Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Party.

[takno]

I think this "contributing to a massive housing crisis" is just an excuse made up after the fact by Brexiters to justify their views, and try and make the liberal left sympathetic to them. I really can't see that EU citizens are the single most important factor in this. What proportion of people are EU citizens? Isn't it 1 in 20? Scarcely a huge proportion. High property prices and high rents are far more significant, I suspect.

More to the point, net immigration is higher now than it was under the EU, so the large exodus of EU nationals from the UK hasn't changed the situation, and hasn't led to any easing in the housing crisis.

We choose to have the level of immigration we have now, just as by not implementing the allowable restrictions under the EU we effectively chose the level of immigration we had then. It's just that the people making the choice have been lying about the reasons for it.

 

[nw1]

What's wrong with that?

Where does the notion come from that people who voted to leave the EU dislike Europe or its individual nations and people?

People who campaigned for Brexit have effectively delivered a sleight on (non-Irish) EU citizens by blocking them from coming to the UK.

 

[ainsworth74]

I think we're wandering a little bit off the topic of Rishi and the Tories in general to the specifics of Brexit which is subject of its own thread. Appreciate there is a lot of overlap but I think we've reached the point where it's better done on the Brexit thread at this point

 

[WatcherZero]

Tobias Ellwood has resigned as head of the Defence Committee due to his video praising the Talibans leadership. That was an obvious own goal but otherwise hes actually been a pretty good chairman and Russia Hawk really challenging the government on procurement and lack thereof and pushing for more support for Ukraine.

 

[weeklycommuter]

Clear from the debate on 13 September in Westminster Hall the Conservative Government are not popular with their own backbench MPs over the ticket office closures see Mark Francois, Priti Patel and others

Parliamentlive.tv

Westminster Hall

www.parliamentlive.tv

I agree with Mark Francois that the ticket office closure proposals should be binned but I assume that having started the rail ticket office consultation process the Conservative Government are stuck with what has become a horror show for them including during the Conservative Party Conference until the Transport Focus report on Halloween.

 

[nw1]

Clear from the debate on 13 September in Westminster Hall the Conservative Government are not popular with their own backbench MPs over the ticket office closures see Mark Francois, Priti Patel and others

Parliamentlive.tv

Westminster Hall

www.parliamentlive.tv

I agree with Mark Francois that the ticket office closure proposals should be binned but I assume that having started the rail ticket office consultation process the Conservative Government are stuck with what has become a horror show for them including during the Conservative Party Conference until the Transport Focus report on Halloween.

It says something about how ill-thought-out it was when the party's right-wingers are criticising this policy!

 

[jon0844]

Clear from the debate on 13 September in Westminster Hall the Conservative Government are not popular with their own backbench MPs over the ticket office closures see Mark Francois, Priti Patel and others

Parliamentlive.tv

Westminster Hall

www.parliamentlive.tv

I agree with Mark Francois that the ticket office closure proposals should be binned .. (cut)

At the very least, kick the plan down the road until you can determine how to adapt ticket offices to be more like visitor centres/accessibility meeting points or whatever. Accept that closing almost all of them is NOT a good idea for clearly obvious reasons (as I assume the 700k+ responses will demonstrate).

Then at least wait until you've overhauled ticketing to simplify things, so that people will barely need TVMs let alone ticket offices to do basic travel. That allows staff to concentrate on providing customer support and route planning, and maintaining a presence to offer a level of security for the station (including assurance to passengers that they're not alone) and even being close enough to do suicide interventions etc.

 

[najaB]

At the very least, kick the plan down the road until you can determine how to adapt ticket offices to be more like visitor centres/accessibility meeting points or whatever. Accept that closing almost all of them is NOT a good idea for clearly obvious reasons (as I assume the 700k+ responses will demonstrate).

Then at least wait until you've overhauled ticketing to simplify things, so that people will barely need TVMs let alone ticket offices to do basic travel. That allows staff to concentrate on providing customer support and route planning, and maintaining a presence to offer a level of security for the station (including assurance to passengers that they're not alone) and even being close enough to do suicide interventions etc.

A well thought out, reasonable, rational and sensible plan.

So no chance it will ever happen.

 

[jon0844]

A well thought out, reasonable, rational and sensible plan.

So no chance it will ever happen.

Indeed! Knee-jerk short-termism decision making is the order of the day. And has been the norm for decades in politics.

BUT we do have an election looming so issues like this and the pay disputes with multiple unions will likely need to be addressed one way or another.

 

[The Ham]

There's starting to be reports that RAAC impacted hospitals may have been removed from upgrade lists as recently as 2020 (whilst Sunak was chancellor):

Rishi Sunak blocked rebuild of hospitals riddled with crumbling concrete

Exclusive: Delay to work on five buildings in 2020 led to warnings of ‘catastrophic’ safety risk

www.theguardian.com

Rishi Sunak blocked plans to rebuild five hospitals riddled with crumbling concrete three years ago, prompting warnings of a “catastrophic” risk to patient safety, the Guardian has learned.

Just two of the seven hospital rebuilding projects requested by the Department for Health were signed off by the Treasury at the 2020 spending review when Sunak was chancellor and Steve Barclay, now the health secretary, was his chief secretary.
The other five were finally added to the new hospitals programme in May, when the government amended the list, but it has meant a three-year delay in starting to rebuild dangerous hospitals. In their most recent risk assessments, all five have been graded at “catastrophic” risk with warnings that an incident is “likely”.

The five hospitals are Frimley Park hospital, in Surrey; Airedale general hospital, Keighley, West Yorkshire; Hinchingbrooke hospital, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire; Leighton hospital, Cheshire; and the Queen Elizabeth hospital in King’s Lynn, Norfolk.
The revelations will revive the row over reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) which dominated the start of the new parliamentary session, with Sunak and his education secretary, Gillian Keegan, coming under fire for uncertainty and disruption over crumbling concrete in England’s schools.

The 2023-4 risk register of Frimley Park hospital, which serves Michael Gove’s constituency, reported widespread crumbling across its buildings. It warned: “There is a risk of injury or death to patients, visitors, and staff due either to delamination of a roof plank whereby a part of it falls, or a sheer collapse with no warning due to limited bearing on the concrete support beam.”

A government spokesperson said: “These claims are untrue. The funding was not rejected by the Treasury, or the chancellor and chief secretary at the time, and there was an agreement to link these decisions into the wider new hospitals programme.”

They added that the full extent of Raac issues were not known until 2022 following an independent report by engineering consultants Mott MacDonald.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

There's starting to be reports that RAAC impacted hospitals may have been removed from upgrade lists as recently as 2020 (whilst Sunak was chancellor):

Rishi Sunak blocked rebuild of hospitals riddled with crumbling concrete

Exclusive: Delay to work on five buildings in 2020 led to warnings of ‘catastrophic’ safety risk

www.theguardian.com

I guess the question here is, to what extent was the RAAC problem understood in 2020? I have to admit I'm struggling to find out information about what was known when, but it does seem from some reports (including the Guardian article you quoted) that it is possibly only within the past year that engineers have come to understand how dangerous these buildings may be - hence why there's a sudden headline panic about an issue that virtually no-one had heard of 2 months ago. If that is the case, then the decisions of the Treasury in 2020 may well have made sense, given what was known at the time. After all, why spend loads of money replacing hospitals that everyone (mistakenly) believes are safe when there are so many other calls on Government spending! Of course, subsequent events do appear to have shown that, with hindsight, it would have been better to go ahead and spend that money.

I think we really need more information about what was known when before we can judge the decisions that Sunak and others made in 2020. (Particularly when most of 2020 was spent with everyone in a lockdown-panic over Covid!)

 

[najaB]

I guess the question here is, to what extent was the RAAC problem understood in 2020?

It's been know to be problematic since at least 2016, to the extent that the government was compiling a list of where it was used, if not before.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

It's been know to be problematic since at least 2016, to the extent that the government was compiling a list of where it was used, if not before.

Sure, but knowing that something is problematic - sufficiently problematic that it's worth compiling a list of where it's used - isn't the same thing as knowing that it's dangerous and in sufficiently urgent need of replacement that you must immediately stop people using a building.

 

[JamesT]

Sure, but knowing that something is problematic - sufficiently problematic that it's worth compiling a list of where it's used - isn't the same thing as knowing that it's dangerous and in sufficiently urgent need of replacement that you must stop people using a building.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...who-knew-what-when-crumbling-concrete-england Has a timeline of various times where RAAC has been considered.

April 2020 – SCOSS published findings from surveys of buildings that revealed Raac beams suffered noticeably from water ingress, cracking, spalling and surface corrosion. The expert who assessed the buildings said they “require rectification” but there was not “an enhanced risk of sudden shear failure”.

Doesn’t read to me “replace it all now”.

 

[The Ham]

Sure, but knowing that something is problematic - sufficiently problematic that it's worth compiling a list of where it's used - isn't the same thing as knowing that it's dangerous and in sufficiently urgent need of replacement that you must immediately stop people using a building.

Although you didn't ever get to the point that a building is about to fall down any second.

This provides some background:

https://www.fhft.nhs.uk/your-hospitals/frimley-park/raac-planks-at-frimley-park/

Including the section on past development due to the known issues:

We have run an extensive programme of maintenance and repair at Frimley Park for more than ten years. The most significant development was replacing the external roof covering in 2012, at a cost of £5 million, which offers substantial protection against RAAC deterioration

 

[najaB]

Sure, but knowing that something is problematic - sufficiently problematic that it's worth compiling a list of where it's used - isn't the same thing as knowing that it's dangerous and in sufficiently urgent need of replacement that you must immediately stop people using a building.

That is true. But, given that the main factor in its eventual failure is a lack of maintenance, it's unfortunate (at the least) that the government took the decision to cut back on maintenance budgets.

 

[HSTEd]

It is likely that the reason that RAAC School rebuilding never really got funded is the projections for numbers of school children.

Total state funded school numbers are predicted to fall from 7.8m today to 7.6m by 2025, and then start tanking at 100k+ per year.

If RAAC had not become a catastrophic problem for a couple more years then no RAAC rebuilds would have been required at all because there would be huge surplus capacity in the school system.
The affected buildings could just have been condemned without replacement.

As it is, a bunch of new school buildings will be built, and in a decade we will have huge numbers of unused buildings lying derelict.

 

[Busaholic]

It is likely that the reason that RAAC School rebuilding never really got funded is the projections for numbers of school children.

Total state funded school numbers are predicted to fall from 7.8m today to 7.6m by 2025, and then start tanking at 100k+ per year.

If RAAC had not become a catastrophic problem for a couple more years then no RAAC rebuilds would have been required at all because there would be huge surplus capacity in the school system.
The affected buildings could just have been condemned without replacement.

As it is, a bunch of new school buildings will be built, and in a decade we will have huge numbers of unused buildings lying derelict.

That assumes school numbers will fall uniformly across the country, which is not the case. Some areas will even see a rise in pupil numbers. The RAAC affected schools also appear to be over concentrated in certain localities, like Essex for instance, which would mean pupil numbers having to decrease drastically for there to be sufficient capacity in other buildings, unless you're suggesting school children be bussed to Herts or Suffolk, or perhaps ferried to Kent!

 

[The Ham]

It is likely that the reason that RAAC School rebuilding never really got funded is the projections for numbers of school children.

Total state funded school numbers are predicted to fall from 7.8m today to 7.6m by 2025, and then start tanking at 100k+ per year.

If RAAC had not become a catastrophic problem for a couple more years then no RAAC rebuilds would have been required at all because there would be huge surplus capacity in the school system.
The affected buildings could just have been condemned without replacement.

As it is, a bunch of new school buildings will be built, and in a decade we will have huge numbers of unused buildings lying derelict.

Not necessarily.

Whilst the number of children in school will fall (based on 100k/year) by 2050 about 1/3 fewer would be in schools.

Given that there's 22,000 schools the rebuilding of an extra (say) 500 schools over the past 10 years would have an impact on 2.25% of schools.

There's a fairly reasonable chance that other schools could need replacing over the next 25 years to compensate for those extra schools being built.

Also you're assuming that to cope with a 1/3 reduction in school children will result in a 1/3 reduction in the number of school sites. Chances are (due to factors including the legal duty to bus school kids where there are 3 miles from their school for over 8's or 2 miles for those under 8) schools are more likely to reduce the number of classes in many schools rather than close schools.

A primary school with a 3 form entry could easily reduce to 2 form entry. Yes it would result in 7 extra classrooms, which otherwise would be unused, however they could use some of that space for other things, for example early years (aged 3+) provision (obviously early years provision would also reduce, but being able to drop all your kids off at one site is a great advantage for parents, meaning other locations may not be viable).

Other uses could be dedicated lesson teaching space (for example to allow more food based lessons), office/staff space, better library space, dedicated SEN space, or probably about 20 other things that schools would love to be able to do but they just don't have the space for.

As buildings reach end of life then the space would be removed. However the costs of an empty room are fairly small if it's only seeing light usage. To the extent that you'd only really see enough of a saving to justify demolition after quite a few years.

 

[Enthusiast]

Well, for a starters, the UK is in Europe, as I keep saying. So are Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Serbia and Albania, amongst others. It is geographically illiterate to claim that countries not in the EU are automatically not in Europe. So by definition, everyone with a home in the UK (or Serbia or Switzerland, etc) also has a home in Europe. "Europe" is a geographical concept, and has a different meaning to "the EU".

Which is er... exactly what I said.

 

[The Ham]

Not necessarily.

Whilst the number of children in school will fall (based on 100k/year) by 2050 about 1/3 fewer would be in schools.

Given that there's 22,000 schools the rebuilding of an extra (say) 500 schools over the past 10 years would have an impact on 2.25% of schools.

There's a fairly reasonable chance that other schools could need replacing over the next 25 years to compensate for those extra schools being built.

Also you're assuming that to cope with a 1/3 reduction in school children will result in a 1/3 reduction in the number of school sites. Chances are (due to factors including the legal duty to bus school kids where there are 3 miles from their school for over 8's or 2 miles for those under 8) schools are more likely to reduce the number of classes in many schools rather than close schools.

A primary school with a 3 form entry could easily reduce to 2 form entry. Yes it would result in 7 extra classrooms, which otherwise would be unused, however they could use some of that space for other things, for example early years (aged 3+) provision (obviously early years provision would also reduce, but being able to drop all your kids off at one site is a great advantage for parents, meaning other locations may not be viable).

Other uses could be dedicated lesson teaching space (for example to allow more food based lessons), office/staff space, better library space, dedicated SEN space, or probably about 20 other things that schools would love to be able to do but they just don't have the space for.

As buildings reach end of life then the space would be removed. However the costs of an empty room are fairly small if it's only seeing light usage. To the extent that you'd only really see enough of a saving to justify demolition after quite a few years.

Also whilst live births doesn't equal school population is a fairly good indicator, if you take the 11 years prior to any given year (to provide a fair estimate of school aged children).

It you look at 2022 (so school aged children from 2027) was lower than 5 years previously (school children for 2022) by about 375,000 it should also be noted that this is the same as 11 years prior (school aged children from 2016).

However the school year for 2010 is 440,000 lower than the 2027 school year (and about 800,000 lower than 2022).

Therefore the numbers within school years can fluctuate a fair amount over a fairly short timeframe, so I'm not sure that the fall is likely to be sustained to end up with the numbers getting to 2/3 of the current value without some significant change.

 

[Yew]

So why does the UK have to be different? Why are France and Germany not so motivated to block people from other parts of the European continent from living there? To me it's just UK exceptionalism.

Because the Conservative Party used EU legislation to justify unpopular decisions that benefited their donors. Unfortunately 'technically the government can do things to mitigate this whilst keeping within EU law' doesn't make as good of a headline as 'Brussels beurracrats block British business'. As an example France was under the same regulations, but it's remarkable how often they seemed to choose French suppliers for their rail equipment, as they recognise the economic benefits of domestic production, whereas in the UK these benefits were disregarded in favour of the lowest list price.

I think this "contributing to a massive housing crisis" is just an excuse made up after the fact by Brexiters to justify their views, and try and make the liberal left sympathetic to them. I really can't see that EU citizens are the single most important factor in this. What proportion of UK residents are EU citizens? Isn't it 1 in 20? Scarcely a huge proportion. High property prices and high rents are far more significant, I suspect.

Turns out that if you sell off all the council houses without any protections from slumlords picking them up down the line, then forbid local authorities from building more, you start to have problems. If you then cast the building of new houses into the private sector, then the housebuilding companies do what is best for them and their stakeholders, rather than for the good of the population. If that means fewer houses built every year, and higher prices, then that is the cost of lazzaris fair free market capitalism.

 

[jon0844]

It beggars believe that nobody seems to want to stop 'right to buy', which is so massively abused. Underfunded council's really struggle to do the necessary checks to stop fraud - and ultimately, that's yet another property taken of the council register and now owned by a private landlord to profit from.

At the end of the day, no Government seems to want to start some huge housebuilding project because the developers don't want to flood the market and see prices fall. Nor do MPs or anyone who makes profit in property.

They can talk all day long about housing shortages and sympathise with all those struggling to get on the housing ladder, but they have no incentive to change things.

 

[brad465]

Who elected Rupert Murdoch and his team?

Murdoch executives ‘told Sunak not to resign after Partygate fine’

Then chancellor reportedly nearly stepped down last year after breaking Covid-19 lockdown laws in 2020, according to new book

www.theguardian.com

Rishi Sunak was persuaded not to quit as chancellor over his fine for breaking lockdown laws after an intervention by executives working for media mogul Rupert Murdoch, it has been claimed.

The claim is detailed in a book by the Telegraph’s political editor, Ben Riley-Smith, and published by the newspaper’s website on Friday.

It is the latest report to suggest that Sunak was on the verge of resigning after he and Boris Johnson were fined in April 2022 for attending the then prime minister’s birthday celebration in Downing Street in June 2020.

According to the paper, Sunak shared a draft resignation statement with allies, including some who worked for Murdoch such as former Tory leader and Times columnist Lord Hague.

It also reported that Sunak’s potential resignation was discussed with Mas Siddiqui, an old friend and director at Murdoch’s News Corp.

But the paper said that it is not known if a message was passed directly to Sunak from Murdoch.

Originally reported in the Telegraph.

 

[najaB]

Who elected Rupert Murdoch and his team?

I think you've got backwards. Isn't it more common to ask who Murdoch, et. al. managed to get elected?

 

[317 forever]

Holding both the Tamworth and the Mid Bedfordshire by-elections on October 19th will mean only 1 set of bad headlines for the Tories, not 2. That said, because there is a more divided opposition in Mid Beds, with both Labour and the LibDems thinking they have a chance and therefore campaigning, it could enable the Tories to slip through the middle and hang on.

Admittedly the Rutherglen & Hamilton West by-election is on a different date, October 5th, but here the Tories have never been in the running.

 

[jfollows]

Survation poll for The Observer today reported at https://www.theguardian.com/politic...eck-mid-bedfordshire-race-poll-nadine-dorries for Mid Bedfordshire shows Labour 29%, Conservative 29%, LibDem 22% (undecided voters excluded), or Labour 20%, Conservative 20%, LibDem 15% including undecided voters.
"Labour Together" is reported as saying that the poll shows 29% of voters will be voting tactically.
This may well show that LibDem voters will switch to Labour in the coming weeks to ensure a Conservative defeat. It's what I'd do - if it were Tatton then I'd vote for my second choice to get rid of Esther McVey, and indeed that's probably what I'll be doing at the next opportunity.

 

[Gloster]

Who elected Rupert Murdoch and his team?

Murdoch executives ‘told Sunak not to resign after Partygate fine’

Then chancellor reportedly nearly stepped down last year after breaking Covid-19 lockdown laws in 2020, according to new book

www.theguardian.com

Originally reported in the Telegraph.

It is democracy in action: one man, one vote. And the man with the vote is Rupert Murdoch.

It is convenient that it comes when Parliament isn’t sitting, so no risk of Sunak being harried at Prime Minister’s Question Time (if he turned up). And it is a week until the party conference season starts, two to the Conservative conference and three to the Labour one. So they will just say that it is old news if anyone brings it up.

 

[baz962]

Holding both the Tamworth and the Mid Bedfordshire by-elections on October 19th will mean only 1 set of bad headlines for the Tories, not 2. That said, because there is a more divided opposition in Mid Beds, with both Labour and the LibDems thinking they have a chance and therefore campaigning, it could enable the Tories to slip through the middle and hang on.

Admittedly the Rutherglen & Hamilton West by-election is on a different date, October 5th, but here the Tories have never been in the running.

Yea mid beds is my area and I'm really struggling to decide labour or lib Dems.

 

[nw1]

Yea mid beds is my area and I'm really struggling to decide labour or lib Dems.

I think people really need to watch the opinion polls. Hopefully one of the two will take the lead soon.