” data-vars-target-content-type=”feed” data-vars-type=”web_internal_link” data-vars-subunit-name=”article_body” data-vars-subunit-type=”component” data-vars-position-in-subunit=”0″>he opined that last night’s by-election results were “not particularly good” for Labour and the Lib Dems.
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Yes, you read that correctly. The two by-elections – which saw the Tories comfortably lose to Labour in Wakefield and be humiliated by the Lib Dems in Tiverton and Honiton – were actually underwhelming for the victors.
Try telling that to Lib Dem leader Ed Davey and his new MP Richard Foord, who celebrated their result by declaring it was “time to show Boris the door” by, er, standing next to a door.
To be fair, Lord Frost concede that the results were also “terrible” for his own party.
But he said an analysis of the results showed that the combined Lab/Lib vote share only went up marginally in Devon and actually fell in west Yorkshire.
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The real story of the night, he insisted, was that traditional Tory voters opted to stay at home. “We as Conservatives must decide why that is, and what we do about it,” he added, in a less-than-subtle hint that it may well be time to give Johnson the heave-ho.
Of course, Lord Frost wasn’t the only Tory trying to rain on the Labour and Lib Dem parades.
The heroic spin coming out of CCHQ was that history shows that Tory governments lose by-elections but then go on to win the subsequent by-elections.
Even the resignation of party chairman Oliver Dowden failed to persuade them that things in the Conservative garden are far from rosey.
Sad to see @OliverDowden one of our Party Co-Chairmen stand down.
As the PM says, he understands his disappointment in the by-election losses.
They don’t tell you much about how GE’s pan out. We lost 15 by-elections between 1979 & 1992 but went on to win in 1983, 1987 & 1992. pic.twitter.com/ADUYEctRvb
But what that thesis fails to acknowledge is that after 1992, the Tories lost no fewer than eight by-elections before going on to lose by a landslide to Tony Blair’s New Labour in 1997.
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It also ignores the fact that in Tiverton and Honiton, the Lib Dems came from 27,000 votes behind the Tories in 2019 to win by more than 6,000.
And while Labour’s performance in Wakefield didn’t trouble the political Richter scale, if they repeated it across the country, it would be enough to send Keir Starmer into Number 10.
Senior Conservatives have an awful lot of thinking to do over the coming weekend. It would help if they started by dealing in reality, rather than fantasy.
Lisa Nandy has dismissed speculation that Keir Starmer is lining up a successor to lead the party if he is forced to quit as “absolute nonsense”.
Nandy, the shadow levelling up secretary who is often touted as a future Labour leader, said she had not spoken to Starmer about plans to secure a replacement if Durham Constabulary fine him for breaching Covid rules.
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Although he has insisted he did not break any rules, the Labour leader has promised to step down if he is issued with a fixed penalty notice over a takeaway beer and curry he ordered with campaigners in the city last year.
Nandy was responding to reports in the Sunday Times that Starmer — who has been battling days of negative headlines and briefing — has told potential rivals to put campaign teams in place to continue to ensure his work in rebuilding the party does not go to waste.
According to the newspaper, Starmer told allies: “I will not let this party become a basket case again. I will not let our hard-won gains be squandered so we will need to be ready in the unlikely event that the worst comes to the worst.”
But asked about the report on Sky News, Nandy said she had only spoken to Starmer twice in the last couple of days about “how we persuade this government to lift a finger to avert a crisis on the railways”.
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Presenter Sophy Ridge joked: “Are you a bit worried he’s been talking to Wes Streeting and not you?”
Nandy replied: “No, I’m not worried that he’s been talking to anybody about succession planning, because I know that he’s been talking to all of us about how we rid this country have a government that has held us back for the last 12 years and finally start to deliver for working people — that is the conversation that we’re having in the Labour Party at the moment.”
And asked separately on Times Radio whether she was plotting her own leadership bid behind the scenes, Nandy said: “Not true. Not true at all. I’ve not been having fundraising dinners, I haven’t been launching some kind of leadership bid.
“The only job that I am going after right now is Michael Gove’s and I am determined that I’m going to get it. Not because of my wishes for myself, but because I’m ambitious for this country. And I know that we could do better than this.”
The Labour Party confirmed on Friday that both Starmer and deputy leader Angela Rayner have now returned their questionnaires to Durham Constabulary.
The prospect of a looming fine is just the latest headache for Starmer.
The Labour leader has endured days of negative headlines and briefings from members of his own shadow cabinet who have accused him of “boring voters to death”.
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One told the Times: “Is he exciting? No, of course not — that isn’t why we ended up with him.
“But there is a big difference between not being Mr Razzmatazz and boring everyone to death . . . to loads of my constituents he just doesn’t exist in their minds at all.”
In return Starmer was forced to tell his shadow cabinet not to brief the press that he was boring, in an exchange one colleague described as “ironically very boring”.
However, Starmer has been defended by former prime minister Gordon Brown, who told him to “ignore” the negative briefings against him.
Asked by the BBC’s Sunday Morning programme what his advice would be to the Labour leader, Brown replied: “To ignore this because what’s exciting about the possibility of Keir Starmer’s leadership is he will have a plan for Britain.
“He will show how we can get back growth, he will show how we can get living standards rising again and he will show how we can have a fairer society that deals with climate change.
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“Keir Starmer was the director of public prosecutions. He’s been a great public servant over many years and I think he will make a great prime minister.”
Next week Starmer will be put to the test in a key by-election in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, where the former Tory MP was forced to stand down following his conviction for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy.
Recent polls have put Labour 20 points ahead of the Tories for the contest on June 23.
However, internal polling cited in the Sunday Times suggests that lead could in fact only be around eight points.
“I know he’s a madman in some ways,” says Loll Christie on Honiton high street. “But my argument again is — I think he kind of deserved a little party?”
The Lib Dems are expected to win the Tiverton and Honiton by-election on June 23, overturning the current hefty 24,000 Tory majority.
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But there are still quite a lot of Conservatives in Devon. And the expectations game can kill you.
It has not been a good few weeks for Boris Johnson. And there are a lot of things going in the Lib Dems favour.
Tiverton is in their former south west stronghold – although the party has never held this seat itself.
At the local elections in May, the Lib Dems seized control of neighbouring Somerset council. The party has climbed to 15 per cent in the national polls.
The prime minister was recently almost ousted by his own MPs, but his survival has allowed opposition parties to argue it is the entire Tory party that needs to be given a kicking.
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And the by-election itself was triggered when the incumbent Tory MP, Neil Parish, resigned after being caught watching porn in the Commons.
“The tide,” Ed Davey says, “Is going out for the Tories.” But the Lib Dem leader, campaigning in the seat, is trying to stop everyone getting carried away.
“The Tories are fighting far harder than they did in North Shropshire,” he says. “There is a battle on our hands. I think it could be really close.”
It is a delicate balancing act, of making a Lib Dem victory highly possible, to make it worthwhile voters turning out, but not so inevitable potential supporters do not think they need to.
In December the Lib Dems overturned a 23,000 Tory majority in North Shropshire. This time last year they did similar in Chesham and Amersham.
Both of these seats were snatched before the partygate saga had played out and the cost of living crisis had yet to bite.
Repeating it in Tiverton and Honiton would arguably be their biggest scalp yet.
All three are part of what the Lib Dems have successfully, and somewhat cheekily, branded the “blue wall” – southern Tory seats the party hopes are vulnerable to a yellow wave.
A few days out of the Chesham vote, Lib Dems on the ground were bullishly confident of victory. Westminster was somewhat taken by surprise by that result.
In Tiverton and Honiton the mood is more cautious optimism, despite a Tory loss already having been priced in by many Conservative MPs.
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“People do think that. The bookies think that. They are just wrong. I mean, they don’t see the data we see, they don’t knock on doors,” Davey tells HuffPost UK when asked if the Lib Dem candidate, Richard Foord, is all but certain to be elected on Thursday.
“What’s different from North Shropshire is that some Labour supporters are already backing us. It took time to switch them in North Shropshire,” he says.
“The difficulty is you only win these seats if you persuade Conservatives to move over. Some Conservatives in Tiverton and Honiton are angry. But not all of them.”
On the same day as people vote in Tiverton and Honiton, there is a by-election in the red wall Tory held seat of Wakefield.
Labour are expected to easily win the seat back. Although, again, party sources are talking down expectations of a landslide. One poll gave Labour a 20-point lead in the seat.
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Davey rejects the suggestion he struck an agreement with Keir Starmer to divvy up the two seats between them. “There’s no deal,” he says. “It’s just rational behaviour.
“My job as Lib Dem leader is to get as many Lib Dem MPs we can with the resources we’ve got.
“We have had a really strong legacy in the West Country. This was a natural seat for us to come and put our scarce resources into.”
He says the party has a “great candidate” in Wakefield. But concedes he is unlikely to mount a serious challenge.
“It was a Labour seat for a long long time. We don’t have the tradition that we have down here. We’ve got a candidate and are proudly flying the flag. But, you know, you face political reality under first-past-the-post.”
GEOFF CADDICK via Getty Images
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Honiton high street is lined with bunting. Union Jacks jut out from every shop, still up in celebration of the Queen’s Jubilee.
If the Conservatives do hold on to the seat, it will be hard to argue it was a result of a door-knocking charm offensive.
Opposite The Crusty Cob bakery a film crew is hunting for the prime minister, who, somewhat covertly, is in the constituency. “Boris Johnson rumoured to be in Devon,” runs the headline on the local Devon Live website.
Rishi Sunak was spotted earlier in Complete Meats, but the butcher is not terribly excited or showing signs of having been aggressively canvassed. “He’s quite short. Think he just came in for some lunch.”
Helen Hurford, the Conservative candidate, has also not exactly been a constant presence.
A former headteacher who runs a beauty academy, Hurford has not been hugging Johnson close and has been somewhat evasive about whether she would have backed the PM in the confidence vote.
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Perhaps surprisingly Neil Parish, given the circumstances of his resignation, is not a pariah.
Foord, a former soldier, says many locals respect how Parish “went quickly”.
“They contrast the very dignified way in which Parish resigned straight away with Johnson,” he says.
“Neil wasn’t a wholly unpopular MP around here. At least he did the decent thing. It’s just a pity the PM doesn’t do the same.”
The Tory campaign is alive to the Lib Dem threat. “Thinking of voting Liberal Democrat?” one bright Lib Dem yellow leaflet delivered by the Conservatives to voters asks, before accusing the party of wanting to “rejoin the EU” and “actively plotting to put Labour into power”.
And as Davey observes, there are plenty of people who remain charmed by the PM.
Christie, 30, supports the PM. “I’m not a rich person. I know that a lot of people look at Tories as rich people. I live day-by-day, penny-by-penny. I think he has done quite well.
“In the way that he’s actually had Covid, had a baby and the whole process and just having to go through so much stuff.”
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Wayne, 45, shares that view. “I still think that none of the others would have done what Boris has done. He’s the man who’s taken it on the chin. And he’s accepted taking it on the chin.”
The safe bet next week is that the Lib Dems will have pulled off another stunning by-election victory.
But even just as Johnson’s allies claimed seeing off a no confidence vote by one MP would count as a win, holding on in Tiverton and Honiton, despite everything, will be hailed as proof the PM retains his magic electoral touch.
Boris Johnson has said Ukraine should be given the opportunity to host next year’s Eurovision Song Contest, as organisers confirmed that they were beginning discussions about holding the event in the UK.
Speculation soon began about whether the competition would be able to take place in Ukraine in 2022, amid the ongoing Russian invasion.
On Friday, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) said in a public statement that they had conducted a “full assessment and feasibility study” with Ukrainian state broadcaster UA:PBC.
However, it concluded that after “exploring all scenarios” with the network, they shared “their sadness and disappointment that next year’s Contest cannot be held in Ukraine”.
“As a result of this decision, in accordance with the rules and to ensure the continuity of the event, the EBU will now begin discussions with the BBC, as this year’s runner-up, to potentially host the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest in the United Kingdom,” they added.
Speaking to reporters shortly after returning from an unannounced visit to Kyiv, Johnson explained: “I have just been to Kyiv. I won’t say it is completely jiving and buzzing and popping but it is far, far more lively. People are much more confident. People are out in the streets eating in cafes and restaurants in a way that they weren’t even few weeks ago.
“The Ukrainians won the Eurovision Song Contest. I know we had a fantastic entry, I know we came second and I’d love it to be in this country. But the fact is that they won and they deserve to have it.”
He added: “I believe that they can have it and I believe that they should have it. I believe Kyiv or any other safe Ukrainian city would be a fantastic place to have it.”
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Boris Johnson
Leon Neal via Getty Images
Following the EBU’s statement, a representative for the Ukrainian broadcaster claimed they’d been “denied the right” to host the contest and called for negotiations on a new location to be put on hold.
“We are disappointed with this decision of the EBU,” they said. “During this month, a large number of people in Ukraine have thrown all their efforts to fulfil the conditions for holding Eurovision in our country. Security is, of course, our first priority.
“The team of UA:PBC, state and local authorities did a thorough job and offered different options. It is a pity to see such an unappealable statement, therefore, we ask our partners to hold further negotiations.”
Since debuting in the competition in 2003, Ukraine has racked up three wins, with Kyiv consequently hosting the Eurovision live final in both 2005 and 2017.
This article has been updated to include a comment from UA:PBC.
While presenting the ITV show, Adil was discussing the government’s failed attempts to fly asylum seekers who arrive at British shores via illegal means to Rwanda with The Times’ political sketch writer Quentin Letts.
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Explaining how Ukrainians seeking refuge here were able to apply online while the process for those coming from other countries, such as war-torn Afghanistan, was more difficult, Adil said: “The Afghans do not have an online visa system.”
When Letts tried to say he wasn’t sure if there was a system available to the Afghans looking to resettle in the UK, Adil interjected: “I’m telling you there’s not.”
Looking exasperated, Letts said: “You’ve asked me on this programme, you never let me actually answer a question.
“There are procedures, there are perfectly legal procedures, for people to come in. But what the people using the boats are doing is they’re paying money to scoot around the rules.”
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Migrants who arrive into the UK by crossing the Channel are at the centre of the government’s new policy.
The Home Office has repeatedly justified this controversial new approach by claiming the route is unsafe and that the human traffickers who send the asylum seekers across must be deterred.
For comparison, the government opened up several different schemes to help home Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion following intense public pressure.
But, as Adil pointed out, many people travelling to the UK across the Channel are doing so “because there are no legal routes” available for them.
“There are legal routes,” Letts said in response.
“There aren’t actually,” he persisted.
Adil and Letts continued to speak over each other, until the guest eventually said: “I give up! There’s no point.”
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“It’s my job to correct you, Quentin,” the GMB presenter explained.
“It’s not actually, your job is – you ask me a question, and you don’t let me answer it.”
“That’s not the point,” Adil continued. “Do you accept that first of all, there aren’t the legal routes, there isn’t an online system like the Ukrainians have.”
“Look, people on the boats are paying money to smugglers to get round the rules.”
“Because there are no legal routes.”
Letts sighed loudly and said, “forget it,” waving his hand dismissively.
The presenter persisted: “You can’t avoid that question.”
“There’s no point talking to you,” gesturing to the other people sat on the GMB panel, Letts added: “Four of you against me, it’s just absolutely pointless.”
At which point the other presenter, Kate Garraway, chipped in: “No one’s against you! It’s about looking at the facts.”
The clash comes two days after the European Court of Human Rights ruled against the first Rwanda flight which was supposed to take refugees out of the country.
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The sudden move from the European court has left some factions in the Conservative Party furious, while the government has promised it will not give up on its attempts to remove illegal immigrants to East Africa.
A Labour MP today said it was “extremely concerning” that a full impact assessment has not been carried out on Boris Johnson’s right to buy extension.
Just days after surviving a bruising confidence vote, Johnson attempted to reset his leadership with a speech announcing a new housing policy in Blackpool.
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It included an extension of the right-to-buy scheme to people on low incomes who rent their homes from housing associations.
The prime minister argued the £30 billion currently spent on housing benefit should instead be used to help people secure and pay for mortgages on their own home.
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However, the secretary of state Michael Gove has admitted that they did notconduct a “full” impact assessment before it was announced.
Asked if an assessment of the impact on social housing stock had been carried out, Gove told MPs on the housing committee: “We haven’t conducted a full equalities impact assessment yet. We will do, as ever, when we bring forward policy.
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“The prime minister explained last Thursday on the basis of the pilot – there had been a full evaluation of that pilot – we felt it was now appropriate to roll it out nationally.”
The senior cabinet minister suggested a “full impact assessment” of the policy could not be done until all the details of the policy are “furnished”.
Labour MP Ian Byrne, among those who quizzed Gove yesterday, told HuffPost UK: “The admittance by the secretary of state regarding the absence of an impact assessment on social housing with his new right to buy policy announcement is extremely concerning.
“We need a real strategy to deal with the lack of housing in our communities not a reheated Thatcher policy which has contributed hugely to the housing crisis we face, by a desperate PM searching for positive headlines with his core supporters.”
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The Sunday Times reported that the policy caused “heated rows” with Gove who privately accused Downing Street of “bouncing” the policy before it was ready.
The newspaper reported that officials had not undertaken an impact assessment on how it will affect social housing stock, or how many new homes will be needed to replace those sold off and that the Treasury was refusing to provide extra funds.
During the committee hearing yesterday, Gove insisted the government would ensure housing associations do not “see detriment to their balance sheets” as a result of the policy.
But asked where the funds would come from, he replied: “From across government. We’ll be saying more about how we propose to ensure we have the funding necessary in order to deliver the programme.”
He said the Treasury had agreed it will be funded, adding: “I think we’ll have to say watch this space.”
Bob Kerslake, former head of the civil service, wrote in the Guardian: “The paucity of detail in the current announcement suggests it is still at the drawing-board stage. It should stay there.”
A spokesperson from the department for levelling up said: “Right to buy has helped nearly two million council tenants realise their dream of home ownership, and we want housing association tenants to have the same opportunity.
“As the prime minister stated, there will be a one-for-one replacement of each social housing property sold.
“We will work with the sector on the design of the scheme, and will announce more details in due course.”
Keir Starmer is under investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards over potential breaches of rules on earnings and gifts.
The Labour leader is being probed by Kathryn Stone over whether he broke two sections of the MPs’ code of conduct on registering interests on employment and earnings.
Stone is also looking at whether Starmer potentially breached rules in the section regarding gifts, benefits and hospitality from UK sources.
Asked about the issue on Monday, the Labour said he was confident he had not broken the MPs’ code of conduct.
“My office is dealing with it and will be replying in due course,” he told reporters while on a visit to Wakefield ahead of the by-election.
Asked if he was sure he had done nothing wrong, he said: “Absolutely confident, there’s no problem here.”
A cabinet minister has been ridiculed after he claimed no Conservatives in his constituency are critical of Boris Johnson.
Brandon Lewis said Tories in Great Yarmouth are “in full support” of the prime minister, despite 148 of his own MPs voting to remove him from office.
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The PM has seen his personal approval ratings plummet in recent months as a result of the partygate scandal.
But appearing on the BBC’s Sunday Morning programme, the Northern Ireland secretary insisted Johnson remained popular throughout the country.
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He said: “In 2019 people came out and voted for the prime minister, gave him an overwhelming mandate, which followed the mandate the Conservative Party gave him a few months earlier.
“He is somebody who consistently does well and wins elections and I’ve got to say, my constituents, my mailbox, is very clear that support is there for the prime minister.”
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Presenter Sophie Raworth asked: “You don’t get criticism in your mailbox about the prime minister?”
Lewis replied: “Genuinely, the criticism I’ve had in my mailbox has been people I know are Labour supporters or are Labour activists in my constituency. What I’ve had generally on doorsteps and in my mailbox, and elsewhere in the country, is people want to see us getting on delivering for people and that’s what the prime minister is focused on.
I can only talk for my constituency – I’ve had people in full support of the prime minister. And actually, even today I’ve had supportive messages from the chairman of the Conservatives in Northern Ireland around the work the prime minister’s doing and we should get on with the job.”
The exchange was met with incredulity on social media.
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Brandon Lewis clearly demonstrating that it’s not just Johnson who’s the problem but every member of his spineless cabinet who continue to repeat his lies & defend his law-breaking #SundayMorning#Raworth
Lewis had earlier insisted that legislation being introduced tomorrow by the government to over-ride parts of the Northern Ireland protocol will not break international law.
Labour has condemned government plans to replace striking rail workers with agency staff in a bid to stop the network grinding to a halt later this month.
Transport secretary Grant Shapps is reportedly preparing to draft emergency legislation to allow the move ahead of planned industrial action later this month.
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Members of the RMT are due to stage a three-day walkout on June 21, 23 and 25 in a dispute over jobs and pay.
According to the Sunday Telegraph, Shapps wants to overturn a law brought in by the last Labour government banning the use of agency workers to carry out the jobs of those on strike.
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Asked for her view of the proposals on Sky News’s ‘Ridge on Sunday’ programme, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said she would not feel safe travelling by rail with untrained staff carrying out essential tasks.
She said: “It just doesn’t make any sense. The way to resolve this is to get people around the table, but the idea that you can replace a skilled train signaller with an agency worker – would you feel safe going on a train knowing that there was an agency worker rather than a properly-skilled and trained-up train signaller?
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“I know that I wouldn’t, so instead of this fanning the flames and increasing tensions the Government need to act like firefighters rather than arsonists and try and get some resolution to this.”
Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS union, accused the government to trying to “pour petrol on the flames” of the dispute.
Asked about the agency worker plan, he said: “That would be an outrageous act if the government go down that road.
“We’ve already got the most restrictive anti-union legislation in the whole of western Europe. It’s already incredibly difficult for unions and workers to withdraw their labour. There are so many legal loopholes to fly through.
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“If you think about what Grant Shapps is trying to do with that legislation, is to make industrial action ineffective, and I believe it’s a basic human right to be able to withdraw your labour.
“You only do it as a last resort and any attempts to bring people in to undermine disputes will not resolve the problems.”
The Tory government has been accused of “astronomical” waste as it emerged that £15bn worth of taxpayers’ money has been lost on faulty PPE and servicing government debt.
The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) is under fire after it was revealed that £4bn worth of unusable personal protective equipment (PPE) left over from the Covid-19 pandemic will be burned “to generate power”.
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A report by parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) claimed that DHSC lost 75 per cent of the £12bn it spent on PPE in the first year of the pandemic due to inflated prices and kit that did not meet the required standards — including £4bn going to waste.
A DHSC spokesperson said a number of claims in the PAC report were “misleading” and that they made “no apology for procuring too much PPE rather than too little”.
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“The story of PPE purchasing is perhaps the most shameful episode in the UK Government response to the pandemic.”
– Dame Meg Hillier
Meanwhile, chancellor Rishi Sunak also stands accused of losing £11bn of taxpayers’ money by paying too much interest on UK debt, according to the Financial Times.
The losses were said to exceed the amount that the Conservatives have accused Labour former chancellor Gordon Brown of losing when he sold some of the UK’s gold reserves at rock bottom prices.
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It comes as people struggle with the mounting cost of living crisis which has seen the average cost of filling up a typical family car reach the £100 mark for the first time.
Labour’s Meg Hillier MP, chair of the PAC, said the purchasing of PPE was “perhaps the most shameful episode the UK government response to the pandemic”.
“At the start of the pandemic health service and social care staff were left to risk their own and their families’ lives due to the lack of basic PPE,” she said.
“In a desperate bid to catch up the government splurged huge amounts of money, paying obscenely inflated prices and payments to middlemen in a chaotic rush during which they chucked out even the most cursory due diligence.
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“This has left us with massive public contracts now under investigation by the National Crime Agency or in dispute because of allegations of modern slavery in the supply chain.
“Add to that a series of inappropriate, unauthorised severance payoffs made by clinical commissioning groups in the first year of the pandemic and the impression given falls even further from what we expect.
“DHSC singularly failed to manage this crisis, despite years of clear and known risk of a pandemic, and the challenges facing it now are vast, from getting the NHS back on its feet to preparing for the next major crisis. There are frankly too few signs that it is putting its house in order or knows how to.”
In the FT article, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) attributed the £11bn loss to the chancellor’s failure to insure against interest rate rises.
NIESR’s Professor Jagjit Chadha told the Financial Times Sunak had left the country with “an enormous bill and heavy continuing exposure to interest rate risk”.
In response, Tulip Siddiq, Labour’s shadow economic secretary to the Treasury, accused the chancellor of “severe wastefulness”.
“These are astronomical sums for the chancellor to lose, and leaves working people picking up the cheque for his severe wastefulness while he hikes their taxes in the middle of a cost of living crisis,” she said.
“This government has played fast and loose with taxpayers’ money, failing to recover money lost to fraud and handing covid contracts to their friends.
“Britain deserves a government that respects public money and delivers for people across the country.”
A DHSC spokesperson said: “A number of these claims are misleading, including the claims that we are burning £4bn of unusable PPE and that there is no clear disposal strategy for excess PPE.
“In the face of an unpredictable and dangerous virus, we make no apology for procuring too much PPE rather than too little, and only 3 per cent of the PPE we procured was unusable in any context.
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“At the height of the pandemic, there was unprecedented global demand for and massive inflation in prices of PPE. But despite these global challenges, we delivered over 19.8 billion items of PPE to frontline staff to keep them safe.
“Now we are confident we have sufficient PPE to cover any future Covid demands, we are taking decisive action and have reduced storage costs by 82 per cent since October 2020.”
A HM Treasury spokesperson said: “Proposals such as this risk undermining the independence of the Bank of England and forcing commercial banks to swap reserves for gilts would be an act of financial repression. This would be hugely damaging to the credibility of the UK’s macroeconomic framework and weaken the wider economy.
“The £11bn figure is based on the implausible assumption that it would be possible to undertake action of this scale in a single transaction.”
