Professor Philip Alston’s wilfully slanted conclusions have done a disservice both to those genuinely struggling with Universal Credit and those trying to fix it.
Setting flimsy evidence and distorted statistics to a depressing soundtrack does nothing for their credibility.
The challenge is complex. New factors such as poor EU migrants and increasing drug use are driving it.
The Grenfell Tower tragedy was a shocking exception to a trend of improvement in safety. Fire deaths are down below 250 a year, the second lowest on record.
Emma Dent Coad was a director of the company that runs Kensington and Chelsea’s council housing stock – with all the legal responsibilities that implies.
Management of the block was not farmed out to some profiteering, Rachmanite landlord. It was run by a body on which tenants themselves were in a majority.
It’s no wonder Opposition campaigning on the health service isn’t cutting through when between 87 and 97 per cent of users would recommend it to friends and family.
It would simply replicate all the worst faults of the NHS and create a new set of problems.
This is a straight industrial dispute about pay, and high falutin rhetoric about patient safety, privatisation and all the rest is just that.
Fire deaths are only a third of what they were in the 1980s.
Hagiographies of the post-war Labour Government are misplaced.
Labour has been banging the NHS cuts drum for four years
The short answer: no. They’re simply being asked to deliver a bit more for the same amount of money.
