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Newslinks for Sunday 14th July 2013

4.30pm WATCH:

1.30pm Ashley Fox MEP on Comment: Where now for Britain’s relationship with Europe?

Tory Diary: The roots of the NHS scandal are in a culture that grants human life no absolute value

Phillip Blond on Comment: Why the Government needs to let the Church of England deliver more public services

May picks row with EU over public prosecutor as vote on European Arrest Warrant looms

May Theresa Home Office6"Her comments, likely to trigger a fresh row between Britain and Brussels, come ahead of a Commons debate on Monday in which MPs will vote on coalition plans to scrap 98 EU laws relating to criminal justice and home affairs by next spring. The government will exercise a mass “opt out” of 133 measures but will then seek to opt back in 35 moves which are seen to be in the national interest. Among the 35 are the controversial European Arrest Warrant, although ministers are pushing for it to be reformed. Some Tory Eurosceptics will vote against Mrs May’s strategy - but MPs were not predicting a mass backbench rebellion this weekend." - Sunday Telegraph

Hunt: Up to 3,400 patients died needlessly last year at the 21 major hospitals run by the 14 NHS trusts

"A major review of patient safety will find that as many as 21 hospitals are  still failing the most critically ill people – especially the elderly and emergency cases – four years after the Mid Staffs scandal claimed hundreds of lives. On Tuesday Mr Hunt will tell Parliament that up to ten of 14 hospital trusts investigated over high death rates require urgent action." - Mail on Sunday

Camilla Cavendish: What the NHS needs is a dose of kindness

Screen shot 2013-07-14 at 08.57.15
"It has saddened me that in the past four months I have heard almost no one use the word “kindness”. Only two people who were not patients used this word. One was the chief nurse at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital, who has done more than almost anyone to make her healthcare assistants a respected part of the clinical team and says bluntly that her staff need to be “kind and competent”." -  Sunday Times (£)

Promotion speculation and leadership hysteria over Liz Truss...

Truss Elizabeth"Senior sources predict Liz Truss will be given a job ‘just outside the Cabinet’ as a staging post on her path to the top. Bookmakers have slashed the odds on her joining the Cabinet within the next 12 months from 4/1 to 2/1 – and even quote her at 50/1 to become the next Tory leader. It is a remarkably rapid rise for the 37-year-old Childcare Minister, who has impressed David Cameron since joining Michael Gove’s team last September." - Mail on Sunday

  • Cameron will shuffle junior Ministers and promote Truss - Sun on Sunday
  • Prime Minister vows to protect Bomber Command memorial - Sun on Sunday
  • Why Cameron will struggle to make friends in the North - David Paul, Sunday Express

…As Matthew D'Ancona says: Don't sack Willetts...

"Of all the rumours swirling round Westminster about the forthcoming mini-reshuffle, the most disquieting concerns the possible pensioning off to the backbenches of David Willetts. For the sake of the Government, I hope this gossip is unfounded. If it has a basis in fact, I urge the Prime Minister, George Osborne and Ed Llewellyn – Cameron’s chief of staff and the man with the Post-it notes in any reshuffle – to think again." - Sunday Telegraph

...It's claimed that Davey got Hayes sacked...

Screen shot 2013-07-14 at 08.44.38"Climate change sceptic Mr Hayes had asked the head of power giants  E.on to warn of blackouts unless the Coalition watered down its green crusade and made a U-turn on the closure of coal-fired generators. But Mr Hayes’s boss, Energy Secretary Ed Davey, hit the roof when he found out about the ‘treachery’ – and demanded he was sacked.  Two weeks later, Mr Hayes was dismissed and given a minor backroom role in No 10, advising David Cameron on links with Tory MPs." - Mail on Sunday

...And a former LibDem Minister says: Sack Crosby...

"As the latest row over the role of big money in politics hit Downing Street, Paul Burstow, who was a health minister until September last year, said Crosby should either quit or be sacked by Cameron after it emerged that his lobbying firm works for global tobacco giant Philip Morris. Other Liberal Democrats also made clear they were furious and would fight to ensure Crosby was removed from any role in which he could influence health or any other coalition policy." - Observer

…Who, earlier this week, told leading Tories how to nail Miliband

Screen shot 2013-07-14 at 08.46.10"Crosby emphasised that there were to be two attacks on Labour: that the leader is weak and that it is still the same old Labour party with all its flaws.  He drove home to the room that it is not enough to just say Miliband is weak, you have to show that ‘his weaknesses have consequences’. Crosby ran through a series of potential hits on Miliband. In a sign of how hard the Tories will go, one of them was that Miliband is too weak to ‘look after our interests abroad’." - Mail on Sunday

Gove blocks flagship Islamic free school following links to extremism

"The Education Secretary pulled the plug on the Muslim-inspired Northern Lights primary school in Halifax, Yorkshire, following a three-month investigation. Ministers ordered the inquiry after complaints that a local Islamic centre had circulated a leaflet suggesting that Muslim parents who failed to support the free school would be condemned." - Mail on Sunday

  • Number of pupils taught in overcrowded classes doubles as supply struggles to keep up with demand - Independent on Sunday
  • Gove rewrites admission code - Observer

Grayling summit over compensation calls and texts

Grayling May 2011
"British Bankers’ Association (BBA) chief executive Anthony Browne is to meet with Justice Secretary Chris Grayling and MOJ officials over the conduct of the “aggressive” firms amid fears they prey on the less welloff and that their fees are opaque. It says that there needs to be a clampdown on firms that constantly bombard people with text messages and phone calls that promise to get them compensation." - Sunday Express

  • Dozens of prison workers dismissed for being too close to inmates - Sun on Sunday

From Boris Island to the Isle of Grain

"The new transport hub was going to be built in the Thames estuary on an artificial island. Now Mr Johnson is more strongly backing a giant airport on the Isle of Grain in Kent, partly built on reclaimed land. However, Mr Johnson now says that the Isle of Grain plan has the 'greatest single potential for regeneration'. The blueprint involves an opening scheduled for 2029, requiring infrastructure improvements such as extending Crossrail and widening the M25 an extra lane in each direction for 36 miles." - Mail on Sunday

Will Douglas Hogg win hereditary peers by-election?

Screen shot 2013-07-14 at 08.47.57"Insiders suggest a two-horse race is taking place between Hogg, also known as Viscount Hailsham, and Lord Borwick, a businessman, for Tuesday's byelection to fill one of the few places reserved for hereditary peers in the upper house. The position becomes vacant only after the death of an incumbent, in this case that of Lord Reay, a Conservative, in May. The position is normally filled by a hereditary peer from the same party as that of the deceased, a process known as the Carter convention. However, this is not always obeyed." - Observer

Liberal Democrat MP Greg Mulholland: I support an In-Out referendum by 2017

"I agree with Nick when he says it is not a case of if, but when, we have a referendum; but that means that the Liberal Democrats need to be seen to be committed to that ‘when’; and it must be in the next four years – by 2017 – to have any credibility. My own view is that we are better off in the European Union, but that it needs reform and so we should seek to influence things from within." - Mail on Sunday

Unions 1) Shapps mulls Halfon plan to recruit millions of union members

HALFON-robert"Tory chairman Grant Shapps is considering proposals drawn up by campaigning backbench MP Robert Halfon to help promote the Tories as the “true workers’ party”. It comes ahead of the launch of a new Tory campaign group tomorrow designed to broaden the party’s appeal to all sections of society. It wants the Conservatives to campaign for hard-working low and middle income ­workers, particularly in northern towns and cities, by championing improved wages and cutting the cost of living." - Sunday Express

Unions 2) Unite plots more control over Labour

"[The document] reveals how Unite is to spend £10,000 on up to 100 Labour target seats, focusing on union- backed candidates – with the campaigns run by Unite ‘constituency captains’ – to try to gain more influence over Labour policies after the next Election. The document, seen by The Mail on Sunday, was written by Steve Hart, who has close links with the Labour leadership and was Unite’s political director until he left last month after a power struggle." - Mail on Sunday

  • TUC boss Brendan Barber given a £104,000 golden goodbye - Sunday Times (£)
  • Cameron more vulnerable than Miliband over party funding poll - Independent on Sunday
  • Observer Opinium poll finds voters more concerned with funding from donors than funding from unions - Observer
  • Labour's poll lead stretches back to double digits - Anthony Wells, Sunday Times (£)
  • Shadow Minister Willie Bain MP considers plan to make state benefits a human right - Sun on Sunday
  • Cut the link with the unions, don't make benefits a human right - Sun on Sunday Editorial
  • David Miliband says that Iraq and Afghanistan failings have put pay to western intervention in Syria - Observer
  • Ben Bradshaw turns up in skin-tight shorts to David Miliband's farewell party - Mail on Sunday

Miliband: I’ll take the gamble to give politics back to people with my funding reforms to Labour

Miliband Red"I’ve said members of trades unions should now make a more active choice if they want to be linked as individuals to our party. And when they do so, they should be given a real say in how we make change happen in communities and across the country. But the change we need in our politics doesn’t end there. You don’t get invited round for cosy “kitchen suppers” to discuss policy changes with David Cameron in Downing Street. But wealthy donors paying hundreds of thousands of pounds to the Tories do — and this Government is making decisions in their interests." - Sun on Sunday

  • John Rentoul: Well done, Ed Miliband (but who will pay for Labour's election campaign?) - Independent on Sunday
  • Miliband's reforms will be costly. Not changing will cost even more - Alan Johnson MP, Independent on Sunday
  • Ed’s offering to give up £10m. What about you Dave? - Adam Boulton, Sunday Times
  • Political parties are dying - Andrew Rawnsley, The Observer

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14 July 2013 in July 2013 newslinks |

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