Record numbers waiting more than 12 hours in A&E in England as non-urgent waiting list figure falls slightly – live | Politics

Suella Braverman, the home secretary, has admitted that “a small minority” of foreigners allowed to stay in the UK under a so-called “golden visa” scheme for the super-rich were likely to be criminal or corrupt.

She also said the scheme attracted “a disproportionate number of applicants” from countries where there was a high money-laundering risk.

Braverman made the disclosures in a Commons written statement summarising the findings of a review of the “golden visa” system, which was originally launched in 2008 and finally axed in February last year, when Russia was poised to launch its fresh invasion of Ukraine. Russians were some of the principal beneficiaries of “golden visas”.

Under the scheme, foreigners with a substantial sum (originally £1m, later £2m) available to invest in the UK could get a tier 1 (investor) visa. After the Salisbury poisonings in 2018, Amber Rudd, the then home secretary, announced a review of who had got visas under the scheme up until 2015, when the rules were tightened.

Braverman said 6,312 investors and their dependents got visas under the scheme between 2008 and 2015. She went on:

The review of cases identified a small minority of individuals connected to the tier 1 (investor) visa route that were potentially at high risk of having obtained wealth through corruption or other illicit financial activity, and/or being engaged in serious and organised crime.

I should stress that the work carried out only implies that a particular individual potentially poses a risk of having connections to criminality; it does not mean guilt has been proven.

Braverman said the information was being shared with law enforcement authorities, and that 10 oligarchs who had received visas throught this route had been sanctioned over the war in Ukraine.

She also said the review showed “a disproportionate number of applicants” for these visas came from countries where there was a high risk of cross-border money laundering, and there was evidence of some “golden visa” applicants “seeking out and exploiting financial institutions that had the weakest customer due diligence controls”.

In future, visas will not be offered just on the basis of wealth, she said.

The Home Office has found that there are inherent difficulties in an investment-based immigration route based on passive wealth, both in terms of security and economic value. I am determined this government will ensure such mistakes are not repeated.

PA Media has more on what the NHS England figures say about ambulance response times in December.

• The average response time in December for ambulances in England dealing with the most urgent incidents, defined as calls from people with life-threatening illnesses or injuries, was 10 minutes and 57 seconds, NHS England figures show. PA says:

This is the longest on record.

The target standard response time for urgent incidents is seven minutes.

• Ambulances in England took an average of one hour, 32 minutes and 54 seconds in December to respond to emergency calls such as burns, epilepsy and strokes. PA says: “This is the longest on record and well above the target of 18 minutes.”

• Response times for urgent calls, such as late stages of labour, non-severe burns and diabetes, averaged four hours, 19 minutes and 10 seconds – again, the longest on record.

But there is a very modest reduction in the number of people waiting for non-urgent hospital treatments, the NHS England figures shows.

This is convenient for Rishi Sunak, because he made getting NHS waiting lists down one of his five promises to the nation in his speech last week. But the fact that the corner has been turned so quickly also highlights how unambitious the promise was. Waiting lists were expected to start falling this year. Sunak did not make any specific pledges about A&E, where the situation is more grim. (See 10.01am.)

PA Media has some of the top lines.

An estimated 7.19 million people were waiting to start treatment at the end of November, NHS England said.

This is down from 7.21 million in October, which was the highest number since records began in August 2007.

last month the same figures showed numbers still going up.

• An estimated 406,575 people in England had been waiting more than 52 weeks to start routine hospital treatment at the end of November, PA reports. It says:

This is down from 410,983 at the end of October and is the first month-on-month fall since February last year.

The government and NHS England have set the ambition of eliminating all waits of more than a year by March 2025.

• Some 1,423 people in England are estimated to have been waiting more than two years to start routine hospital treatment at the end of November, PA reports. It goes on:

This is down slightly from 1,907 at the end of October and is well below the peak of 23,778 in January 2022.

The government and NHS England set the ambition to eliminate all waits of more than two years by July 2022, except when it is the patient’s choice or for complex cases requiring specialist treatment.

The lastest NHS England performance data is out, and the figures show A&E waits at a record high, PA Media reports. It says:

• A record 54,532 people waited more than 12 hours in A&E departments in England last month from a decision to admit to actually being admitted, the NHS said.

On Tuesday Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow work and pensions secretary, gave a speech announcing plans to get more sick or long-term unemployed people into the labour market. One of his proposals was for people who return to work to be able to return to the benefits they were on, if the job does not work out, without having to go through the complicated benefits assessment process all over again. This would remove a concern that discourages people from applying for work in the first place.

Our report of the speech is here, and the text of the speech is here.

This morning the Times has splashed on a story saying Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, is planning something similar. It says details will be set out in a health and disability white paper before the spring budget, but someone has been keen to give a detailed briefing on the plans.

In their story Chris Smyth and Steven Swinford report:

People will be allowed to keep claiming sickness benefits after returning to work and will be offered tax breaks for getting jobs, under plans to boost employment.

A reform of disability benefits is likely to scrap a “perverse” assessment system, which ministers think encourages people to prove they are too ill to work, in an effort to reverse a rise in the number of people not looking for jobs …

People claiming employment and support allowance and universal credit who are judged as having limited capability for work are reluctant to look for a job for fear they will lose the payments, and officials are trying to design a system that does not leave claimants concerned about being judged capable of any employment. It has yet to be decided when benefits might be withdrawn once a claimant has found work. A system similar to the tapering of universal credit as people earn more is being considered.

The two plans are not identical (the government’s sounds more generous, although without the detail is it impossible to tell), but Ashworth has accused Stride of “stealing” his policy.

In truth, the government has been looking at this issue for some time and it is not likely that Stride only started work on this after Ashworth gave his speech. But, equally, it is hard to believe the policy would have been on the front page of the Times this morning if Ashworth published his ideas earlier this week.

Opposition parties get criticised when they do have policies. But if they announce a policy that is sensible and popular, there is a risk it will get pinched.

Good morning. Britain has now been legally out of the EU for almost three years, and practically out of the EU (following the end of the transition period) for two years. Increasingly, people view this as a mistake. Here is a graph from the What UK Thinks website showing what has happened to the polling since 2016 on the question was Britain right or wrong to leave. The green line represents wrong.

If you look at the graph on the What UK Thinks website, you can read the results of all 241 polls on this it has tracked.

This is not something that the leaders of both main parties are keen to talk about. Rishi Sunak voted for Brexit not primarily because he wanted to end free movement, a logical reason for voting leave, but because he thought Brexit would in time be good for trade and economic growth, which is increasingly looking like a colossal misjudgment. It is obvious why he is keen to avoid the subject. Keir Starmer fought against Brexit tenaciously, but he is not particularly keen on discussing the subject either. Labour got hammered in 2019 by being seen as on the wrong side of public opinion on Brexit, and the party has (probably quite rightly) concluded that there is nothing voters hate more than being told they got it wrong.

But tonight Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, is going to step into this argument in a speech at the Mansion House in London, some extracts from which have been released in advance. London voted remain, and so, unlike Starmer, can speak out on this without worrying about alienating his electoral base. But he is going to make two arguments that will stir things up a bit in the party.

I simply can’t keep quiet about the immense damage Brexit is doing.

Ministers seem to have developed selective amnesia when it comes to one of the root causes of our problems.

Brexit can’t be airbrushed out of history or the consequences wished away.

In this quote he refers to “ministers”, but his comment clearly applies to Labour too. Last month Starmer was criticised for telling the Today programme that rejoining the single market would not boost growth. (Economists are almost unanimous in saying it would boost growth, but in the interview Starmer elaborated on his initial unequivocal answer and said the UK could only rejoin the single market after “years of wrangling”, which would create uncertainty.)

After two years of denial and avoidance, we must now confront the hard truth: Brexit isn’t working.

It’s weakened our economy, fractured our union and diminished our reputation. But, crucially, not beyond repair.

We need greater alignment with our European neighbours – a shift from this extreme, hard Brexit we have now to a workable version that serves our economy and people.

That includes having a pragmatic debate about the benefits of being a part of the customs union and the single market.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9am: Steve Barclay, the health secretary, holds a meeting with the BMA about the proposed strike by doctors.

9.30am: NHS England publishes its latest monthly performance figures.

11am: Keir Starmer visits Stormont for talks with the political parties in Northern Ireland. Leo Varadkar, the taoiseach (Irish PM) is also visiting Belfast today.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

At some point today the RMT and TSSA rail unions are also holding talks with the rail companies about a possible solution to the rail strikes.

And at some point later in the day Rishi Sunak is travelling to Scotland, where he has also got engagements tomorrow. He will be meeting Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, while he is there.

I’ll try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com