Select committee report on response to pandemic: whitewash thicker than I realised

 On 12th October, I wrote: "A brief glance at the summary of the Commons inquiry suggests some watering-down in the interests of achieving unanimity." That criticism was too mild, as Phil Hammond in the current Private Eye points out:

Asking former health secretary Jeremy Hunt, now health committee chair, to investigate the UK's pandemic preparation is akin to asking Dido Harding to chair the public inquiry. Perhaps not quite as independent as required.

[...]

The report wrongly paints a picture of the UK only planning for a flu pandemic. " the anticipated future risk of pandemic disease focused too closely on influenza rather than diseases like SARS and MERS that had in recent years appeared in Asian countries. Previous exercises to test the national response capability, namely Exercises Cygnus and Winter Willow, did not squarely address a disease with the characteristics of covid-19."

These reports did model very clearly what we would need to do for a flu pandemic, but most preparations were not put in place by Hunt.

Hunt's report curiously fails to mention that there were at least seven other pandemic exercises, including Exercise Alice in 2016, which looked precisely at how the UK should respond to the deadly coronavirus causing [MERS].

Exercise Alice concluded: "There was a general consensus on the need to identify capacity and capability of assets within the health system. Assets in this context would be all resources that would be required to effectively respond to a MERS-CoV outbreak such as trained personnel, appropriate PPE in sufficient quantities and the requisite beds with suitable clinical equipment. It was considered that senior engagement to direct resources, including across boundaries, was necessary for effective management."

[...] Neither Hunt nor his successor Matt Hancock has ever acknowledged the existence of Operation Alice. And yet countries hit by MERS responded very well to SARS-CoV-2 using similar strategies outlined in Operation Alice. The UK assessed the risk accurately and then ignored it.

Equally troubling, these seven pandemic reports would have remained entirely secret until the public inquiry, were it not for a freedom of information request.

Bus services hit as HGV industry lures drivers

From the experience of a cousin and his wife, I know how tricky the test for a PSV licence can be. Retraining for and taking a HGV test must be a comparative doddle. Therefore, the headlines from the Independent and the i newspaper earlier this week came as no surprise. The loss of drivers seems to have reached even this corner of South Wales as a number of services from a timetable already restricted by Covid have been cancelled by First Cymru without warning.

The essence of Jacob Rees-Mogg

The Leader of the House was in fine form yesterday, from defending his decision to eschew social distancing and mask-wearing to praising a budget for working men which was little of the sort.

He has his own peculiar take on saving the planet:

The Government’s vision is one based on improving people’s standards of living. That is what the Budget was about yesterday and it is what the green policy is about. It is not about cave dwelling. It is not hair-shirt greenery. We are not becoming Adullamites. What we are in favour of is having higher standards of living based on the new technologies. All sorts of exciting things are happening, including with hydrogen, which will make that possible. There is not, I think, a market for going back to the stone age—some hon. Members may think I have never really emerged from the stone age—but we want to ensure that the standard of living of our constituents improves.

Never the stone age. For me, JR-M is of the period of the Restoration when the rigour of the Cromwell era was replaced by the dissolute King Charles and his louche courtiers returning from France and all its high church manners.

Childhood and maturity

I think that there is a point in adulthood when we can cast a bright light on the habits of personality that we developed in childhood, and accept them for the parts that are self-sustaining, instead of rejecting them as "things" we need to change in order to find happiness and balance as adults. We each have our own coping mechanisms, and we each have our own timeframe for putting childish things behind us, and moving on.

- Elaine Fine, composer and violist

Stray thoughts on the budget

First of all, I add my voice to that of the Speaker and of his deputy, the Chairman of Ways and Means for this occasion, in condemning the wholesale publication in advance of the main points of the budget. This demeans parliament and chips away at the democratic process.

It seemed to me that this was a crossed-fingers budget. All the glossy spending promises will only be redeemed eighteen months hence. In the meantime, Sunak must hope that inflation, both home-grown and international, will subside and that no other unexpected shocks will hit the UK economy before 2023. Mel Stride, the chairman of the Treasury Select Committee,  was not the only Tory MP to doubt that inflation and interest rate rises could be contained.

It appears that tax receipts have proved more buoyant than predicted. They have been enough to cancel the scheduled rises in fuel and beer duty, and to ease the pain for some people of the failure to consolidate the uplift in Universal Credit, but not enough to make the Chancellor change his mind about breaking the triple lock on state pensions.

Finally, I wondered why the Chancellor was so keen to give out solar panels. A quick search reveals that a company in which his wife and father-in-law have an interest produces a robot cleaner for them. I am sure that this is just a coincidence.

Labour should listen to our First Minister

Mark Drakeford has made the strongest statement yet in favour of fair votes of any leading Labour politician.  It is probable that his stock is higher among Labour members than not only their former national leader but also the present one. This must give the best chance yet of reversing Labour's age-old support for our primitive first-past-the-post system for electing parliament. It should not be ducked, as Tony Blair ducked it in 1997. Reneging on his agreement with Paddy Ashdown and Roy Jenkins led eventually in 2019 to giving the keys to No. 10 to a destructive charlatan of whom even our friends abroad make fun.

Drink Welsh milk and save the planet

 According to a Welsh dairy farmer on Radio Wales' Country Focus last Sunday, a dairy cow in Wales is two-and-a-half times more efficient than the rest of the world.

[later] An Internet interruption prevented me from filling out what was meant to be merely a headline-grabber and left that first paragraph on its own looking like a troll. So it should be stressed that the above, illustrating the efficiency of farming in England and Wales, was only one of the points that Abi Reader made.

In the programme dedicated to an examination of the effects of agriculture on climate change, Dr Prysor Williams set the scene by explaining that production of carbon dioxide itself, the longest-lived contributor to the greenhouse effect, was negligible. The larger concerns were about methane (all those belching cows and sheep) and nitrous oxide. These two can contribute as much as 80% of the total greenhouse gas emissions from farms. The nitrous oxide, which I must admit I had not realised was part of the problem, stems from both artificial fertiliser and natural waste from animals. 

Abi Reader pointed out that methane lives for about 10 or 11 years in the atmosphere before being reabsorbed in a natural cycle. If dairy cattle numbers stayed the same, methane from milk production would remain static. She placed her hopes on the quality of research in Wales. Such things as changing the content of cattle feed and generally reducing the amount of input for the same input. The NFU target of being carbon neutral by 2040 was achievable. Agriculture had the unique offer of being a carbon sink, for instance using trees and hedgerows. Farmers can also make use of the space they have to create energy which can be exported in the renewable energy market.

Rory Stewart's Private Passions

 Yesterday's Radio 3 broadcast reminded us of the loss to British politics of the man who could have been a great Foreign Secretary and was, for all too brief a time, a Prisons Minister who could have made a dramatic difference to the treatment of prisoners and therefore the level of recidivism. To Michael Berkeley he expressed no regrets at leaving the political scene, though one suspects that this is mainly because of the depths to which Johnson and his cronies have dragged it. Stewart is still interested enough in politics in general to have been teaching the subject at Yale. 

At the same time, he has been actively supporting the charity he and his wife set up in Afghanistan with the Prince of Wales and whose future they are negotiating with the Taliban administration. He and his family are now on the way to a new challenge, a rebuilding project in Jordan which will give much-needed employment to some displaced Palestinians. This could put him in more danger than any of his previous adventures, given the determination of some extremists to deny Palestinians any chance of making a living.