PM’S NEW DEAL ‘NO DEAL FOR WALES’
Boris Johnson’s apparent spending spree to help the economy cope with the “aftershock” of the coronavirus crisis will not lead to a “single penny” of new investment for Wales, said Health Minster Vaughan Gething.
Mr Gething said the Prime Minister’s “New Deal” was nothing more than recycling money found by “looking down the back of departmental sofas”.
Following Mr Johnson’s speechyesterday, Mr Gething told the Welsh Government’s daily press briefing in Cardiff: “It’s a classic challenge of unpicking the rhetoric from the reality.
“I know he’s been presenting it as a ‘New Deal,’ (but) it’s not so much new deal as no deal.
“If you look at what’s actually happening from his announcement today, we don’t understand there was a single penny of new investment for Wales.
“It’s recycling money already announced, and it’s simply looking down the back of departmental sofas to repackage that money. That isn’t a new deal.
“I think at a time when all of us in ministerial office have had to think about how we behave and how we conduct ourselves this time around unprecedented international crisis, the trust in what we say really matters.
“There is no new money being put into England, let alone new money into Wales.”
He added: “We would welcome additional capital spending that is genuinely additional, but that is not what today’s speech by the Prime Minister represents.”
Earlier, Mr Johnson promised his response to the pandemic would not be a return to the austerity that followed the financial crisis, but instead a stimulus package inspired by US president Franklin D Roosevelt, who led America out of the Great Depression with his New Deal in the 1930s.
Mr Johnson returned to the theme of his general election campaign, promising to “level up” parts of the country that had been left behind while London and the South East prospered.
In a speech in Dudley – a seat the Tories took from Labour – the PM promised to tackle the “unresolved challenges” of the last three decades, highlighting problems in building, social care and the economy.
He acknowledged that jobs which existed in January “are not coming back” after the coronavirus crisis, and the furlough scheme which has seen the state pay people’s wages cannot continue forever.
Promising to “build, build, build” his way out of the crisis, Mr Johnson said he would slash “newt-counting” red tape in the planning system to speed up delivery of infrastructure projects and homes.
Opposition MPs accused him of not offering any new ideas and trying to “hoodwink” voters with rehashed manifesto promises, while critics pointed out that the sums promised by the Prime Minister were dwarfed by the funds Mr Roosevelt had spent.
Mr Johnson said the Government intends to spend £5bn “to accelerate infrastructure projects”.
The announcements included:
■ £1.5bn to be allocated this year to hospital maintenance;
■ more than £1bn for a 10-year school rebuilding programme;
■ £100m to be spent on road projects; and
■ £900m for “shovel-ready” local growth projects in England during 2020/21.
The Prime Minister acknowledged “it may seem a bit premature to make
a speech now about Britain after Covid” given events in Leicester, where a local lockdown has been imposed.
But “we cannot continue simply to be prisoners of this crisis” and the country “needs to be ready for what may be coming”.
“We’re waiting as if between the flash of lightning and the thunderclap with our hearts in our mouths for the full economic reverberations to appear,” he said.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak will set out a plan to support the economy through the first phase of the recovery next week, Mr Johnson said.
Welsh Secretary Simon Hart said: “Today’s speech has set out the strategy that our government is following to fuel economic recovery right across the UK.
“The review into the improvement of road, rail, air and sea links between our four nations is a vital step forward in bolstering the connectivity of the UK and its internal market. As we begin our economic recovery, it is more important than ever that all four nations work together. This review will strengthen the union and help us to emerge from this pandemic stronger than ever.
“The Prime Minister was clear – we are committed to prioritising infrastructure projects that will boost the economy and create jobs across the UK. I look forward to working with the Welsh Government to identify projects in Wales that will make a real difference to people’s lives.”
CBI director-general Dame Carolyn Fairbairn said a “jobs-first recovery” and infrastructure investment could help limit the economic damage.
But she added that “the reality is that longer-term plans will falter without continued help for firms still in desperate difficulty”.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said: “The Prime Minister promised a New Deal, but there is not much that’s new, and it’s not much of a deal.
“We are facing an economic crisis – the biggest we have seen in a generation – and the recovery needs to match that.
“What’s been announced amounts to less than £100 per person, and it’s the re-announcement of many manifesto pledges and commitments.”
THE map of councils with the most coronavirus cases in the UK has made worrying reading for Wales since the very start of the pandemic in March.
Yesterday, eight of the 10 councils with the most positive test results when adjusted for population are in Wales – Merthyr Tydfil, Denbighshire, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Cardiff, Wrexham, Conwy, the Vale of Glamorgan and Newport.
The other two are Midlothian and Dundee in Scotland.
Throughout the outbreak it has never made sense because, as terrible a loss of life as they have seen, none of those councils have had the most deaths of people with Covid-19 in the UK as shown in the ONS weekly stats.
In recent days, it has not made sense that local authorities in Wales appear to have had the biggest rise in coronavirus cases, while England has been locking down Leicester again.
Yet an investigation by the Financial Times has revealed this is largely because England has been publishing the wrong data.
Its report has shown that the figures being published for the English council area “contain only a fraction of the real total in those areas”.
England is only including the results of one type of test in the data it is publishing for local authorities – the number of positive tests recorded in hospitals.
In its rolling total for each local authority, Wales includes both the results of these tests – called pillar one – results, but also the results of tests done in commercial labs and at home – so-called pillar two.
In the past two months, the vast majority of the tests done in England have been in pillar two – yet they haven’t been counted in the local data.
They are counted in the UK and English data, but not the council area figures.
For instance, the FT reported that Leicester’s published data shows it recorded just 80 new positive tests between June 13-26.
But it really has had 944 cases over the same period – as was revealed when England’s Health Secretary Matt Hancock closed non-essential shops and ordering schools to shut to all non-key worker pupils.
There is also another reason why the high number of positive tests in north Wales in recent weeks is not as concerning as it looks.
Graham Brown, a consultant in communicable disease control and the chair of the outbreak control team for the Anglesey outbreak, told the Western Mail that the high number of positive tests showed officials were effectively spotting infections early – while other indications from hospitals showed the spread of Covid-19 had not reached the levels seen at the start of the outbreak.
“There are figures for people who go into hospital with compatible symptoms so we know about those cases. There is also admissions for ITU and critical care – that is another factor we look at. that gives us some knowledge,” he said.
But does the data back this up? In short, yes it does.
The amount of deaths from the disease, a key indicator of a serious and sustained outbreak, are not singificantly higher in north Wales.
The spike in cases in recent weeks in north Wales has not been followed by a spike in deaths.
Another reason why looking at confirmed case figures is a blunt instrument is because it both fails to take into account the amount of tests carried out and the size of the population.
In fact, the distribution of cases between north and south Wales is fairly even – with the virus focused in areas with the most dense population.
Disease expert Mr Brown said the surge in cases in north Wales over the past month is mainly down to a shifting in testing focus to that part of the country.
He said: “It is predominantly because we have tested in a pretty targeted way around two significant outbreaks in the area. When you go looking for Covid-19 you find Covid-19.
“There are a couple of large mass testing sites and at the moment things are pretty stable.
“There is nothing out there that is indicating we are seeing a massive surge of infections in the wider community. In terms of hospital admissions and some of the bio surveillance indicators, they are not showing that there is a massive surge in community transmission in the area at the moment, but obviously we keep that on the constant review and it is updated on a daily basis.
“It is an iceberg. What we can see are the people with very severe disease and need critical care.
“Underneath them you have the people who require hospital admission. Below then you have got people in the wider community who have symptoms and present to their GP or ring NHS Direct.
“Below them you’ve got the people who don’t seek medical attention to find information online and then beneath them you have the individuals who have had it but don’t have symptoms.”
However, there are also some parts of the north Wales’ demographics that mean there are more likely to see severe cases.
“The demographics of the area will contribute to how the cases present and how many we are likely to see,” said Mr Brown. “Certainly with old age groups and the care homes, we have a large number of those in north Wales so will expect to see particularly more severe cases, which is also why we look at the hospital data and hospital admissions.
“Rurality has a part to play as well. In rural areas you are, by default socially distanced, from individuals because of geography that introduces natural barriers between transmission.
“Obviously in urban areas where you have more people you will likely have more cases in places like Wrexham, for example, because you have a larger centre of population you are going to see more cases compared to some of the more rural areas.”
Mr Brown added: “I don’t think there is anything particularly alarming coming out of north Wales which says ‘hang on a minute there is something going on here’.”