The Times - UK (2022-02-23)

2 2GM Wednesday February 23 2022 | the times

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To day’s highlights

7.20am

12pm

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5.35pm

8.30pm

Foreign secretary Liz Truss

PMQs Unpacked: Matt Chorley and Tim Shipman

pause the action between the dispatch boxes

Mariella Frostrup chats to the BBC world affairs

editor John Simpson on about his career

John Pienaar speaks to Mary Bousted, the

general secretary of the National Education

Union, as part of Education Week on Drive

Singer-songwriter Johnny Marr, right,

on his first double album

Mental health patients arriving at A&E

will be promised a face-to-face assess-

ment from a specialist team within an

hour under new targets.

The NHS plans to introduce updated

mental health access standards as part

of a drive to treat mental and physical

health problems “on an equal footing”.

Under the plans, people in the com-

munity would receive help within four

weeks for non-urgent treatment, and

patients of all ages with an urgent

mental health need would be seen by

community crisis teams within 24

hours. This should be within four hours

for those considered “very urgent”.

Claire Murdoch, the NHS’s national

mental health director, said: “The pro-

posed new standards are good news for

patients and if agreed will ensure they

get timely access to mental health

services, when they need them most.”

Any adults accessing community-

based services for non-urgent mental

health care should start to receive help

within four weeks of referral. This

would be the same timeline under a

separate standard for children, young

people and their families or carers.

This help might include “immediate

Mental health patients to

be seen within an hour

Kat Lay advice, support or a brief intervention,

help to access another more appropri-

ate service, the start of a longer-term

intervention or agreement about a

patient care plan, or the start of a spe-

cialist assessment that may take

longer”, the NHS said.

Murdoch said that a national consul-

tation — involving charities, patients

and NHS staff, among others — had

shown the measures had widespread

support, with eight in ten people

responding backing the new standards.

The NHS said it would work to set

out how the ambitions could be

achieved as quickly as possible, even

before any formal targets were set.

Sean Duggan, chief executive of the

NHS Confederation’s Mental Health

Network, said that the standards would

improve transparency in mental health

services. “Mental health services have

not had comparable performance

metrics to physical healthcare for far

too long, which has created barriers to

understanding the extent of the chal-

lenges they face.”

He added that while the targets in

themselves would not lead to improve-

ments, they would increase transpar-

ency and allow NHS teams to measure

their progress.

Salmond told

to switch off

Russian show

Mark McLaughlin

Alex Salmond is under growing pres-

sure to ditch his Kremlin-funded chat

show amid claims from former allies

that his Alba Party is spreading Russian

disinformation.

The former Scottish first minister

has continued broadcasting The Alex

Salmond Show on RT, formerly Russia

Today, as tensions have mounted

between Russia and Ukraine. Stewart

McDonald, the SNP’s defence spokes-

man, accused Alba of peddling Russian

disinformation. He tweeted: “I’m afraid

Alba’s position is undone by the facts...

Alba’s line is, generously, a misunder-

standing of history. It’s also a favourite

Kremlin narrative.”

Last year Salmond, 67, repeatedly

refused to say if he believed that Russia

was behind the Salisbury poisonings.

Ross Greer, external affairs spokes-

man for the Scottish Greens, who share

power with the SNP at Holyrood, said

that if Salmond and George Galloway,

the former Labour MP who also

presents a show on RT, had “an

ounce of integrity they’d quit that

channel immediately”.

Whitehall bureaucracy must be tackled

or the government’s NHS reforms risk

becoming “another failed health ser-

vice reorganisation”, a report warns.

The report, commissioned by the

NHS Confederation, also said that ef-

forts to improve will be hampered un-

less health chiefs and ministers loosen

their control over the health service.

If the new bodies created by the

Health and Care Bill are to “fulfil their

potential”, the number of staff working

for the NHS centrally and in regional

offices “should be reduced substantial-

ly”, it concluded.

The report, titled Governing the

health and care system in England, was

produced by Professor Chris Ham, co-

chairman of the NHS Assembly.

The bill is to create a legal basis for

Integrated Care Systems, where the

NHS, local councils, charities and pri-

vate sector providers in an area come

together to provide health and care ser-

vices for their local population.

Plans for their creation were set out

in the NHS long-term plan, with an aim

to remove traditional divisions that

have proved barriers to access, such as

Bureaucrats ‘threaten plans to

improve health and social care’

Kat Lay Health Editor those between primary and secondary

care or NHS and council services.

Ham’s report was commissioned to

examine what conditions they will

need to succeed.

There is a limit to how much “com-

mand-and-control” from national

chiefs can achieve to improve care, the

report says. Performance management

has contributed to improvements but

has also had negative consequences

“including disempowering staff and

fostering a culture of compliance”.

The report adds: “There is an over-

reliance on regulation and an urgent

need to value trust and restore respect

between leaders at all levels.”

In the preface to the report, Matthew

Taylor, chief executive of the NHS

Confederation says: “In a few years the

Health and Care Bill could be seen as a

game-changer in improving health

outcomes, or another failed health ser-

vice reorganisation. At present, it still

too often feels like the sponsors of that

legislation in NHS England and Im-

provement and Whitehall have not

fully understood or accepted the conse-

quences of their own proposals.”

He told The Times: “We are not ask-

ing for the centre to not exist. In a sense,

it’s more about losing an empire and

finding a role.”

The report was not a call for a cull of

civil servants, he said, but devolving

power would require health service

chiefs and politicians to be “more stra-

tegic and less operational” in the

instructions they gave the NHS, setting

priorities and objectives, but not con-

trolling how they were met. “There will

always be targets for the health ser-

vice”,“But the question is, how do you

support leaders in balancing the range

of priorities that they have,”

The report adds that “NHS leaders

must engage in political management

and push back on interventions that

run counter to aspirations to devolve

decision-making”.

6 A report from the patient champion

Healthwatch found that only a third of

NHS trusts complied with communica-

tion standards designed to help people

who were blind, deaf or have a learning

disability. Sir Robert Francis, chairman

of Healthwatch England said there was

“a failure to protect the rights of our

most vulnerable patients to accessible

information”.

It is right to ask if we need so many civil

servants, leading article, page 29

the dominant global platform for

processing financial transactions.

“We will use every lever at our

disposal to stop him [Putin] in his

tracks,” Truss writes today. “Should

Russia refuse to pull back its troops we

can keep turning up the heat... degrad-

ing the development of its military-

industrial base for years.”

Those sanctioned by Britain include

Gennady Timchenko, a billionaire who

controls the Volga investment group,

Boris Rotenberg, a co-owner of SMP

Bank, and his nephew, Igor Rotenberg.

All had already been sanctioned by the

US. Individual members of the Russian

parliament who voted to recognise the

NEWS

FOSSIL FIND

Meet the dinosaur

that soared over

Jurassic Scotland

PA G E 1 5

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Best of any dry and sunny weather
in the southeast with rain further
north. Full forecast, page 60

THE WEATHER

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Residents stay

in floods town

Residents of

Ironbridge, a Unesco

world heritage site in

Shropshire at risk of

being submerged by

flooding, have refused

to leave their homes

despite warnings of a

risk to life. Pages 20-

No student loan

without maths

Pupils who fail GCSE
English and maths will
be banned from taking
student loans under
plans to be announced
this week. Ministers
are also seeking to
limits low-quality
degrees. Page 4

Hollywood con

duped woman

A make-up artist from

Britain has spoken

about her ordeal at the

hands of an alleged

con artist who is

facing extradition to

the US accused one of

Hollywood’s most

brazen frauds. Page 13

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Why renting — not

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SPORT

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The tricks behind

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PA G E 6 2

independence of the breakaway repub-

lics of Donetsk and Luhansk will also be

subject to travel bans and asset freezes.

Bill Browder, the American financier

who has been instrumental in the cam-

paign to impose further western sanc-

tions on the Putin regime, described the

British government’s move as “pretty

tepid” and asked: “The oligarchs have

been on the US sanctions list since 2018

... where are the other 50 oligarchs?”
Johnson was also criticised by some
Tory MPs. Tom Tugendhat, chairman
of the Commons foreign affairs
committee and a critic of the prime
minister, cited “the principle of clout
don’t dribble... to make sure that the
opposition understand that you’re
serious”. He warned that “the rachet
could be misinterpreted as giving a free

pass at an early stage rather than

drawing a clear line that needs not to be

crossed”.

Vyacheslav Nikonov, a senior

Russian parliamentarian, told PM on

BBC Radio 4: “What would be the result

of sanctions like they’re introduced

today by Boris Johnson? Zero, it’s

nothing. It’s sanctioned about three

oligarchs and five... small banks. You

know, this is a laughable affair, of

course. We expected something more

serious, like switching from Swift.”

Ukraine reports, 6-

Country is closer to home than you

think, Daniel Finkelstein, page 25

Prove Putin wrong, Roger Boyes, page 26

Sanctions are woefully inadequate,

leading article, page 29

Inflation fears as oil nears $100, page 35

continued from page 1

Ukraine crisis

Banca do Antfer

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