|
The Guardian journalist Polly Toynbee might look like a kindly granny who’d make you fold yer pyjamas and sit-up-properly, at the tea table.
But... if she was a sports-star, she’d be a cage-fighter.
One of yer-god’s other creatures? She'd be Boa-constrictor that would silently encircle you and squeeze-out the last drop of life.
She is an assassin. The tools of her trade are a pen and her ammunition, facts and data.
She’s just demolished Rishi. Flattened him. Wrung the life out of one of his flag-ship policies and for good measure pretty-well called him a liar.
This is from her latest column;
‘… the prime minister dismissed claims there were too few nursery places for every two-year-old in England… on... the day [the] entitlement to 15 hours [child care] a week began.
He even said: “Staffing levels have increased and more people are at work in the sector and the number of places has also increased over the past year.”
Toynbee lands a killer blow;
‘Outside the Commons, you might call that an untruth.’
Ouch! She's right. The facts are;
Ofsted’s registers show a fall in early years places every year since 2016: 17,800 places were lost in the year to November 2023 alone.
The Department for Education confessed it needs 85,000 more nursery places and 40,000 more staff to … meet its target of expanding 30 free hours to children, aged nine-months by September 2025.
If there is a more complete demolition job of government policy, I’d like to see it. Catching the PM out in a big fat, black, wriggling porkie.
But…
… I do have a tiny soupçon of sympathy.
Not for being done-over by The Toynbee… no, no.
I just would share his undoubted, private frustration that a very good policy, like child-care, helping working families to cope with the cost of living, has run aground.
Of course, the real answer would be to get a grip of the economy. If people were paid fairly they wouldn’t have to do two jobs and 12 hour shifts. In the mean time, more child-care is no bad thing.
However, it looks like it’s coming unstuck.
The announcement of more child care was made without consultation with the child-care sector. The situation is simple; they don’t have the staff to expand their sector and no prospect of recruiting them.
Sunak should have known. Just down the corridor from his office in the Commons is the the House of Commons Library.
They’d have told him;
- In November 2022, 13.3% of businesses in an ONS survey reported a shortage of workers.
- That percentage has been between 12.9% and 15.4% as far back as October 2021.
- In August 2022, it was 16.8%.
- In September-November 2022, there were 1.19 million vacancies in the UK…
… similar to the number of unemployed people.
The more you dig, the worse it gets. There is no way Sunak can find 40,000 more staff.
There are skills shortages across the economy.
By the way, not least in construction, which is probably part of the reason why the forlorn hope we might have 40 new hosptials has gone
This labour shortage ‘thing’, is a real worry. As the House of Commons research tells us;
A key reason for labour shortages is… demand for labour has recovered faster than labour supply since the pandemic. The Bank of England’s August 2022 Monetary Policy Report points out that labour demand…is above pre-pandemic levels, while labour supply is below pre-pandemic levels…
… because of a rise in economic inactivity.
There are a tangle of reasons. Brexit, slow population growth, lack of EU applications to work here… blah, blah.
Now, here’s the thing… when we hear Silly-Boy Streeting telling us he’s going to;
‘…recruit 8,500 additional mental health staff to drive down waiting lists.’
… where are they going to come from?
When you hear he;
‘… commits to thousands more NHS doctors and nurses…’
… well, you know the 3 questions to ask.
We know Streeting is painfully ambitious and his thinking is the living definition of gallimaufry but Sunak should know better.
Overpromising is a common management failing. Often done with the best of intentions.
But, making policy promises that obviously can’t be fulfilled...
... is fraud.
| 
