4 2GM Friday May 27 2022 | the times
News
in previous announcements with large
targeted support for those hit hardest”.
Spending bonanza, pages 8-
Splurge will only buy Sunak six months,
James Forsyth, page 25
Mini-budget shows political weakness,
leading article, page 29normal times [but] they are also facing
challenging times,” Sunak said. “Is it
fair to leave them unsupported? The
answer must surely be ‘no’. ”
Torsten Bell, chief executive of the
Resolution Foundation, a think tank,
said that the package “fills the huge gapHarassment MP avoids recall petition
David BrownThe disgraced MP Claudia Webbe has
been urged to resign after her sentence
for harassing a love rival was reduced,
meaning that she will not now face an
automatic recall petition.
Webbe, 57, who sits as an independ-
ent after Labour withdrew the whip,
lost an appeal against her conviction for
a 19-month campaign of harassment
against Michelle Merritt. However, her
ten-week suspended sentence was
scrapped and judges reduced an unpaid
work order from 200 hours to 80 hours.
The MP had faced the possibility of a
recall petition, which could have led to
a by-election in her Leicester East
constituency. The reduced sentence im-
posed at Southwark crown court means
she will avoid that outcome, but Labour
has urged her to quit voluntarily.
A Labour spokesman said: “The alle-gations in this case were extremely
serious. Ms Webbe should now resign
so the people of Leicester East can get
the representation they deserve.”
The appeal hearing found Webbe
twice threatened to send naked photo-
graphs of her love rival to her family
and made a string of silent calls, but that
she did not threaten Merritt with acid
The MP said after the verdict: “I have
never threatened violence, nor would I.
I was deeply frustrated that my partner
and Michelle Merritt had been
socialising in the middle of the Covid
pandemic... I was frightened and
frustrated by his behaviour. But that fear
and frustration could not and should not
have been interpreted as harassment.
“[Merritt] wanted to get rid of me...
and far from being fearful or frightened
of me, was actively planning and
plotting my downfall and humiliation.”
Judge Deborah Taylor, sitting withtwo magistrates, said that Webbe had
been suffering stress because of her
political campaigning at the time,
which was “exacerbated by lockdown
and concern about the breaking of
lockdown regulations”.
The judge found Merritt lied when
she told the earlier trial that she was
“friends” with Webbe’s partner, Lester
Thomas, a scout for Chelsea Football
Club. Webbe said she was unaware they
were having sex until police informed
her in March of their text messages.
These showed Thomas bought Merritt
a £120 sex toy and sent her pornography
while the pair discussed meeting for sex.
Webbe was elected MP in December
2019, winning the seat formerly held by
Keith Vaz, also of Labour, who retired
after a sex scandal. Webbe has already
completed 150 hours’ unpaid work.
Merritt’s compensation was cut from
£1,000 to £50.Specialist doctors such as paediatri-
cians and respiratory consultants are to
be moved out of hospitals to work
alongside GPs in the heart of local com-
munities, after a major NHS review.
Instead of going to hospital for care,
patients will be looked after by “neigh-
bourhood teams” in their local area
where they can see specialist doctors as
well as general practitioners.
Dr Claire Fuller, of the Surrey Heart-
lands Integrated Care System, was
commissioned by the NHS to under-
take a “stocktake” of non-hospital care.
She warned that without action,
England’s GP system would “become
unsustainable in a relatively short
period of time”.
There were “real signs of genuine and
growing discontent with primary care
— both from the public who use it and
the professionals who work within it”,
she said. Urgent care services were “not
fit for purpose” and should be changed
to guarantee same-day care for
patients.
Government NHS reforms, how-
ever, offered “a real opportunity” for
change, she said. Her proposals wereConsultants will move out of
hospitals to work with GPs
Kat Lay Health Editor backed by all 42 leaders of the new Inte-
grated Care Systems that will take on
responsibility for care in local areas.
Fuller’s report comes as NHS figures
show the number of full-time GPs has
fallen by 1,622 since 2015.
April also saw a reduction in appoint-
ments delivered by GPs and their
teams, with 28,000 fewer daily appoint-
ments on average compared to March.
Fuller set out three key areas for
improvement — urgent care services
for infrequent health service users,
continuity of care for people with
long-term health problems, and
preventing people becoming sick.
She said that vulnerable patients
with complex needs could be supported
to stay at home and receive care in the
community by changing how and
where existing staff work. The changes
would signal a shift away from a “hospi-
tal-centric” model of care that no
longer suited most people, she said.
The review found that urgent care
services offered poor or disjointed
access to services that were difficult for
patients to navigate.
Fuller said: “Improving the experi-
ence of accessing primary care is essen-
tial to restoring the confidence of thepublic, who rightly expect us to be there
when they need us. Even more impor-
tant in my view, is the opportunity this
new vision for integrating primary care
presents in helping people to stay well
for longer.”
Amanda Pritchard, the chief execu-
tive of NHS England, said she looked
forward to implementing the recom-
mendations. Neighbourhood teams
should be operating in the most de-
prived areas from next April, she said.
“Secondary care consultants, includ-
ing for example, geriatricians, respira-
tory consultants, paediatricians and
psychiatrists, should be aligned to
neighbourhood teams... along with
members of community and mental
health teams,” she said.
Pritchard said there was also scope
for pharmacists to refer people directly
to mental health or other services.
The report was broadly welcomed by
health leaders, with some caveats. Dr
Rebecca Fisher, a senior policy fellow at
the Health Foundation, said: ‘Fuller
sets a welcome vision for integrated
primary care. But the reality is that core
general practice is in desperate need of
support that was never within Fuller’s
remit.”DAB RADIO l ONLINE l SMART SPEAKER l APPTo day’s highlights
8.35am
2pm6.30pm8pm10.30pmShadow chancellor Rachel Reeves
Ruth Davidson chats to veteran broadcaster
Melvyn Bragg, right, about his new biography
Natalie Ibu, artistic director and joint chief
executive of Northern Stage
Sir Michael Morpurgo talks about his
new book There Once is a Queen
Journalists Aletha Adu and
Martha Gill take a first look at
tomorrow’s newspaper front pagesShowers in Scotland and northern
England. Long spells of sunshine
elsewhere. Full forecast, page 58
42824815
19
19181411THE WEATHER
NEWS
HEALTH CHECK
Tiny robot crabs
could work inside
the human body
PA G E 1 4COMMENT 25
LETTERS 28
LEADING ARTICLES 29WORLD 30
BUSINESS 35
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A censorious culture provides a climate for
comedians such as Ricky Gervais to thrive
JOANNA WILLIAMS, PAGE 26SPORT 59
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thetimes timesandsundaytimes thetimesEY considers
global overhaul
EY, the Big Four
accountant, confirmed
that it was considering
separating its audit
business from its
higher-margin
consultancy division as
part of a global
restructuring. Page 35Visas offered
at record rate
More than a million
foreigners were offered
visas to live in the UK
over the last year, the
highest figure on
record and up a third
on pre-pandemic
levels, according to
official figures. Page 20
Anger at police
over shooting
Grief turned to anger
for relatives of the
children and teachers
killed in America’s
latest school shooting
as it emerged that the
gunman was inside for
an hour before being
shot. Page 33TIMES
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Celebrities were out
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PA G E 9SPORT
HIGH STANDARDS
A bootcamp in the
Alps led Liverpool
to European final
PAGES 66-again. It looks like we’re being dictated
to by Labour.” Another cabinet minister
expressed concerns that the interven-
tion could quickly be forgotten. “The
last intervention was worth £22 billion
and we barely got any credit for it.”
The spending package, which will be
funded by up to £16 billion of borrow-
ing, was described by the Institute for
Fiscal Studies as “strikingly redistribu-
tive”. Writing in The Times Paul John-
son, director of the institute, said that
“Gordon Brown... might have been
proud”. “Remarkably, many low earn-
ers on the national living wage who re-
ceive universal credit should end up
being better off this year than last. High
earners are still going to be hit by rising
taxes,” he said. He warned, though, that
further public spending risked fuelling
inflation.
In the spring Sunak said that all
households would receive a £200 pay-
ment but that this would be clawed
back in higher bills over the next five
years. This clawback has now been
abandoned and the payment doubled
to £400. “There are many other fami-
lies who do not require state support incontinued from page 1
Tories split over tax and spend AnalysisR
ishi Sunak
is making
use of the
headroom
he had
available to support
households due to
higher than expected
income from taxes
(Arthi Nachiappan
writes).
The tightest labour
market in decades, in
which the number of
vacancies has
overtaken the number
of unemployed people
for the first time, has
offered the chancellor
some room to spend.The government
received a boost from
higher tax revenue
and a fall in spending
on Covid, according
to Office for National
Statistics figures
Borrowing fell to
£18.6 billion in April,
taking it down by
£5.6 billion on the
same month last year.
The Office for Budget
Responsibility had
predicted borrowing
of £19.1 billion. The
government was
helped by a £5.5 billion
rise in taxes to
£50.2 billion, including£1.4 billion from the
increase in national
insurance. Receipts
rose to £70.2 billion,
£9.9 billion more than
the same month last
year.
The injection of
funds into the
economy at a time
when inflation is at a
40-year high,
however, is not
without risk. The
consumer prices
index is at 9 per cent
and the retail prices
index even higher at
11.1 per cent, pushing
up government costs.Banca do Antfer
Telegram: https://t.me/bancadoantfer
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