democrats are fighting to keep Britain open, tolerant and united.
Andrew Gwynne, the shadow minister without portfolio, has put out Labour’s response to Theresa May’s speech.
It’ll take more than a speech and a slogan for Theresa May to convince people that she wants to tackle division in society.
The Tories should be judged on what they have done in government: over the last six years they have systematically failed to stand up for the majority. Under the Tories those at the top have been given tax breaks while everyone else suffers, working people have had vital support cut and our NHS is being run into the ground.
Mental health is a case study in Tory failure. Repeatedly the Tories give speeches saying they will give mental health parity with physical health, but their record is dismal: spending on mental health fell by £600m in the last parliament, money intended for children’s mental health goes to other priorities and there are thousands fewer mental health nurses than when the Tories came to power.
Updated
There will be an urgent question in the Commons on how domestic abuse victims are treated in the civil courts (prompted by this Guardian story) followed by a statement from Jeremy Hunt on the NHS.
One statement confirmed so far - Mental health and NHS performance update from @Jeremy_Hunt and @JonAshworth
— Labour Whips (@labourwhips) January 9, 2017
UQ from @peterkyle on emergency review to determine how to ban perpetrators of domestic violence from directly cross-examining their victims
— Labour Whips (@labourwhips) January 9, 2017
Updated
Here is the Labour peer Stewart Wood, who used to be one of Ed Miliband’s key policy advisers, on Theresa May’s latest Brexit “clarification”.
The PM can't understand why markets are in denial about leaving the single market. And markets can't understand why the PM wants to do it.
— Stewart Wood (@StewartWood) January 9, 2017
May says it is wrong to claim hard Brexit is inevitable
This is what Theresa May said about not accepting that she is heading for a so-called hard Brexit. (See 12.02pm.) She was responding to a question from the Sun’s Tom Newton Dunn.
Dunn said, in the light of what she had said early about not saying anything new yesterday (see 11.57am), either the markets were getting their interpretation of her Brexit stance wrong or she was getting it wrong. Which one was it?
May replied:
Well, I’m tempted to say the people who are getting it wrong are those who print things saying I’m talking about a hard Brexit, [that] it’s absolutely inevitable it’s a hard Brexit. I don’t accept the terms hard or soft Brexit. What we are doing is going to get an ambitious, good, the best possible deal for the United Kingdom in terms of trading with, and operating within, the single European market. But it will be a new relationship because we won’t be members of the EU any longer. We will be outside the European Union, and therefore we will be negotiating a new relationship across not just trading but other areas with the European Union.
Updated
May is answering the final question, which came from a mental health specialist, not a journalist. It was hard to hear it from the TV feed.
She says the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and the minister for civil society, Rob Wilson, are both in the audience to hear the points that have been made.
And that’s it. The event is over.
I will post a summary of the speech, and of the Q&A, shortly, as well as posting reaction and analysis.
UPDATE: I’ve corrected the second paragraph because earlier it wrongly said Nick Hurd was civil society minister.
Updated
May says she does not accept she is heading for a hard Brexit
Q: You talk about healing the division between young and old. How would you do that? Would you cut benefits for wealthy pensioners?
May says she wants to address intergenerational fairness through housing. She wants to help young people get housing.
The industrial strategy will also be about showing that prosperity is spread around the country.
Q: Given the pound has fallen, but you say you have said nothing you, are traders getting it wrong? Or are you wrong about what you said?
May says those who have got it wrong are those saying she is heading for a hard Brexit. She does not accept the term, she says.
- May says she does not accept she is heading for a hard Brexit.
Q: [From someone from the Mental Health Foundation] We would like to welcome what you have announced.
May says she wants to ensure that resources are addressing the needs, and that they are being used effectively.
May's Q&A
May is now taking questions. The first come from Channel 4 News’s Gary Gibbon. He asks three.
Q: What can you do to stop local health bosses raiding the mental health budget to tackle with other problems?
May says the NHS is always under pressure during the winter. But the government has put extra money into the NHS.
She wants to thank all those medical professionals working so hard over the holiday period.
Q: Is the state too big, too small, or just the right size?
May says she spoke about this a few years ago. It is important that the state is strategic, that it is strong. It is important to ensure that when the state intervenes, it does so effectively.
Q: After your interview yesterday the pound has gone down 1%. Isn’t that a worry?
May says what she said yesterday was what she has been saying for the last few months.
She says she is ambitious for what happens when we leave the EU. But it will not be able keeping bits of EU membership.
May ends by paying tribute to Charles Walker, a Conservative MP, and Kevan Jones, a Labour MP, who have both spoken openly in the Commons about their mental health problems.
I remember the reaction when, back in 2012, Charles Walker and Kevan Jones spoke in Parliament about their own personal challenges with mental illness. The courage of these two MPs - Conservative and Labour - to speak out in this way, encouraged us all to put aside party differences and come together in solidarity.
That sense of solidarity will be essential in helping us to transform the support we offer those with mental health conditions and to defeat the stigma that makes addressing this issue so much harder than it should be. But I also believe that in a wider sense, that commitment to strengthening the bonds we share as a union of people, can be a defining part of how we meet the great challenge of our time and bring our whole country together.
It is by tackling the injustice and unfairness that drives us apart and by nurturing the responsibilities of citizenship that we can build that shared society - and make it the bedrock of a stronger and fairer Britain that truly does work for everyone.
May is winding up now.
For too long mental illness has been something of a hidden injustice in our country, shrouded in a completely unacceptable stigma and dangerously disregarded as a secondary issue to physical health. Yet left unaddressed, it destroys lives, separates people from each other and deepens the divisions within our society. Changing this goes right to the heart of our humanity; to the heart of the kind of country we are, the attitudes we hold and the values we share.
May says the government will review mental health support in the workplace.
It wants to develop more mental health support in the community.
Digital mental health services will be expanded, she says.
And she says she wants to tackle the injustices mental health people face, in particular acting to stop people having to pay their GP for a certificate proving they are ill.
May says by 2021 no child will be sent away from their area for treatment for a mental health condition.
(That is to address cases like this one.)
May says charities have done a fantastic job addressing mental health issues.
But today she wants to highlight a new approach.
Today she is announcing the first steps towards finding a new way of addressing the problem.
This starts with helping children. Mental illness often helps in childhood. The number of 16 to 24-year-old women reporting self-harm has increased three-fold since 2000, she says.
She says social media has been a factor too.
The government will trial new approaches to improve mental health support in schools. (See 10.42am.)
May says, as home secretary, she acted to stop mental health patients being held in police cells. There has been an 80% reduction in this happening, she says.
And for under-18s this practice will be abolished entirely from this spring, she says.
May says at the heart of her plan is the desire to tackle burning injustices.
She wants to focus now on one of those in particular, the treatment of mental health.
One in four of us have a common mental disorder at any one time, she says.
May says we all know people affected by mental health problems.
She says it was a Conservative government that legislated for people with mental health services to receive parity of esteem with other patients. But this is not happening, she says.
May says the challenge is to show the mainstream centre politics can deliver that change that people want.
May says the old certainties that apply to politics are being called into question.
May says Brexit gives Britain a once-in-a-lifetime chance to decide what type of country we want Britain to be.
May says she is continuing the work that David Cameron started through the Points of Light programme to celebrate every day the work done by volunteers.
May says some businesses outrage people when they appear to operate under rules different from those that apply to everyone else.
May says a housing white paper will show how the government will improving the supply of housing.
And a green paper will set out the government’s industrial strategy, showing how prosperity can be shared by all parts of the country.
She says this is why she wants to ensure that good school places are available everywhere.
May says it is important to ensure that those who are just above the threshold used when government support is focused on the poor are also helped.
May says injustices are what drive us apart.
That is why government must tackle injustice, she says.
May says at the Conservative conference she upset some people (including the Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, apparently - although she does not say this) by saying if you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere.
But she says she is not arguing against globalisation.
May is speaking now about those who are getting by, but not getting on. (Or the “Jams - just about managing”, as they were dubbed in Whitehall at one point.)
She says when people feel all they hold dear under threat, resentments grow.
When we consider obvious and everyday injustices in unison, the central challenge of our time is to bring people together.
And that is why she backs the shared society.
The shared society is one that doesn’t just value our individual rights but focuses rather more on the responsibilities we have to one another. It’s a society that respects the bonds that we share as a union of people and nations.
The bonds of family, community, citizenship, strong institutions. And it’s a society that recognises the obligations we have as citizens – obligations that make our society work.
Theresa May is speaking now.
She starts with a passage very similar to this one, which she used in her first speech from Number 10 as prime minister in July last year.
If you’re born poor, you will die on average 9 years earlier than others.
If you’re black, you’re treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if you’re white.
If you’re a white, working-class boy, you’re less likely than anybody else in Britain to go to university.
If you’re at a state school, you’re less likely to reach the top professions than if you’re educated privately.
If you’re a woman, you will earn less than a man. If you suffer from mental health problems, there’s not enough help to hand.
If you’re young, you’ll find it harder than ever before to own your own home.
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Theresa May is by no means the first prime minister, or leading politician, to proposing transforming mental health services.
When Nick Clegg was deputy prime minister he also made this a priority. In January three years ago he gave a speech saying there was “too much prejudice” around mental illness.
And in January last year David Cameron gave a speech making much the same point. He said:
We have got to get this right.
Mental illness isn’t contagious.
There’s nothing to be frightened of.
As a country, we need to be far more mature about this.
Less hushed tones, less whispering; more frank and open discussion.
We need to take away that shame, that embarrassment, let people know that they’re not in this alone, that when the clouds descend, they don’t have to suffer silently.
Cameron also promised “a revolution in mental health treatment”.
Downing Street said yesterday that the review of mental health support in the workplace would “review recommendations around discrimination”.
A Number 10 briefing suggests this might involve strengthening the legal protections for people affected by conditions like depression. It says:
The government will also consult employers, charities and legal experts to gather evidence about current discrimination protections for workers with mental ill-health. Existing laws already protection people when mental illness is classed as a disability – when the illness persists for a year or more – but for many common disorders such as depression that average length of illness can be much shorter and there is anecdotal evidence of people facing issues in employment in these situations.
Theresa May's social reform speech
Theresa May will be delivering her speech within the next hour. It is being billed as a speech on social reform.
Quite a lot of the content has already been released in advance. At the weekend Downing Street released extracts about May’s vision for a “shared society”. And yesterday Number 10 released details of what she will say about her plan to reform mental health services. These have not been posted on the web yet, but here are excerpts from the news release setting out the detail of what May is announcing.
The plans aim to make mental health an everyday concern for every bit of the system, helping ensure that no one affected by mental ill-health goes unattended. It includes:
New support for schools with every secondary school in the country to be offered mental health first aid training and new trials to look at how to strengthen the links between schools and local NHS mental health staff. There will also be a major thematic review of children and adolescent mental health services across the country, led by the Care Quality Commission, to identify what is working and what it not and a new Green Paper on children and young people’s mental health to set out plans to transform services in schools, universities and for families;
A new partnership with employers to improve mental health support in the workplace. The Prime Minister has appointed Lord Dennis Stevenson, the long-time campaigner for greater understanding and treatment of mental illness, and Paul Farmer CBE, CEO of Mind and Chair of the NHS Mental Health Taskforce, to drive work with business and the public sector to support mental health in the workplace. These experts will lead a review on how best to ensure employees with mental health problems are enabled to thrive in the workplace and perform at their best. This will involve practical help including promoting best practice and learning from trailblazer employers, as well as offering tools to organisations, whatever size they are, to assist with employee well-being and mental health. It will review recommendations around discrimination in the workplace on the grounds of mental health.
Further alternatives to hospital to support people in the community. Recognising that seeing a GP or going to A&E is not or does not feel like the right intervention for many people with mental ill-health, the government will build on its £15m investment to provide and promote new models of community –based care such as crisis cafes and community clinics. The initial £15m investment led to 88 new places of safety being created and the government now plans to spend up to a further £15m to build on this success;
Plans to rapidly expand treatment by investing in and expanding digital mental health services. Digitally assisted therapy has already proved successful in other countries and the government will speed up the delivery of a £67.7m digital mental health package so that those worried about stress, anxiety or more serious issues can go online, check their symptoms and if needed, access digital therapy immediately rather than waiting weeks for a face-to-face appointment – with further follow up face-to-face sessions offered as necessary; and
New ways to right the injustices people with mental health problems face. Despite known links between debt and mental health, currently hundreds of mental health patients are charged up to £300 by their GP for a form to prove they have mental health issues. To end this unfair practice the Department for Health will undertake a formal review of the mental health debt form, working with Money and Mental Health. The government will also support NHS England’s commitment to eliminate inappropriate placements to inpatient beds for children and young people by 2021 – a practice which currently sees hundreds of children being sent halfway across the country to access mental health services.
The Guardian’s preview story focuses on what May is saying about the importance of reducing the stigma attached to mental illness.
Other papers, like the Daily Mail, have focused on her plans to improve the way schools deal with pupils with mental health problems. “Teachers are to be trained to spot pupils affected by cyber-bullying and eating disorders under plans to tackle the scourge of mental illness”, the Mail reports.
Hunt rejects claim NHS in state of 'humanitarian crisis'
Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, did a round of interviews this morning. As my colleague Peter Walker reports, he strongly rejected the British Red Cross’s claim that the NHS is in the midst of a “humanitarian crisis”.
Here is the start of Peter’s story.
Jeremy Hunt has rejected the British Red Cross’s description of a humanitarian crisis in emergency NHS care, arguing that most hospitals are coping better this winter than they did last year.
The health secretary – who plans to make a statement to the House of Commons on the NHS later on Monday – said while it was “totally unacceptable” for patients to be left on trolleys for hours, the situation was improving ...
Asked about reports of emergency patients being kept on trolleys for hours due to a lack of available beds, Hunt said: “Well, these problems are totally unacceptable. This is the most difficult time for the NHS in the year. It always is very difficult after the Christmas period when GP surgeries are not open over the actual days of Christmas and then they reopen and a lot of people get sent to hospital.”
However, he argued that the situation had “eased significantly” over the weekend, saying the numbers of patients kept too long on trolleys “has reduced to a handful now. so it’s much, much lower than it was a week earlier”.
He added: “This is always the busiest week but we need to work with the public to understand that accident and emergency departments are there for what is says on the tin, for accidents and emergencies.”
And here is the full story.
Boris Johnson is in Washington today for meetings on Capitol Hill, including with Paul Ryan, the House Speaker, and Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader. But, as the Economist’s David Rennie reports, he won’t be speaking to the media.
It's catching. British foreign secretary @BorisJohnson is meeting Team Trump in US but-unusually-no time for media pic.twitter.com/zqEfl43H4H
— David Rennie (@DSORennie) January 8, 2017
Diplomatic correspondents say Johnson hardly ever gives interviews. For some reason, it is as if he is not trusted to speak to the press at length without causing trouble. Perhaps he’s becoming the Oliver Letwin of the Theresa May administration ...
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Before Christmas my colleagues Heather Stewart and Jessica Elgot wrote a story revealing how Jeremy Corbyn’s team were planning a fresh approach to campaigning - aka “relaunch”, in the terminology the media inevitably uses for these developments - highlighting his credentials as an anti-establishment insurgent.
At Politico Europe Tom McTague and Charlie Cooper have published an article explaining the proposed stratagy in more detail. Here’s an excerpt.
Corbyn’s inner circle, alarmed at the party’s dramatic slump in support, agreed over Christmas to overhaul their media strategy, taking direct inspiration from [Donald Trump’s] aggression against mainstream TV networks and newspapers, which they hope will whip up support among those already distrustful of the media.
“What we have been doing has not worked, we know that,” the senior party official said. “There is no bunker mentality. We have got to change tack.”
The decision to take on a more aggressive, insurgent strategy was agreed by Corbyn’s senior advisers during the parliamentary recess when they met to assess the Labour leader’s impact in 2016. Corbyn has personally agreed the change in direction as part of a wider bid to cast himself as the leader of a populist, anti-establishment movement, according to the senior aide involved in the discussions. “He’s fully signed up,” the official said.
Asked specifically if Corbyn’s inner circle had been inspired by Trump’s success in the U.S., the aide said yes, citing how the president-elect had used negative media coverage to his advantage “to reinforce the message,” turned campaign rallies into media events in their own right and used infrastructure spending pledges to connect with voters turned off from politics.
Tom Baldwin, who was Ed Miliband’s head of media and strategy when Miliband was Labour leader, is sceptical about this approach.
I fear this is a misreading of what drives populism which is more about insecurity, nostalgia and fear than any latent left wing tendency. https://t.co/hYWrI9LsBg
— Tom Baldwin (@TomBaldwin66) January 9, 2017
And my Guardian colleague Gaby Hinsliff also has her doubts.
Apparently Jeremy Corbyn is being relaunched as an aggressive populist, because we really need more of those https://t.co/bSH1VQbxJk
— Gaby Hinsliff (@gabyhinsliff) January 9, 2017
But the GfK pollster Keiran Pedley is more positive about the idea.
Corbyn relaunch based around using twitter, Facebook, rallies is the right approach. In reality it is the only one available. Go all in.
— Keiran Pedley (@keiranpedley) January 9, 2017
But here is the problem. Where was this strategy a year ago? Big risk Corbyn already defined negatively already.
— Keiran Pedley (@keiranpedley) January 9, 2017
And the academic Glen O’Hara says someone needs to write a PhD thesis on this.
Genuinely fascinating experiment. Can Trumpism playbook work for the Left? Def a PhD/ articles/ a book in it. https://t.co/UdhqZepwOs
— Glen O'Hara (@gsoh31) January 9, 2017
My colleague Matthew Weaver is covering the London Tube strike on a separate live blog.
Gove says NHS 'needs more funding'
Yesterday, in her interview on Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday, Theresa May said that the government had given the NHS the money it needs. She told the programme:
We asked the NHS a while back to set out what it needed over the next five years in terms of its plan for the future and the funding that it would need. They did that, we gave them that funding, in fact we gave them more funding than they required so funding is now at record levels for the NHS, more money has been going in.
But at least one Tory MP doesn’t seem to agree. In an article published today on the BrexitCentral website Michael Gove, the former justice secretary and leading Vote Leave campaigner, says the NHS “needs more funding”.
Government squanders billions on vanity projects every year while our tried and trusted NHS needs more funding.
In his article he claims that leaving the EU would allow more money to be spent on the NHS (although, strangely, he does not repeat Vote Leave’s much-discredited claim that Brexit would release £350m a week for the NHS.)
But the article is not mostly about the NHS. Gove’s main point is to attack those saying the UK should remain in the single market or the customs union, saying that would amount to a “fake Brexit”. He even suggests he is opposed to a transitional arrangement for when the UK leaves.
Those supporters of the EU who still haven’t come to terms with the referendum result want to delay and drag out the process of leaving. They often change their demands – sometimes they insist we should stay in the single market, on other occasions they stress the importance of the customs union, at yet other points they talk about transition arrangements or ten-year-long trade talks – but they have one simple goal: they want to complicate and obfuscate the process in the hope that the public appetite for change will dissipate so they can secure a relationship with the EU which is as close as possible to the status quo.
That’s why we mustn’t miss the wood for the trees. That’s why we need to deliver a full Brexit, not settle for fake Brexit.
Theresa May will be delivering a major speech this morning but it won’t be the big one on Brexit, which is coming later this month. That’s probably good news for sterling. May did talk about Brexit in an interview with Sky yesterday and, as a result, the pound has slumped. The same thing happened after she delivered a speech on leaving the EU at the Conservative party conference in October. Who’d have thought she would become a one-woman devaluation machine?
My colleague Graeme Wearden has more on what is happening to sterling here, on his business live blog.
Instead, May’s speech will be focusing on her vision of a “shared society” and on mental health. I will be covering it in detail.
Health will be big news today. Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, told ITV’s Good Morning Britain that he would be making a statement on the NHS in the Commons this afternoon and in the Times (paywall) Mike Adamson, chief executive of the British Red Cross, has an article defending his decision to describe what is happening in the NHS as a “humanitarian crisis”. He says he did not use the term lightly.
In considering making this statement, I went back and looked closely at the definition of a humanitarian crisis: it refers to the scale and depth of need facing a population.
In this case we are seeing large numbers of vulnerable people facing a threat to their health, safety or well-being. At the most extreme end this has led to deaths; in a broader way it has led to prolonged physical and mental distress.
But there is an additional way of looking at this. I’ve been asked repeatedly whether it’s proportionate to use a term associated with Syria, Yemen and the Lake Chad region of west Africa about the NHS. Of course each of those crises is different. But to the British Red Cross, every crisis is personal. From famine to floods to loneliness, it’s not just the scale of the crisis that matters. It’s that the person affected feels they are in crisis. That person suffering on the trolley in a corridor feels at crisis point. The people our volunteers help feel scared and desperate. They feel they are in crisis.
I’d expect May to respond in her speech, or in questions afterwards.
Here is the agenda for the day.
11.15am: Theresa May delivers her speech.
3.30pm: Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, is due to give a statement to MPs on the NHS.
4pm: Louise Casey gives evidence to the Commons communities committee about her integration report.
As usual, I will be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I plan to post a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.
You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here.
If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
I try to monitor the comments BTL but normally I find it impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer direct questions, although sometimes I miss them or don’t have time. Alternatively you could post a question to me on Twitter.
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