Catch up on the latest political news from across Kent with Rob Bailey, joined by Maidstone Borough Council's Conservative Cllr Patrik Garten and Green Cllr Lee Athwall from Tonbridge and Malling.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00 Welcome to the Kent Politics Show live on KMTV. I'm Rob Bailing.
00:23 And first tonight, we'll be asking, are we facing a health crisis this winter? The
00:28 East Kent Hospitals Trust has the longest patient waiting list in the country, according
00:32 to a report published this week. There are 517,000 patients awaiting follow-up care in
00:38 what the Daily Mail describes as a hidden waiting list. Earlier this month, Swale Council
00:43 wrote to the government pleading for help to address one of the worst GP shortages in
00:48 the country. Mahima Abedin met a Kent student who is on the waiting list.
00:52 While some university students spend their time making memories and having fun, this
00:57 student has been worried about his health since his first year of university in Kent.
01:02 Almost 9,000 people were waiting more than 18 months for routine treatment at the end
01:07 of August, and according to NHS England, waiting times have hit a record high since 2007. The
01:13 fear of a long wait has resulted in Abed avoiding making a visit to the doctors for two years.
01:19 Symptoms I've been experiencing, it's like, it's just like irritation in my stomach that
01:24 I've been experiencing a lot. So my dad's got recently diagnosed, not recently, he's
01:28 had ulcerative colitis since 2017, and it's like foods that, foods that we eat can irritate
01:34 the stomach and it's like, it affects me day to day because I'm unaware of what's good
01:39 for me and what's bad for me to eat, so it's all about, like it's literally all about dieting,
01:44 but having the correct advice is something that I should get, but obviously I've been
01:49 avoiding it just because of the waiting times. If you go to A&E, you're waiting in there
01:53 for a good four to five hours, you're literally wasting your whole day just sitting there
01:56 doing nothing, and then calling the GP, I tried asking them for an emergency appointment,
02:00 they said my doctor's not available at this time, like even though it's a priority and
02:04 it should be considered as an emergency. While the government blames the ongoing doctor strikes
02:09 as playing a significant role in contributing to the delays that patients are experiencing,
02:14 doctors disagree. I have to say that it's a convenient excuse for them, because if you
02:21 actually look at it, the waiting list started to build a decade ago, and really the industrial
02:26 action has had a small effect, but compared with the big rise prior to it, it's a very
02:31 small factor. The winter is a difficult time for the NHS, so it's a bigger challenge to
02:37 actually maintain the waiting list and an even bigger challenge to actually reduce it
02:41 during the winter. Unless investment is put into the NHS, I think we're stuck with long
02:46 waiting lists for several years. In response, a spokesperson from the Department of Health
02:50 and Social Care said, "Cutting waiting lists is one of the government's top priorities
02:54 and 18-month waits have fallen by more than 90% since September 2021." It says it's exceeded
03:01 its target to deliver 10,000 virtual beds by winter and is investing an extra £200
03:06 million to support the NHS during winter. But for now, doctors urge patients to continue
03:12 to seek care if they are experiencing health concerns. Mahima Abedin for KMTV.
03:18 With me this evening is Green Councillor Lee Athwell from Tunbridge and Morling Borough
03:21 Council and Conservative Councillor Patrick Garton from Maidstone Borough Council. Welcome
03:26 both of you. We heard there from someone who's been waiting a long time. There are more than
03:33 7.5 million people across the country currently waiting for a first appointment for care.
03:38 According to the Mail, 19 million could be the number waiting for a follow-up appointment
03:43 and/or for care. There's going to be a lot of people at home watching this in that situation.
03:48 What hope is there of us getting on top of this backlog?
03:50 Well, Rob, we have district councillors, Lee as well as myself. So it is national politics.
03:56 It's a question to ask the MPs in the first place. But I can obviously answer because
04:00 like every person in the democracy, I've got an opinion. I think we've got a record backlog
04:06 for a start and the NHS is also a victim of its own success. People live longer. And so
04:15 it doesn't matter how much money we throw at the health service, it will only get worse.
04:22 As long as we're living longer and we're becoming more needy in old age. So the future of the
04:27 health and social care should be at every politician's heart. And all I can say is
04:37 the strikes didn't help recently. Doctors asking 35% pay rise doesn't help. We now have
04:44 an agreement with the nurses union. So hopefully we're getting on top of that. It's a lot wrong
04:54 in the system, basically wrong, basically wrong because of COVID as well, the backlog.
05:00 But we're doing better in England than we're doing in Wales, for example, which is Labour
05:04 run where they've got four times as long a waiting list. And A&E don't talk to me about
05:09 their waiting times. It's more than four hours there on average.
05:12 Lee, Patrick quite rightly says that the district councils aren't directly responsible for health
05:16 care, which of course is right. But you represent a lot of people who are going to be frustrated
05:22 and waiting. What do you make of the claim the Conservatives have made, Patrick repeating
05:27 it there, that the strikes are to blame?
05:28 Well, I see it a little bit differently, as I'm sure you can imagine. I think we've been
05:29 underfunding the NHS for many, many, many years. And I think unfortunately the underfunding
05:38 led to some really bad decisions being made to, for example, push things out to the private
05:42 sector like building new hospitals, like contracts for this, that and the other, which now means
05:46 there's always a bunch of people skimming profits off the NHS. So we put more and more
05:52 money into it, but unfortunately people take more and more profit out of it. I think it's
05:56 very unfair to talk about it being elderly people who are holding all this up because
06:01 many of them are sort of losing their homes to pay for health care. I think we just need
06:07 more frontline GPs. We need to stop cutting frontline services. We need people to have
06:11 access to good food, healthy diets, cycling, being healthy, being well, track of the obesity
06:17 crisis, all of those things. Stop people being so stressed that they end up with horrible
06:22 neurological painful diseases. You can't just keep cutting the frontline and expecting the
06:27 back end to pick up the pieces. We have to invest in that frontline community health.
06:32 Patrick, people would say the demographic time bomb, people getting older, people living
06:37 longer, you can see this coming and the Conservatives obviously have made in the past claims about
06:42 extra funding for the NHS. We saw it coming. All nations, all industrialised nations in
06:49 the First World saw it coming. It's not a problem specific to England or the UK. We've
06:55 got a shortage in doctors all over Europe, again in the whole First World, probably worldwide
07:01 even. What this government is now doing is putting a substantial amount in new training,
07:07 new doctor training. This government spends more money than any government in the past
07:13 spent on frontline training. And unless we are training and recruiting new GPs and new
07:19 health workers, we can't cope with it.
07:23 There's been a lot of talk since the Green Conference and the Labour Conference, the
07:26 Green Party are quite open to working with Labour if Labour were to win the next general
07:30 election. What would a green solution to this problem look like?
07:33 Well, as I say, I think it's a grassroots solution and I think we have to get back to
07:37 some basics. We have to wonder why we've got some of the biggest obesity problems in Europe
07:42 and we have to look at why by government reckoning 26,000 to 36,000 people a year are dying from
07:47 car fumes. We need to go back to a much more healthy way of living. I think doing things
07:53 like stopping all the nurses' bursaries back in whatever year that was. It's not
08:00 just about training new staff, it's about retaining them. And if people can't afford
08:04 to live near to the hospitals and they can't afford to get to work and they can't afford
08:07 to park in the car parks, which are now privately owned, and giving profit to somebody other
08:12 than the UK, then you're never going to retain staff. So you can keep training them,
08:17 but they're going to get to a point where they go, I'm working my butt off here for
08:20 not a lot, I'm not seeing my family, I can't afford to live, I'm using a food bank.
08:25 That's the reality. So it's a lot more than just training new doctors. It's all
08:30 about those whole solutions in the community.
08:33 This was obviously one of Rishi Sunak's big pledges at the start of the year. He's
08:36 just finished his first full year in office. He's lasted significantly longer than his
08:41 predecessor. How do you think Rishi Sunak has done in that year?
08:45 He's one of those prime ministers who can't win for doing right, really. He's inherited
08:52 a big backlog of bad work, of again, stuff which was out of the control of the previous
08:58 prime minister, certainly the one before the 14 days prime minister. COVID is a big problem.
09:07 The national debt went right through the ceiling. So we've got to keep to rein in finances
09:12 in the first place. I think he's a very good accountant. I do like his style of being careful
09:19 with the finances. Yes, I mean, Lee is right. We've got to look at the future of health
09:25 and social care. But just throwing money at things doesn't solve problems. We've got
09:30 to be very selective about it, be clever about it, how we deal with the money the nation
09:37 has. It's not an infinite pot. And I think that's where Rishi's strength really lies.
09:43 That's why he cut down on the HS2 extension and uses that money, which was a vanity project,
09:50 if we would proceed with that, to use it on actual local infrastructure investments. I
09:55 think that is a shrewd move. I want to ask you, I know obviously, I think
09:59 if I asked you how has Rishi done, I think I can predict how that answer would probably
10:03 go. But I would talk about a specific thing that he's mentioned this week. He's been talking
10:09 about his year in office, using his Twitter account to do so. He says, we've provided
10:13 30,000 hours of extra uniformed police patrols in hotspots. There was a really interesting
10:17 thing here in Medway last week where councillors were talking about a meeting they'd had with
10:22 police where 54% – they've been told that police were operating at 54% of capacity in
10:30 Rochester. And obviously, there was a lot of concern here in Medway. What do you think
10:34 about the level of policing in Tunbridge and Morling at the moment? Have you heard similar
10:37 things? I mean, we've got some really good policing
10:39 going on on the ground. But, you know, I'm sorry to be a broken record, but we've been
10:44 cutting those police forces for years and years and years and turning policemen into
10:48 PCSOs, turning PCSOs into community support people. You know, you can't keep doing that.
10:54 You've got to retain your experienced staff. So, just as an example, my daughter applied
10:59 to be in the Met, passed all the training thingies and bleep tests and all that stuff.
11:05 A year and a half later, she still hadn't heard because all the trainers have all retired
11:09 or left and they couldn't train people quick enough. So, she's gone and got a job doing
11:13 something else. And I wonder how many people that that happens to. And if you don't keep
11:18 investing steadily in these things, they break. And that's where we've got to, both with
11:23 the NHS, with social care and with policing. You have to steadily invest year on year,
11:29 not just throwing money at it, but making sure the money that you do put into it doesn't
11:34 end up in the hands of a private firm.
11:35 We need to take a break there, sadly. But when we come back, we'll find out about Maidstone's
11:40 new air quality action plan and what that might mean for buses and traffic around the
11:45 county town. Be back with us very soon.
11:48 [Music]
11:53 [Music]
12:03 [Music]
12:13 [Music]
12:23 [Music]
12:33 [Music]
12:43 [Music]
12:53 [Music]
13:03 [Music]
13:13 [Music]
13:23 [Music]
13:33 [Music]
13:43 [Music]
13:53 [Music]
14:03 [Music]
14:13 [Music]
14:23 [Music]
14:33 [Music]
14:43 [Music]
14:53 [Music]
15:01 [Music]
15:04 Welcome back to the Kent Politics Show live on KMTV. Now, just as we move to the ad break
15:09 there, we were talking about police resources, Medway hearing that there are 54% of capacity
15:15 in some parts of Medway. Patrick, I mean, do you think that the Conservative Party is
15:19 doing enough to make sure that there are police on the streets?
15:22 Well, since Matthew Scott became Police Crime Commissioner, the amount of police officers
15:28 actually increased by almost 30%. We've got more police officers on Kent streets now than
15:35 what we've ever had since 2016. So, I hear what Lee said, but I think her comments weren't
15:43 quite fair. Recruitment, again, like the NHS, recruitment is a problem, particularly for
15:50 Kent Police because Siddiq Khan in London was thrown a big wad of money from central
15:55 governments to recruit police officers there. It's obviously far more interesting for people
16:02 to join the Metropolitan Police Force rather than Kent Police and hence we've got a backlog
16:08 in training because there are not enough candidates available. They all disappeared to the Met.
16:13 So it's all very fine to throw money at things and complain that there's no police on the
16:20 streets, but we need the staff. I think staffing is a big problem in this country to get qualified
16:25 staff and young people who are interested in entering sensible careers.
16:30 Interesting. Well, we'll come back to that maybe later on, but next tonight, the right
16:35 to breathe clean air has proved a surprisingly divisive issue in Kent. We've seen Canterbury
16:40 scrap a zoning system, Medway fighting over red routes and of course, uproar over London's
16:46 Ewe Lez. Well, it's the county town next. Maidstone's new air quality action plan insists
16:52 on higher eco standards for buses and aims to break the gridlock in the one way system.
16:57 Still with me is Conservative Patrick Garton and Green Lee Athwell. Well, Patrick, you're
17:03 in charge of this new air quality action plan for Maidstone as the Environment Cabinet Minister.
17:12 We've got buses being told now that they must meet a Euro 6 eco standard. Is that right
17:19 in Maidstone? No, Euro 6 is the latest standard we've got. First of all, Maidstone reduces
17:26 air quality management zones quite substantially. We've got now 10% of air quality management
17:32 zone than what we had about five, six years ago. So, that means all the measures we've
17:37 already taken have been proved very successful. One of the measures, which was my own idea,
17:43 is making Upper Stone Street part of the uphill going one way system to make that a no stopping
17:50 zone. And we possibly intend of expanding the no stopping zone there to keep the traffic
17:56 flowing and so thereby improving air quality. Another issue is that Maidstone, like a lot
18:03 of smaller district councils, get the worst bus fleets now because everybody wants Euro
18:09 6 buses and they introduce EULA zones, etc. in London and Bristol, wherever. Arriva and
18:15 the big national companies bring their old fleet down to Maidstone and Lee's party colleague
18:21 made a very interesting point at this week's committee meeting saying Maidstone has actually
18:28 got the dirtiest buses in the country at the moment. So, we want to go out, talk to the
18:33 bus companies and make sure that they are upgrading their fleets or upgrade their timetables
18:39 – take your dirty buses out where the pollution, the NOX is coming out of the exhaust pipe,
18:46 don't make that much difference, go in the rural lanes. We've asked Arriva about this
18:51 and they've got 234 buses in Kent, 85 of which, so 36%, meet that highest standard.
18:58 The rest of them don't and the rest of them, effectively you're saying you don't want
19:02 those more polluting buses using Upper Stone Street, which is a key link to all of the
19:07 villages to the south of Maidstone. Are you worried that a rule like this could actually
19:12 make it harder for public transport to serve those communities to the south?
19:17 I think public transport, it is hard for public transport to make a business out of it. That
19:21 is the problem, the first and foremost problem for bus companies. But that's a question you've
19:26 got to ask KCC or even national government. We as a district council, we are concerned
19:31 about our air quality and all we're saying is don't use the dirtiest buses on our most
19:37 sensitive roads. I'll bring you into that point, Lee, because
19:39 you actually have the same aspiration in Sturbridge and Morling as part of your air quality action
19:43 plans. How much pressure can you put on buses, on the bus companies to make a difference?
19:48 Well that's the problem, isn't it really? I absolutely applaud what you've just said
19:51 there. I think it's absolutely right. My nervousness is if we push the bus companies
19:56 too hard, they'll just stop doing those routes and then we'll get more cars coming in and
19:59 that's even worse. So we need to really work with the bus companies. I'm really glad that
20:04 that's what you're saying. I think that's fantastic. The hard thing of course is that
20:08 they are privately owned companies. They're looking to make a profit, both for themselves
20:11 and their shareholders. So by saying a bus route is not economic, what you're saying
20:16 is you can't make enough profit. Obviously if we had them in public ownership, we wouldn't
20:21 need to make that profit. We could run them at cost. So again, it's somebody always scraping
20:26 off the profit from the top, which is costing everybody at the bottom.
20:31 So nationalisation would be the green answer to this problem?
20:34 Absolutely. For most services that people need to live their lives well, we're seeing
20:39 the same problem with water in Tunbridge with everything collapsing. These companies don't
20:45 – I mean we've talked about Euro 6, it's been the law for about seven years and we've
20:49 been talking about it since the 90s. So this is no surprise. So you'd expect a really good
20:54 company to be investing year on year, upgrading their fleet, but of course that doesn't make
20:58 profit. So it's the same story I'm afraid, but I think that's great what you've done
21:03 in Maidstone and I absolutely applaud that for the people of Maidstone. Your own document
21:08 talks about the fact that something like 5.6% of all deaths in Maidstone can be attributed
21:12 to air pollution. That's just disgusting. So I really applaud that. It's fantastic.
21:18 The other aspiration that is shared by both councils is to increase EV ownership, electric
21:22 vehicle ownership in both your district and boroughs. Obviously what you're looking at
21:28 is trying to increase incentives. Maidstone already gives cheaper parking in town centre
21:33 car parks. Looking at a residence permit discount as well for electric vehicle owners. Do you
21:38 find that the central government's messaging about this and pushing back the 2030 deadline
21:43 for cars to be at least partly electric, those kind of things, are they working against the
21:48 priorities of local conservatives who are bringing in these kind of measures?
21:52 I think the national government is again drawn by the problems of international governments.
21:59 The EU put the target back to 35, so we had to follow suit.
22:05 Well, that was the point of Brexit, wasn't it? We don't have to do what the Europe do
22:08 anymore.
22:09 But we've got to do it to keep our industry, our car industry competitive. That is the
22:13 thing. We live in a global world, EU, Brexit or no Brexit. It's a global world and it's
22:18 global business and car industry is a global business. So I think that's where national
22:24 government cannot do tunnel vision politics. But again, we're district councillors, you'd
22:33 better talk to our MPs about that.
22:35 Yes, I mean, obviously, it's saying you're pressuring perhaps rather than making the
22:40 decisions. But pressuring is an important part of the process, isn't it? And from your
22:44 point of view in Tunbridge and Morling, you're not offering as many incentives to electric
22:48 vehicles at the moment. Is this something that you would consider?
22:51 Well, I think what we want is a proper active travel plan. What we want is to get people
22:55 out of cars, actually, electric or otherwise. My slight issue with some of the incentives
23:01 that are being offered is if you don't have your own drive, it's quite hard to take advantage
23:06 of those. So what we need is some of the quite innovative things that are happening in London
23:11 where sort of bollards on the side of the road become charging points. What I don't
23:15 want to happen is that the people kind of at the top of the tree that can afford to
23:18 buy electric vehicles can take advantage of these offers to get great charging points
23:24 all do really, really well. And the people at the bottom end of the ladder who can't
23:27 do that, don't have a drive, live in a flat, can't afford to upgrade their vehicles are
23:31 left lagging behind and paying for all that infrastructure for those that have actually
23:35 got the money to pay for it themselves.
23:38 And I wanted to ask you a little bit, you mentioned about Tunbridge and Water a little
23:41 bit earlier on. I mean, one of the problems with all of this is, of course, that road
23:45 closures change where the traffic goes. We've seen an awful lot of congestion problems this
23:49 week. Ken Online leading today on a story about windcheap in Canterbury being so rammed
23:54 up that an ambulance couldn't move for a long time. You yourself have been caught in traffic
23:59 on the way here tonight. Tunbridge High Street is closed. I mean, the level of coordination
24:05 around transport and how this affects communities, are you concerned about that?
24:10 Well, I kind of am, but it's something that I've been sort of learning a lot about since
24:13 I was elected. So, Tunbridge High Street isn't closed. There's one exit into the high street
24:19 that's coming into a three-way traffic system. It's a real pain, don't get me wrong, but
24:24 it's not closed. And this is an emergency sewer repair because we have Victorian sewers
24:29 which crack and break because they haven't been upgraded over the years by the companies
24:33 taking huge profits out.
24:36 There was another one in Tunbridge where we've been reporting leaks for a long, long, long,
24:39 long time and it wasn't until the road collapsed that South East Water came and did the repairs.
24:44 So there's not a lot you can do either as a TNBC councillor or as a KCC councillor when
24:49 there's an emergency road closure, you have no choice but to say, yes, please go ahead.
24:54 You have no choice. And it's very frustrating for residents because they somehow think that
24:58 there's a lack of planning. There's no planning in an emergency. There's just a response.
25:02 They're trying really hard to use some new method of relining the pipe, which doesn't
25:06 mean they have to dig up the road. But that also means that the workmen are sitting in
25:10 a van and people can't see them working. So everyone's getting frustrated because they
25:14 think no work's going on, but it actually is.
25:17 And it's a tricky one.
25:18 Patrick, at that point, you represent a rural part of Maidstone. We've seen in that part
25:21 of Maidstone road closures that have caused an awful lot of rat running over the last
25:25 few months. Is it a concern that you have?
25:27 Of course, it's a concern. And the problem, again, is particularly in Kent, where we've
25:32 got a two-tier local government system, is we are taking in the SILDA community infrastructure
25:37 money from developers, from house builders, section 108 agreements. We are sitting, actually
25:43 in Maidstone, we're sitting on a very big bundle of several million pound of money,
25:48 which the infrastructure providers don't tap into. And don't stop me on the Wee Chief,
25:54 supposed to be a roundabout, still junction, which has been going on for years and years
25:59 and years. I think the solution is if we're building houses and we do need houses, we've
26:05 got a housing shortage, but if we're building houses, we need to build the infrastructure
26:10 with it. And that's where two-tier local government is a very, very bad card to play. We need
26:17 far more joint up thinking between the infrastructure providers, Kent County Council, Highways and
26:24 the district councils in Maidstone as well as in Pembrokeshire, Morley.
26:27 Thank you very much. That's all we've got time for here on the Kent Politics Show. Thank
26:30 you to both of my guests for coming in tonight and braving the traffic. There's more politics
26:34 news analysis and opinion at Kent Online by hitting the new politics tab. And stay with
26:39 us because Kent Tonight is coming up with all the latest news from around the county.
26:43 Have a great weekend. Good night.
26:44 [MUSIC]
26:54 you
26:56 you