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Levelling up projects may need to be ‘resized for inflation’, Clarke warns
Councils should be prepared to downscale their levelling up projects, as central government admits that just 15% of money it has allocated from the levelling up fund has so far reached council bank accounts, amounting to £187m of the £1.24bn committed by the Department of Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (DLUHC) in the first round of the levelling up fund last year.
When pressed during DLUHC questions in parliament on Monday about when councils would hear about bids to the second round of the levelling up fund, submitted at the start of the summer, Simon Clarke, levelling up secretary, warned that no additional funding would be on offer to those projects which now face spiralling costs as a result of inflation and the rising cost of borrowing.
Several MPs asked for updates on when bids for the second round of levelling up funding would be decided, and Mr Clarke said applicants would hear “by the end of the year” and declined to comment on particular bids.
Source: Local Government Chronicle, 17 October 2022
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Opinion: Thérèse Coffey should spend less time trying to save Liz Truss, and more time saving the NHS
Writing in the i, chief political commentator Paul Waugh highlights “fears in the health service that Health Secretary Therese Coffey is just not doing enough to fight the NHS’s corner on funding” in light of the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s focus on spending restraint. There are concerns among many in the NHS that health funding is at risk.
The new Chancellor stressed at the weekend that “all” departments would be asked to find “efficiency savings”. However, the NHS is already having to find £12bn in efficiency savings. To cover the £20bn black hole in its budget, NHS finance chief Julian Kelly warned it may have to “completely revisit” its plans and possibly cut resources for cancer care, GPs and mental health. Waugh warns that as the former Treasury’s Director General for Public Spending and Finance (2014-2017) “when [Kelly] says cuts are going to hurt, he means it”.
Waugh highlights comments from Kelly stating that “10 years of funding significantly below the level of the historic trend rate of growth in health spending…meant that we went into the pandemic with little or no resilience. If you compare the winter of ‘19/’20, nurses, doctors, acute beds per head of population compared to most Western European countries, we were clearly right down at the low end of the table in benchmarks as a result as we went into the pandemic.”
Waugh writes that health secretary Thérèse Coffey’s media comments signalling reluctance to tackle obesity and smoking as well as the suggestion staff leaving for better pay and conditions abroad could simply be replaced by others from overseas have led to major concerns that she is not sufficiently grappling with the issues and fighting the NHS’s corner on funding. He continues that some “even think she could be the one trying to persuade the Chancellor not to spend too much.” But the biggest worry about Coffey among some, he states, is that her other job as Deputy Prime Minister (and the closest friend and ally of the PM left in Cabinet) is getting in the way of her day job at health. He comments: “The image of a part-time Health Secretary spending more time trying to save Truss’s career than trying to bat for the NHS is certainly another gift to Labour.”
Source: iNews, 18 October 2022
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Liz Truss turns to former Johnson adviser as she fights to shore up tottering premiership
Liz Truss has recruited a key member of Boris Johnson’s inner circle in a bid to shore up her tottering premiership following the collapse of her flagship economic policies. Addressing MPs on the Brexiteer right of the Conservative Party on Tuesday evening, Ms Truss was accompanied by the former PM’s deputy chief of staff, combative election strategist David Canzini, who aides confirmed had started working with her earlier that day.
The meeting with the European Research Group (ERG) came on the eve of Wednesday’s crucial session of Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons, at which Ms Truss hopes to shake off the impression that she is a passenger in a government now led by chancellor Jeremy Hunt. But one Tory MP told The Independent that no amount of improvement on her previously wooden PMQs performances can save her now, calling the PM “toast”.
A poll by YouGov found that 77% of Britons disapprove of the Truss government, the highest figure in 11 years of polling on the issue, and 87% say it is handling the economy badly. Over half (55%) of 530 Tory members questioned told the pollster Ms Truss should resign, and her overall satisfaction rating hit new depths of -70%.
Source: Independent, 18 October 2022
See also: The Times - David Canzini: the key player in Westminster you’ve never heard of
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No 10 chief of staff accompanied Libyan militiaman to Foreign Office meeting
Mark Fullbrook, the No 10 chief of staff, accompanied a controversial Libyan politician involved in an attempted military coup to a meeting in the Foreign Office to lobby officials on foreign policy, it has emerged, with Labour calling Fullbrook’s position as Liz Truss’s most senior official is “untenable”.
Fullbrook is understood to have facilitated unofficial meetings in June with senior cabinet ministers, helping Fathi Bashagha lobby the government to diverge from the official stance of the UN and back a rival administration in Libya. Just one month earlier, Bashagha, who has links to the Russian Wagner Group and a military strongman in the east of the country, had unsuccessfully attempted to seize power in Tripoli by force backed by a militia called the eighth brigade, against the UN-backed government.
Soon after Bashagha’s visit to meet with Fullbrook, the foreign affairs select committee held a rare off-evidence session via satellite link with Bashagha. The session was highly unusual, given that the committee was not conducting an inquiry into Libya at the time, it did not seem related to any of its other work, and it largely gave Bashagha a platform to lobby for British support.
The Sunday Times revealed that Bashagha met Kwasi Kwarteng, then business secretary, and Nadhim Zahawi, then education secretary, at an unofficial appointment in parliament. It also reported that Fullbrook had made efforts to influence Truss, despite No 10 having previously told the Guardian that his company, Fullbrook Strategies, “did not lobby Liz Truss when she was foreign secretary”.
Kwarteng, after a visit to Libya prompted by Fullbrook, has previously written in support of eastern Libya’s military strongman, Khalifa Haftar, whom Bashagha is in alliance with. Haftar’s Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) is responsible for a bloody siege to Tripoli in 2019-20 with the support of thousands of Kremlin-affiliated Wagner Group mercenaries.
Fullbrook’s position was further destabilised on Sunday when he was forced to recuse himself from discussions about changes to the government’s smoking strategy due to his past as a tobacco industry lobbyist. Fullbrook worked on behalf of British American Tobacco and Philip Morris, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes.
Source: Guardian, 17 October 2022
See also: Tobacco Tactics - Crosby Textor Group
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US: Biden asks courts to pull six vape companies from the market for selling them illegally
The Biden administration is cracking down on six different e-cigarette makers for illegally marketing their products despite numerous warnings from federal regulators.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in conjunction with the Department of Justice filed suit against six e-cigarette companies. The agencies behind the suits argued that all of the shops ignored previous warnings for failing to submit required applications to sell their products on the US market.
Under current rules vape manufacturers have to complete stringent pre-market applications to legally sell in the US. These are in part to assure that the companies are not claiming to make a device that is a safe smoking alternative.
‘We will not stand by as manufacturers repeatedly break the law, especially after being afforded multiple opportunities to comply,’ said Dr Brian King, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products.
The requested injunctions, if granted, would compel the companies to cease manufacturing, selling, and distributing their products permanently.
Source: UK Times, 18 October 2022
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