JaffnaCakes

Alistair Darling, the Labour chancellor who steered the UK through the 2008 financial crisis, has died aged 70, a family spokesperson has said.

Following Labour's landslide 1997 election win, Lord Darling served in cabinet for 13 years under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

He also led the Better Together campaign in 2014's Scottish independence referendum.

The ex-Edinburgh MP died after a short spell in hospital, his family said.

The Prime Minister has announced that he will introduce emergency legislation to send those who come to our country illegally to Rwanda. I welcome his decision, as do, I’m sure, the clear majority of the British public.

The immediate issue before us is whether the Government can send illegal migrants to a particular country in Africa.

The more fundamental question is where does ultimate authority in the United Kingdom sit? Is it with the British people and their elected representatives in Parliament? Or is it with the vague, shifting, and unaccountable concept of “international law"?

There is no reason to criticise the judges. They have merely interpreted the law of the land. The fault lies with the politicians who have failed to introduce legislation that would guarantee delivery of our Rwanda partnership.

Now is not the time to waste energy on a post-mortem of how we got here. What matters for those of us who believe in effective immigration control is how to move forward. This requires honesty.

There must be an end to spin

Above all, it demands of the Government an end to self-deception and spin. There must be no more magical thinking. Tinkering with a failed plan will not stop the boats.

Amending our agreement with Rwanda and converting it into a treaty, even with explicit obligations on non-refoulement, will not solve the fundamental issue.

We lost in the Supreme Court because the judges determined that Rwanda cannot be trusted to fulfil the commitments we asked of them on non-refoulement, not because those promises were embodied in one type of legal instrument, a memorandum, rather than another, a treaty.

To try and deliver flights to Rwanda under any new treaty would still require going back through the courts, a process that would likely take at least another year.

That process could culminate in yet another defeat, on new grounds, or on similar grounds to Wednesday: principally, that judges can’t be certain Rwanda will abide by the terms of any new treaty.

Even if we won in the domestic court, the saga would simply relocate to Strasbourg where the European court would take its time deciding if it liked our laws.

That is why the plan outlined by the PM will not yield flights to Rwanda before an election if Plan B is simply a tweaked version of the failed Plan A For emergency legislation to achieve what the PM says he wants, Parliament needs to amend the Illegal Migration Act so that it meets these five tests:

1. The Bill must address the Supreme Court’s concerns regarding Rwanda

Parliament is entitled to assert that Rwanda is safe without making any changes to our Rwanda partnership. However, for substantive and presentational reasons, it would be preferable to amend that agreement to address issues identified by the judges. This could include embedding UK observers and independent reviewers of asylum decisions. It is less important whether these commitments are embodied in an amended memorandum or a new treaty. What is crucial is that they are practical steps to improve Rwanda’s asylum system. On the basis of these new commitments, Rwanda’s safety could be credibly confirmed on the face of the Bill.

2. The Bill must enable flights before the next general election

Legislation must therefore circumvent the lengthy process of further domestic litigation, to ensure that flights can take off as soon as the new Bill becomes law. To do this, the Bill must exclude all avenues of legal challenge. The entirety of the Human Rights Act and European Convention on Human Rights, and other relevant international obligations, or legislation, including the Refugee Convention, must be disapplied by way of clear “notwithstanding” clauses. Judicial Review, all common law challenges, and all injunctive relief, including the suspensive challenges available under the Illegal Migration Act must be expressly excluded. Individuals would, however, be given the chance to demonstrate that they had entered the country legally, were under 18, or were medically unfit to fly – but Home Office decisions on these claims could not be challenged in court.

3. Swift removal must mean swift removal

Those arriving illegally must be removed in a matter of days rather than months as under the Illegal Migration Act. This means amending the Act to ensure that removals to Rwanda are mandated under the duty to remove, with strict time limits. This will streamline the Home Office process as much as possible, so that the only Home Office decision is to determine whether an individual falls within the scheme or not.

4. Those arriving here illegally must be detained

Legal challenges to detention must be excluded to avoid burdening the courts, making it clear that detention is mandated until removal.

5. This must be treated as an emergency

The Bill should be introduced by Christmas recess and Parliament should be recalled to sit and debate it over the holiday period. There is no longer any chance of stopping the boats within the current legal framework.

Having committed to emergency legislation, the Prime Minister must now give Parliamentarians a clear choice: to either properly control illegal migration, or explain to the British people why they are powerless under international law and must simply accept ever greater numbers of illegal arrivals on these shores.

The status of the Lucy Letby inquiry, which will consider how a nurse was able to murder seven babies, has been upgraded to statutory. That is welcome news but, really, it should never have been in any doubt. Heinous attacks were committed against the most vulnerable patients in the care of the National Health Service. Managers at the Countess of Chester hospital were told by paediatricians that something sinister was going on.

A run-of-the-mill inquiry would not have been able to compel witnesses to give evidence under oath. For example, the former £175,000 per annum medical director, Ian Harvey, who has been accused of having “fobbed off” victims’ parents, would have been able to go on residing pleasantly at his French villa, glancing up from his glass of Malbec to issue the standard concerned platitudes. Ah yes, “open, inclusive and transparent”, the three monkeys – see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil – of the morally unaccountable NHS.

Former managers at the Countess of Chester who, according to consultant Dr Stephen Brearey, obliged him and other clinicians to attend mediation with a baby killer, should have no place to hide. But the remit of the inquiry must be far wider than merely adjudicating the bitter war of words between hospital executives and senior doctors.

What the Letby case has revealed is no less than the systematic and deliberate disenfranchisement of the medical profession. As one despairing consultant emailed: “The NHS ‘leadership’ is now staffed predominantly by over-promoted, under-qualified people, especially nurses, but also others with inadequate skills. Many are incompetent bullies (so many bully to hide their incompetence), part of a back-slapping self-congratulatory club which presides over a culture of ‘no bad news’.”

In other words, the brightest, most well-qualified members of staff have to answer to an elite class of numpties which has gained institutional and personal control of the system while rewarding itself with vast salaries, especially for failure. (In fact, technically you can’t really fail if you’re in NHS management; you’re often just moved to another important role where you can fail better.) Incredibly, Tony Chambers, the former CEO at Chester, went on to get three senior NHS jobs after presiding over the Letby calamity.

I asked a current member of staff at the Countess of Chester what Chambers was like. “Total gobshite,” he practically spat. That’s the technical term, I believe. “The number of clueless nonentities in senior positions in NHS trusts is unbelievable,” the medic continued. “They are obsessed with reputational management and preoccupy themselves with empire building, wasting time on the plethora of talking shops and obsess over bureaucracy and process to ensure that, under no circumstances, does anything get done. This all takes place alongside absurd gimmicks and virtue-signalling.”

Paediatricians raised concerns about an unusual number of babies dying on Letby’s shifts and nothing happened for three months. “That’s how they operate,” my source says. “Ask them what day is it tomorrow and they’ll come back to you in two years.”

NHS management is a cult, I have come to realise. They ruthlessly attack any heretics (aka doctors or nurses raising safety concerns) who dare to deviate from the theology of true believers. “They believe they are untouchable,” one doctor says, “because they think the public loves them and politicians daren’t do anything about NHS failure."

I am not easily shocked, but what I have found out since the Letby verdict about the way the NHS treats whistleblowers has shaken me to the core. One trust chief executive was heard boasting he had £1 million to spend “if consultants raise issues”. A former lawyer who used to work on clinical negligence claims for neonatal deaths and injuries, being brought against her firm’s main client, the NHS, said that cases were deliberately dragged out for as long as a decade with “both sides billing huge sums”. Grieving parents had to fight to get anywhere with discovery (the medical records paid for by you and me, the taxpayer).

“The sheer incompetence of the NHS staff was shocking,” recalls the lawyer, “and there was definitely a culture of cover up.”

How a nurse was able to get away with murdering at least seven babies at the Countess of Chester hospital is a grave matter for the forthcoming inquiry. None graver. But I have been given the names of numerous hospitals, all with equally awful management, where clinicians claim exactly the same thing could happen.

What kind of organisation gets away with an estimated 340,000 of its customers dying on a waiting list while spending millions of customers’ money making sure that failings and negligence never come to light?

Open, inclusive and transparent? Don’t make me laugh. It’s time to bring down the untouchable numptie class of the NHS. If its managers remain untouchable, how long before there’s another Lucy Letby?