Addenbrooke’s governors confirm they’ve had meetings with Michael Gove’s Cambridge chief on our city’s future

Posted byCambridge Town OwlPosted inUncategorized

Or to put it more officially, Dr Michael More of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust (which includes Addenbrooke’s) confirmed the Trust had met with Peter Freeman of Homes England – the man charged by Michael Gove to come up with a plan later this autumn on ‘supercharging Cambridge’

This was a comment sort of in response to my public question to the CUH Board at their Annual Public Meeting.

“I didn’t know they had an annual public meeting”

That’s because:

  • Public services are fragmented locally
  • Local and regional media is so under-funded that they cannot cover everything in depth all at the same time like in the olden days
  • There’s no mainstream routine programme of lifelong learning educating the people of our city about how it functions and malfunctions.

In the meantime…

Have a listen to the comments from Dr Mike More of CUH NHS

“This issue of keeping tab on the increasing population and how the hospital is able to grow and keep on top of that. This is a discussion we had with Peter Freeman, who is the person nominated by Michael Gove, the Secretary of State, to look at the growth potential for Cambridge”

Dr Mike More to CUH NHS APM on 29 Sept 2023

I’m actually glad that they’ve had that discussion. Because it means that, along with the conversation he had with former Cllr Sam Davies some time ago, the Chairman of Homes England is not being dazzled by the spiel of ‘the magic of Cambridge’ like we’re some sort of theme park. Because if the majority of the people who work in Cambridge (and without whom our city would cease to function), cannot afford to live here at the same time, then we are that theme park we don’t want to be.

“That question of how does hospital capacity relate to that growth in population [the A&E unit having last expanded in 2001, since when the population of our city has grown by over 30,000, and that of surrounding districts in the catchment area by even more] was his central question. And we indicated that there is no correlative funding that follows the growth in population, but the concerns on the pressure on our infrastructure and that of the patient experience is centre to our debate with Government…. ….We had extensive discussions with him and his team over the summer on that particular point.”

Dr Mike More, 29 Sept 2023

Which then makes me wonder…

***What the hell the MP for South Cambridgeshire has been doing for the past five years given that he spent several of those years as a member of the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee?!?!***

Which seems like a reasonable question that candidates standing in the general election in the new seat of St Neots and Mid-Cambs may want to discuss with him given that at in the run up to the 2019 general election one of his key messages to the electorate was his ability to influence central government given his close connections with the now disgraced former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. You may also recall the debate about whether the report from the Intelligence and Security Committee should have been published before or after the election – read the document here. The former Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, Dominic Grieve was damning in his condemnation.

“But there’s only so much a backbench MP can do, right?”

That will be one for the electors in the new constituency

  • to put the questions to him (and to the other candidates on what influence they might have as an alternative choice)
  • to judge the responses from the candidates accordingly

In the revamped South Cambridgeshire constituency, the candidates may wish to reflect on the record of their predecessor and ask why there is no link between changes population numbers and demographics generally, with funding from central government.

It’s no secret that the MP for South Cambridgeshire has openly opposed Michael Gove’s plan. Whether Messrs Freeman and Gove listen to the former remains to be seen. Furthermore, given Sir Keir Starmer’s announcement of a new generation of ‘New Towns’ in his keynote speech to Labour’s Party Conference means that Labour’s candidates will need to read up on the environmental limits to growth, as well as infrastructure covering public transport, social, leisure, educational, and environmental amenities. It’s not like there’s a shortage of historical literature both terms of proposals while war was still raging, to evaluation decades after completion.

“So…not a short reading list then?!?”

Those are the ones on my bookshelf.

The full debate on my PQ is from here

I asked about:

  • Housing
  • Transport services that integrates with change-over of shifts
  • Lifelong learning / adult education esp those wanting to retrain into healthcare.\

Make of the response what you will.

As I’ve mentioned before, local government’s austerity-hit under-resourced workforce is called out by Peter Steinkrug as a reason for the Tories enabling private sector building control not doing a good job as an alternative. I’ve never been a fan of ‘self-regulation’ as a concept – and the public hearings at the Grenfell Inquiry only reinforced that point. Especially in the construction sector.

“What can we expect from a Labour Government given Starmer’s Speech?”

Comparing the party conferences you get the sense of which party is most likely to form the next government. As with the mid-1990s, the you get the sense that the whole operation was meticulously planned, with really strong use of visuals consistently targeting voters with the symbolism of the union jack in the background – the reds contrasting strongly with the royal blue of CPC23.

On ‘Fabian elitism’

I only discovered the term existed a few days ago, but I spotted it in this book on political education from the late 1980s (See p12 here). It contrasts Tory Democracy as an alternative to participatory democracy.

“In reality a section of the ruling class, who have the necessary skills and knowledge, attempt to identify the public interest and govern in accordance with it. Indeed it is their function and duty to do so. It is also argued that general participation is not desirable, as the masses do not have the necessary skills and knowledge to rule.”

Political Education (1989) p11

Well…if you don’t educate the people about democracy and politics, how are they going to know? Hence my point about being ‘educated to be ignorant’ by both schools and church under the Conservatives in the 1980s & 1990s. Why else, for example would politicians supported by the main established churches brought in Section 28?

As for Fabian Elitism:

“Sir Julian Huxley, in the thirties, spoke about a new millennium that could be brought about by following scientific principles in the organisation of society and industry. This planned society would be led by the experts, the scientists and the scientifically minded conceive how this planning would take place, and the direction that society should take. In other words, these experts had a better insight into the public interest than the masses.

This neo-Platonic Fabian elitism paid lip service to participatory democracy but in reality it needed only a low level democracy to legitimate the elite’s claim that they were guardians of the public interest. Real political education was not necessary”

Political Education (1989) p12

What will be interesting to see is whether Labour will give citizenship education another big push like they did in the early 2000s. It turns out I happen to have been in an unlucky generation – one that ministers chose a very narrow curriculum that had no citizenship education. Not in any meaningful sense because it was so under-resourced if it was there on paper. Again, I went through history to have a look at what previous generations had.

Given that the Labour Party has a much stronger Political tradition of in-depth planning, they should (in principle) be better placed to deal with the concerns about limits to growth, water stress, environmental damage and more. That does not mean they shouldn’t be scrutinised. Quite the opposite. It means that we should expect to see much more co-ordination and co-operation. And resourcing. Again in principle. I just hope it doesn’t get tied up in bureaucracy – something that the previous Labour Government struggled with. Hence it will be interesting to see what new structures the party comes up with in its more detailed proposals about devolving more powers.

Food for thought?

If you are interested in the longer term future of Cambridge, and on what happens at the local democracy meetings where decisions are made, feel free to: