Shadow minister tells health service ‘money is tight’ and that it must provide better value for taxpayers
The shadow health secretary has accused the NHS of using every winter crisis and challenge it faces as an excuse to ask for more money.
Speaking on a visit to Singapore, Wes Streeting said the health service needs to accept “money is tight”, and that it must rethink how the care it provides could provide better value for money for the taxpayer.
“I think people working in the NHS and the patients using the NHS can see examples of waste and inefficiency,” he told the Sunday Times. “I don’t think it’s good enough that the NHS uses every winter crisis and every challenge it faces as an excuse to ask for more money.”
He added: “The NHS is going to have to get used to the fact that money is tight and it’s going to have to get used to switching spend, and rethinking where and how care is delivered to deliver better outcomes for patients and better value for taxpayers’ money. At the moment, I think we get the worst of all worlds, which is poor outcomes alongside poor value for taxpayers.
“I’m willing to give people more freedom to innovate and create as long as they deliver. That’s the tough love that people can look forward to if I become the health and social care secretary.”
Activists say their actions in 2020 and 2021 were lawfully justified amid Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians
The ‘Elbit Eight’ – Jocelyn Cooney, Nicola Deane, Caroline Brouard, Emily Arnott, Huda Ammori, Richard Barnard, Genevieve Scherer and Robin Refualu – at Snaresbrook Crown Court last month | Guy Smallman/Getty Images
Jurors have begun deliberations in the trial of the ‘Elbit eight’, a group of activists with Palestine Action accused of offences relating to the shutdown of UK operations by Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms producer.
The eight have been on trial for four weeks at Snaresbrook Crown Court in north-east London. They do not deny the charges of burglary, criminal damage, encouraging offences of criminal damage, possessing articles with intent to cause criminal damage, and threatening to damage property belonging to Jones Lang LaSalle – a company that provides services in relation to one of Elbit’s UK sites – but they have argued that they were lawfully justified in their actions.
Over the past month, jurors have heard how the activists, in the years 2020 to 2021, deployed tactics such as rooftop occupations, window smashing, and spray painting to force Elbit out of the UK and cease the production of lethal weapons used against Palestinian civilians.
Though the prosecution has described their actions as “wanton criminality”, defence barristers have placed great emphasis on the fact that the defendants acted under the belief that if decision-makers at Elbit UK, UAV Systems and Jones Lang LaSalle understood the true extent of the atrocities committed using Elbit manufactured systems, then they would have consented to their actions.
Richard Barnard, Huda Ammori, Robin Refualu, Genevieve Scherer, Milly Arnott, Caroline Brouard, Jocelyn Cooney and Nicola Deane are charged in various combinations on 13 counts relating to a series of incidents in London, Kent, Oldham and Staffordshire.
As barristers for each of the defendants delivered their closing speeches on Tuesday, a number of them reminded jurors that many historical rights movements were once vilified – including the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and the civil rights movement in the US.
Barnard’s lawyer said: “It’s no good if in a few weeks’ or months’ time, if you’re pushing your trolley around Tesco, and you think: ‘Oh, I’m not sure we did get that right.’ That’s the heavy responsibility you have.”
He added: “People are allowed, in the free society that you represent as jurors, to hold strong beliefs. Some hold them more strongly than others. Not many would don an adult nappy [a reference to protests that saw activists stay in place for long periods of time]. It takes a certain type of person to do that. A certain strength of belief.
“But these people are important. [They] bring issues perhaps that most of us are content to read about or listen to from the comfort of our own homes.
“Times change, opinions change, and sometimes it takes others to bring matters to our attention which change our opinion. It’s almost laughable to think that women once didn’t have the right to vote.”
All defendants except Scherer and Cooney are charged with at least one count of criminal damage, while all except Brouard, Cooney and Deane are charged with at least one count of burglary. Cooney is charged only with encouraging offences of criminal damage and possessing articles with intent to cause criminal damage.
Two-thirds of U.S. voters surveyed by Data for Progress support making fossil fuel companies pay for the damage their products cause to the climate. (Photo: rmitsch/Getty Images)
“Voters resoundingly endorse fossil fuel companies contributing their fair share to address a crisis they helped manufacture and still refuse to help fix,” said one campaigner.
As yet another United Nations Climate Change Conference winds down without a meaningful agreement on phasing out fossil fuels, polling released Tuesday by Data for Progress revealed strong bipartisan support among U.S. voters for legislation forcing oil and gas companies to pay for their role in fueling the planetary emergency.
The survey of 1,279 U.S. voters, conducted November 3-6, found that around two-thirds of all likely voters support such legislation, a +40-point net margin. Among Democrats, support for the proposed bill is 88%, while 61% of Independent and 46% of Republicans either strongly or somewhat back the proposal.
“In a resounding call for accountability, two-thirds of the American people support legislation demanding industry titans like Exxon and Shell shoulder their fair share of the climate damages inflicted by fossil fuels.”
Asked if they were more or less likely to support elected officials who prioritize making Big Oil pay for its climate pollution, 64% of overall respondents, 89% of Democrats, and 58% of Independents answered “more likely.” Republicans were the only group whose members were less likely to back officials who would make oil and gas companies pay for their pollution.
“In a resounding call for accountability, two-thirds of the American people support legislation demanding industry titans like Exxon and Shell shoulder their fair share of the climate damages inflicted by fossil fuels,” Fossil Free Media communications director Cassidy DiPaola said in a statement.
“With COP spotlighting the towering price tag of climate change, voters resoundingly endorse fossil fuel companies contributing their fair share to address a crisis they helped manufacture and still refuse to help fix,” she added, referencing the U.N. summit.
The poll follows the September launch of the “Make Polluters Pay” campaign, a public relations blitz meant to drum up public support for suing fossil fuel corporations—which knew that their products caused climate change decades before publicly saying so.
That month, California joined dozens of states and municipalities that have targeted fossil fuel giants in court,suing five fossil fuel giants—ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, and Chevron—over their decadeslong effort to deceive the public about their products’ role in fueling global heating.
The new survey’s findings also came as so-called “loss and damage”—the harm caused by anthropogenic climate change—features prominently at COP28. However, climate campaigners were once again disappointed as the United States and other top polluters failed to make meaningful contributions to the fund.
The rich nations most responsible for the climate catastrophe pledged just $700 million between them, the equivalent of under 0.2% of the irreversible losses Global South countries suffer each year during the worsening planetary crisis. The United States pledged a paltry $17.5 million.
“Every year, we travel across oceans to come to these negotiations and we continue to get only drops of ambition,” Drue Slatter, a Fijian climate campaigner attending COP28, wrote in an opinion piece published Tuesday by Common Dreams.
“Facing the catastrophic effects of extreme weather at home and watching the slow progress of the negotiations, it was hard not to be pessimistic before we even arrived at COP28,” Slatter added. “But the point is that we can’t afford not to be here, we can’t afford to stop fighting because what’s at stake is our very survival.”
Children in California are suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (Photo: Our Children’s Trust)
“We’re challenging the EPA’s failure to protect us. The air we breathe has become a casualty of their opposition.”
As the United Nations climate talks cast a spotlight on the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency, the U.S. law firm Our Children’s Trust on Sunday launched a constitutional lawsuit against the Biden administration on behalf of 18 California children “growing up with polluted air and a government-imposed and -sanctioned climate crisis.”
Filed in the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California, the complaint takes aim at the federal government, the Environmental Protection Agency, and its administrator, Michael Regan, arguing that the “EPA’s conduct in controlling the pollution that enters the nation’s air actively discriminates against children, and these plaintiffs, knowingly causing them disproportionate harm compared to similarly situated adults and burdening them with a lifetime of hardship.”
Avroh, a 14-year-old plaintiff, said in a statement Monday that “we are experiencing what no one should have to experience. We’re facing constitutional negligence. We’re challenging the EPA’s failure to protect us. The air we breathe has become a casualty of their opposition.”
Another plaintiff, 8-year-old Neela, said that “I believe kids can make a difference and the Earth needs our help. I want to help protect the people and places I love. I’m excited to be a part of this case and be a voice for all kids who deserve a healthy environment.”
“We feel a constant worry about the future, and all around us no one is moving fast enough.”
Catherine Smith, of counsel to Our Children’s Trust—which secured a landmark victory while representing Montana youth in state court earlier this year—argued that “in times like this, when the legislative and executive branches have breached their obligation to young people by intentionally allowing climate pollution and explicitly discounting children’s lives in some political or economic calculus fully aware of its consequences to youth, courts must serve as a constitutional backstop to end it.”
The plaintiffs—who are ages 8-17—are seeking “a declaratory judgment that as children they are entitled to a heightened level of judicial review over government conduct that burdens them with lifetimes of hardship, that they are members of a constitutionally protected class, and that defendants have violated their constitutional rights,” according to the complaint.
“They also seek declaratory relief that defendants have infringed their fundamental rights to life, including their personal security and happiness, and in so doing have also acted outside the scope of their delegated authority,” the filing adds. “Plaintiffs seek further relief as deemed necessary and proper to enforce a declaratory judgment after the facts are found and the legal conclusions of the district court are rendered on a full evidentiary record.”
Noah, a 15-year-old plaintiff, warned that “time is slipping away, and the impact of the climate crisis is already hitting us directly. We are running from wildfires, being displaced by floods, panicking in hot classrooms during another heatwave.”
“We feel a constant worry about the future, and all around us no one is moving fast enough,” Noah noted. “The Constitution guarantees every American the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness including and especially children.”
Our Children’s Trust chief legal counsel Julia Olson declared that “these children are rising up from fire, smoke, heat, and flood to share their stories of physical harm and despair, along with their clarion call to adults—’our equal rights to life matter as much as yours.'”
“There is one federal agency explicitly tasked with keeping the air clean and controlling pollution to protect the health of every child and the welfare of a nation—the EPA,” she continued. “The agency has done the opposite when it comes to climate pollution and it’s time the EPA is held accountable by our courts for violating the U.S. Constitution and misappropriating its congressionally delegated authority.”
In addition to representing youth plaintiffs in Held v. State of Montana—which the state is now appealing—Our Children’s Trust is the group behind Juliana v. United States, the constitutional climate lawsuit first filed on behalf of 21 young people in 2015. While a June ruling put Juliana on track to proceed to trial, the Biden administration continues its battle to quash the case.
E&E News reported Monday that “while Juliana targets a swath of government agencies,” the new case, Genesis B. v. EPA, singles out one agency. Our Children’s Trust senior staff attorney Andrea Rodgers explained that the firm hopes the focus will mean that the EPA “won’t fight this case” in the way that the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations have targeted Juliana.
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders speaking with attendees at the Presidential Gun Sense Forum hosted by Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action at the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines, Iowa. Image by Gage Skidmore shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
Israeli atrocities in Gaza are being carried out by “bombs and equipment produced and provided by the United States and heavily subsidized by American taxpayers,” the Vermont senator wrote.
Calling the Netanyahu government’s ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip “immoral” and illegal under international law, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday urged President Joe Biden to drop his support for the portion of a supplemental foreign aid package that would give the Israeli military more than $10 billion in unconditional assistance.
Sanders (I-Vt.), who has faced backlash from Palestinian rights advocates for rejecting calls for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza, also pushed Biden to “support efforts at the United Nations to end the bloodshed, such as the recent resolution, vetoed by the United States, that would have demanded an immediate humanitarian cease-fire, the unconditional release of all hostages, and full humanitarian access.”
The senator’s letter to Biden was made public a day after the U.S. joined just nine other nations in voting against a U.N. General Assembly resolution calling for a cease-fire. The nonbinding resolution passed overwhelmingly, leaving the U.S. “increasingly isolated in its steadfast support of a war that seems to have no rules and no limits,” as the executive director of Doctors Without Borders put it following Tuesday’s vote.
“The U.S. must not provide $10 billion in military aid for Netanyahu’s right-wing government to conduct their horrific war against innocent Palestinians.”
Sanders argued in his letter that “while there is a moral case for a military response against a brutal terrorist attack, it is clear that the Netanyahu government’s current campaign is being conducted in a deeply immoral way.”
“Israel’s reliance on widespread and indiscriminate bombardment, including with massive explosive ordinance in densely populated urban areas, is unconscionable,” Sanders wrote. “This constitutes not just a humanitarian cataclysm, but a mass atrocity. And it is being done with bombs and equipment produced and provided by the United States and heavily subsidized by American taxpayers.”
“Tragically, we are complicit in this carnage,” the senator added, pointing to a recent Amnesty Internationalinvestigation showing that the Israeli military used U.S.-made munitions to bomb two family homes in the Gaza Strip in October, killing 43 members of two families—including 19 children.
The U.S. must not provide $10 billion in military aid for Netanyahu's right-wing government to conduct their horrific war against innocent Palestinians.
Read my letter to President Biden asking him to stop funding this war and to support UN efforts for a humanitarian ceasefire. pic.twitter.com/IG96mF6Up1
Sanders went on to criticize the Biden administration’s timid response to Israel’s massacres in Gaza, writing that the U.S. has “done little but ask nicely while continuing to enable” the Netanyahu government’s devastating military campaign.
“While it is appropriate to support defensive systems that will protect Israeli civilians against incoming missile and rocket attacks,” Sanders argued, “it would be irresponsible to provide an additional $10.1 billion in military aid beyond these defensive systems as contained in the proposed supplemental foreign aid package.”
Sanders asked Biden to “withdraw” his support for that element of the larger aid package to stop fueling “the continuation of the Netanyahu government’s widespread, indiscriminate bombardment.”
Biden said Tuesday that Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” of the Gaza Strip is costing the country support on the world stage, but administration officials made clear Wednesday that the U.S. “has no plans to shift its position and draw any red lines around the transfer of weapons and munitions to Israel,” CNN reported.
