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Wes Streeting criticises Labour colleagues who complain about Whitehall not being able to deliverWes Streeting, the health secretary, has given a speech to the Institute for Government conference this morning.As Jessica Elgot reports, Streeting criticised politicians who complain about being unable to reform public services because of Whitehall inertia.
New – Streeting goes full throttle on the idea that politicians can’t make the state work and that “nothing happens” when levers are pulled.
“Where there aren’t levers, we build them. Where there are barriers, we bulldoze them. Where there is poor performance, we challenge it.”
He says the complaints are just poor excuses from the right.
“Bafflingly, some on my own side of the political divide have begun to parrot the same argument… If we tell the public that we can’t make anything work, then why on earth would they vote to keep us in charge?”
This was aimed partly at the right. (At the Reform UK press conference yesterday, the party’s latest recruit Nadhim Zahawi was complaining about the “over-mighty bureaucratic inertia that now dominates and runs the country”, for which he claimed Tony Blair was mostly to blame”.)But Streeting criticised Labour figures who adopt this view too. He may have been thinking of the former adviser to Keir Starmer, Paul Ovenden, who wrote an article for the Times over the holiday period complaining about the “supremacy of the stakeholder state”.But Starmer has also himself set out this argument – in December 2024, when he said that there were “too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”, and again last month, when he said:
My experience now as prime minister is of frustration that every time I go to pull a lever there are a whole bunch of regulations, consultations, arm’s-length bodies that mean that the action from pulling the lever to delivery is longer than I think it ought to be, which is among the reasons why I want to cut down on regulation, generally and within government.
Streeting’s comment will be seen by some as an implicit dig at Starmer – although he might argue that he was just restating the determination to make the Whitehall machine deliver that the PM himself has also set out.ShareUpdated at 09.52 GMTKey eventsShow key events onlyPlease turn on JavaScript to use this featurePolish president urges Starmer to offer Polish as modern foreign language for students in UKJakub KrupaJakub Krupa writes the Guardian’s Europe live blog.Poland’s president Karol Nawrocki has urged the British government to offer Polish as a modern foreign language available to students in the UK as part of a push for closer political and people-to-people relations between the countries.Briefing reporters outside 10 Downing Street after his meeting with UK prime minister Keir Starmer, Nawrocki stressed the importance of Polish-British military and security links, noting that over 100 UK troops are stationed in Poland.He said the two leaders also discussed the opportunities for Polish and British military industries to work together as they rearm their respective armies.Nawrocki said they also talked about trade, including Poland’s anticipated involvement in the G20 summit this year, and ongoing talks about the UK’s post-Brexit settlement with the EU, including on easing SPS (sanitary and phytosanitary) checks that would have allowed Polish companies to trade with the UK.He also said that he was “very pleased” that “the UK is on the way to introducing Polish as a foreign language in the education system in the UK”, as he offered his backing to the idea which would benefit thousands of children born in Polish and Polish-British families in the UK.With an estimated population of over 800,000, Poles remain one of the largest national foreign-born communities in the UK. However, the number of Poles in the UK has been falling in the last few years as more have been moving out of the country than coming in.A former head of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance, Nawrocki emerged from relative political obscurity to unexpectedly win last year’s presidential election. He beat liberal Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski after a closely run contest in which he was backed by the US president, Donald Trump.Poland’s president Karol Nawrocki speaking to journalists after his meeting with Keir Starmer. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPAShare71% of parents who had child benefit suspended after HMRC emigration fraud probe were legitimate claimants, MPs toldLisa O’CarrollLisa O’Carroll is a senior Guardian correspondent.Seven in 10 parents who had child benefit suspended in a HM Revenue and Customs anti-fraud crackdown fiasco last year were in fact legitimate beneficiaries who had not emigrated, the tax authority has revealed.The chief executive of HMRC, John-Paul Marks, told the Treasury select committee said 71% of those targeted, higher than the 63% previously admitted, were in “error”.Marks admitted that “just under 5%” of the 23,700 parents who lose their child benefit, were in fact fraudulent.Meg Hillier, chair of the committee, accused HMRC of causing unnecessary “pain” to innocent parents and making an “egregious” error assuming parents who had used Dublin Aiport to return to Northern Ireland had emigrated.The admission shows a major system failure by HMRC which had told the government before rolling out the scheme in July, it could save up to £350m in benefit fraud over five years.They had piloted a scheme the previous year but had used PAYE records and Home Office travel data to try and work out which parents had emigrated and were still claiming child benefit.But, when the scheme was rolled out, the PAYE checks were removed leaving incomplete Home Office travel records as the basis of the calculation of fraud.Parents said they were left frightened and stressed after they received letters telling them their benefit was being suspended with demands they answer 73 questions involving detailed medical records, school reports and bank statements to prove they were not fraudsters.The 71% error rate is much higher than previously admitted when HRMC told Conservative MP Andrew Snowden in a written answer before Christmas that 63% of the parents had been wrongly targetted because of flawed travel data.ShareLouise Haigh says government should be ‘really, really tough’ in its approach to XLouise Haigh, the former transport secretary, has said that Labour should be “really, really tough” in its response to Elon Musk over X and its Grok AI tool creating sexualised, deepfake images.Last week Haigh called for the government to give up posting on X.Today, in an interview on the Today programme, referring to the Grok AI feature allowing users to digitally undress pictures of women and children, Haigh said:
These issues are a feature, they’re not a bug of Elon Musk’s Twitter.
Elon Musk is ideologically committed to pushing the boundaries of free speech, and we’ve seen that from his reaction to the threats of the Ofcom investigation.
He doesn’t believe in the kind of guardrails and safeguarding that the British public would expect online, and he takes a very different approach from AI companies like Google and OpenAI.
So it’s right that we are really, really tough in our response, and I’m really pleased the government has taken him on so roundly.
ShareDavey says that President Trump’s comments about Greenland show that he is “out of control”. He says Keir Starmer and other European leaders were right to issue a statement saying that the future of Greenland is not a matter for the US. And he says he would be happy to see Nato come up with a strong response, putting Nato forces there to protect it from Russia. And the US should be invited to join that mission, he says.The press conference is now over.ShareDavey says he would back partial ban on under-16s using social media, but claims Tory plan would go too farQ: Would you support a total ban on under-16s having social media accounts?Davey says, as a parent, he thinks we have to have this debate. He thinks there has to be “some sort of ban”.
There’s no doubt that we’re going to have to put some sort of ban in place to keep them safe. So no doubt about that.
The question is, how do you do that?
I’ve seen some of the proposals from other parties. There’s a danger that they will have some unintended consequences.
So I’m really worried that the idea we’ve heard from the Conservatives is that GCSE pupils will end up being banned from Wikipedia.
ShareDavey says Tony Blair and New Labour were right to say that A&E waits should be reduced to a maximum of four hours. By and large they achieved that. The fact that that is no longer the case shows how far backwards the NHS went under the Tories, he says.ShareQ: Why are you doing so badly in Wales?Davey says the Lib Dems won a seat again in Wales at the last election. And he says he thinks they will improve their representation in the Senedd at the elections this year. He won’t go beyond that, he says. He says, with Plaid Cymru, Wales has real multi-party politics.ShareDavey says, as opponent of assisted dying bill, he thinks it is ‘outrageous’ that Lords trying to block itAsked about assisted dying, Davey says he voted against the bill. But he goes on:
I personally voted against the assisted dying bill. And, though many of my colleagues didn’t, I think the real issue at the moment is what the Lords is doing, and I think it’s quite outrageous that that seems to be members of the House of Lords who are trying to kill the bill. And I say that as an opponent of the bill. But it’s the democratic right of the House of Commons to pass bad law if it wants to.
ShareQ: Before the election you said the problem with the NHS was Tory incompetence. Now you say it is Labour incompetence. Do you have a view as to what the underlying problem is?Davey says he is clear that the Tories are most to claim for the NHS crisis.But he says Labour has not been able to sort the problem out.He says the Lib Dem argument that is that social care must be transformed at the same time. That is what experts think, he says. And sorting out care would transformative.He says he set out this argument in his book last year, Why I Care.The Guardian wrote an editorial about this at the time.ShareQ: What is your approach to Labour? And, with all the challenges facing the Lib Dems this year, are you the person to carry on leading them?Davey says Labour have been a disappointment. And he says they are the party with a leadership problem; there are Labour MPs who want Wes Streeting to be leader. But Streeting needs to sort out the trolley wait problem first, he says.Referring to the Lib Dems, he says the YouGov poll today shows that are five parties within 10 points of each other.But the Lib Dems are doing well in actual elections, he says.He says in May last year the Lib Dems beat Labour and the Conservatives for the first time.ShareDavey says Labour have been ‘total failure’ on social careDavey says he had hoped that Keir Starmer was serious about what he said during the election campaign about wanting a cross-party solution to social care. He goes on:
I’m afraid I’ve been proved wrong. There has been total failure on social care, kicking it into the long grass. No real political push for it. Elongated timetables. So they’ve been huge, disappointing.
And they will not save our NHS unless they sort out care. I’ve long said if you if you care about the NHS, you’ve got to care about care.
ShareOn Iran, Davey says he would take Donald Trump’s comments about stopping the murder of protesters more seriously if he were also willing to stop things like that happening in Minnesota.But he says he supports Trump in wanting to use sanctions to put pressure on Iran.ShareQ: What you are proposing would cost less than 1% of the NHS budget. Is this really about changing the NHS, or is it really about campaigning ahead of the local elections?Davey says this is about responding to “the pain and distress that people are feeling in every hospital A&E across the country”, and showing that there is a political party that wants to do something about it.Responding to the claim that £1.5bn is not a big enough sum, he says this shows that the plan is affordable.And he rejects the suggestion he is parking Lib Dems tanks on Labour’s lawn. The NHS was a liberal creation, he says, citing William Beveridge.ShareDavey urges journalist at the press conference to visit hospitals themselves and examine what is happening in A&E.
It is really quite astonishing. It’s never happened before in my lifetime. And it’s the untold crisis in the health service.
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