There was something fractious in the air on the BBC’s Politics Live TV show.
Panellists Kit Malthouse, Jim McMahan, Jacqui Smith and (especially?) Isabel Oakeshott went at each other, hammer and tongs (or the genteel BBC equivalent) on subjects ranging from Rishi Sunak’s new ‘Windsor Framework’ for Northern Ireland, migrant Channel crossings, the salad shortage and – ironically – standards of behaviour in public life:
The words were strong but if you watch the video clip through, you’ll actually hear some worthwhile comments on the issues of the day.
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Kit Malthouse: does he look like he cares about anything?
Policing minister Kit Malthouse has been – rightly – slammed for repeatedly saying the Government must wait for the outcome of a police watchdog report into the traumatic strip search of a black schoolgirl.
In December 2020, police – two male, two female – were called by teachers at a secondary school in Hackney, who believed a girl was carrying drugs because they could smell cannabis.
She was subjected to what seems clearly a deliberately humiliating strip-search. She was made to strip naked, to spread her legs, to use her hands to spread her buttock cheeks and then to cough.
She was menstruating. According to family members, the police insisted that she take off the bloody pad and would not let her go to the toilet to clean up. Then they made her reuse the same pad.
No drugs were found, yet the rumour spread around the school that this perfectly innocent girl was a drug dealer.
The experience left the girl traumatised, in therapy and self-harming.
Answering an urgent question in Parliament, Malthouse condemned the “distressing” incident, saying she “could have been any one of our relatives”.
But he insisted that the government had to wait for a report into the incident, on which the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has already been working for 10 months.
He said the police officers involved had a right to “due process”, which is all well and good – but justice delayed is justice denied, and doesn’t Child Q have a right to justice?
And despite a safeguarding review into the matter producing a series of recommendations for the Government and police to act upon, Malthouse insisted there was doubt whether the police have a specific problem or a systemic problem relating to their policies and practices.
“It is the role of the independent police watchdog – the Independent Office for Police Conduct – to investigate serious matters involving the police and the IOPC has said it has been investigating the actions of the Metropolitan police in this particular case,” he said.
“We must let the IOPC conclude its work. We would, of course, expect any findings to be acted upon swiftly but it’s vital that we don’t prejudge the IOPC’s investigations or prejudice due process – so it would be wrong for me to make any comment on the case in question at this time.”
This Writer wonders whether Malthouse is simply hoping the IOPC will find a way to exonerate the officers involved (one of whom, it seems, was male – in a gross violation of police rules).
And he did not respond to a call to publish data on the number of times children are strip-searched. Why not?
Other MPs saw matters differently – not that he should not comment until the inquiry had been completed but that he should life a finger or two to bring the matter to that conclusion:
Labour MP for Eltham, Clive Efford, criticised Mr Malthouse for having a “wait and see attitude”, and said: “I feel like we’ve woken the minister from an afternoon nap to come in and make this statement”.
He added: “There’s a complete lack of urgency in his approach. It is quite clear that there are areas now where the Government can act; why isn’t the minister coming to this house to explain to us just exactly what he’s going to do, rather than this wait and see attitude?”
It seems clear that Malthouse’s fellow Tories felt no need to enact justice for Child Q. Only one Conservative MP turned up to the discussion – Jackie Doyle-Price – and her contribution was to ask what the minister would do to ensure the Metropolitan Police changes its practices.
Underlying this lack of activity there must be the same question that underlies the reasons for the humiliation and trauma of the strip-search of a menstruating teenage girl.
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Master and servant: Owen Paterson with his boss, Peter Fitzgerald of Randox. Funny that… wasn’t Paterson supposed to be working for the people of North Shropshire?
North Shropshire’s Tory MP Owen Paterson has turned out to be as corrupt as they come – using his position as a public representative to boost the private interests of two companies. And it seems thousands of people may have died as a result.
Paterson is set to be punished for corruptly using his Parliamentary position to win contracts for two companies that employ him.
Yes, it is corruption. Yes, it is against Parliamentary rules. He should be booted out of the Palace of Westminster and told never to come back. In a proper, working democracy he would be arrested and sent to prison.
Would you like to know what will actually happen?
He’ll be suspended from Parliament for 30 working days.
That’s right – he gets a month’s extra holiday.
Here’s the report on Sky News:
The committee on standards have recommended that Tory MP Owen Paterson be suspended from the house for 30 sitting days.
This was a serious breach of the MPs rules… as he used his privileged position to benefit two companies… & he has brought the house into disrepute pic.twitter.com/tGjNTqzxdJ
The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Kathryn Stone opened an investigation into the MP following accusations he had lobbied on behalf of two companies who employed him.
Her report said he was a paid consultant to Randox and Lynn’s Country Foods and had made approaches to the Food Standards Agency and Department for International Development ministers about the companies.
The commissioner also found Mr Paterson had breached the MPs’ code of conduct by using his parliamentary office on 25 occasions for business meetings with clients between October 2016 and February 2020 and in sending two letters relating to business interests on House of Commons headed notepaper.
The report noted that there was no immediate financial benefit secured by the two companies-
Oh, really?
The healthcare firm that kept Tory MP Owen Paterson on a six-figure retainer won a £133m contract to produce Covid testing kits without any other company getting the opportunity to bid. That's Britain in 2021.
That would be Randox Health. Perhaps the Commissioner didn’t notice this significant fact because her report only goes as far as February 2020.
Randox was awarded its £133 million contract in March 2020 – and, yes, it was a closed process – unadvertised and with no other companies being asked to bid.
A month later, Paterson was a party to a call between Randox and James Bethell, then the Tory minister responsible for Covid-19 testing supplies.
Randox was hired to supply 2.7 million testing kits – but 750,000 of them were withdrawn after spot checks in July found that some of the kits, supplied by a Chinese manufacturer but sent out by Randox, were not sterile and could therefore be contaminated.
The failure delayed plans to provide regular testing for English care home residents and staff. We later discovered that Tory government failures to protect care homes resulted in around 30,000 unnecessary deaths.
But that was no concern for Randox – its contract was extended for a further six months in October last year. Again, the process was closed – unadvertised, with no other companies permitted to bid.
In fact, it should have been to safeguard the health of the people of the UK – especially, in this case, care home residents and staff. Instead, thousands died – possibly because he vouched for a company that provided substandard testing kits.
And his punishment is a 30-day holiday.
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Test: A Covid-19 test. The Tory government failed to secure enough of these – so it seems ministers deliberately decided to sacrifice care home residents to the disease.
The Conservative government made a conscious decision not to test for Covid-19 in care homes – while the disease was ripping through elderly and vulnerable residents.
That is what we’re hearing from inJustice Secretary Robert Buckland.
He says that, after ensuring that the UK would not have the capacity to test everybody who should have had tests, and while sending people who were known to be infected with Covid-19 back to care homes from hospital, the government decided not to test anybody there for the disease. It seems they were too busy testing people like Matt Hancock instead.
And he also says, “We’ve seen a great tragedy in our care homes which is a matter of huge regret.”
Okay – much of what has gone above is me reading between the lines. But you have to do that with Tories because they don’t give you all the information you need.
For example: is it “a matter of huge regret” that there has been “a great tragedy in our care homes”?
Or is it just regrettable that the public has “seen” it?
Don’t let yourself be fooled; if they could have covered up the excess deaths, that is what the Tories would have done – indeed, it is what they were trying to do.
The choices were all deliberate, though.
And they have resulted in at least 20,000 fewer people (so far) claiming pensions.
That is a huge saving for a Conservative government that hates paying money to the plebs – even though they know that we pay into the pension fund for this very purpose.
At the end of the day, we’re still left with two choices: either the Tories have been incompetent, in which case they should be removed from a position of power…
Or they have been homicidal, in which case they should be removed from society and spend the rest of their lives in prison.
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Matt Hancock: doesn’t he look smug? Most liars do, when they think they’ll get away with it.
Has Matt Hancock not resigned yet? No?
Shame. He should have gone, just for wasting up to 40,000 coronavirus testing kits by posting them out – sometimes multiple kits to the same homes – with no return address.
Recipients were told to bin them.
This is at a time when people are dying of this disease.
So to the commenter on This Site who wrote: “I have heard, but cannot corroborate, that some tests have arrived with no return envelope nor address. When people have contacted the help centre they have been advised to toss them in the bin and another would be sent out. If they are counting tests sent out then that would count as two tests”…
I can respond with this:
Seen this Craig god knows how many test kits are like this.#COVID__19 testing kit arrived without a return label. When I called the helpline she said a lot had been sent out without them in and to just put it in the bin. I wonder if this will be counted as part of 122k
Worse still, if you wanted even more proof that the Tories rigged the system so they could parade a lie before us… it seems the number of tests carried out on May 1 – even under the new system – almost halved:
So, after claiming they‘d hit their 100k target for coronavirus tests yesterday, the number of people tested today has mysteriously dropped to just 63k.
The overall increase in testing is a good improvement, but why can’t the government just be honest about the numbers?
Thousands of test kits posted out with no return address, with several sent to the same homes.
And Matt Hancock is still Health and Social Care Secretary.
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Days after Dominic Raab threw shade on Matt Hancock’s promise of 100,000 coronavirus tests a day, we find the Tory government is letting huge numbers of kits go to other countries.
What is wrong with these besuited buffoons?
They stand up in front of us every day and lie through their teeth that they are doing everything they can, and then we find they are dragging their heels on something as fundamentally important is this.
There is a reason the need for testing has been a hot topic since the coronavirus arrived in the UK.
The UK is far behind other countries in the matter of testing – and our leaders do not seem bothered about changing that.
As I write these words, Chris Whitty is telling the UK we need tests that work.
But his people haven’t bothered to check whether the kits on offer from South Korea do that.
Considering the way that country has got to grips with its rate of infection, I’d say these kits are probably quite good. But the omission – or rather, the refusal – to check and then get on with securing delivery is unforgivable.
Isn’t it?
The government risks losing an offer from South Korea of 400,000 coronavirus test kits a week to a rival country because they have not yet been tested by Public Health England, it has been claimed.
A shareholder in the South Korean LG conglomerate has sourced the kits from five companies in the country and has offered them to the UK through a contact who was the former deputy leader of the Conservative party in Westminster council.
Nick Markham says he has been in touch with the government, but they are dragging their heels and insisting they won’t make a decision until the kits are tested.
He says the production facilities and kits already manufactured are in huge demand, and countries including Ukraine and Romania have already sent military planes out to snap up the supplies.
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