In 2021, HM Prison and Probation Service was allocated an estimated £5.2 billion to deliver the 20,000 additional places.

A report published today by the National Audit Office (NAO) reveals that only 6,518 of the 20,000 additional prison places promised by the Conservative government have been delivered.

The NAO has referred to the Tories’ plan as “unrealistic and not prioritised”. 

The public spending watchdog has found that the plans will not be delivered until 2031, will cost far more than estimated, and will not meet the rising demand for places projected by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ).

It said that the MoJ currently projects a shortage of 12,400 prison places by 2027, if demand increases according to its forecast. 

According to the report, the MoJ is relying on the former justice secretary David Gauke’s Sentencing Review to reduce demand for prison places and close the gap. 

The justice secretary Shabana Mahmood has said that “prison isn’t working” for women and wants to reduce the number of women who are jailed.

More broadly, Mahmood wants the review to look at community alternatives to prison and the use of fines.

Andrea Coomber KC, Chief Executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said: “This scathing report underlines a fact that the new government has recognised – we cannot build our way out of the prison capacity crisis. 

Coomber said “finding a solution is not simply a matter of supply; we have to reduce demand on a system that has been asked to do too much, with too little, for too long.”

“When the prison system gets bigger, the problems within it get bigger, becoming harder to solve.”

She added that “the billions of pounds earmarked for building new prisons would be better invested in securing an effective and responsive probation service, working to cut crime in the community. 

“And it makes no sense to build more jails when the ones we already have are understaffed, falling apart, and failing to help people to move on from crime.”

Pia Sinha, chief executive of the Prison Reform Trust, said: “This damning report lays bare the negligence of previous governments and their approach to penal policy. This has left taxpayers facing an eyewatering £4.2bn bill with no certainty on when the ongoing prison capacity crisis will end.

“Politicians have been dishonest with the public — promising to lock people up for longer but failing to provide the prison places necessary or being upfront about the costs of doing so. This cannot continue. 

“The findings of this report should give impetus to the government’s sentencing review to bring forward bold proposals to place our use of imprisonment on a more sustainable and proportionate footing”.  

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

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Assuming Labour takes office on July 5, campaign group We Own It has laid out a plan for Labour not to renew private NHS contracts which are set to expire in the first term of the next government, as analysis has found a huge majority of contracts will need renewing over the next four years.  

Based on an analysis of NHS contracts, data has shown that the next government will inherit 7,452 contracts, worth a total of £29.1bn, between for-profit private companies and local, regional and national NHS entities in England. 

The public ownership campaign group found that 93.7% of these contracts are scheduled to expire before July 2029, worth £19.7bn, leaving the next government with the choice of whether to bring these services back into the NHS.  

Over £1bn is the estimated profits private companies stand to make from all NHS outsourcing contracts the next government will inherit, according to public sector procurement specialists Tussell. This money could help hire over 27,000 NHS nurses, or cover the cost of knee replacement surgeries for over 71,000 NHS patients, We Own It argued.

Professor of Accounting at the University of Edinburgh, Christine Cooper, said: “The evidence suggests that measures to bring back outsourced contracts would enable better public services at lower cost. 

“Whether to outsource to the private sector is no longer a question of ideology, it is a question of economic interest and empirical evidence.”

Among the big contracts that could be brought in-house are, a £128m deal with Serco to provide catering and cleaning services to University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, and a £2bn contract by Danish diagnostics company Compleo Health Limited.  

QI presenter Stephen Fry backed the new research as he blasted, “14 years of the worst outsourcing in the entire history of the NHS”. 

“Politicians have historically presented outsourcing as a neutral choice, but it clearly isn’t,” said Fry. “It’s resulting in billions leaving public services in the form of profits, which could instead be used to provide a better service to everyone. And as we see with water, the railway and the NHS, it has not worked.”

The latest polling by We Own It and Survation found that eight in ten people want the NHS to be fully in public ownership. The group has encouraged Labour to make the same pledge for the NHS that it has for public transport, and commit to take almost all outsourced NHS services in house in their first term.

Lead campaigner at We Own It, Johnbosco Nwogbo, said:  “Only the NHS has A&Es, trains doctors, and treats everyone however complex their case may be. Building up the NHS to treat everyone who needs care is the most efficient and effective reform a Labour government could introduce.

“The first step is to take back NHS outsourcing contracts when they expire. Labour will get a chance to do right by the NHS, and the public is looking to them to protect the NHS.”

(Image credit: Flickr / Diego Sideburns)

Hannah Davenport is news reporter at Left Foot Forward

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New analysis by the nurses’ union showed that the number of patients waiting more than a year for treatment had sky-rocketed from around 700 in 2014, to over 300,000 a decade later.

In A&E, the number of people waiting more than 12 hours rose from 23 in 2014 to over 42,000 in 2024, another startling jump that the RCN said reflects the decline in quality of care for patients and Rishi Sunak’s failure to tackle the waiting list crisis. 

The Prime Minister promised to bring down NHS waiting lists, however he was forced to admit in February that he had failed on this pledge. 

The latest NHS figures released today showed that the overall number of treatments waiting to be carried out has stayed the same as last month, at just over 7.5 million. This is more than double the number in 2014 when 3 million were waiting. 

RCN leader Pat Cullen said the scale of decline over the past decade was “staggering” as she called on the government to address the “chronic” staff shortages in nursing which has contributed to delays in care. 

“Patients have endured a decade of growing misery, and they are being failed by the prime minister’s inability to grip this situation.” General Secretary Pat Cullen said.

“No matter how the government tries to cut the figures, one in nine people in England waiting for treatment is shocking.

“In ten years, the numbers on waiting lists have more than doubled while dangerous 12-hour waits in A&E have gone from impacting just a handful of people to becoming the norm for tens of thousands. Whether in emergency departments or at home, there can be little doubt that patients will have died waiting for the government to get its act together.

She added: “The scale of the decline in the last ten years is staggering and the pandemic is not the root cause. Behind these figures are people suffering in pain, many unable to get on with their lives. 

“The prime minister must face the truth head on and acknowledge that bringing and keeping waiting lists down requires investment in the nursing workforce.”

(Image credit: Flickr / Creative Commons)

Hannah Davenport is news reporter at Left Foot Forward

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Compared to 2010 when 70% of the public were satisfied with the NHS, the latest survey findings lay bare what 14 years of a Tory government stripping funds and resources from the NHS has had. 

Campaign group Keep Our NHS Public has called it “an appalling act of state vandalism” commenting that the NHS “isn’t failing, it’s being failed”. 

NHS workers have expressed heartbreak over the shocking decline in public satisfaction for the service under the Tories while unions have called for immediate action to address the staffing crisis.

One palliative care doctor wrote on X: “14 years of Tory government understaffing, underfunding & private sector outsourcing have trashed the NHS into a travesty of the service we want to give you.

“It is heartbreaking & so disgustingly wrong.”

A NHS Medical consultant and health policy editor wrote: “The public are right to be dissatisfied with the NHS right now. It’s a shadow of its former self. Staff are completely wiped out. There isn’t enough space to treat patients. Roofs are falling down. And the govt solution is to bung their mates in AI and tech a few billion quid.”

Since 2020 satisfaction has fallen by 29%, with waiting times and staff shortages the biggest concerns, while the public was least satisfied with A&E and dentistry.

Pat Cullen, leader of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said nurses would respond to the survey with mixed emotions of both ‘sorrow’ and ‘hope’ – hope that the public shares their view that ‘enough is enough’.

Making care services and the NHS the central issue of the general election is what voters must now do, Cullen urged. 

“It did not have to be this way and it did not start with the pandemic either,” the general secretary responded. “An NHS that was once a world-leader is now treating patients in corridors, doorways, and store cupboards.”

“Nurses are exhausting themselves caring for unsafe numbers of patients at a time as they are short of tens of thousands of colleagues. The status quo has become professionally intolerable for many.”

Support for the fundamental principles of the NHS remain extremely high, with 91% of people believing it should remain free of charge when people need it, and 82% said it should be funded primarily from taxation and available to everyone, regardless of income. 

The UK’s largest union Unison blamed the government for patient suffering and called on ministers to hold immediate pay talks for health workers, in order to address the NHS staffing crisis. 

“The NHS cannot provide the quality care people need until the staffing crisis is addressed. Patients are suffering because of government inaction,” said Unison’s head of health Helga Pile. 

“Low pay and burnout are to blame for nurses, paramedics and other health workers quitting the service. When the minimum wage increases next week, the lowest paid NHS staff will only be earning one pence an hour above the legal minimum.

“It’s not surprising they’re leaving for jobs elsewhere when supermarkets are paying much better hourly rates.”

This chart by the Kings Fund highlights just how steep the depressing fall in public satisfaction with the NHS has been under the Tories, and how it compares to public sentiment since 1983.

Hannah Davenport is news reporter at Left Foot Forward, focusing on trade unions and environmental issues

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Doctors have seen the biggest fall in their average pay in real terms, almost 15% lower today than in 2010 according to the research group while teachers’ pay is lower by about 9%, with cuts even larger for more experienced workers in the profession. 

This is in comparison to private sector pay which rose by 4% from 2007 to 2023, while real public sector pay at the end of 2023 was 1% lower than at the start of 2007, the report found. 

Despite recent pay increases in the public sector following industrial action, between December 2019 and November 2023 the IFS said average public sector pay fell by 0.3% in this period, compared to a 2.3% rise in the private sector.

Consistently cutting the pay of higher-paid public sector workers has only contributed to both the recruitment and retention crisis and ‘industrial strife’, IFS associate director Jonathan Cribb said, as the think tank highlighted the gap between higher-and-lower paid public sector workers has fallen by a third since 2007.  

Nurses in England also fared particularly badly over the past 14 years with a significant reduction in their real pay and only a modest recovery in recent years. 

Commenting on the findings, The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said the research should be ‘essential reading for government ministers’ towards supporting fair pay in the profession. 

“With repeated below-inflation pay awards, and the lowest pay deal in the entire public sector last year, ministers exposed nursing staff to a brutal cost of living crisis,” RCN general secretary Pat Cullen said. 

“Experienced nurses are leaving for better pay abroad in soaring numbers too. These two trends are a direct consequence of the repeated political decisions to keep NHS pay down.”

Hannah Davenport is news reporter at Left Foot Forward, focusing on trade unions and environmental issues

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In a TikTok video posted by campaign group We Own It, the former QI host slammed NHS privatisation while praising the treatment he recently received as he became the latest celebrity to back the Pledge for the NHS. 

Commenting on the worst 14 years of underfunding, understaffing and outsourcing in the NHS’s history, Fry opened up about his hospitalisation last year and warned of the need to protect the institution. 

“There are plenty of enormous corporations in America who are dribbling at the idea of moving in and taking over our health service,” said Fry.

“It doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to wonder why this health service is being so consistently underinvested in.”

He referred to the NHS as “one of the great ornaments of British institutions” but warned that “desperate” underfunding has seen its reputation lag behind other countries.

Funding for the NHS is £40 billion less per year than in France, whilst the same study by the Health Foundation found Germany spends £73 billion more on healthcare than Britain. 

Recounting his time in hospital after an accident last September, Fry said his experience was “fantastic” despite the challenges faced. 

“I was taken by ambulance to the nearest NHS hospital which is not regarded as one of the great ones,” said Fry.  

“It was fantastic. The people were just incredible.

“Yes, some of the paint was peeling on the walls. Yes, it could do with some infrastructure, love and probably, you know, better hours for those junior doctors and nurses and other support staff.

“Yes, the waits are longer than they should be. But the spirit and the idea of the health service is important and alive today as it ever was unless we allow it to be run into the ground. So let’s fight for it.”

The TikTok video has been liked over 8,400 times and Stephen Fry ended by urging viewers to support the campaign and send the We Own It letter to parliamentary figures. 

He joins other celebrities including Frankie Boyle, Doc Brown, Rosie Holt and Ken Loach who have expressed their support for the new campaign calling on political candidates to commit to protect and improve the NHS. 

Candidates who take the pledge commit to: 

Reinstating the Health Secretary’s legal duty to provide healthcare to all

Give the NHS £40 billion more per year

Bring outsourced services back into the NHS as their contracts end

Lead campaigner at We Own It, Johnbosco Nwogbo, said the campaign hopes to mobilise tens of thousands of people to send a clear message that people will be voting for politicians who pledge to support the NHS.

Nwogbo said: “The NHS is a key election issue. Right now we have a short window of opportunity to shape election manifestos and show political candidates that ending privatisation and protecting our NHS as a fully public service is a priority for voters.

“Politicians don’t always do what they promise, but they hardly ever do good things that they didn’t promise. That’s why we must push for bold commitments to end wasteful outsourcing, fund our NHS in line with the rest of Europe, and protect it for future generations.”

Hannah Davenport is news reporter at Left Foot Forward, focusing on trade unions and environmental issues

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Attempts to deflect from their record on spending and restoring health care in England have wracked up, here are five times the Tories have lied about the NHS. 

Waiting list lies

This week we saw Rishi Sunak admit he failed to cut waiting lists in the NHS, one of his top campaign priorities.

Only a week previous he had written a column for The Telegraph claiming that the government had got 18-week waits down by 90%. This was debunked shortly after. Full Fact found that 18-week waits for non-emergency NHS treatment in England had in fact risen by 4-9% since the government pledged to reduce the waiting lists. It turns out he may have been talking about 18-month waits.

People are typically waiting longer for treatment than they did a year ago,  in 2023 the waiting list for treatment stood at 7.7 million. 

Strikes to blame

After admitting failure, Sunak was quick to throw striking NHS workers under the bus and claim industrial action was to blame for long waiting lists, a common narrative used by Tory MPs of late to blame strikers for problems in the NHS. 

Health experts have stressed that only a tiny fraction of people on waiting lists would have had appointments had strikes not happened, and other experts have argued how austerity and worker shortages are more to blame for the increased waiting lists. Summed up by one professor who pleaded to the public to ‘please, look at the evidence’. 

6,000 extra doctors

Tory health secretaries have made repeated pledges that they will increase the number of doctors in England over the years. However these have all turned out to be false assertions. By 2019, MPs were making the pledge for a fifth time, again promising 6,000 new doctors by 2024/25, made up of half extra fully qualified GPs and half trainees.

Jeremy Hunt, Former Health Secretary, had made a pledge in 2015 to increase the GP workforce by 5,000 by 2020.

However, GP numbers have actually dropped every year in England since then, with reports showing there were 1,500 less GPs in 2022 than 2015. It looks likely the latest pledge will be yet another false promise.

Record NHS spending

During his time as Prime Minister, Boris Johnson was accused of ‘cash bombing’ the electorate with misleading funding figures and erroneous claims about NHS funding.

Multiple times in his campaign, Johnson claimed the Tories would be giving the NHS its “biggest increase in modern memory in the NHS”, as he pledged to spend £34 billion.

However, his memory clearly didn’t stretch too far. Fact checkers found this amounted to a real terms increase of £20.5 billion between 2018/19 and 2023/24, adjusting for inflation. With the previous time spending increased by at least that amount was between 2004/05 and 2009/10. 

Johnson also announced a £1.8 billion one-off cash boost to NHS hospitals in England. However this soon unravelled as the PM was then accused by both health experts and the opposition party of misleading the public over whether the money was really ‘new’, as he claimed, and not just a reversal of cuts trusts were asked to make before. 

40 new hospitals

Yet another broken pledge, the government promised it would deliver 40 new hospitals however the most recent committee review warned it had no confidence that the government can deliver the promise.

The initial number was a lie, as it is also unlikely that the 32 new hospitals now aimed for completion in 2030 will happen either. Whilst out of these 32 projects, only 11 were said to actually qualify as “whole new hospitals” by the National Audit Office.

Hannah Davenport is news reporter at Left Foot Forward, focusing on trade unions and environmental issues

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As bus services were deregulated across the UK in 1986 – except in London where services remained under local control – the move represents the biggest change to public transport in a generation.

The privatisation of Britain’s bus sector was introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s government. At the time, the government predicted that the move would lead to “lower fares, new services, and more passengers,” while removing “any potential liability on the taxpayer.”

Instead, bus use has been in decline ever since, and today, much of the sector is in crisis, with taxpayers subsidising corporate profits. In Greater Manchester, the number of passengers using buses has fallen from 355m in 1986/87, to just over 182m at the end of 2019, just before Covid.

From September 24, a fleet of 50 zero-emission Bee Network-branded buses (ZEBs) will be in service. The buses offer a range of improved features for passengers, including two bays for wheelchair users, anti-slip flooring, audio and visual announcement systems, and hearing induction loops. Over the next two years, existing buses in Greater Manchester will be gradually upgraded to Bee Network buses.

A Bee Network app enables customers to have access to live departure times, see where their nearest bus or tram stop is, and rate their journey. The app also provides access to the new AnyBus + tram ticket, which makes travel 20 percent cheaper.

The Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), said that bus franchising signifies the start of the Bee Network – Greater Manchester’s plan for an integrated, ‘London-style’ transport network. “It is the first step in reversing decades-long decline in bus use, with the recently published GM Bus Strategy setting out how the city-region aims to deliver 50 million more bus journeys each year by the end of the decade.”

Ahead of the launch, Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham, who has been campaigning for cheaper, more efficient public transport in Manchester for years, said: “By this time next week, Greater Manchester will have retaken control of our buses after almost 40 years of deregulation.

“I hope it signals the start of a public transport revolution across the whole of England.”

Norman Baker, from Campaign for Better Transport, described Greater Manchester’s Bee Network as “groundbreaking.” 

“It’s fantastic to see how this will benefit Manchester,” he said.

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward

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In what the education secretary presumably thought was a brag and desperate attempt to deflect from the growing list of schools affected by RAAC, Keegan boasted about the “very high quality portakabins” some children were now being taught in.

It follows not so long after her hot mic moment where she was caught on camera in a sweary rant venting her frustration at others being “sat on their arses”.

“At the first school I went to, the children were petitioning me to stay in the portakabin because they actually prefer it to the classroom,” Keegan claimed. “So, the portakabins are very high quality, and I would advise the honourable lady to go and see some of the portkabins we have.”

Keegan had taken a grilling from the Shadow Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson who highlighted how Keegan was on holiday as the RAAC school chaos panned out.

Daniel Kebede, the general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU) offered a perfect response to the out-of-touch education secretary in an interview on Sky News.

Kebede told the interviewer that Keegan had made the same claim to him in private during a meeting earlier that day.

“In my mind I did think, it’s a good job you’ve not said that in public, and there she is standing up in Parliament saying the children prefer portakabins,” started an incredulous Kebede.

“My question is, what dire state of repair are our schools in if a portakabin is better than a classroom?”

Reminded of Keegan’s previous on camera hot mic moment, the interviewer asked whether the union boss thought Keegan was aware of her blunders, “do you get the feeling she really grasps this?”

Kebede said: “As we’ve heard today, she was on holiday as this crisis was unfolding. We’ve heard that hot mic moment and now we have an education secretary saying portakabins are better according to some children.

“What it really feels like is that we haven’t got a secretary of state experiencing the same reality as the rest of the public.”

One teacher summed up on X: “Pretty sure that kids thinking their temporary portakabin is of better quality than their actual classroom isn’t the brag Gillian Keegan thinks it is..”

(Image credit: BBC News / Screenshot)

Hannah Davenport is news reporter at Left Foot Forward, focusing on trade unions and environmental issues

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The government is seeking to extend their anti-trade union powers through the Minimum Service Levels legislation, with the Health Secretary announcing, in a column for the Daily Telegraph, that they will be launching a consultation today to expand the powers into hospitals.  

On the media rounds this morning, Sky News presenter Jayne Secker questioned why the government is seeking to expand anti-strike legislation, rather than getting to ‘the root of the problem?’

“Wouldn’t it be quicker to get around the table and talk about this, because, my understanding is this could take up to six months to bring in?” Asked Secker.

“What we are announcing today is how we protect time critical hospital services.” Barclay responded. “Because we recognise the right to strike is important, but we have to balance that with the rights for patients.”

He has claimed this move was something France and Italy are already doing, however this was rinsed by lawyer Peter Stefanovic, who called out the reality as ‘dramatically different’. Stefanovic highlighted that ‘it is not the case’ that public sector workers in these countries can get sacked if they refuse to comply with minimum service levels during industrial action, which is what the Tory government are doing.

Stefanovic added: “It’s an absolute disgrace, our NHS workers have always been there for us, now let’s be there for them.”

Wages for junior doctors has fallen 26% between 2008 and 2022, whilst consultants have seen their real terms pay cut by 35%. Junior doctors are demanding a 35% pay restoration to bring their salaries back to 2008 levels, whilst consultants are seeking an about inflation pay rise.

The BMA responded to Barclay by pointing out that the government would not have spent a decade running the health service to the ground if they were serious about patient safety.

 “If this government was serious about patient safety, it would not have deliberately run down the health service over the last 10 years, with the terrible, adverse effects that austerity has had on the health of the nation every day,” Professor Phil Banfield, chair of BMA council, said.

He added: “The BMA has been clear that any strike action taken by members preserves minimum levels of staffing to ensure patient safety.

“We have always maintained that consultants and junior doctors together, will never stage a full walk out and we have been clear that we are not planning to do so, with urgent and emergency care continuing to run. It is disingenuous for the Secretary of State to say otherwise.”

Consultants in England are walking out for 48-hours from Tuesday, joined by junior doctors on Wednesday until Friday.

Banfield highlighted that the only route to ending the strikes was for the government to drop its opposition to negotiating a new pay deal, and get round the table with doctors.

“Rather than focusing on strike days, ministers should be looking to make sure that our health service is safely staffed for 365 days a year.”

Barclay also accused the BMA of taking a ‘political agenda’ by timing their strike to coincide with the Conservative Party conference. Asked if the government was prepared to sack any doctor or nurse who defied the minimum service levels, Barclay did not deny it and said those were decisions for the local employers but that it was about providing the ‘enabling legislation’.

The Trades Union Congress has blasted the move as a ‘desperate attempt’ by the Tories to distract from their ‘dire’ record.

“Nothing works in this country anymore,” slammed Paul Nowak, TUC General Secretary. “But instead of fixing our crumbling public services and sorting out the chronic retention and recruitment crisis blighting our NHS, ministers are threatening nurses and doctors with the sack for exercising their right to strike.”

Nowak warned that the laws will only work to escalate conflicts and sour industrial relations, ultimately worsening disputes.  

“They’re unworkable, undemocratic and almost certainly in breach of international law. That’s why we won’t rest until this Act has been repealed. And we won’t stand by and let workers get sacked for defending their pay and conditions.”

(Image credit: Sky News / YouTube)

Hannah Davenport is news reporter at Left Foot Forward, focusing on trade unions and environmental issues

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