- Food prices set to rise: news will be hammer blow for millions already choosing between heating and eating
- NHS stats: winter “one of the most brutal on record” as Lib Dems call on Streeting to bring forward emergency plan to protect patients
- ‘Bed blocking’ has already cost NHS £165 million this winter as Davey calls on govt to finish social care review this year
- Market turmoil: Chancellor should cancel China trip for emergency growth statement
- Oxford Farming Conference: Reed’s “regret” not good enough – Starmer must reverse family farm tax
- More than 440,000 police officer and staff days lost to mental health since 2019
Food prices set to rise: news will be hammer blow for millions already choosing between heating and eating
Responding to the British Retail Consortium saying that food prices will rise by 4.2% in the latter half of this year as “retailers battle the £7 billion of increased costs in 2025 from the Budget”, Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesperson Daisy Cooper MP said:
This news will come as a hammer blow to families across the country. Millions of people are already having to choose between heating and eating and the prospect of even more pressure on stretched budgets will be incredibly worrying.
The new government is faced with the enormous challenge of cleaning up the Conservative Party’s economic vandalism, but their approach so far risks repeating more mistakes.
It’s now clear as day that the Chancellor’s misguided national insurance hike is only going to hammer household budgets further by forcing up prices. Ministers must recognise their error and scrap this tax hike immediately.
NHS stats: winter “one of the most brutal on record” as Lib Dems call on Streeting to bring forward emergency plan to protect patients
Responding to NHS England saying that this is the busiest year on record for emergency services, Liberal Democrat Health and Social Care spokesperson Helen Morgan MP said:
This winter threatens to be one of the most brutal on record. Patients are suffering through deadly delays and staff are already at breaking point.
There can be no overstating just dangerous this situation is after years of the previous Conservative government’s shameful neglect of our NHS.
It is of paramount importance that the new government grips this crisis urgently. That must start with the Health Secretary producing an emergency plan in the coming days to protect patients from this ongoing disaster.
‘Bed blocking’ has already cost NHS £165 million this winter as Davey calls on govt to finish social care review this year
- This winter has already seen 417,220 bed days taken up by patients that were well enough to be discharged – costing the NHS £165 million or £4.8 million a day
- 12,271 of England’s 103,277 hospital beds have been taken up by people who are fit to be discharged everyday this winter – the equivalent of just under one in eight
- Lib Dem Leader Ed Davey has called on the government to complete its social care review by the end of the year to take pressure off hospitals
This winter has already seen 417,220 bed days taken up by patients that were fit enough to be discharged, the equivalent of 1 in 8, costing the NHS £165 million in just over a month research by the Liberal Democrats has revealed.
The analysis by the Party found that the equivalent of 417,220 of hospital beds every day have been lost this winter due to being occupied by patients that were fit enough to be discharged. On average it means 12,271 beds per day are lost, close to one in eight of all beds in England.
The King’s Fund has previously said that the cost of a night to care for someone when they could be discharged is £395 meaning that the 417,220 bed days lost due to ‘bed blocking’ this winter has resulted in a £165 million hit to the NHS already this winter.
Ed Davey has called on the government to conclude their social care review by the end of the year. Currently, the government says it will report back in 2028. The Lib Dem Leader said there “was no time to waste” in rescuing social care and without saving the sector the problem of ‘bed blocking’ in hospitals would only get worse, leading to patients suffering unnecessarily.
It comes as the Liberal Democrat Leader is expected to visit Cambridgeshire on Friday where 4,451 bed days were lost due to bed blocking this winter at a cost of over £1.7 million.
Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey said:
These devastating delays mean that patients are facing deadly waits in A&E as no beds are available.
Millions of these wasted bed days would not happen if social care was in place to get these patients out of hospitals and back into the community.
The new government has no time to waste in rescuing social care after years of Conservative neglect but their lack of urgency has been bitterly disappointing.
The Prime Minister must grasp this now before it is too late and make sure that his social care review is completed by the end of the year. Thousands of patients on trolleys in hospital corridors cannot afford for the Government to kick the can down the road.
Market turmoil: Chancellor should cancel China trip for emergency growth statement
Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey has called on the Chancellor to cancel her trip to China and instead make an emergency fiscal statement to Parliament cancelling the national insurance hike planned for April, to boost economic growth and bring interest rates down.
Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey said:
Instead of jetting off to China, the Chancellor should urgently come before the House of Commons to cancel her counterproductive jobs tax and set out a real plan for growth.
The country is paying an ever-higher price for the total mess the Conservative Party made of our economy, and the Chancellor needs to realise that she’ll never dig us out of this hole without a far more ambitious plan to grow our economy, including rebuilding trade with Europe.
The Government’s misguided jobs tax is hurting businesses and hitting investment badly, meaning it will hold back growth while failing to raise the funding the Chancellor claims for the NHS.
The Chancellor should look instead at our plans to raise revenue without hitting jobs and growth, by raising taxes on the profits of the big banks, social media giants and online gambling firms – all of which are making eye-watering profits while ordinary families struggle.
Oxford Farming Conference: Reed’s “regret” not good enough – Starmer must reverse family farm tax
Commenting on Steve Reed’s remarks to the Oxford Farming Conference this morning, Tim Farron MP, Liberal Democrat Environment spokesperson, said:
When it comes to the family farm tax, it’s adding insult to injury that all Mr Reed had to give farmers this morning was his ‘regret’ for the introduction of the policy. It’s simply not good enough.
I know many in the hall today will have been bitterly disappointed. Farmers up and down the country were sold out by the Conservatives and have now been let down by the Labour government – they don’t need more empty words. They need action to address the dire financial predicaments they are staring down as this unfair new tax approaches.
The Government must do the decent thing and reverse the family farm tax.
More than 440,000 police officer and staff days lost to mental health since 2019
Scottish Liberal Democrat justice spokesperson Liam McArthur has today urged the SNP to do far more to support police officers and staff as he revealed that the number of working police officer and staff days lost to mental health absences has risen sharply in recent years.
A Scottish Liberal Democrat Freedom of Information request to Police Scotland found that:
- Since 2019, 304,424 police officer days and 136,206 police staff days have been lost due to mental health absences.
- Between 2021/22 and 2023/2024, there was a 22% increase in the number of working days lost to mental health among officers.
- Between 2021/22 and 2023/2024, there was a 16% increase in the number of working days lost to mental health among police staff.
- In 2024/25 so far (from 1st April to 30th September), there have been 38,669 days lost to mental health.
- As at the end of September 2024, police officer numbers have fallen by more than 1,000 compared to when Police Scotland was formed in 2013.
Mr McArthur said:
This is a sad reflection of the many police officers and staff who feel overwhelmed and stretched dangerously thin.
Ever since the SNP’s centralisation of Scotland’s police service, officer numbers have been on a downward trend. Those numbers are now at some of their lowest levels ever. If ministers continue deprioritizing provision for things like mental health, we could see many more officers and staff heading for the door.
Keeping communities safe starts by supporting those at the heart of Scottish policing.
That’s why Scottish Liberal Democrats want to see regular staff surveys and a mental health first aider installed in every police workplace. We also need to see concerted action to root out discriminatory practices, making sure every officer and every member of staff feels respected and valued.
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15 Comments
Might it be that the consistent, and now obviously harmful, mismanagement of the country by the previous government and the present one have the same root cause, which is unquestioning obedience to, Neoliberalism?
Might the L. D. party come to the rescue by offering “Mixed Economy Now Dynamism” (M E N D) and “Transparent and Consistent Taxation ” (T A C T)?
Revised definition: Market turmoil = markets “continue to function in an orderly way”.
I think I even the Lettuce and co acknowledged the ride out of the mess created by Boris et al was going to be rough…
@Steve: With respect, I think you might find your understanding of our economic problems will improve if you stop simplistically always trying to blame everything on ‘neoliberalism’
There are many causes behind our economic difficulties, and the mess the Tories have left us in is certainly a big part of it. But one other thing does stand out for me: Rachel Reeves has made the same mistake that people on the left (and sometimes on the right) almost invariably make: They assume that scapegoating and taxing businesses more is a cost-free way to get more money. It isn’t – because most businesses are not the evil exploitative monsters that the left likes to make them out to be: A tiny minority may be, but most businesses are simply groups of people trying to earn a living – for small businesses, often a lot more precariously than for employees. If you tax them more, impose more regulations on them, and force them to pay employees more, then you put up their costs, which they are then forced to pass on to the rest of us because otherwise they’d go out of business. So actually no-one is better off, and the inefficiencies and inflexibility resulting from any increased regulation often makes us all worse off. That seems to be exactly what is happening (again). Labour have been exactly right to target growth, but they are going about it almost entirely the wrong way.
@Simon R. I agree. The budget was also divisive. Increasing the employed/self employed wedge (thus increasing tax evasion). Rural/urban (tractor tax). Private sector/public sector (pensions IHT and pay awards). Landlords/renters. The government has a huge majority but little support.
Cancelling the China trip is a daft idea.
Sends all the wrong signals in a very twitchy world.
I agree with Steve that the UK needs to become more of a mixed economy again. The privatisation of what should be social monopolies has not helped.. The cost of energy is absurd, water companies are hopeless and train travel is just too expensive for someone like me to use it. If people do not have disposable income you can forget demand led growth, and the failed globalisation which was supposed to have given us cheaper produce but lots of stuff like shoes are of very shoddy quality, is also not producing economic growth because the cost of living crisis has engulfed any initial benefit. Unless the government does something to subsidise energy prices lots of businesses are going to go bust soon.
“the inefficiencies and inflexibility resulting from any increased regulation often makes us all worse off”
And they often make us all better off, if they are sensible and properly enforced. Food and water safety, fire resistant cladding….
Might the unaccountable, regular citizen and their children harming, policies of the Bank of England contribute significantly to our econo-social problems?
Might the fact that it is run by a Crown appointed “Court of Directors [I kid you not!] who, with the possible exception of Frances O’Grady, seem to have no experience of regular person living, contribute to our problems too?
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/01/10/the-bank-of-england-is-crashing-the-uk-economy/
@ SimonR,
I can appreciate that Lib Dems, especially those in the party who consider themselves to be liberals, won’t be happy with the term ‘Neoliberal’.
However if we look up the meaning of the word we can see that: Neoliberalism is a set of economic liberalization policies, including privatisation, deregulation, globalisation, free trade, monetarism, austerity, and reductions in government spending. These policies are designed to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society.
In other words, the term ‘neoliberalism’ describes the early 21st century economies of the western world.
Steve is perhaps guilty of stating the obvious but nothing more. The root cause of our problems is the system itself and which is justified by the ‘neoliberal’ economic ideology we have developed over the last 45 years or so.
@Jenny: Well really it’s both. Regulations usually have some benefit – whatever the purpose of each regulation is is generally a benefit; but there is invariably also a cost. To take your example of food safety regulations, the benefit is obvious: Safer food. The cost of the regulations is food is more expensive, lots of food gets thrown away (almost certainly including lots of food that is actually safe but just doesn’t meet the letter of the regulations), and there are greater barriers of entry to entering the food industry, which will reduce competition. In the case of food, I imagine almost everyone would feel the benefits of safe food are so great as to be worth those costs, but that’s not the case for every regulation.
The wider problem is that we tend to see only the benefits of regulation and never think about the costs or whether the benefits are actually worth the costs: That leads to the constant pressure for ever more regulations. And the obvious example relevant to this discussion is that the Labour Government are introducing a lot of new employment regulations because they are thinking only about the benefits, not the costs which (completely predictably) will include harming economic growth and causing inflation via the added expenses businesses will suffer – as we are starting to see.
@Peter Martin: I probably see ‘neoliberalism’ as a bit more vague in meaning, although roughly corresponding to the things you say. But your claim that the move to greater economic liberalism of the last 30-40 year is the reason for our economic problems is really a huge assertion that has very little evidence, and I would say is largely false. Most established academic understanding of economics, as well as the history of large numbers of countries ever since the industrial revolution strongly indicate that economic liberalism generally leads to higher growth and to long term increases in living standards. That growth has been so low in he UK and other European countries since around 2008 is a historical aberration which needs much more careful analysis than simply declaring it’s all because of ‘neoliberalism’
“……….strongly indicate that economic liberalism generally leads to higher growth and to long term increases in living standards.”
But how are the increases in living standards distributed among the population as a whole?
Economic liberalisation may well be the reason for the UK’s relative decline over the past eighty years or so but it’s not our economic liberalisation. The countries that have strongly out-performed us have largely been those which have grasped the opportunities created by the end of colonial rule. In many cases this came after a long period of failed command economics.
Globally, there has been considerable growth and a reduction in inequality but the winners have largely been the new middle classes in countries like China and India and the big losers have been the poor of the former colonial powers.
“we tend to see only the benefits of regulation and never think about the costs ”
It’s usually worth interrogating exactly what is meant by “we” in such a statement.
If “we” means right wing think tanks, tories etc, probably “we” see only the cost of regulation and never think about the costs. Bonfires of red tape are always exciting for “us”
” growth has been so low in he UK and other European countries since around 2008 is a historical aberration which needs much more careful analysis ”
Since the 1700s or thereabouts it has been possible to increase our energy consumption at low cost in energy needed to access the coal, then oil and gas. Since around 2008 peak conventional oil has meant that the energy cost of accessing energy has increased to a point where it constricts economic growth. No energy, no economy. So we might need to think about how to improve well being in an economy that is gradually contracting. Would we all be better off drinking water rather than sugary fizzy drinks? Are 3 tonne SUVs really so desirable?