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** 19 April 2021
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** UK
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** Local democracy 'at breaking point', says study (#1)
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** Explainer: former PM tried to persuade the health service to use a Greensill app called Earnd (#2)
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** Opinion: Power grab casts a shadow over Hancock's push for integration (#3)
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** Opinion: The David Cameron scandal: just how sleazy is British politics? (#4)
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** International
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** Bangladesh: Anti-tobacco groups urge raising taxes, fines for public smoking (#5)
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** UK
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** New research shows that local government has been “hollowed out” over the past four decades due to funding cuts, growing centralism, and a lack of constitutional protection. The report for the Unlock Democracy campaign group by De Montfort University academics says that local democracy has been ''eroded’’ with Whitehall ''chipping power’’ away from local government.

The authors note a decline of direct council control over services such as education, planning, and housing, comparing the 6.5 million council homes across England, Scotland and Wales in in 1980 to the level of 2 million in 2021. It says centralism has advanced through legal cases, secondary legislation, and conditional deals “policed by central government”.

The report also says that ad hoc reforms and the allocation of power to unelected bodies such as local enterprise partnerships, multi-academy trusts and integrated care partnerships have led to “tangled webs of accountability” with “fuzzy boundaries”. It also argues that the introduction of the executive or cabinet model for councillors has led to “‘two tribes’ of councillors, with very different leverage over local affairs”.

Source: Local Government Chronicle, 16 April 2021
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** On Sunday 18th March it was revealed that David Cameron sought access to the personal details of NHS staff on behalf of Greensill during lobbying efforts aimed at getting the health service to adopt an app called Earnd, claimed by Cameron to help improve the wellbeing of the NHS’s workforce.

The Sunday Times published in full an email Cameron sent on 23 April 2020 to Matthew Gould, the chief executive of NHSX, an arm of the health service charged with promoting digital innovation, who Cameron already knew from the coalition government in 2010-16 and who George Osborne, the chancellor in that administration, knew as a schoolfriend.

The email caused controversy because Cameron, on behalf of Greensill, asked for access to the Electronic Staff Record (ESR), which contains details of the 1.4m people in England whom the NHS employs directly ''as Earnd will be much slicker if it can obtain access to employee data in ESR.” The Sunday Times reported that Earnd entered a contract with ESR and separately with NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) to roll the app out to “all” NHS trusts, therefore accessing the ESR.

Despite Greensill boasting that Earnd would eventually be used across the NHS, only 450 health service personnel from three different trusts began using the app, NHS SBS confirmed to The Sunday Times. Both Greensill and Earnd went bust last month. The app’s future is unclear.

Source: The Guardian, 18 April 2021
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** The Local Government Chronicle’s Editor Nick Golding writes that the white paper’s focus on population health could be undermined by the lack of trust in the health secretary as he seeks more power for himself.

There is ''conflicting centralisation’’ within the white paper according to Golding as positive reforms are counterweighted with an ''undercurrent’’ empowering the health secretary, often at the expense of NHS England. Matt Hancock gets new powers to abolish the NHS’s numerous arm’s-length bodies or to transfer powers between them, set NHS England’s powers and objectives, intervene on service reconfiguration, and require data on social care from providers and councils. Golding notes that he can also intervene in councils’ delivery of social care, make payments to social care providers, and “direct NHS England to take on specific public health functions”.

Golding questions whether Hancock and the current Government have done enough to merit such powers. He cites the failures in COVID-19 handling such as the expense and slowness of NHS Test & Trace and that many public health practitioners are aggrieved that the government made Public Health England the fall guy for COVID-19 failings when ''far more of the failings could be laid at its own door’’. Golding also says ministers have ''repeatedly prioritised what is popular, and what suits their political interests, above fairness, cohesion and good governance’’, with unequal schemes such as the towns fund.

However, Golding says local government’s biggest grievance with the white paper is on social care. The Care Quality Commission has been told to assess councils’ delivery of their duties with the health secretary intervening where they fail. But, according to Golding, ''social care’s problems are not predominantly councils’ fault – they are the fault of successive governments that have not reformed its finances’’.

Source: Local Government Chronicle, 16 April 2021
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The Financial Times’ Robert Shrimsley gives his opinion on the question: ''how deep is the malaise’’ in British politics following the Greensill affair?

The UK’s record is ''good rather than great’’. The UK ranks 11th out of 180 nations on Transparency International’s global corruption rankings. But Greensill is, as Bernard Jenkin MP says, ''a culture in Whitehall that’s been building up for a long time’’.

Regulations on political donations and electoral spending have been tightened several times, including after the so-called Bernie Ecclestone affair which saw Tony Blair’s Labour party abruptly exempt Formula 1 from a 1997 ban on tobacco advertising, just months after Labour received a £1m donation from the motorsport magnate, and shortly after a meeting between the two men.

Yet the elevation of donors and allies to the House of Lords continues. Political donations remain a weak spot. But the most pressing issue now is the revolving door between government and the private sector, an issue made more complex by the changing nature of public service.

Civil servants increasingly are encouraged to gain business experience and outsiders are brought into Whitehall. There is arguably a new class of public figure in British politics, neither civil servant nor traditional political adviser, part of a “chumocracy” in Government. Jolyon Maugham, founder of the Good Law Project, says that the civil service feels ''disempowered’’ as a result.

One conclusion from all of this is made by Bob Kerslake, former head of the home civil service: ''Our current model depends to a large degree on the prime minister following, understanding and respecting the rules. Maybe in the light of recent experience we might want to ask the question of whether a system that depends on that is sufficient.”

Source: Financial Times, 16 April 2021
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** International
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**

The Bangladeshi government should impose a specific tax to prevent the young from consuming tobacco and should raise the fine for smoking in public by amending the Tobacco Control Act 2005, speakers said at a webinar on Sunday 18th March organised by the Bangladesh Anti-Tobacco Alliance (BATA) and Work for a Better Bangladesh Trust (WBB).

The webinar, entitled “Aggressive Advertising of Tobacco Products: Impact on Youth”, discussed how better to regulate the tobacco industry for what Zaman Liza, program manager of the Tobacco Control and Research Cell at the Dhaka International University, called its ‘’massive campaigns to encourage teenagers to use tobacco, in violation of existing laws’’.

The speakers called for a provision to be introduced for the direct filing of cases where tobacco control laws were violated. They also called for a ban on the display of characters in web series and on television smoking cigarettes. Overall, they called for the Tobacco Control Act to be amended to strengthen the regulation of the tobacco industry and bring it under greater control.

Md Azhar Ali, assistant commissioner at the Deputy Commissioner's Office in Satkhira, however pointed to the lack of human resources and coordinated effort as the major hindrance to dealing with smoking in public places.

Source: Dhaka Tribune, 18 April 2021
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ASH Daily News is a digest of published news on smoking-related topics. ASH is not responsible for the content of external websites. ASH does not necessarily endorse the material contained in this bulletin.

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