Conservative Party
Is Stealth NHS Privatisation Happening in Plain Sight?
Is the NHS really being privatised on the quiet, before enough of us realise it?
It remains a taxation-funded, largely publicly-provided, universal, free at the point of use service, notionally based on need not the ability to pay, in line with its founding principles. And you can’t buy shares in the NHS – a million miles away from the situation in our privatised utilities and public transport providers.
International health system comparisons and league tables have consistently shown that the NHS is a leader in terms of efficiency, cost, equity of access, not financially charging patients, and not damaging them financially by the cost of care or avoiding care due to fear of cost.
That said, the World Health Organisation defines privatisation as occurring “where non-government bodies become increasingly involved in the financing or provision of health care services”. Use that yardstick and the situation warrants further scrutiny.
Services such as dentistry, community pharmacy, and eye testing have been provided by the private sector for many years without considerable pushback (although the recent crisis in the provision of NHS dentistry and a contract that makes it unviable for dentists to deliver at any kind of scale has raised doubts about this).
Support services such as catering, car parking, cleaning, security and maintenance, and records storage have been outsourced for years – although not without concerns regarding their value for money, quality, competence, or comparison with traditional in-house provision (not to mention NHS frontline staff being fined for parking at their own workplace and companies profiting from patients or their families visiting hospital).
Legislation in recent decades has created an internal market with a 'purchaser-provider split’: the “any qualified provider” clause in Andrew Lansley’s 2012 Health and Care Act made it compulsory for the Government to put NHS contracts out to competitive tender. This has since been repealed with the creation of 42 "integrated care systems" and the Alternative Provider Medical Services Contract, enabling primary and community services to be bid for by non-NHS providers.
NHS trusts are also saddled with debts from the private finance initiative (PFI) for building and maintenance of facilities. In 2022, the Guardian found that 101 trusts owe £50 billion between them and several are spending more than 10% of their revenue on servicing PFI contracts. There are numerous ongoing disputes between NHS trusts and providers about the quality of the contractors’ work and plans when the contracts come to an end.
Despite all of this, respected health policy think tanks such as the King’s Fund have pointed out that notwithstanding the growth in clinical contracts being awarded to the private sector after the 2012 Act, they have often been of low value (with a total spend of only about 7 % of NHS expenditure).
Meanwhile, adult social care – including personal care at home or long-term care in residential and nursing homes – unlike the NHS, has long been rationed by highly restrictive eligibility assessment. It is far from universal and is also subject to means testing and personal payments. Cuts to local government funding, competing pressures on councils, repeated failures of government to provide social care funding solutions, and the crisis in the poorly paid social care workforce, have seen a growing gap between requests for support and provision.
Earlier this month, it was reported by the director of the Centre for Healthcare in the Public Interest that private equity funds and US health corporations were taking more than £1 billion in profit annually from their stakes in care homes for older people and homes for looked-after children. These facilities are currently essential to service provision and represent a stable opportunity for return on investment.
It was also reported that half of the UK's sexual assault referral centres were backed by private equity and that companies had made several millions in dividends during the past two years, not only from these centres but also from healthcare provision for people in custody and secure units.
Around one in three inpatient mental health beds, and the majority of addiction, drug and alcohol rehabilitation facilities, are now private sector provided. Local government cuts have also impacted capacity in such services.
This is despite a major evidence review this year in the Lancet, which found that research in the past 40 years had shown that an increasing aggregate of private sector provision has been linked with worse outcomes for patients. It concluded that the evidence for the benefits of privatisation was weak.
A review by the British Medical Journal last year of the literature on private equity investment had shown that a growing involvement of private equity in all healthcare settings was associated with higher and harmful costs to patients and “mixed to harmful” impacts on care quality.
The Guardian also reported this month that private hospitals are now carrying out 10% of all elective NHS operations (a record high). The biggest areas among the 1.67 million NHS-funded operations carried out in the private sector were in routine orthopaedic surgery, eye surgery and dermatology – a 29% increase in the numbers reported in 2019.
The Independent Health Provider Network praised the increasing access and choice for patients as helping to reduce waiting lists (as part of the NHS referral to treatment scheme).
The Centre for Healthcare in the Public Interest has also reported that cataract operations being conducted in the private sector are also being clinically coded as of higher complexity than those in the NHS – with more complex codes attracting a higher price.
Meanwhile, between 2019 and 2022, the proportion of British citizens taking out private medical insurance nearly doubled from 12% to 22%, bringing the UK more in line with other industrialised nations from a historic low uptake.
Again, the insurance industry is pleased with this progress. Last year, both Aviva and Axa celebrated the opportunities this provided and the growth in their market share.
We know that more than one third of patients having private sector surgery are now paying out of their own pocket, even without any personal insurance policy, and that this too has seen a steep rise in recent years.
The pandemic caused a sharp rise in privatisation tendencies.
The National Audit Office published a series of reports on pandemic procurement, showing tens of billions of pounds squandered on personal protective equipment – much of it unusable, on test and trace, apps, ventilators, and consultancy contracts often from unqualified and unsuitable commercial organisations with insufficient scrutiny and transparency and poor value for money.
As Byline Times has reported on extensively, some of the individuals and organisations who won contracts had links to the Conservative Party or were known donors, with a 'VIP lane’ created to facilitate this.
The private hospital sector was also given an additional £2 billion of government money between 2020 and 2023 to help with pandemic elective care, but its activity continued to be dominated by private work.
There is also the issue reported by Byline Times of several MPs or peers holding shares in private healthcare providers, or private equity firms who fund them and lobbying on their behalf.
The private healthcare sector employs and poaches staff trained by the NHS and bears none of the training costs itself; selectively cherry-picking low-risk elective procedures it can monetise and avoiding acute, urgent or complex care – including the provision of emergency departments, intensive care, or inpatient care for sick older people.
It evades the degree of regulatory scrutiny the NHS must rightly meet. And it ships thousands of patients each year back to NHS hospitals when they develop acute complications that private hospitals are not staffed or equipped to deal with.
Analyses by the King’s Fund, the Nuffield Trust, Health Foundation, and even global consulting giants McKinsey, have shown that there is no inherent advantage in an insurance-based system with greater marketisation and profit motive compared to predominantly tax-based and publicly-provided systems.
Nor is it true that those systems do not exist outside of the NHS. Versions can be seen in Italy, Spain, Portugal, New Zealand, Canadian Provinces, Malta and Scandinavia – albeit often with less centralised political leadership and control.
Data from the British Social Attitudes Survey, the Health Foundation and Ipsos Mori has shown no public appetite, and no political mandate, for a change in the current tax-funded and notionally publicly-provided NHS model or its founding principles.
The same goes for support for an European-style insurance-based models (repeatedly touted by small state lobbyists from the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Adam Smith Institute, or columnists in right-wing publications who ignore the presence of perfectly decent, publicly-funded, models in their selected examples).
Sadly, a major reason why so many more people are now feeling they must take out private insurance or use their savings to pay for treatment or consultations – and why the NHS itself is placing ever-growing volumes of business with the private sector – is the years of declining performance since 2010.
I believe the majority of the public wants the existing NHS model to work like it used to, in terms of access, waiting times, staffing, patient, and staff satisfaction – rather than a complex market involving multiple payers and competitive providers.
With a Labour government likely after the next general election, it would be good to see it openly defending the NHS’ founding principles – and to stop and reverse the expansion of the profit motive and markets in the service. I have seen no such commitments yet.
‘Adopting Canada’s Progressive Conservative Strategy Won’t Save Rishi Sunak’s Party’
Across Britain, political commentators have been singing Pierre Poilievre’s praises. Poilievre, Leader of Canada’s Progressive Conservative Party, now leads Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the polls by a 17-point margin. In all likelihood, he will be the next prime minister of Canada.
At first glance, Poilievre seems like UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s foil – something many commentators in Britain have picked up on.
Both are young Conservatives who rose to prominence in 2022 – one as opposition leader, the other as Prime Minister. Both have ascended in similar economic and political climates – in which issues like COVID, immigration, inflation, and an overheated housing market were front and centre.
Both moved the needle some 20 points for under-thirties – but only one, Poilievre, moved it in the right direction.
Perfect opposites, Poilievre has ushered in a new and almost unprecedented category of young Conservative voters, while Sunak has nearly eliminated them – with only one in 10 Brits under 40 reportedly planning to vote Conservative in the next election.
It is tempting to suggest – as many British columnists have – that Sunak and the Conservatives should be modelling their political calculus on Poilievre. But this is a misreading of the political situation in Canada.
Poilievre’s policy approach and rhetoric hasn’t won over Canadians in any meaningful sense. Rather, Canadians have fallen out of love with Trudeau in a big way. What’s more, endeavours by Sunak’s Conservatives to descend into populism have mostly backfired.
There is no understating how disliked Trudeau is by many Canadians. Two-thirds look upon him unfavourably, and half believe he should resign before the next election.
Because Canadian news doesn’t travel particularly well, this is easy to overlook. To some on this side of the Atlantic, Trudeau still appears the fashionable young progressive – or the beloved, beady-eyed “Calvin Klein model” – he appeared to be in 2015.
At the moment, the country finds itself embroiled in a $60 million dollar corruption scandal that led to a precipitous decline in Liberal favourability when the news surfaced last November. Colloquially known as 'ArriveScam’, the scandal involves what appears to be reckless overspending on a mid-pandemic app created by government contractors, which was meant to speed up border declarations. But his is just one of a long string of scandals that has plagued Trudeau's administration.
Canada’s souring on the Liberals, then, has little to do with what Poilievre has done well and everything to do with what Trudeau’s administration has done poorly, unethically and scandalously.
No doubt, Poilievre is a skilled politician. But the economic and social vicissitudes of recent years have made the opposition’s job in both Canada and the UK a sinecure.
Just like in Canada, Labour’s success in the polls is in no small part owing to the Conservatives floundering, what with 'Partygate’, Liz Truss’ fall from grace, and a unlawful Rwanda plan all weighing heavily on the minds of the British electorate.
Those who believe Sunak has something to learn from Poilievre often raise housing affordability, which has long been the sine qua non of Poilievre’s campaign. Yet, in all likelihood, Canada and Britain’s respective housing crises would be in similar shape with Poilievre or Keir Starmer at the helm. The post-pandemic inflationary run that drove up housing prices in countries like Canada and the UK was mostly unrelated to which party was in power.
When commentators suggest that Poilievre’s message is resonating with Canadians, what they really mean is that his rhetoric has struck a chord. Some might recall a video of Poilievre that went viral last year, in which he calmly rebuffed a journalist while eating an apple. The video is paradigmatic of Poilievre’s approach to politics. That is, he incessantly calls for 'common-sense’ government without wading too far into the weeds of what that might entail.
Is that what Brits want of Sunak? Because Poilievre’s brash, populist tone surely resembles that of another British politician – the one who claimed to be “made of Gregg’s” – who fell sharply out of favour with voters by the time he stepped down in 2022.
Even if that is what British Conservatives want, Sunak couldn’t pull it off. The Prime Minister is a technocrat through and through, not a populist. He promised a government of “integrity, professionalism and accountability” but has not delivered. An eleventh-hour embrace of populism by the Conservatives is only likely to set the party back further.
Jonah Prousky is a London-based Canadian commentator. He has written for Canada publications including the Globe and Mail, CBC, Toronto Star, Canadian Affairs, and Calgary Herald
The BBC’s Road to Appeasement
Read Adam Bienkov and Patrick Howse's full and exclusive investigation into the BBC in the April edition of Byline Times. Available as a digital edition online now, or in stores and newsagents from 20 March.
Read Adam Bienkov and Patrick Howse's full and exclusive investigation into the BBC in the April edition of Byline Times. Available as a digital edition online now, or in stores and newsagents from 20 March.
The BBC operated within a “culture of fear” in which senior journalists became afraid of reporting negative stories about the Government due to external pressure from Downing Street and internal pressure from senior editors and executives, Byline Times can reveal.
The culture, which was overseen by editors perceived as having overly “cosy” relationships with Government, followed a two decade campaign to undermine and neuter Britain’s national broadcaster.
The full story is available to read in the new retail edition of Byline Times, available in shops from next Wednesday. It reveals how:
⬛ Insiders say BBC bosses became “terrified” of upsetting Downing Street during Boris Johnson’s tenure
⬛Reporters were actively discouraged from reporting embarrassing stories about Government ministers
⬛ The former Head of BBC Westminster, Katy Searle, was seen internally as being “too close” to Downing Street.
⬛ There was widespread disquiet about the “access culture” fostered at BBC Westminster, in which maintaining good relations with Downing Street was prioritised
⬛ Internal pressure for “balance” in news coverage was heavily slanted in the Conservatives’ favour, with Labour judged to “not be in the game” under Jeremy Corbyn
⬛ The former Labour leader was “misled” into taking part in an election campaign interview with the BBC’s Andrew Neil, when no similar agreement had been made with Downing Street
⬛ Former BBC Daily Politics Editor Robbie Gibb, who went on to work as Director of Communications for Theresa May, would “relentlessly drive the Brexit agenda“ internally at the corporation
⬛ The Covid crisis was seen by BBC bosses as a chance for the corporation to "prove its worth" to Downing Street
⬛ As a result, some reporters feared the corporation had allowed itself to become a "state broadcaster" during the pandemic
The full story includes testimony from current and former senior BBC journalists and editors.
It reveals how Government threats to scrap the license fee were successfully used by Johnson's Government to encourage more favourable coverage from the broadcaster, with BBC bosses beginning to internalise Government criticisms of the corporation
You can read the full revelations in the new retail edition of Byline Times, available to read in shops from next Wednesday, or online by subscription.
It’s the Conservative Party Which Most ‘Undermines British Values’, Say Voters
A majority of British voters now believe that it's the Conservative Party which truly doesn’t understand British values, an exclusive new poll commissioned by Byline Times suggests.
Rishi Sunak's Government this week set out its new definition of “extremism” with new restrictions to be placed on individuals and organisations it perceives to be “undermining British values”.
However, new polling conducted this week by pollsters We Think for this paper found that 61% of those surveyed do not believe the Conservative Party “understands British values”, with a further 58% saying the same of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
By contrast, a majority of those surveyed said that the Labour Party (57%) and its leader Keir Starmer (56%) do in fact understand British values.
Those surveyed were also presented with a list of 21 organisations, political parties, companies and individuals, including the Muslim Council of Britain and Britain First and asked to select all those they believed to be “undermining British values”.
Among the options offered, the Conservative Party was the most picked, with 31% saying the party undermines British values, followed by 29% who picked ‘the Government’.
The third most picked organisation was the Muslim Council of Britain, which was selected by 23% of those surveyed.
Byline Times exclusively revealed his week that the MCB, which represents mosques and Islamic organisations around the UK, had been removed from Michael Gove’s draft list of “extremist” groups amid legal fears among officials.
The list of those set to be targeted by ministers was leaked to this paper on the eve of Gove’s statement to Parliament.
It prompted a formal Government leak inquiry, with Gove telling MPs that such leaks were "fundamentally a challenge to the effective operation of government”.
Voters Want Conservatives to Hand Back Hester Cash
Voters were also asked what they think about the Conservative party’s continued refusal to hand back the £15 million they have received in donations from the businessman Frank Hester.
The Guardian revealed this week that Hester had called for the MP Diane Abbott to be shot, as she made him “want to hate all black women”.
Sunak's Government initially defended Hester, before eventually admitting that his comments had been “racist and wrong”.
However, despite admitting this, the party is still refusing to hand back the money received from Hester, with the Prime Minister telling MPs he was proud to have received donations from him.
This refusal to return the money puts the party firmly out of step with the British public, according to our poll, which found that 63% of those surveyed believe the party should return the money.
The Hester case has also helped to highlight the broader issue of party funding. Hester made the donations to the Conservatives after having received tens of millions of pounds in Government contracts, via his company TPP.
Asked where those who donate to political parties should be banned from receiving Government contracts, 70% of those surveyed agreed, compared to just 30% who disagreed.
Levelling Up: 90% of Promised Schemes are Nowhere Near Completion
Ninety per cent of the "Levelling Up" projects promised by Rishi Sunak and former Prime Minister Boris Jonson are still years away from completion, a parliamentary report has revealed.
A report by the Commons Public Accounts Committee found that only £1.24 billion will be spent on the projects by the end of this month out of £10.47 billion programme originally promised by Johnson’s Government to improve dilapidated town high streets and run down areas of the country.
This month is supposed to be the completion of the first round of “Levelling Up” grants which councils had to put in bids under the scheme but the report reveals the deadline has had to be extended for at least a year because so few have been finished. The report reveals that out of 71 so-called “shovel ready” projects due to be completed this month, only 11 had been finished and the remaining 60 would not be completed until next year, if not later.
It also says only £3.7 billion out of the £10.7 billion has been allocated to councils by the ministry because the bidding procedure has been so complex and many councils have wasted council taxpayers money on projects which stood no chance of being accepted by ministers.
Ministers changed the rules midway through the bidding for Levelling Up projects so that councils that were successful in bidding in the first round were disqualified from bidding in the second. As a result 55 councils wasted scarce council taxpayer’s money by putting in bids that were ruled out.
Dame Meg Hillier MP, Labour Chair of the Committee, said: “The levels of delay that our report finds in one of Government’s flagship policy platforms is absolutely astonishing. The vast majority of Levelling Up projects that were successful in early rounds of funding are now being delivered late, with further delays likely baked in.
“DLUHC [The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities] appears to have been blinded by optimism in funding projects that were clearly anything but ‘shovel-ready’, at the expense of projects that could have made a real difference. We are further concerned, and surprised given the generational ambition of this agenda, that there appears to be no plan to evaluate success in the long-term.
The ministry tried to claim to the National Audit Office that the majority of the programme was under way but when MPs questioned civil servants from the department it was revealed that “under way” only meant that construction was at the design stage or required planning permission.
Both the Local Government Association, which represents local councils, and the South East Councils, which represents local authorities in London and the South East, were highly critical of the bidding process to get the money.
South East Councils described the process as a “whole system of “beauty contest bidding” [which] is bad government. Levelling up funding further contributes to a “begging bowl culture” through a wasteful, inefficient, bureaucratic, over-centralised, unpredictable, short-termist, demoralising, time-consuming and frustrating way of allocating money to councils.”
In the South East only four councils got any money – they were Gosport, Gravesham, Test Valley and the Isle of Wight.
Politicising Dissent: Michael Gove’s New Extremist Definition is ‘an Attack on Civil Liberties’
The new definition of extremism announced by the Communities Secretary Michael Gove today is a blatant attack on civil liberties and free speech.
We believe this new definition is a highly politicised and undemocratic polemic aimed at trying to exclude and ostracise peaceful and law-abiding Muslim organisations that have been critical of the government from having a voice. Labelling a group that is critical of Government policy as ‘extremist’ is a lazy and convenient way of avoiding dialogue. It is a tactic more suited to authoritarian repressive regimes stifling dissent rather than a pluralistic Western democracy silencing those exposing UK Government complicity in the Gaza ‘plausible genocide’ as designated by the International Court of Justice.
The new definition is ;
Extremism is the promotion or advancement of an ideology based on violence, hatred or intolerance, that aims to:
Under (1) none of the aforementioned organisations have sought to negate the rights or freedoms of others, and we await to see the evidence upon which any of our organisations would meet this part of the definition. Indeed given the focus in the Government Press Release on “Islamist extremists” in Muslim communities, we expect that this part of the definition will be used to label Muslim groups exercising their democratic right to legitimate criticism and dissent as ‘promoting hatred’ and thus impacting on the freedoms of other groups.
Under (2), again none of the aforementioned organisations are seeking to replace the “UK’s system of liberal parliamentary democracy”. We note the manner in which the definition has been introduced, deliberately avoiding any parliamentary scrutiny debate or criticism, is itself undermining our Parliamentary democracy.
Under (3) it is clear that the context for this new ‘anti-extremism’ drive emanates from the Government’s perspective from recent rises in antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate.
Moreover, we have to consider whether the Government’s own track record of ‘extremist’ policies has created this ‘permissive environment’ where hate crime is flourishing.
The Government has a long history of racist and Islamophobic policies including the Windrush Scandal, the ‘hostile environment’ and the discredited Prevent Strategy. More recently senior Conservative MPs have made blatantly racist and Islamophobic comments. The former Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party Lee Anderson stated that ‘Islamists’ had ‘got control’ of the London Mayor Sadiq Khan. Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman said “the truth is that the Islamists, the extremists and the antisemites are in charge now."
The former Prime Minister, Liz Truss spoke at a right-wing conference in the US and said “there’s going to be by-election in the next few weeks, and it could be a radical Islamic party win in that by-election. So that is a possibility.” It thus appears that such comments by senior Conservative MPs are driven by a hatred or intolerance of people from the Muslim community, and thus would fall foul of this definition.
Gove himself has a long track record of Islamophobic views and associations. He is a founding member of the Henry Jackson Society which is neo-Conservative think tank that has promoted an anti-Muslim agenda over many years. Despite having no expertise in Islam, Islamic theology or history he authored a book called Celsius 7/7 published in 2006 in which he highlighted the threat of “Islamism” in Britain.
He led the government’s role in ‘The Trojan Horse’ affair. This falsely accused a number of schools in Birmingham of an ‘Islamist takeover’ on the back of a fake letter , perpetuating Islamophobic tropes of Muslims being a ‘fifth column’ and a threat to British democracy. Subsequent inquiries found no evidence of radicalisation in these schools. Given his own ‘extremist’ credentials, for him to be lecturing others as to who is or is not an extremist is an example of rank hypocrisy, and there would appear to be a persuasive argument that he is also an extremist on his own definition!
The Government’s proposals have been criticised by the Archbishop of Canterbury and remarkably also by three former Conservative Home Secretaries warning him that “no political party uses the issue to seek short term tactical advantage.” This indicates that Michael Gove’s policies appear to be ‘extremist ‘even within his own party.
Gove stated in the commons that “Islamism is a totalitarian ideology which seeks to divide, calls for the establishment of an Islamic state governed by sharia law and seeks the overthrow of liberal democratic principles”, and added “Organisations such as the Muslim Association of Britain, which is the British affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups such as CAGE and MEND, all give rise to concern for their Islamist orientation and views.”
We challenge him to provide the evidence to back up his view that the organisations above have called for the establishment of an ‘Islamic state governed by sharia law’. Of course, he has made these comments under the cover of parliamentary privilege and we call upon him to repeat these claims outside of that, if that is what he truly believes.
In a General Election year, and noting their dismal opinion poll ratings, it is clear that Gove and the Conservative party want to demonstrate their ‘anti-Muslim’ credentials to head off mass defections to the Reform Party and appeal to a far-right electorate. Defining extremism requires a calm, measured and cross-party approach and should not be used as a political football to target marginalised groups.
Michael Gove Expected to Drop Plans to Put Muslim Council of Britain in List of ‘Extremist’ Groups
Michael Gove appears to have dropped plans to label Britain’s biggest representative group of mosques and Islamic associations as an “extremist” group, according to draft plans leaked to Byline Times.
The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities is due to make a statement on Thursday outlining his plans to expand the official definition of “extremism”.
Multiple reports this week suggested Gove would use the statement in order to label the Muslim Council of Britain as an extremist group due to the Government's belief that they have failed to “repudiate or rescind past behaviours” while maintaining associations with those with “extreme” views.
Inclusion on the list would have meant the MCB would have been blocked from engaging with public authorities due to allegations that they are “undermining... British values” or institutions.
However, while a leaked draft version of Gove's statement seen by this paper did reference several other prominent Muslim groups, including MEND (Muslim Engagement and Development), CAGE, Friends of Al Aqsa, 5Pillars and the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), it does not contain any reference to the MCB.
The inclusion of Friends of Al Aqsa and the MAB could have major ramifications, as the groups are part of the organising committee for the weekly protests calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, bringing thousands of campaigners out on the streets.
It is not clear, for example, whether the police's engagement with the two groups over the demonstrations will have to change following their classification as extreme organisations. There are also questions over whether civil servants or even politicians would be barred from attending their events.
The statement also includes a list of prominent far-right groups, including Britain First, the British National Socialist Movement, and the Patriotic Alternative.
One well-placed Government source suggested that the MCB had been removed from the list due to fears that including them would have been a step too far, while another source suggested that including the organisation could have left the Government open to significant legal risk.
Sources suggested that the leaked statement was not the final version due to be put before Parliament on Thursday and that the full list of excluded groups may not now be announced until a later date.
Despite being apparently removed from the list, there were still suggestions that Gove, or other ministers, could use parliamentary privilege in order to single out the MCB.
Responding to the original reports, a spokesperson for the group said this week that: “To suggest that the Muslim Council of Britain would fall under arbitrary definitions of extremism is offensive, ludicrous and dangerous.
“We are a democratic organisation representing a cross-section of British Muslims. After standing accused of peddling Islamophobia, it is ironic that the governing party should lash out and accuse everyone else but themselves of extremism. We shall be monitoring developments and will seek to reserve our position legally.”
In a statement, the Chair of Friends of Al Aqsa, Ismail Patel, said “Gove and the Tory party are undermining freedom of speech and fermenting cultural wars. They are encouraging Islamophobia and targeting Palestinian peace activists”.
"The only organisation being divisive and causing harm to the Muslims in the UK is the Tory party and Michael Gove"
A Government spokesperson declined to comment.
Selective Extremism
The Prime Minister came under fire on Wednesday after refusing to distance himself from the Conservative Party donor Frank Hester, for making extreme racist and hateful comments about Diane Abbott.
Questioned in Parliament, the Prime Minister said he was “proud” that Hester had donated to the party. A Government minister had earlier insisted that the party would be happy to accept a further £10 million donation from the businessman, despite his comments.
A spokesperson for Sunak refused to say whether Hester’s suggestion that Abbott should be shot would be caught under the Government’s new definition of extremism, but insisted that his “remorse” for his comments “should be accepted”.
They added that Hester’s donations to the Conservative Party, which made up “the most diverse ever Cabinet” was a sign that he was not a racist.
Hester has yet to accept that his comments about Abbott making him want to “hate all black women”, while calling for her to be shot, were either racist or sexist. He did however, suggest that they were rude.
Sunak’s Private Meetings With Murdochs and Right-Wing Editors Were Purely ‘Social’ Says Government
The public will never be told what Rishi Sunak discussed in private meetings with members of the Murdoch family and leading right-wing newspaper editors, due to them being held without civil servants present, or minutes being taken, Byline Times can reveal.
The Prime Minister met media representatives more than any other sector of the UK economy between July and September last year, analysis by Byline Times found in December.
Now Freedom of Information requests by this newspaper have revealed that not one of the PM's meetings with journalists or media barons last summer was minuted, with officials describing them as "social or informal" gatherings.
No independent civil servants were present. Instead, the Cabinet Office pointed to the presence of a special adviser, who is political but paid for by the taxpayer.
Every single one of the PM’s eight media meetings in that time was with right-leaning media outlets.
An official for the Cabinet Office told Byline Times: "Since 2011 the Government has pro-actively published details of all meetings (including social and political) between Ministers and senior media executives. This includes informal meetings or engagements (with such senior media figures), where there is no requirement to take minutes as they are not structured or formal Government meetings.
"As set out in the relevant transparency release entries, the engagements in which you have
expressed an interest were informal, social or political engagements...Outside the terms of the Act, we would note that the Prime Minister was accompanied to such informal media engagements by a special adviser."
But Rose Whiffen, Senior Research Officer at the campaign group Transparency International UK said that if any Government business was discussed, the contents need to be made public: “Transparency over who ministers are meeting and why is vital in allowing the public to see who has access and potential sway with those in power.
“Regardless of who they're talking to, if official government business is discussed, engagements should always be recorded in an appropriate manner.
“When these interactions talking about government policy occur in social settings, the rules still apply and the content must be made public.”
Lib Dem Chief Whip Wendy Chamberlain MP told this outlet it looked like the Prime Minister was "using a loophole to get out of following the usual transparency requirements for these meetings."
"Rishi Sunak promised integrity, accountability and professionalism when he came into Number Ten, but all we've had since is yet more sleaze and scandal from the Conservative Party," she added.
The Prime Minister met senior executives from Rupert Murdoch’s media empire alone four times in the space of three months, compared to just once for NHS representatives.
Sunak met Daily Mail editors twice in that time, while meeting housing sector figures once. Several of the meetings were listed as “social”, meaning they are unlikely to have been minuted. That includes meetings with the departing News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch, and separately, his son Lachlan who would shortly take over at the helm.
Lexie Kirkconnell-Kawana, Chief Executive of independent press watchdog Impress, said: “At a time when journalists across the country are being frustrated by low government compliance with Freedom of Information requests, serious steps should be taken to ensure the public are informed of what is going on in Westminster.
“The lack of clarity regarding what goes on in key meetings between the Prime Minister and senior members of the media industry certainly does not help. We have an election on the horizon where voters will expect journalists to act independently and hold politicians to account.
“Poor transparency only opens up the floor to speculation, ultimately damaging the already-fragile trust in both journalists and politicians.”
Read the full meeting declarations for the three months over the Summer here.
Sunak’s Media Meetings – July-September 2023
- Organisation/Individual: Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief of DMG Media
- Purpose of Meeting: "Informal media engagement to discuss the work of the Government"
- Organisation/Individual: The Spectator
- Purpose of Meeting: "Social Meeting"
- Organisation/Individual: Lachlan Murdoch, Co-Chairman of News Corp, Executive Chairman and CEO of Fox Corporation
- Purpose of Meeting: "Social Meeting"
- Organisation/Individual: Rupert Murdoch, Proprietor of News Corporation
- Purpose of Meeting: "Social Meeting"
- Organisation/Individual: Victoria Newton, Editor of The Sun, Alex Mahon, CEO of Channel 4
- Purpose of Meeting: The Sun's "Who Cares Wins" Awards
- Organisation/Individual: Ted Verity, Editor, of the Daily Mail
- Purpose of Meeting: "Informal media engagement to discuss the work of the Government"
- Organisation/Individual: Paul Goodman, Editor of Conservative Home
- Purpose of Meeting: "Informal political media engagement to discuss the work of the Government"
- Organisation/Individual: Tony Gallagher, Editor of The Times, Steven Swinford, Deputy Political Editor of The Times
- Purpose of Meeting: Dinner and meeting at Conservative Party Conference
- Organisation/Individual: Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief of DMG Media
- Purpose of Meeting: "Informal media engagement to discuss the work of the Government"
- Organisation/Individual: The Spectator
- Purpose of Meeting: "Social Meeting"
- Organisation/Individual: Lachlan Murdoch, Co-Chairman of News Corp, Executive Chairman and CEO of Fox Corporation
- Purpose of Meeting: "Social Meeting"
- Organisation/Individual: Rupert Murdoch, Proprietor of News Corporation
- Purpose of Meeting: "Social Meeting"
- Organisation/Individual: Victoria Newton, Editor of The Sun, Alex Mahon, CEO of Channel 4
- Purpose of Meeting: The Sun's "Who Cares Wins" Awards
- Organisation/Individual: Ted Verity, Editor, of the Daily Mail
- Purpose of Meeting: "Informal media engagement to discuss the work of the Government"
- Organisation/Individual: Paul Goodman, Editor of Conservative Home
- Purpose of Meeting: "Informal political media engagement to discuss the work of the Government"
- Organisation/Individual: Tony Gallagher, Editor of The Times, Steven Swinford, Deputy Political Editor of The Times
- Purpose of Meeting: Dinner and meeting at Conservative Party Conference
Do you have a story that needs highlighting? Get in touch by emailing josiah@bylinetimes.com
Rishi Sunak’s Plans for New Gas Power Stations Will Leave UK ‘Stranded’ in Push for Net Zero
Energy Secretary, Claire Coutinho and the chair of a senior House of Lords committee last night clashed over the future of the UK’s energy security needed to safeguard the Government’s move to Net Zero by 2035.
The row blew up after the minister announced a new wave of gas fired power stations as a standby for renewable energy on the eve of a House of Lords report calling for the opposite solution – a new network of long term storage sites for surplus renewables.
The Energy Secretary said the new gas fired power stations – to replace existing plant coming to the end of its useful life - was “a common sense solution” to prevent black outs should renewable energy fail through lack of wind and sun. She was backed by Rishi Sunak, who said: “I will not gamble with our energy security. I will make the tough decisions so that no matter what scenario we face, we can always power Britain from Britain.
However, Baroness Brown of Cambridge, the crossbench chair of the Lords Science and Technology Committee, denounced the decision describing the new gas fired power stations as “stranded assets” and leaving the UK open to “volatile gas prices”.
She said: “A strategic reserve of hydrogen as a means of low-carbon long-duration energy storage would insulate the UK against dependence on volatile gas prices whilst allowing it to continue decarbonising the electricity system. We should be building this now rather than designing in delay by expecting the market to deliver fossil-fuelled plants that will hardly be used and will rapidly become stranded assets."
The Lords report also criticises the government for not getting its act together to set up a new network of storage sites which can take years to get planning permission, time to build and need to be connected to the national grid to be effective.
The report says: "Long-duration storage facilities can take 7–10 years to build and require up-front capital investment. Developers need a clear business case, supporting infrastructure such as grid connections, and financial support in order to invest.
"Energy storage has multiple benefits. It allows a greater amount of cheap renewable power to be integrated into the electricity system, lowering the overall cost of electricity for consumers. It provides power capacity that can be switched on and off, making the grid more flexible."
"It avoids the waste when, as often occurs today, renewables have to be curtailed due to excess supply or congestion on the grid. And it provides electricity system services to the grid, such as the ability to restart after power failures. For many of these services, energy storage facilities can replace fossil fuel power plants."
The peers say if a network of storage facilities were set up the UK could export their surplus power and the new technology to other countries. But it warns that to do nothing now would make it extremely unlikely that the UK would be able to meet the target of a fully decarbonised power system by 2035.
Baroness Brown added: "In light of the huge economic damage the recent energy crisis has caused, it is distressing to see that the Government lacks a clear plan for energy supply risks and indeed is still deliberating over investment in long-duration storage to prevent future crises. A strategic reserve of electricity storage is a critical investment to secure the UK’s energy supply against future shocks, but the Government is still equivocating over whether it is necessary to invest in one."
The report is also a challenge to Labour which has had to scale down its ambitious net zero programme because of lack of money. Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, appeared to back Rishi Sunak yesterday by saying it would build new gas power stations as well.
‘The Extremist Islamists are Coming! Sunak Cries Wolf to Criminalise Dissent’
Last week saw an extraordinary piece of political theatre. A lectern placed outside Downing Street led to fevered speculation about a General Election announcement. It was no such thing. Instead, we witnessed one of the most extreme speeches a Prime Minister has ever given.
Rishi Sunak talked of “Islamic extremists” who were “hostile to our values” and were threatening and undermining democracy itself, adding that “our streets have been hijacked by small groups” who operated through “threats of violence and intimidation”. An apocalyptic picture no less, and one that demanded tougher action from the police and a ‘redoubling’ of support for the discredited Prevent programme.
Enter Michael Gove, the Communities Secretary, whom we learnt was drawing up proposals for a new definition of extremism. The aim of this definition will be to declare pro-Palestinian and Muslim groups such as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Muslim Council of Britain and MEND (Muslim Engagement & Development) as ‘extremist’, as well as other ‘disruptors’ such as Extinction Rebellion.
The new definition’s purpose will be to ban politicians from engaging with these groups. However such plans have been met with opposition, not only from the ‘usual suspects’ such as Amnesty International UK and Liberty, but from Conservative MPs and Peers also, who are concerned that anti-abortion groups or those opposed to transgender rights will be caught by this definition also.
So what is going on here? It is clear that the Government in recent months has been alarmed by the massive displays of overwhelmingly peaceful support for Palestinians coupled with criticism of the UK Government (and the Opposition) for fully supporting the state of Israel committing genocide, ethnic cleansing and war crimes against the Palestinians. In fact it doesn’t get more ‘extreme’ than that.
It is important to state that this support has come from all quarters of society, including Jewish groups opposed to the actions of the Israeli state. However, rather than defend their actions, they choose to create a ‘straw man’ argument of a threat to democracy from ‘violent extremist Muslim mobs’ as a pretext to crack down on lawful protest and assembly.
This is an attempt to distract the public from his failing Government and appeal to right-wing voters as the polls show that the Conservatives are heading for political oblivion at the next General Election with 78% of Britons dissatisfied with the way that the Government is running the country.
The current definition of extremism is a ‘vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values’. The new definition proposed is “the promotion of an ideology based on intolerance hatred or violence that aims to that undermines the rights or freedoms of others.”
What does this mean? Should we not be ‘intolerant’ of genocide, or ‘hate’ ethnic cleaning or war crimes? Make no mistake, this definition is simply self-serving and aimed at protecting the Government from any kind of criticism or protest, whilst whipping up hatred towards Muslims who dare to speak out by labelling them as ‘Islamist extremists’. It is worth noting that the Government’s own definition of British values as set out in the Prevent Strategy includes “Mutual respect and tolerance of those of different faiths.” So much for tolerance then.
Indeed we should call out the real extremists here, which are members of the Government and Conservative Party. Recent weeks have shown the Conservative Party has sunk to new depths of racism and Islamophobia.
Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman claimed that “Islamists” were in charge of Britain, and then Lee Anderson, former Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party waded in with a bizarre claim that “Islamists” were controlling Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, which was too much even for Sunak, who suspending him from the party, provoking a backlash in support of Anderson. So who are these ‘Islamists’? This has now simply become a term to describe any Muslim individuals or groups who are critical of the Government.
But what Sunak, Gove and the Conservatives are doing is not a minor political side-show, it threatens the very fabric of our democratic society as it seeks to criminalise lawful dissent and criticism of the Government. We must come together to oppose this new definition.