‘Get this done’: Andrew Dilnot attacks three-year plan for English social care
Downing Street’s plan to spend three years preparing a blueprint to overhaul England’s social care is “inappropriate” given the urgency of the crisis facing frail, ill and disabled people, a leading care expert has told MPs.Sir Andrew Dilnot, the architect of previous government-commissioned attempts to reform adult social care funding, said that with clear backing from Keir Starmer, new plans could feasibly be in place by the end of the year.“I think it’s so blindingly – excuse my language – bleedin’ obvious that something should be done here, that, in the end, in an intelligent, affluent, civilised society, we get this done,” Dilnot said.Appearing before the Commons health and social care committee on Wednesday, he urged ministers to speed up the reform process: “I think it’s perfectly, perfectly feasible for the government to expect … by the end of 2025, to say: ‘Actually, we know what needs to be done, this is what we’re going to do.’”He added that he thought reform would not happen unless the proposed changes received political backing from the very top – and he urged the prime minister to “get behind” the changes.
“It’s really a matter of political courage and political decision-making,” he said.“I don’t think we need a very long time to work out what, we just need to decide ‘this is what we are going to do’.My own view is that three years is a completely unnecessary period of time.If we simply focused on it we could get that decided very, very quickly.”He said: “I think Sir Keir’s views will be absolutely critical in this and if the prime minister gets behind this then something, I think, will happen.
So I am optimistic,I’m always vague about timescales but we will get this done and we must because how can we look ourselves in the mirror and not deal with this?”Dilnot said the care challenges facing families and local authorities were “simply unacceptable in a society with the levels of income and wealth that we have,We are just not doing that well,That’s the clear and pressing, immediate, urgent task,”His intervention came amid growing pressure on Labour to accelerate progress of an independent commission, announced last week and headed by the crossbench peer Louise Casey.
Her final report is not expected to be published until 2028,Adult social care reform has been on and off the English policy agenda for more than two decades with repeated attempts by governments to change the system being derailed by lack of political consensus and political timidity,Sign up to First EditionOur morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it mattersafter newsletter promotionThe Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, said Dilnot was right to say the review could be completed within a year and accused Labour of dragging its heels: “The social care crisis is forcing patients to be treated in hospital corridors while elderly people sell their homes to pay for care,”Dilnot led a government review into the future of funding social care and published his proposals in 2011,Despite Dilnot-style changes having been accepted by previous governments, and white and green papers being issued, they are still yet to be enacted.
He said there had been repeated political consensus on the need for social care funding reform over recent years across all parties.Ministers had made repeated promises to deliver change.The problem was “just not actually delivering”.The chief executive of the Social Care Institute for Excellence, Kathryn Smith, told MPs: “I’ve worked in social care throughout all those green and white papers, and every time one comes out you think you are going to get somewhere, and to be honest, it is just Groundhog Day.”
AI-generated ‘slop’ is slowly killing the internet, so why is nobody trying to stop it? | Arwa Mahdawi
How do you do, fellow humans? My name is Arwa and I am a genuine member of the species homo sapiens. We’re talking a 100% flesh-and-blood person operating in meatspace over here; I am absolutely not an AI-powered bot. I know, I know. That’s exactly what a bot would say, isn’t it? I guess you’re just going to have to trust me on this.I’m taking great pains to point this out, by the way, because content created by real life human beings is becoming something of a novelty these days
Meta’s changes to policing will lead to clash with EU and UK, say experts
Sweeping changes to the policing of Meta’s social media platforms have set the tech company on a collision course with legislators in the UK and the European Union, experts and political figures have said.Lawmakers in Brussels and London criticised Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to scrap factcheckers in the US for Facebook, Instagram and Threads, with one labelling it “quite frightening”.The changes to Meta’s global policies on hateful content now include allowing users to call transgender people “it”, with the guidelines stating: “We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation.”Chi Onwurah, the Labour MP and chair of the science and technology committee for the House of Commons, which is investigating how online disinformation fuelled last summer’s riots, said Zuckerberg’s decision to replace professional factcheckers with users policing the accuracy of posts was “concerning” and “quite frightening”.“To hear that Meta is removing all its factcheckers [in the US] is concerning … people have a right to be protected from the harmful effects of misinformation,” she said
Revisions of ‘hateful conduct’: what users can now say on Meta platforms
Meta’s rewritten policies on “hateful conduct” mean users will now be able to say different types of things on its platforms, Facebook, Instagram and Threads. After Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement of sweeping changes to oversight of content on its platforms, multiple edits have been made to its policies.Among them are:A specific injunction against calling transgender or non-binary people “it” has been deleted. A new section has been added making clear that “we do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation”. It said this was a reflection of “political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like ‘weird’”
‘Dispiriting’: factchecker reacts to Meta’s move to scrap role
The Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday his company, Meta, would be scrapping factcheckers in the US, accusing them of making biased decisions and saying he wanted to enable greater free speech. Meta uses third-party independent factcheckers around the world. Here, one of them who works for the Full Fact organisation in London, explains what they do and reacts to Zuckerberg’s “dispiriting” allegation.I have been a factchecker at Full Fact in London for a year, investigating suspicious content on Facebook, X and in newspapers. Our bread and butter includes a lot of video disinformation about wars in the Middle East and Ukraine and AI-generated fake video clips of politicians, which are getting harder to disprove
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman accused of sexual abuse by sister in lawsuit
The sister of the OpenAI chief executive, Sam Altman, has filed a lawsuit alleging that he regularly sexually abused her for several years, starting when they were children.The lawsuit filed on 6 January in a US district court in the Eastern District of Missouri alleges that the abuse began when Ann Altman was three and Sam Altman was 12. The filing alleges that the last instance of abuse took place when he was an adult but his sister, known as Annie, was still a child.The chief executive of the ChatGPT developer posted a joint statement on X, which he had signed along with his mother, Connie, and his younger brothers, Max and Jack, denying the allegations and calling them “utterly untrue”.“Our family loves Annie and is very concerned about her wellbeing,” the statement said
Elon Musk’s Tesla has received almost £200m in UK grants since 2016
Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company has received almost £200m in grants from the UK government since 2016, according to analysis.Tesla, which is run by the tech billionaire who has become increasingly vocal about the UK government, has received £191m from Westminster through grants, according to Tussell, which analyses public contract data.The bulk of the funds came from the Department for Transport (DfT), which has given the company £188m over that period.The transport funds related to the plug-in car grant, which was designed to encourage the uptake of EVs and plug-in hybrids. Introduced in 2011, the grant provided a discount towards the cost of new plug-in cars, initially at £5,000, until the scheme ended in June 2022
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