MPs have voted down attempts to prevent foreign influence in UK elections yesterday [Wednesday], in a move which has drawn strong criticism from political transparency campaigners.
The House of Commons yesterday voted against tightening the rules on foreign interference in elections after the government whipped its MPs to oppose an amendment to the National Security Bill proposed by the House of Lords.
253 MPs voted to oppose the amendment, all of whom were either Tories or independent MPs who were elected as Tories. 134 MPs backed the Lords’ proposals – with Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens all voting in support. Just one Tory – Julian Lewis – voted to tighten foreign interference in elections.
Just Stop Oil protesting in London 6 December 2022.
Just Stop Oil are peacefully marching in defiance of new anti-protest legislation that came into effect yesterday. They state that they will immediately halt their campaign when the government makes a meaningful statement to end licensing and consents for any new fossil fuel projects in the UK.
From around 8:00 am, over 30 Just Stop Oil supporters began marching from Queen Victoria Street in the City of London. Just Stop Oil supporters have been slow marching in the capital every day since the 24th April.
Yesterday 23 Just Stop Oil supporters were arrested for peacefully marching from Downing Street to Parliament Square. The police were acting with new powers granted by the Home Office following the commencement of the ‘public order’ bill yesterday. This is the third piece of legislation in two years designed to silence legitimate dissent. The introduction of this bill has been described as ‘alarming’ by Amnesty International and ‘deeply troubling’ by the U.N High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The home secretary has also used a controversial ‘statutory instrument’ to grant extra powers to the police, in a bid to ban ‘slow walking’ demonstrations. In doing so, the home secretary has evaded the usual democratic process, as these measures were previously rejected from the ‘public order’ bill by the House of Lords.
A Just Stop Oil spokesperson said:
“Yesterday, 23 good people were arrested for peacefully marching between Downing Street and Parliament, in accordance with their fundamental human rights. Rights that are protected under international law. All legal avenues for dissent have now been banned by this illegitimate, criminal government. ”
“In licensing new fossil fuels, they are overseeing the destruction of our homes, livelihoods and food supply. This will lead to the collapse of ordered society. This is treason. Regardless of our divergent political beliefs, it is imperative the citizens of this country wake up to what is happening, and get onto the streets to resist. It is what our children and the next 10,000 generations demand of us. Any less is a betrayal of our loved ones and the hundreds of millions currently experiencing climate collapse around the world.”
Campaigners question why huge sums are being handed to multi-billion pound companies over local health experts
NHS England is paying management consultants day rates of up to £3,000, despite the government claiming it cannot afford to give nurses and junior doctors a real-terms pay rise.
Some executives from top consulting firms including Deloitte and PA Consulting are being paid the equivalent of an annual salary of more than £600,000 by NHS England for their services – more than double what its own CEO is reportedly paid.
Deloitte, which charged the most for its consultants last year at up to £3,000 a day, was ironically hired to help NHS England improve how it keeps track of its spending on private companies.
The findings come after a deal was struck between health unions and the government for a 5% pay rise for more than a million NHS workers. Ministers had dismissed demands for an above-inflation rise on the grounds that it would be unaffordable.
Unite and the Royal College of Nursing rejected the offer, with the former saying that it fell well short of the current rate of inflation. Both are planning to continue with strike action, while the British Medical Association (BMA), which represents junior doctors, is continuing negotiations. The BMA is looking for a 35% pay rise to make up for 15 years of below-inflation pay increases.
Unite’s national lead officer Onay Kasab called the figures “a damning indictment of a government that seems intent on destroying the NHS and has learnt nothing from the pandemic, when it allowed the health service to be plundered by private sector profiteers”. He added: “The money would be much better spent providing a proper pay rise for NHS staff to end the recruitment and retention crisis that is crippling health services.”
The day rates were disclosed to openDemocracy through a Freedom of Information request only after the Information Commissioner’s Office warned NHS England that it could be taken to court if it continued delaying its response.
The figures also show consultants from PA Consulting were paid up to £2,500 a day to provide NHS England with support for its Covid vaccination programme between December 2022 and March 2023.
More than a dozen consultants from Ernst and Young were paid up to £2,343 a day last year to give NHS England recommendations for a system that would make it possible to share patient health records electronically between trusts.
The health service also forked out up to £2,350 a day on consultants from KPMG to support improvements to its digital services.
NHS England told openDemocracy that the rates are negotiated centrally by the government.
“It is absolutely appalling to see huge sums of money syphoned off into consultancy firms in this manner,” Julia Patterson, chief executive of NHS campaign group EveryDoctor, told openDemocracy. “At the very least, there should be published reports annually demonstrating the added value provided by contracting strategic advice.
“Local healthcare experts – such as the NHS clinicians, who are woefully underpaid – would be much better placed to offer advice about the planning and processes within their respective areas.”
The sums raise questions about whether the government has learnt from its disastrous NHS Test and Trace scheme, which was criticised for relying too heavily on private sector consultants. Deloitte staff were paid up to £6,000 a day to work on the programme despite an inquiry later finding that it failed to slow the pandemic.
At the time, the ballooning spending prompted a Cabinet minister to warn that consultants waste taxpayer money and “infantilise” civil servants.
Then cabinet secretary Michael Gove defended the use of consultants during the pandemic but conceded the government needed to reduce its overall spending on them.
In February, openDemocracy revealed NHS England quadrupled its budget for outsourced consultancy work to £83m – enough to train more than 1,600 new nurses or pay for almost 14,000 hip operations.
Tamzen Isacsson, chief executive of the Management Consultancies Association, said: “There are strict regulations for how the government procures management consultants and firms need to show they meet stringent cost and value criteria.
“The charge from consulting firms, which operate in a highly competitive market includes various operating costs that goes well beyond consultant salaries. The per day cost charged by consulting firms working in the NHS will include security system and technical requirements, product development costs, solution developments, legal costs, overheads, training and recruitment costs.”
An NHS spokesperson said: “The NHS is one of the most efficient health systems in the world, spending 2p in the pound on admin compared with 4p in Germany and 6p in France.
“NHS England uses Crown Commercial Service frameworks with government negotiated rates for management consultancy where it is necessary, and seeks to negotiate additional discounts to ensure best value for taxpayers.”
The Existing, not Living report, commissioned by Scotland’s largest social landlord, the Wheatley Group, spoke to tenants around the country to look at the impact of the social security system on their lives.
The research showed that 65 per cent of claimants believed that UC payment failed to give them enough money to cover the basics of life.
One tenant said of her situation: “Trying to live on £243 per month, that’s horrible.
“I’m expected to pay my council tax, gas and electricity, pay debt and rent arrears.
“It’s physically impossible to pay for all that and, of course, also your internet or some kind of mobile phone with internet, which you need to have if on UC.”
THREE major unions will be launching a joint campaign to halt social care privatisation in West Lothian, they announced over the weekend.
Following the integration of health and social care in Scotland in 2014, local integration joint boards (IJBs) have run social care, with council social work departments relegated to the status of “contractor.”
The boards are made up of health board members and local councillors.
West Lothian IJB, which operates in a locale with the fastest-growing elderly population in Scotland, is considering forcing the privatisation of four care homes for the elderly, according to the Unite, GMB and Unison unions.
The government has quietly published plans to effectively legalise “hazardous” accommodation for thousands of asylum seekers in England.
In a move labelled “shameful” and an “assault on human rights” by housing and refugee charities, a new draft law proposes removing landlords’ obligation to get a HMO (house in multiple occupation) licence if they are providing accommodation to vulnerable asylum seekers.
Campaigners say HMO licences are the primary way authorities currently ensure homes filled with large numbers of people they were not initially designed to fit do not become a major fire risk. They are normally required for all private rented properties that house five or more people from multiple households and are granted by councils if inspectors are satisfied that the building meets government guidelines, including that it isn’t dangerously overcrowded, in disrepair, damp or mouldy.
OIL and gas giants were accused of “grotesque profiteering” today after BP reported that it had raked in an eye-watering £4 billion in just three months.
The mammoth profit total for the first quarter of 2023 was down from the near £5bn the energy firm pocketed in the same period last year following Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
But the combined profits of both BP and Shell have now hit a whopping £55bn over the last year as gas and electricity bills have more than doubled for Britons already struggling with 40-year high inflation and plummeting take-home pay.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “BP’s grotesque profiteering is continuing at pace.
“Profiteering is a blight on the economy which is driving prices higher, leaving workers poorer while businesses struggle to keep the lights on.”
UNISON is challenging the Tory government’s latest attack on the right to strike in a two-day High Court hearing starting on Wednesday.
The public-sector union’s case was prompted by then prime minister Boris Johnson’s decision to scrap decades-old regulations preventing bosses from employing agency workers to break industrial action.
Last July’s widely condemned action was “unlawful and violates fundamental trade union rights,” Unison argued.
General secretary Christina McAnea said: “Breaking strikes with unqualified and ill-experienced agency workers doesn’t address the root causes of why people are striking and it only puts the public in danger.”
THE TUC is calling today for solidarity in defence of democracy and against racism and extremism to mark the day 90 years ago that trade unions were banned in Nazi Germany.
Union offices were raided and officials and activists rounded up on May 2 1933; some were tortured and some died in concentration camps in the years that followed.
Independent trade unions were replaced with the Nazi-controlled German Labour Front, a propaganda tool for the regime and its hate-filled anti-semitic ideology.
“Trade unions are a bastion of democracy and freedom against authoritarian and violent regimes,” said the TUC, which is providing training and resources for union activists to counter racism, including anti-semitism, and attempts by the far right to recruit in workplaces.
Persecution of trade unionists continues around the world, the union body said.
The Electoral Commission has admitted it will ‘not be possible to accurately quantify’ the impact of the new rules by counting who does or doesn’t have ID at the ballot box
The number of people turned away at polling stations because they do not have Voter ID will never be known, the elections watchdog has admitted.
People will be required to show photographic ID for the first time at polling stations on Thursday.
But the Electoral Commission has admitted it will “not be possible to accurately quantify” the impact of the new rules by counting who does or doesn’t have ID at the ballot box.
Data reveals the world’s leading oil and gas majors continue risk-laden, global expansion, despite net-zero pledges.
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Analysis of exclusive fields data from GlobalData, Energy Monitor’s parent company, shows that the world’s five largest Western oil majors by revenue – BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and TotalEnergies – are planning for a future misaligned with a net-zero pathway, as outlined by the IEA.
The findings come despite the fact that all five companies have pledged on paper to reach net zero by 2050, and they are all based in countries that hold similar pledges on a national level. The findings also come on top of an earlier Energy Monitor investigation, which found that the oil and gas extraction plans of just 25 oil majors will produce carbon emissions that use up 90% of the world’s remaining 1.5°C carbon budget.
In the case of the five Western oil majors, the first key net-zero misalignment is the sheer size of the companies’ expansion plans. Rather than entering the period of managed decline that the IEA recommends should occur to be aligned with net zero by 2050, data shows that the five companies are in the process of developing 157 new fields, on top of the 1,350 they already operate. These upcoming fields would add a massive 122 billion barrels of oil equivalent (bboe) to the 299 bboe remaining in the five companies’ already-operating fields.
A motorist drove through Just Stop Oil protesters blocking a road in north London on Tuesday morning (2 May), colliding with a person.
“It went over my foot,” a member of the group can be heard saying.
The demonstration was part of Just Stop Oil’s vow to march every weekday and on Saturdays from 24 April to call on the government to stop licensing any new fossil fuel projects in the UK.
The car wasn’t hanging around for Just Stop Oil’s protest. Credit: Twitter/Just Stop Oil
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A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police told LADbible: “Police are appealing for witnesses and dash cam footage after a person was involved in a collision with a vehicle on Holloway Road, Islington, whilst engaged in a protest, at around 10:00hrs, today Tuesday 2 May.
“The incident was brought to police attention after being circulated on social media and shows the person being involved in collision with a grey Renault Megane.
“If you were the person or have any information about the incident please report by calling 101, tweeting @MetCC or online at www.met.police.uk/.”
After the footage went viral, Just Stop Oil shared the video and commented how they believe that ‘inflammatory language’ from politicians and commentators has caused this end result.
The group tweeted: “After weeks of inflammatory language from politicians and right-wing media personalities, a car has finally rammed into a peaceful protest.
“Are you about to comment ‘Good!’ or ‘Stay out of the road?’
“Are you sure that the side you want to pick is the side of violence, of the repression of protest?
Since mid-March, the world’s oceans have been hotter than at anytime since at least 1982, raising concerns among some climate experts about accelerated warming.
Why it matters: Hotter oceans are hugely consequential for land areas, since they can contribute to more frequent and severe extreme weather and climate events, from deluges to heat waves.
In addition, the temperature spike could be a sign that warming is speeding up in ways that climate models failed to anticipate.
The situation has also driven conflict, with more than four million people now in need of humanitarian aid.
A cohort of 19 researchers from seven countries studied if climate change was to blame, ruling that the longer rainy season has become drier, while the short rainy season has become wetter all due to changes in global temperatures.
They branded the drought “one of a kind”, adding that climtae change had made agricultural drought one hundred times more likely.
A Conservative MP has said delaying climate action risks damaging the UK’s economic prospects, in a major review of the government’s net zero plans.
The report by Chris Skidmore says the government’s climate policies need to be more consistent and ambitious.
The UK is “falling behind” on some targets and needs a “new approach”, the report says.
It calls for 25 actions within two years, including food eco-labelling, and phasing out gas boilers by 2033.
Mr Skidmore – the Tory MP who wrote the report – was commissioned by former prime minister Liz Truss to review the government’s delivery of net zero, to ensure it was “pro-growth and pro-business”.
Some green campaign groups praised the report for focusing on the economic opportunities of net zero and urged the government to heed its recommendations.
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In his conclusion, Mr Skidmore said the UK was in a “net-zero race” and delaying decisions risked losing jobs, infrastructure and investments to other countries.
The UK, he said, had “reached a tipping point” where the “risks of ‘not zero’ are now greater than the associated risks of taking decisive action on net zero now”.
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