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Treasury minister: Lobbyists are ‘huge and important part’ of government plans

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Original article by Ethan Shone republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

The Treasury is at the centre of a move to refocus the government’s agenda on ‘growth at all costs’
 | Leon Neal/Getty Images

Exclusive: Government is inviting lobbyists and their clients to play a major role in the deregulatory agenda

“Growth comes from business, not the government.”

That was the message a government minister delivered to hundreds of corporate lobbyists, including those representing banks, arms companies and pharmaceuticals, during a webinar this morning.

Lord Livermore, the financial secretary to the Treasury, made the comments at the online event, which was the first in a series aimed at encouraging lobbyists to play a major role in the government’s ‘growth at all costs’ agenda.

In the call, which openDemocracy attended, Livermore made clear that Number 10 sees this agenda as being driven by corporations, while the government is a secondary actor that “work[s] in partnership with business”.

Also present among the 700 attendees were lobbyists representing tech firms, energy giants and consultancies, and those working for agencies including Hanbury, Headland, Lexington, Brunswick, Cavendish and Grayling.

These people and their clients are a “huge and important part” of the government’s plans, Livermore said, stressing that ministers are “really keen to draw on… the expertise that exists within your organisations and your clients”.

He added that the government’s focus is on getting rid of “stifling regulation that has for too long held business back” and “removing barriers to growth that we, in partnership with business, identify”.

The treasury minister also discussed Great British Energy’s role in “derisking investment” and providing capital for public-private partnerships, to make renewable infrastructure investment more attractive to the market.

While the government has been unapologetic about its outreach to business as a means to drive growth, Labour’s critics say an ever-closer relationship with lobbyists only heightens the impression of a government that does not have an agenda of its own.

Speaking to openDemocracy after the call, Green Party deputy leader Zack Polanski said: “With inequality rife, the government should be listening to the people who keep our country running and those suffering, not hosting desperate mass Zoom calls with arms dealers and oil giants.”

Cutting red tape

Setting out the government’s priorities, Livermore put a particular focus on achieving major reform to the planning system to encourage more commercial and infrastructure projects, and getting rid of regulations that “stand in the way of businesses investing”.

Livermore talked up the recent ousting of the head of the competitions regulator and his replacement with a former Amazon executive as evidence that the government is taking seriously its deregulatory agenda.

He also mentioned the recent push for regulators to submit proposals for growth and said Labour’s National Wealth Fund will “help catalyse private investment into sectors where at the moment, perhaps there’s a too high degree of risk”.

“We can use the National Wealth Fund to help derisk some of those investments,” said the minister. Economists describe this process as the state stepping in to improve the private returns on infrastructure assets.

Livermore continued that the fund could be used to “guide investments, particularly into the kind of clean energy investments of the future that we want to see”.

The government-lobbyist calls are being led by a new partnerships team in No 10 fronted by James Carroll, who has previously worked for the party on external relations and business engagement.

Also on the call was a senior executive at Anacta UK, described by The Times as the “first Starmerite lobbying firm”, and a banking lobbyist who is also involved in the running of Labour in the City, a group which convenes Labour supporters who work in financial services.

Lobbyists were able to submit questions during the call. One criticised “some parts of the business community” which have been “vocally critical about the government’s handling of the economy so far,” describing it as “unhelpful”.

They then asked: “How can firms who don’t want to talk down the UK but would rather promote a more positive narrative about the many opportunities open to British businesses best work with the government to do so?”

This prompted Carroll to quip: “I promise I haven’t planted that question.”

Carroll then rounded out the call by reiterating the importance the government places on developing this relationship with lobbyists.

“Just to emphasise,” he said, “your clients [and] your expertise is critical to delivering these ambitious national missions the prime minister has set out and the chancellor reiterated this week.”

Polanski, the Green’s deputy leader, said the plans to derisk investment “amounts to privatising the rewards and socialising the risks”.

He added: “Regulation exists for a reason, Grenfell stands as a towering reminder of lives lost and the total failure of standards.

“This isn’t growth for the many, just more wealth for the super-rich while the rest of us are told to look up at their private jets and wait for the trickle down.”

Original article by Ethan Shone republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Continue ReadingTreasury minister: Lobbyists are ‘huge and important part’ of government plans

Police admit eviction of homeless people who had tents destroyed was unlawful

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Original article by at OpenDemocracy republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. 

Met chief Mark Rowley has apologised for the incident outside a London hospital in November

Met Police commissioner Mark Rowley has apologised for unlawfully ordering people sleeping rough to move from outside a hospital during an operation that also saw their tents destroyed.

The eviction in central London, first covered by openDemocracy, sparked outrage when videos showed tents being thrown into the back of a bin lorry by officers working for Camden Council.

It happened in November, days after disgraced former home secretary Suella Braverman declared homelessness was a “lifestyle choice” and was reported to be planning a crackdown on tents in urban areas.

Anthony Sinclair was arrested after refusing to leave the area and while in custody had all of his belongings and his tent binned. Backed by human rights campaign group Liberty and outreach workers at Streets Kitchen, Sinclair threatened legal action against the Met chief on the grounds that dispersal orders should not prevent people from accessing the place where they live. Liberty also said the actions of police breached his human rights and put him and others at risk of harm.

Now, in a letter, Rowley’s lawyers have stated: “The commissioner accepts that the decisions were unlawful in the circumstances, in particular as regards the direction for your client to leave a place where he had been living for some time.”

The ‘section 35’ dispersal order was issued by the Met after concerns from University College Hospital (UCH) about anti-social behaviour from people living in the tents outside. The landmark case could now stop such orders being used against people experiencing homelessness who have been in the same area for an extended period of time.

Sinclair said: “The treatment that I and others received at the hands of police officers was inhumane.

“I was arrested for refusing to leave the place where I had been living for eight months, and while I was held for six hours in custody, my tent and other belongings were taken away and destroyed.

“I am glad to see this admission from the police that this was wrong, and I hope that no-one in the future receives the treatment that I did.”

The Met Police will also discuss compensation with Sinclair.

Elodie Berland, Streets Kitchen co-ordinator, said: “We were shocked, though not surprised, to witness the Metropolitan Police and Camden Council’s cruel actions attacking those at perhaps the lowest points of their lives experiencing homelessness.

“This was not an isolated incident where powers were used unlawfully to disperse people and destroy their possessions. This is sadly something we witness regularly.

“The Met’s acknowledgment that they indeed acted unlawfully and their apology are certainly a step in the right direction and highlights the need to always be observant and resist such cruel acts whenever they occur anywhere. Being homeless is not a crime – the fact that it exists should be.”

Camden’s Labour council initially said it had had “no role in enforcing this eviction” but, after looking into the matter further, vowed to carry out an “urgent investigation”. Its acting leader Pat Callaghan said at the time she was “deeply concerned” by the videos.

Liberty lawyer Lana Adamou said: “We all have the right to be treated with dignity and respect, whatever our circumstances. But increasingly, people living on the streets are being subject to unfair and degrading treatment by police, putting them at risk of harm.

“This government is criminalising poverty and homelessness, and police are misusing powers they have been given such as dispersal orders as a short-term fix to remove people from an area, instead of providing support or dealing with the root causes of these issues.

“We’re glad to see the police admit that their officers should not have treated our client or the other people affected in this way and that our client’s rights were breached, and we welcome the commissioner’s apology. This sends a clear message that dispersal orders should not be used against people living on the streets in this way.”

In their letter, Rowley’s lawyers said: “The MPS will be taking actions to ensure that in future, proper consideration is given to whether the Part 3 dispersals powers are appropriate for homeless persons.”

Chief superintendent Andy Carter, who is responsible for policing in Camden, said: “We don’t underestimate the impact of this incident on the man and will be meeting him to apologise in person, and listen to any views he might have.

“My officers will be taking part in further legal training around use of their dispersal powers so that we can ensure this does not happen again and that we use this tactic responsibly.”

Original article by at OpenDemocracy republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. 

Continue ReadingPolice admit eviction of homeless people who had tents destroyed was unlawful

Spy tech firm Palantir was shoo-in for NHS data deal, leaked emails suggest

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Original article by Lucas Amin republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

NHS sign

Exclusive: Labour and Tory MPs demand review as email chain appears to show health chiefs knew firm would win deal

US spy-tech firm Palantir was a shoo-in for a multi-million-pound NHS contract months before the deal was signed, emails obtained by openDemocracy appear to show.

The email exchange from 2020, in which senior NHS executives discussed the budget for a new national data platform, sees more than one person referring to Palantir as the recipient of the funding.

The firm, owned by billionaire Donald Trump donor Peter Thiel, has won five NHS deals in a row without tender. It is heavily tipped to secure a separate contract worth £480m later this year to build a new “operating system” for the NHS.

Conservative MP David Davis told openDemocracy it was “incredibly concerning that the NHS appears to have already taken decisions to award contracts to Palantir before the end of the procurement process”.

He added: “Allowing a company with Palantir’s provenance into the NHS needs careful scrutiny. It must not be railroaded through in secrecy.”

Palantir officially signed a £23.5m deal on 11 December 2020 to operate a full-scale “datastore” of NHS patient information, building on work carried out in the pandemic.

More than two months earlier, on 5 October 2020, an official from NHS England and NHS Improvement sent an email to the health service’s chief data and analytics officer Ming Tang with the subject line: “Update finances for data platform project [sic].”

The email provided detailed information on how NHS England could structure a budget for the project, and appears to refer to Palantir as the recipient of the funding, stating at one point: “This [the budget proposal] provides a total of £26m for Palantir higher than our previous ask of £24m.”

The exec, whose name is redacted, then asks for “an accountant to support us to get the budget transfers” before warning: “Delays here could lead to risk of non-delivery.”

Tang responded three hours later, writing: “We are trying to keep Palantir to 10-12M per year,” and told the unnamed person to prepare information on the “costs vs funding” of this.

She also said of the proposed budget: “I won’t send him yet – will share screen instead.” The name of the person she is referring to is redacted throughout the documents openDemocracy has seen, and it is unclear what their role is and which organisation they work for.

NHS England has denied any wrongdoing. A spokesperson said: “Clarifications were being sought from several potential suppliers as part of routine financial planning and commercial decision-making.” The spokesperson insisted NHS England had “acted in accordance with all relevant commercial and legal rules”.

But critics say the documents seen by openDemocracy are further proof that Palantir is favoured by NHS executives, despite its controversial links to Donald Trump and the CIA.

Cori Crider, the director of legal campaigners Foxglove, told openDemocracy: “This goes to show that a handful of officials have favoured them from the start.”

Surveillance software

Thiel, the “big money man” for Trump’s Make America Great Again campaign, founded Palantir in 2003 with funding from the CIA-controlled firm, In-Q-Tel. The firm’s clients include the US army, which uses its surveilling software to conduct drone strikes.

British healthcare campaigners have questioned whether a company with Palantir’s history should be entrusted to work in the NHS. In 2021, the government promised not to enter any new contracts with Palantir without consulting the public after openDemocracy and Foxglove took legal action against the Department for Health and Social Care.

But earlier this year an openDemocracy investigation revealed the NHS, seemingly in breach of that pledge, had ordered all English hospitals to share confidential patient information with Palantir.

Parliament must scrutinise why Palantir is being singled out to deliver sensitive data servicesLabour MP Rachael Maskell, vice chair of the health select committee

Health service insiders believe Palantir has now been lined up to win a £480m NHS contract later this year to run a “Federated Data Platform”. Final tenders for the platform, which will act as a new “operating system” for the NHS, were due to be submitted last week.

Jo Maugham, the director of Good Law Project, told openDemocracy: “It’s widely believed that Palantir is being lined up for this hugely valuable NHS data contract – despite concerns over what it will do with patient data. These emails support those concerns.”

There are further concerns about the usefulness of Palantir’s software, with 11 hospital trusts either pausing or suspending trials of the company’s Foundry database. Crider said: “Several real-life pilots of Palantir software at hospitals appear to have failed. We’ve called on Parliament to investigate the deal and get to the bottom of the failed pilots before it’s too late.”

Labour MP Rachael Maskell, vice chair of the health select committee, also called for more parliamentary scrutiny. She told openDemocracy: “Before another deal is signed with Palantir, Parliament must have the opportunity to scrutinise the financial operations of NHS England and the way it is handing out contracts, issues concerning public consent over data use, and why Palantir is being singled out to deliver sensitive data services.”

The National Data Guardian

Six weeks after NHS data chief Tang wrote about “trying to keep Palantir to 10-12M a year”, she met the government’s patient privacy champion, Dame Fiona Caldicott, who was then probing the health service’s relationship with Palantir.

A document of Tang’s ‘talking points’ for the 19 November meeting, disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act and dated the previous day, suggested no provider had yet been chosen for the contract: “We have been working with Palantir to continue to build out the modules that we think are critical to our response and to package up the code and data models. And we are currently in an open procurement process for a longer-term solution.”

Caldicott, who has since died, was at the time serving as the UK’s first statutory National Data Guardian and was a hugely influential figure in medical confidentiality. In 2016, her review of the government’s botched attempt to reuse patient data without consent led to the failure of its care.data project.

Caldicott’s successor at the National Data Guardian, Dr Nicola Byrne, warned NHS England last year that its new data platform “must avoid common pitfalls around trust and transparency that have frustrated previous initiatives”.

An NHS England spokesperson told openDemocracy: “The description of the procurement process [in Tang’s talking points] was accurate – it was ongoing, and was being conducted on an open basis within a transparent government procurement framework.”

Palantir told openDemocracy it could not comment on NHS procurement issues.

Read the emails in full

Original article by Lucas Amin republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Continue ReadingSpy tech firm Palantir was shoo-in for NHS data deal, leaked emails suggest

Failing UK anti-pollution scheme needs ‘complete rethink’, experts say

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Original article by Adam Ramsay republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Government accused of ‘deliberately undermining’ green policies after slashing financial penalties for big polluters

Scientists and campaigners have slammed the government’s decision to hand unexpectedly large subsidies to the biggest polluters – making it far cheaper to pollute in the UK than in the EU.

The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) requires major polluters to have a ‘permit’ for each tonne of CO2 they emit. They are given some for free but have to buy more on the open market – receiving fewer free ones every year to encourage them to slash their emissions.

But the government has quietly announced changes to the scheme that will see polluting industries given far more free permits than anticipated, according to a new report in the Financial Times.

The move means emitting a tonne of carbon in the UK now costs big polluters just £47, compared to £75 in the EU. It comes weeks after openDemocracy revealed the government gave free permits to a controversial Russian cargo airline the day after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Leo Murray, an expert in emissions trading, told openDemocracy that the decision to slash the cost of polluting “should trigger a complete rethink of the entire scheme”, which he branded “the worst possible way to price carbon in our economy”.

The ETS, which replaced a similar EU scheme after Brexit, has been beset with difficulties. openDemocracy’s previous investigations have found that some of the biggest polluters were handed vast de-facto subsidies under the scheme, while others – including highly polluting incineration firms and owners of private jets – were exempt entirely.

Over-allocating permits can only be read as a deliberate move to undermine the shift away from fossil fuels

Leo Murray, We Are Possible

Murray, who is the director of the environmental campaign group We Are Possible, said: “It is so telling that the UK can’t even let the most market-friendly climate policy approach in the whole toolbox do its work without deliberately intervening to make sure it is totally ineffective at reducing emissions.

“Over-allocation of permits was the biggest reason why the EU ETS, which our own scheme is a pale shadow of, failed to reduce emissions for most of the first phases of its existence, so repeating this mistake can only be read as a deliberate move to undermine the economy-wide shift away from fossil fuels.”

Murray’s frustration was echoed by Natalie Bennett, a Green Party member of the House of Lords, who said: “We heard much talk, during the [Brexit] referendum campaign and subsequently, of a so-called ‘Green Brexit’… The hollowness of that claim, the reality that we could – and do – have far lower environmental and climate standards is today being driven home with great force.

Bennett continued: “The EU is continuing to – if not quickly enough – advance in climate action and on the protection of nature and human health, while the UK falls further and further behind.”

The EU is continuing to advance in climate action, while the UK falls further and further behind

Natalie Bennett, Green Party

Aaron Thierry, a climate expert at Cardiff University, added that the government’s decision to cut the cost of polluting shows that “the UK is continuing to backslide on its climate pledges”.

He added: “That this is happening even as we see extreme temperatures around the world topple all-time records, with southern Europe’s grain harvest down 60%, India forced to ban rice exports and fires around the Mediterranean, is an absolute scandal. Rishi Sunak is a danger to us all.”

Earlier this month, thousands of openDemocracy readers wrote to their MP to call on the government to stop giving away free pollution permits to big polluters. You can join them here, or sign our open letter to the government here.

Original article by Adam Ramsay republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Continue ReadingFailing UK anti-pollution scheme needs ‘complete rethink’, experts say

North-east mayor slams Starmer’s green rollback after quitting Labour

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Labour leader Keir Starmer (centre) with then US secretary of state Mike Pompeo (R) and then US ambassador to Britain, Woody Johnson, in London, 21 July 2020.
Labour leader Keir Starmer (centre) with then US secretary of state Mike Pompeo (R) and then US ambassador to Britain, Woody Johnson, in London, 21 July 2020. Pompeo said in 2019 “we will do our level best” to stop Jeremy Corbyn getting elected. (Photo: US State Department)

Original article by Adam Ramsay republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Exclusive: Jamie Driscoll says some voters think Starmer is ‘a liar’ and backing ULEZ would win votes

The ex-Labour mayor of the UK’s poorest region has slammed Keir Starmer for watering down the party’s environmental commitments.

In an exclusive interview with openDemocracy in his office in Newcastle, North of Tyne mayor Jamie Driscoll said: “There is no contradiction between protecting us from the climate emergency, and prosperity. In fact, if you fail to protect us from the climate emergency, you’re going to lose all prosperity in the future.”

Labour’s leadership has blamed its failure to take Boris Johnson’s former constituency of Uxbridge and South Ruislip in the recent by-election on London mayor Sadiq Khan’s plan to expand the city’s ‘ultra-low emission zone’ (ULEZ) into the area. But Driscoll, who dramatically quit Labour last month, said the party would have won the seat if it had stood by the scheme and campaigned against Tory cuts to bus services in the capital.

“Labour would have won the Uxbridge by-election if they had said: ‘Yes, it [ULEZ] is a problem, because the Tories have cut public transport in London – if we had better buses here, which we will do, you’ll be better off,’” he said. “That would have won them it… A lot of people who voted Green because they were outraged by Labour’s abandonment [of ULEZ] probably would have voted Labour.”

Labour’s candidate in the by-election had publicly opposed the ULEZ expansion during the campaign; the Green candidate won 893 votes, more than the margin separating Labour from the Tories.

Driscoll also argued that politicians’ failure to take climate breakdown seriously contributed to falling trust in politics: “We’ve got a climate juggernaut hurtling towards us, and [politicians] are saying ‘some people in outer London didn’t like ULEZ so let’s just burn the planet because we need their votes’. Almost any rational person, which is the majority of the electorate, I still believe, would say: ‘It doesn’t add up any more.’”

Deselected by Labour

Driscoll is currently mayor of the North of Tyne region, which extends northwards from Newcastle to the Scottish border. He has successfully negotiated an expansion of the region, meaning that when the post comes up for re-election next year, it will also cover areas of north-east England south of the Tyne, including Sunderland, Gateshead and County Durham.

With an engineering background and his own software business, Driscoll was first elected as a councillor in Newcastle in 2018. He was quickly chosen by Labour members to be the party’s candidate for North of Tyne mayor when the post was created in 2019, beating the longstanding leader of Newcastle Council in the selection. Calling himself a “pragmatic socialist”, he is generally identified with the left of the party, and was supported by Momentum.

But when Labour announced its shortlist of candidates for the mayor of the newly expanded North East seat, Driscoll’s name was notably absent. Party insiders briefed that he had been ‘purged’ because he once spoke at an event alongside the filmmaker Ken Loach, who was himself banned from Labour because of his prior support for the Left Unity party. While much of the media parroted this line, a simpler explanation is that he was binned because of his left-wing views, and as revenge for defeating one of the party’s big beasts.

Driscoll’s deselection was slammed by politicians across the political spectrum, with Labour mayors Andy Burnham and Steve Rotherham praising his approach to the role. His interview with openDemocracy is the first time he has so clearly attacked the Labour leadership since standing down from the party.

Speaking about Starmer’s recent equivocation on previous climate spending commitments, Driscoll characterised the Labour position as: “We might put £28bn into tackling the climate emergency at some point in the future if the fiscal rule allows it – a fiscal rule which we decided on, which is not real and has no legal basis in anything, on the basis that we just think it makes us look a bit more credible to some people.”

If you do a vox pop and say ‘do you think Keir Starmer keeps his word?’ you would have no one say ‘yes’

He added: “There is an underlying reality to people’s lives. Either your bus comes, or it doesn’t. Either you can get an operation, or you can’t. These are the things that are concrete and in the real world. The climate emergency is absolutely one of those.

“The science is uncontroversial – we already now have enough CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that even if they remain stable at that level, global heating is going to continue and we will pass way beyond 1.5°C. Even if we live in a magic world where no tipping points kick in, that will lead to mass people movements and crop failures around the world.”

For Labour’s leadership to respond to this reality by saying “yeah, but we need a fiscal rule” isn’t good enough, he argued. Criticising his former party for saying it won’t cancel oil and gas licences recently issued by the Tories, and for comments Starmer reportedly made to shadow climate change secretary Ed Miliband that he “hates tree huggers” (which he denied) and isn’t “into hope and change”, Driscoll asked: “What are they there for?”

‘Dishonest’

Speaking more broadly, Driscoll said some people perceive Starmer as a “liar”. He claimed: “If you would go out and do a vox pop and say ‘do you think Keir Starmer keeps his word?’ you would have no one say ‘yes’. Or some people think, ‘yes, he’s a liar but he’s not as much of a liar as the Tories’ – you know, lesser of two evils. But the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil.”

Referring to an event during Starmer’s Labour leadership campaign, Driscoll added: “I interviewed him in 2019. He said that you have to inspire people to party unity – you don’t discipline people to party unity.” Referring to Starmer’s promises at the time, Driscoll said: “Ten pledges, has he kept any of them? I don’t think he has. And the public know that.”

He added: “Regardless of what people say in politics, regardless of their ideologies, there is an objective reality. And when politicians forget that, they find themselves unable to tell the truth. The reason they are unable to tell the truth is that what they propose does not tally with reality.”

He also claimed Starmer and shadow health secretary Wes Streeting are unduly influenced by big business, pointing to Streeting’s donations from a hedge fund manager heavily invested in private healthcare and Starmer rowing back on commitments to tax Big Tech after a meeting with Google. “To abandon that,” he said, “shows you in whose interests they are operating.”

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Original article by Adam Ramsay republished from OpenDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Continue ReadingNorth-east mayor slams Starmer’s green rollback after quitting Labour