Letters: Stop paying out without result April 20, 2022 [Re: Deloitte wins £9m contract with government, April 12] Last week, Deloitte won a new £9m contract with the government, having previously won a £4.8m deal, for work on One Login – a type of digital identity system for across government services. Currently, around half of the 370 different services on gov.uk have their own [...]
Explainer-in-brief: a social tariff to keep the heating on April 20, 2022 Energy bosses yesterday called for a social tariff to try and ease pressures on those hit hardest by the spike in energy prices. Such a plan would require the government to implement legislation for a tariff below the Ofgem price cap – which is subject to variability in energy prices. It would require each provider [...]
It’s time to salvage rational thought when we look at immigration plans for refugees April 20, 2022 Priti Patel’s proposals to send illegal immigrants to Rwanda has sent the usual suspects into a veritable lather. Not since the peak days of the pandemic, have we seen such a number of people indulge in virtue-signalling. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury has joined in, cornering the headlines on Easter Sunday. He seems to have [...]
Boris Johnson’s political survival could come at the cost of Britain’s rule of law April 20, 2022 Last week epitomised a favourite phrase of political pundits: it was a “bruising week” for the government. This one, so far, isn’t shaping up to be much better, after the Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis compared fines handed out to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor to speeding tickets. The partygate fines have been fraught [...]
Letters: Traders, what’s up with WhatsApp? April 19, 2022 [Re: Whatsppp messages expose “Essex Boys” traders to multi-million US lawsuit, April 14] The lawsuit against eight “Essex Boys” traders”, accused of colluding to drive the price of oil down in order to make huge profits selling futures contracts, reinforces how it is possible for any message to get out over Whatsapp. All recorded in [...]
Explainer-in-brief: Johnson gets his own version of Denmark’s Aliens Act April 19, 2022 Last week, Boris Johnson unveiled a deal with Rwanda on migration. People coming to the UK to claim asylum can now be relocated there while their request is processed. The UK is not the first country to do this. Last summer, Denmark passed the controversial Bill L 226 – the “Aliens Act” – that allows [...]
Could the NHS lose its halo as waitlists push people towards private practice? April 19, 2022 Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, NHS waiting times have increased sharply. In early 2020, there were about 4.4 million people on some kind of NHS waiting list. In early 2022, that figure had soared to 6.1 million. In early 2020, fewer than one in five patients waited for longer than 18 weeks. Now, [...]
A Welsh dream: we can fight international competition with more regional investment April 19, 2022 The City holds the crown as the world’s leading international financial centre. Yet, we can do more to power the UK’s regional commercial hubs. London attracts a diverse pool of financial and professional services talent from all around the globe, and provides unrivalled UK business access to world markets. Its natural impulse for collaboration is [...]
Companies relieved at unions waning power face a revived challenge in ERGs (no, not the Brexit kind) April 19, 2022 Companies are in the firing line for the way they treat their workers. The latest in the long list of companies who are experiencing the sharp end of worker anger is gaming giant Activision Blizzard whose workers are staging a virtual walkout in protest of the lifting of the vaccine mandate, which workers claim creates [...]
Easter Reads part two: the best in our opinion pages on politics, the economy and Ukraine April 18, 2022 The much debated Online Safety Bill was introduced on March 17. It means US tech giants finally have a set of standards to adhere to, to safeguard online communities. The piece of legislation, however, is a behemoth bill of confusion, writes Leah Montebello. It’s not clear yet what content counts as “harmful”, and who should [...]