The Health Secretary was asked about freebies and dodgy donations tonight by Sophy Ridge:
“What I don’t think we say enough in this country is that people who give to political parties to fund our politics are showing the same philanthropic spirit as people who give to charity. I think it is actually a noble pursuit, I think it is a good thing to do.”
Is that the line now?
Labour’s latest brainstorming session for how to raise taxes whilst blaming the Conservatives has produced a new scapegoat: the NHS. No prizes for originality…
A major report commissioned by Health Secretary Wes Streeting is set to find NHS progress has declined for the first time in 50 years. Waiting lists, which have increased across all areas of the service, will be highlighted as a Tory failure, adding to the growing arsenal of Labour excuses to raise taxes. Streeting will be hoping no one looks to Wales’ Labour run NHS where 20.1% of people wait more than a year for treatment, compared with 5.2% in England…
Many will see the report as the latest development in Labour’s doom-mongering approach to government, clearly a ruse to prepare the country for tax rises in the imminent October budget. The phrase ‘progress has declined’ feels very Labour…
The British Heart Foundation is crowing today over “a lost decade of progress” when it comes to heart conditions. They decry “inequalities” and claim it is “unacceptable that too many people see worse outcomes from heart disease linked to their economic status, gender or ethnicity.” And right on cue they suggest the usual socialist solutions:
- A new tax on salt and sugar. Thanks to the Tories’ soft drink sugar tax the BHF now says making food more expensive is required…
- Immediate implementation on TV and online advertising ban for “less healthy products.“
- The expansion of the proposed advertising ban to “outdoor and radio advertising, sports sponsorship.“
- Cigarette-style packaging on less healthy food. Cheery…
- An extra tax on tobacco producers the BHF calls a “Smokefree Fund.”
- Making air targets set by the 2022 Environment Act even stricter.
The DHSC isn’t commenting on the BHF’s proposals but rest assured the government is interested. Campaigners have met with Treasury officials to directly discuss a salt and sugar tax. Wes Streeting is a big fan:
“From my point of view, I think we can see the soft drinks industry levy as a successful intervention and a model to follow. And if industry doesn’t like that, well, they’d better pull their finger out and come forward with a very persuasive argument about what they will do without the heavy hand of state regulation.”
More on Starmer’s “politics that treads lightly on people’s lives” as Guido gets it…
Labour just can’t get enough of their previous political staff handed supposedly neutral civil service jobs. In what is now becoming a major scandal, ministers are failing to justify the provision of mass-Labour donor Waheed Alli with a Downing Street pass and Labour aides are entering the civil service in droves. It’s not just Sue Gray bringing on her loyalists…
Wes Streeting’s political press officer Joe Davies, employed by the Labour Party in the four months to election, was handed a civil service media relations role this month. DHSC deploys the usual line when asked about this parachute job by Guido: “The department does not comment on individual personnel matters. Any appointments are made in line with the civil service rules on recruitment.” The department has not denied that the job was given without interview. Normally ministers’ civil service press teams are composed of impartial civil servants…
If the job wasn’t advertised externally, what exception was used? Who signed off on the exception? Did Streeting make a declaration of interest?
Starmer’s line when asked at his ‘State of the Nation’ speech was that “most of these allegations are coming from the very people who dragged the country down in the first place.” Which is complete nonsense as it’s the press, not Tories, digging out these appointments…
Guido is told that, while donor Ian Corfield’s crony civil service appointment won’t be going ahead, Jess Sargeant’s position in the Propriety and Constitution Group hasn’t changed. There’s no stopping this train…
