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1 Mar, 9 tweets, 3 min read
Conservative former International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell on c4 news on the Yemen aid cut: “it’s a very dark day for a country which has been a poverty superpower.”

Says wider UK development cuts will lead to 100,000s of avoidable deaths, many of them children.
“To cut aid to Yemen, the poorest country by miles in the M East, in the middle of a pandemic when we know they are famine conditions and famine is stalking the land, with 4 million, many children as a result of this decision continue the agonising process of starving to death.”
Extraordinary moment that a Conservative former Cabinet Minister saying a decision of his own government will lead to more deaths of children in Yemen.
FCDO minister James Cleverly confirmed earlier that UK aid to Yemen is falling this year. He said UK aid would be “at least” £87m. It was £160m in 2020 & £200m in 2019. This is at the same time the UN is seeking a total of $3.85bn (£2.76bn) in assistance for the country.
Former Foreign Sec Jeremy Hunt: “The timing is inexplicable with the UN warning only last week that Yemen faces the worst famine the world has seen for decades”.
Facts on Yemen

🇾🇪 UN calls Yemen “the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis”
🇾🇪 million children under the age of five are severely malnourished
🇾🇪 million children displaced
🇾🇪 Polio outbreak last year
🇾🇪 million suffering from cholera
🇾🇪 45% medical facilities in operation
For a sense of what’s involved here, watch this remarkable piece of storytelling from my colleague @OrlaGuerin.
Shadow International Development Sec @PreetKGillMP asks @DominicRaab to lay out spending allocations in full. Asks him what his priorities are “because clearly it is not preventing 100,000s of Yemenis from going hungry and starving to death.”
Raab replies that Gill is “blithely” dismissing the contribution the government is making and that the £87m will help the situation a great deal.

But the fact that (as the govt says) £87m will help a lot logically means £200m (that the UK pledged last year) would help far more.

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More from @lewis_goodall

Lewis Goodall Profile picture
1 Mar
NEW: Big news in France. Former President Nicolas Sarkozy has been found guilty of corruption and sentenced to 3 years in prison (2 years suspended).
It’s the second time a former president of the fifth republic has been given a sentence.
Reports say Sarkozy will serve at least the first part of his sentence at home wearing an electronic tag.

An extraordinary and humiliating end to his political life. When elected he said he wanted to be France’s Thatcher,the Republic’s great reformer. Instead he is in disgrace.
Read 4 tweets
Lewis Goodall Profile picture
25 Feb
I've been in touch with the Department for Transport about this. I've asked them repeatedly (as a point of information) to deny that they've cut TfN's core budget by 40%. They've not done so.
They did say: "This Government is absolutely committed to delivering the upgrades to level-up the North, building on more than £29 billion invested in transport across the north since 2010..."
“In 2021/22 TfN have access to over £70m of funding, the majority of which will help develop proposals for Northern Powerhouse Rail. There is also a significant proportion of money remaining in their reserves, enabling them to carry out all their statutory functions effectively.”
Read 5 tweets
Lewis Goodall Profile picture
25 Feb
Gavin Williamson updating the Commons on exam plans for this summer

Says the consultation had more than 100,000 responses

Says the government and Ofqual “have considered all of them very carefully”
“The most important thing we can do is to make sure the system is fair. Fair to every student...students will receive a grade based on what they were taught not on what they have missed.”
“Teachers can choose a range of evidence to support their assessments including coursework, in class assessments and the use of optional questions provided by exams boards and we will of course give guidance on how to do this fairly and consistently.”

That’s...going to be tough.
Read 26 tweets
Lewis Goodall Profile picture
24 Feb
Never mind unsatisfactory PPE last year, I've interviewed a carer in Walsall for tonight's Newsnight who says that even today PPE in the care sector isn't sufficiently high quality and can be inconsistent.

She also says lack of sick pay is still causing problems
Zoe says there's "still people who have got one mask for a whole day or who are running out of gloves and having a few shifts where there's no gloves...the PPE that we do have is in no way consistent at all..."
...So some deliveries will be really good quality. Sometimes we'll get aprons that rip as soon as you touch them, we'll get gloves that have holes in."

Her PPE is the same type of stuff that they had before the pandemic. Says the problem is especially acute in domiciliary care.
Read 8 tweets
Lewis Goodall Profile picture
23 Feb
Matt Hancock said today "we never had a national outage of PPE"

Yet on 17th April govt felt the need to issue guidance which said PPE could be reused: "Compromise is needed to optimise supply in times of extreme shortages."

Also said lab coats could be used if gowns ran out.
If MH means the country didn't completely run out of PPE well of course, that's literally true- but was never going to happen and not the metric against which the period should be adjudged.

There was, however, extreme national (not just local) pressure as this guidance attests.
And if there wasn't a "national outage" (as I say, an interesting choice of words), why did areas of the wider care network, like hospices, struggle so severely and rely on their community hand making them goggles and gowns?

Read 4 tweets
Lewis Goodall Profile picture
23 Feb
Sturgeon says that although there's been a very large reduction in infections in Scotland since the lockdown, that's been slowing and last week there was almost no reduction at at all. Says R might not be much below 1: "It would likely not take v much easing to push it above 1."
FM says that Scottish govt intends to publish a more detailed plan in mid-March on sequencing of reopening. Today is about "overall approach"
FM:"If all goes according to plan we will move back to a levels system from the first week of April"

Says she hopes all parts of Scotland to move out of Level 4 into Level 3 and some places less depending on infection rate

So Scotland moving back to tiers/levels and England not
Read 8 tweets

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