The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport estimates that the creative industries contribute £115.9bn to the UK, accounting for 5.9 per cent of our economic output. This is economically significant (fishing was discussed far more in recent years yet that industry contributes just £536 million) but the arts are more important than economic figures. The UK is a cultural dynamo, a hugely influential creative superpower, and we should want this to continue. 

The negative impact on the music industry of being ignored in Brexit negotiations has been devastating. The Independent Society of Musicians (ISM) carried out a survey that shows that almost half of UK musicians and workers in the music industry have had less work in the EU since Brexit than before it, and more than a quarter have had no EU work at all. 

The ISM conducted extensive testimony sessions with over 400 musicians and industry professionals, gathering insights regarding their post-Brexit experiences. Forty percent of respondents reported work cancellations, while nearly an equal proportion, 39 per cent, stated they had been compelled to decline work opportunities.

The Independent Commission on UK-EU Relations has similar findings in our report on the impact of the Brexit deal on the wider creative sector. The most frequently cited extra expense and complication has been the introduction of visas and work permits, plus the cost of equipment manifests known as “carnets”. These are customs permits that allow the vehicles to be taken across borers, and it is now piled on to various other new travel expenses that performers didn’t have to contend with before. 

According to Sarah McQuaid, a singer, songwriter and composer: “Completing the required inventory of all the gear we carry, which includes a full PA system as well as instruments and other associated tech, took days as every item had to be individually listed with its replacement value and (if applicable) serial number.”

For McQuaid, the total cost of the carnet, including a 12-month security bond to cover £15,333 of gear, “came to £379.25.”

UK professionals no longer enjoy the same ease of travel, touring, and exhibiting in Europe. Touring now entails navigating through 27 distinct sets of visa and work permit regulations. Additionally, creatives and technical workers face the constraint of a 90-day limit on their presence in the Schengen area within a 180-day period.

Transporting goods and equipment has become needlessly intricate and costly. For less well-funded creatives, the associated expenses and administrative burdens are overwhelming. The existing system mandates the use of equipment manifests referred to as ‘carnets’ for the transportation of equipment and large instruments into the EU.

Even a brief one-time event or performance necessitates a costly and time-consuming carnet. Each truck must report to the correct border location for carnet inspection and stamping when crossing the border in both directions. This has a devastating impact on small to medium-sized bands, musicians, and theatre groups, potentially absorbing all the profits generated from a tour.

Merchandise sales are often what renders a tour financially viable. These sales are now subject to customs regulations applicable to shipments into the EU exceeding a certain value. Creatives must now register and pay VAT in each country, adhering to different regulations, resulting in additional paperwork, border inspections, duties, and charges.

According to David Martin, CEO of Featured Artists Coalition: “The product being sold is live performances. This includes selling merchandise but will also provide the opportunity for other things such as radio and TV, and it will proliferate further opportunities such as festival bookings. On top of that, the band develops the fan base and demand for record sales and streaming income.”

EU road haulage limitations further amplify the cost and complexity of touring for creatives and technical workers. Touring lorries are bound by the haulage restrictions outlined in the TCA, permitting a maximum of two stops in the EU after delivering goods from the UK under basic cabotage rules. Subsequently, they must return home within seven days.

“In 2019, 22 EU countries represented 154 of our 221 foreign trips, which produced £14.4 million in earned income from foreign tours,” says Mark Pemberston, former Chief Executive of the Association of British Orchestras. “Of this, £8.4 million came from touring in the EU, accounting for 9 per cent of our income for that year.”

For instance, consider the Sadler’s Wells Theatre group. Like all touring productions, they are now restricted to two additional destinations before returning to the UK, only to then proceed to two more EU cities. Previously, they could tour 12 or more European cities consecutively. Furthermore, when an orchestra intends to transport their instruments by truck, they find it more advantageous to engage an EU-registered commercial operator, resulting in UK hauliers losing business opportunities (it’s not just artists and performers losing out, but all the haulage firms, suppliers and technical workers that support them).

Brexit is hindering the ability of mobile artists, such as singers, dancers, and entertainers, to secure work within the broader arts and creative industry in the EU. For example, 31 per cent of UK Equity members (the trade union for the performing arts and entertainment industries) have encountered job advertisements and/or casting breakdowns explicitly seeking applications from EU passport holders only. Additionally, 14 per cent of members have been directly requested to confirm their EU passport status for the purpose of securing employment.

Already well-established and famous acts and artists will be able to navigate the red tape and deal with the bureaucracy: they will absorb the costs or increase their ticket prices, but lesser names will struggle, and emerging talent will be seriously hindered or perhaps blocked from finding success. Surely no Brexit supporter wanted to stifle emerging talent and strangle the career of the next [insert artist you love here]? 

The Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) signed by the UK and EU on 30 December 2020 did not include any specific provisions on short-term travel for creative professionals or their support staff. This was an unnecessary mistake, especially considering the EU originally suggested a visa waiver agreement, but UK negotiators rejected this as it involved a compromise on regulatory autonomy. 

Former European Commission Vice-President, Viviane Reding, proposed the adoption of a cultural passport for the creative industries; this is closer to what we at the Independent Commission on UK-EU Relations would like to see. We should aspire for the addition of a “cultural exemption” within the Trade and Co-operation Agreement: removing visa and work permit restrictions on short-term, cultural visits to the EU, replacing the burdensome carnet with a more agile system suited to the temporary movement of goods and equipment for tours and one-off events, and reducing limits on road haulage stops for all cultural activities.

Brexit is done, yes, but it isn’t working for the creative industries. Now we must work towards a process of continuous improvement. Brexit is a process, not an event, and the TCA is a foundation that must be built on to make it work. 

Ben Kelly is a member of the Independent Commission on UK-EU Relations. The Commission works to research the impact of the UK’s departure from the EU and to propose beneficial changes to the UK-EU agreement.

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Europe can do little to influence events across the Atlantic, but it can prepare itself for potential outcomes. The US could be about to enter a new phase of turmoil and, depending on the outcome of the election, isolationism. As Iain Martin wrote in the Times last week, this has serious implications for European security and if the worst happens, Britain and the EU must be ready to step up for Ukraine.

The invasion of Ukraine led to an improvement in relations between the UK and the EU as both sides turned their focus to something more important than Brexit that required rapid joint action. Informal coordination increased in the wake of the invasion, contributing to an improvement in the bilateral relationship after a period of post-Brexit dissonance. This should pave the way for a formal defence and security agreement to be embedded with the EU-UK the Trade and Cooperation Agreement.

In the wake of the invasion, the UK was invited – along with the US, Canada and Norway – to attend an extraordinary session of the Foreign Affairs Council to coordinate a response. At the same time, high level calls took place between Liz Truss, then Foreign Secretary, and

the EU’s High Representative, Josep Borrell. UK-EU cooperation on sanctions was strong and resulted in both sides enacting similar packages. The UK also had a presence in the clearing cell established in Brussels to identify and route military aid to Ukraine.

So, as informal dialogue worked so well, why the need for a formal security partnership? For the answer, we need only look at the political climate. European security cooperation was enhanced in the 1990’s out of fear of American disengagement, the 2016 election was a wakeup call for Europe, and 2024 could bring disruption once again.

Changes in government in European states also bring risks to security cooperation, as exemplified by the fact that there is no formal security partnership in the TCA because political events in the UK sank the May government, which had plans for one. Boris Johnson came in and his desire for a basic Brexit deal and a scorched Earth approach to diplomacy meant security and defence was neglected in negotiations, an inadequate agreement was concluded, and relations soured.

The Ukraine war has highlighted that the EU and UK need one another, and security is more important than political squabbles over Brexit, and relations between domestic leaders. We need institutionalised cooperation because formal dialogue is more robust and less vulnerable to political change. There should be regular conversations across all levels of government, which would enable civil servants on both sides to exchange information and identify productive areas of cooperation. Bilateral coordination is inefficient and can never be as effective as a single mechanism for consulting with the collective EU27.

The UK-EU security relationship is the missing link in Europe’s response to Ukraine and, politically, the time is right for an agreement. Public support for a harder Brexit has drained away, in any case security cooperation was never a contentious issue during the referendum, aside from the fear of an EU army which is a defunct concern after Brexit. There are fewer sovereignty trade-offs to make than in other areas of relations so a security partnership should have cross-party support.

With the US election reminding us of the need for Europe to act and coordinate if America turns inwards, and the war in Ukraine still raging, now is the time to take advantage of the window of opportunity and negotiate closer arrangements with our closest security partners.

Ben Kelly is a member of the Independent Commission on UK-EU Relations. The Commission works to research the impact of the UK’s departure from the EU and to propose beneficial changes to the UK-EU agreements

The Windsor deal was achieved by setting a different tone and opting for a different tactic than Boris Johnson’s threats and belligerence. Boris loyalists and the hard-line Brexiteers in the ERG have always maintained that a confrontational approach was the best way of negotiating with the EU. The idea was that threats, blackmail, a refusal to cooperate and a willingness to break international law would get us what we wanted. Anyone who thought otherwise wasn’t a true Brexiteer, they were probably a remainer in disguise. Where did that get us? Nowhere. 

Threatened by Sunak’s success, Boris has made his intervention. Surprise, surprise, he criticised the deal and isn’t sure he can support it. It was typical that he led his criticism with his tired, facile phrase ‘take back control’ and fell back on his Northern Ireland Protocol Bill. Slogans and unrealistic non-solutions, that’s all the disgraced windbag had to offer, the same shallow and infantile nonsense we’ve heard before. 

The Northern Ireland Protocol Bill was no kind of solution. It did not work as a threat. The belief was that it would force the EU to the negotiating table, instead it soured relations and inspired an incredible negative reaction from all of our European allies. It actively prevented a solution being found for Northern Ireland and ensured that no discussions could take place on any other matter of importance. 

Boris has no appreciation of the trade-offs necessary to reach compromises in difficult matters like this. All he has is the same old cakeism, he doesn’t understand Northern Ireland and he doesn’t understand Brexit. He doesn’t want to, it’s easier to be a rabble rouser and a populist. This self-professed patriot wanted to renege on an international treaty, turn the UK from a champion of the rule of law to a law-breaking nation, staining our reputation and souring international trade relations. His unhelpful act of brazen attention seeking ought to be ignored. 

The Prime Minister negotiated significant concessions from the EU that puts Northern Ireland in a good position. Is the Windsor Framework perfect? No, of course not. There is no perfect solution. Did the government get everything it wanted? No, of course not. That isn’t how negotiations work. It’s time to grow up. Stop all their archaic, purist talk about sovereignty and begin to understand there are trade-offs, consequences from choices we freely make and necessary compromises. 

What has been achieved is beyond the minor tinkering initially put forward by the EU. I have been surprised by how substantial the renegotiation have been. The scope of EU law has been narrowed, the role of the European Court of Justice is limited, and the Stormont Brake is a significant achievement. 

The Stormont Brake allows a petition of concern to be raised which could lead to a UK veto on changes to the rules covered by the protocol and not subject to the ECJ but arbitration. This is a genuine limitation on the ECJ, it is not just government spin. 

Article 12(3a) of the revised protocol sets out conditions for when the UK can legitimately notify the EU that it intends to trigger the brake and suspend the application of amended EU law to Northern Ireland. 

If there is a dispute as to whether those conditions have been satisfied there will be negotiations, if the dispute cannot be resolved in negotiations it will be referred to an arbitration panel. If the arbitration panel is dealing with a dispute that involves interpretation of EU law it must seek guidance from the ECJ. However, this does not mean that the ECJ has the final say or settles the dispute on behalf of all parties, the ECJ simply interprets EU law to assist the arbitration panel. 

It is hoped that it will not have to be used, and at the very least disputes will be settled in negotiations, but the Stormont Brake meaningfully addresses the democratic deficit in Northern Ireland and is a significant concession. 

There are various other important changes, the “green lane” for goods from Britain to the UK means most check and paperwork will be scrapped. On Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Checks at Northern Ireland Points of Entry where there is now only a requirement for a single document per lorry without the need for official vet sign off, a positive change from the current process.

Significantly, on parcels, there are no further requirements placed on anything sold to consumers in Northern Ireland as the grace period is to be made permanent. There are also welcome changes on VAT that are an improvement of the previous, complex process.  

If we compare the Windsor Framework to being in the single market it is not a good deal. If you compare it to a fictional dreamland inhabited by Boris and the ERG in which the UK can do whatever it wants, doesn’t have to compromise of acknowledge its choices have consequences, then it’s not a good deal. If we compare it to the current situation, then it is an improvement and a good deal. 

It is high time we learned that complex problems cannot be reduced to slogans. We’ve had years of trying it the hard way with the Brexit dogmatists as they led us down the garden path. It’s time to move on. Northern Ireland doesn’t need dogmatism and belligerence, nor does it need perfection. It needed a workable compromise. Now we have one. 

As I have written previously, solving the Northern Ireland impasse and improving relations with the EU are the first necessary steps to making Brexit work. We must now take those steps and not let the headbangers pull us back again. Settling this issue unlocks so many doors for us. 

What is the credible alternative? 

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Now I’m seriously working on it, in a variety of ways, and I’ve also finally done something I’ve never done before, I read a book about mental health. I’ve had many recommended and gifted to me over the years. I’ve still got books I downloaded on my Kindle that I either never read or stopped reading after a few chapters. I just could not get into them. They either didn’t speak to me or they felt like hard work. From thick tomes of psychological theory to patronising and unrealistic self-help guides, books on mental health can often feel totally inaccessible.

“Sort Your Head Out: Mental Health Without All the Bollocks” by Sam Delaney is designed to be accessible and relatable. The language of mental health and therapy cannot be one size fits all, we need different types of voices out there and different ways of thinking, especially for this book’s main target audience, men who have struggled to accept they need help and find much of the traditional language of mental health impenetrable and off-putting.

Sam Delaney is a self-professed “Jack the lad” from a working-class family of four boys. He was outwardly confident and went onto become a successful journalist, building his career in the lads mags that had their heyday in the nineties and early noughties. In his thirties, all the stresses of his life combined with his toxic coping mechanisms finally took him to the brink, where he stopped, stepped away, and began to deal with his addiction issues and sort his head out. 

This book tells that story in a relatable way with a lot of humour, sincerity and common sense that can’t be said enough. Beginning with his childhood, which the author recalls as happy and full of love, but which was nevertheless littered with traumas both large and small, moments of shame and embarrassment, that contained the roots of future anxieties, insecurities, and persistent sadness. This can be flippantly hurtful comments from family, feelings of abandonment or being told by a girl “I won’t kiss you, you’re too fat” in front of mates.

His parents divorced when he was young, enough to cast a dark cloud over any child, leaving a young Sam desperate for fatherly approval, and vying for his mother’s attention that was divided between four sons and the work she had to do to feed and clothe them.

The author is at pains to point out that he is aware that people have had worse childhoods, but therein lies a key message, the importance of recognising our own pain and trauma and not minimising it just because other people have been through worse. He points out that he wasn’t the victim of abuse, but you know what? I was, and I felt myself feeling a great deal of empathy for the little boy who was often “lonely and bored”, teased and bullied by older siblings (note that this book is dedicated to them, but brothers will be brothers) and put in situations that left him feeling isolated and scared.

It is important to check our privilege. I had a traumatic childhood but there are also many ways in which I count myself lucky and realise things could have been worse, but it can be counterproductive to downplay our own pain and avoid facing up to it.  The author recognised this in himself, realising that “comparing and contrasting my pain to that of other, less fortunate, people was a technique I used to try and snap myself out of glumness”. This doesn’t work. It just makes things worse. 

The book moves onto the author’s working life, one which was fast-paced and often went hand in hand with drink and drugs, and a lot of people will identify with the appalling work/life balance, the pressures of work and managing finances alongside all of the challenges of personal life that come up. Then of course comes parenthood to magnify everything, the pleasures, the stresses and the pain.

Fatherhood, so says the author, was the best thing that ever happened to him but also one of the “toughest challenges of my life”. Amen to that. Not to take anything away from mothers, as the author repeatedly states, motherhood is even harder, but fatherhood has its own challenges and they are not insignificant. There are many men out there struggling to cope.

My own mental health problems raged harder than ever after becoming a dad, despite loving it. It disturbed repressed traumas from my own childhood, brought with it enormous pressure and made life harder to manage. It can bring with it guilt, shame, feelings of inadequacy, anxiety and exhaustion. A sense of drowning in life. Many people, such as myself, and the author, will eventually turn to unhealthy and destructive coping mechanisms. This leads to some excellent passages about his own descent into addiction and the wisdom of his experience in making a successful recovery.

There are some key messages pressed home throughout the book, but not in a preachy way. It’s more in the manner of a mate who’s looking out for you and trying to give the reader the benefit of their experience. The book is like one big arm around your shoulder.

The simple importance of talking about our feelings, sharing and recognising our pain, not self-pitying, but not bottling it up or downplaying it is central here. Sam talks about feeling embarrassed about his mental health, “deeply ashamed of feeling sad”, a feeling many of his readers will surely recognise. 

We may have come a long way in how we think about mental health in our culture, but this is still an essential message, especially for men. Suicide is the biggest killer of men under the age of 45 in this country, so it cannot be said enough that we need to talk about our feelings and share when we feel down.

The tone of Delaney’s writing will be familiar to any fan of his excellent (and my favourite) podcast, “Top Flight Time Machine” (referenced in the book in the chapter “How a Podcast Saved My Life”) which is permeated by his personal experiences and reflections on mental health and showcases his knack for storytelling and funny anecdotes, strengths he brings to this book. 

Throughout this very readable book, I found myself laughing a lot, and also feeling a little emotional as passages led to me reflecting on my own life, and often feeling empathy for the author and the challenges he went through. Eventually, I’m sure I’ll get to reading a second book on mental health but for my first one, I have to say, this was cracking.

Sam Delaney’s Sort Your Head Out (£18.99; Little, Brown) is out now.

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life

As with all negative economic forecasts, the news was jumped on by Brexit critics who believe leaving the EU is the reason for our stagnation. The danger of always focusing on Brexit is that it distracts from the fact that so many of our problems are caused by a range of policy failures that have nothing to do with leaving the EU and won’t be solved by re-joining.

Brexit, for example, is not the reason we don’t build enough houses or infrastructure. We don’t need to re-join the EU to implement major tax reform, improve digital connectivity and transport links or invest in education and skills. A relentless focus on Brexit underestimates the scale and diversity of the challenges we face and the wide-ranging nature of the economic reforms we need to reinvigorate this country.

In a long list entitled “the causes of the UK’s economic malaise”, Brexit – the still rippling political aftershock of the EU referendum and the way in which the result was implemented – is but one bullet point. Having said that, when developing a multi-layered strategy to reverse the UK’s economic decline, it would be foolish to ignore Brexit and continue to pretend it’s going well as the Conservative Party does so unconvincingly.  

The Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, confirmed Brexit was one of the “shocks” hitting growth and it has taken effect even faster than expected. “The long run impact seems to come through more quickly,” he said, referring to depressed trade and business investment.

This will be yet another bit of bad news pounced on by buoyant advocates of re-joining the EU, but an important part of Britain’s recovery will be dropping that whole idea and moving on. The idea of re-accession anytime soon is deeply unrealistic and unserious. The EU would never consider an application without political consensus and genuine public clamour for it consistently over the long term. Such negotiations would mean years of uncertainty and political divides would rupture, creating an abysmal environment for business and investment. We must get real.

Ideally in the long term a new legal and regulatory framework should be developed but for now we must look at what can be realistically achieved in the short to medium term. Our economic and political relationship with the EU needs a reboot but that will require a new government and the rebuilding of trust with the EU.

In the immediate short term, the Conservatives are incapable of making Brexit work but they could at least not make things worse and begin to set us on the right path. Reaching an agreement on the Northern Ireland protocol and preventing the potential chaos that could be caused by the Retained EU Law Bill would be a step in the right direction.

The impasse over the Northern Ireland protocol has overshadowed relations with the EU since we left and nothing else can be resolved until it is sorted. Reaching an agreement and then faithfully implementing it is key to rebuilding our relationship with the EU and enabling discussions about how our economic partnership can be enhanced in the future.

The Labour Party will almost certainly form a new government with a strong majority in 2024. It must set a positive, cooperative tone and develop a new diplomatic policy that treats the EU as a strategic partner and ally. It must introduce a fresh strategy for engaging with the EU and its institutions constructively so we can move towards an improved relationship based on mutual trust and benefits.

The EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement is subject to a pre-agreed review process which will begin in 2025, this is an opportunity to improve a deal that is totally inadequate for such a crucial partnership. The current situation is unsustainable and the evidence for that is clear. With public opinion decisively shifting the path is clear for renegotiation.

The Labour Party should dispense with the “f*ck business” approach and actively consult UK business to help develop better policy that meets their needs. We need to build on existing arrangements to reduce trade barriers in goods and services and create a greater degree of regulatory alignment. There must be a greater degree of cooperation in areas of shared interest embedded into the agreement across the board.

Our economic malaise is caused by a range of domestic policy failures, most of which are nothing to do with leaving the EU and all of which must be addressed. However, hard Brexit is not working. Ultimately, we need healthier and more cooperative relations with the EU and a deeper economic and political partnership. That will contribute to the economic growth we need to pay for much needed domestic reforms.

Ben Kelly is a freelance writer and a member of the Independent Commission on UK-EU Relations.

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Truss had such a short-lived and hapless time as prime minister that it was easy for Rishi Sunak to advertise himself as competent. Here was a grown-up technocrat who could sensibly manage the country and its ailing economy; after all, he was right about his predecessors’ economic policies. Yet here he is fast tracking an incredibly ill-conceived Bill with a deeply irresponsible disregard for the consequences, all to appease people who have been consistently wrong in their ideas and proclamations about Brexit.

Back in 2016, when I and many others were campaigning for a pragmatic approach to leaving the European Union, I made the case that we should repatriate the entire body of EU law applicable to the UK to ensure continuity and minimise disruption while avoiding a massive burden on the Civil Service and regulatory uncertainty for business. This then would allow the government to conduct a considered, long-term review of the UK statute book, allowing us to amend or repeal EU law over time.

The first part was done with the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, which retained EU-derived legislation as a new category of domestic law (“retained” EU law). However, instead of sensibly reviewing the law and unpicking it over time, giving due consideration to the potential impacts, the government has decided instead that it should be reviewed in a mad dash within a year working towards a completely arbitrary deadline.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, then BEIS Secretary, introduced the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill which includes a sunset clause meaning all retained EU law expires at the end of 2023 unless the government actively does something to preserve the legal position. This Bill is championed by all the same people who told us we held all the cards in negotiations, that negotiations would be simple, that having no deal at all would be fine, and pushed to make the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement as thin as possible.

The result of this has been that the UK’s various economic ailments, many of which we share with other countries, have been amplified due to self-inflicted structural weakness. There is plenty of evidence to show now that the approach to Brexit championed by hardliners has resulted in reduced trade, less investment and a hit to tax revenues estimated at an annual £40bn (enough to have avoided most of the spending cuts we’re going to have to suffer). The Centre for European Reform estimated that UK GDP is 5.5 per cent smaller because of how Brexit has been implemented.

Now, take these forecasts and estimations with a pinch of salt if you like, but the fact is that the UK is the only major economy not to have returned to its pre-pandemic size. Thus far, leaving the EU has not been a success and a great part of this responsibility goes to the uncompromising ideologues in parliament whose ideas on Brexit are consistently proven wrong. They have turned the public against their own project, with people who think Brexit was a mistake now consistently outnumbering those with no regrets by a significant margin.

Yet here we are, being hurled headfirst into another debacle of their creation, and our oh-so-sensible, competent Prime Minister is meekly going along with it. The kamikaze Brexiteers are taking advantage of his weakness and his vapidity, and once again leading us to the promised land of freedom and prosperity. Anyone who warns against this act of folly is a traitor attempted to spurn Brexit and hold Britain back.

So despite the state of the UK economy and the problems building up in the country right now, the government will dedicate a huge amount of resource within Whitehall to reviewing or revoking 4,000 pieces of EU originated legislation by the end of the year. Businesses will, in-turn, have to dedicate resource to managing and adjusting to this rushed process.

The laws under review cover a vast array of areas from cyber security to consumers and workers’ rights, from procurement to intellectual property. This is complicated, no matter how many times Jacob Rees-Mogg insists it is simple (just like him and his ilk insisted the whole process of Brexit would be simple) it is not simple and there is great scope for negative and unintended consequences. The Bill creates uncertainty and instability for regulators, industry, employers and investors. It is yet another act of self-harm.

There is no reasonable justification for the Bill. It’s the last act of the Conservative Europhobe right who believe everything associated with the EU is alien and bad, so they’re trying to burn it all down before they are out of government. The notion that EU-derived law must be repealed as a matter of urgency because it was imposed undemocratically and is therefore illegitimate is highly dubious. This law wasn’t something imposed on the UK or “done to us”.

Much of EU law was strongly influenced and promoted by the UK, and the UK participated in the lawmaking process. Yes, there were times when we lost votes and the government of the day didn’t agree with every law made in the EU, but the 2018 Withdrawal Act gave us the opportunity to amend and repeal law via our ordinary legislative process.

In any case, this Bill itself is anti-democratic. It hands sweeping powers to the executive to revoke, replace or restate legislation without proper parliamentary oversight. The Tory MP Bob Neill commented: “We have Henry VIII powers so wide that all scrutiny is effectively removed from this House… that’s not taking back control, that’s actually doing the reverse of what the government seeks to do.”

There is no provision for proper consultation and no criteria on which ministers will base their decision making on when deciding what should be revoked, replaced or amended. We simply don’t know what ministers intend to do with all these laws in this mad rush, and the bill is handing them an extraordinary amount of discretion to do as they please.

This, I contend, is in violation of the spirit of Brexit. Was it not intended to restore and reinvigorate British democracy? Were we not called to Take Back Control for parliament? I’m quite sure a great many of the supporters of this bill made that case, surely it wasn’t all disingenuous bluster?

We need to make Brexit work and this is not how. The Retained EU Law Bill has the potential to do harm and very little good. Amidst a cost-of-living crisis this bill is unlikely to bring great benefit to anyone’s life, yet a huge amount of energy and resource will be spent on it.

If Rishi Sunak really was competent and a safe pair of hands, he’d have been kicking this into the long grass. In his leadership campaign he gave himself a little wriggle room by promising to replace retained EU law that is “holding us back”, he should focus on a few select sectors to review this year for potential “easy wins” and then delay the rest until 2026. Unfortunately, that is a pretty big “if”. 

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The failure to launch a national public information campaign to reduce demand during a war with the UK facing an energy crisis is deeply irresponsible and the reasoning behind it is childish. This is not the “nanny state” gone mad, this is a sensible move that can inform the public, save them money and most importantly, potentially prevent blackouts. A serious government wouldn’t hesitate.

The public are being alerted to the danger by the front-page news that the National Grid has issued severe warnings that the country faces blackouts in a few months if the supply shortage in Europe means we can’t import enough gas. If we do experience blackouts that could have been averted by reducing demand, the government will have to accept a share of the blame for abdicating its responsibility now. It would be a long time before the public forgive the Conservative Party for failing to keep the lights on.

The proposed £15 million information campaign had planned to urge the public to turn down boiler temperatures, turn off radiators in empty rooms and turn off heating when they go out. As campaigns go, it’s relatively unambitious and would likely pay for itself in household savings of an estimated £300 a year. Yet in defending the PM’s wrongheaded move, Maria Caulfield MP said Liz Truss was right to question whether it was the “best use of taxpayer’s money”. This is a very muddled way of considering the economics.

£15 million is a rounding error in government terms, especially compared to estimates of up to a £100 billion to pay for the government’s energy package. The campaign need only reduce energy usage fairly modestly to reduce the cost of that energy package and then more than pay for itself. The cap on the price of energy, be making gas and electric more affordable, could also disincentivise people to reduce demand, therefore they need to be encouraged to use less and informed in how to do so.

In Europe the problem is being taken seriously. EU member states agreed collectively to reduce demand by 15% this winter and have launched initiatives far more ambitious than the plan Liz Truss has blocked. France, Germany and other European nations have introduced reduction measures such as: urging retailers and advertisers to turn off overnight lighting, turning off hot water for hand washing in public spaces, overnight lighting on public buildings and monuments turned off, no public buildings to be warmer than 19 degrees, lowering the temperature of swimming pools. This is what our government should be doing right now.

People need to have the seriousness of the situation emphasised. There is an energy crisis. There is a war in Europe. Britain may not be fighting, but it is very much involved in this war by proxy, by providing its support financially, militarily, and diplomatically, and that comes with negative consequences. The government should call upon the public’s sense of duty, patriotism and morality, and tell them they can support their country, Ukraine and each other by doing what they can to reduce their use of energy.

The government must prepare the public and be honest with the country. By providing practical advice it could at best avert disaster and at worst save people money. However big or small the risk of blackouts and rationing is, the risk is real and must be managed and mitigated appropriately.

This isn’t about the nanny state or a libertarianism vs interventionism debate. It’s about responsible government acting in the face of a crisis. If Liz Truss doesn’t understand this, she is not qualified to be the prime minister. 

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life

After a tumultuous first few weeks, it’s easy to forget the controversial announcement of the government’s official review of its entire anti-obesity strategy. This was yet another break for current orthodoxy based purely on the prime minister’s libertarian instincts and bound to face sustained opposition.

A coalition of 70 health organisations quickly expressed their “profound concern” about the policy review and urged her to “reconsider any plans to weaken the public health measures” designed to tackle “junk food”, arguing that it would be “absolutely scandalous” to go ahead.

I have written for Reaction several times in the past opposing meddling, ineffective nanny state policies and warning that the demands will never stop. After the sugar tax on soft drinks, came demands for the tax to be extended to cakes, sweets, pizza, and any other foods deemed to be “junk”. There have been calls to clamp down on promotions of certain meat and fish products. It is never enough.

The trouble is, Britain does have an obesity problem. We are one of Europe’s fattest nations and projected to become the fattest. It is estimated that 63% of British adults are overweight or obese, which is double the percentage figure in 1990. The pandemic has exacerbated the situation, with childhood obesity rates increasing significantly.

Freedom is great, but freedom alone isn’t going to address this problem.

Our lifestyles have changed significantly over recent decades and in many ways we haven’t fully adapted. We now have cheaper and more abundant food with far more choice, we have a thousand ways to spend our leisure time sat on our backsides and many of us are sedentary throughout our working day.

We drive everywhere and prioritise convenience. Even central heating can contribute to weight gain according to some studies. The modern world, which has provided us with so much comfort, has also made it more difficult to keep fit and healthy without making a concerted effort to do so. There is no government strategy on how to mitigate this, so in lieu of one we have trivial and illiberal sin taxes and lifestyle regulation.

To reduce obesity, we need a multi-layered approach and a long-term vision. We need investment that pays off in the long term in reduced costs for the NHS. The government should focus on empowering people to improve their lifestyles through education, access to information and means of getting active.

There must be unapologetic intervention in schools and doctors must never spare anyone’s feelings when tackling what is a serious medical problem. GP’s surgeries should be like health centres where people can learn to use diet to address their weight and manage illnesses like diabetes. There are a million success stories out there because losing weight in theory is simple, eat fewer calories, exercise more and have a consistent, balanced diet.

The main focus to address obesity over the long term should be to target childhood obesity and to help educate parents. The city of Amsterdam provided a localised example of a multi-pronged approach to obesity. In 2013, one in five children in Amsterdam were found to be overweight or obese. To tackle this the Council and Health Department of Amsterdam set out to develop a long-term approach which became the ‘Healthy Weight for All Children’ Programme. Within three years it achieved a 12% drop in children who were overweight and obese and Amsterdam received a European Health Award in 2019.

The programme was a package of extensive, targeted government intervention. Children in Amsterdam began to be regularly weighed and tested for agility and balance. Overweight children received early intervention and they were told, along with their parents, that they were overweight and referred to a nurse. They were then offered a package of help including access to gym classes, health centres, home visits by volunteers and dietary advice.  

This is how we should tackle our obesity problem. Combining public services with third sector organisations and voluntary networks to fully address the crisis as part of a long-term plan. Early intervention in schools, funding access to health services, activities and gyms, improving PE and health education in schools, this whole systems approach would reap benefits in the long term.

Sadly, that requires investment, ambition and a long-term vision, which simply isn’t going to happen under Trussonomics. Since coming into government in 2010 the Conservatives have always preferred to hack the public realm to the bone for short term savings without considering whether the long-term costs rendered this a false economy. Schools, GP surgeries, third sector charities and children centres would all be essential means of delivering a proper strategy to tackle obesity, but all have faced steep budget cuts since 2010.

Cuts in yearly years support were linked to childhood obesity in a 2021 study which stated that “the cuts correspond to 4575 more children with obesity or 9174 more overweight/obese children between 2010/11 and 2017/18 than would have been expected had funding levels for the centres remained the same”. Deprived areas were the hardest hit by the cuts, and that is likely to have widened the “obesity gap” between the richest and the poorest children, according to researchers.

Like so many societal problems facing the UK, short termism and a lack of imagination have prevented an effective response to our obesity problem. Abolishing the obesity strategy will be a short lived victory over the “nanny state”. The same policies and worse will inevitably be implemented by a new government because the only way to defeat bad ideas is with good ideas, and this government has none to offer.  

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life

I find myself increasingly wondering when we’ll ever experience a sustained period of prosperity of the kind we haven’t seen since before 2008. Where have all the good times gone? I am working harder than ever and have a good job yet have far less disposable income than I did a few years ago. There is no sign of better times on the horizon either, and the situation is totally beyond my control.

For the poor, the situation is far more severe. The increased cost of living means going hungry, choosing between heating or eating in the winter, unpaid bills and the dark cloud of poverty following you everywhere. It means malnourishment and ill health. At worst, it means descending into destitution.

Truly, the cost-of-living crisis is a bread-and-butter issue. Speaking of butter, the price of this single product has proved a useful tracker for me. Until 2015 I worked at Tesco and I had begun taking an interest in how prices changed over time (I would get very bored, alright?!). Back then, Tesco’s own-brand butter was a mere 89p. Throughout the economic instability in the wake of Brexit and the pandemic, I’ve let out many audible gasps before begrudgingly sticking it in my trolley. I did so when it broke the £1 barrier and I distinctly remember gasping when it hit £1.39.

This week, I went full Yorkshiremen when I saw the latest price and yelled out in the middle of the aisle: “Jesus Christ, £1.75!” Before I remembered I was in public and slunk away embarrassed (yes, I bought it, I’m not a margarine man). I recalled when you’d pay that price for the good stuff – your President, Kerrygold or some luxury butter made in a creamery in the Yorkshire Dales. This was just Tesco’s own-brand. From 89p to £1.75 in a few short years, a tale of economic woe.

This is all very un-scientific and anecdotal, of course – I’m not expecting credit for my investigative journalism. But that’s kind of my point. The cost-of-living crisis doesn’t require much investigation, nor explanation by experts, or statistics, for anyone to understand it. No one needs to tune into BBC news or read a newspaper column to get it. This is something that we can feel. It’s very simple to look at your weekly shop and just know that you have got less for your money than you did even a few months ago, never mind last year or the year before that. When the energy bill arrives, anyone can look at the number and note how much it has increased.

The cost-of-living crisis is on the minds of ordinary Britons every single day. The government should be very worried, because it cannot spin its way out of it or distract from it with culture war issues. In lieu of actual policy, ministers have told us to buy value brands, budget better, or cook meals from scratch. This isn’t going to cut it.

The cost-of-living crisis is such a potent political weapon that Labour’s next election campaign writes itself. Simply ask the electorate if they have got richer or poorer under the Conservatives. The answer is obvious. Economically, things have gotten worse.

Not only that, while people have been struggling, the government increased taxes, effectively cut benefits by failing to uprate them in line with inflation and now it is threatening a trade war with the EU over the NI protocol, an issue utterly unimportant to most people outside of Northern Ireland. It’s breathtakingly complacent. Do they not see the asteroid of public resentment hurtling towards them? Even if they do, it’s already too late.

But Keir Starmer doesn’t seem to be the man to seize the opportunity.

In the local elections, Labour’s performance outside London was poor, gaining just 22 seats in England. Starmer has been criticised for being dull, uninspirational and lacking a clear vision. There is no sense of crisis within Labour at him resigning if he is fined over Beergate. His support base has been exposed as quite thin.

A leader with the ability to inspire could reinvigorate Labour and inject a little of the pre-1997 energy and excitement that erupted with the New Labour revolution. The new leader should be a fresh face from the moderate right of the party, with relatively little baggage and a story to tell. 

Step forward rising star Wes Streeting.

Unlike Keir Starmer who served in the Shadow Cabinet, Streeting sat on the backbenches during Jeremy Corbyn’s doomed leadership. He is not muddied by association with him nor the racism scandal that engulfed the party. Streeting was a frequent critic of Corbyn and posed difficult questions in the Commons over the handling of anti-Semitism complaints.

Despite this, he is not universally hated by his ideological opponents. Even elements of the barmy far-left are onside. Commentator Owen Jones has known Streeting since his days leading the NUS and believes he is different from what he calls the “soulless Blairites”, possessing a vision that has a “grounding in his experience.”

That experience is his story to tell the nation and it’s a compelling one. While Boris likes to make jibes about Starmer being a lawyer and portray him as elitist, Streeting’s life story would pose a real problem. He was raised in a poor, single-parent household in Stepney, East London. He has had personal challenges and obstacles to overcome unlike anything Etonian Boris has known, and the fact he has got on in life to where he is today, is itself inspirational.

His mother was born in prison and was 18 when she had him. Streeting has memories of poverty, of blackouts when the money for electricity ran out, of an empty fridge and going without, of being embarrassed at getting free school meals. He has memories of visiting his maternal grandfather in prison, where he served time for armed robbery.  His grandmother, too, spent a brief period in prison in relation to her husband’s crimes (interestingly sharing a prison cell with Christine Keeler, the model at the centre of the Profumo affair).

Streeting joined Labour aged 16 because of his own experiences, seeing Labour as the best vehicle for addressing the obstacles faced by his family, friends and people he grew up around. It may sound cynical (that’s politics, baby!) but as a political figure he is very easy to sell. He may be relatively young at 39, but this is a man who has been involved in and thinking about politics for a very long time. A man driven by his own life experience to improve the lot of others.

After Starmer’s election as Labour leader in 2020, Streeting joined the shadow Treasury team and has become a favourite of the Labour press office and darling of the commentariat. He makes regular appearances across the media. He is charismatic, likeable, genuine and a very good orator, which has helped him rise quickly, being continually promoted: shadow schools minister, shadow child poverty secretary and, finally, shadow health secretary.

There is a buzz around him as a potential Labour leader, and with begrudged admiration from his left, respect and adoration to his right, and what Owen Jones called a commentariat “love-in”, Streeting has a lot going for him as he builds up momentum. With the right policy platform, there is a sense that Streeting could offer a clear vision for the country in a way that Starmer has so far failed to do. 

Boris Johnson was right to make it clear that there will be a cost to us all for the necessary sanctions on Russia. He must keep banging that drum and preparing the British people for the inevitable. Any financial pain we endure will be nothing compared to the unbearable suffering of the Ukrainian people. Nonetheless, the cost of living crisis at home will hit the poor hard and bite the middle classes and the government must be straight with us about that.

At the same time, we must not let the government conflate issues to cover up its own mistakes. There is an existing cost of living crisis, and its root causes are the global pandemic and leaving the single market. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions against Russia will exacerbate this and we must monitor the government narrative to ensure it doesn’t pull a fast one and blame the war for a crisis it seems determined to make deliberately worse.

Next month, the energy price will go up – the misguided energy policy of successive governments must take a major share of the blame. We decided against exploiting the vast reserves of shale gas to obtain a degree of energy independence and we are now in a mad, single-minded dash to meet net zero targets.

Now would be a good time to remove the green levies on our household bills and instead fund them via general taxation. This would move around £185 per year from the bills of the average household to general taxation and help to cut energy bills. This would have more effect than the frankly bizarre plan to “loan” us our own money whether we like it or not and then have us repay it over five years in the hope that energy prices will stabilise.

In the very same month as our energy bills shoot up, the government is still planning on increasing both employers’ and employees’ national insurance, despite the extra inflation this is bound to cause. It really is a baffling folly to hit us all in the wallets and throw a spanner in the works of the jobs market during such volatile economic times. If there was ever a good time to do this, it certainly isn’t now.

There will be no political cost to performing a U-turn under the current circumstances. In fact, the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, could claw back some lost credibility now if he addressed the nation and told us that, in response to the unfolding crisis in Europe – and to help the British people as we economically punish Russia for its war mongering – the government will scrap the planned rise in National Insurance Contributions.

To further alleviate the crisis, the government should then increase Universal Credit by restoring the uplift introduced during the pandemic and put £20 a week back into the bank accounts of the poor and vulnerable. It’s easy to quibble about the costs, but this doesn’t even come close to making up for the drastic cuts to welfare that were implemented during the age of austerity.  

Waging economic warfare against Putin’s squalid regime is the least the West can do. YouGov polling has found that Britons supported the initial sanctions against Russia but are hesitant to support further sanctions if it means accepting further price increases. By 45% to 35%, Britons would oppose further sanctions that increase the overall cost of living.

The government is doing the right and necessary thing, but it must gain the buy-in of the public. The best way to do that is to do what it can to ease the cost of living crisis and ensure it does not do anything to make it worse. Voluntarily increasing taxes in the middle of a spending squeeze that is about to get worse is utter madness. 

Not for nothing has President Volodymyr Zelensky been so complimentary of the British response, often expressing his gratitude and calling Britain a “reliable” friend. He is in regular communication with the Prime Minister and has praised him for enhancing Ukraine’s combat capabilities. The standing ovation Boris Johnson received from people attending the Ukrainian Cathedral of the Holy Family in Mayfair was discombobulating to his detractors.

And on Monday, Sky News interviewed former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, and he was gushing with praise for Britain, calling its response to the invasion “absolutely great” and telling of his “positive experience in communication with Boris Johnson” as Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister. It’s important to acknowledge this to get a balanced view of the situation, but also because it makes the government’s moral failure on accepting refugees even more disappointing.

On Monday, it emerged that more than 10,000 people had applied for the UK’s Ukraine Family Scheme since Friday, but so far, only “around 50” visas have been granted, according to the Home Office. Little wonder – the application process is a Kafkaesque nightmare of red tape, especially for non-native English speakers. 

Whereas the EU was quick to offer to take any refugees visa-free for three years, the route to the UK is paved with red tape and the government has proven reluctant to do the right thing. This hard rhetoric and hostile environment is specifically designed to make the UK less inviting and ensure it is difficult for people to come here to live, work and seek refuge.

When the government eventually did provide a Ukrainian Humanitarian Route, it was woefully inadequate and cruelly restrictive. In response to the backlash, the government introduced the Ukraine Family Scheme, increasing the number of refugees allowed and extending the support to parents, grandparents, adult children and siblings. It also announced an uncapped visa route allowing sponsors, such as communities, private sponsors or local authorities, to bring people to the UK.

It was reported on Monday that the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, was looking into relaxing the rules further and offering a new humanitarian route” to the UK. On Sunday she told The Sun: “In response to the desperation I saw with my own eyes at the Polish border two days ago, I’m urgently escalating our response to the growing humanitarian crisis.

“I am now investigating the legal options to create a humanitarian route.

“This means anyone without ties to the UK fleeing the conflict in Ukraine will have a right to come to this nation.” The Sun reported that the new plan would be separate from the current families scheme and proposed sponsorship scheme that would allow Brits to support a new arrival that was announced last week.

Within hours Boris Johnson had contradicted his Home Secretary and sowed confusion when he appeared to reject her idea while speaking during a visit to RAF Northolt, insisting the UK has “two very, very generous routes already” which could see “hundreds of thousands” of Ukrainians come to this country.

He said: “What we won’t do, let me be very clear, what we won’t do is have a system where people can come into the UK without any checks or any controls at all. I don’t think that is the right approach.”

Government sources have also sought to clarify Patel’s comments, claiming they referred to the existing humanitarian route under which people need to be sponsored by organisations. There is, however, an understanding that the initial estimate of 200,000 people arriving will need to be revised due to the horrific conditions in Ukraine.

All in all, this is a story of moral failure, a disgraceful lack of urgency and appalling government communications. Ukrainians are fleeing for their lives as their country descends into hell and the Russians slaughter civilians and commit war crimes with impunity. Ukrainians attempting to come to the UK are finding the drawbridge is up as they hit a barrier of red tape and paperwork in Calais.   

Shockingly, even British citizens are facing disappointment when they hoped their own home would provide a safe haven. David Carter, a British citizen who fled Ukraine with family, claims to have been turned away at the border, told to find a hotel and wait because his wife and children are Ukrainian.

Britain is not rising to the occasion.

In defending its moral failure and the sluggish nature of British bureaucracy, Patel was almost boastful in saying that the UK’s Ukrainian visa scheme is the “first of its kind in the world”. This simply does not wash. It’s the first of its kind because other European countries have adopted a truly humanitarian approach and provided refuge by removing visa requirements.

According to the UN, Poland has taken in 1,028,000 refugees. Hungary 180,000. Moldova 83,000. Slovakia 128,000. Romania 79,000. Belarus 406. Britain is an island and not a neighbouring country so its numbers will never hit such heights, but it’s high time it joined other nations in providing a route to safety for refugees.

The government must waive all visa requirements for Ukrainian passport holders arriving in the UK. It’s time that we were proud to call Britain a safe haven. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. 

The proposed ban is part of a package of new proposals designed to roll back New Labour’s drive to encourage as many people to attend university as possible, as well as reducing the taxpayer subsidy for unpaid tuition fees.  Policies such as reintroducing student number controls also aim to crack down on “low-quality” degrees.

Ministers are concerned that some university degrees are not benefitting all students as too many graduates take on a lot of debt to study courses that ultimately don’t lead to careers lucrative enough to enable the student to pay back their loans in full.

Research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies showed that almost eight in 10 graduates will never pay back their full loan under the current tuition fees system. Three-quarters of the total amount dished out in loans is picked up by the taxpayer, the IFS report from 2019 found.

There is certainly an issue here and there is a debate to be had about how to deal with it, but if the government’s method of resolving the problem it is to make it far more difficult for poorer students to attend university, these great engines of social mobility, then it should stop pretending it cares about inequality and drop it’s “levelling up” rhetoric.

It’s questionable why anyone should be excluded from studying drama, art or music because they didn’t get a 4 in Maths. Especially as it only excludes those who don’t have rich parents. Equally, why should anyone not be able to study maths because they are not very gifted in English as a subject? This proposal is an incredibly blunt instrument.

There is also not enough flexibility to this ban. There will likely be exceptions for those with learning difficulties, but that doesn’t help people with undiagnosed problems, whether that be dyslexia or ADHD. Neither does it consider extenuating circumstances. Students at GCSE level who are having trouble at home – whether that be family breakdown, victims of abuse, bereavements, illness – may struggle with their revision and exams. They shouldn’t be punished for this just because their family doesn’t have the money to pay their tuition fees.

The plans are already kicking up a fuss. As Glorio De Piero, former Labour shadow minister and now GB News presenter, tweeted: 

Universities have their own entry requirements based upon the needs of the specific course. This allows for flexibility because the requirements for getting onto an arts course should clearly not be the same for studying Medicine. Crucially though, there is a degree of discretion which allows universities to consider individual circumstances and offer a degree of flexibility and this is essential to ensuring disadvantaged students are not excluded.

With this ill-conceived, unimaginative, and grossly unfair idea, the government has shot itself in the foot. The ban is grabbing the headlines over worthy policies such as the £900 million investment in medicine, dentistry, nursing and midwifery, as well as science and engineering degrees.

The government should go back to the drawing board and come up with an idea that doesn’t restrict disadvantaged young people from attending university. They could consider extending the repayment period or imposing a levy on universities with high subsidy rates, anything that doesn’t aggravate the inherent inequality of our society.

The rich never lose out. They can afford to pay for private education for their children and extra tutoring and they can pay their tuition fees. Wealth brings with it an inherent advantage in life and can put you on the fast track to the elite. Many people now in government had this advantage. If they have a social conscience, and believe in levelling up, then they must not pull up the drawbridge behind them. 

The potential mental health implications for forcing children to wear masks all day every day at school, combined with a rather tenuous case in favour of the policy providing significant benefit, should lead to this policy being dropped. 

The Times has today reported that the study used to justify the introduction of masks in English schools implied that they had, at best, a marginal effect. This is according to documents released by the Department for Education. That’s right, the government’s own research failed to find that masks had a significant effect in lowering transmission, but they’re doing it anyway and children be damned! 

This correlates with findings from the USA, data collected by the COVID-19 School Response Dashboard  found that schools and school districts without mask mandates had lower case rates than schools with mandates. There are a myriad of factors and differentials that may have contributed to this apparent anomaly, but it sure doesn’t make for a convincing case to mask children every day. 

Face masks are designed to be worn in hospital and clinical settings mainly, and when necessary other enclosed public spaces, to prevent saliva droplets from landing on other people and infecting them, with Covid. However, for school pupils to wear masks six to seven hours a day, five days a week is a demand too far. Along with the constant reminders of the ongoing pandemic, the risks of infection and warning about hygiene, we are risking causing anxiety and mental health problems in our children. 

In any case, how healthy can it really be to wear a mask all day meaning that instead of the body expelling other bacteria and viruses they are simply inhaling them again or their exhalation waste settles in a moist environment behind their mask? This is exacerbated by the use of cloth masks, flimsy fake ‘surgical’ style masks and the overusing of single masks before cleaning.

Of course, Twitter is awash with Little Miss Prissy mummies, and know-it-all Mr Smug dads saying how their little darlings are complying with no problem at all because they understand the reasons why and they are so incredible and selfless. Fine, far be it from me to question the significance of anecdotal evidence from self-satisfied, middle class social media moralisers, but I do wonder whether they’ve really given the subject that much thought. 

Think about how likely children are to not wear their masks properly, to fiddle with them, to take them off and put them back on repeatedly, to contaminate their masks thereby making the whole thing pointless. Expecting children to wear masks properly and comply with this absurd ruling every school day is optimistic at best and downright stupid at worst. 

It makes communication (rather important in the school setting) more difficult; school children will be less able to rely on and respond to facial cues from their teachers and fellow pupils. Teachers will find it harder to read the reactions of their classes. Masks are detrimental to human interaction, and this is serious issue in a school setting in a way that it simply isn’t in a supermarket. 

We can be certain that plenty of the smug advocates of masking children are not sending their kids to state schools, attended by many pupils with behavioural issues that struggle to obey the normal rules, wear uniforms and often come from backgrounds of poverty and/or neglect. Will they comply? Will teachers spend less time teaching as they try to enforce mask wearing on these children? Does this come into the consideration of privately educated political decision makers and scientific advisers? Is the smug Twitter brigade considering them? Of course not. 

On this one, I’m with renowned children’s author Julia Donaldson who believes forcing pupils to wear facemasks in the classroom is dystopian:

“Even if the current proposals are only for three weeks, this could be repeated and become something considered normal whenever there is infection, whereas in fact it should not be considered normal, it is alien — even dystopian […] Children are children for such a short time, I don’t think they should be sacrificed like this.”

“(Masks) are seen as a gesture that isn’t costing the government any money and as something that is not doing any harm. Because of the climate of fear, people have readily accepted something I regard as unacceptable, and that I fear may now be seen as a normal part of life.”

Hear, hear! This is not another left/right issue. Not everything has to be another front in the culture war. We have to balance real-life factors against the advice of scientists, and forcing children to wear masks every day is a bad policy that will do more harm than good. 

I thought about this recently as assisted dying returned to the political agenda. It pops up every few years only for the debate to lead nowhere as MP’s cower away from bringing about change that the public support. Although it’s a complex and contentious issue, public opinion on the matter is very clear. In 2019, a YouGov study on the beliefs of the left and right wing showed that support for assisted dying was the nation’s most closely bipartisan view. 

The results of research released in August shows overwhelming public support for assisted suicide for patients suffering from a terminal illness. MPs remain divided on the issue and completely out of step with the public. Almost three quarters of Britons (73%) think the law should be changed to allow doctors to assist in the suicide of someone suffering from a terminal illness, including 74% of Conservative voters and 76% of Labour voters. However, just 35% of MPs feel the same way. 

Next month, Baroness Meacher, the crossbench peer, will introduce a new bill into the House of Lords, the fourth to go before parliament in the last 15 years. The Times has been exploring the issue, with Matthew Syed and Daniel Finkelstein writing in support of change and Daniel Kruger MP arguing against it. This is one of those issues I have been uncertain of, but as I read arguments in favour of assisted dying, I realised I am now firmly in the pro camp.  

I was inspired to reflect further on the issue after my dad’s final day, the day I had been fearing for as long as I can remember. I watched him draw his last breath. Ultimately, he was assisted to die, oops, sorry, I mean he was given doses of morphine continually to ‘manage his pain’ until it killed him.

You see, when it becomes obvious to everyone in the room that the patient is on their last legs, has no desire to suffer anymore, and has reached a stage in their decline when reviving them to live another day would be an act of cruelty, they are often offered so much pain relief that it’s the morphine pumping through their veins that finishes them off.  

And for that we should be grateful.  

In his final weeks, he had a hospital bed in his living room. He spent much of his time asleep and his ability to do the things he enjoyed were finally taken from him. Then the real indignity of his physical state began to kick in. I remember one day I was looking after him and I popped out to the shop to get us something to eat for dinner. I received a text: dad was distressed as I hadn’t shut the front door properly, it had blown open and he was cold. He could no longer stand up on his own volition, my big, strong, strapping dad. It broke my heart. I had to help him out of his seat like a man thirty years his senior.

When, weeks later, he went into our local community hospital in the knowledge he was unlikely to come out, I have no doubt this steep decline in his health and quality of life factored into his pleading to the nurses to help him die. Of course, the more immediate problem was the extreme pain he was suffering, but his final months had already taken his will to live.

“Just knock me out!’ he said, before being administered more morphine. When he woke, eyes glazed over and in agonising pain, he whimpered: “I just wanna go”. I’ll never forget those words and the desperate tone in which they were said. My distraught mum asked the nurse to help in language deemed too direct. She was steered away from literally asking for help to end his life, because assisted dying is illegal.

Eventually, after a visit from a doctor, he was given further doses of morphine to “manage his pain”. He spent the last three hours of life entirely within the confines of his own, morphine-addled mind. Then his breathing became increasingly laboured before he basically suffocated and choked on his own saliva which he could no longer swallow. Different choices could have been made, his life could possibly have been extended, but it would have been a grim extension of a life no longer worth living.

It is difficult to believe that similar scenarios don’t play out up and down the country. My mum told me grandad was helped on his way with similar methods. If assisted dying is already happening, but unregulated, and people are even able to make the trip to countries where it is legal, should we not look at this issue again?

Public opinion has shifted towards legalising assisted dying, so it’s likely only a matter of time now. Now less time should be spent arguing about the moral principle and we should move on to discussing how exactly assisted dying would work in this country. For sick people who feel like a burden to their families, or sick people who have bad actors within their family, there is a risk of going down this route when it isn’t yet necessary. Disabled people will also need protection as they already don’t receive equal treatment in this country.

There will need to be safeguards, and there should certainly be no rush to change the law. However, the possibility of change must be given serious consideration so that people can die with dignity and in peace rather than have their suffering prolonged as their quality of life is diminished to nothing.

The reporting and online discussion of the Prime Minister’s visit to the United States have been dominated by tedious Brexit gotchas. Desperate to continuously point out how Brexit has diminished the UK, the press, commentators, and social media critics have delighted in pretending that the stalling of UK-US trade talks is fresh news. The same people who said a trade deal won’t happen are now scoffing at the fact it isn’t happening as if that makes them insightful.

This isn’t news, it has been clear for a very long time that a UK-US trade agreement wasn’t going to happen. This is not a case of Biden snubbing Boris. Even under Trump, there were many chapters yet to be discussed, let alone agreed. There are far too many contentious issues for negotiations to be easy or rapid. To facilitate an agreement, the UK would need to roll over and give in to all American demands. It can only be a good thing that we haven’t.

The US downed tools in trade talks some time ago as it focuses on its Pacific strategy and leaves the UK and EU to ease tensions and teething problems with the Northern Ireland protocol. Now Biden is in office and new trade agreements are not a priority. Remainers are revelling in this, but the truth is that not only is a trade agreement with the US not important, it’s something the government should actively avoid.

There are irreconcilable differences in our regulatory culture that make the agreement of a comprehensive trade agreement near impossible. If the UK were to give in to US demands and adopt US standards, it would harm its trade with its other trade partners, not least the EU. The consequence of which would be that the US trade deal would have a net negative economic effect.

The most contentious is probably agrifood. If the UK agreed to adopt US standards the British media and political opposition have a field day reporting on US animal welfare and agricultural standards. Then will come the horror stories about the threats to the NHS. First protest amongst the public grows and then political opposition in the House of Commons brings the whole thing to a halt. It’s an entirely pointless endeavour.

This is not some big prize we have missed out on. A deal with the US would infringe on British sovereignty and would lead to insignificant gains in terms of boost to GDP. The UK and the US already have a significant trade partnership and there are many ways this can be enhanced without an FTA. No doubt anything else we do to boost trade would be belittled by Brexit critics anyway, see the fuss made over the Aukus pact for an immediate example.

The US has not snubbed us, nor is it stalling trade talks out of spite because of Brexit. It’s crucial to note that even without any formal trade agreement in place, the US is Britain’s second biggest trade partner behind the EU. Not only that, the US is the biggest investor in the UK economy and the UK is the third biggest investor in the US economy, ahead of any individual EU member state. There is more to trade and business than Free Trade Agreements. 

The latest concern is nitrous oxide. The substance – widely used in catering, medicine and motoring – can also be used recreationally to induce a brief sense of euphoria. Now it may be criminalised as the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, has ordered experts to review its effects. She said she was ready to “take tough action” on the widespread use of “laughing gas”, which is mostly taken by inhaling it through balloons filled from small metal cylinders. They are increasingly seen littering streets, nightclubs and festivals.

We’ve been here before. In 2016 hysteria over the use of nitrous oxide motivated the introduction of the Psychoactive Substances Act which banned so-called “legal highs” and made it an offence to use or sell nitrous oxide for recreational purposes. Yet outlawing the sale of nitrous oxide has done nothing to curb its use and the 2016 Act has been largely ineffectual in reducing drug use overall.

The Act was just the latest means of the government deciding what substances are acceptable and which are not. For example, the Psychoactive Substances Act did not criminalise “poppers” because the government of the time didn’t want to get into a debate with the gay community. They were arbitrarily deemed to be “not psychoactive”, and the argument made by the National Aids Trust that banning poppers would drive the market underground and pose a health risk to the gay community was accepted.

Fancy that, driving the drug market underground can pose a health risk to users. Who’d have thunk it? Of course, the logical next step was not taken and here we are banging our head against the same old wall. The Psychoactive Substances Act did not curb the use of nitrous oxide and the only option the blinkered government will consider is to introduce yet more stringent legislation.

The Royal Society for Public Health immediately opposed Patel’s move, warning it was not clear that criminalising possession had any effect on a drug’s level of availability or use.

Burcu Borysik, head of policy at the charity, said: “The government’s insistence on criminalisation and incarceration for minor drug offences worsens problems linked to illicit drug use, including social inequality and violence.

“The heavy-handed enforcement approach to drugs does nothing but spread fear among young people, prevents them from seeking the support they need, and unnecessarily drags them into the criminal justice system.”

The Home Office argument is that nitrous oxide “can cause serious long-term effects such as vitamin B12 deficiency and anaemia. It is also commonly used at antisocial gatherings and leads to widespread littering in public places, bringing misery to communities.”

Sorry to be a bore, using predictable arguments. But doesn’t that sound like the effects and consequences of a drug abundantly available on tap in every village, town and city in the country? A drug advertised across the media, widely enjoyed and deeply embedded in our culture?

Deaths from alcohol-specific causes rose to 7,423 in England and Wales in 2020, according to the Office for National Statistics, and in 2018-19 more than one in 10 incidents of antisocial behaviour were attributed to alcohol. I’m not suggesting we ban alcohol and nor is the government, but it’s time we got a sense of perspective amongst the hysterics and hypocrisy. This seems less about health concerns and more about a sense of moral inconsistency.

It is of course right that anti-social behaviour that results from its use should be clamped down on under existing laws. It is said to lead to widespread littering, noise nuisance and vandalism and this is why local authorities such as Tower Hamlets Council have threatened £100 fines and a Public Space Protection Order.  

There are certainly valid health concerns about nitrous oxide misuse too. Dr Chris Moulton, vice-president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said “the effects of inhaling nitrous oxide gas can include headaches, nausea, dizziness, unconsciousness, collapse and consequent injury.” If administered incorrectly, it can lead to severe internal burns. Like any drug, there are health risks and dangers that users need to be aware of.

Yet banning it outright is just the latest round in an endless game of whack-a-mole that the government insists on playing, eternally chasing its losses. It will become less widely available, but people will move on to other widely available drugs or purchase it on the black market. Ultimately, drugs will still be rife and many non-violent users of nitrous oxide will have criminal records.

The drugs charity Release warned a ban would burden tens of thousands of young people with criminal records “which will affect their employment and educational opportunities, something that seriously outweighs the harms of nitrous oxide”.

A harm reduction approach is the only realistic way of reducing the risk. Educate young people on the health risks of nitrous oxide, but also educate them on how it can be used safely, to avoid the risks of asphyxiation, B12 depletion, injury and fainting.

The way the government goes about drug policy is utterly futile and pointless. It’s part of the pretence that the war on drugs can be won and the government is able to prevent people using drugs recreationally. It’s harmful, counterproductive theatre. Instead of focussing on a drug that does relatively little harm, certainly far less than alcohol, money should be invested in harm reduction across the board, especially for people dying from using opiates.

Instead of building on the ineffectual Psychoactive Substances Act, it’s time to reflect on the harmful and ineffective way we approach drug legislation in this country as a whole. Sadly, we seem to be stuck in an endless, pointless loop. 

There seems to be no sign of backtracking, as yesterday the tone deaf Prime Minister suggested 2.3million Brits on low wages should be using “their efforts” to claim less Universal Credit. Johnson said: “My preference, my strong strong preference, and I believe this is the instinct of most people in this country, is for people to see their wages rise through their efforts – rather than from taxation of other people put into their pay packets, rather than welfare.”

This is classic “on yer bike” rhetoric from Boris who seems to have completely rolled over for the Chancellor’s austerity drive. Rishi Sunak has often been tipped to be the next Tory leader, despite having a tin ear and mediocre political instincts. He has pushed for this cut, and in the same week he refuses to budge on withdrawing welfare for the poor the BBC reports he has been granted planning permission for a swimming pool, gym and tennis court at his North Yorkshire home. It’s alright for some.

As the Chancellor receives the good news of approval for the construction of an outdoor tennis court, wildlife area and a stone swimming pool building in his grade II listed house in his Richmond constituency, Tory Ministers have insisted its right to reduce benefits after lockdown. Although no assessment of its impact on the six million Universal Credit claimants has been carried out.

According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, it will affect more than one in three working-age families with children in over 400 constituencies – 191 of these seats are Conservative and 43 were won at the last election or subsequent by-elections, hardly a great way of repaying constituencies that turned blue. The biggest impact will be felt in Yorkshire and the Humber, the North East, North West, and West Midlands so once again the government talks of levelling up before levelling down.

The temporary uplift of Universal Credit was introduced last year as a support measure during the pandemic and was extended in March. Anti-poverty groups have urged the government to retain the uplift and warn that millions of families could be left with less than half the income required for an acceptable standard of living.

How can the government possibly “build back better” or “level up” if it prioritises cutting financial support for the poorest people in society in the early stages of the post-pandemic recovery? This cut is likely to drive people into poverty, many of them already in work, and exacerbate the existing homelessness crisis, as well as increasing food bank use.

The charity Citizens Advice estimates the cut could drive 2.3 million people into debt including almost half of claimants in “red wall” battleground constituencies. Their research suggests that the average budget shortfall facing claimants in areas such as Redcar and Stoke-on-Trent would be £55 a month, pushing them into debt and driving up food bank use.

Last month, the Northern Research Group. (NRG), representing around 50 MPs called on ministers to keep the uplift in place. This week, two more Conservative MPs wrote to Boris Johnson urging him not to press on with the planned cut. Peter Aldous and John Stevenson said the £20-per-week increase should be made permanent.

In the letter, the MPs, who represent constituencies in Suffolk and Carlisle, said they had “very serious concerns” about the ability of low-income families to make ends meet if the top-up is removed. And they said they were “alarmed to see the government unwilling to heed the widespread warnings that are coming from all quarters” about the impact on living standards.

The letter read: “Our central promise at the last election, that you articulated so well, was to level up.

“Infrastructure is a crucial part of this agenda, but with the emphasis solely on eye-catching projects we are at risk of forgetting the importance of investment in people in these communities, without whom this vision cannot be realised.”

They told Mr Johnson that the £20-a-week boost is “one of our best legacies from the pandemic” and the investment must continue, they added.

Self-preservation should motivate Boris into preventing this cut that will impoverish people in the Red Wall and worsen regional equality which he has pledged to improve. The fallout is likely to give Labour a lot of political ammunition and generate bad press as the consequences seep in. The ‘nasty party’ are back, they will say, the party of the rich making the poor poorer  and forcing low income workers to pay the deficit.

Labour is already looking at an overhaul Universal Credit by introducing a ‘taper rate’ allowing low-income workers to earn more without having their welfare cut. It’s part of their envisioned “new deal” for working people and a wider overhaul of the social security system. The Conservatives are gifting the opposition ideas that may come back to haunt them.

The pandemic has increased the wealth gap between the rich and poor, which is already a major setback to Boris Johnson’s pledge to “boost the country’s most disadvantaged areas” and his promise of a “a fairer, stronger society – one where, whatever your background and wherever you live, everyone can access the opportunities they need to succeed.”

If his rhetoric mean anything, and many would say it doesn’t, it’s time he reconsidered implementing a contradictory policy that impacts the poor when they are at their most vulnerable at time of economic fragility and social uncertainty. 

The latest, in the Sunday Mirror, quoted an anonymous source as saying that halting the eastern leg would save £40bn and “there’s no way we’re going to see this built in our lifetimes”. Although some “Red Wall” Tory MPs are celebrating the potential cancellation of what they see as an overpriced white elephant, many Northern leaders reacted with dismay.

The Department for Transport denied the decision had been made, insisting the much-delayed integrated rail plan will “soon” outline the way ahead for major rail projects. That will include HS2 phase B, which was supposed to contain the western leg to Manchester and the eastern leg to Leeds. If Boris doesn’t put his foot down and ensure HS2 gets built in the north, then it really is a mystery what he stands for. His legacy will be a hollow one.

Boris took ownership of the project when he gave the green light an absurd eleven years after initial preparatory work began. He risked the anger of some Conservative MPs because he is a fan of big infrastructure projects and HS2 fits into his “levelling up” agenda. After taking this personal risk, chickening out now would make him look weak and leave the project in the worst of all worlds.

If the cancellation goes ahead then we will build enough of HS2 to annoy a lot of people, but not enough to maximise the benefits it can deliver. All its opponents will claim vindication and it will make the obstruction of future railway projects more difficult.  Boosting East-West connectivity in the north is the transformative element of HS2. Without it, it’s simply a £41 billion project to cut 25 minutes off the journey from Birmingham to London.

The levelling up agenda already seems to be in trouble when Boris had such difficulty articulating it in his vapid levelling up speech delivered last month. This could be the nail in the coffin for what was meant to be a key part of this government’s ambitions, leaving Boris with little of substance in his policy programme.

Henri Murison, director of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, which represents northern businesses, warned: “Without the western and eastern legs to Manchester and Sheffield on to Leeds as well as into north-east England, the whole of HS2 will be undermined in achieving its full economic benefits.”

James Lewis, leader of Leeds city council, said the latest leak jeopardised 10 years of planning and consultation that had gained cross-party support along the eastern route. “I will be hugely disappointed if we are back to the drawing board,” he said. “The constant pipeline of projects in London moving forward suggests that levelling up isn’t in operation.”

Leeds is a great city, hampered like many northern cities and towns with inadequate transport connections. Leeds railway station is the busiest in the north and a notorious bottleneck. HS2 was supposed to include a new station in the city. If it’s cancelled, once again a great northern city is having its potential for greater prosperity and growth hampered by London-centric officials and politicians.

The potential of the north can be unlocked by connecting the region to maximise people’s opportunities for jobs, education and leisure activities. If the government doesn’t address the decades of underinvestment in the north’s transport networks, it quite simply doesn’t have a “levelling up” agenda. 

This is what he said: “If you are guilty of anti-social behaviour and you are sentenced to unpaid work, as many people are, I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t be out there in one of those fluorescent-jacketed chain gangs visibly paying your debt to society.” An eye-catching headline, yes, but how will wearing a hi-vis jackets help them to rehabilitate? 

Typically, there is nothing original or imaginative among the new policy ideas which are here: 

·         Permanently relaxing conditions on the use of section 60 stop-and-search powers.

·         Expanding the use of electronic monitoring for thieves upon release from prison.

·         Making unpaid work “more visible” by getting offenders to clean streets and open spaces.

·         Trialling the use of alcohol tags – which detect alcohol in the sweat of offenders guilty of drink-fuelled crime – on prison leavers in Wales.

Indeed, the “chain gang” proposal looks pitifully archaic when fraud and digital crime now accounts for a third of offences. More importantly, there is the significant matter of funding across the board.

The criminal justice system suffered massive cuts in the Conservatives’ austerity drive, including the police, the CPS and drug treatment and rehabilitation services. Delays in the courts are at a record high and 295 courts in England and Wales have been closed. It’s not credible to argue that this has had no negative impact, but there is no indication that the damage will be undone.

There is a dearth of ideas when it comes to rehabilitation, which is short-sighted and suggests this is just more sloganistic headline grabbing. Although there is some money to be allocated to measures such as drug treatment and violence reduction units, it is far from enough.

The truth is, to be tough on crime you really do have to be tough on the causes of crime, from poverty, poor education, and lack of opportunity to addiction and mental health issues.

Back in 2012 I volunteered for a social care charity which targeted the reduction of reoffending rates within its area of operation. Re-offenders were referred to the organisation for assessment of their social needs which led to referrals to help them with issues such as addiction, employment, mental and/or physical health, housing and beyond. These interventions were designed to help people break the cycle of re-offending.

After a year of voluntary work that I hoped would lead to a career, the organisation was victim of steep and sweeping austerity cuts across the third sector. There has never been a better example of false economy than cutting funding to organisations rehabilitating long term reoffenders. Ultimately, it simply leads to a great overall financial and social cost in paying to imprison people and abandoning people to addiction, homelessness and other social ills that lead people into a life of crime.

No crime reduction strategy is going to be successful without integrating innovative intervention programmes into the policy approach. It will take money and it means thinking outside of the box. Scotland and England and Wales have the highest imprisonment rates in western Europe. The prison population has risen by 74 per cent in the last 30 years — and it is currently projected to rise by a further 20,000 people by 2026. Clearly, the current approach is not working.

In England and Wales, we overuse prison for petty and persistent crime, and we do not allocate adequate resources to rehabilitation, which is the most effective way of reducing reoffending rates. Over 40,000 people were sent to prison to serve a sentence in 2020. The majority, 63 per cent, had committed a non-violent offence and 33 per cent weresentenced to serve six months or less.

Nearly two thirds (63 per cent) of those who receive a prison sentence of less than 12 months reoffend within a year. Overall, nearly half of adult inmates (48 per cent) are reconvicted of another offence within one year of release. Too many people are being released from prison only to return there shortly after. I’m afraid chain gangs and stop and search are not going to change this dire situation.

Short prison sentences disrupt the lives of the convicted, but there is no time to address their long-term issues in such short periods. Some people believe the answer must therefore be longer sentences, but without effective rehabilitative measures and adequate funding in place they would not be effective either.

In any case, HM Prisons and Probation Service has experienced significant cuts to its budget in recent years. Between 2010–11 and 2014–15 its budget reduced by around 20 per cent, and despite some increases its budget remains 13 per cent lower in real terms than in 2010–11. The money and capacity simply is not there.

The evidence indicates the desperate need for an approach that considers the medium to long term effect results of crime reduction policies. Punishment and deterrence are key pillars of the criminal justice system, but reducing crime is a hugely difficult and complex conundrum and we must think beyond them if we are to move people away from crime.

For example, only 10 per cent of people are in employment six weeks after leaving prison. After a year, the figure rises to a shockingly low  17 per cent. Only half of people released from prison between March 2019–20 had settled accommodation on release while 17 per cent were homeless or sleeping rough.

Consider the situation of these people and remember there are individual human beings behind these statistics and consider what you might do in their situations. Slipping back into crime is far easier than overcoming these obstacles with little or no support.

Then comes the point at which our ailing criminal justice system meets our inadequate mental health provision. Some 71 per cent of women and 47 per cent of men in prison reported that they had mental health issues. A study of 469 male and female prisoners found that 42 per cent of participants had been previously diagnosed with a mental illness yet only around a quarter of the sample reported current contact with prison mental health services.

Furthermore, 34 per cent of people assessed in prison in 2017–18 reported that they had a learning disability or difficulty. Although there has been an improvement in this area in recent years, with more than half of prisons inspected in 2016–17 actively identifying and supporting prisoners with learning disabilities, clearly there is more room to improve and further support would be fruitful.

A pivot to reducing crime is welcome, but a fresh approach is needed. Without an overarching strategy that includes addressing the social ills that trap people in a cycle of reoffending, no crime reduction plan can succeed. Reducing crime requires a multi-layered policy approach and it cannot be done on the cheap.