uk politics
‘The Country has Noticed the Conservatives’ Lack of Levelling Up’
The Government could have used Boris Johnson's 'levelling up’ project not just to transform Britain’s regions, towns and poorer cities, but also to redraw the political map of the UK. That it has failed spectacularly to do both is a key reason why it is now facing political oblivion and why the Conservative Party will find it hard to rebuild public support.
In 2019, levelling up was a masterstroke. Even then, the public was well aware that a decade of under-investment had damaged public services and made inequality between and within regions ever more stark.
Johnson’s pledge to level up the UK – combined with specific promises to increase the number of nurses, doctors, police offices and hospitals – signalled a radical change from the policy of austerity pursued by his predecessors.
Had Johnson been true to his word, levelling up could have transformed Britain’s regions, investment could have poured into regional transport and other infrastructure, and the NHS and other public services could have full quotas of staff instead of record shortages.
Instead, as we approach another general election, the failure of levelling up has been made clear in a report published by the House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee last week.
As of last September, it found that local authorities had spent only £1.24 billion of the £10.47 billion the Government promised to tackle regional inequality across the UK.
Crucially, the committee found that the Government has nothing in place to measure this policy’s impact in the long term. In other words, as has been pointed out, there is “no compelling evidence” that levelling up has achieved anything.
As recently as 2022, the Government were talking up the transformative impact of levelling up.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) said in 2022 that the economic prize was potentially huge: “If under-performing places were levelled up towards the UK average, unlocking their potential, this could boost aggregate UK GDP by tens of billions of pounds each year.”
The disconnect between this rhetoric and the reality could not be more stark.
Since 2010-11, local authorities have experienced a 27% real-terms cut in core spending power due to reduced central government funding. Eight of the 317 English local authorities have effectively declared bankruptcy since 2018.
In the most egregious example, Birmingham City Council – Europe’s largest local authority – is to severely reduce or do away with a swathe of council services in pursuit of savings of about £300 million. This is the deepest programme of local cuts ever put through by a UK council.
Cuts will impact some of the most vulnerable groups in Birmingham. Spending on children will be cut by millions, including cuts to an early help service that helps families in crisis and to transport for children aged over 16 who have special educational needs.
Youth services will be almost halved. Spending on the arts will now be zero. Eleven community centres are being sold off. Highway maintenance, street lighting, recycling, bin collection, and street cleaning suffer. Yet residents face an increase to council tax of 21% by 2026 – a cruel fate for residents facing years of cuts to what, for many, have been essential services.
But it isn’t just Birmingham. In 2019, the entire country was promised increased investment, public services, and a restoration of the kind of public realm the Conservatives had dismantled over the previous decade.
What the public has received is more of the same – austerity and higher taxes from the Government and, in many cases, cash-strapped local councils.
This is one of the main factors damaging the Conservatives’ poll ratings. They have wildly over promised and under delivered in a way that is obvious to anyone using public transport, the NHS, education, or other public services, or indeed anyone walking down their local high street.
In 2019, Boris Johnson explicitly thanked Labour voters who had ‘lent him their vote’. He said “we have won votes and the trust of people who have never voted Conservative before" and that "those people want change".
"We cannot, must not, let them down," he added. "We must recognise the reality that we now speak for everyone from Woking to Workington, Clwyd South, Sedgefield [and] Wolverhampton."
He and his successors have betrayed that trust – a betrayal that will take a generation at least to overcome.
Those voters in Sedgfield, Clywd South, and Wolverhampton will not be so quick to trust a Conservative next time, whatever their policies and whoever their leader.
But the failure of levelling up – and the prior decade of austerity that preceded it – is doing deeper harm to our politics and public realm.
Resolution Foundation research shows that living with crumbling public services undermines people’s trust in the ability of the state to effect change for the better, whoever is in power.
“This isn’t a small problem,” says the Resolution Foundation’s chief executive, Torsten Bell. “Change requires citizens to imagine a better future so they can embrace the disruption involved in getting there.”
This warning is consistent with wider research looking across 166 elections post-1980. It found that austerity measures tend to reduce voter turnout but also boost votes for non-mainstream parties – hence, at least in part, explaining last decade’s UKIP popularity and the more recent rise of Reform.
Labour’s task, if as expected it wins a sizeable majority in the next election, will be not just one of rebuilding public services, but of rebuilding faith that politics can make a real difference to lives and communities.
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.
‘Extraordinary’ Claims of Evidence Spoliation in NHS Whistleblower Case
Questions have been raised around court claims of evidence spoliation and recoverability in a high-profile NHS whistleblowing case during which tens of thousands of emails were deleted.
NHS doctor Chris Day has won the right to challenge a tribunal decision about information governance in NHS hospital trusts and the scrutiny applied to attempted evidence destruction at employment tribunals.
Day exposed acute understaffing at a south London intensive care unit linked to two patient deaths in 2013. His decade-long legal campaign has since revealed a lack of statutory whistleblowing protections for nearly 50,000 doctors below consultant level in England.
An appeal tribunal in February refused Day the right to challenge key aspects of an earlier ruling that cleared Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust (LGT) of concealing evidence and perverting the course of justice when one of the trust’s directors deleted up to 90,000 emails during a tribunal hearing in July 2022.
That hearing heard that LGT communications director, David Cocke, had attempted to destroy tens of thousands of emails and other electronic archives that were potentially critical to the case.
An unsigned witness statement submitted to the tribunal on behalf of Cocke claimed that the information had been “permanently” deleted. LGT has since claimed that the cache was recovered and submitted to the tribunal, something Day disputes.
Appeal tribunal judge Andrew Burns described Cocke’s conduct during the 2022 hearing as “extraordinary”.
Cocke’s actions followed LGT’s late disclosure of more than 200 pages of documents and, the tribunal heard, suggested that the trust’s CEO, Ben Travis, had given “inaccurate” and potentially misleading evidence to the tribunal days earlier.
Day’s barrister, Andrew Allen, told an employment appeal tribunal in February that Cocke went "in the middle of the night and destroyed them... because he was in a panic".
According to Allen, Cocke "had been observing the case and realised that key evidence had not been disclosed".
That Cocke "destroyed documentation potentially relevant to the litigation,” Allen argued, “is intimately tied up with" Day's concealment and detriment claims.
He added that there was a “failure to make findings” at the 2022 tribunal on the attempted destruction of electronic evidence.
Burns noted in his judgment that “although the employment tribunal has mentioned that it can draw adverse inferences… from the respondent’s deletion of documents, it doesn’t seem to have turned its mind to doing so.” He described Day’s patient safety disclosures as been of “the utmost importance”.
Allen also raised questions about LGT’s destruction of electronic records prior to the 2022 hearing.
"Documents had not been sought from key personnel,” he said, including from Janet Lynch – an ex-workforce and education director at the trust who, as its instructing client, had been responsible for advising the trust’s solicitors up until late 2018. “And key documents [including Lynch’s emails] were destroyed after she left the trust.”
Five trust directors’ emails – Travis, Cocke, Lynch, and two doctors involved with Day’s whistleblowing case – were either said to have been deleted or unavailable during the key dates being examined by the 2022 tribunal.
The hearing considered whether the trust had caused Day detriment linked to his whistleblowing. His appeal will examine whether public statements the trust issued about the settlement of a previous hearing did so.
The directors whose emails were unavailable at the 2022 tribunal are understood to have been involved in producing the statements, which drew criticism from the Care Quality Commission regulator.
The appeal hearing will not consider Day’s allegations of concealment. He has asked the tribunal to review its decision and applied for a further ground to be added.
Martin Nikel, an expert in e-discovery who heads Thomas Murray's cyber risk advisory e-discovery and litigation support practice, told Byline Times that a number of key questions regarding the emails’ status had not been answered by the tribunal or LGT.
"It's very irregular for a director of communications to have the ability to permanently delete emails without administrative privileges,” he said.
“When it's said that he deleted 90,000 emails, that's potentially a big task to undertake. In these scenarios, an end user without significant knowledge and access rights, would leave three potential sources of email, which could be explored to see if the email can be recovered.”
The NHSMail system, which LGT has confirmed was in use in 2022, usually retains emails for a minimum of 30 days and up to two years, Nikel said. A forensic discovery request or search of the Microsoft 365 environment could also establish the presence of the emails.
Nikel added that the way LGT board members were asked to provide evidence for the 2022 hearing was “unreliable” and explained that “it appears that board members were instructed to simply search their own emails".
“This is an obviously unreliable way to perform any collection of evidence in a neutral way," he said. "The NHS has processes in place for such situations – and organisations like the Counter Fraud Authority – that I am sure could provide better evidence-handling processes in such high-profile matters.
“Legal advisors could appoint external forensic experts, which if nothing else, would help with perception in future situations such as these.”
Robert Maddox, an employment lawyer with Doyle Clayton, told Byline Times that employment tribunals apply the same evidence to disclosure and preservation rules as the civil courts, but don't have “the same level of rigorous procedure that goes with a High Court matter”.
“For example, in the civil courts, a party can be obliged to complete a disclosure certificate of compliance confirming where they’ve searched, what they’ve searched for, confirming they’ve disclosed all relevant documents," he said.
“That’s not necessarily done in the tribunal. There is an obligation on parties to perform a reasonable search and to disclose any documents that are relevant, irrespective of whether they are favourable or adverse for a party’s case.
“But there certainly is an obligation to preserve documents and tribunals will look unfavourably on documents having been lost or destroyed.”
Maddox added that, although it is possible to enlist an IT expert to assess lost or deleted evidence, tribunals can take a party’s statements at face value.
It is more common for a party to make submissions on adverse inferences that can be drawn from missing, lost or deleted evidence, he said, rather than incur costs or risk further delays.
A LGT spokesperson acknowledged the outcome of the appeal hearing but declined to comment further "as legal proceedings are ongoing”.
LGT declined to say if Cocke still works at the trust and whether it paid his legal costs after he enlisted the services of a separate firm during the 2022 hearing. Travis remains the trust CEO.
‘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.
Hotel Chain Voted UK’s Worst Makes Tens of Millions a Year from Housing Asylum Seekers in Harmful Conditions
A hotel chain voted the UK’s worst has made tens of millions of pounds and brought itself back from financial uncertainty after it became one of the Home Office’s main sources of accommodation for asylum seekers, Byline Times can reveal.
Britannia Hotels has made over £150m over the last decade, which it has spent as one of the main suppliers of hotel accommodation for asylum seekers.
The firm has been voted the UK’s worst hotel chain for the last 11 years running.
Byline Times spoke to asylum seekers housed in Britannia Hotels for months on end who described refugees attempting suicide, living in fear of harassment in dirty rooms; conditions so bad that one charity said were actively “harming people’s health”.
Making Nearly £100,000 a day
Between 2002-2003 and 2013-2014, the company made just over £23m, or an average of £1.9m a year in pre-tax profits. The company even registered pre-tax losses in 2007, 2008 and 2010, and listed profits of less than £1m in 2006 and 2009.
But things started to change for the chain in 2014-2015, which is also, as it happens, the year it was first reported in the press that the chain was beginning to house asylum seekers en-masse for the Home Office.
That year the company’s profits shot up to £14.2m, a 441% increase.
Since then, the number of asylum seekers staying in Britannia Hotels has only increased, with some reports suggesting at least 17 of the chain’s hotels have been block booked out on behalf of the government.
And so – bar a dip during Covid – in the years since 2014 that figure has only increased. In its last accounts – for 2021-2022 – the company posted a record profit of £33.3m, or £91,232 in profit a day.
Britannia Hotels is owned by octogenarian hotel tycoon Alex Langsam, whose has been dubbed the “Asylum King” thanks to the record profits made from housing asylum seekers helped by a rise of 63,214 in asylum applications received by the government between 2010 and 2022.
Britannia is just one of dozens of private firms involved in some way in managing and running the UK’s burgeoning and largely outsourced asylum seeker system, many of whom have been able to make huge profits in recent years while being paid to help manage the asylum system..
The problem has only been worsened by a huge backlog in the government processing of asylum claims; as of last month, 98,599 people were still awaiting a decision, many of whom are living in hotels.
“It’s scandalous that the Government allows private companies to make hundreds of millions of pounds of profit a year,” said Tim Naor Hilton, the chief executive of Refugee Action.
“This gravy train must stop. We should fund councils to run a not-for-profit asylum system, so every penny of this public money is spent protecting refugees and strengthening services for all of us.”
'When We go out We Find People Shouting at Us, Saying they Want to Kill Us'
Imran* has spent the best part of a year in a Britannia Hotel in Manchester. In that time his wife has repeatedly attempted suicide due to mental health problems he claims are worsened by their prolonged hotel stay.
“The last time she tried to jump out of a window. I caught up and saved her luckily, but she’s depressed and can’t come out of the room,” he recalls. “She has had miscarriages twice while we’ve been in this hotel.”
When he complained about the incident, he claims he was asked to share medical records with Migrant Help – the service that handles complaints on behalf of the Home Office and Serco, which manages asylum seeker accommodation in the North West – but says he never heard back.
It’s just one of a litany of complaints he’s made over the last few months – from the food, which he says is often the same dishes for days on end, to insensitivity from staff, who repeatedly enter their room, without asking, when his wife is not dressed or wearing a hijab.
But not only is the couple still in the hotel almost a year after arriving in the UK, but he says they haven’t even been given an indication by the Home Office as to when they might expect to leave.
Omar* compares the hotel to a prison. Forced to flee his home country of Egypt as a political refugee from the country’s military and government, he ended up in the same hotel as Imran where he’s been for more than six months now.
Just weeks ago, Omar says a group of protestors turned up outside the hotel attempting to film and identify asylum seekers living there.
The threat of far-right harassment outside the hotel has left him and his family scared of leaving, he says. “You have to stay in the hotel like it’s a prison,” he says. “When we go out we find people shouting at us, saying they want to kill us.”
Byline Times has seen videos showing badly leaking ceilings and uncleared food and clothes littering corridors in the hotel.
But Omar and Imran’s concerns were not just about the cleanliness, but the sheer amount of time spent having to live in a cramped hotel bedroom at all.
It’s worth noting that for homeless families living in council temporary accommodation, there is a six-week limit on how long they can spend living in hotels or B&Bs. While that limit is not always stuck to, it’s an acknowledgement of just how huge an impact prolonged living in a hotel can have.
As just one example, a child of another family in the hotel was hospitalised recently with full-body burns after they spilt a kettle filled with boiling water on themselves while the parents were attending to their three other children in their room.
Serco said that it did not recognise Imran and Omar’s accounts of poor conditions in the hotel, and specifically refuted claims put forward about the timeliness of responses to complaints.
A spokesman for the company said: “The safety and well-being of the asylum seekers in our care is our top priority and the hotel accommodation that we use is regularly checked by our team and monitored by the Home Office to ensure that it is meeting all requirements.
“All complaints that are raised with us are properly and fully investigated and where necessary changes are implemented. The Serco team is working extremely hard to move people into dispersed social housing as rapidly as possible.”
The Home Office said that they had been unable to investigate these claims due to the anonymity of those we interviewed, but it stressed that the government continues to “provide safe accommodation for asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute”.
A spokesperson added that “there are established procedures which providers are contractually obliged to follow to manage the safety, security and well-being of those they accommodate and where concerns are raised about any aspect of the service delivered in a hotel, we work with the provider to ensure these concerns are addressed”.
Britannia Hotels did not respond to a request for comment.
*Names have been changed at the request of our interviewees
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.