Claims of Tory offers to Brexit Party ‘are nonsense’
Senior medics point to priority for Government
BORIS JOHNSON has dismissed as “nonsense” claims that the Conservatives offered peerages to senior Brexit Party figures in a bid to get them to stand aside in the General Election.
Nigel Farage has claimed he had repeatedly been offered a seat in the House of Lords in an attempt to persuade him to “go quietly”.
He said that, when that failed, people working “deep inside Number 10” had tried to bypass him, going directly to senior Brexit Party figures and suggesting eight of them could be made peers if they could persuade him to withdraw more of his candidates.
Asked during a BBC phone-in about the claims, the Prime Minister acknowledged that there may have been “conversations” between senior Tories and people in the Brexit Party.
However, he flatly denied there had been any offers of peerages, saying that was “just not the way we operate”.
“What is this nonsense?” he said. “I am sure that there are conversations that take place between politicians of all parties.”
TWO LEADING Yorkshire medics say replacing and improving the region’s ageing Victorian healthcare facilities should be a priority for whoever forms the next government.
Hospital buildings in Yorkshire are described as being “past their sell-by date” and it is feared poor infrastructure is having a knock-on effect on the morale of health workers. The future of the NHS has taken centre stage in the General Election campaign this week, with the Conservatives and Labour pledging much-needed funding boosts for the health service.
And it emerged on Thursday that the NHS is experiencing its worst ever performance in A&E and heading for one of its “bleakest” ever winters, with thousands of people facing rising waits for operations and cancer treatment.
The Yorkshire Post spoke to Dr Richard Vautrey, a Leeds GP and chairman of the British Medical Association’s GP Committee, and Dr Nick Scriven, a consultant in acute medicine in Calderdale and president of The Society for Acute Medicine, about what the next government should be prioritising.
Dr Vautrey said NHS workers in Yorkshire do not have confidence in the institutions and facilities they are working in, due to the poor state of old premises, and the Government needs to fund long-term investment in infrastructure to change this.
“The practice premises are often inadequate. Many hospital buildings are very much past their sell-by date and are not in a good state to offer good care”, he added.
Dr Vautrey said this issue has impacted every aspect of the health service, including the level of care. While Leeds in particular has been promised investment, Dr Vautrey said this was not good enough for the region.
Earlier this year, the Conservative government promised to build 40 new hospitals, though it later emerged that funding was only allocated for six to receive building work by 2025.
Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust was among the trusts to benefit, with two new hospitals, one for adults and the other for children, to be built at Leeds General Infirmary. Up to 38 other hospitals will receive money to develop plans for upgrades but not to undertake any building work.
Dr Scriven echoed the need for improved NHS infrastructure in Yorkshire, adding that a large number of Yorkshire’s hospitals are very old and without the necessary technology to function effectively.
He said: “This definitely has a knock-on effect on staff morale and can cause delays in care. If you don’t have enough diagnostic scanners, patients can be waiting unnecessarily for a very important scan”.
He highlighted areas such as Huddersfield and Goole as premises that need urgent improvement.
Dr Scriven said the next government needs to get all hospitals and practices, such as these, up to an acceptable standard rather than focusing on a top 20, the way previous governments have done, that he said make good headlines but leaves hospital infrastructure ‘still pretty poor’.
Dr Vautrey highlighted that a number of medical practices in Leeds and West Yorkshire are still operating out of Victorian buildings.
He said these buildings often have problems with disabled access, installing technology and are not “conducive to modern medical practice”.
He added: “If you look at a lot of hospital estates across the region it is easy to find facilities that need replacing. That involves investment in infrastructure.”