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News INSIDE TODAY
Opinion
News
Sneer today, and gone tomorrow for our oafish MPs
Why today is the day to grab that Christmas party little black dress
Weekend
Sport
Hugo Rifkind, page 18
Harriet Walker, page 15
The maverick who’s bringing the art of protest to the White House
Sathnam Sanghera meets Glenn Ligon, pages 40, 41
Rise of the short ball in cricket has reflected manners and habits of the age John Woodcock, pages 82, 83
Opinion 17 Weather 17 Cartoon 19 Leading articles 20 Letters 21 World 32 Weekend 37-60 Business 63-69 Markets 70, 71 Register 72 Sport 76 Crosswords 60, 96 Please note, some sections of The Times are available only in the United Kingdom and Ireland
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Bed-blocking hits record level as social care budget is slashed Chris Smyth Health Correspondent
Bed-blocking has reached record levels in the NHS, with an all-time high in the number of days spent in hospital by patients well enough to go home. Almost half of the delays were due to problems getting into nursing homes or waiting for support at patients’ homes, prompting claims that cuts to the social-care budget were piling pressure on the NHS. However, ministers insisted that even though hospitals are much busier, on average patients now leave hospital earlier than they did two years ago. A record number of patients also needed emergency admission to hospital last week, with A&E units still missing waiting times targets even before cold winter weather brings extra pressure during the winter. In October, 143,118 bed days were lost because of delays in discharging patients, 57,000 of them the result of waits for care home places, support at home or equipment to help daily living. The problems affected almost 5,000 patients, 20 per cent more than this time last year.
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Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, said: “It is truly sad that record numbers of older people are trapped in hospital when they are well enough to be at home. This sorry state of affairs is a direct result of David Cameron’s decision to take home-care away from hundreds of thousands of older people. It is a false economy that is piling pressure on hospitals and is a root cause of the A&E crisis.” Last week the Royal Bournemouth hospital was criticised after threatening to evict patients who did not leave within seven days. The hospital said that some families were leaving frail relatives in hospital while they went on holiday, and the latest figures show that 15 per cent of the delays, 21,000 days, were due to “patient or family choice”. A patient pressure group said that the Royal Bournemouth was not an isolated example, citing a man who could not go home because his house had been broken into by squatters but was nonetheless forced out of hospital. Anna Bradley, chairwoman of Healthwatch England, said that it was “nonsense” to blame patients. “This is a problem that the system
needs to work out itself, and the idea of fining patients is disgraceful. From the moment we are admitted, the doctors, nurses and care services all need to start planning for how and when we are going to leave hospital, to ensure the transfer is safe and that the right care package is in place,” she added. Sarah Pinto-Duschinsky of NHS England said: “The rise in A&E attendance and emergency admissions continued this week, with 109,300 emergency admissions to hospital; the highest number since weekly records began. Unsurprisingly, this is also leading to more pressure on community services as these extra hospital patients become well enough to go home. “The NHS is pulling out all the stops, with local hospitals, ambulances, GPs, home-health services and local councils all working hard to open extra beds and seven-day services.” 6 Deaths from cold weather reached a record low last winter. The milder weather saw 18,000 “excess winter deaths”, 40 per cent fewer than the winter before and the lowest figure since records began in 1950, the Office for National Statistics said.
We must fight fear of ebola, says Welby Oliver Moody
The threat of ebola has been magnified by fear, the Archbishop of Canterbury said as he urged the international community to concentrate on the science of the virus instead. In a video message, the Most Reverend Justin Welby said that the epidemic attacked “those things that make us most human”. He told a World Council of Churches meeting convened in Geneva to discuss the disease: “In the ebola crisis we’re facing something that is extraordinarily unusual in the modern world, which has swept through people we know,
value, care for, have a sense of responsibility, have partnered with very often. “This is a hidden thing. It just seems to come from nowhere, from anywhere, anyone. You’re infected by the people you love most, and grieve for most — they are most dangerous to you when they’ve died. This is a challenge to the very heart of what it is to be human.” The archbishop said that fear of ebola had been one of the greatest difficulties faced by those fighting to stem the spread of the virus in West Africa. He also spoke of the intense pressure on the continent’s churches as they struggled to deal with the crisis.
Osborne ready to scrap flight tax for children Matt Dathan
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George Osborne is to make family holidays cheaper in his autumn statement next week, according to the Conservative MP who has been campaigning to cut tax on flights. Andrew Bridgen, MP for North West Leicestershire, said he was confident that his campaign to scrap air passenger duty for children under the age of 12 would appear in the chancellor’s statement next Wednesday. The levy adds £52 to the cost of a holiday to Spain for a family of four, or £276 for long-haul trips. Campaigners claim abolishing the tax would help families who face a huge spike in the cost of flying during school holidays, while costing the Treasury just £50 million. Mr Bridgen proposed the idea at a Conservative party away day last month, when MPs were asked to put forward suggestions for the autumn statement. It was backed by David Cameron, who is understood to have responded: “I really like this one — I have three children under ten myself.” MPs reacted angrily earlier this week to proposals to hand control over the tax to the Scottish parliament as part of the wide-ranging Smith Commission. The SNP wants to abolish it altogether,
a move that would heavily disadvantage airports in the north of England. Writing on PoliticsHome this week, Mr Bridgen said it was unfair to charge children the same amount of tax as adults, saying it was “a well-established principle that children are exempt from taxation, for example VAT on food and clothing”. “Scrapping APD on family flights would give hardworking families the break they deserve,” he said. “APD is a tax on the passenger, not on the aviation industry, so the benefit of scrapping the tax will be directly felt by families.” The “Scrap the Tax on Family Flights” campaign has cross-party support in the Commons and is backed by more than 30 travel companies, including Virgin Atlantic. Earlier this week its owner, Sir Richard Branson, condemned the levy for making the UK “less competitive, discouraging investment and growth”. APD has risen sharply since its introduction 20 years ago, when it was £5 for short-haul flights and £10 for long-haul. It now generates more revenue for the Treasury than inheritance tax. The Treasury refused to comment on whether measures to cut APD would be included in the autumn statement. How to bag bargain flights, page 31
“I think because I’m someone who comes from a religious, a faith background, I’m not a medic, I don’t have the skills to understand this — I want to talk about one word in the international response, and that word is fear,” he said. “Fear shuts borders to volunteers trying to go back to their own country. Fear quarantines them for 21 days when they’ve not been somewhere, in a place that gives any reason to be quarantined. We must go by the science, not the fear. This is not a political, it is a scientific problem.” Key ebola targets missed, page 62
MPs challenge Met on 1,700 phone records Richard Ford Home Correspondent
MPs are demanding to know how many of more than 1,700 mobile phone records of people working for News UK sent mistakenly to Scotland Yard were investigated by police officers. Keith Vaz, the chairman of the Commons home affairs select committee, wrote to Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan police commissioner, and Jeroen Hoencamp, the chief executive of Vodafone UK, demanding answers from both men about the data breach which affects staff on The Times, The Sunday Times and The Sun. He asks how may times the Metropolitan police has asked companies to provide phone records of individuals, how many details were provided and whether other phone records have been handed mistakenly to police. Mr Vaz said last night: “My worry is that they just happened to find they had a whole lot of material and did not hand it back. It is very unusual that they did not send it back immediately. . .” He will question Helen Ball, the deputy assistant commissioner, when she appears before the home affairs select committee on Wednesday.