Everything But Brexit III: More Terrible Stuff the Government Has Done Recently

Nearly three years into the Brexit shitshow and it continues to dominate the news agenda. But just because Britain’s increasingly protracted, mishandled and ill-advised efforts to leave the EU have occupied the headlines, don’t think for one second that the rest of government business has been running smoothly: there’s been no shortage of contemptible policies, controversial decisions and entirely avoidable fuck-ups taking place while the nation attempts to stock up on tinned vegetables.

Here’s what the UK government has been up to over the last few months.

• Called a woman a "lying bitch" after she appealed against a decision to strip her of disability benefits to which she was entitled.
• Implemented education budget cuts which head teachers claim have created a £5.7 billion funding shortfall at a time when schools are increasingly being forced to act as an "unofficial fourth emergency service" for poor pupils.
• Faced repeated reprimands from the UK’s statistics watchdog for making misleading claims about issues including schools funding.
• Accused British citizens from the Windrush generation of being illegal immigrants, wrongfully detaining and forcing many of them to leave the country, in a scandal believed to have contributed to the premature deaths of at least 11 people. A report by parliament’s Public Accounts Committee accused the Home Office of “complacency” over the affair and said the government had “failed to take ownership” of the problems it had created. A proposed compensation scheme has since been branded “derisory”.
• Re-appointed Amber Rudd to a cabinet role less than seven months after she resigned as Home Secretary, having misled parliament over the existence of government targets for the deportation of illegal immigrants.
• Privatised probation services in a move which was recently revealed to have been followed by a 50 percent rise in the number of serious crimes committed by offenders on parole.
• Kept Chris "Failing Grayling" in post despite the transport secretary “becoming a byword for haplessness” for his inability to get to grips with an increasingly chaotic rail network and a series of other blunders which include handing a £14 million ferry contract to a firm with no ferries.
• Overseen a more than four-fold rise in the number of hospital infections – which have risen from 11,000 in 2010 to 48,000 last year.
• Proposed internet regulations which critics have warned could create a “North Korea-style censorship regime”.
• Advised the Saudi Arabian military in relation to a bombing campaign in Yemen that has killed or injured more than 17,500 civilians. In all, nearly a third of UK arms exports were recently revealed to be sold to countries on a government human rights watchlist. Britain has continued to allow arms to be exported for use in the Yemen conflict despite a recent parliamentary committee finding that the deals place Britain “on the wrong side of the law”.
• Demanded hundreds of pounds from victims of forced marriages to pay for their travel arrangements to get home.
• Failed to tackle an epidemic which has seen the number of knife-related murders rise to the highest level since records began in 1946.
• Offended Slovenia when foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt incorrectly described the nation as a “former Soviet vassal state” on an official visit.
• Oversaw a startling rise in the number of hospital admissions linked to recreational drugs – including a doubling in the number of A&E diagnoses linked to cocaine in the last five years.
• Presided over a crumbling social care system that it’s alleged is causing 1,000 elderly people to be needlessly admitted to hospital every day. A recent report from Human Rights Watch found disparities in social care assessments mean older people are not receiving the support they need. Despite promising social care reforms back in 2017, the government is yet to publish a promised green paper on the issue. In the time since, the charity Age UK estimates that more than 50,000 people have died while waiting for help.
• Proposed changes to A&E targets which doctors have warned will have a "near catastrophic impact on patient safety".
• Accidentally featured a spoof poster, which suggested parents should shoot children with rabies, in a publication about the history of government communications.
• Closed half of all magistrates courts in England and Wales since 2010 in an "efficiency exercise", which means defendants and witnesses are forced to travel for hours to attend hearings.
• Acted unlawfully by failing to provide reasons to child refugees in Calais who were rejected when applying to be transferred to the UK.
• Forged ahead with a rollout of Universal Credit while being criticised for turning a “deaf ear” to concerns that the system was causing “unacceptable hardship”.
• Forced thousands of asylum seekers and other migrants to fight lengthy legal battles to remain in the UK – despite the government winning just 25 percent of cases. The government has also been found to have wrongfully detained more than 850 people under immigration laws and been forced to pay out more than £21 million in compensation.
• Been accused of profiteering by charging more than £1,000 to process the citizenship applications for children of migrant parents.
• Stood by as a crisis envelops the prison system, with new records being set for incidents of violence and self-harm, and conditions deteriorating to a level that the UK's chief inspector of jails has said have "no place in an advanced nation in the 21st century".
• Failed to declare meetings with fracking firms at which energy minister Claire Perry outlined plans to "create a ‘UK model’ for shale gas extraction which can be exported around the world". News of the meetings broke less than two weeks after the government came under fierce criticism from one of the world’s leading climate scientists, who accused ministers of ignoring scientific evidence in lending their support to the fracking industry.
• Underpaid disability benefits to thousands of people by an average of £5,000 – leading to an arrears bill totalling close to £1.7 billion.

@mark_wilding