UK politics live: most public services much worse now than when Tories took office in 2010, report says | Politics

Rishi Sunak will chair an emergency Cobra meeting amid fears that the conflict between Hamas and Israel could have increased the domestic terror threat in Britain, PA Media reports. PA says:

The prime minister will assemble police and national security officials and home secretary Suella Braverman in Downing Street on Monday morning, Whitehall sources said.

Education minister Robert Halfon stressed before the meeting that the government has to ensure British citizens are “safe and secure from the threat of terrorism”.

He declined to say whether the terror threat level might be raised, which stands at “substantial” in England, Wales and Scotland, meaning an attack is likely.

It has stood at that level since February last year when it was lowered from “severe”, meaning the threat is highly likely.

Good morning. Any plan Rishi Sunak has to win the next general election has to deal with the Conservative party’s record in office, which is something of a handicap. Today’s non-Israel-Gaza political news is likely to focus on the Covid inquiry hearing, which could shed fresh light on how dysfunctional No 10 was under Boris Johnson in the early days of the pandemic. But Covid is very far from being the worst indictment on the government’s record (not least because the vaccine rollout is widely regarded as a triumph). Today the Institute for Government thinktank has published its annual survey of how key public services are performing and, frankly, its conclusions are dire. It says almost all public services are worse than they were at the time of the last election, and most of them are much worse than they were when the Conservatives took office in 2010.

Here is the chart that sums it up.

Here is an extract from the report.

All the services covered in this report, with the sole exception of schools, were performing worse on the eve of the pandemic than a decade earlier. The situation was particularly dire in prisons, hospitals, general practice and adult social care. But they are performing even worse now. The situation is most severe in criminal courts and hospitals.

The crown court backlog is at a record high, reaching 64,709 cases in June 2023, compared to just 40,826 in March 2020. However, accounting for the greater complexity of cases in the backlog, which now includes a disproportionate number of jury trials, the ‘true backlog’ is now equivalent to 89,937 cases.

Hospitals are doing substantially worse on all major performance metrics. The elective waiting list continues to grow, reaching 7.8m in August 2023, up from 4.6m on the eve of the pandemic. And in 2022/23, little over half of those attending A&E were admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours (56.7%), compared with more than three-quarters in 2019/20 (75.4%). This also compares unfavourably with a longstanding target of 95%, and even to a new target, announced in December 2022, of 76%.

Performance is worse in some services despite substantial spending and staffing increases. In hospitals there were approximately 13% more doctors and nurses in March 2023 as compared with March 2020, yet many areas of activity have not returned to pre-pandemic levels. Adult social care has also seen substantial spending increases in recent years, but these have largely been eaten up by higher costs to provide the same level of service, meaning that there has been little progress in reducing unmet and under-met need.

And here is Rachel Hall’s news report.

Parliament is in recess before the king’s speech next week, and so there is not much on the agenda. Here is what is coming up.

10.30am: Martin Reynolds, Boris Johnson’s principal private secretary during the pandemic, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry. Later Imran Shafi, Johnson’s private secretary for public services, gives evidence.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

Morning: Rishi Sunak is due to chair a meeting of the Cobra emergency committee to discuss the impact of the Israel-Hamas war on the terrorist threat in the UK.

2pm: Lee Cain, Johnson’s director of communications during the first phase of the pandemic, gives evidence to the Covid inquiry.

Also today Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, and Kemi Badenoch, the business and trade secretary, are due to speak at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in London. Prominent rightwing US Republicans are also speaking, including Mike Johnson, the new speaker of the House of Representatives. This is how Josiah Mortimer from Byline Times characterises the gathering.

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