Rt Hon Sir John Redwood MP (Wokingham) (Con): If the Treasury was not holding up the plan, can we be told what was holding it up? When will we get the plan?
Edward Argar (Minister of State at the Department of Health and Social Care: I am grateful, I think, to my right hon. Friend for his question. As I set out, it is important that this is the right plan and that it does the job for which it is intended. We are working closely with other Departments to make sure the plan, when it is published, does the job for which it is intended, and I look forward to its imminent publication.
February 8, 2022
Rishi tells us that the priority is to fix the NHS (his justification for punitive taxation.)
No it isn’t.
It is to fix the economy which PAYS for the NHS. It is bonkers to think it can be the other way around .
The global response to Covid has been a disaster of panic which was based on dodgy stats, dodgy forecasting and false reporting. How the Left have thrived on it.
February 8, 2022
PS, Taiwan and Ukraine are a direct result of our surrender to woke and to Covid. I told you our competitors would be empowered by it.
February 8, 2022
PPS, I also said that lockdown was going to cause a lot more suffering than Covid. And so it is.
February 8, 2022
Much truth in this and even worse in many places – Wales, Scotlands, New Zealand, Canada, Italy, France, Austriaā¦Boris is perhaps one of the least bad leaders.
Increasing taxes (This government/Sunak has made huge increases) from the vastly overtaxed already position left by Hammond, Osborne, Darling, Brown, Clarke, Major. Then they lump net zero amd reams of red tape on top of the productive too.
February 8, 2022
āThe global response ā¦ā: A typical comment from an armchair general ignorant of what was happening on the front line.
āHow the Left have thrived on itā: Another typical comment from someone who does not appear to know that the CUP has been in power since the 6th of May 2010.
Have you ever recognised that one of the best characteristics of the CUP is its ability to evolve with the current situation? If such evolution lets dinosaurs like you, still wedded to a PM of the ā80s, on the side of the road, all the better. The future does not belong to the over-70s.
February 8, 2022
Do you always have to be so rude to people hef?
Do you talk like this to people you meet?
February 9, 2022
This site is used for graffiti from time to time, and its not pretty.
February 8, 2022
Reply to Hefner
Thanks for the promotion !
General !!!!
Do I now get to choose what’s on TV ?
February 8, 2022
Exactly “It is to fix the economy which PAYS for the NHS. It is bonkers to think it can be the other way around “.
As Churchill put it:-
Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.
Sunak seems to think it is a cow they can milk to death!
Why has the BBC decided that the Boris claim that (that Starmer that he failed to prosecute Jimmy Saville) is false? Saville was not prosecuted I understand – so what more proof do they need? Starmer and indeed everyone else clearly “failed” to prosecute him.
Why too is this BBC “false news” leading every news item?
February 8, 2022
I see we arenāt even rearranging the deckchairs, not even repainting the deckchairsā¦.weāre just putting different cushions on themā¦.maybe its time for another name change
February 8, 2022
and slap a tax on those deckchairs, and call it an āeco-chargeā so that there are no dissenters in fear of the woke brigade backlash
February 8, 2022
The Minister is not certain we even want, or will get, deckchairs.
February 8, 2022
Gibberish.
February 8, 2022
JM, Thanks, I was not expecting anything more intelligent.
February 8, 2022
Dear Sir John, your persistence is much appreciated, so thanks again. But could I save you time and effort in future by suggesting that for such posts you need only make use of the following template?
‘On (…date…) I asked the Minister about (…topic…), but did not receive the information I was requesting.’
February 8, 2022
yet again ….’Good question (but then they can’t say ‘you are wasting my time’ can they?) but there is no way on this earth I’m going to tell you!
February 8, 2022
Rishi has apparently announced the re-opening of six oil/gas fields in the North Sea.
Are they to be solely for the benefit of UK citizens at cost plus an acceptable profit or will their opening allow the big oil companies to make obscene profits on the World market. This is one to watch, very critically.
February 8, 2022
@agricula
Perhaps the increase in energy supply will have the effect of reducing energy prices so that the UK will benefit either directly or indirectly from the North Sea fields.
I would be happy for the (UK) big oil companies to make “obscene profits on the World market”, provided the UK receives the tax on those profits and provided that extra UK jobs have been created.
February 8, 2022
Over the past few years oil companies have made big losses – did you call for the government to subsidise them then ?
February 8, 2022
The best plan would be to offer people on the waiting list say 50% of treatment costs to go privately to shorten the list and to give tax breaks for private health care. Cancel 12% IPT tax on medical insurance too. This to get more capacity, more money and real freedom and choice into the market. Rather than a dire state NHS monopoly with generally very poor outcomes indeed for a fairly wealthy nation.
Cancer is perhaps most urgent as early detection saves lives. But other operations get people back to work too.
February 8, 2022
100% would be better.
start with people who have been waiting the longest, just give them a cheque to take anywhere they want, move onto cases (like Cancer) where many of the NHS treatments are now regarded as prehistoric in the rest of the developed world, just give the patients a cheque.
February 8, 2022
Yes but 50% would reduce the list very considerably for the others. Go higher if sufficient reduction does not happen. They do not have the money for 100% as they have wasted so much on net zero, test and trace, HS2, PFI contracts, eat out to help out, the absurdly OTT lockdowns, over the top testing, hugely bloated government everywhere, private jets to Australia and Blackpool, COP26, millions of āloansā for duff degrees, the all are welcome in Dover agenda, a hugely inefficient NHS with far too many duff managersā¦
February 8, 2022
My assumption is that Rishi wasn’t holding up the plan but No 10 briefed that he was as payback for him refusing to support Boris in his Jimmy Saville comments. That’s all. Too many unelected unaccountable untalented “special” advisors around in government.
February 8, 2022
If the rumours are true then 6 gas fields are to be granted licences. Hooray for Synak if it’s his doing. Now approve the Cumbria coal mine and get frackung.
Let’s hope this is the net zero tanker slowly turning away from this blind aley we are being led down.
February 8, 2022
+1 and lets do it pretty dam quickly
February 8, 2022
+1 open some coal mines too and get those power stations running on UK coal – steel works too
February 8, 2022
+1
February 8, 2022
That was a non-reply if ever I saw one, and he is not even sure if he is grateful for the question!
February 8, 2022
Sir
Do you get the opportunity to keep asking the same question until you get a straight answer ?
February 8, 2022
The minister could have replied :-
āNo. We cannot say./ We donāt know.ā
February 8, 2022
Or as the BMJ puts itā¦.
ā6 million patients wait as politicians argue over the elective recovery plan.ā
What is NHSX?
February 8, 2022
Answer comes as first in any Google search for āNHSXā: āNHSX is a joint unit bringing together teams from the DHSC, NHS England and NHS Improvement to drive the digital transformation of careā.
See nhsx.nhs.uk then check āWho are weā, āAbout usā, āNewsā, āKey Tools and Infoā, āCovid-19 responseā or āBlogā.
February 8, 2022
Well lets just say I know someone in the cancer treatment queue, and have access to the letters within the hospital and GP about that case, and know in detail what has actually been going on. The NHS hospital is fabricating dates, and evidence, and is clearly completely accustomed to fraudulently reporting on the status of such things to make their own performance look better than it is. Thats one of the fundamental problems with the NHS, nobody has the true figures and wait times because they are simply not recorded.
As for the treatments take radiotherapy. After the Ashya King case the NHS is now finally rolling out some proton beam treatment as an alternate to X-Ray’s for destroying cancer. However they have only bought the capacity to treat a small minority of head cancers. The reality is the rest of the world recognises the massive advantages that proton beam brings (it avoids damaging the surrounding tissue when zapping cancer) and is using it in far more cases. The vast sums the NHS get should buy the British people at least a similar chance of getting proton beam when they need radiotherapy as people in the rest of the developed world. But the inertia in using X-Rays is there for all to see. Patients needing radiotherapy should be given a cheque to take anywhere they want, and if they top it up and go private or abroad for proton beam then good, its better for everyone.
The NHS is an impossible monster to control. Top down state controlled never works. Hand the buying power over to individual patients, keep the state backed insurance aspect where we all pay in according to ability and get out according to need, get the state out of owning, running, rationing, allocating healthcare, make the insurance payouts according to written words in a policy not randomly rationed when its too late for an individual to make alternate arrangements.
February 8, 2022
Again. A statement that says a lot without saying anything.
Since when did Humpty Dumpty become a Minister ?
February 8, 2022
Off topic please.
BBC at it again.
Boris is guilty of hate speech because of the Savile comments. The Right were guilty of hate speech – the murder of Jo Cox.
A debate on Jeremy Vine today.
These events bookend another incident of which the BBC were determined not to make any connections.
I don’t recall such a debate over the murder of David Amess so close after the toxic comments by Angela Rayner when she called the Tories racists and scum.
Also – if Starmer isn’t guilty of Savile being let off then Boris isn’t guilty of lack of PPE or anything else done by his departments for that matter.
February 8, 2022
I’ve looked at the conclusions to Alison Levitt QC’s report on the affair, available online. The prosecutor was found not to have carried out the CPS policy of following up witnesses if they were reluctant to come forward, as was the case with Savile. Starmer was ultimately responsible for seeing that his organisation followed policy properly, I would have thought. He is known to have been involved in several other high-profile cases at that time, so it isn’t true he always distanced himself from individual cases. He can try and put a firewall between himself and Savile, as Nixon did with Watergate, but the questions about what he knew and when won’t go away.
February 8, 2022
Those questions have been answered.
February 9, 2022
My point was about the BBC ignoring the possible connection between Ms Rayner’s undoubted ‘hate’ comment and the murder of David Amess whilst getting het up about the examples that bookend hers.
Never mind the fact that the BBC was employing and covering up for a man who was molesting children who were ill in hospitals… and a few other vile things this organisation could be accused of in recent history.
February 9, 2022
Thanks, I answered them again, but Sir John apparently does not want to publicise those well- documented facts.
What went on or did not at the BBC is indeed another matter, however.
February 9, 2022
Angela Rayner’s remarks were intemperate and unparliamentary in language perhaps, but were simple matters of opinion as to the moral stature of the Tory Party, and have historically famously been said before on various occasions. Given recent revelations, I wonder how many would now disagree with her too?
They were not misrepresentations of objective fact.
February 10, 2022
Dreadful comment NHL
February 8, 2022
The news items in The Telegraph and The Times this morning that oil and gas drilling licences in the North Sea are about to be issued is good news, if it is true?
It is only one step, along with the RR SNR’s and Sizewell C development , along a long road of rational policies that you have been advocating for some time so strenuously . Well done
Pity that the job is still far from complete but we can live in hope that common sense Conservatism is begining to prevail
Reply Yes, sometimes we make progress.
February 8, 2022
Right to reply
I agree that there is some progress however they (the powers at be) need to acknowledge the error of ‘net-zero’
February 8, 2022
Just out of interest are the SNP supporting these new gas fields ? I thought they were anti-fossil fuels this week.
February 8, 2022
The upper ranked pen pushers in the NHS are like children who have been spoiled in early childhood- they are always looking for more. 40% more on their budget must be the last rise until they demonstrate they are good value for money.
Its not good pushing good money after Bad!
February 8, 2022
Once again, the minister has failed to reply to either of your two questions!
This has also got me pondering a much, much bigger question that I don’t think has ever been asked before: is it right that the Chancellor and the Treasury should have a right to control and veto the spending of every other department? This makes the Treasury a ‘super-department’, the real ‘primus inter pares’ and creates a much too strong centre of power – with grave consequences for government unity and the efficient running of the country when the Chancellor clashes with the Prime Minister.
You might think that it cannot be otherwise, as departments can’t simply be allowed to spend whatever they like. And indeed they can’t. But if departments cannot be trusted because they always want to spend more, the same applies to the Treasury, which always wants to spend less. So how to square this circle? Well, what about this: (i) policy goals are agreed by the Cabinet, then (ii) the department produces a plan of action for the most cost-efficient way of achieving those goals, and finally (iii) a *separate* body reviews those plans to see if they do, indeed, achieve the goals most cost-effectively. A new body could be created to do this, or you could simply add this task to those of the OBR, whose title ‘budget respopnsibility’ does neatly encapsulate what I am proposing. Whatcha think?
February 8, 2022
The Health Secretary (HS) has offered a number of conventional solutions to get approaching a pint out of the NHS pint pot. No radical business type thinking. Has the HS been in contact with his peers in Sweden, Norway, Iceland , Australia , India for instance to see what capacity he can buy in the various overloaded UK disciplines. I do not say there is spare capacity out there, but if there is it could accelerate the shrinking of many waiting lists. Equally why not look at the private sector in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece. Our HS needs to be asked whether he has investigated such an approach. Chances are it would get the job done at a lower cost than at home. Many of the patients are walking wounded so a two hour assisted flight would be no great hardship.
February 9, 2022
the fact that you can buy instant access to many treatments within the UK private sector and abroad demonstrates there is indeed spare capacity, indeed probably a better use of government money than throwing more of it at failing NHS institutions