Hunt approves compensation for contaminated blood victims
“Jeremy Hunt will approve final compensation for the victims of the contaminated blood scandal this week after a Sunday Times campaign for justice was backed across the political divide. The chancellor is preparing to unveil a package worth at least £10 billion for those affected by the deadliest man-made disaster in postwar Britain. Tens of thousands of people were treated with disease-ridden blood products from the United States in the 1970s and 80s.” – Sunday Times
- Jeremy Hunt: I promised a dying friend I’d end infected blood scandal – Sunday Times
- It is our duty to finally erase this mark of shame – Sir Keir Starmer, Sunday Times
Badenoch urges firms to cease orders “politicisation” of work environment
“A top Cabinet minister last night told woke bosses to stop lecturing people and get back to delivering great goods and services. Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch accused firms of wasting too much time on political gestures and activism which can turn off potential customers. She also called for a return to common sense when recruiting staff, warning that “well-meaning” equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives can “divide rather than unify”…Her outburst is backed by research which shows only a tiny minority of people are more likely to buy a company’s products if it publicly backs “progressive” causes such as Palestinian statehood or transgender rights. The majority said it would make no difference or would be less likely to buy goods, according to a Deltapoll survey for Policy Exchange.” – Sunday Express
- Four in 10 less likely to stay with their company if asked to wear pronoun badges – Sunday Telegraph
- National Trust uses ‘anti-white’ rhetoric, claims Badenoch – Sunday Telegraph
Heaton-Harris not standing for re-election
“Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris has said he will not be standing at the next general election. The Tory MP said on X, formerly Twitter, it had been an “honour and a privilege to serve” and passed on his thanks to his constituents in Daventry. Mr Heaton-Harris has been the Northern Ireland secretary since September 2022, describing it as the “best job in the Cabinet”. He announced his intention in a letter to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.” – BBC
>Today: ToryDiary: For better or for worse, Cummings points towards the future of the Right
NHS 1) Labour “will tell staff to work weekends”
“NHS staff will be told to work evenings and weekends under Labour plans to slash waiting lists, Wes Streeting has announced. Neighbouring hospitals would be asked to share staff and pool waiting lists as part of a £1.1 billion drive to provide an extra 40,000 appointments a week. Overtime pay rates would be offered to NHS staff who agree to pick up any extra shifts. In an interview with The Telegraph, Mr Streeting, the shadow health secretary, revealed that senior NHS leaders who silenced whistleblowers would be sacked and barred from working for the health service again under Labour.” – Sunday Telegraph
- Nurses with joint pain to get free private healthcare to get them back to work treating patients, Streeting pledges – The Sun on Sunday
- The public should trust Labour, we can turn the NHS around — we did it before and we will do it again – Wes Streeting, The Sun on Sunday
- Reeves and Rayner’s ‘pointed exchange’ over New Deal – Sunday Times
- The real pitfall of eye-catching pronouncements and one-liners in difficult policy areas is ridicule – David Blunkett, The Sun on Sunday
- David Lammy, the least subtle of shapeshifters – Dominic Lawson, Sunday Times
NHS 2) “Integrated care” is not yet a reality
“The NHS publishes regular updates on delayed discharges, and their causes. The most recent shows that in the last week of April, 722 long-stay patients were waiting for things that were obviously the hospital’s responsibility: discharge decisions, paperwork, medicine etc. But 7,369 were waiting on other parts of the public services — above all, for beds to be available in care homes and rehabilitation units, or care assessments for those returning to their own homes…you can’t fix the NHS without fixing social care…But so far the rhetoric is a lot more impressive than the reality. As the new reform was picking up pace, my colleagues at the Centre for Policy Studies think tank published a study of the preliminary evidence from the 13 pilot areas. It showed that “delayed transfers of care” in those areas had actually increased by more than the national average. There had also been a notable rise in spending on bureaucracy, to run all the new committees.” – Robert Colvile, Sunday Times
Treasury analysis finds Labour’s tax and spending plans would leave a gap of £74 billion a year
“Labour’s spending wish list will end up costing £74billion a year by 2028, bombshell Treasury analysis reveals. This week, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt unveiled a dossier claiming Labour’s plans have a £38.5billion black hole. That is the equivalent of £2,094 for each working household — but a more detailed Treasury analysis of Labour’s spending aspirations now suggests it will be far higher. The number crunchers put the spending figure at £74.2 billion by 2028-29. The plans include ending new oil and gas licences, losing £5.7 billion every year in tax revenue. Scrapping business rates would cost £26.3 billion a year and ending income tax rates freezes £33.5 billion annually.” – The Sun on Sunday
Cleverly: Would Labour try to negotiate a “returns agreement” with the Taliban or the ayatollahs?
“We are, right now, preparing to send a regular rhythm of migrant flights, having secured the legislation for that in the teeth of Labour opposition…It is clear to everyone but Labour that, without Rwanda, they have absolutely nowhere to send those from Afghanistan, Syria, Iran and anyone whose home country is unsafe, they’re determined to stop the flights, not the boats. To solve that self-inflicted problem, they’d have to negotiate “returns agreements” with the Taliban, Assad and the ayatollahs, Labour dodge this question.” James Cleverly, Sunday Telegraph
- Our airfield is on standby, and the Rwanda flights are booked – Michael Tomlinson, Sunday Express
Zahawi argues that ousting Johnson was a mistake
“In his first newspaper interview since leaving the cabinet, Nadhim Zahawi, 56, said that with hindsight he and colleagues were wrong to oust Johnson, whom he described as the most “consequential” leader since Margaret Thatcher. “I wish we had held our nerve,” Zahawi said. “Many colleagues got spooked. If colleagues had stepped back and just realised Twitter was not the country, we’d have probably made a very different decision.” The MP for Stratford-on-Avon also expressed partial regret about how he had handled the fallout surrounding a £5 million settlement with HM Revenue & Customs, which included a £1 million penalty for making a “careless” error over tax due on the sale of shares in YouGov, the polling company that he helped found in 2000.” – Sunday Times
Police ‘put pressure on a local Tory party to unseat councillor’ who was arrested after being wrongly accused of hate crime
“A police force was last night accused of ‘trampling’ over democracy after detectives allegedly put pressure on a local Tory party to unseat a colleague wrongly accused of a hate crime. Anthony Stevens, a Conservative councillor in Northamptonshire, was arrested last year after posting an image from a video – first revealed by The Mail on Sunday – of a Christian preacher having his bible wrested off him by police in the street. The father of two was held for nine hours, during which he was also quizzed about his online support of another politician who criticised gay pride events. Mr Stevens, 51, a member of Wellingborough Town Council, was released and later told that no further action would be taken against him. But the MoS can now reveal that days before Mr Stevens was arrested, a Northamptonshire Police detective phoned Jonathan Ekins, a former local Tory mayor for Wellingborough, and allegedly told him Mr Stevens should be ‘removed’ as a councillor because of his views.” – Mail on Sunday
Welby calls for “cruel” two-child benefit cap policy to be ditched
“Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, has issued an impassioned plea to the government and Keir Starmer’s Labour party to scrap the two-child limit on benefit payments to families, branding it as a cruel and immoral policy that plunges hundreds of thousands of children into poverty. The intervention by the head of the Church of England will place particular pressure on Starmer to make a firm commitment to end the policy, which he has so far refused to do, as he tries to position Labour as being responsible with the public finances.” – The Observer
Other political news
- Labour councillor defects to Conservatives – BBC
- Sunak leads global drive to protect us all from AI – Sunday Express
- Israelis recover another body of a hostage – BBC
- New dentists face being forced to work for NHS – Mail on Sunday
- Lord Ranger faces Parliament ban over drunken outburst – BBC
- Third of voters believe Starmer was wrong to let Elphicke into Labour Party – The Observer
- Tory leadership rivals “using weight loss drugs” – Mail on Sunday
- Where did the Black Lives Matter millions go? – Sunday Times
- Sunaks’ wealth rises to £651m in latest Sunday Times Rich List – BBC
- Schools in England send police to homes of absent pupils with threats to jail their parents – The Observer
Hannan: Europe’s shifting to the right
“Brexit has supposedly turned us into philistines and xenophobes. But maintaining this line requires you not even to glance at what is happening on the Continent…Just as Europe explores various Rwanda-style return schemes, Sir Keir Starmer is repeating his promise to scrap ours. Where does that leave the progressivist Remainer conceit? More immediately, where will it leave illegal migrants? Which country, in a reversal of the current trend, are they likely to find the most attractive? Funny how things work out, eh?” – Daniel Hannan, Sunday Telegraph
- ‘I have never in my lifetime seen as much anger’: how Ireland’s migration system was overwhelmed – Sunday Telegraph
- Countries copying Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda scheme show that PM was right – Leader, The Sun on Sunday
- Austrian leader set to back Sunak’s Rwanda plan – The Sun on Sunday
Braverman: Craven university authorities are enabling student intolerance
“I studied at Cambridge as an undergraduate over 20 years ago. I still remember the tears in my mum’s eyes when we opened the acceptance letter from Queens’ College. Neither she nor my dad had had a great education or the chance to study for a degree until they were in their forties as mature students. So this was an honour that made their hearts soar. But these days, why should getting into Oxbridge bring such tears of joy? These universities have become craven indulgers of militant Left-wing politics. The people in charge should be holding the line, rather than pandering to eco-zealots, Black Lives Matter anarchists and pro-Palestinian militants, who are so grossly wrong. They’ve smugly fostered a climate of fear at our universities, forcing others to pay the price for their cowardice.” – Suella Braverman, Sunday Telegraph
News in brief
- It’s already going wrong for Vaughan Gething – Jawad Iqbal, The Spectator
- Populist legislation is making people homeless – Henry Hill, CapX
- It is futile for the Tories to complain about the consequences of laws they have established or upheld – Fred de Fossard, The Critic
- How MPs are styling themselves into a general election – Tali Fraser, The House magazine
- The agony of sex education – Kathleen Stock, Unherd
