Blairs new Britain

1. MINISTERS BEG JUDGES: DON'T JAIL ANY MORE CRIMINALS!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=430962

1. MINISTERS BEG JUDGES: DON'T JAIL ANY MORE CRIMINALS!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=430962

Desperate ministers will beg judges to stop sending criminals to prisons - because they are full.

A letter will be sent to courts across the country admitting that jails are officially in crisis.

It pleads for only the most violent or dangerous criminals to be given a custodial sentence. Magistrates are also being asked to allow bail to all but the most serious crime suspects.

The letter, signed by Home Secretary John Reid, Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer and Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, is the first in a series of drastic steps likely over the next few weeks.

The most dramatic option is to order the early release of thousands of inmates sentenced to 12 months or less.

The Home Secretary has been struggling since last summer to contain the overcrowding crisis - caused by the Government ignoring repeated advice to build more prisons - but it is now escalating rapidly. Politicians don't take advice because the big headed buggers think they know it all. In fact they really know very little about most things, a conclusion come to by years of watching their abysmal performances.

On Monday alone, nearly 300 more prisoners were sent down by the courts than were released, pushing the jail population to almost 80,000.

Mr Reid, Lord Falconer and Lord Goldsmith have met senior judges to explain that the system is now in meltdown. It was agreed that the three Ministers would circulate a 'communique' to the entire criminal justice system. It calls on the courts to jail only the worst criminals – effectively freeing thousands who
would normally have been put behind bars.

In cases where judges and magistrates are considering a term of 12 months or less, they are 'reminded' they could use a community sentence instead.

Magistrates are also urged to consider bail instead of remanding suspects such as burglars. Around 13,000 suspects are in custody awaiting trial.

Mr Reid paved the way for his move when he said recently that taxpayers' money should not be 'squandered' on locking up or monitoring offenders who would be better punished in the community. But having to plead with the courts is still a humiliation for the Home Secretary and leaves Labour's pledge to be tough on crime in tatters.

Home Office ministers have been warned repeatedly by their officials that the jail population was growing rapidly, but have failed to provide sufficient extra places. Mr Reid has belatedly promised 8,000 more - but none will be available until spring. In the meantime, hundreds of criminals are locked in police cells at a cost of £365 each a day.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said last night: "It is outrageous that sentences are being dictated by the prison capacity and not by the crime committed.

"Yet again we see the public being put at risk by the failure of ministers. How much longer must the public pay the price of Gordon Brown's miserliness and John Reid's incompetence?

"John Reid must say what he intends to do about this crisis, and not rely on his usual tactic of dreaming up an unworkable gimmick to try and deflect the bad headlines."

Home Office officials are hoping today's letter will buy Mr Reid some time to think of a politically- acceptable solution. But they fear he will be forced to take more drastic action as early as next week.

The 'nuclear option' is the early release of thousands of inmates sentenced to a year or less. They would not even be placed under supervision, simply be told they were free to go. Mr Reid wants to avoid this at all costs, fearing it would instantly wreck his reputation for toughness and demolish any hopes of a
challenge for the Labour leadership.

Less dramatic, but still highly damaging, would be an extension in the use of releasing inmates on tags. Other plans include letting as many as 30,000 criminals serving up to four years walk free ten days before their sentences would normally end. This was suggested by officials last year, but blocked by
the Home Secretary and Downing Street.

Mr Reid is also likely to try to move foreign prisoners awaiting deportation decisions into immigration holding centres, and his officials are trying to acquire prison ships.
2. NO SPEEDING FINES FOR FOREIGN DRIVERS

http://news.intranetics.co.uk/articles/3225.html

Speeding foreign drivers have little need for a speed camera detector as thousands are managing to avoid speed fines.

In Leicestershire alone, nearly 1,500 foreign drivers have escaped an automatic notice of intended prosecution, despite being snapped by a gatso speed camera.

Under current laws, drivers only have to register foreign number plates if the vehicle will be driven in the UK for more than six months.

With no central registry of more fleeting visitors, many foreign drivers simply need to leave the country to evade prosecution for a traffic fine.

Leicestershire safety camera partnership snapped 1,487 speeding foreign vehicles in 2006, including one case on the A1 near Oakham where a vehicle with foreign plates was snapped at 121 mph.

Speed camera officials admitted that the loophole is likely to provoke resentment among British drivers, who frequently complain of the proliferation of speed cameras and the need for speed camera maps when driving.

"People will be a little frustrated to see that a foreign driver is perhaps getting away with speeding because we can't trace them and they themselves may have drifted over the speed limit and been caught," said Hema Lad from the Leicestershire safety camera partnership.

Leicester MP Peter Soulsby claims that better sharing of vehicle data is necessary.

The Labour MP said: "It just needs our computer system at the DVLA to be linked with similar systems in other European countries.

"It needs them to talk to each other to exchange information and make sure these drivers that are breaking our laws pay our fines."

Transport for London (TfL) has previously admitted that there are similar problems in the capital, with foreign drivers evading the congestion charge.

Between January 2005 and June 2006, TfL reports that 88,000 foreign drivers escaped the C-charge, amounting to lost fines worth £8.8million.

TfL claimed that the lack of a Europe-wide agreement on fine enforcement made it very difficult for UK local authorities to tackle foreign drivers.

Police chiefs warned late last year that foreign lorry drivers pose a danger to British road users, with the Association of Chief Police Officers claiming that the expansion of the EU had exacerbated the
problem.

It was found that many foreign lorries were unsafe compared to UK standards. The road safety charity Brake further warns that foreign lorry drivers do not have to undergo additional training.

Figures show that foreign drivers are at least as likely to offend as UK drivers.

3. NHS BLUNDERS KILL 200 PEOPLE PER YEAR

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/19/nhs19.xml

More than 200 patients died last year as a result of mistakes made by hospital staff while another 1,800 were made worse during treatment, it has been revealed.

Some patients were given overdoses of radiation or had healthy organs removed in operations, while others died after being wrongly attached to medical equipment. advertisement

Figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that 2,109 events which could injure patients, staff or public - known as serious untoward incidents - were reported to health authorities in 2006.

At least 221 resulted in avoidable deaths, including a 76-year-old man who had a feeding tube inserted into his lungs instead of his stomach and a pensioner who was given air instead of pure oxygen.

Hundreds more patients were made worse while in hospital because of wrong diagnoses or mistakes in treatment, such as a woman who had chemotherapy and surgery for ovarian cancer when she never had the disease.

At least 55 people were given the wrong medication or too much, with seven receiving an overdose of radiation. More than 100 suffered from serious delays in diagnoses or treatment.

There were 43 reports of serious equipment malfunction, one of which left a patient's lungs filled with hot water after a respiratory humidifier broke down.

In one NHS trust, a pregnant woman was exposed to radiation which led to the termination of her pregnancy, while a teaching hospital reported a baby suffering fractured ribs and humerus while being delivered with forceps.

Hospitals also reported 172 outbreaks of communicable diseases, including 94 confirmed cases of the superbug MRSA. It is thought that injuries to patients cost the NHS £2 billion a year in compensation and legal fees.

Katherine Murphy, the director of the Patients' Association, condemned the figures which were compiled from reports made by 141 of England's 170 hospital trusts between December 2005 and December 2006.

She said: "These cases will shock and appall everyone who has to trust the NHS with their lives. Patient safety should be paramount. "But with the NHS deficit, staff are not getting adequate training,
which leads to mistakes."

The Department of Health insisted most patients receive safe treatment, and said that more reporting of mistakes helps make sure they are not repeated.

A spokesman said: "The incidents reported by the acute trusts account for only a tiny proportion of the care and treatment carried out by NHS staff across the country. "But we have to recognise that in our increasingly complex health service, mistakes can and will inevitably happen."

4. PATIENTS SENT TO WRONG WARDS TO MEET NUMERICAL TARGETS

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/17/nae117.xml

Doctors are struggling to meet the Government’s accident and emergency waiting time target because the NHS cash crisis is resulting in a shortage of beds, doctors’ leaders warned today.

A survey for the British Medical Association (BMA) found that a shortage of hospital beds was delaying the admission of patients from A&E in England.

The Government target is that 98 per cent of patients should wait no more than four hours from arrival at A&E to admission, transfer or discharge. While recent Government figures show that 98.2 per cent of
patients were seen and treated within four hours in the year to April 2006, a third of the doctors questioned said figures were being manipulated to the target.

Doctors' leaders also said that while there have been improvements, healthcare trusts are claiming to hit the target by including figures from minor injuries units and walk-in centres where patients are being seen more quickly than in actual A&E departments.

A total of 503 members the British Association for Emergency Medicine, including staff at all grades working in emergency departments, took part in the survey.

It found nine out of 10 doctors believed a lack of in-patient beds was the main reason for not meeting the Government target. Many also blamed staff shortages and patients attending A&E with minor problems.

The NHS finished the last financial year with a record deficit of £512 million. Two-thirds said patients were moved to inappropriate areas or wards to help meet the target. Almost all, 97 per cent, said
their workload had increased in the last 12 months, with most blaming the transfer of out-of-hours care from GPs to primary care trusts.

The survey also revealed that doctors from one third, or 67, of the 200 A&E units in England believe their unit is at risk of being downgraded or closed.

Don MacKechnie, chairman of the BMA’s Emergency Medicine Committee, said: “Many hospitals have cut bed numbers as part of their financial recovery plans and attempts to balance their books.

“This means that there are fewer available beds for patients coming through A&E who need to be transferred within four hours to a hospital ward from the emergency department to meet the Government’s access target.”

A Department of Health spokesperson said: “The NHS is treating more patients than ever before and is treating them more efficiently.

5. MORE STEALTH PRIVATISATION FEARS FOR NHS

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/health/6287261.stm

Hospitals could be put under threat and the NHS fragmented by a plan to set up private centres to take over simple procedures from hospitals, doctors say.

Health chiefs in the North West have become the first to start consulting on a new breed of private clinics to carry out diagnostics and minor treatment.

The Clinical Assessment Treatment and Support centres have been designed to cut waiting lists, officials said.

But doctors warned they could starve hospitals of money.

The specialities covered by the proposed centres are ear, nose and throat, general surgery, orthopaedics, rheumatology and minor treatments, which combined contribute 80% of hospital workloads.

Similar schemes are expected to be put forward elsewhere in the country as the contracts are being negotiated by the Department of Health, with NHS trusts only expected to pay for the services patients use. If hospital units become unviable, NHS capacity is wasted, jobs are lost, and services that patients have valued for years are cut Dr Jonathan Fielden, of the BMA

They go a step further than the much-criticised independent sector treatment centres as they have the ability to carry out diagnostic tests.

Primary care trusts in Cumbria and Lancashire are carrying out an eight- week consultation over the centres which will be run by private firms, but paid for out of the NHS purse.

The two preferred bidders which have been chosen are Netcare and Care UK.

It comes as the NHS attempts to meet the government's 18-week treatment target by the end of 2008.

At the moment, all patients are seen within six months but this does not include the time it takes from seeing a GP to getting diagnosed, which it is estimated can be as long as the wait for treatment.

The eight private centres aim to speed up this process by carrying out the diagnosis and treatment assessments in one go.

If only minor treatment is required, the centres will have the ability to carry that out as well.

If not, they will refer on to the appropriate community or hospital services.

The theory is that as the local hospital will be freed from this assessment and diagnostic process - only a third of patients referred to hospitals as outpatients end up being given treatment - they will have
more time to carry out treatments.

Mike Farrar, chief executive of NHS North West, said: "The centres are not a replacement for hospital services, rather they will let the hospitals concentrate more on what they do best - treating those who
need immediate care.

"Neither will they reduce the volume of work done at local hospitals. Achieving the 18 week target will mean more work for the hospital trusts and therefore more income to support more NHS services."

But the British Medical Association has criticised the plans.

Dr Jonathan Fielden, chairman of the BMA's consultants committee, said: "These proposals could represent a significant threat to local NHS hospitals.

"When work goes to the private sector, they lose income.

"If hospital units become unviable, NHS capacity is wasted, jobs are lost, and services that patients have valued for years are cut.

"Unless they are carefully integrated, and local clinicians engaged, the number of specialties and cases involved means that core NHS work is likely to be hit, rather than surplus capacity being created.

And he added the public consultation in Lancashire and Cumbria was clearly "on the location of CATS - not on the real issue, which is why the NHS, rather than profit-making companies, can't be given the chance to further cut waiting times".

It is envisaged the centres will be up and running by the end of the summer.

6. SCHOOLS HAVE NO WAY TO CHECK CRIMINAL RECORDS OF FOREIGN TEACHERS

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=429094&in_page_id=1770

The Home Office faced a fresh row today when it emerged that London’s schools have no means of checking criminal records of some foreign teachers.

The Daily Mail's sister paper, the Evening Standard, has learned that Britain has formal arrangements to check the backgrounds of prospective teachers from only 17 countries worldwide.

For the other 176 nationalities from across the globe, the Department for Education and Skills’ advice to schools is to simply “take extra care” in checking the references of foreign applicants for teaching posts.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis today seized on the revelation as the latest proof that the Government was failing to protect the public.

London’s schools are a particular cause for concern because they rely heavily on overseas teachers and in some areas supply staff are almost exclusively from abroad.

One head teacher in the capital has warned in the past that if foreign teachers were banned from working, half of the capital’s schools would have to close.

The lack of checks has emerged as part of the wider controversy over a Home Office failure to put British criminals’ overseas convictions on the national police database. The department’s most senior civil servant admitted last night that it had “fallen short” in telling ministers of a backlog of 27,000 cases that were missing from the computer files, with 540 for serious or violent offences.

But the problem has also now exposed what the Tories called a “big hole” in the system of checking foreign nationals who had committed crimes abroad but still wanted to work in the UK.

Despite tightening rules for British teachers last year, the DfES points out that if an applicant has never worked in the UK, checks by the Criminal Records Bureau are pointless.

Similarly, the applicant will not show up on List 99, a database of those who should be barred from working with children.

The CRB operates an Overseas Information Service but updated guidance issued in 2004 states that “at present the service is limited to 17 countries”.

MrDavis said: “The point about databases is that they should be complete. It takes one mistake to result in a tragedy.”

The DfES said that schools should try to obtain “certificates of good conduct from relevant embassies or police forces”.

.