The Friday Blog: Well, Did you Ever?
I will apologise now, but I simply have to tell you about it again. What a difference a week makes in the life of a rugby fanatic eh? I ventured a fortnight ago that some of us will have forgotten all about what happened in Keardiff once the Cornish Pirates were underway again. And have we ever. I have said for a number of years now that given the choice of a box at Twickenham to see England or a weekend in Doncaster following the Pirates, I would take my adopted club every day of the week. For a result like the one on Saturday, I would happily swap an England World Cup win.
This season’s RFU Championship was supposed to be a procession. Saracens, having served time on the naughty step for flagrant and repeated breaches of the salary cap, merely had to turn up ten times, complete record-breaking wins on each occasion and endure the minor inconvenience of a two leg play off before returning to rugby’s top table, promptly pulling up the drawbridge behind them. They will still likely, almost certainly in fact, win the competition, but that they left Mennaye Field on Saturday afternoon without so much as a losing bonus point, should make some people take notice. Granted, this was Saracens without Farrell or George or Itoje, or Mako and Billy. Nevertheless, there were eight internationals on display, including a British Lion and a South African World Cup winner. You would have thought that might have been enough for them, especially if you subscribe to the view, held by some in rugby’s hierarchy, that the Championship is a non-entity. It most certainly is not. It is, as Pirates’ joint head coach Alan Paver said afterwards, the Badlands, and if you get it wrong on the day, you will get beaten.
That is the ranty bit over with, but do allow me to enjoy it for a day or so longer, because sport is a great leveller. Tomorrow the boys will be in South West London, in the shadow of Kew Gardens at the Richmond Athletic Ground. It is not a place where we have ever had much joy over the years. Whether it is against tomorrow’s hosts or the Welsh or Scottish exiles, I am struggling to remember ever leaving there happy. Tomorrow we will arrive with a huge weight of expectation after last week’s heroics, and face a Richmond side who are, with absolutely no disrespect intended to them, probably the weakest side in the Division this season. We have absolutely no chance whatsoever.
Another thing that seems to me to have a limited chance of success, is the bridge being planned between the UK and Northern Ireland, or maybe it will be a tunnel. I cannot help but think about an old Monster Raving Loony Party manifesto commitment to invade France, bulldoze Calais, use the rubble to fill in the Channel Tunnel and build another one to the Falkland Islands. Which, thinking about it, might not be entirely off the cards the way UK / EU relations are going at the moment. Boris seems to think it is a good idea, or at least one worthy of consideration, not that he exactly has a great track record with bridges. Maybe it is an attempt to sure up the Union, which is a noble enough endeavour the way UK / UK relations are going at the moment. The problem is Boris has only been considering it with his people in Whitehall, and bridges (or tunnels) are to do with transport, and transport is a devolved function, and the planned route runs from the West Coast of Scotland (ignore the World War 2 munitions dump in the North Channel for a moment) so, excluding people in Stormont and Holyrood, might not necessarily be the best way to win friends and influence people.
Maybe it is an attempt to distract from other, less positive news at home. The estimated £20 billion a bridge would cost, makes it look like a snip compared with the 37 that has been thrown at the Test and Trace programme. This is some of that less positive news, and was the subject of activity at the Public Accounts Committee this week. Of all the Select Committees in Westminster, the one you least want to find yourself in front of, especially as a government official, is the PAC. It is the only committee with any sort of teeth and is constituted entirely of bad cops. I think it is fair to say that the Committee was not impressed with the performance of T&T so far. On Wednesday, the PAC report found that the programme had failed in its task of preventing the second and third national lockdowns. It said the programme must “wean itself off” its reliance on private-sector consultants, after figures showed it was still employing around 2,500 in early February, and they were on an estimated daily rate of £1,100 a head, with the highest paid individual costing taxpayers £6,624 a day. Committee Chair, Meg Hillier, demanded better control of costs, accusing the government of treating taxpayers “like an ATM machine”. In front of her was the T&T boss Baroness Harding, or Typhoid Dido as the wonderful Marina Hyde has christened her. Lady Harding was bullish in her defence of the programme’s performance, mind you, from mobile phones to sanctioning last year’s Cheltenham festival, she has had plenty of practice at explaining things away. To be fair, the numbers she quoted are looking a lot better than they were in October, but you do get the sense that if T&T were a technology being considered by one of the Appraisal Committees at NICE, it would struggle to meet the required cost effectiveness thresholds. £37 billion is a lot of bread. In fact, it is a third of the total NHS budget and NHS spending was some more less positive news for the Government.
The fallout from last week’s budget is lingering now people have had chance to look behind the headlines. Leading the assault was NHS Chief Executive, Sir Simon Stevens, who was in front of his old boss Jeremy Hunt at the Health Committee. Stevens told MPs that there is an urgent need to secure additional funding beyond what was announced last week, and that he expects this to be agreed by the Treasury. He argued the NHS would need more funding than had been announced to cover unavoidable COVID costs. NHS England is forecast to have received around £18 billion of coronavirus funding in the current financial year. But the budget allocated just £3 billion for 2021-22, most of which had already been announced in a spending review in November. That does not look nearly enough, with the service being under intense pressure over the past four months. NHS Providers has estimated that the gap in funding for the first half of 21-22 caused by COVID will be £8 billion, a figure which seemed about right to Stevens who also said, “The expectation is that the NHS will receive additional funding to cover those unavoidable COVID costs, certainly into the first half of the year.”
Sir Simon also commented on the topic at the front of many of your minds, the recovery of elective procedure volumes. He said the £1 billion allocated to start tackling the backlog in elective procedures that has built up during the response to COVID was a “very important start”. I should think it is, it is just not clear where the money actually is or quite how it will be used. Interestingly, he said there is “quite a lot of uncertainty as to precisely what the size and shape of the waiting list will be” at the end of 2021-22. He added the autumn spending review would be an opportunity to “take stock” and for “the government will be able to make decisions in the round”.
The NHSE Chief Executive also revealed that the service had budgeted for a pay rise for NHS staff that was more than twice that which the government has proposed, confirming there had previously been a working assumption of a 2.1 % rise in pay costs for staff on Agenda for Change contracts. The Government, of course, has said that these assumptions were set before the COVID pandemic, and its recommendation was made in the light of its impact on public finances. A Mandy Rice-Davies moment if ever there was one.
I am not sure for how long the Government can hold its line on the pay rise, or real terms pay cut as some are pointing out. There will certainly be some nervous Conservative candidates in the upcoming local and Mayoral elections. It was not lost on Labour leader Keir Starmer. On Wednesday lunchtime he used all six of his questions to the Prime Minister to repeat the Party’s well-rehearsed line that you cannot trust the Tories with the NHS. Boris countered, saying that the fact was that Labour had voted against the proposed 2.1% rise as part of last year’s NHS Funding Act. Unfortunately for the Not The Guardian of Truth, it had not. It was something that Shadow Health Secretary, John Ashworth, pointed out as soon as he was able. He called a point of order, saying that Labour had gone out of its way not to divide the House on the NHS settlement when it was at Bill stage. He asked that the PM return to the Dispatch Box to correct the record, but by now Boris was on his toes, scuttling back to Downing Street and the waiting pile of Poggenpohl catalogues. Mr. Speaker, who may, as I suggested last week, owe ministers a favour or two, decided that there was no need for a formal correction, merely a clarification. Time for Allegra Stratton to earn her corn, and did she ever. And she may well have created a world record in the process. Those of a certain vintage will remember Michael Howard, the former Conservative politician and Party leader. Famously, in 1997 he faced Jeremy Paxman in his belligerent pomp, and refused to answer the same question 12 times during a real toe-curler on Newsnight. That was always going to take some beating. But records are there to be broken, even that of Australian cricketeer David Boon, which you should not, by the way, try at home. After the PM had disappeared, his Press Secretary received a call from the Chair of the Westminster journalists’ press lobby, Macer Hall. He asked her to apologise on behalf of her boss and for him to correct the record. She refused. So he asked her again. Again she refused. And on it went. And on she went. Twenty times she refused. Allegra Stratton, take a bow. What a player.
And so to another weekend, after which an auspicious anniversary looms. It was exactly 12 months ago next week that the implications of COVID were beginning to dawn on us. A year ago on Tuesday we held an emergency Board call to take stock of the situation. Afterwards I enjoyed a pedicure at the Malmaison Hotel in Birmingham, being surprised that the salon was still open. We had lunch at Maribel, my favourite dining room in the city, and had only one other couple for company. The circumstances caused us to forego our traditional visit to the bowling lanes, but we did have dinner at Pizza Express in Brindley Place. We were the only guests, whilst around us a deserted city was closing itself down. How do I remember things so well? It was St. Patrick’s Day, which also happens to be my birthday. When we went into the November lockdown, we remarked that we might be lucky to be able to go out again for my anniversary this year. We were only half serious, never really believing that the celebrations might actually be in doubt. I do, at least, have some Guinness Draughtflow in the shed left over from Christmas, and, when it gets to a reasonable time to do so, I will crack one and toast you all. May the road rise up to meet you, Sláinte.
