Category: #ToryBrokenPromises

#ToryBrokenPromises

FactCheck: Boris Johnson’s broken promises as London mayor

From Channel 4 News: In 2009, Boris Johnson promised to end rough sleeping within three years. He said: “It’s scandalous that, in 21st century London, people have to resort to sleeping on the streets, which is why I have pledged to end rough sleeping in the capital by 2012.”

But by his final autumn in office (2015), there were an estimated 940 people sleeping rough in the capital.

Over his tenure, rough sleeping rose by 130 per cent.

Mr Johnson made a number of opaque and downright misleading claims about the strength of the Metropolitan Police while he was mayor of London, which we FactChecked at the time.

At one point he announced: “We are recruiting 5,000 constables over the next three years”, which sounded like a welcome boost to Met police numbers.

He failed to mention that the Met expected to lose 5,000 PCs over three years through natural wastage – all he was promising to do was replace the ones who left.

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Government accused of ‘total failure’ to widen elite university access

From the Guardian: Ministers have been accused of a “total and abject failure” to widen access to top universities for disadvantaged students, after analysis by the Labour party found the proportions attending Russell Group universities had increased by only one percentage point since 2010.

Separately, research by a group of Labour MPs suggests pupils from towns are less likely to attend university than those from London, with a nine percentage point gap between pupils from London and the rest of the country, and a 20-point gap between those from low-income families in the capital and in towns.

Labour said the Russell Group, which includes Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, University College London and Imperial College, had failed to recruit students from neighbourhoods where few traditionally enter higher education.

The party’s analysis of the Higher Education Statistics Agency data found the proportion of students from those areas had increased by one percentage point across all Russell Group universities to 6%, less than half that at non-Russell Group institutions.

Labour said it was clear the Department for Education would not reach the target set in 2013 by the then prime minister, David Cameron, to double the proportion of university entrants from disadvantaged backgrounds by 2020.

[Read full article on Guardian website…]

Have the Tories blown hot and cold on the environment?

From BBC News: Once in power, critics say, David Cameron’s enthusiasm for the green agenda began to wane, and some questioned his genuine commitment to the cause.
 
There was a planned sell-off of state-owned woodland in England.
 
In 2013, it was reported that David Cameron had told Downing Street aides to “get rid of all the green crap” – referring to environmental levies on energy bills.
 
And he backed fracking, to the dismay of green campaigners.
 
After the 2015 election yielded a Conservative majority, the Green Deal for home insulation was scrapped and subsidies for on-shore wind farms came to an end a year earlier than initially planned.

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The Grenfell residents still living in hotels: ‘This is no normal life’

From The Guardian: Only two families who escaped Grenfell Tower have moved into permanent new homes, despite a firm commitment from Theresa May two days after the fire that everyone would be rehoused within three weeks. Approximately 150 households are still scattered across London in 36 hotels. The hotel bill (excluding meals) already stands at more than £5m.

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Tory pledge to cap energy bills missing from Queen’s speech

From The Guardian: Millions of people are unlikely to see their energy bills capped after Theresa May appeared to make a U-turn on one of her flagship election promises – to the delight of big energy companies.

The prime minister had pledged to cap bills for 17 million families on the worst-value energy tariffs, but the plan was missing from the Queen’s speech and No 10 would not confirm a cap would go ahead.

Instead, the government looks likely to extend an existing ceiling on bills for 4m households on prepayment meters to a further 2.6 million vulnerable customers.

That compromise would be exactly what the industry has been lobbying for, and a huge rowing back by the Conservatives after months of escalating rhetoric from May and ministers.

[Read full article on Guardian website…]

Tory Government makes ‘outrageous’ U-turn over fracking in precious wildlife sites

From The Guardian: The government has made a U-turn on its promise to exclude fracking from Britain’s most important nature sites, arguing that the shale gas industry would be held back if it was excluded from them.

Campaigners accused ministers of putting wildlife at risk and reneging on their pledge earlier this year to ban fracking in sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs), which cover about 8% of England and similar proportions of Wales and Scotland.

Amber Rudd, the energy secretary, told MPs in January: “We have agreed an outright ban on fracking in national parks [and] sites of special scientific interest”.

But the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc), which laid draft regulations in parliament on Thursday covering which areas fracking would be excluded from, has confirmed that exploration for shale gas will no longer be prevented in SSSIs.

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David Cameron at centre of “get rid of all the green crap” storm

From The Guardian: David Cameron was at the centre of a storm on Thursday over whether he ordered aides to “get rid of all the green crap” from energy bills in a drive to bring down costs.

The language, attributed to Cameron in the Sun newspaper by a senior Tory source, sparked a furious reaction from campaigners accusing the prime minister of abandoning his promise to run the greenest government ever.

Although Downing Street said it did not “recognise” the phrase as one used by the prime minister, Cameron’s team has not explicitly denied that he had ever referred to environmental policies as “green crap”.

The Sun quoted an unnamed source as saying: “The prime minister is going round Number 10 saying: ‘We have got to get rid of all this green crap’. He is totally focused on it. We used to say: ‘Vote blue, go green’, now it’s: ‘Vote blue, get real’.”

[Read full article on Guardian website…]