NHS at ‘unprecedented’ breaking point after 14 years of Tories as Starmer closes Bibby Stockholm barge - live

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A set of new dossiers published by the National Audit Office have revealed the real state of government after 14 years of Tory rule.

According to a NAO report, the NHS is at an “unprecedented” breaking point with health workers “working at the limits” of the system.

It has also revealed Rishi Sunak’s decision to scrap the second phase of HS2 will cost up to £100m and it could take three years to shut down sites where work has begun, an official report has revealed.

Sir Keir Starmer will close down the controversial Bibby Stockholm migrant barge after the Home Office announced the contract will not be renewed.

The three-storey vessel, housing hundreds of refugees, will be shut in an effort to  “clear the backlog and fix the asylum system”.

The prime minister is facing a major Labour rebellion after several MPs pressured him to scrap the two-child benefit cap and suspend arms sales to Israel.

Today’s King’s Speech debate will end up with a vote on the matter as the Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle selected the SNP’s amendment to scrap the cap, with veteran John McDonnell confirming he will vote against the policy.

Key Points

• NHS at ‘unprecedented’ breaking point, NAO dossiers reveal
• Labour to shut down Bibby Stockholm asylum barge
• Sunak’s decision to scrap HS2 will cost £100m and take up to three years
• Councils spending half their budgets on homelessness as problem hits record high
• Sir Keir faces pressure vote on two-child benefit cap today
• Suella Braverman told to ‘hang her head in shame’ over Rwanda

Collective wait of 753 years for people phoning DWP in 2023/24, watchdog says

People phoning the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) collectively spent more than 753 years waiting for their calls to be answered in 2023/24, according to a spending watchdog.

This was made up of around 652 years waiting on DWP’s in-house lines and 102 years on its outsourced lines, the National Audit Office (NAO) said. The figures have been rounded.

DWP aims to answer 85% of calls to its in-house lines but overall 76% of calls were answered in 2023/24.

Some 17.3 million calls were answered and 5.3 million calls were abandoned after customers had joined a queue.

In 2023/24, the average time DWP took to answer calls to its in-house lines was 15 minutes and 23 seconds.

DWP expects 90% of calls to outsourced providers to be answered. In 2023-24, they answered 94% of calls – 19.4 million calls were answered with 1.2 million calls abandoned.

The DWP makes benefit and pension payments to over 20 million people to support them through life events such as being out of work, being retired or living with disabilities.

In 2023/24, it spent £268.5 billion on these payments plus £7.3 billion on running costs.

Disadvantaged children further behind in school than a decade ago despite £9bn spent, watchdog finds

The attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers is wider than it was a decade ago, despite around £9 billion being spent on the problem over the last year, a damning report has found.

The Department for Education (DfE) does not have a strategy to tackle the problem or “monitoring to understand how much it spends”, according to the public spending watchdog the National Audit Office. ]

The attainment gap measures the educational outcomes of those eligible for free school meals and compares them with pupils who have never received free school meals.

Read the full article here:

Disadvantaged children further behind in school than a decade ago despite £9bn spent

The Department for Education (DfE) does not have a strategy to tackle the problem, a report from the National Audit Office has warned

The two rebellions Labour could face in Parliament today

Sir Keir Starmer faces two potential Labour rebellions today as MPscontinue to debate the bills unveiled in the King’s Speech last week.

There are 11 amendments to the speech tabled by different groups of MPs. Speaker Lindsay Hoyle will decide at the end of the session which will be voted on by MPs.

The two most likely to be worrying Sir Keir will be the one’s tabled by his own MPs.

Several Labour members have put forward an amendment on the two-child benefit cap, which has been backed by 21 more MPs, as well as an amendment to stop arms sales to Israel, which has been backed another 26.

The two rebellions Labour could face in Parliament today

Issues both at home and overseas are dividing Labour MPs

Data watchdog reprimands school over facial recognition for canteen payments

A school has been reprimanded by the data protection regulator after using facial recognition technology (FRT) to take cashless canteen payments from pupils.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said Chelmer Valley High School, in Chelmsford, Essex, broke the law when it “failed” to complete a data protection impact assessment (DPIA) before starting to use the technology.

Data watchdog reprimands school over facial recognition for canteen payments

The Essex secondary broke the law when it ‘failed’ to take appropriate data protection safeguards, the Information Commissioner’s Office said.

Richard Tice has bemoans ‘bureaucrats’ threatening North Sea fishing sector

Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice has bemoaned “bureaucrats” who he claims threaten the North Sea fishing sector.

In his maiden speech, the Boston and Skegness MP told the Commons: “Despite the slogan of Skegness ‘the jolly fisherman’, my constituents actually are not feeling very jolly at the moment because seven out of 10 of my constituents voted to leave the European Union.

“They trusted the previous government. They took them at their word but they feel a sense of political betrayal in a number of areas.

“The first people who are not very jolly are indeed the fishermen themselves who feel that various bureaucrats – Environment Agency, Natural England, IFCA (the Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities) – are acting in a way as to try and suppress, destroy this great industry of ours for a very seafaring nation, food producing, generating great revenues.”

Mr Tice also said: “Thousands of homes have been flooded and with a failure to properly maintain sea level defences, tens of thousands of homes are at risk, again because of bureaucracy and inertia.

“Another reason that my constituents are actually really quite grumpy is because of the implications of the stupid net zero policies which will result in hundreds of massive ugly pylons blighting the environment and countryside in my constituency as well as solar farms planned on incredibly productive agricultural farmland – absolute idiocy.”

Mr Tice earlier said Skegness was home to “the best value, the most delicious and the greatest portion of ice cream, which I’m very partial to”.

Softening of attitudes to fraud putting pressure on welfare system, report warns

Society’s attitude to fraud is “softening” with the effects being felt in the billion-pound benefits system, the Department for Work and Pensions has said.

The £266.1 billion welfare budget “is a deliberate target for both organised crime groups and opportunistic individuals”, the department’s annual report warned.

In the year to March, fraud accounted for overpayments of £7.4 billion, the report said.

It estimated that fraud levels could grow at around 5% each year without action to reduce them.

A “rising trend” in fraudulent behaviour towards organisations generally and a “softening of attitudes” around fraud in wider society is “likely to be mirrored in the benefit system”, the DWP said, noting the greater scale of the challenges it faces in trying to prevent and detect fraud as a result.

Research noted included a British Social Attitudes Survey showing the proportion of people who felt it was either “not wrong” or only “a bit wrong” for someone claiming unemployed benefits not to report a cash income from a casual job had risen from 16% to 27%, between 2016 and 2022.

A separate study from the University of Portsmouth suggested the proportion of people who thought falsely claiming benefits was never justified had fallen from 85% in 2011 to 67% in 2023.

Rollout of payment schemes causing ‘widespread uncertainty’ for farmers – report

The rollout of new payment schemes for farmers is causing “widespread uncertainty and risks” for the sector, the National Audit Office has warned.

The Farming and Countryside Programme aims to transition the UK’s agriculture sector post-Brexit to ensure profitable farms, food security and environmental health by 2028.

Under the scheme, the Environment Department (Defra) is phasing out EU direct payments to farmers, which were based on land area, and replacing them with agri-environment schemes, based on delivering environmental outcomes alongside food production, such as the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI).

The changes have come at a time when extreme weather, market conditions and sudden rises in input costs are putting farms under immense pressure.

Defra has been taking an iterative approach, making changes and improvements to the new subsidy schemes over time.

But the National Audit Office (NOA) released a 56-page report on Tuesday warning that chopping and changing has made it difficult for farmers to plan their businesses to remain viable, produce food and achieve the programme’s environmental goals.

The spending watchdog said the take-up of the new schemes is rapidly increasing with 40,700 farmers signing up as of April 2024.

Listen: Suella Braverman told to hang her head over Rwanda in shame by angry LBC listener

Listen: Suella Braverman told to hang her head in shame by angry LBC caller

Suella Braverman has been told she should be “hanging your head in shame” over the Tory party’s approach to immigration. The former home secretary, who was a guest presenter on LBC on Tuesday morning (23 July), took a call from a listener called James in Glasgow. James told her: “You should be hanging your head in shame. The Tory party has exacerbated this problem for political gain.” James also urged her to apologise for the £700 million Labour claimed she spent on the scheme. Ms Braverman asked: “What is your solution, James? “We promised and failed and for various reasons we didn’t succeed. Do you think they [Labou] are going to fix the problem?”

Tory MP: Crime is ‘not an illness to be treated'

Conservative former minister Sir John Hayes has argued that crime is “not an illness to be treated, it’s a malevolent choice made by those who are careless of the harm they do”.

Referring to the early release from prison scheme, Sir John said he was “shocked” that the Government intends to “let more of those dangerous people on to our streets” after they’ve served 40% of their sentence.

The South Holland and The Deepings MP argued that “punishment is not a dirty word”, adding: “I hope the new Government will recognise that in order to crack down on crime we really need do have to restore public faith, as I said, that justice will be done.”

He said the Government can’t rely on “wishful thinking”, adding: “The guilty must be punished and the innocent must be protected”

During Sir John’s contribution in the Commons, Labour MP Sarah Champion (Rotherham) intervened and said: “So does that mean you believe people are born wicked? Because I believe if there’s good education at a very early age, and early intervention, crimes can be prevented.”

Farage calls for a referendum to leave ECHR

Nigel Farage claimed the European Court of Human Rights has “now completely outlived its usefulness” and called for a referendum to leave the body.

During his maiden speech in the Commons, the Reform leader said: “We will only stop this if we start deporting people that come illegally. Then they won’t pay the smugglers. But we will only do that by leaving the ECHR.

“But I have got a fun suggestion that I think would liven up politics, engage the public and see a massively increased turnout. Why don’t we have a referendum on whether we continue to be members of the ECHR?”

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