Catch up on the latest political news from across Kent with Rob Bailey, joined by Labour Councillor Susan Beer and Tonbridge and Malling Conservative Patrick Lohlein.
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00:00 Welcome to the Kent Politics Show, live on KMTV. I'm Rob Bailey. The economy is shrinking,
00:29 debt is high and the NHS waiting lists are longer than ever. So perhaps it's no surprise
00:34 that Rishi Sunak has gambled his political future on solving the small boats crisis on
00:38 Kent's coastline. The PM survived a rupture within his own party this week with the support
00:43 of Ashford MP Damien Green and his One Nation caucus of moderate Tories. But where does
00:49 it leave his five pledges for 2023? Here to unpack that question with me are Tunbridge
00:54 and Morley Conservative Patrick Lowline and Labour's Susan Beer from Dover. Welcome both
01:00 of you. Susan, you're in Dover, obviously we can see you're there now. It's been a year
01:06 of political emphasis on Kent's coastline. We've heard endless talk about it. By the
01:11 end of this year, it will be about 30,000 people that have made a crossing and a very
01:15 stark reminder overnight that it isn't just numbers, that there is a tragedy behind every
01:20 one of these crossings, a life lost on the channel last night. From your point of view
01:25 in Dover, what does this issue, what impact does it have on a coastal community like yours?
01:31 And how has this kind of progressed this year, do you think?
01:35 Hello Rob, nice to be here, thanks. First of all, I have to say, while this is really
01:43 a very serious problem, it's not nearly as serious as the second one that you mentioned,
01:48 the hospital waiting list for example. I've recently been to an event where Ukrainian
01:55 families told me how marvellous and how valuable they found it to be hosted in the UK. Very
02:01 kind people putting them up, I know there's lots of people in Deel where I live where
02:06 people have been put up for the initial six months and then willingly hosted for longer.
02:12 It's marvellous the welcome we've given to the Ukrainians and isn't it a shame that a
02:17 few people take an opposite view for other kinds of refugees. I think it's true there
02:24 are fewer people arriving overall. I have to say that when I talk to people in our constituency
02:32 and say have you had any personal experiences, anything that's gone wrong in your life because
02:37 there are people arriving in small boats across the channel, I haven't had anybody say directly
02:41 well yes, you know, this happened to me, I couldn't get a job or you know, something
02:46 happened in the street that was because of these people visiting us. I do not believe
02:52 people have a personal experience of that as much as they do of, for example, our failure
02:58 of hospital and GP services at present. So it would have been nice if we didn't have
03:04 to start on this topic. I honestly think that Rishi Sunak is using it as a distraction tactic.
03:11 He's following on from what the press are doing. The press love scandal. They love dramatic
03:17 stories and if there's some fatalities they love it even more. I think it's all being
03:22 bigged up massively. It's serious but it's not universal. It doesn't affect most people
03:29 in the UK apart from the budget, the finance which has to accommodate people looking for
03:36 asylum and looking for somewhere to live.
03:39 Well of course we're going to talk about the NHS later on in the show but just for the
03:42 moment on Rwanda, Patrick, a distraction tactic. Do you think that Rishi Sunak is taking something
03:48 of a gamble, staking his political future on this issue with an election now not all
03:52 that far away?
03:53 It probably is a bit of a gamble, absolutely, and I think the slogan 'stop the boats' was
04:01 perhaps a bit of a bad choice but I do think it is a problem that does need addressing.
04:05 It is not as serious in the UK as it is in other countries in the world. It is a problem
04:09 that countries are having everywhere but something needs to be done. I personally don't think
04:14 the Rwanda policy is necessarily the best approach to deal with it but as everybody
04:21 says including James Cleverley, our Foreign Secretary, it is only part of the strategy.
04:25 However, it is what everybody is focusing on right now and I think that's a great shame
04:29 that the debate has just become about that aspect of the whole strategy rather than the
04:34 whole thing which includes the deal with Albania that Rishi Sunak managed to secure this year
04:41 which actually reduced the small boat crossings by one third which is very substantial. So,
04:47 yes, it is a great pity that the debate is purely on this one aspect of the whole issue.
04:53 Just thinking about the politics of this for a moment, it was a squeaky vote for Rishi
04:58 Sunak. Some people thought he might lose it earlier this week. He won it with the support
05:03 of the One Nation group of Conservatives led by Ashford's Damien Green. That's your wing
05:07 of the party effectively. They are not the kind of Conservatives that would naturally
05:12 normally support a policy like the Rwanda one, are they?
05:15 True.
05:16 Is there a game being played there?
05:17 I do believe there is a game being played, absolutely. The faction that is very, very
05:23 passionate about this issue is the other side. The so-called five families as they describe
05:29 themselves which are actually much smaller number than the One Nation group overall.
05:35 It's an issue that matters to them a lot. But all parties in this country are of need
05:40 coalitions between different groups. So, we have to work out some kind of a compromise.
05:47 I think the approach taken by the One Nation group that the bill has to be compatible with,
05:57 you know, has to be constitutional and compatible with international law, which by the way is
06:03 also a requirement of the Rwandan government to make the deal work. I think that's a very,
06:08 you know, that's a, it's a best way forward, I think.
06:12 Susan, the MP for Dover.
06:13 I just say, I think probably it was the least worst option that they decided to stick with
06:19 because they knew that they'd have to have another prime minister and the queue is getting
06:22 shorter and shorter to be prime minister for this party, especially with what's looming
06:28 next year. So, they took the least worst option in that sense that they just had to choose
06:32 something which would keep him in power rather than something which was clearly the best
06:37 choice and had a really good principle behind it.
06:39 Well, I mean, in politics, unfortunately, because it is about compromise, the least
06:44 worst option is often what is taken. So, yeah, that's, and often there isn't necessarily
06:51 a best option. We don't really know what, we don't really know what's going to work
06:54 as a deterrent. The idea is that there should be a deterrent in addition to other things
06:59 which are very important. I mean, the real way to stop refugees coming over in small
07:04 boats is to stabilise those countries. Most people don't want to leave their homes where
07:08 they grew up, where they've got family, where their ancestors are buried. They don't do
07:13 this by choice.
07:14 Of course, the Conservative government is not particularly keen on expanding aid budgets,
07:17 is it? Which is how we would do that.
07:19 Well, that's not quite true. We did have to cut the aid budget, which I regret because
07:24 I think that stabilising these countries and creating opportunity in these countries is
07:28 one of the most important ways forward. But we are also dealing with that not just in
07:33 the aid front but also on the trade front. So, by the way, we're doing more trade deals
07:38 with different countries around the world and we're creating opportunities in these
07:42 countries and making it more attractive to people to stay there. I think that's really
07:46 the overall strategy that will work in the end. But in addition to that, there is this
07:51 idea that it should be deterrent. I personally don't think it's necessarily going to work,
07:57 but a lot of people want to try it. So, well, that's what we're going to be doing. We're
08:02 trying it out and seeing if it works or not. Because what else can you do in terms of deterrence?
08:08 Susan, I wanted to ask you.
08:09 We've got a couple more things. We've got a couple more things we can do. One is that
08:16 we can allow people when they have potentially left or want to leave the country of their
08:22 birth or their residence, we can allow them to apply for asylum in the nearest safe country.
08:28 We have three, I believe, three different countries where people are allowed to apply
08:32 for asylum. Syrians, Afghans, Ukrainians, I think that's it at the moment. But there
08:38 are people from all over the world that think they have a good reason to claim asylum who
08:43 should be allowed to claim it. If they're not successful, well, there's new things that
08:49 need to be done. But if you can't even claim until you set foot on British soil, and I
08:55 have to remind people it's not illegal to enter the country as long as you notify the
09:00 authorities straight away, if they can't even claim before they get here, then many, many
09:05 people will take this really awful route, will put themselves, their families at risk
09:11 and will bolster the income of these awful wicked gangs. So the five point plan that
09:15 Labour has is really well worth looking at. And I would recommend it to people.
09:21 Well, Patria, the interesting thing with Conservative moderates backing the Rwanda plan and helping
09:25 Rishi get this through, some of the non-moderate Conservatives were actually on the other side
09:30 of this argument. Natalie Elphick, the MP for Dover, wrote in the Daily Express at the
09:34 weekend that the Rwanda plan is completely wrong and we should be working with France,
09:38 which is essentially what Keir Starmer's plan is. A rather peculiar situation that the Conservative
09:43 party is arguing against itself from all angles on this.
09:46 It is rather peculiar the situation right now. I agree that we need to work with other
09:50 countries and especially France, our nearest neighbour, of course, absolutely. But how
09:58 much can you actually do? The French have a lot more refugees than we do. So for them,
10:08 why should they stop them coming over? Something we really have to, you know, honest question
10:12 to ask. Would you restock people, refugees leaving the UK if they wanted to go to France?
10:17 I mean, it's a very, you know, it's a question that needs to be asked. So I think we should
10:22 explore all of these options. And I agree that there should be safe, you know, safer
10:26 routes, ways for people to apply to make these claims. And then, but we also then need some
10:32 kind of deterrent that not everybody can apply, not everybody can come here. So there is no
10:37 easy answer.
10:38 But ultimately, across the political spectrum, people would want tragedies like last night's
10:41 tragedy to stop happening. Do you have confidence that next year we will see a reduction in
10:47 that kind of crossing, those deaths?
10:50 Well, we've already seen, as I just said, we've already seen them this year.
10:54 But it's still, it'll be the second highest year of crossings on record, even though it's
10:58 a third down from last year. Last year was an extraordinary figure. It's still a lot
11:01 of people, isn't it?
11:02 Yes, it is. Absolutely. But in the overall scheme of things, it is not that big. If you
11:07 look at, like I say, if you look at other countries, they're actually tiny, these numbers.
11:11 So it is a worldwide problem. It's a big, well, especially for Western countries. And
11:16 we also have to admit that it is something that's been weaponised by Putin deliberately.
11:21 You know, they're driving, he's driving refugees, you know, over the border into European countries,
11:27 you know, to create trouble in our society. So it's not an easy answer.
11:32 For more reason to get good, reliable asylum application schemes in countries in Europe
11:39 when they arrive. If we had those schemes run by the British government, people wanted
11:44 to come to Britain, that would be a really helpful solution.
11:47 Sorry, Susan, when we come back, we'll find out which Kent hospital ranks among the worst
11:51 in the country for waiting times in A&E. Stay with us.
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15:10 Welcome back to the Kent Politics show live on KMTV.
15:13 Next, it's the pledge that Rishi Sunak may wish to forget.
15:17 Record numbers of patients in Kent hospitals are waiting 12 hours or more for treatment in A&E.
15:22 One man was forced to sleep on the floor while waiting 45 hours to be admitted to a ward.
15:27 The number of patients waiting more than 12 hours for a bed grew beyond 2,000
15:32 in October this year. So what happened to cutting NHS waiting times?
15:36 Still here with me are Labour's Susan Beer from Dover and Conservative Patrick Lowline from Borough Green.
15:41 Welcome back. Is it the pledge? He doesn't talk about it that often, Rishi Sunak, anymore.
15:46 Is it the pledge to cut waiting lists? Do you think he'd rather he never made that pledge to begin with?
15:51 I'd rather he'd never made that pledge because, let's be honest, fixing the issues of the NHS is a really, really complicated thing.
15:59 And it's not something that the government can just direct people to go and do, as any government, I think, would find out.
16:08 It is very hard. And, well, we've got an ageing population.
16:13 We have a shrinking workforce. So these challenges are at a very, very deep level.
16:20 And also the other problem is, of course, the way that hospitals are managed.
16:25 We've not automated very early. A lot of, and if you actually talk to doctors and nurses,
16:31 a lot of their frustration is about being bogged down in paperwork and that they don't really have enough time.
16:36 They don't spend enough time with patients. And I think we do need more reforms on that.
16:41 But I, yeah, like I said, I think it's very difficult for the government to just go and go.
16:47 You can't just tell people what to do because these things are very difficult.
16:50 I've worked in hospital myself, so I understand how difficult the situation is.
16:55 Susan, there were some new figures this week, particularly stark for East Kent.
16:59 It's the seventh, has the seventh highest number of patients waiting at least 12 hours for a bed.
17:05 In East Kent, only 49% of patients are seen within 18 weeks for treatment in hospital.
17:11 The national target is that 92% of patients should be. What's going wrong, do you think?
17:18 These are macroeconomic problems which are happening on our doorstep.
17:23 I have got personal experience of this, having sat with my elderly mother many hours at a time,
17:29 waiting for something which was a fairly simple, either a judgment or a checkup or a small bit of treatment.
17:36 It all goes back to not having enough qualified, either specialists in hospitals or A&E specialists or GPs,
17:45 because the feed-in to A&E comes because people can't go to their GP within 48 hours like we used to be able to.
17:52 We don't have enough GPs because a great many are retiring or leaving because pay is better elsewhere.
17:59 If we had a cycle of government which was reliably looking forward 15 years at a time,
18:07 some of this could have been catered for because right at the beginning of it,
18:11 if we look for the origins of the problem, it's about how many people are getting trained to go into medical professions.
18:18 There are not enough GPs because 15 years ago, nobody sat down and said,
18:23 well, actually, we're going to have a huge dearth of GPs in 15 or 20 years' time when people retire.
18:28 Had they opened up new medical schools 10 years ago when they finally had time to think about it,
18:34 we would have a stream of new GPs coming on now.
18:37 There would be enough GPs for everyone to get an appointment when they're needed.
18:40 People wouldn't be flooding to A&E with things which could be fixable.
18:44 There's loads of different approaches going on as to how to solve the problem.
18:48 For example, we've got a really good urgent care service in deal in our local hospital,
18:54 which used to be a cottage hospital, and it does all kinds of minor injuries in a really good way
19:00 so that people don't have to travel either to Margate or to Ashford or to Canterbury.
19:05 We don't have a major hospital in our district at all.
19:09 So it's about long term planning. It's about not thinking about well, where we're going to be in three years' time.
19:15 A lack of long term planning.
19:16 I'd agree with most of that, but I would add it goes much, much further.
19:20 As an example, in 2009, I sat in A&E for six hours with my son, who was five or six years old at the time,
19:29 with his face all smashed up and bleeding and then it all got scarred up.
19:32 And it was horrible because I could have, I would have cleaned it myself if I'd known that he wouldn't be looked after.
19:37 And they actually forbade me to do anything once we were in the hospital.
19:41 But I'd agree, yes, this is the kind of thing that does need long term planning.
19:45 I mean, when I studied at university in the 90s, we learned about demography,
19:50 how that is going to be one of this big force that is we're going to have this ageing population
19:55 and that we will have a lot, you know, older people need to go to hospital more.
19:59 Yes. And it wasn't planned, but it goes back much longer.
20:03 So it's not something you just blame the Conservatives for. It's definitely something that Labour also didn't.
20:08 People watching this at home will see a Labour politician, a Conservative politician here, both saying, yes, it's not working properly.
20:14 Now, we've got a general election next year. We're going to go into that with both parties effectively
20:19 not able to spend the kind of money to fix the problems that you've described here.
20:23 Is that, I mean, Keir Starmer's not going to be able to throw money at the NHS, is he?
20:29 It's not about throwing money at it now. It's about like Lord Patrick's already mentioned, using technology where you can.
20:36 We've seen the beginnings of it lately where people are being urged to consider where they should go for treatment,
20:43 what they should expect, who can help them. This needs to be taken much further.
20:48 Things like triage. You shouldn't have to sit in a row with other people, sick people,
20:53 for three hours before somebody finds out whether you need something, doing rapidly or not.
20:57 It's all about using the service wisely as well as enhancing where necessary.
21:04 But it's such a big problem. I'm very, very concerned that in the end we'll end up with a two tier system.
21:10 I travel to the States quite frequently and I think it's a dreadful position where those who can afford it
21:17 can get their insurance or can pay privately. And a substantial portion of the population,
21:23 not the majority, but a substantial portion, live in fear of getting sick so they can't work
21:29 or actually getting fatal illnesses which they simply can't get treatment for because they're not on some list somewhere.
21:35 We don't want to be like that. Neither do we want to have half the population paying for private treatments
21:42 while the other half has to rely on a second hand in-house service which is left.
21:45 Very quickly Patrick, is that what's going to happen under the Conservatives?
21:48 No, not at all. Nobody's looking at the American model. There are plenty of other interesting models we can look up
21:54 in European countries which I would personally like to explore more where you've got,
22:00 rather than paying so much in tax to the government, you actually pay a proper national insurance
22:05 that is then mainly about the healthcare or you actually have your health insurance and that is compulsory.
22:10 The state pays it for children up to the age of 18. It pays it for when you're unemployed.
22:16 Then it covers it for those gaps, things like that. So there are other options.
22:21 But then to be honest, let's look at those other countries, those European countries.
22:24 They also have very similar problems. This is happening everywhere.
22:27 It's not just in Europe as well. It's also happening in Asia. Ageing population is the main problem there.
22:32 And the other problem is that it takes such a long time to train a doctor.
22:36 It's not something you can do overnight. It takes years and years and seven years or so.
22:41 Let's leave that there. Finally tonight, should schools in Kent talk to pupils about gender identity and sexuality?
22:48 A school in Mepham near Gravesend was due to trial speaking to children aged 10 and 11 about terms like
22:53 transgender and gender neutral. But it was forced to U-turn after concerns were raised by parents.
22:59 Patrick, should children be spoken about, should they find out about terms like that at age 10, at age 11?
23:07 Do you think that that's an appropriate thing to happen?
23:09 I think it should be included in the curriculum as part of the biology classes when you're learning about sex in general.
23:17 It is something you could include in that. But I certainly don't think it should be this decision of a head teacher
23:23 to do autonomously because it creates a lot of problems, potential problems.
23:29 And I'm not just thinking here of the children and their parents, but I'm also thinking of the teachers.
23:34 How do teachers respond? If there's no training, there's no guidance, how do they deal with a situation like this?
23:41 Let's say a child comes to a teacher and says, "I don't feel I'm a boy, I don't feel I'm a girl, but I don't know what to do.
23:50 I don't want to tell my parents. I'm afraid my dad might hit me or something." What should the teacher do?
23:55 The teacher has a responsibility to safeguard the interests of the child, but they're also obliged to talk to the parents,
24:02 not keep secrets from the parents. So there's some very, very difficult, complicated issues around this that need to be resolved.
24:10 And that's why the government should publish its guidance first. And it is doing a consultation on this right now.
24:15 And I think that no school should be doing this kind of thing until that guidance is published, because we saw in Scotland...
24:20 I want to bring Susan in. Children are being exposed to these ideas. They're meeting people.
24:26 They're hearing this language in culture. Shouldn't they be given the tools to understand and to navigate that properly?
24:35 I'm sorry, they're not being exposed to things. They're living with things.
24:39 There are many families that are not standard mummy, daddy and two kids or a dog.
24:48 It's about, you know, do you need the terminology? Well, I'm not sure.
24:53 I've just been doing some basic research and it's confirmed what I knew already, which is that children from the age of three are aware of gender.
25:02 They're aware that, you know, cultural, cultural behaviours are tied into different genders as well.
25:09 We've all been in shops where children go, oh, I can't have that. It's pink.
25:14 Or, you know, can I have a train? No, you're a girl. You can't have one.
25:17 That's historically how it used to be. And I'm so glad it's not like that anymore.
25:22 People are already living lives which are not standard black and white boy and girl.
25:29 And children are observing those lives being lived. Lots of different styles of families.
25:35 If you want to give them the terminology, yes, I think 10 or 11 is a good time to learn.
25:40 I have a nine year old grandson. He's already well aware of people being different in all kinds of ways.
25:47 He's autistic. He actually knows what that means, understands it.
25:52 And he would grasp this one as well without any difficulty.
25:55 And the lovely thing about children that age is that they're much more accepting than those of us who've spent 50 years being trained into,
26:02 oh, you're a boy, you're a girl, you have to have a label.
26:04 I'm afraid I have to break off there. I'm so sorry we don't have more time to discuss that one.
26:09 But before we go, this Sunday, you can catch an exclusive 24 minute interview with the leader of Kent County Council, Roger Goff.
26:16 He discusses how close Kent is to bankruptcy and how KCC is responding to Ofsted concerns about education for children with special educational needs.
26:25 It's part of our series where we interview Kent's most powerful politicians.
26:28 You can see it at 1 p.m. on Sunday, the 17th and 10, 15 a.m. on Monday morning.
26:34 But thank you so much to both of my guests for joining us tonight.
26:38 We'll be back very, very soon.
26:40 But you can find more politics, news analysis and opinion by hitting the politics tab on Kent online and stay with us for Kent tonight with all today's news.
26:49 We'll see you soon.
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