Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments, including Theresa May’s ‘shared society’ speech and Jeremy Hunt on the NHS
May’s speech - Summary and analysis
5.05pm GMT
The Department of Health is saying that Jeremy Hunt’s comments about the four-hour target (see 4.45pm) were not intended to mean that it is being watered down. It is not. He was making the point that the target was only supposed to apply to people in A&E in a real emergency. This is from Huffington Post’s Paul Waugh.
DH insists Hunt is NOT scrapping or even amending 4hr A&E waiting target. But clear msg: non-urgent cases shd stay away cos skewing figures
4.58pm GMT
And this is what Hunt said in his statement about the emergency measures that may be taken in some areas to relieve pressure on A&E departments.
As of this weekend, there are signs that pressure is easing both in the most distressed trusts and across the system. However with further cold weather on the way this weekend and a spike in respiratory infections there will be further challenges ahead.
NHS England and NHS Improvement will also consider a series of further measures which may be taken in particularly distressed systems on a temporary basis at the discretion of the local clinical leaders. These may include:
4.45pm GMT
This is what Jeremy Hunt said about excluding non-urgent cases from the four-hour A&E target.
However, looking to the future, it is clear that we need to have an honest discussion with the public about the purpose of A&E departments. There is nowhere outside the UK that commits to all patients that we will sort out any health need within four hours. Only four other countries, New Zealand, Sweden, Australia and Canada, have similar national standards which are generally less stringent than ours.
This government is committed to maintaining and delivering that vital four-hour commitment to patients. But since it was announced in 2000 there are nearly 9m more visits to our A&Es, up to 30% of whom NHS England estimate do not need to be there. And the tide is continuing to rise.
4.28pm GMT
Hunt says the government must have an honest conversation with the public about A&E.
No other country has such high A&E standards.
4.25pm GMT
Hunt starts by paying tribute to NHS staff. They have never worked harder, he says.
He says NHS planning for the winter has been better than ever before.
4.21pm GMT
Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, is making his Commons statement now.
It covers mental health and the NHS generally.
4.19pm GMT
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has reaffirmed her belief that, if Britain does not accept free movement of EU citizens, it will not be able to keep full access to the single market after Brexit. Speaking to civil servants in Cologne she said:
Access to the single market can only be possible on the condition of respecting the four basic freedoms. Otherwise one has to talk about limits.
4.11pm GMT
LabourList has a useful list of people who are know to have applied to be selected as Labour’s candidate in the Copeland byelection. Applications closed today.
4.05pm GMT
Martin McGuinness has been speaking to the BBC about his resignation announcement.
Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness talks about his sudden resignation, a possible election and whether he'll be well enough run in the election. pic.twitter.com/PAMiaVed2S
4.00pm GMT
The Ulster Unionists have accused Sinn Féin of letting Arlene Foster off the hook. This is from the UUP leader Mike Nesbitt.
Sinn Féin should have stayed, to hold the first minister to account, to force a public inquiry and to vote on the much-needed cost controls on the scheme.
Instead, they have prioritised self-interest, as always. This is Sinn Fein letting the DUP off the hook. The public mood clearly indicates they want the facts of the RHI debacle exposed. To move straight to an election without this taking place is farcical. They had a choice between the integrity of the institutions and electoral advantage and they appear to have chosen the latter.
3.51pm GMT
This is one for those of you looking for some bedtime reading ...
Dominic Cummings has written a blog post about his role heading Vote Leave. It's 19,800 words long.https://t.co/AGJ1peDt0W
Boris would have announced an extra £100 million a week for the NHS in his 1st week as PM says @odysseanproject https://t.co/sBj7up29jX
3.46pm GMT
Q: Why has nearly 10 years of power sharing between the old foes of Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist party been imperilled?
The irony about of this crisis is not that it centres not on traditional issues of dispute such as the constitutional status of Northern Ireland or even how the power-sharing government deals with the legacy of the Troubles and nearly 4,000 deaths. It has come crashing down due to a ‘cash for ash’ scandal.
3.39pm GMT
There is a new Guardian/ICM poll out today. The Conservatives have a 14-point lead, which is unchanged from where they were in our last poll.
The most significant movement affects Ukip, who are down two points.
3.20pm GMT
The BBC’s Mark Devonport has posted Martin McGuinness’s resignation letter on Twitter.
@M_McGuinness_SF letter page 1 pic.twitter.com/z1vlUgR0tF
@M_McGuinness_SF letter page 2 pic.twitter.com/nrORvuVE1Z
3.18pm GMT
Martin McGuinness, Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister, has resigned from office in protest over his power sharing partner’s handling of a bungled green energy scheme.
McGuinness’ resignation means an election to a new Northern Ireland assembly, which will be expected to rancorous and divisive, is now inevitable.
The first minister has refused to stand aside, without prejudice, pending a preliminary report from an investigation. That position is not credible or tenable,” he said in his resignation letter.
It is with deep regret and reluctance that I am tendering my resignation as deputy first minister with effect from 5pm on Monday, 9th January 2017.
3.00pm GMT
The Press Association has just snapped this.
Martin McGuinness is to resign at 5pm today as deputy first minister of the Northern Ireland Executive in protest at the Democratic Unionist Party’s handling of a botched renewable energy scheme, Sinn Fein said.
2.51pm GMT
Embattled first minister of Northern Ireland Arlene Foster insisted today she won’t “blink first” over demands that she steps down from the post even temporarily while a ‘cash for ash’ scandal is investigated.
The Democratic Unionist leader came out fighting this morning after a weekend barrage of criticism mainly from her party’s sole partner in the regional government, Sinn Fein.
If he [McGuinness] is playing a game of chicken, if Sinn Fein are playing a game of chicken and expecting me to blink in terms of stepping aside they they are wrong.
If there is an election, there is an election and we will be ready for that election as the DUP always are.
The plot thickens in the Stormont #RHI scandal... pic.twitter.com/NXUjE4Y3Dd
2.24pm GMT
This was really two speeches for the price of one. The second half was all about mental health policy. I posted a lengthy summary of the main points earlier (see 10.42am), and I will post some reaction from mental health specialists later, but here I will just focus on the first half of the speech - the “shared society” stuff.
All prime ministers feel the need from time to time to define what they are about and, although this was not the first speech from Theresa May setting out her political beliefs - the Birmingham leadership speech, her Downing Street statement on becoming prime minister, her “great meritocracy” grammar schools speech and her Conservative party conference speech, “The good that government can do” are the other four essential reads for anyone studying Mayism - this was the first one that included a catchphrase intended to summarise her political philosophy.
We see these fringe voices gaining prominence in some countries across Europe today - voices from the hard-left and the far-right stepping forward and sensing that this is their time.
But they stand on the shoulders of mainstream politicians who have allowed unfairness and division to grow by ignoring the legitimate concerns of ordinary people for too long.
An opportunity because Britain is going through a period of great national change, and as we do so we have a once-in-a-generation chance to step back and ask ourselves what kind of country we want to be.
The central tenet of my belief - the thing that shapes my approach - is that there is more to life than individualism and self-interest.
We form families, communities, towns, cities, counties and nations. And we embrace the responsibilities those institutions imply.
And government has a clear role to play to support this conception of society.
It is to act to encourage and nurture those relationships, networks and institutions where it can. And it is to step up to correct injustices and tackle unfairness at every turn - because injustice and unfairness are the things that drive us apart.
Because government and politicians have for years talked the language of social justice - where we help the very poorest - and social mobility - where we help the brightest among the poor. But to deliver the change we need and build that shared society, we must move beyond this agenda and deliver real social reform across every layer of society so that those who feel that the system is stacked against them - those just above the threshold that attracts the government’s focus today yet who are by no means rich or well off - are also given the help they need.
So we will recalibrate how we approach policy development to ensure that everything we do as government helps to give those who are just getting by a fair chance - while still helping those who are most disadvantaged. Because people who are just managing, just getting by don’t need a government that will get out of the way, they need a government that will make the system work for them.
That’s why I believe that - when we consider both the obvious and the everyday injustices in unison - we see that the central challenge of our times is to overcome division and bring our country together by ensuring everyone has the chance to share in the wealth and opportunity on offer in Britain today. And that starts by building something that I call the shared society.
The shared society is one that doesn’t just value our individual rights but focuses rather more on the responsibilities we have to one another. It’s a society that respects the bonds that we share as a union of people and nations. The bonds of family, community, citizenship and strong institutions.
Governments have traditionally been good at identifying - if not always addressing - such problems. However, the mission I have laid out for the government - to make Britain a country that works for everyone and not just the privileged few - goes further. It means more than fighting these obvious injustices. It means acknowledging and addressing the everyday injustices that too many people feel too.
Because while the obvious injustices receive a lot of attention - with the language of social justice and social mobility a staple of most politicians today - the everyday injustices are too often overlooked.
A few months ago at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, I upset some by saying that ‘if you think you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere’.
But my point was simple. It was that the very word ‘citizen’ implies that we have responsibilities to the people around us. The people in our community, on our streets, in our places of work. And too often today, those responsibilities have been forgotten as the cult of individualism has taken hold, and globalisation and the democratisation of communications has encouraged people to look beyond their own communities and immediate networks in the name of joining a broader global community.
1.51pm GMT
Here’s Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, on Theresa May’s speech.
The prime minister has tried to make a pitch to the centre ground, but frankly, it won’t work. Her words are not matched by her actions.
Every time Theresa May opens her mouth on Brexit the pound falls further. It’s clear this government is taking us towards a destructive hard Brexit that would hurt jobs, increase prices and blow a hole in the budget.
1.16pm GMT
Andrew Gwynne, the shadow minister without portfolio, has put out Labour’s response to Theresa May’s speech.
It’ll take more than a speech and a slogan for Theresa May to convince people that she wants to tackle division in society.
The Tories should be judged on what they have done in government: over the last six years they have systematically failed to stand up for the majority. Under the Tories those at the top have been given tax breaks while everyone else suffers, working people have had vital support cut and our NHS is being run into the ground.
12.58pm GMT
There will be an urgent question in the Commons on how domestic abuse victims are treated in the civil courts (prompted by this Guardian story) followed by a statement from Jeremy Hunt on the NHS.
One statement confirmed so far - Mental health and NHS performance update from @Jeremy_Hunt and @JonAshworth
UQ from @peterkyle on emergency review to determine how to ban perpetrators of domestic violence from directly cross-examining their victims
12.31pm GMT
Here is the Labour peer Stewart Wood, who used to be one of Ed Miliband’s key policy advisers, on Theresa May’s latest Brexit “clarification”.
The PM can't understand why markets are in denial about leaving the single market. And markets can't understand why the PM wants to do it.
12.13pm GMT
This is what Theresa May said about not accepting that she is heading for a so-called hard Brexit. (See 12.02pm.) She was responding to a question from the Sun’s Tom Newton Dunn.
Dunn said, in the light of what she had said early about not saying anything new yesterday (see 11.57am), either the markets were getting their interpretation of her Brexit stance wrong or she was getting it wrong. Which one was it?
Well, I’m tempted to say the people who are getting it wrong are those who print things saying I’m talking about a hard Brexit, [that] it’s absolutely inevitable it’s a hard Brexit. I don’t accept the terms hard or soft Brexit. What we are doing is going to get an ambitious, good, the best possible deal for the United Kingdom in terms of trading with, and operating within, the single European market. But it will be a new relationship because we won’t be members of the EU any longer. We will be outside the European Union, and therefore we will be negotiating a new relationship across not just trading but other areas with the European Union.
12.06pm GMT
May is answering the final question, which came from a mental health specialist, not a journalist. It was hard to hear it from the TV feed.
She says the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and the minister for civil society, Rob Wilson, are both in the audience to hear the points that have been made.
12.02pm GMT
Q: You talk about healing the division between young and old. How would you do that? Would you cut benefits for wealthy pensioners?
May says she wants to address intergenerational fairness through housing. She wants to help young people get housing.
11.59am GMT
Q: [From someone from the Mental Health Foundation] We would like to welcome what you have announced.
May says she wants to ensure that resources are addressing the needs, and that they are being used effectively.
11.57am GMT
May is now taking questions. The first come from Channel 4 News’s Gary Gibbon. He asks three.
Q: What can you do to stop local health bosses raiding the mental health budget to tackle with other problems?
11.53am GMT
May ends by paying tribute to Charles Walker, a Conservative MP, and Kevan Jones, a Labour MP, who have both spoken openly in the Commons about their mental health problems.
I remember the reaction when, back in 2012, Charles Walker and Kevan Jones spoke in Parliament about their own personal challenges with mental illness. The courage of these two MPs - Conservative and Labour - to speak out in this way, encouraged us all to put aside party differences and come together in solidarity.
That sense of solidarity will be essential in helping us to transform the support we offer those with mental health conditions and to defeat the stigma that makes addressing this issue so much harder than it should be. But I also believe that in a wider sense, that commitment to strengthening the bonds we share as a union of people, can be a defining part of how we meet the great challenge of our time and bring our whole country together.
11.51am GMT
May is winding up now.
For too long mental illness has been something of a hidden injustice in our country, shrouded in a completely unacceptable stigma and dangerously disregarded as a secondary issue to physical health. Yet left unaddressed, it destroys lives, separates people from each other and deepens the divisions within our society. Changing this goes right to the heart of our humanity; to the heart of the kind of country we are, the attitudes we hold and the values we share.
11.50am GMT
May says the government will review mental health support in the workplace.
It wants to develop more mental health support in the community.
11.47am GMT
May says by 2021 no child will be sent away from their area for treatment for a mental health condition.
(That is to address cases like this one.)
11.45am GMT
May says charities have done a fantastic job addressing mental health issues.
But today she wants to highlight a new approach.
11.42am GMT
May says, as home secretary, she acted to stop mental health patients being held in police cells. There has been an 80% reduction in this happening, she says.
And for under-18s this practice will be abolished entirely from this spring, she says.
11.41am GMT
May says at the heart of her plan is the desire to tackle burning injustices.
She wants to focus now on one of those in particular, the treatment of mental health.
11.39am GMT
May says the challenge is to show the mainstream centre politics can deliver that change that people want.
11.37am GMT
May says the old certainties that apply to politics are being called into question.
11.35am GMT
May says Brexit gives Britain a once-in-a-lifetime chance to decide what type of country we want Britain to be.
11.34am GMT
May says she is continuing the work that David Cameron started through the Points of Light programme to celebrate every day the work done by volunteers.
11.32am GMT
May says some businesses outrage people when they appear to operate under rules different from those that apply to everyone else.
11.31am GMT
May says a housing white paper will show how the government will improving the supply of housing.
And a green paper will set out the government’s industrial strategy, showing how prosperity can be shared by all parts of the country.
11.30am GMT
May says it is important to ensure that those who are just above the threshold used when government support is focused on the poor are also helped.
11.29am GMT
May says injustices are what drive us apart.
That is why government must tackle injustice, she says.
11.29am GMT
May says at the Conservative conference she upset some people (including the Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, apparently - although she does not say this) by saying if you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere.
But she says she is not arguing against globalisation.
11.26am GMT
May is speaking now about those who are getting by, but not getting on. (Or the “Jams - just about managing”, as they were dubbed in Whitehall at one point.)
She says when people feel all they hold dear under threat, resentments grow.
The shared society is one that doesn’t just value our individual rights but focuses rather more on the responsibilities we have to one another. It’s a society that respects the bonds that we share as a union of people and nations.
The bonds of family, community, citizenship, strong institutions. And it’s a society that recognises the obligations we have as citizens – obligations that make our society work.
11.23am GMT
Theresa May is speaking now.
She starts with a passage very similar to this one, which she used in her first speech from Number 10 as prime minister in July last year.
If you’re born poor, you will die on average 9 years earlier than others.
If you’re black, you’re treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if you’re white.
11.17am GMT
Theresa May is by no means the first prime minister, or leading politician, to proposing transforming mental health services.
When Nick Clegg was deputy prime minister he also made this a priority. In January three years ago he gave a speech saying there was “too much prejudice” around mental illness.
We have got to get this right.
Mental illness isn’t contagious.
11.00am GMT
Downing Street said yesterday that the review of mental health support in the workplace would “review recommendations around discrimination”.
A Number 10 briefing suggests this might involve strengthening the legal protections for people affected by conditions like depression. It says:
The government will also consult employers, charities and legal experts to gather evidence about current discrimination protections for workers with mental ill-health. Existing laws already protection people when mental illness is classed as a disability – when the illness persists for a year or more – but for many common disorders such as depression that average length of illness can be much shorter and there is anecdotal evidence of people facing issues in employment in these situations.
10.42am GMT
Theresa May will be delivering her speech within the next hour. It is being billed as a speech on social reform.
Quite a lot of the content has already been released in advance. At the weekend Downing Street released extracts about May’s vision for a “shared society”. And yesterday Number 10 released details of what she will say about her plan to reform mental health services. These have not been posted on the web yet, but here are excerpts from the news release setting out the detail of what May is announcing.
The plans aim to make mental health an everyday concern for every bit of the system, helping ensure that no one affected by mental ill-health goes unattended. It includes:
New support for schools with every secondary school in the country to be offered mental health first aid training and new trials to look at how to strengthen the links between schools and local NHS mental health staff. There will also be a major thematic review of children and adolescent mental health services across the country, led by the Care Quality Commission, to identify what is working and what it not and a new Green Paper on children and young people’s mental health to set out plans to transform services in schools, universities and for families;
10.14am GMT
Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, did a round of interviews this morning. As my colleague Peter Walker reports, he strongly rejected the British Red Cross’s claim that the NHS is in the midst of a “humanitarian crisis”.
Here is the start of Peter’s story.
Jeremy Hunt has rejected the British Red Cross’s description of a humanitarian crisis in emergency NHS care, arguing that most hospitals are coping better this winter than they did last year.
The health secretary – who plans to make a statement to the House of Commons on the NHS later on Monday – said while it was “totally unacceptable” for patients to be left on trolleys for hours, the situation was improving ...
Related: Jeremy Hunt denies Red Cross claim of NHS humanitarian crisis
9.58am GMT
Boris Johnson is in Washington today for meetings on Capitol Hill, including with Paul Ryan, the House Speaker, and Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader. But, as the Economist’s David Rennie reports, he won’t be speaking to the media.
It's catching. British foreign secretary @BorisJohnson is meeting Team Trump in US but-unusually-no time for media pic.twitter.com/zqEfl43H4H
9.43am GMT
Before Christmas my colleagues Heather Stewart and Jessica Elgot wrote a story revealing how Jeremy Corbyn’s team were planning a fresh approach to campaigning - aka “relaunch”, in the terminology the media inevitably uses for these developments - highlighting his credentials as an anti-establishment insurgent.
At Politico Europe Tom McTague and Charlie Cooper have published an article explaining the proposed stratagy in more detail. Here’s an excerpt.
Corbyn’s inner circle, alarmed at the party’s dramatic slump in support, agreed over Christmas to overhaul their media strategy, taking direct inspiration from [Donald Trump’s] aggression against mainstream TV networks and newspapers, which they hope will whip up support among those already distrustful of the media.
“What we have been doing has not worked, we know that,” the senior party official said. “There is no bunker mentality. We have got to change tack.”
I fear this is a misreading of what drives populism which is more about insecurity, nostalgia and fear than any latent left wing tendency. https://t.co/hYWrI9LsBg
Apparently Jeremy Corbyn is being relaunched as an aggressive populist, because we really need more of those https://t.co/bSH1VQbxJk
Corbyn relaunch based around using twitter, Facebook, rallies is the right approach. In reality it is the only one available. Go all in.
But here is the problem. Where was this strategy a year ago? Big risk Corbyn already defined negatively already.
Genuinely fascinating experiment. Can Trumpism playbook work for the Left? Def a PhD/ articles/ a book in it. https://t.co/UdhqZepwOs
9.24am GMT
My colleague Matthew Weaver is covering the London Tube strike on a separate live blog.
Related: Tube strike: all lines hit and most central London stations closed – live updates
9.19am GMT
Yesterday, in her interview on Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday, Theresa May said that the government had given the NHS the money it needs. She told the programme:
We asked the NHS a while back to set out what it needed over the next five years in terms of its plan for the future and the funding that it would need. They did that, we gave them that funding, in fact we gave them more funding than they required so funding is now at record levels for the NHS, more money has been going in.
Government squanders billions on vanity projects every year while our tried and trusted NHS needs more funding.
Those supporters of the EU who still haven’t come to terms with the referendum result want to delay and drag out the process of leaving. They often change their demands – sometimes they insist we should stay in the single market, on other occasions they stress the importance of the customs union, at yet other points they talk about transition arrangements or ten-year-long trade talks – but they have one simple goal: they want to complicate and obfuscate the process in the hope that the public appetite for change will dissipate so they can secure a relationship with the EU which is as close as possible to the status quo.
That’s why we mustn’t miss the wood for the trees. That’s why we need to deliver a full Brexit, not settle for fake Brexit.
8.58am GMT
Theresa May will be delivering a major speech this morning but it won’t be the big one on Brexit, which is coming later this month. That’s probably good news for sterling. May did talk about Brexit in an interview with Sky yesterday and, as a result, the pound has slumped. The same thing happened after she delivered a speech on leaving the EU at the Conservative party conference in October. Who’d have thought she would become a one-woman devaluation machine?
My colleague Graeme Wearden has more on what is happening to sterling here, on his business live blog.
Related: Pound hit by Brexit fears as FTSE 100 touches fresh record high – business live
In considering making this statement, I went back and looked closely at the definition of a humanitarian crisis: it refers to the scale and depth of need facing a population.
In this case we are seeing large numbers of vulnerable people facing a threat to their health, safety or well-being. At the most extreme end this has led to deaths; in a broader way it has led to prolonged physical and mental distress.
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