‘Everything possible’ is being done by ministers to increase hospital bed capacity amid growing NHS pressures, No 10 says
The government is doing “everything possible” to increase the number of hospital beds available, Downing Street has said, as winter pressures continue to bite.
Concerns are mounting about the current state of public healthcare, with well over a dozen NHS trusts and ambulance services having declared critical incidents over the festive period.
While the British Medical Association (BMA) has accused the government’s “political choices” of leading to patients “dying unnecessarily”.
Transport secretary tells striking workers to get off the picket line – politics latest
Issuing a stark warning, Professor Phil Banfield, chairman of the BMA council, said in a statement: “The current situation in the NHS is intolerable and unsustainable, both for our patients and the hard-working staff desperately trying to keep up with incredibly high levels of demand.
“The BMA has repeatedly invited the government to sit down and talk about the pressures on our health service, but their silence is deafening.
“It is disingenuous for the prime minister to talk about ‘backing the NHS’ in his New Year message, when his own health secretary is failing to discuss how this crisis can be fixed.”
Professor Banfield also called on the government to “step up and take immediate action” to solve the crisis.
“The government should deliver on its obligations to the public. It is just not true that the cost of resolving this mess cannot be afforded by this country,” he said.
“This is a political choice and patients are dying unnecessarily because of that choice.”
But the PM’s official spokesman said on Tuesday that ministers had been “up front” with the public about the pressures the NHS would face this winter, partly due to the backlog created by the pandemic.
He also acknowledged that the current pressure on the health service was an “unprecedented challenge”.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
NHS winter pressure explained
The spokesman told reporters: “I think we have been up front with the public long in advance of this winter that because of the pandemic and the pressures it’s placed in the backlog of cases that this would be an extremely challenging winter, and that is what we are seeing.”
He continued: “The NHS is already maximising its number of beds, so the equivalent of 7,000 additional beds, plus funding for discharges and increasing virtual wards. That’s all to free up capacity.
“Again, that’s all thanks to the extra funding, the billions of extra pounds we’ve put in.
“We are doing everything possible to increase the number of beds.”
Opposition parties have criticised the government for inaction over recent days, with the Liberal Democrats calling for parliament to be recalled to discuss the situation.
Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting accused the Conservatives of “mismanagement” of the NHS.
Speaking yesterday, Mr Streeting said it was “inexplicable” that neither Rishi Sunak nor any of his ministers had offered solutions to the pressures hospitals are facing.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Doctor describes ‘bleak’ NHS
Meanwhile, continuing to be probed on the NHS, Mr Sunak’s spokesperson said the PM’s own healthcare arrangements are not in the public interest.
Mr Sunak has previously refused to say if he has private healthcare.
The PM’s spokesperson added that it was “wholly wrong” to suggest that Mr Sunak was not aware of the challenges facing the health service.
A nine-year-old girl found dead in Weston-super-Mare has been named on the day police revealed a teenager had been charged with her murder.
Emergency services were called to Lime Close in the Somerset town at 6.09pm on Monday but Aria Thorpe was pronounced dead at the scene.
Police said a 15-year-old boy had been charged with her murder and that a preliminary post-mortem found she died from a single stab wound.
The teenage boy – who can’t be named due to his age – will appear at Bristol Magistrates’ Court later today.
A police cordon remains in place as forensics officers continue their work.
Flowers and tributes have been left at the scene. Pic: PA
Read more from Sky News:
NHS facing ‘worst-case scenario’ as doctors strike
Arrests over plot to steal ‘tonnes’ of charity clothes to fund crime
Superintendent Jen Appleford, from Avon and Somerset Police, said the community was in shock and Aria’s family were being supported by police.
“It is impossible to adequately describe how traumatic the past 36 hours have been for them and we’d like to reiterate in the strongest possible terms their request for privacy,” she said.
Supt Appleford said police were working with local schools and other agencies to make sure support is available.
Britain loves chocolate.
We’re estimated to consume 8.2kg each every year, a good chunk of it at Christmas, but the cost of that everyday luxury habit has been rising fast.
Whitakers have been making chocolate in Skipton in North Yorkshire for 135 years, but they have never experienced price pressures as extreme as those in the last five.
“We buy liquid chocolate and since 2023, the price of our chocolate has doubled,” explains William Whitaker, the real-life Willy Wonka and the fourth generation of the family to run the business.
William Whitaker, managing director of the company
“It could have been worse. If we hadn’t been contracted [with a supplier], it would have trebled.
“That represents a £5,000 per-tonne increase, and we use a thousand tonnes a year. And we only sell £12-£13m of product, so it’s a massive effect.”
Whitakers makes 10 million pieces of chocolate a week in a factory on the much-expanded site of the original bakery where the business began.
Automated production lines snake through the site moulding, cutting, cooling, coating and wrapping a relentless procession of fondants, cremes, crisps and pure chocolate products for customers, including own-brand retail, supermarkets, and the catering trade.
Steepest inflation in the business
All of them have faced price increases as Whitakers has grappled with some of the steepest inflation in the food business.
Cocoa prices have soared in the last two years, largely because of a succession of poor cocoa harvests in West Africa, where Ghana and the Ivory Coast produce around two-thirds of global supply.
A combination of drought and crop disease cut global output by around 14% last year, pushing consumer prices in the other direction, with chocolate inflation passing 17% in the UK in October.
Skimpflation and shrinkflation
Some major brands have responded by cutting the chocolate content of products – “skimpflation” – or charging more for less – “shrinkflation”.
Household-name brands including Penguin and Club have cut the cocoa and milk solid content so far they can no longer be classified as chocolate, and are marketed instead as “chocolate-flavour”.
Whitakers have stuck to their recipes and product sizes, choosing to pass price increases on to customers while adapting products to the new market conditions.
“Not only are major brands putting up prices over 20%, sometimes 40%, they’ve also reduced the size of their pieces and sometimes the ingredients,” says William Whitaker.
“We haven’t done any of that. We knew that long-term, the market will fall again, and that happier days will return.
“We’ve introduced new products where we’ve used chocolate as a coating rather than a solid chocolate because the centre, which is sugar-based, is cheaper than the chocolate.
“We’ve got a big product range of fondant creams, and others like gingers and Brazil nuts, where we’re using that chocolate as a coating.”
The costs are adding up
A deluge of price rises
Brazil nuts have enjoyed their own spike in price, more than doubling to £15,000 a tonne at one stage.
On top of commodity prices determined by markets beyond their control, Whitakers face the same inflationary pressures as other UK businesses.
“We’ve had the minimum wage increasing every year, we had the national insurance rise last year, and sort of hidden a little bit in this budget is a business rate increase.
“This is a small business, we turn over £12m, but our rates will go up nearly £100,000 next year before any other costs.
“If you add up all the cocoa and all the other cost increases in 2024 and 2025, it’s nearly £3m of cost increases we’ve had to bear. Some of that is returning to a little normality. It does test the relevance of what you do.”
-
Sports2 years agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports3 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Sports3 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment3 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment1 year agoHere are the best electric bikes you can buy at every price level in October 2024