Getting closer to a ban

I have been a long-time campaigner for the introduction of a ban on ivory sales.

Around 20,000 elephants a year are still being slaughtered due to the global demand for ivory, an average of around 55 a day. The number of elephants in the wild has declined by almost a third in the last decade.. There are now approximately 415,000 African elephants - a 20% reduction over the last 10 years, mainly due to poaching.

The UK isn’t one of the countries of most concern about the global illegal ivory trade. But, there is evidence that the, currently legal, UK ivory market is being used to launder illegal ivory, and ivory in the UK is both legally and illegally shipped to other countries.

I thought we would finally achieve a ban on ivory sales after the three biggest UK political parties promised one in their 2010 election manifestos. What could possibly hold this up?

Well, we all found out. David Cameron and Nick Clegg made all sorts of promises – on student fees, house-building, the NHS and many more – and broke most of them, including the commitment on ivory. So, we carried on campaigning for the ban. Despite repeating the promise in his 2015 manifesto, David Cameron’s Conservative government still failed to act.

And then, being frustrated about the failure to make progress, things got even worse. Mrs May’s Conservatives dropped the promise altogether from their 2017 manifesto.

So, we’ve carried on campaigning and, finally, after China decided to close its domestic ivory market last year, this government has brought a Bill before the UK Parliament.

It isn’t perfect and I hope that it will be amended and improved, in particular to ensure that evaders face civil and criminal penalties, including imprisonment as well as heavy fines. There also needs to be action to tackle illegal ivory dealing on the internet.

Once the Bill becomes law, it will give the UK more credibility in trying to persuade other countries with a history of ivory trade – especially in south-east Asia: Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, Laos and Myanmar – to close their domestic ivory markets.

When an international ban is in place, the decline in the number of elephants in the wild may be halted.

Red light means Stop!

Sometimes, it’s difficult to believe just how stupid or malign some people can be.

Over the last 10 years, there have been more than 14,000 reported incidents of someone directing a laser light at aircraft pilots in the UK. The only good news is that the number of aircraft incidents reported last year (989) to the Civil Aviation Authority was nearly 50% lower than the peak number in 2011.

Research shows that most attacks took place during take-off and landing, or against hovering police helicopters, and are carried out using cheap, high-powered handheld devices that are readily available on the internet. The attacks can distract pilots and flight crew, obscure instruments and dials, and cause short-lived ‘flash’ blindness or even permanent eye damage. The potential for catastrophic accidents with significant loss of life, as well as life-changing effects on individuals are obvious.

And the problems are not just in the skies. There are too many reports of laser lights being pointed at the drivers of trains and of vehicles on our roads.

Although It has been clear for some time that the police do not have the powers to effectively tackle and investigate the inappropriate use of laser devices, there have been a number of false starts for legislative change. However, last December, the government published a Laser Misuse (Vehicles) Bill.

As you might imagine, there are some tricky lines to be drawn between civil liberties and criminal action, between activities which may be described as ‘not unreasonable’ and behaviours which are reckless or malign. Everyone knows what is right and what is wrong, but defining that clearly in law is not always easy. Unsurprisingly, there have been some robust debates on where those lines are to be drawn and on the definitions of various words and phrases such as actions ‘likely to dazzle or distract’.

Following amendments in the House of Lords, the Bill It makes it clear that the offence can be committed against any ‘vehicle’, which “would apply to all forms of vehicles, including aircraft, road vehicles, trains, trams, ships, hovercrafts, invalid carriages, and cycles”…and even horse-drawn vehicles.

If found guilty, on summary conviction, you can be sent to prison for up to a year. If found guilty in the Crown Court, you could be sent down for up to five years. The Act comes into effect on July 10^th.

Let’s hope that we see much less stupidity and malign behaviour in the future.

Our NHS safe in Conservative hands?

Draw your own conclusions from the latest government statistics.

Accident and Emergency (A&E):

• Last year 2.5 million people waited over four hours in A&E, up from 350,000 in 2009/10.
• Just 76.4% of patients at major A&E departments were treated within the 4 hour target in March - well below the 95% standard. This was the worst performance since records began.

Trolley waits:

• 613,957 people waited over 4 hours on trolleys in 2017/18, up from 61,696 in 2009/10.
• 3440 people waited over 12 hours on trolleys in 2017/18, up from 123 in 2011/12.
• 353 patients waited over 12 hours on trolleys in April 2018 and 48,002 patients waited over 4 hours on trolleys, the worst figures ever for the month of April.

Ambulances

• Ambulance crews in England had to look after 186,000 patients, either in the back of their vehicle or in a hospital corridor, for more than least 30 minutes (Nov 2017 – March 2018)
• Nearly 600,000 ambulance arrivals had delays of more than 15 minutes in handing a patient over to hospital A&E staff (Jan-March 2018), when no handover should take this long.

18 week waits

• Waiting lists are now more than 4 million, up from 2.5million in 2010.
• Cancellation of elective operations has seen waiting lists rise by 5% since last year.
• More than 2000 patients had waited more than one year for treatment (Feb 2108).
• 454,342 patients were waiting longer than 18 weeks for elective treatment (Feb 2018).
• The 18 week target for planned treatment has now not been met in two years.

Cancer

• 26,693 people waited over 62 days for cancer treatment in 2017, twice the rate in 2010 when the total was 13,354
• One patient waited 541 days for treatment following a GP referral against a target of 62 days.
• Two-thirds of NHS trusts had at least one patient waiting over six months and 69% had longer waits than in 2010.

Hospital alerts

• The number of hospitals operating at the highest emergency alert level has nearly doubled in the last year.
• More than half of NHS Acute Trusts in England declared emergency measures - an Operational Pressures Escalation Level 4 (OPEL 4), equivalent to the old 'black alerts' - on at least one day (Dec 2017 - March 2018).

No immunity

The latest NHS performance data ought to be shocking us all.

In March, fewer patients received treatment in Accident and Emergency (A&E) Departments within the 4 hour target than at any time since records began. Just 76.4% of patients at major A&E departments were treatedwithin 4 hour target. For all A&E units, performance was 84.6%, well below the 95% standard.

Waiting lists for treatment have increased to more than four million. Waiting-times for out-patient and in-patient diagnosis and treatment are increasing day-by-day. We see ambulances backed up outside overcrowded hospitals, operations cancelled, and elderly confused vulnerable patients stranded on trolleys in the corridors of bursting wards.

Waiting-times for GP appointments are increasing and, in many areas, there are problems in recruiting new GPs because the Coalition and Conservative governments actually cut the number of training places.

Now, we’ve had the revelation that 450,000 women did not receive an invitation for breast cancer screenings as they should have done. We all know someone who has been diagnosed with breast cancer and the pain and anguish that brings. To learn that you, or your grand-mother or mother or sister has not been invited to screening just adds to the concern and anguish.

Screening rates are at their lowest level for a decade. Ministerial concentration should be on ensuring that the NHS has the staff and resources need to get that back on track, instead of investigating how these historic mistakes were made. We are entitled to know how this has been allowed to go on for so long and why the problem wasn’t identified earlier.

Do you remember when David Cameron told us that our NHS was safe in the Conservative’s hands? It wasn’t true then. And it isn’t true now.

Why do waiting-times and waiting-lists – like crime – always go up under Conservative governments and always come down under Labour governments?

We must not become immune to what Mrs May and her Conservative colleagues are doing.

Dangerous desktops

James Brokenshire is the new Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (HCLG). Near the top of his in-tray will be the health and safety of high-rise buildings in the light of the Grenfell disaster.

The all-party HCLG Committee has been having a robust debate with Ministers and Dame Judith Hackitt, who is leading the government’s review, about future requirements and standards.

Dame Judith has indicated she does not favour a “prescriptive” approach which would simply ban combustible materials, whereas we are clearly recommending a ban on the use of combustible materials on tower blocks.

Meanwhile, the HCLG Ministry is currently running a consultation about using desk-top studies only to assess fire risks.

A ‘desktop study’ is a way of trying to find out whether or not a cladding system would meet particular standards in particular circumstances without actually testing it. It involves using data from previous tests of the materials in different combinations to make assumptions about how it would perform in the proposed use. The alternatives to a desktop study are full scale testing or not using combustible materials.

So, why don’t we think desk-top studies are sufficient? Well, because we already have the evidence which shows that cladding approved through desk-top tests has later failed fire safety tests.

In this instance, I’m clear that desktop studies alone are simply dangerous if any combustible materials are permitted to be used in the cladding of tower blocks. I’m concerned that the overuse of desktop studies would be a contributory factor to a weaker, less stringent regulatory regime and would increase the likelihood of dangerous materials being used on high-rise residential buildings.

This week, I’ve written to Mr Brokenshire to tell him very clearly that we believe there should be a total ban on the use of combustible materials on high-rise buildings¹ .

But, if Dame Janet Hackitt recommends a risk-based approach to assessment, it is simply not acceptable for such risks to be assessed only in desk-top studies.

¹ https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/housing-communities-and-local-government-committee/

There are times to be intolerant

Each year, we pay hundreds of millions of pounds in taxes to try to ensure that we get a swift and professional response to our emergencies.

If it’s a road accident or a heart attack, we want that ambulance or para-medic to arrive as quickly as possible, to take control, to save lives or give treatment to ensure we have the best chance of survival or return to full health.

If our home or place of work is on fire, or dangerous chemicals are spilt, we want that fire-engine to get to us before we’ve even ended our 999 call, to get the fire put out or to smother or neutralise the chemicals so that we are not endangered by toxic fumes.

When someone is breaking in to our home, or a fight breaks out in the street, or another vehicle smashes in to our car and then drives off at speed, or a child or grandchild goes missing, we want the police to get to us soonest to catch the perpetrators, end the violence or find and return the child safely.

Those police officers, fire fighters and para-medics are acting on our behalf. We want and need them to respond so much better than we could manage to save lives and property and to give security.

That’s why we should be absolutely intolerant of, and take tough action against, those who assault emergency workers in the course of their duties.

There are flaws in the way in which statistics about these assaults are collected, so the numbers must be treated with some caution.

However, it is believed that there were more than 23,000 assaults on police officers last year. That is 450 a week; the equivalent of an officer being assaulted every 22 minutes. The Police Federation says the true figure is closer to 6,000 assaults every day, with most not being reported and prosecuted. And, there were more than 70,000 recorded assaults on NHS staff and more than 500 attacks on firefighters in England in 2016. Worryingly, the numbers are increasing.

That’s why I’m backing a Private Member’s Bill currently being promoted in Parliament by my colleague Labour MP Chris Bryant. This would create a new offence of ‘assaulting an emergency worker.’ This proposed new law has support from the Royal College of Nursing, Unison, the Fire Bridges Union, the Police Federation, Alcohol Concern, the British Transport Police and the GMB union.

I’m also supporting amendments that are being tabled to the Bill as it goes through the Parliamentary process. One amendment would ensure that sexual assault against an emergency worker becomes an aggravated offence – of particular importance as, locally, we have had reports in the last few days of a known offender sexually attacking police officers who had gone to arrest him. Another amendment will clarify that the disgraceful (and potentially health-threatening) act of spitting at an emergency worker is a common assault.

If we claim to be a civilised society, we need to be absolutely clear that we simply won’t tolerate assaults on those who we have asked to put themselves in danger to save lives.

Populism never saved lives

I’ve been reflecting on the latest road accident casualty statistics in Britain and the world¹ .

In 2016 there were 181,384 accident casualties recorded on Britain’s roads; 1,792 of these were fatal.

In 2016 46% of those fatal road accident victims were car occupants; 25% were pedestrians; 25% motorcyclists; and 6% were cyclists.

Comparing those groups in terms of distance travelled, you are about twenty-five times more likely to be killed or to be a casualty if you are a motor-cyclist rather than a motorist. And cyclists are about fifteen times more likely to be killed and twenty times more likely to be a casualty than a car driver. It is little wonder that road accident campaigning today focuses on those dangers.

After 1945, fatalities increased year-on-year throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, to a peace-time peak of 7,985 (more than 21 road deaths per day) in 1966.

Then, in Great Britain, the overall number of fatalities and road casualties has been in long term decline since the mid-1960s, and especially since the mid-1990s. This is despite the fact that the number of vehicles on British roads has consistently increased over that period. So, a near 80% cut in road deaths compared to 50 years ago.

To think about this in a different way, if we had the same fatality rate today as in 1966, each and every week of the year, a police officer would be knocking on the door of an additional Sheffield household to bring them the dreadful news that a son/daughter/mother/father/sister/brother had been killed on the roads.

How has this decline come about?

There are a number of significant reasons, but it isn’t a coincidence that the drink-driving laws were introduced in 1966.

Nor is any coincidence that enforcement of the speed limits has been a significant contributor to the reduction.

And, certainly, legislation requiring improvements in the minimum safety standards of cars, and the enforcement of maintenance standards through MoT tests, and the requirements to wear seatbelts and carry children in car-seats have all made substantial contributions.

And, do you remember the populist campaigns against each and every one of these new laws? “It’s an Englishman’s right to be able to drink and drive…drive as fast as I like…decide when his car needs maintaining. The state shouldn’t be interfering in our rights.”

Of course, those same populists are now campaigning against the ban on using your phone whilst driving, despite the damning evidence.

What is happening in the rest of the world?

According to the World Health Organisation, more than 1.25 million people die each year as a result of road traffic crashes. Injuries from road traffic accidents are the leading cause of death among people aged between 15 and 29 years of age. Low- and middle-income countries had higher road traffic fatality rates per 100,000 population (24.1 and 18.4, respectively) compared to high-income countries (9.2).

Over 3 400 people die on the world's roads every day and tens of millions of people are injured or disabled every year. Children, pedestrians, cyclists and older people are among the most vulnerable of road users.

The numbers killed in road accidents is just lower than the number of deaths from tuberculosis. On current trends road traffic accidents are to become the seventh leading cause of death by 2030. The 2030 agenda for Sustainable Development has set a target to halve the global number of deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents by 2020.

It is clear that many countries will have to go through exactly the same legislative and enforcement changes - relating to reducing traffic speed, drink-driving and increasing the use of motorcycle helmets, seat-belts and child restraints – that we have been through in Britain if they are to cut the casualty and fatality rates significantly.

But, just like in Britain, there are populist campaigns against restrictions on speed, drink-driving and safety standards.

So, throughout the world, we need our elected representatives to make tough decisions on our behalf, not based on the views of those shouting loudest, if we are to make significant improvements.

Populism never saved lives.

TIME TO ACT

The all-party Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, which I chair, has been conducting an inquiry into the state of the private rented housing sector which now houses nearly 20% of all households. ¹ .

Renting privately is becoming an increasingly long-term, even life-time, prospect for many individuals and families. Most private tenants are satisfied with the quality of their homes. However, at the lower end of the market, 800,000 homes that have at least one Category One hazard, such as excess cold, mould or faulty wiring.

Nearly half of tenants fear retaliation – for example, eviction, rent increases or harassment - if they made a complaint to their landlord. 200,000 tenants report having been abused or harassed by a landlord.

That simply cannot be right. Tenants need additional protections from retaliatory action by the worst landlords, so that they can pursue complaints about the repair and maintenance of their homes. Further, it is time for a review and consolidation of private rented sector legislation. Similarly, we need straightforward quality standards to bring more clarity for tenants, landlords and local authorities.

Although in a minority, there are some dreadful landlords. I have personally visited some houses and flats providing the most awful living conditions for families with young children. Locally, we have recently seen court action against some of our local villains. Yet, six out of 10 councils did not prosecute a single landlord in 2016.

Some landlords appear to think that fines are just a business cost, easily offset against the massive rent income they are receiving for over-crowded and badly managed and maintained properties.

Councils do not have sufficient resources to undertake their enforcement duties, as the costs of investigations and prosecutions can rarely be recovered through the courts. They should be funded to do this work. For the worst persistent offenders, councils should have the power to confiscate properties from the landlords.

Some areas have selective licensing schemes, but the processes are too slow, lacks transparency, is overly bureaucratic and unduly expensive. These decisions should be made locally, not nationally by a government minister.

It’s now time for the government to act It has just a few weeks to make up its mind.

¹ https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/communities-and-local-government-committee/inquiries/parliament-2017/inquiry1/

What would you do?

Imagine that you are running a business.

Some of your suppliers charged you for goods and you paid, but they didn’t deliver them. Some of your customers ordered and took goods from you, but they didn’t pay. Some well-paid professional agents – accountants, lawyers, bankers – are being paid millions of pounds advising these suppliers and customers on the best ways of ensuring you got the money you are owed.

As a result, your business is struggling to remain solvent, your income drops way below what it should be, and you experience your own form of austerity, which hits you and your family hard.

Now, would you:

• just forget about the money you are owed, and/or
• reduce the number of staff in your business who are meant to be chasing outstanding payments from suppliers and customers, and/or
• Tell your wealthiest customers - who are enjoying a wonderful life of luxury houses, cars and cruises… because they haven’t paid you what they owe – that you will send the bailiffs round, but you’ll pay all the legal, bailiffs’ and other costs involved in securing recovery of your money?

My guess is that you wouldn’t do any of those things.

Like me, you would pursue what you are owed, because your business and your family’s solvency depends on it. You would increase the resources committed to recovering your dues. And you would tell those who are having a laugh at your expense that you will also ensure that they pay the bills for recovering your money.

So, you have to ask yourself, why is this Conservative government

• doing all those things when it faced with multi-national companies manipulating their accounting practices to ensure they don’t pay tax on their trading in the UK, but switch the profits to low-tax havens where they do no trading?, and
• actually cutting the number of staff whose job it is to recover unpaid tax from crooks and scammers?, and
• pursuing hugely expensive legal action against wealthy individuals, companies and professional advisers to recover tax unpaid and avoided in completely artificial economic constructs (not for any legitimate or logical business reason) simply designed to secure tax avoidance and evasion?

Is it simply because they prefer that ordinary hard-working people should face the burden of austerity rather than ensuring that the already fabulously wealthy should pay their dues?

I know what I would do, and I think I know what you would do.

Un-adopted

Every so often, a story appears in a newspaper about a road which doesn’t appear to be being maintained at all. In fact, it’s far worse than any normal potholed road which is found up and down the country.

[Incidentally, as the government has made big cuts to councils to undertake road maintenance, the backlog of repairs has risen to £9.3bn, with more than 24,000 miles of streets in England in need of urgent maintenance in the next year alone.]

Similarly, most Members of Parliament have received delegations of residents, or users, of one of these un-maintained roads asking for support to get the council/the government/anyone to take responsibility and pay for the road to be fixed.

What we are talking about is an ‘Un-adopted road’, that is a highway that is NOT maintainable at public expense. There are an estimated 40,000 of these roads in England and Wales, totalling more than 4000 miles. In 2009, it was estimated that it would cost more than £3bn to bring them up to standard.

Well, how does that come about? As with all such things, there is a fascinating historical background, which is neatly summarised in a recent publication¹ from the House of Commons’ Library.

It includes the fact that in the mid-16th century, the King wasn’t spending enough money to maintain the King’s Highway (sound familiar?) so he gave the responsibility to the parishes (a forerunner to modern councils). Parishes paid for the repairs by requiring residents to work without pay and by levying property taxes. This free labour was limited to a maximum of six days per year by a 1555 law.

The Highways Act 1835 provided that new roads were not to be the subject of the inhabitants' duty to repair highways unless a formal procedure for adoption was followed. This was eventually extended to public paths. This created a class of highway which no one was liable to repair.

As a result of the Highways Act 1959, as regards liability to repair, highways were divided into three main classes:

(1) highways repairable at the public expense;

(2) highways repairable by private individuals or corporate bodies; and

(3) highways which no one is liable to repair.

It also replaced the concept of highways repairable by the inhabitants at large of an area by that of highways maintainable at the public expense.

Then, in 1980, with the passage of a new consolidating Highways Act, the ownership of highways maintainable at the public expense rests with the local unitary or county council or, if a trunk road, with the Department for Transport.

Most roads are thus subject to a public right of way, are publicly owned and publicly maintained. They are "highways maintainable at public expense". Roads that are not maintainable at public expense are referred to as private or ‘Unadopted’ roads. These can still be subject to a public right of way, but the public generally do not contribute to their upkeep.

Responsibility for the cost of maintaining a private road rests with the frontagers (the owners of properties which front onto such roads).

If unadopted roads are brought up to the right standards, they can be adopted and then maintained at public expense. Similarly, if, because of the poor state of an un-adopted road, it becomes dangerous, the council can require frontagers to undertake necessary repairs. If they fail to act, the council can do the repairs itself and recover the costs from the frontagers.

There are two main types of private or un-adopted road: those on new developments such as housing estates and those which, usually by historic accident, have existed for a long time, often since the nineteenth century. Confusingly, mainly between 1920 and 1960, some roads were built in council estates, but were never adopted, and are maintained by the housing revenue accounts of councils (ie by tenant rents) and not by the council as the highways authority.

Some residents of un-adopted roads think it is unfair that they have to pay for the maintenance of their road, when everyone is allowed to use it as a highway. I think it’s a case of swings and roundabouts. The price of houses in un-adopted roads are typically lower than similar houses on maintained roads, reflecting their legal status. Is it reasonable to pay less, but get the same? Probably not.

And, of course, it’s not just the highway and pavement maintenance that can become an issue. While there is a power, there is no duty on a council to provide street lighting. And, even though highways’ criminal offences might be committed on un-adopted roads, all sorts of different legal issues arise when it comes to bad parking, obstruction or trespass.

The biggest problem comes when some home-owners and frontagers want to spend money to get the highway up to an adoptable standard but others don’t. In those circumstances, neighbour disputes can run for years, without any possibility of finding a cheap or happy solution.

So, if you are contemplating purchasing or renting a home in an un-adopted road, you might want to take especial care in considering the potential liabilities or issues that might arise.

¹ http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN00402