Day: July 2, 2017

    Plans to rescue the NHS are in chaos after a weakened Theresa May backed down from a fight with MPs likely to involve hospital closures, Labour has alleged. Legislation to allow local health chiefs to transform the delivery of care and, crucially, save many billions of pounds has been shelved after the Conservatives lost their Commons majority. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has admitted the legal shake-up cannot go ahead without a consensus and that it will not happen while the Government is fixated on Brexit. Two thirds of the 44 Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs) propose closing a hospital, or moving treatment to a different site. The STPs have not been stopped in their tracks. Local health bodies will continue to create them, but without any legal underpinnin...

    Labour’s right wing has launched a new plan to rein in Jeremy Corbyn’s power despite his growing standing within the party following the general election result, The Independent can reveal. The battle plan, issued to activists just a week after Labour overturned Theresa May’s majority, would water down Mr Corbyn’s influence on the party’s powerful executive by drafting in extra members likely to be hostile to him. The manoeuvre is the latest sign of the continuing guerrilla warfare taking place behind the scenes in Labour, with Mr Corbyn’s own supporters undertaking a counteroffensive to try and cement the left’s grip on the party. The competing plans set the scene for a major showdown at this year’s annual conference in Brighton, where the struggle for the heart of the pa...

    A placard at an anti-austerity march in London on Saturday. Theresa May is facing a chorus of Tory demands for a radical overhaul of state funding for public services as cabinet ministers and senior Conservative MPs back higher pay for millions of NHS workers, more cash for schools and a national debate on student debt. The prime minister’s waning authority was highlighted as her health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and education secretary Justine Greening lobbied for an easing of austerity and senior Conservative MPs insisted public services would be in growing peril without an urgent loosening of the purse strings. Separately, Damian Green, the de facto deputy prime minister and a May loyalist, hinted at a wider rethink when he said there might need to be a national debate abo...