‘Sunak has failed on the NHS’ says shadow health secretary as waiting list figures remain high – as it happened

• Labour’s health spokesperson Wes Streeting has said “Rishi Sunak has failed on the NHS” after new NHS England data showed that despite a slight fall, waiting lists are still higher than when Sunak promised to bring them down in January 2023.

• NHS England also missed its target on A&E waiting times, though the target on rapid cancer referrals was met for the first time.

• At the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, former Post office boss David Smith acknowledged the “substantial distress” he had caused after telling the Post Office staff the result of Seema Misra’s trial was “brilliant news”. Misra was handed a 15-month prison sentence when pregnant.

• Former Post Office chair Sir Michael Hodgkinson also offered an apology, but his words came after a passage in which Sam Stein KC skewered him for his lack of curiosity in the way in which the company he chaired was prosecuting people.

• UK taxpayers have paid out more than £34,000 to cover the cost of science secretary Michelle Donelan’s libel case, more than double the sum the government had previously admitted.

• The Unite union has announced that about 1,500 steelworkers at Tata based in Port Talbot and Newport Llanwern have voted to take industrial action over plans to close its blast furnaces with the loss of 2,800 jobs.

• Liberal Democrats’ deputy leader Daisy Cooper has called on the prime minister to kick Nick Fletcher out of the party after he appeared to endorse Reform UK MP Lee Anderson.

• Bus drivers will be officially getting younger under government plans to relax laws on 18-year-olds behind the wheel. The news comes on the day Labour’s shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh announced plans to end what she described as the “managed decline” of the deregulated bus network under successive Tory government.

Thank you for your comments today. I will be back with you tomorrow, slightly earlier than I had intended, as the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry is going to start earlier than scheduled. I will see you then, have a good evening.

This is a brutal end to Sir Michael Hodgkinson’s appearance at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry today. He has been given the chance to say some words, offering an apology, but the apology comes directly after a passage of questioning which exposed his total failure at the company to understand or show any interest in investigating what was going on.

Hodgkinson said:

I have been saddened and appalled at the evidence that’s come out over the last 15 years since I left, where so many innocent postmasters and mistresses were unfairly prosecuted under the Horizon system, and as a result suffered most dreadful experiences and devastating consequences not just for themselves, but for their families.

And I just want to put on record that I apologise unreservedly for the fact that while I was chairman of the Post Office, I did not discover the problems with the Horizon system. And all I can say is I’m very, very sorry for the misery that subsequently caused, so I apologise again unreservedly.

Asked by Sam Stein KC to what extent he was to blame, Hodgkinson feebly offered “I just don’t really know. I mean, what else could I have done? I mean, I just I tried to make sure the business was run as well as I possibly could.”

All those words followed a summing up Stein, during which Hodgkinson had to meekly concede every point. The KC put it to Hodgkinson:

Sir Michael, it comes to this. You knew that the Horizon system data was being used in the prosecution of subpostmasters.

You knew that there was an investigation department that was investigating subpostmasters.

At some point in your work as chair of the Post Office, you learn that subpostmasters are actually prosecuted by the Post Office.

And at no point did you directly try and find out exactly how the system worked in order to make sure that accurate data was used to prosecute subpostmasters. Is that about it?

During your time, Sir Michael, people were prosecuted. People were told to pay up funding shortfalls, because apparently it was their fault, because the Post Office didn’t look into it. That was during your time, Sir Michael.

Chair Wyn Williams has closed the inquiry for the day, and said they will endeavour to start a little earlier tomorrow at 9.30am as they have a significant amount to get through. Tomorrow it is Alan Cook, former managing director of Post Office Ltd, and Adam Crozier, former CEO of Royal Mail Group Ltd.

Having criticised the inquiry earlier for being a bit dull and technical about the corporate structure of the Post Office this afternoon, Sam Stein KC has now upped the pace considerably and has absolutely skewered Sir Michael Hodgkinson in a passage exposing his lack of curiosity about prosecutions by a company that he was chair of.

Stein, establishing that it was late in his term at the company that Hodgkinson even became aware that prosecutions were taking place, says:

Did you say to the people around you “Well, that’s a bit of a surprise. I’m a bit surprised that we prosecute our own staff. I’d like to know a bit more about it.”

Hodgkinson is forced to answer “No, I didn’t.”

Stein continues:

Well, you’ve suddenly been made aware that you’re the chair of a prosecution authority. That’s an unusual thing. What did you do to investigate that the Post Office was properly prosecuting its own members?

Hodgkinson replies “I didn’t do anything.”

Stein goes on to say:

So, by the time you learn that your chair of a prosecution authority, did you say to yourself, well, we need to make sure that these little people who work in the subpostmaster branches, that are running these places within the community are dealt with fairly, and properly by the Post Office of which I’m Chair. Did that occur to you?

Hodgkinson has struggled to answer during this passage, and been told to give vocal answers rather than just nodding or shaking his head for the purposes of the transcript.

Sam Stein KC has taken over questioning Sir Michael Hodgkinson at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry. Stein is acting on behalf of subpostmasters. He has set off at a brisk pace going through Hodgkinson’s work career, and after confirming each job, he is asked “Did it prosecute its own staff?”, and Stein has established that he had no experience of running a business which did so.

The Unite union has announced that about 1,500 steelworkers at Tata based in Port Talbot and Newport Llanwern have voted to take industrial action over plans to close its blast furnaces with the loss of 2,800 jobs.

Unite’s general secretary Sharon Graham said: “This is an historic vote. Not since the 1980s have steelworkers voted to strike in this way.

“This yes vote has happened despite Tata’s threats that if workers took strike action, enhanced redundancy packages would be withdrawn. Unite will be at the forefront of the fight to save steelmaking in Wales. We will support steel by all and every means.”

At the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, the former chair of the Post Office, Sir Michael Hodgkinson, has been explaining what a dire state the business was in at the time he was there. He said that if it had been a normal business, it would have folded. It was only because of the government funding to support the rural post office network that it was kept viable.

He is being asked about the renegotiation of a contract with Fujitsu to reduce costs of the Horizon IT system for the Post Office. Hodgkinson insisted that it was a condition that it would not lead to a deterioration in quality. It was still, at this time, he seems to imply, the view of the board that this was a robust system.

Rishi Sunak has also been out and about today. The prime minister was visiting Woking community hospital on the day that new NHS England data showed that while they were falling slightly, waiting lists were higher now than when he pledged to reduce them in January 2023.

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Keir Starmer has been in Blackpool today campaigning alongside Labour candidate Chris Webb ahead of the byelection there on 2 May. The Labour leader said the people of the town would not be “fooled” by gestures from the Conservative government.

PA Media reports that speaking to the media there, Starmer said:

They know we need real change and they will judge the government on whether it’s actually making material difference to them and their families on the ground.

You’ve got the seafront here, then go two streets behind here and I don’t think you’ll find many people who feel that their life is better now after 14 years of this government than it was in 2010. I suspect you’ll find quite a lot who say things are going backwards.

Webb has said that residential areas in the town felt “forgotten about” and that the local food bank was delivering 14,000 meals a week in the town, which has some of the most deprived neighbourhoods in the country.

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Starmer said “Every time I’ve been here, I’ve been really struck by the pride and ambition that people in Blackpool have of their place. They have the pride and ambition. What they feel is the Government hasn’t invested in them and doesn’t match their pride and ambition.

“That’s the difference that we could make if we are able to form the next government, which is a government that understands that.”

Starmer again moved to dampen expectations of increased public spending, saying Labour could not “come in and turn on the money taps,” but that it would stabilise the economy, and make a significant change in the division of funding and services for councils.

The byelection is taking place after Conservative backbencher Scott Benton quit parliament after he was suspended for 35 days over his role in a lobbying scandal. The MP suggested to undercover reporters at the Times that he could lobby ministers on behalf of the gambling industry and leak a confidential policy document for up to £4,000 a month. Benton won the seat from Labour in the 2019 election with a majority of just under 3,700

I note that over at the BBC, their reporter Sean Seddon has said that this afternoon’s session at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry is not “the most gripping evidence an inquiry has ever heard”, which is, if anything, an understatement.

A key things to have come out so far is that it appears there was a structural weakness in oversight in the Post Office at the most senior level.

Former chairman of the Post Office Sir Michael Hodgkinson has said he was “never” told about early concerns with the Horizon IT system raised by auditors in a 1999 letter.

He has said his interest in the system was mostly in how it could be developed to support new products. He also said that branches and subpostmasters were viewed as “highly motivated individual businesses”, perhaps a hint at the way the culture of the Post Office worked.

He has been read out a lengthy document which discussed the circumstances around a known bug in the system and said “it was difficult to answer” why this was never raised to the board.

There is a long silence when he is asked “Is there something in particular that you can pinpoint that you think went wrong in that reporting line to the board?” and he finally answered “I’ve just got no idea.”

Chair Wyn Williams is pointing out that some of the cases involved exceptionally high amounts of money, and surely these should have been escalated to board level. Hodgkinson says he agrees with Williams, they should have been, but they were not.

The inquiry is taking a break. As will I. I will back with you in a few minutes when they resume.

11 Apr 202410.15 EDT

Gwyn Topham

Gwyn Topham, our transport correspondent, reports that bus drivers are set to get younger:

Bus drivers will be officially getting younger under government plans to relax laws on 18-year-olds behind the wheel.

A shortage of drivers across the transport industry has prompted moves to lower minimum age requirements for bus and coach drivers in Great Britain, as well as speeding up training for bus, coach and lorry drivers.

Although there are already a small number of teenage bus drivers, qualified drivers under 21 are restricted to driving shorter routes of up to 31 miles (50km), ruling out jobs on most intercity coach services and many rural bus routes.

Read more here: UK government to relax rules to get 18-year-olds driving buses

There are lots of reminders on social media today that the deadline to register to vote in May’s local elections in England (and there are some police and crime commissioner elections happening in Wales on the same day too) are rapidly approaching.