Wes Streeting accuses BMA of ‘holding the country to ransom’
Wes Streeting has launched a fresh attack on resident doctors as their strike gets under way, accusing the BMA of “holding the country to ransom”.
Speaking from NHS England’s headquarters in London, where officials are monitoring the impact of the walkout, the health secretary said: “We are doing everything we can to minimise the risk to patients, minimise disruption.”
But he admitted the disruption could not be completely avoided. “I want to be honest with people what we can’t do is eliminate disruption or risk to patients,” he said.
Operations, appointments and procedures have already been cancelled, Streeting added, warning of “real challenges” in the days ahead.
“That is why the prime minister and I are so angry on behalf of patients and other NHS staff who are working hard to keep the show on the road.”
Key events
Rob Evans
A Conservative peer has apologised for breaking the House of Lords rules by helping to secure a meeting with a minister for a Canadian company he advises.
Ian Duncan, a deputy speaker of the Lords, was found to have breached the rules by providing a parliamentary service for Terrestrial Energy when he facilitated an introduction between its chief executive and a new energy minister.
His conduct had been reported to the House of Lords standards commissioner following the Guardian’s months-long investigation examining the commercial interests of peers.
As a result of the Lords debate series, four other peers are being investigated to establish whether they breached the house’s code of conduct.
A fifth peer, Iain McNicol, a former general secretary of the Labour party, was required to apologise in May for breaking the rules by writing to the Treasury to promote a cryptocurrency firm that was paying him.
In a report published on Friday, the standards commissioner ruled that Lord Duncan of Springbank had broken the rules which forbid peers from seeking to profit from their membership of the upper chamber.
The business secretary has said the idea of a “magic wealth tax” to raise funds is “daft” amid speculation that the chancellor could turn to such a measure to plug holes in the public finances.
The government’s U-turns over welfare reform and winter fuel payments have left the Chancellor with a multibillion-pound black hole to fill, fuelling speculation she might target the assets of the wealthy in the next budget.
Rachel Reeves has not ruled out the possibility of a new wealth tax but has been eager to highlight that she will stick to her commitment not to hike tax for “working people”.
Some in the Labour party, including former leader Lord Neil Kinnock and Wales’s First Minister Baroness Eluned Morgan, have called for a wealth tax.
However, business secretary Jonathan Reynolds dismissed the idea.
“This Labour government has increased taxes on wealth as opposed to income – the taxes on private jets, private schools, changes through inheritance tax, capital gains tax,” he told GB News.
“But the idea there’s a magic wealth tax, some sort of levy… that doesn’t exist anywhere in the world.
“Switzerland has a levy but they don’t have capital gains or inheritance tax.
“There’s no kind of magic (tax). We’re not going to do anything daft like that.
“And I say to people: ‘Be serious about this.’ The idea you can just levy everyone… What if your wealth was not in your bank account, (what if it was) in fine wine or art?
“How would we tax that? This is why this doesn’t exist.”
Peter Walker
Zack Polanski, the Green party leadership candidate, has said he would be potentially willing to cooperate with a new leftwing party led by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, after calls for the two groups to form an alliance.
Polanski stressed that any decision would be one for Green members, and would depend on the eventual form of a new party that does not as yet officially exist or have a name.
His comments to the Guardian open up a divide on the issue with his competitors for the leadership, Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns, who have warned against the Greens becoming “a Jeremy Corbyn support act”.
A day after Corbyn and Sultana jointly launched a new website for people to register interest, with the interim title of Your party, a leftwing campaign group called for it to seek a formal alliance with the Greens in England and Wales.
We Deserve Better, which argues for electoral pacts on the left, said a united ticket for the Greens and the new party could potentially unseat dozens of Labour MPs, whereas both running could split the vote.
Polanski, currently the Greens’ deputy leader, has built his push for the leadership around the idea of making the party a mass-membership “eco-populism” organisation, which could take on not just Labour but also Reform UK.
“I’m open to working with anyone who’s up for challenging the far right threat of Reform and this unpopular Labour government,” he said.
“Exactly what this might possibly look like with regard to any sort of arrangement is a bridge I’ll cross further down the line and will be in the hands of Green party members. The new party doesn’t exist yet, and 2029 is some way off.
“If anyone’s looking for a leftwing vehicle for power and change in this country, the Greens are here right now, we’re surging, we have well established party infrastructure and we have hundreds of elected representatives across the country. Join us.”
Essex Police said a total of nine people have now been charged following the force’s continuing investigation into incidents of disorder in Epping last week.
The force said Shaun Thompson, 37, of Western Avenue, Epping, has been charged with violent disorder and criminal damage in relation to disorder in Epping on 17 July.
He appeared at Chelmsford Magistrates’ Court on Friday and was bailed to appear at Chelmsford Crown Court on August 18 for a plea and trial preparation hearing.
Essex Police said Dean Walters, 65, of Corner Meadow, Harlow, has been charged with using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour and he is due to appear at Chelmsford Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday September 24. He remains on bail.
Assistant chief constable Stuart Hooper said on Friday: “I’m really grateful to the people of Epping who wanted to make their voices heard yesterday and did so peacefully.
“I’ll take this opportunity to thank them again. As people will have seen, we had a really robust police operation around the protest.
“We wanted to ensure everyone could safely go about their business, minimising disruption, while facilitating peaceful protest.
“We are continuing to investigate those few intent on exploiting peaceful protests to launch assaults on officers, cause criminal damage, or commit disorder.
“They can expect a knock on the door.”
The Forth Road Bridge has been closed to traffic due to a Greenpeace protest.
The group said 10 of its activists have suspended themselves from the bridge in order to block an Ineos tanker from passing underneath.
Police Scotland said they were alerted at 1.05pm and officers were “engaged with those involved”. The public were asked to avoid the area.
The bridge is one of three crossing the Firth of Forth in central Scotland which links Edinburgh to Fife.
The UK government’s ban on Palestine Action limits the rights and freedoms of people in the UK and is at odds with international law, the UN human rights chief has said.
Volker Türk, the UN human rights commissioner, said ministers’ decision to designate the group a terrorist organisation was “disproportionate and unnecessary” and called on them to rescind it.
In a statement on Friday, he said the ban amounted to an “impermissible restriction” of people’s rights to freedom of expression and assembly that was “at odds with the UK’s obligations under international human rights law”.
He added that the decision restricted the rights of people involved with Palestine Action “who have not themselves engaged in any underlying criminal activity but rather exercised their rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association”.
Türk said it could “lead to further chilling effect on the lawful exercise of these rights by many people” and that the UK government should halt any police and legal proceedings against protesters who have been arrested on the basis of the proscription.
The Guardian has contacted the Home Office for comment.
Kevin Rawlinson
Dozens of councils have been targeted by campaigners calling for a four-day week after it that emerged one local authority had become Britain’s first to vote to adopt the pattern permanently.
The move comes shortly after thousands of private-sector workers were also told they would be staying on shorter working weeks with the same pay after more than 200 businesses decided it worked for them – in some cases, after lengthy trials.
“As hundreds of British companies in the private sector have already shown, a four-day week with no loss of pay can be a win-win for both businesses and workers,” said Joe Ryle, the campaign director of the 4 Day Week Foundation.
Ryle spoke after it was confirmed that South Cambridgeshire district council had voted to become the first local authority in the UK to permanently adopt the four-day week. The Liberal Democrats-led council said independent analysis had shown “most services got better or were maintained, with significant improvements to recruitment and retention”.
Now, the campaigners have said they have compiled a target-list of at least 24 more councils, in the hope of setting off a wave of new announcements. They said they believed as many as six councils were close to taking the step in the near future.
The move towards more modern working practices has been gaining momentum recently. In February 2023, more than 50 companies opted to continue with the new working pattern after conducting the world’s largest trial of a four-day week up to that point. Campaigners hailed it as an indication that the working pattern could be adopted in the wider economy.
The International Monetary Fund has said the UK government risks being knocked off course in meeting its targets to repair the public finances and urged Rachel Reeves to give herself more leeway through tax or spending measures.
In a final version of an annual report on the UK economy, the Washington-based organisation said changes introduced by the chancellor to the government’s deficit reduction plans had enhanced the credibility and effectiveness of fiscal policy.
“Risks to this strategy must be carefully managed. In an uncertain global environment and with limited fiscal headroom, fiscal rules could easily be breached if growth disappoints or interest rate shocks materialise,” the IMF said.
The fund also said the risk of overly frequent changes to tax and spending policy could be reduced by measures including the creation of more fiscal room for manoeuvre by Reeves to meet her targets.
“The first best (option) would be to maintain more headroom under the rules, so that small changes in the outlook do not compromise assessments of rule compliance,” it said.
Zarah Sultana has claimed the new left-wing party she launched with Jeremy Corbyn has already attracted more “sign-ups” than Reform UK’s total membership.
Posting on X, the Coventry South MP wrote:
We’ve reached 230,000 sign ups! That’s more than Reform’s membership. Nigel Farage, Zia Yusuf, Richard Tice, Lee Anderson… your boys are taking one hell of a beating. Labour, you’re next.
It follows the launch of what Jeremy Corbyn and Sultana described as “a new kind of political party, one that belongs to you”.
Earlier today, during a visit to a bin strike picket line in Birmingham, the former Labour leader told reporters the party had already attracted around 190,000 sign-ups.
The Unite general secretary Sharon Graham has accused the government of abandoning workers after it announced the Lindsey Oil Refinery is set to shut.
It comes after more than 100 people gathered outside Grimsby Town Hall in protest on Thursday, demanding urgent government intervention to save the plant and protect jobs in north-east Lincolnshire.
The Unite general secretary said the site’s closure has left livelihoods hanging in the balance. “Over a thousand workers rely on the future of the oil refinery, their jobs are now at immediate risk, through no fault of their own,” Unite’s official X account said, citing Graham’s comments.
“If the government fails to act then workers at Lindsey and much further afield will rightly feel abandoned by it.”
Mhairi Black confirms she has left SNP
Former SNP MP Mhairi Black has confirmed she’s left the party, criticising its stance on trans rights and Palestine.
Speaking to The Herald ahead of her Edinburgh fringe show Work in Progress, the former deputy leader at Westminster said the “capitulation on LGBT rights, trans rights in particular” had contributed to her decision.
I thought the party could be doing better about Palestine as well.
There have just been too many times when I’ve thought, ‘I don’t agree with what you’ve done there’ or the decision or strategy that has been arrived at.
Black, who did not stand in last year’s general election citing online abuse, said she remains “just as pro-independence” and considers herself “probably a bit more left wing” than before.
Wes Streeting accuses BMA of ‘holding the country to ransom’
Wes Streeting has launched a fresh attack on resident doctors as their strike gets under way, accusing the BMA of “holding the country to ransom”.
Speaking from NHS England’s headquarters in London, where officials are monitoring the impact of the walkout, the health secretary said: “We are doing everything we can to minimise the risk to patients, minimise disruption.”
But he admitted the disruption could not be completely avoided. “I want to be honest with people what we can’t do is eliminate disruption or risk to patients,” he said.
Operations, appointments and procedures have already been cancelled, Streeting added, warning of “real challenges” in the days ahead.
“That is why the prime minister and I are so angry on behalf of patients and other NHS staff who are working hard to keep the show on the road.”