Author: johnredwood

I would like to follow up on my questions to you concerning the search for treatments that help CV 19 patients. You rightly replied that a number were in clinical research under your Recovery Trial, as well as with the WHO’s Solidarity trial and elsewhere. It was good news that  Dexamethasone was shown to have helpful effects for some serious cases.

How are the trials both in the UK and abroad going for

1. Other immune moderators and Interferons?

2. Anti virals including Remdesivir and Hydroxychloroquine?

3. Anti coagulants?

4. Convalescent plasma?

5. Vitamins C and D? 6. Nitric Oxide, zinc and Ozone?

Some of these treatments some doctors say  might be best used in the early stages to prevent the disease taking hold , and some may have beneficial effects in serious cases needing oxygen treatment, as with Dexamethasone. Clearly finding more ways of combatting the different features of the serious versions of the pandemic would be of great help in taming it.

Your stated policy of getting the NHS back to work on everything not related to CV 19 is now crucial. New contracts with the private health Sector should be based solely on buying stated procedures, treatments and operations for patients on the NHS waiting list. Buying capacity with no known patient in mind will be wasteful and will not incentivise the NHS to use the private capacity fully, as we saw during lock down.

It is also important that the policy of handling CV 19 cases in isolation hospitals or in clearly sealed off units in District General hospitals is properly enforced and advertised so patients are not put off attending surgeries, clinics and hospitals to have other serious conditions treated. With best wishes to you in getting the NHS fully back to work after the heroic efforts made by some to tackle the dangerous and difficult CV 19 surge.

As there is great support from many writing in for this, why not set out  your proposals  for the Home Secretary in your postings as she clearly shares this aim.

I have raised this issue several times in the Commons, on this site and elsewhere. I have proposed a more intense police operation against people traffickers, and new UK  asylum legislation which makes clear all EU continental countries are safe countries and the Dublin Convention should therefore be applied by our courts.

Let us welcome the idea of a simple map setting out general uses for land in each designated area of a Local Plan. Let us also agree the government needs to cut inward migration and prevent people trafficking.

The government suggests 3 categories on a map. One is Growth, the second is Renewal and the third is Protection.  Growth implies more or less any development is fine in principle, though subject to design and density requirements to be set in the Local Plan. Renewal we are told implies rebuild, change of use or some “gentle densification”. Protection implies keeping areas green with little or no building.

Maybe the government should look at three other use categories instead. They could demark land for housing, land for commercial development be it retail or industrial estate, and land for green gaps, farming and outdoor leisure for sports fields and other green spaces. I am all in favour of eroding the current complex uses classes and allowing greater freedom for building owners to flex from retail to homes or to industry. There do need to be special controls on the location of industrial businesses or leisure businesses that create noise or other nuisance, so they do not conflict with housing areas. Adjusting their categories, they could make it clear Growth includes employment sites as well as housing sites, whilst Renewal might like to stay more in keeping with current uses and styles of development.

The big issue to be resolved is the process of forming the Map, and the extent to which local wishes will be fully reflected in the results. The present system is deeply distrusted and disliked for the simple reason that the compromise which is a local Plan is soon broken by appeal decisions, forcing fast growing communities to absorb more housing development than they wanted. In communities that lack growth and investment the same process fails to lift the area to attract the new people and new investment they need to boost living standards and enterprise.

There is enthusiasm for levelling up both in  the fast growth areas suffering from too much building, and in  the slow and no growth areas desperate for new investment. How will this new system level up? What does it bring to the areas without investment that will drive a better distribution of building around the country? The government needs to make sure this is not just a new variant of systems to increase the pace of housebuilding in areas that are already relatively well off.

There is much to support  in the Planning White Paper. I have long advocated a map based approach where each area designates which places are to be green space or farms, which can be developed for housing and which have general commercial use. Speedier decisions, Local Plans only one third of the current length and a simpler approach to an Infrastructure levy or contribution on  developers are all welcome.

The present system is complex, expensive and frustrating to developers and local communities alike. It often does not allow a local community to protect areas from housing development  if they are not specially designated as Green belt or SSSIs. Whatever the Local Plan says, determined and well funded developers hire expensive lawyers and keep on with appeals and changed submissions until on national appeal they overturn the local Plan and get their way with a further planning permission. Developers have to allow for  many years of battles, have to pay  big fees to planning consultants and lawyers and enter a variable negotiation over developer contribution.

Local Councillors often are dragged from seeking to protect a piece of land from development which is not designated for development in their approved local plan, by the appeals process. They seek a deal with a determined developer on the advice of their planning officers. They are told if they do not do a deal the Council will lose out on a Section 106 Developer Contribution Agreement, as they will lose on  appeal and one may  not be awarded. They are also told they may land the Council with large planning and legal fees trying to defend their local plan, only to lose and have to explain why they wasted all that money.

The Councillors who give in then become very unpopular with the local community who sometimes suggest unreasonable collaboration with the developer, when in most cases it is the run of official advice and the likelihood of loss in  the system that causes the about face. The local community wants the Council to defend green spaces and keep local communities apart from continuous urban sprawl.

The government wishes to hit high targets for future housebuilding. As the White Paper acknowledges, the problem is often poor build rates despite large numbers of outstanding planning permissions. Landowners and developers can game the current system by building slowly on  land with approvals in order to persuade Planning  Inspectors to allow more planning permissions where the local community wants to keep green space. The government should also as part of  this policy exercise improve its control of our borders and set a sustainable figure for economic migrants as past Conservative governments did or promised to do, to ease some of the development pressures.

In future blogs I will look at more of the detail of the proposals in  the White Paper in preparation for putting in my response to this consultation document. I look forward to hearing from constituents in particular about how this might affect us in Wokingham and West Berkshire.

The last figures for UK output and incomes from the ONS take us to end May. They revealed an 18.9% drop in service activity in the 3 months to end May. Unsurprisingly  eating and drinking out and the motor trade led the falls, given the lock down impact. Less  predictably the other two sectors the ONS singled out as the main drivers of the collapse were health and education, down 31.4% and 37.8% respectively. Many other private sector service areas had much smaller declines thanks to working from home, using remote technology and identifying key workers to keep the service going.

Getting health and education back to where they were should be a priority now. Ministers have said they want the full range of treatments to be available again on  the NHS, and to see the backlog of delayed operations and treatments being tackled. So far the NHS has struggled to get back to anything like the capacity before the virus. It has also been unable to fill the private hospitals contracted to support it.

It is now policy to either have isolation hospitals for CV 19 or to have isolated and sealed  parts of hospitals to contain CV 19 patients and those helping them. This should enable normal infection control procedures to resume for all the other work the NHS does. Some of the shortfall in  work has been patients reluctant to attend medical centres and hospitals for fear of catching the virus when they already belong to an at risk group. The isolation strategy needs to reassure them.

Remote technology has allowed many private sector services to continue as before, substituting remote communication for the previous client and customer contact that was common. The NHS is learning to use this technology for primary care and for consultations with hospital doctors. Where treatment needs contact in a hospital between staff and patient then the hospitals have expertise in infection  control and the staff must have access to high quality protective clothing and equipment.

The private sector is still willing to offer capacity to the NHS to help with the backlog. This coupled with the extra money made available for CV19, winter pressures and other issues should enable the health sector to recover more quickly.
It is important the government defends the proposition that choice is an important driver of innovation and Quality. Private hospitals can offer good service and extra capacity which the NHS buys into when it needs to.

West Berkshire is receiving £103,352 and Wokingham £77,342 to make grants to people struggling with food bills and the cost of other essentials.

Payments under this scheme can be made to those already  in receipt of normal social security payments, and getting help from the Covid Summer Food fund.

The government is determined no-one need go hungry, and leaves it to Councils to use their skills and knowledge of local deprivation to distribute money where needed.

Government activity has expanded massively as a result of the decision to lock down the country to combat the virus. It is time to roll back many of these areas to bring budgets back towards balance after a huge borrowing splurge.

 9 million people are now effectively additional employees of the state thanks to the Furlough scheme. Most of their wages are paid by taxpayers with the express requirement that they must not work for their employers whilst being so paid.  It is important as the government  has indicated that rapid progress is now made with getting these people back into full time or part time working with their employer, to save the jobs and slash the costs to government.

The state has paid to control the workload and actions of the private health sector. During the height of the crisis there was an understandable surge in NHS spending, but there was also a drop in health output.  Most private sector medicine stopped altogether, and most  non urgent treatments stopped in the NHS. As a result health GDP fell. We need to get health output up to at least the levels it was at in January, and return to a system where private money as well as public comes  in  to cover the costs.

There are also an number of other areas where the state procured resources and capacity by contract to deal with the emergency, where it could now review those contracts, save some money and free capacity for others.

The state has taken upon itself paying to sustain  the full level of costs of public transport when it was carrying three or four times as many people as it is today.  There needs to be some thought of what demand for the next two or three years is likely to be and what level of fare revenue is likely. It would be unrealistic to carry on recruiting people to the railway for example when the forecast demand is going to be so much lower than last year. Current loss levels are unsustainable for any length of time, and thought needs to be given to a pathway for winning back lost passengers.

The government doesn’t have a choice of either controlling the virus or promoting jobs and growth. It has to do both. So far anti virus policies have dominated, with ruinous effects on the travel, leisure and hospitality industries. The PM is now looking at options to avoid a new national lockdown to control the virus.

Policy has to centre on

1 More intense medical discussion and analysis drawing on worldwide experience of which drugs and treatments can cut the death rate of serious hospital cases.

2 Help with continued shielding of those most vulnerable to serious forms of the disease.

3. Good trace and test systems so more carriers can isolate.

To generate economic recovery we need further relaxation of general restrictions on economic activity. I pointed to the way green policy is damaging large industrial and energy sectors yesterday. Today I highlight the travel, leisure and hospitality sectors.

Some leisure and hospitality businesses think there is no point in opening at all under current regulations, and some are still banned from opening. Some have re opened but face turnover well down owing to the need for social distancing and new methods of working which raise costs. A minority have adapted their business model to new conditions and are trading well. Given current levels of demand and the nature of the government interruptions the majority are unlikely to be able to do this.

On the plus side for the U.K. industry are some of the quarantine restrictions and bans on foreign travel. The decision on Spain in particular gives the U.K. holiday industry a real boost as you would expect many more people to holiday in the U.K. These same regulations undermine foreign tourist serving businesses like Bicester Village and central London.

Talking to some of the affected businesses I encountered one which saw a market opening for top end take away prepared dinners delivered to time share accommodation and is doing well. I found a travel business that has a back up contract for the NHS who as a result has abandoned the traditional visitor travel they offered. I have seen several shuttered businesses, often with older owner managers who wish to avoid social contact with the public. I have seen varied interpretations of the rules by hotels and restaurants prepared to run with lower occupancy and fewer covers.