Get all your news in one place.
100's of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

Theresa May says NHS 'better prepared' for winter than ever but operation delays 'disappointing' - Politics live

Ambulances outside the A&E department at St Thomas Hospital in London.
Ambulances outside the A&E department at St Thomas Hospital in London. Photograph: Isabel Infantes/AFP/Getty Images

Afternoon summary

  • Sarah Wollaston, the Conservative MP who chairs the Commons health committee, has said May and her colleagues need to “get a better grip” on the problems facing the NHS. (See 9.16am.)

That’s all from me for today.

Thanks for the comments.

My colleague Martin Belam has rounded up some of the most controversial things Toby Young said on Twitter and elsewhere prior to his appointment as a member of the board of the new Office for Students.

The Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable is appalled.

Theresa May has refused to comment on the longstanding suspension of a former Tory whip, the Press Association reports. Dover and Deal MP Charlie Elphicke was suspended by the Conservative party on November 3 following “serious allegations”. Elphicke has denied any wrongdoing and says he still does not know what the allegations are.

On her visit to Wokingham today May was asked what she would like to say to the MP two months on from his suspension. She replied:

I am not going to comment on an individual case, this is a matter that is now for the police to investigate and that’s what’s happening.

With Jeremy Hunt being praised for his presentational skills (see 2.51pm), and even tipped as a possible replacement for Damian Green in the expected reshuffle (see here and here), it it worth pointing out that until recently he was out of favour with Number 10. As Tim Shipman writes in his book about the general election and Theresa May’s first year in office, Fall Out, Hunt was one of the ministers effectively banned from the airwaves by Number 10 during the campaign.

Those on the ‘never use’ list in a so-called ‘Brexit election’ included Brexiteers like Liam Fox, Andrea Leadsom and Chris Grayling, who spent the campaign doing regional tours, described by one aide as ‘trying to organise a bunch of cats in the middle of a firework display’. Others banished to media Siberia included Justine Greening, the education secretary; Liz Truss, the justice secretary; and David Lidington. [Fiona] Hill’s sheet [Hill was May’s co chief of staff] decreed that Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, should be confined to ‘canvassing’. It is curious that ministers responsible for the public services were banished from the airwaves in an election where Labour was fighting austerity cuts in schools and hospitals.

Fall Out, by the way, is outstanding, and even better than you would guess from the glowing reviews it has already received. It’s the follow-up to Shipman’s book about the EU referendum, All Out War. I thought All Out War was hard to beat, but this volume is even better; the sources are more varied (the Corbyn inner circle gets covered properly) and the revelations are more extraordinary. For years the best insider accounts of political campaigns have come from America (partly because of the size and the structure of the US market) but now Shipman has written two books worthy of the Making of the President tradition. And he strongly implies in Fall Out he is planning a third. So don’t let anyone tell you nothing good ever came from Brexit ...

Paul Kelso, Sky’s health correspondent, thinks Jeremy Hunt was better than Theresa May at defending the government’s record on the NHS in their respective interviews earlier.

In his World at One interview, and in a separate interview with BBC News, Jeremy Hunt the health secretary, largely repeated the points that he made to Sky’s Beth Rigby. (See 1.11pm.) But he did make some fresh arguments too. Here they are.

  • Hunt, the health secretary, accepted that the NHS needed more staff, but claimed that the government was already addressing this. It would, however, take time to train up the doctors and nurses needed, he said.

In terms of staff, we have more staff in the NHS, but I think we need even more.

Staff salaries have to be funded. But it isn’t just about money. It’s also about training the number of staff that you want, and that’s why in the last couple of years we have seen a very important change, which is that we have said we will increase the number of doctors and nurses we train by a quarter. That’s actually the biggest increase in the history of the NHS.

But we do need to ask staff on the front line to bear with us because it takes seven years to train a doctor, three years to train a nurse and it’s going to take time for those nurses and doctors to come through.

  • He said this week was always the busiest week in the year for the NHS.
  • He said an extra 1,000 hospital beds would be freed up this week as a result of the measures taken by NHS England. He also said that there were 200 more doctors working in A&E departments and that 111 call centres have doubled the number of calls being handled by a doctor or a nurse.
  • He said there would be one million more people aged over 75 in 10 years’ time, creating a “very big challenge” for the NHS.
  • He said he thought the the total number of cancelled operations “won’t be significantly higher this year than last year.”
  • He said some A&E departments were peforming better this year than last year.

Actually, if you look at the last monthly figures, over half of A&E departments are actually doing better than they were doing in the same period as last year. So I think there are some signs that things are better.

Theresa May meeting first-time buyer Laura Paine (centre) as reporters, security and Downing Street staff look on, during a visit to new housing development, Montague Park in Wokingham, today. Paine benefited from the stamp duty cut for first-time buyers announced in the budget.
Theresa May meeting first-time buyer Laura Paine (centre) as reporters, security and Downing Street staff look on, during a visit to new housing development, Montague Park in Wokingham, today. Paine benefited from the stamp duty cut for first-time buyers announced in the budget. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

And this is what the Lib Dem health spokesman Norman Lamb is saying about Jeremy Hunt’s apology to NHS patients. Lamb said:

This apology will be little comfort to the tens of thousands of people across the country seeing their operations delayed. There is no doubt that patients will die and families will suffer because of the impossible pressure the NHS is being put under.

Tragically this crisis was wholly predictable and preventable. People will rightly be infuriated that the government has refused to put in enough resources to stave off another winter crisis.

We cannot allow the NHS to keep going from crisis to crisis in this way. The Liberal Democrats would put a penny on income tax to raise an extra £6bn a year for the NHS and social care.

Yesterday Toby Young told me he’d tweeted 56,000 times. Today, fewer than 9,000 tweets remain. It seems he’s deleting them as he comes under pressure over his appointment to the Office for Students (OfS) board.

We’ll be posting an article soon on what some of the deleted tweets say.

Here’s what Toby was saying about his tweets yesterday:

I’ve composed over 56,000 tweets and, if someone is prepared to spend hours trawling through them, it’s not altogether surprising if they come up with a few sophomoric, politically incorrect remarks. I regret these, obviously. I hope people will judge me on my actions, not on silly things I’ve tweeted or written in my 30-year career as a journalist.

Updated

Labour says May 'burying her head in the sand' over NHS winter crisis

Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, says Theresa May’s comments on the NHS winter crisis (see 12.23pm) show she is “out of touch”. In a statement he said:

Yet again Theresa May reveals how entirely out of touch she is. Next, she will be trying to lecture patients that ‘nothing has changed’ for patients.

The reality is we see hospitals at full capacity, ambulances backed up, cancelled operations and patients waiting for hours on trolleys.

Instead of burying her head in the sand, Theresa May needs to explain why she has allowed underfunding and cuts to health and social care to continue. As Tory MP Sarah Wollaston said this morning [see 9.16am], the government needs to get a grip.

And this is what he told the BBC about the situation.

Jeremy Hunt is now being interviewed on the World at One.

Q: Is this a crisis?

Hunt refers to what Prof Keith Willett, the director of acute care at NHS England, told the Today programme this morning. (See 9.48am.)

Q: Isn’t the problem shortage of beds and shortage of staff?

Hunt says the bed situation is better than it was last year. But he says the NHS need more staff.

But it will take time for new staff to come through, he says. He says it takes seven years to train a doctor and three years to train a nurse.

He says there will be questions to be addressed about NHS funding.

And he repeats his apology to NHS patients.

Hunt says NHS will need 'substantially more resources' in years to come

Here are the main points from Jeremy Hunt’s interview on Sky News. Beth Rigby was asking the questions.

  • Hunt, the health secretary, apologised to patients who have had operations postponed. But he said that the decision to postpone non-urgent operations for the rest of this month made sense. Asked if it was evidence that the NHS was failing, he replied:

There are real pressures, no question about it. And this is the busiest week of the year for the NHS ...

But I think what is different this year compared to last year is that we had a lot of operations cancelled at the last minute, a lot of people were called up the day before their operation and told ‘I’m sorry, it can’t go ahead’, and we recognise it is better, if you unfortunately are going to have to cancel or postpone some operations, to do it in a planned way. And that’s why this year we’ve decided to take this decision, or this independent panel has decided to take this decision. And that, I think, in the end is better for people, although if you are someone whose operation has been delayed, I don’t belittle that for one moment. And, indeed, I apologise to everyone that has happened to.

  • He praised NHS staff for going “beyond the call of duty” during the winter period.

First thing I want to say is a massive thank you to NHS staff who are working incredibly long hours, through the night, beyond the call of duty in every possible way. It is not just me that’s grateful to them; it’s the whole country. They are doing an absolutely heroic job.

  • He said that, overall, standards in the health service were still high. Asked if he was ashamed of what was happening, he said:

It is absolutely not what I want. In July an independent American thinktank called the Commonwealth Fund said the NHS was the best healthcare system in the world, and that is what we are all so proud of in the NHS. And when the standards of care fall below those very high standards - very few other countries, for example, have a 95% target [95% of patients attending A&E should be dealt with within four hours]; we do, because we want to promise everyone in the country that in an emergency they will get treated as quickly as they need to be.

  • He said the ageing population was creating extra problems for the NHS.

But we also have to recognise that we have around 3,000 more people going to our A&Es every single day than we did year ago. We have an ageing population. There are huge pressures.

We’ve also got an additional pressure this year of an uptick in flu and respiratory illness which we didn’t have last year. It’s too early to say whether we are going to experience what they experienced in Australia. But that has undoubtedly created extra pressures on the system.

  • He said the NHS would need “substantially more resources” in years to come. The government would address this at the end of the NHS “Five Year Forward View”, which runs until the end of the decade, he said.

There is a longer-term funding issue that we have to address as a society because we want our NHS to be the best, to continue to be the best in the world, the fairest healthcare system in the world. And with the extra number of older people that is going to need substantially more resources in the years ahead.

When he was asked if he would demand extra funding for the NHS now, he said the NHS had already had an extra £2.8bn in the budget. But he went on:

But as we come to the end of the five-year forward view, which is the plan the NHS is working towards, then of course we are going to have more discussions going forward about the long-term funding needs of the NHS.

Updated

May says NHS has had extra funding and is 'better prepared for this winter than ever before'

The Press Association has now filed Theresa May’s comments on the NHS. She was on a visit to Wokingham, where she was promoting the government’s stamp duty cut for first-time buyers (see 10.43am), and a reporter asked: “If this is not a crisis in the NHS this winter, how would you classify it?” May replied:

Can I say a huge thank you to NHS staff for their hard work, they work hard and do a fantastic job for us day in and day out all year round, but obviously there are extra pressures in winter.

They’re doing a fantastic job and their dedication is ensuring that people are getting treatment that they need.

The NHS has been better prepared for this winter than ever before, we have put extra funding in.

There are more beds available across the system, we’ve reduced the number of delayed discharges of elderly people who would otherwise have been in NHS beds rather than in social care.

But I recognise for those people that have had their operations postponed this is disappointing, it’s frustrating

We will ensure that those operations are put back as soon as possible and once again I say that NHS staff are doing a fantastic job.

So, in a nutshell:

  • May says the NHS is “better prepared for this winter than ever before”.
  • She says it has had extra funding.
  • But she accepts there are “extra pressures” on the service and says it is “disappointing” that operations have had to be postponed.
  • She says operations that have been postponed should be rescheduled “as soon as possible”.
Theresa May.
Theresa May. Photograph: Sky News

Updated

Jeremy Hunt apologises to NHS patients who have had operations postponed

Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, has also been talking about the NHS.

I will post the full quotes soon.

May says postponement of NHS operations 'disappointing'

Theresa May has said the NHS is “better prepared for this winter than ever before”, Sky reports.

I will post the full quote when I get it.

May’s comment is more or less word for word what Prof Keith Willett, director of acute care at NHS England, was saying on the Today programme this morning. (See 9.48am.)

Updated

And here’s another interesting thread on the TPP story, from Alexander Clarkson, a lecturer in German and European studies at King’s College London. It starts here.

The British Medical Association has been tweeting about the situation in the NHS.

The BMA has also retweeted this, the start of a thread from a doctor at Imperial College hospital in London. It says it is “very revealing” and that it describes a situation “sadly ... being replicated across the country”.

Here is George Magnus, the economic commentator and a former UBS chief economist, on the TPP proposal. (See 10.16am and 11.07am.)

Fox says it would be 'foolish' for UK to rule out eventually joining Pacific trade bloc

Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, is on a visit to China where he has told Reuters that it is a “bit premature” to talk about the UK joining the trans-Pacific partnership (TPP) at this point. But he confirmed that it was an option for the future. He told Reuters:

We don’t know what the success of the TPP is going to yet look like, because it isn’t yet negotiated. So it would be a little bit premature for us to be wanting to sign up to something that we’re not sure what the final details will look like.

However, we have said that we want to be an open outward looking country, and therefore it would be foolish for us to rule out any particular outcomes for the future. So we’ll keep an open mind, and we’ll want to talk to our global trading partners.

This is consistent with what Greg Hands, the international trade minister, told the FT. (See 10.16am.)

Liam Fox at the residence of the British ambassador in Beijing, China, where he was giving an interview.
Liam Fox at the residence of the British ambassador in Beijing, China, where he was giving an interview. Photograph: Thomas Peter/Reuters

Updated

Theresa May has been tweeting too - about the stamp duty cut in the budget.

Jeremy Corbyn has tweeted this about the winter crisis in the NHS.

The Markit/CIPS UK Construction purchasing managers’ index (PMI) recorded a reading of 52.2 for December, down from 53.1 in November, the Press Association reports. Economists were expecting a figure of 53.1. A reading above 50 indicates growth.

Sir Vince Cable, the Lib Dem leader, says Lord O’Neill is right about the Tory Brexiters. (See 9.16am.)

Proposal for UK to join Pacific trade bloc shows ministers in 'cloud cuckoo land', says former Foreign Office chief

The European Union is much more than just a trade bloc. But it is a trade bloc, and it’s adjacent to the UK. There is a land border in Ireland, which means that after Brexit you will be able to walk from Northern Ireland into the EU. Getting into the EU across the English channel will be more tricky, but if you are particularly strong and fit and you choose the shortest route, you can swim it.

Reaching the Pacific is another matter. But that hasn’t stopped an international trade minister, Greg Hands, floating the idea that Britain could join the trans-Pacific partnership (TPP) trade bloc after Brexit. It is for countries bordering the Pacific and its current members are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. (The US pulled out after the election of President Trump.) “With these kind of plurilateral relationships, there doesn’t have to be any geographical restriction,” Hands told the Financial Times (paywall).

UK - top right, the Pacific ocean - far left
UK - top right, the Pacific ocean - far left Photograph: Google/Google Maps

My colleague Julia Gregory has written up the story here.

Simon Fraser, the former head of the Foreign Office, has responded to the story by saying ministers are living in “cloud cuckoo land”.

Updated

NHS England dismisses talk of 'crisis' and says it is better prepared for winter than ever

The department of health did not put up a health minister for the Today programme this morning. Ministers often take the view that on days like this people are more inclined to trust professionals and instead the job of defending the NHS was left to Prof Keith Willett, a trauma surgeon who is director of acute care at NHS England.

Here are the main points from his interview.

  • Willett dismissed the claim that the NHS was facing a “crisis”, saying the word crisis would only be appropriate if the service did not have a plan to deal with the increased demand. But instead the NHS had prepared for the winter “in a way that we’ve never prepared before”, he said:

A crisis is when you haven’t got in place mitigations and you haven’t got a plan to deal with it. We’ve gone into this winter in a way that we’ve never prepared before, so we went into the winter before Christmas having cancelled fewer elective operations than we had previously, discharges from hospital were at a lower level than they had been previously, so we were better prepared.

We’ve also set up a national, regional and local structure - if you like, a winter pressures protocol - which we are invoking now and we are monitoring a whole series of things, activity in the service and the pressures.

We are monitoring the weather alerts in anticipation of weather changes because we know that’s important, and we also monitor the seasonal illnesses like flu.

Asked if what was happening would feel like a crisis to patients, he replied:

I fully accept that for the individual that will be really very uncomfortable, but what we know is if we don’t have a plan in place and we don’t do this in a structured way, what will happen, as we’ve had in previous winters, is lots of last-minute cancellations which is really distracting for patients, it’s inconvenient, it upsets the plans they’ve put together with their family, particularly for elderly patients where their care needs are often quite significant.

  • He said it was possible that further delays to non-urgent operations could be announced. Asked if there could be further postponements, he said:

That’s certainly a possibility ... Intention always is not to cancel patients or postpone patients more than once - that’s one of the principles we try to follow - but clearly it is unpredictable, we don’t know what the weather we do, we don’t know the pressures in the system, we’re taking precautionary action here.

  • He said he had seen “similar” pressures in the NHS “way back in the ‘90s”.

Theresa May needs to 'get a better grip' on NHS crisis, says senior Tory

Good morning. Theresa May is out this morning doing a visit to highlight how some house buyers are benefiting from the abolition of stamp duty for first-time purchases up to £300,000 but, in the light of last night’s announcement about the further cancellation of non-emergency operations to help staff cope with the surge in demand for A&E, all the questions are likely to be about the crisis in the NHS.

Here is our overnight story.

And this morning Sarah Wollaston, the former GP and Conservative MP who chairs the Commons health committee, has said May and her cabinet colleagues need to “get a better grip” on the problem. She told the Today programme:

The point is, if you have a very major increase in people who are living longer with complex conditions, that produces particular demands on the health system that I think they need to get a better grip on, to understand the sheer scale of the increase in demand across health and social care. And that’s what they need to do better planning for.

Wollaston said the NHS was underfunded.

Certainly what we have is a system that is running at absolutely full stretch across both health and social care. And, despite all the planning that we’ve heard about, I’m afraid there are serious issues with capacity, far too many bed closures that have happened, and probably not enough money that has gone in over a number of years now to keep up with the sheer scale of the increase in demand and complexity.

And when it was put to her that people who have had operations cancelled would describe what is happening as a crisis, she replied: “Of course you would.”

Sarah Wollaston.
Sarah Wollaston. Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian

But it is not all NHS today. Here are two other stories in the news.

  • A former Treasury minister in David Cameron’s government has described Theresa May’s Brexit ministers as being “clueless” about the economy. Lord O’Neill, the former Goldman Sachs chief economist who was commercial secretary to the Treasury from May 2015 to September 2016, made the comments in an interview with the German news organisation Die Welt. A China specialist, O’Neill said that the way Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, and other ministers were focusing on developing trade with small Commonwealth countries like New Zealand instead of China was “mad”. The idea that trade links with these countries would compensate for leaving the EU was “a fantasy”, he said. And he criticised Brexiters like Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, and Michael Gove, the environment secretary.

[They are] very intellectual, smart people. But they have no clue about the world of economy. They are clueless, sadly. Clueless.

Lord O’Neill.
Lord O’Neill. Photograph: Matteo Bazzi/EPA
Toby Young.
Toby Young. Photograph: BBC

Apart from the May visit, details of which have not been announced, the diary is fairly empty today. But, 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.

You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here.

Here is the Politico Europe round-up of this morning’s political news. And here is the PoliticsHome list of today’ top 10 must reads.

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.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter.

Updated

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100's of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Kelly Osbourne, Sid Wilson Split: 'Struggling' Star Reportedly Calls Off Engagement 7 Months After Backstage Proposal
Kelly Osbourne has reportedly called off her engagement to Slipknot musician Sid Wilson seven months after his backstage proposal, amid claims she has been struggling with grief and relationship 'challenges'.
International Business Times UK
International Business Times UK
"He said: 'Hold it! Keep playing that, don't stop!' He comes down in his undershorts and grabs his guitar, then completes the riff." How London’s famous clock tower and a flirtatious groupie inspired Jimi Hendrix's last great song
A story of Hawaiian volcanoes and Mick Jagger's bloody finger
Louder
Louder
E. coli cases are on the rise in the United States, and the internet rightfully blames RFK Jr.
Who wants raw milk anyway?
The Mary Sue
The Mary Sue
'It Made Me Shy Away': Barry Keoghan Says Online Hate About His Looks is Affecting His Confidence
Barry Keoghan has opened up about the impact of online hate, saying negative comments about his appearance have become a serious issue affecting his daily life.
International Business Times UK
International Business Times UK
The internet is convinced Jeffrey Epstein was just spotted alive in Florida and the viral footage is genuinely haunting
The internet is absolutely buzzing right now thanks to a viral video showing a man dubbed “Palm Beach Pete” cruising through South Florida, and people are convinced he’s none other than convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. This footage has really lit up social media, sparking immediate comparisons.
The Mary Sue
The Mary Sue
Not just boys: The overlooked story of ADHD in women and girls
When people think about attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), they often picture a hyperactive young boy running around a classroom, not the quiet girl daydreaming in the corner, the chatty student who can’t finish her work or the mother who is chronically late and constantly searching for her keys.
The Conversation
The Conversation
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.
Download on the AppStore Get it on Google Play