Tim Wu, the ‘father of net neutrality,’ is joining the Biden administration

One of Big Tech’s biggest critics joins the White House

By Chaim Gartenberg@cgartenberg Mar 5, 2021

Photo: New America / Flickr

Tim Wu — the Columbia law professor who coined the term “net neutrality” — is joining the Biden administration, where he’ll be working on technology and competition policy at the National Economic Council.



Wu is a prominent voice online, as one of the most well-known advocates for a free and open internet. He’s spent years arguing for the concept of net neutrality — the idea that the internet should be free of throttling or control from the government or companies that provide it.

He’s also been a prominent voice in recent years on the subject of antitrust regulation against big tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, arguing that these companies have gotten too large and lack competition.

His 2018 book, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age, argues for a return to 20th-century antitrust breakups in the style of Teddy Roosevelt. “I think everyone’s steering way away from the monopolies, and I think it’s hurting innovation in the tech sector,” said Wu in a Vergecast interview at the time.

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The choice of Wu is a significant one, signaling that the Biden administration is looking to more aggressively try to curb the ever-growing power of big technology companies like Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook. In a statement, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) applauded the choice: “I look forward to working with Tim to modernize antitrust enforcement, strengthen our economy, and protect workers and consumers.”

Biden Sets Stage for Tech Crackdown With White House Adviser Wu

David McLaughlin and Mario Parker
Fri., March 5, 2021

(Bloomberg) -- Timothy Wu, a Columbia University law professor and outspoken advocate for aggressive antitrust enforcement against U.S. technology giants, is joining the White House an adviser, signaling that the Biden administration is preparing to square off against the industry’s biggest companies.

Wu will join the National Economic Council as a special assistant on technology and competition policy, the White House said Friday.

Wu’s appointment elevates to a senior position in the administration a leading antitrust expert, favored by progressives, who has assailed the power of dominant tech companies like Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook Inc. Both companies were sued by U.S. antitrust enforcers last year for allegedly abusing their monopoly power.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Wu would help advance Biden’s agenda of addressing the “economic and social challenges” posed by tech platforms, tackling monopoly power, and expanding access to broadband service for low-income and rural communities.

“The president has been clear on the campaign, probably more recently, that he stands up to the abuse of power and that includes the abuse of power from big technology companies and their executives,” she said.

After the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general sued Facebook in December, Wu wrote a column in the New York Times comparing Facebook’s strategy of buying competitors to Standard Oil’s tactics in the 19th century.

“What the federal government and states are doing is reasserting a fundamental rule for all American business: You cannot simply buy your way out of competition,” Wu wrote. “Facebook, led by its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has taken that strategy to a smirking and egregious extreme, acquiring multiple companies to stifle the competitive threat they pose.”

Wu joins the Biden administration as tech giants are grappling with a reckoning in Washington that could transform the industry. The Facebook lawsuit could lead to the breakup of the company, while the Justice Department’s complaint against Google targets the heart of its business -- internet search. Antitrust enforcers have also opened investigations of Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.

On Capitol Hill, Democratic lawmakers are working on legislation that could place new restrictions on how the companies operate and make it harder for the companies to continue their spree of acquisitions. Republicans and Democrats also want to change the law that protects tech platforms from lawsuits over what users post online and which is at the center of a debate on content moderation and free speech.

Tech’s Liability Shield Under Fire: 26 Words and What’s at Stake

Beyond tech, many competition policy experts are calling for a broad rethinking of how antitrust enforcers police mergers and conduct by dominant firms across the economy. They point to evidence that increasing concentration across industries is contributing to broader economic woes like reduced innovation and stagnant wages for workers.

Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel and is pushing a legislative overhaul of competition laws, praised Wu’s hiring.

“America has a major monopoly problem that must be urgently addressed,” she said. Wu’s appointment makes “clear this administration is serious about promoting competition in the United States.”

The tech industry criticized the move. Carl Szabo, vice president and general counsel of NetChoice, which represents Facebook, Amazon, Google and other companies, said creating an antitrust position in a political office like the White House is “a recipe for weaponization of antitrust law for political purposes.”“I worry he will not search for evidence but will start with a conclusion and try to prove it,” Szabo said about Wu. “I also worry that he has a fundamental opinion that success should be disallowed.”

Wu argued in his book, “The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age,” that rising concentration across the economy has led to concentrated wealth and power as well as radicalized politics that threatens American democracy. Wu, who coined the term “net neutrality,” previously served as senior enforcement counsel to the New York attorney general and as a senior adviser at the Federal Trade Commission.

Wu’s hiring still leaves key antitrust positions unfilled. Biden has yet to nominate a chief of the Justice Department’s antitrust division or a permanent chairman for the FTC. Progressives are pressuring the administration to appoint nominees without ties to the tech industry. They say a revolving door between the antitrust agencies and lawyers who have represented tech companies has led to lax enforcement.

The American Economic Liberties Project, an anti-monopoly group that has joined other organizations in calling for Biden to reject nominees with ties to Silicon Valley, applauded Wu’s appointment and called for similar choices for other positions. Sarah Miller, the group’s executive director, credited Wu with reviving the idea that antitrust and competition policy is a tool for “decentralizing corporate power for the benefit of working people.”

“The Biden administration has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to turn this idea into action -- and Tim, hopefully in concert with additional appointments who bring similar intellect and vision to this work, is an outstanding choice to lead the way,” Miller said.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

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The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age (Wu, 2018) – New Antitrust (wordpress.com)

The Curse of Bigness Antitrust in the New Gilded Age CHAPTER 2 PDF

https://econ.utah.edu/antitrust-conference/session_material/Curse of... · PDF file

THE CURSE OF BIGNESS to combine some 336 firms, including Boston’s local rail-road, the Boston and Maine, to forge a new system. Brandeis 

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The Curse of Bigness Antitrust in the New Gilded Age From the man who coined the term “net neutrality,” author of The Master Switch and The Attention Merchants, comes a warning about the dangers of excessive corporate and industrial concentration for our economic and political future.

The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age by ...

globalreports.columbia.edu/books/the-curse-of-bigness/

A call to save democracy by battling monopolies


By Benjamin C. Waterhouse

Dec. 28, 2018 

Two decades into the 21st century, capitalism is huge and getting huger. Three-quarters of all industries became more concentrated between 1997 and 2012. About 10 pharmaceutical companies control the production and sale of the world’s medicine; three chemical firms dominate the supply of seeds and pesticides, and thus global agriculture; and one combined corporation produces nearly every non-craft beer for sale on the planet. At the same time, tech giants Facebook, Google and Apple dominate their markets, controlling not just commerce but access to news and our personal information.

As Tim Wu argues in “The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age,” global economic concentration is now at levels unseen in more than a century — since the early days of industrial capitalism. A policy advocate and law professor at Columbia University, perhaps best known for coining the term “net neutrality” in 2003, Wu offers a vital diagnosis: America has abandoned its rich tradition of anti-mon­opoly, or antitrust, law. And while the very term “antitrust” may strike many as dreadfully dry, Wu manages to make this brisk and impressively readable overview of the subject (the entire text runs about 140 pages) vivid and compelling. (Columbia Global Reports)

America’s antitrust history began with the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, passed “as a reaction to the rising power of monopoly trusts.” The law lay dormant for a decade until “activated” by President Theodore Roosevelt against J.P. Morgan’s Northern Securities railroad company and John Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. Despite his trustbuster image, Wu argues, Roosevelt had little problem with bigness itself. He even offered Rockefeller the chance to keep his monopoly as a public trust, subject to government supervision. What’s more, during his campaign to reclaim the White House in 1912, Roosevelt argued (unsuccessfully) for “regulated monopoly” — a system in which “commerce would be controlled by a small group of monopolists, who would be, in turn, controlled by government.” It was a model later implemented by Italy and Germany in the 1930s.

The standout figure in antitrust was jurist Louis Brandeis, the architect of the vision that did triumph in 1912: Woodrow Wilson’s “regulated competition.” Born in Louisville to immigrant, small-business-owning parents, Brandeis cut his legal teeth defending small-business clients in Boston and emerged as a leading opponent of monopolies in the two decades before Wilson named him to the Supreme Court in 1916. For Brandeis, industrial size was the chief problem. Large companies, whether strictly monopolies or not, thwarted individual initiative, restricted competition and thus innovation, and used their size to obscure economic inefficiencies. Most important, large corporations could not be reconciled with democracy and liberty, either for small businesses trying to compete or workers out to make a living. The biggest threat, Brandeis wrote in 1914, was “the suppression of individual liberty, indeed of manhood itself.”

The view that fighting monopoly meant defending democracy triumphed after World War II with what Wu calls “Peak Antitrust.” Democratic Sen. Estes Kefauver minced no words linking a competitive economy with political freedom. “Through monopolistic mergers the people are losing power to direct their own economic welfare,” he said. Putting such power in too few hands, he continued, “results in a Fascist state or the nationalization of industries and thereafter a Socialist or Communist state.” Passed in 1950, his Anti-Merger Act gave the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission new authority to prevent anti-competitive mergers, nipping industrial giants in the bud.

Peak Antitrust endured through the 1970s, culminating in the breakup of AT&T in 1982 after eight years of litigation. The end of that regulated monopoly led, in Wu’s view, to a proliferation of advances in communications technology, including modems that linked home computers over a network, thus “producing the Internet revolution.”

Even as the AT&T case made its way through the courts, however, a conservative backlash undercut the antitrust movement, principally by severing the intellectual and moral link between monopoly and democracy. Beginning in the 1960s, conservative scholars at the University of Chicago argued for applying economic analysis, particularly theories about prices and allocative efficiency, to legal questions like antitrust. Most influential was Robert Bork, who argued that the original Sherman Act intended to deal with only a specific problem: higher prices for consumers. Historians largely discount Bork’s interpretation, which Wu condemns as “laissez-faire reincarnated,” albeit “clad in the costume of economic rigor.” It appealed, Wu asserts, by oversimplifying complex problems and presuming economic rationality — that “the existing structure is the efficient structure.”

Yet Bork’s narrow interpretation of Sherman transformed antitrust. First published in 1966 and elaborated in a book called “The Antitrust Paradox” in 1978, Bork’s thesis reshaped how antitrust was taught in law schools and practiced by judges. Despite pushback by liberal legal scholars in the 1990s, the “judiciary continued to drift toward Bork,” and antitrust had entered a “deep freeze” by the George W. Bush presidency. The denouement came in 2004, when Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argued that monopoly power was not only legal but a positive good. “The opportunity to charge monopoly prices . . . induces risk taking that produces innovation and economic growth.

Wu is an unreconstructed Brandeisian, and his book — whose title comes from Brandeis — sees America’s last hope in a robust antitrust policy. His agenda calls for enforcing the 1950 Anti-Merger Act as its authors intended, by preventing anti-competitive moves like Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and Google’s purchase of YouTube. When that fails, he calls for vigorous prosecutions of companies whose size and influence block competition, erect barriers to entry or otherwise hurt the general welfare. Such a case tradition was once at the core of Sherman Act enforcement but has gone unused since AT&T’s breakup more than 35 years ago.

Finally, Wu challenges the legal community to invest the energy to make those judgments and to repudiate the too-easy solutions offered by Bork and the Chicago School, as well as the false notion that capitalism self-regulates in the public interest. Real political freedom and economic justice demand it.

The Curse of Bigness
Antitrust in the New Gilded Age
By Tim Wu
Columbia Global Reports. 154 pp. $14.99 paperback

Benjamin C. Waterhouse is an associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of “Lobbying America: The Politics of Business From Nixon to NAFTA” and “The Land of Enterprise: A Business History of the United States.”

A Look at Competition in Business Urges Us to Think Small
Jennifer Szalai NYT
Dec. 12, 2018




Credit...Alessandra Montalto/The New York Times

These are fraught times, and while you may be scared, Tim Wu suggests that you may not be scared enough. Like Michael Lewis’s “The Fifth Risk,” a recent book that shows how something most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about — government bureaucracy — is consequential (and potentially terrifying), Wu’s “The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age” is a surprisingly rousing treatment of another presumably boring subject: mergers and acquisitions.

Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, argues that the M&A arcana that lawyers and economists haggle over have effects that spill far beyond their rarefied areas of expertise. “Extreme economic concentration yields gross inequality and material suffering, feeding an appetite for nationalistic and extremist leadership,” he writes, by way of introduction and warning. “The road to fascism and dictatorship is paved with failures of economic policy to serve the needs of the general public.”

Unlike Wu’s previous books, “The Master Switch” (2010) and “The Attention Merchants” (2016), “The Curse of Bigness” is skinny, more of a dip with a snorkel than a deep dive. But the pithiness of this new volume is ideally suited to its subject. Wu doesn’t want to get into all the intricacies of antitrust law; if anything, an enormous book on the problem of enormity would only fool us into believing that the subject is more impenetrable than it really is — and stoke the confusion and apathy that have allowed decades of corporate consolidation to flourish in the first place.

Wu’s point is simple. Giant corporations, seeking to protect their advantage, try to turn their outsize economic power into political power. So to break their grip on American democracy, the government needs to break them up in turn. That this proposal might sound outrageously radical to certain ears is, Wu says, just one sign of how unprepared we are for our current moment. To show how busting up big businesses into smaller parts was once a veritable American tradition, he charts how antitrust law emerged in response to the grotesque inequality of the 19th-century Gilded Age.

When the Sherman Antitrust Act was signed into law in 1890, it had unanimous support in the House, though the language it deployed was both sweeping and severe, stating bluntly that “every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize” any area of business “shall be deemed guilty of a felony.

Enforcing the law turned out to be another matter. A decade later, J .P. Morgan — “history’s greatest monopolizer,” as Wu calls him — created the behemoth U. S. Steel by merging hundreds of smaller firms, even buying out his fellow tycoon Andrew Carnegie in 1901 for an exorbitant sum ($480 million back then) that would make Carnegie the richest man in the world.



Tim Wu

Credit...Miranda Sita

Wu is an able guide through the history — from Theodore Roosevelt’s campaign against “bad trusts” all the way to the expansive bloat of AT&T and Microsoft’s competition-crushing ambitions of more recent memory — but it’s on the level of ideas that his book comes into its own. Similar to the tech moguls of today, the monopolists of a century ago “liked to portray themselves as part of a progressive movement, striving toward a better age,” Wu writes, even if the endgame they were pursuing — essentially “pure economic autocracy” — was a direct rebuke to the foundational values of the republic.

But then competition can feel menacing — a grueling free-for-all that anyone with grand ambitions in business would prefer to do without. The venture capitalist Peter Thiel said as much in the pages of The Wall Street Journal in 2014, in an article with the piquant title “Competition Is for Losers.” “Capitalism and competition are opposites,” Thiel declared. “Only one thing can allow a business to transcend the daily brute struggle for survival: monopoly profits.”

No doubt the most die-hard Marxist would agree — as would Thiel’s fellow disrupters in Silicon Valley, though they tend to play down the allure of profit-making while talking a lot about how much value and “connection” they bring to the public.

Wu, who advised the Federal Trade Commission on competition issues during the Obama administration, doesn’t buy all the piety; nor should he or anyone have to, he says. Trying to distinguish between gigantic corporations that bring value to consumers from gigantic corporations that don’t is ultimately a mug’s game. Competition is a process, and the process should be protected; to fixate too much on the other stuff is to expect the legal system to make distinctions it isn’t equipped to make — pushing up the standard of proof and allowing enforcement to go slack.

But we’ve been conditioned to think that the only goal of antitrust law is to protect consumer welfare; as long as a business like, say, Amazon delivers lower prices on doodads for your home and diapers for your kid, it isn’t supposed to pose a monopoly threat, even as it gobbles up its competitors. This idea was once “considered absurd and even insane,” Wu writes. But its fiercest advocate, the rejected Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, knew how to make it seductive to legal minds, offering a simple theory that allowed judges to make decisions with apparent precision and rigor. Explaining the theory’s journey from heresy to orthodoxy, Wu is gently scathing: “Bork’s antitrust economics are easy.”

Against Bork’s strictly minimalist idea, Wu advances another, more complex one, which was proposed in the early 20th century by the lawyer and eventual Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. Worrying about the tendency of giant corporations to “exterminate” the competition in their inexorable march toward domination, Brandeis believed that the economy, and the businesses that are part of it, needed to operate at a human scale.

“What Brandeis really cared about was the economic conditions under which life is lived,” Wu writes, “and the effects of the economy on one’s character and on the nation’s soul.” It’s a big idea for a little book, but Wu knows how to keep everything concise and contained. “The Curse of Bigness” moves nimbly through the thicket, embracing the boons of being small.


Follow Jennifer Szalai on Twitter: @jenszalai.

The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age
By Tim Wu
154 pages. Columbia Global Reports. $14.99.

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A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 13, 2018, Section C, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Think Small When Too Big Poses a Danger. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

F.B.I. Finds Contact Between Proud Boys Member and Trump Associate Before Riot

A leader of the far-right group separately said he had been in touch with Roger Stone, but an official said it was not the same contact investigators found through electronic communications records

Supporters of President Donald J. Trump outside the Capitol

 during the mob attack on Jan. 6.

Credit...Kenny Holston for The New York Times


By Katie Benner, Alan Feuer and Adam Goldman
March 5, 2021

THE NEW YORK TIMES


WASHINGTON — A member of the far-right nationalist Proud Boys was in communication with a person associated with the White House in the days just before the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation.

Location, cellular and call record data revealed a call tying a Proud Boys member to the Trump White House, the official said. The F.B.I. has not determined what they discussed, and the official would not reveal the names of either party.

The connection revealed by the communications data comes as the F.B.I. intensifies its investigation of contacts among far-right extremists, Trump White House associates and conservative members of Congress in the days before the attack.

The same data has revealed no evidence of communications between the rioters and members of Congress during the deadly attack, the official said. That undercuts Democratic allegations that some Republican lawmakers were active participants that day.

Separately, Enrique Tarrio, a leader of the far-right nationalist Proud Boys, told The New York Times on Friday that he called Roger J. Stone Jr., a close associate of former President Donald J. Trump’s, while at a protest in front of the home of Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida. During the protest, which occurred in the days before the Capitol assault, he put Mr. Stone on speaker phone to address the gathering.

A law enforcement official said that it was not Mr. Tarrio’s communication with Mr. Stone that was being scrutinized, and that the call made in front of Mr. Rubio’s home was a different matter. That two members of the group were in communication with people associated with the White House underscores the access that violent extremist groups like the Proud Boys had to the White House and to people close to the former president.

Mr. Stone denied “any involvement or knowledge of the attack on the Capitol” in a statement last month to The Times.

Mr. Tarrio was arrested in Washington on Jan. 4 on charges of destruction of property for his role in the burning of a Black Lives Matter banner that had been torn from a historic Black church during a protest in Washington in December. He was asked to leave the city, and was not present when the Capitol was attacked. 

His case is pending.

The Justice Department has charged more than a dozen members of the Proud Boys with crimes related to the attack, including conspiracy to obstruct the final certification of President Biden’s electoral victory and to attack law enforcement officers.

In court papers, federal prosecutors have said groups of Proud Boys also coordinated travel to Washington and shared lodging near the city, with the intent of disrupting Congress and advancing Mr. Trump’s efforts to unlawfully maintain his grip on the presidency.

The communication between the person associated with the White House and the member of the Proud Boys was discovered in part through data that the F.B.I. obtained from technology and telecommunications companies immediately after the assault.

Court documents show F.B.I. warrants for a list of all the phones associated with the cell towers serving the Capitol, and that it received information from the major cellphone carriers on the numbers called by everyone on the Capitol’s cell towers during the riot, three officials familiar with the investigation said.

The F.B.I. also obtained a “geofence” warrant for all the Android devices that Google recorded within the building during the assault, the officials said. A geofence warrant legally gives law enforcement a list of mobile devices that are able to be identified in a particular geographic area. Jill Sanborn, the head of counterterrorism at the F.B.I., testified before a Senate panel on Wednesday that all the data the F.B.I. had gathered in its investigation into the riot was obtained legally through subpoenas and search warrants.

Although investigators have found no contact between the rioters and members of Congress during the attack, those records have shown evidence in the days leading up to Jan. 6 of communications between far-right extremists and lawmakers who were planning to appear at the rally featuring Mr. Trump that occurred just before the assault, according to one of the officials.

The Justice Department is examining those communications, but it has not opened investigations into any members, the official said. A department spokesman declined to comment.

The F.B.I. did, however, say on Thursday that it had arrested a former State Department aide on charges related to the attack, including unlawful entry, violent and disorderly conduct, obstructing Congress and law enforcement, and assaulting an officer with a dangerous weapon.

The former midlevel aide, Federico G. Klein, who was seen in videos assaulting officers with a stolen riot shield, was the first member of the Trump administration to face criminal charges in connection with the storming of the Capitol. His lawyer declined to comment on Friday.



Members of the Oath Keepers, a militia group, escorting Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime associate of Mr. Trump’s, during a protest the day before the attack on the Capitol.

Credit...Michael Reynolds/EPA, via Shutterstock


Right-wing extremists, including members of the Oath Keepers, a militia group that mainly comprises former law enforcement and military personnel, have been working as security guards for Republicans and for Mr. Trump’s allies, such as Mr. Stone.

Mr. Stone, who was pardoned by Mr. Trump after refusing to cooperate with the investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russian intelligence, has known Mr. Tarrio for some time and used Oath Keepers as bodyguards before and on the day of the assault on the Capitol.

The Justice Department is looking into communications between Mr. Stone and far-right extremists to determine whether he played any role in plans by extremists to disrupt the certification on Jan. 6, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak about the investigation.

Should investigators find messages showing that Mr. Stone had any connection to such plans, they would have a factual basis to open a full criminal investigation into him, the people said.

Mr. Stone said last month that he was “provided voluntary security by the Oath Keepers,” but noted that their security work did not constitute evidence that he was involved in, or informed about, plans to attack Congress. He reiterated an earlier statement that anyone involved in the attack should be prosecuted.

The Justice Department has charged more than 300 people with crimes stemming from the Jan. 6 assault. It has used evidence gathered in its broad manhunt for assailants — including information from cellular providers and technology companies — to help piece together evidence of more sophisticated crimes, like conspiracy.

It is also looking at possible charges of seditious conspiracy, according to two people familiar with the investigation.

Katie Benner and Adam Goldman reported from Washington, and Alan Feuer from New York. Jennifer Valentino-DeVries contributed reporting from New York.

The G.O.P. and the Riot

Connections between Capitol attackers and Republicans are numerous.

First They Guarded Roger Stone. Then They Joined the Capitol Attack.

A midlevel member of the Trump State Dept. has been arrested on charges related to the Capitol attack.

March 4, 2021

Before Capitol Riot, Republican Lawmakers Fanned the Flames
Jan. 11, 2021

Fallout

Tracking the Arrests
Visual Timeline
Inside the Siege
The Lost Hours
The Oath Keepers


Katie Benner covers the Justice Department. She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for public service for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues. @ktbenner

Alan Feuer covers courts and criminal justice for the Metro desk. He has written about mobsters, jails, police misconduct, wrongful convictions, government corruption and El Chapo, the jailed chief of the Sinaloa drug cartel. He joined The Times in 1999. @alanfeuer

Adam Goldman reports on the F.B.I. from Washington and is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. @adamgoldmanNYT

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M IS THERE ANY OTHER KIND?

Antivirus software pioneer McAfee charged by U.S. with cryptocurrency fraud

By Jonathan Stempel and Chris Prentice
2/5/2021

© Reuters/DARRIN ZAMMIT LUPI John McAfee, co-founder of McAfee Crypto Team and CEO of Luxcore and founder of McAfee Antivirus, speaks at the Malta Blockchain Summit in St Julian's

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - John McAfee, the antivirus software pioneer whose former company still bears his name, has been indicted on fraud and money-laundering conspiracy charges stemming from two cryptocurrency schemes, the U.S. Justice Department said on Friday.

Authorities accused McAfee and his bodyguard, Jimmy Gale Watson Jr., of exploiting McAfee's large Twitter following to artificially inflate prices of "altcoins" through a so-called pump-and-dump scheme, and concealing payments McAfee received from startup businesses to promote initial coin offerings.

The Justice Department said McAfee and his accomplices reaped more than $13 million from the schemes. The charges were brought in Manhattan federal court.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed related civil charges concerning the alleged pump-and-dump scheme.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said in a statement: "As alleged, McAfee and Watson exploited a widely used social media platform and enthusiasm among investors in the emerging cryptocurrency market to make millions through lies and deception."

Lawyers for McAfee could not immediately be identified. McAfee is being detained in Spain following his arrest there on tax evasion charges announced in October, the Justice Department said.

Watson was arrested on Thursday night in Texas, the department added.

Watson's attorney Arnold Spencer said in a statement: "Jimmy Watson is a decorated veteran and former Navy Seal. He fought for other people's rights and liberties, and he is entitled to and looks forward to his day in court to exercise some of those very rights."

Both also face civil charges by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which in October accused McAfee of concealing more than $23.1 million he made from boosting seven cryptocurrency offerings on Twitter.

In the cryptocurrency cases, authorities said McAfee touted assets including Verge, Reddcoin and Dogecoin as part of a "Coin of the Day" or "Coin of the Week" tweet from around December 2017 through February 2018.

Authorities said McAfee held himself up as an expert on cybersecurity and cryptocurrency through his tweets, speeches and his role as a CEO of a publicly traded cryptocurrency company. They also accused him of telling followers he had no stake in the coins, even as he touted how they "will change the world."

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York and Chris Prentice in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Will Dunham)

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli hit with class action suit for creating drug ‘monopoly’


By Ben Feuerherd

March 4, 2021


Martin Shkreli and his company Vyera Pharmaceuticals increased the price of the HIV drug Daraprim by over 4,000 percent in 2015.Seth Wenig/AP

Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli was slapped with a class action lawsuit Thursday from health insurers who claim he engaged in a scheme to create a pharmaceutical monopoly that allowed him to raise the price of an HIV drug by more than 4,000 percent.

In the Manhattan federal court suit, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, said Shkreli — and his company Vyera Pharmaceuticals — created the monopoly on the drug Daraprin in 2015 by, among other tactics, preventing “competitors from obtaining the Daraprim samples they needed to launch a generic product.”

Shkreli and his company then covered up the scheme, according to the suit, by publicly denying the effort to block competitors from taking samples.

With no competition, Shkreli hiked the price of the drug — which is used to treat toxoplasmosis and also given to HIV patients with compromised immune systems —from $17.50 to $750 in 2015.

“Defendants determined they could impose monopoly prices and reap significant profits at the expense of Plaintiff and Class members, who were forced to pay inflated prices in violation of the federal antitrust laws,” the suit states.

The companies are seeking unspecified damages to be determined at a jury trial.

Shkreli drew headlines after inflating the price of the life-saving drug in 2015 — and was convicted of securities fraud in an unrelated case stemming from two hedge funds he managed.

He’s currently serving a seven-year sentence after his 2017 conviction.

Shkreli returned to the headlines in 2020 after a former Bloomberg News reporter admitted she’d fallen in love with the Pharma Bro while covering his trial in Brooklyn federal court.

Christie Smythe, 38, told Elle Magazine that she “fell down the rabbit hole” in her relationship with Shkreli — and ended up splitting from her husband and moving out of their Brooklyn apartment.

MORE ON:
MARTIN SHKRELI
Remorseless ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli should stay in prison: prosecutors

Myanmar police attack medics in crackdown on coup protesters

People build barricades to deter security personnel from

 entering a protest area in Mandalay, Myanmar, yesterday. 

Photo: AP

Nicola Smith

March 05 2021

Police have been filmed mercilessly beating a volunteer ambulance crew in one of many social media videos documenting a violent crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Myanmar.

CCTV footage filmed in the commercial city of Yangon on Wednesday showed armed police stopping an ambulance at gunpoint in the city’s north Okkakapa township and forcing three medics out of the vehicle before repeatedly hitting them in the head with rifle butts and kicking them.

Six officers are seen attacking the crew members as they try to protect their heads.

The officers then shoot out the windows of the ambulance.

According to Radio Free Asia, the three medics were detained and sent to the notorious Insein prison.

Footage of the barbaric treatment went viral on social media on the deadliest day of anti-coup protests in Myanmar since the February 1 military takeover.

More than 50 civilians have been killed by police and soldiers since then, and four children are among the latest to die, according to humanitarian group Save the Children.

Despite the risks, protesters took to the streets again yesterday to oppose military rule and demand the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and other civilian leaders.

The formal health system has been hit by the Civil Disobedience Movement, spearheaded by medics who are refusing to work for the junta. Instead, healthcare providers are offering services voluntarily outside of government facilities.

But as a result, medical staff are facing increasing risks from the security forces, especially as they offer first aid to protesters. Boris Johnson yesterday condemned the violence.

“I’m horrified by the escalation of violence in Myanmar and the killing of pro-democracy protesters,” the British Prime Minister said.

“We stand with the people of Myanmar in calling for an immediate end to military repression, the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and others, and the restoration of democracy.”

As the UN Security Council, chaired by Britain, gears up for an emergency closed-door session on the coup today, Tom Andrews, the UN envoy for human rights in Myanmar, urged it to first “view the photos [and] videos of the shocking violence being unleashed on peaceful protesters”.

The 15-member body was previously unable to condemn the coup because of objections from China and Russia.

Whether the images – most too graphic to print – will now move it to act beyond issuing a compromise statement remains to be seen.

Christine Schraner Burgener, the UN’s top official for Myanmar, said she had warned the military it was likely to face strong measures in retaliation for the overthrow of the elected government.

The volatile situation has left experts unsure about which direction events are likely to take.

 

'hypocrisy'

 

Nurses brand proposed £3.50-a-week pay rise 

'insulting' 

An increase pay for nurses and other healthcare staff by 1 per cent has been branded an 'insult' and 'hypocrisy in its greatest form' by NHS workers.

The Unite union, which represents tens of thousands of health service staff, has warned of industrial action amid growing anger at the proposals, while the Royal College of Nursing announced it will set up a £35 million industrial action fund in response.

Holly Turner, a nurse from Colchester, told the PA news agency it is 'absolutely devastating to see (the Government) place no value in us whatsoever'.

She said: 'Strike action would be a complete last resort for us and it would have to be something that could be planned carefully in order to keep our patients safe because, for all NHS staff, patient safety is priority.

'But long term, if we're going to keep our patients safe, if we need to take industrial action in order to do that, I think we will.'

She added: 'We are exhausted, we are demoralised, we are fed up — but there is also an increased level of anger.'

Multiple healthcare staff said the proposal would see them take home around £3.50 extra per week.

Ameera Sheikh, an intensive care nurse and Unite union representative, said increasing costs of living had left people struggling on stagnant wages. She said the support the Government had shown earlier in the pandemic now feels 'fake'.

'We have treated people from the lowest socio-economic backgrounds to quite literally the leader of the country,' she said.

 'We have sacrificed so much since the start of the pandemic, and that includes moving out of our family homes to live close to the hospital and protect our families and live in complete isolation, which is something that I've actually had to do.

'We are facing an increasingly dangerous workload in the intensive care unit, and a lot of staff being redeployed to ICU without basic intensive care training. Also, the lack of PPE and having to reuse PPE or wear expired PPE and risking our lives.'

Health minister Nadine Dorries gave a series of media interviews on Friday defending the Government's position, saying nurses have received a 12 per cent increase in pay over the last three years and the average nurse's salary is around £34,000.

However, frontline workers have branded these claims 'lies'.

Kelly Robbins, a nurse working in primary care in Brighton, said: 'We listen to them on TV and they are lying, and it's just painful and really debilitating to hear them say that.'

She added: 'We know that they make choices, political priorities as to where the money is spent, and so we know that there is money there, effectively to do this, and it just does seem like a massive insult.'

Kirsty Brewerton, a clinical sister from Coventry, said the move is an 'absolute disgrace'.

'How the Government can say there's no money beggars belief. The billions that they spent on Test and Trace, the PPE contracts that were not appropriate for use.'

An experienced nurse, Ms Brewerton believes that this latest blow will lead to senior colleagues leaving the profession.

Mel, a staff nurse, described the Government's proposed 1 per cent pay rise as an 'insult' and 'hypocrisy in its greatest form'.

She said: 'It really isn't true remuneration for the real-time pay cut that we have seen over the last decade.

'We have healthcare staff using food banks, so £3.50 is not going to improve their situation in any way, shape or form.

'I am angry beyond words both for myself but for my colleagues who I see struggle daily.'

She said staff already feel demoralised and warned more will leave the front line without proper recognition.

'The phrase 'NHS heroes' – we are not heroes and we don't want to be hailed as heroes, we are a professional body and we want recognition for the work we have done, not just during the pandemic,' she added.

'We have absolutely tried our best, but there has to be a line. We are still human at the end of the day, we are still people who come home and crumble at the thought of the number of deaths we've seen.'

Eve, a nurse in central London, told PA she and her colleagues are exhausted and coping with 'severe PTSD'.

She said: 'We now have no choice, we must strike now. How else can we get our voice heard? Claps don't pay our bills or feed our families.

'A 15 per cent pay rise is all we are asking for, but 1 per cent is all we are worth to this Government.'

Majority of British public would back an NHS workers strike and support a 7% nurses pay rise amid Matt Hancock's defence of 'fair' and 'affordable' 1% pay rise for medics

Snap poll by findoutnow.co.uk shows 78 per cent of Britons would back a strike 

Unions say public will be 'horrified' after staff have 'given everything' this year

Ministers point out that the rest of the public sector is facing a complete freeze

DHSC says pandemic has 'placed a huge strain on both public and NHS finances'

By JAMES ROBINSON and CONNOR BOYD ASSISTANT HEALTH EDITOR FOR MAILONLINE and JAMES TAPSFIELD POLITICAL EDITOR FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 5 March 2021

The majority of Britons would back a strike by NHS workers and many believe health staff should be awarded a bumper 7 per cent pay rise this year, according to a new poll. 

As tempers last night flared over the Government's 1 per cent offer, 78 per cent of Britons revealed they would back a strike by NHS staff.

The figures come from a survey carried out by findoutnow.co.uk and reported in The Mirror.

Amid the rising tensions, Matt Hancock last night attempted to defend what he described as a 'fair' pay offer in the face of the UK's rising Covid costs.

In an attempt to bridge the the divide, the Health Secretary also shared his admiration for nurses - which he said was born from the fact that his own grandmother had worked in a hospital.

He claimed he 'bowed to no-one in his admiration' for nurses, adding: 'I learnt that at the knee of my grandmother who was a nurse.'

But Mr Hancock, who has previously promised to 'fight to ensure the NHS was given a 'reward' in the aftermath of the pandemic, last night faced the prospect of a strike from NHS staff.

Unions described 1 per cent pay rise offer as a 'slap in the face'. The Royal College of Nursing announced it is setting up a £35million fund for industrial action, while Unite said it is considering balloting members about striking.

However Mr Hancock risked further ire when he shot down the prospect of a one-off pandemic pay reward for health workers, which is being touted in Scotland.

Speaking at yesterday's Downing Street press conference, he said: 'This isn't the approach we have chosen to take'.

Amid the rising tensions, Matt Hancock (pictured) last night attempted to defend what he described as a 'fair' pay offer in the face of the UK's rising Covid costs

Mr Hancock, who has previously promised to 'fight to ensure the NHS was given a 'reward' in the aftermath of the pandemic, last night faced the prospect of a strike from NHS staff. Unions described 1 per cent pay rise offer as a 'slap in the face'. Pictured: A Unite Union representative protests outside Downing Street yesterday

Responding to the government's NHS pay proposal, the Royal College of Nursing has released a digital billboard message showing the image of a nurse in PPE with the message: 'Look them in the eyes and tell them they're only worth an extra £3.50 a week'

It comes as last night furious unions who had demanded a 12.5 per cent increase threatened to strike amid the bitter pay row, which could threaten the roll out of the Covid vaccines.

Unison has organised a mass 'slow clap' next Thursday - a spin on the clap for heroes campaign - to protest Number 10's 'derisory' offer.

And NHS Providers accused the Government of turning its back on predictions of a 2.1 per cent pay rise made in long-term predictions prior to the Covid pandemic.

But Mr Hancock yesterday defended the proposals, saying: 'The evidence that was put forward yesterday was on the basis of affordability. We've proposed what we think is affordable to make sure that in the NHS people do get a pay rise.

'I think it is fair to take into account all the considerations, the incredible hard work of those in the NHS, which means they are not part of the overall public sector pay freeze and also what's affordable as a nation.'

Health minister Nadine Dorries - a former nurse - earlier pointed out that the rest of the public sector is facing a complete freeze, warning that the government cannot 'afford' to be as generous as it would like with national debt soaring towards £2.8trillion.

Health Minister says 1% NHS pay rise is all Government can afford




Unions branded the offer from the government a 'callous and an enormous slap in the face' after a year on the front line of the coronavirus crisis - with some demanding a 12.5 per cent increase 

Health minister Nadine Dorries - a former nurse - pointed out that the rest of the public sector is facing a complete freeze, warning that the government cannot 'afford' to be as generous as it would like with national debt soaring towards £2.8trillion

In a round of interviews, she said had been 'pleasantly surprised' that a 1 per cent offer had been possible - and dismissed the idea that staff will quit, stressing people work in roles such as nursing because they 'love the job'.

Nurses described the planned pay rise as 'insulting', with many revealing the boost would not cover their weekly parking fees at NHS hospitals.

Multiple healthcare staff said the proposal would see them take home around £3.50 extra per week.

The TUC said yesterday that its analysis showed that under the current pay scheme nurses would be paid £2,500 less than in 2010 when adjusted for inflation, with equivalent falls of £3,330 for paramedics and £850 for porters.

Holly Turner, a nurse from Colchester, said it was 'absolutely devastating' to see the Government 'place no value in us whatsoever'.

Ameera Sheikh, an intensive care nurse and Unite union representative, said increasing costs of living had left people struggling on stagnant wages. She said the support the Government had shown earlier in the pandemic now feels 'fake'.

Sir Keir Starmer seized on the announcement to insist that 'Covid heroes' deserve more and shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said it showed 'you can't trust the Tories with the NHS'. Meanwhile, Tory MPs voiced disquiet. 

NHS 1% pay rise from Government is 'insulting' says Keir Starmer

The submission from the government to the NHS pay body is for a headline 1 per cent rise, meaning that some types of staff are likely to get more and others less.

It also notes that a further 0.7 per cent hike to the pay envelope planned under the wider health service modernisation will still go ahead.

Unison general secretary Christina McAnea said: 'Millions stood on doorsteps and clapped for health staff who've given their all. Let's now stand up for their right to fair wages.

'Give the Chancellor a slow handclap for his miserly 1 per cent. Times may be tough but this deal is below-inflation and derisory. It's like the worst of austerity is back.

'NHS staff have worked throughout the darkest days in health service history. They were expecting a fair increase that reflects their exceptional efforts.

'Nurses, midwives, porters, cleaners and other health workers are upset, hurt and angry. There were 100,000 vacancies even before Covid hit. Now the health service will be losing staff quicker than they can recruit new ones.

'This offer isn't just bad for staff. It's bad for the NHS and the patients it cares for.'

The RCN said in a statement: 'A strike fund is an amount of money that can be used to support workers, who are members of a trade union, to provide some compensation for loss of earnings and campaigning during industrial action.

'RCN council are determined to have the finances available to our members should they wish to take action.

NHS nurse discusses 'devastating' 1% pay rise after 'horrific' year


'In setting up this fund, the RCN will create the UK's largest union strike fund overnight. The next steps will be decided in conjunction with our members.'

Unite national officer for health, Colenzo Jarrett-Thorpe, added: 'Following yesterday's kick-in-the-teeth announcement that the Government wants to peg NHS pay at 1 per cent for 2021-22, Unite will be considering all its options, including the holding of an industrial action ballot, as our pay campaign mounts in the coming weeks.'

'Our members and all NHS staff deserve a fair and decent pay rise and a meagre 1 per cent will not cut it.'

Nurses brand proposed £3.50-a-week pay rise 'insulting' and 'hypocrisy'

A Government recommendation to increase pay for nurses and other healthcare staff by 1 per cent has been branded an 'insult' and 'hypocrisy in its greatest form' by NHS workers.

The Unite union, which represents tens of thousands of health service staff, has warned of industrial action amid growing anger at the proposals, while the Royal College of Nursing announced it will set up a £35 million industrial action fund in response.

Holly Turner, a nurse from Colchester, told the PA news agency it is 'absolutely devastating to see (the Government) place no value in us whatsoever'.

She said: 'Strike action would be a complete last resort for us and it would have to be something that could be planned carefully in order to keep our patients safe because, for all NHS staff, patient safety is priority.

'But long term, if we're going to keep our patients safe, if we need to take industrial action in order to do that, I think we will.'

She added: 'We are exhausted, we are demoralised, we are fed up — but there is also an increased level of anger.'

Multiple healthcare staff said the proposal would see them take home around £3.50 extra per week.

Ameera Sheikh, an intensive care nurse and Unite union representative, said increasing costs of living had left people struggling on stagnant wages. She said the support the Government had shown earlier in the pandemic now feels 'fake'.

'We have treated people from the lowest socio-economic backgrounds to quite literally the leader of the country,' she said.

'We have sacrificed so much since the start of the pandemic, and that includes moving out of our family homes to live close to the hospital and protect our families and live in complete isolation, which is something that I've actually had to do.

'We are facing an increasingly dangerous workload in the intensive care unit, and a lot of staff being redeployed to ICU without basic intensive care training. Also, the lack of PPE and having to reuse PPE or wear expired PPE and risking our lives.'

Health minister Nadine Dorries gave a series of media interviews on Friday defending the Government's position, saying nurses have received a 12 per cent increase in pay over the last three years and the average nurse's salary is around £34,000.

However, frontline workers have branded these claims 'lies'.

Kelly Robbins, a nurse working in primary care in Brighton, said: 'We listen to them on TV and they are lying, and it's just painful and really debilitating to hear them say that.'

She added: 'We know that they make choices, political priorities as to where the money is spent, and so we know that there is money there, effectively to do this, and it just does seem like a massive insult.'

Kirsty Brewerton, a clinical sister from Coventry, said the move is an 'absolute disgrace'.

'How the Government can say there's no money beggars belief. The billions that they spent on Test and Trace, the PPE contracts that were not appropriate for use.'

An experienced nurse, Ms Brewerton believes that this latest blow will lead to senior colleagues leaving the profession.

Mel, a staff nurse, described the Government's proposed 1 per cent pay rise as an 'insult' and 'hypocrisy in its greatest form'.

She said: 'It really isn't true remuneration for the real-time pay cut that we have seen over the last decade.

'We have healthcare staff using food banks, so £3.50 is not going to improve their situation in any way, shape or form.

'I am angry beyond words both for myself but for my colleagues who I see struggle daily.'

She said staff already feel demoralised and warned more will leave the front line without proper recognition.

'The phrase 'NHS heroes' – we are not heroes and we don't want to be hailed as heroes, we are a professional body and we want recognition for the work we have done, not just during the pandemic,' she added.

'We have absolutely tried our best, but there has to be a line. We are still human at the end of the day, we are still people who come home and crumble at the thought of the number of deaths we've seen.'

Eve, a nurse in central London, told PA she and her colleagues are exhausted and coping with 'severe PTSD'.

She said: 'We now have no choice, we must strike now. How else can we get our voice heard? Claps don't pay our bills or feed our families.

'A 15 per cent pay rise is all we are asking for, but 1 per cent is all we are worth to this Government.'

The Royal College of Nursing said their members 'deserve a 12.5 per cent increase'.

Nurse Holly Turner endorsed the idea of striking to send a strong signal to the Government. She said: 'Strike action would be a complete last resort for us and it would have to be something that could be planned carefully in order to keep our patients safe because, for all NHS staff, patient safety is priority.

'But long term, if we're going to keep our patients safe, if we need to take industrial action in order to do that, I think we will.'

She added: 'We are exhausted, we are demoralised, we are fed up — but there is also an increased level of anger.'

Multiple healthcare staff said the proposal would see them take home around £3.50 extra per week.

Ameera Sheikh, an intensive care nurse and Unite union representative, said increasing costs of living had left people struggling on stagnant wages. She said the support the Government had shown earlier in the pandemic now feels 'fake'.

'We have treated people from the lowest socio-economic backgrounds to quite literally the leader of the country,' she said.

'We have sacrificed so much since the start of the pandemic, and that includes moving out of our family homes to live close to the hospital and protect our families and live in complete isolation, which is something that I've actually had to do.

'We are facing an increasingly dangerous workload in the intensive care unit, and a lot of staff being redeployed to ICU without basic intensive care training. Also, the lack of PPE and having to reuse PPE or wear expired PPE and risking our lives.'

Deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, Saffron Cordery, said: 'It is very disappointing that the Government has said that a 1 per cent pay rise is all that is affordable when they know that the assumption was that the 2021/22 NHS pay rise would be 2.1 per cent - and that this was covered by the NHS revenue settlement announced by Theresa May in June 2018.

'This settlement was then enshrined in a formal act of Parliament, the NHS Funding Act 2020.

'These assumptions, published in June 2019 were, of course, made before the events of the last 12 months which have significantly strengthened the case for a larger pay rise for NHS staff.

'In a survey of trust leaders for our evidence to the NHS Pay Review Body, 82 per cent of respondents wanted a pay uplift of at least 3 per cent, with only 14 per cent saying it should be 2 per cent or less.

'Some will think that the Government is snatching planned pay rises from the pockets of deserving NHS staff so they don't have to fund the extra costs of Covid-19, which the Chancellor personally committed he would meet.'

Ms Dorries said the Government 'would love to do more' but stressed that NHS staff have had significant rises over recent years and will still benefit from progression pay.

She told the BBC's Today Programme: 'All of us, the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, I don't think there's any of us who have not been touched or have needed NHS services over the past year.

'The Chancellor believes that this is what we can afford to pay NHS staff across the board, and this is our recommendation to the pay review body, we will have to see what the pay review body come back and say, and we're also waiting for feedback from unions and all stakeholders across the sector.'

She said the Government could not afford to give NHS staff in England a pay rise of more than 1 per cent.

Ms Dorries insisted nurses had received a 12 per cent increase in pay over the last three years and the average nurse's salary is around £34,000.

'Everybody in an ideal world would love to see nurses paid far more, in an ideal world, but we are coming out of a pandemic where we have seen huge borrowing and costs to the Government,' she told Sky News.

Asked whether people would still be signing up to work for the NHS in light of the proposed 1 per cent pay rise and the pandemic, Health Minister Nadine Dorries told BBC Breakfast: 'I believe nurses are about more than superficial soundbites, I think nurses love their job. They do their job because they love their job.

'I know myself, I was a nurse myself and trained as a nurse, I became a nurse because I loved nursing.

'I hope that those nurses who love their jobs too will stay in the NHS and stick with us through what is a difficult time.'

The BMA, RCN, the Royal College of Midwives and Unison have also written an open letter to Rishi Sunak, expressing their dismay at the one per cent pay offer.

It comes after the Chancellor revealed tens of billions of pounds worth of spending in the latest Budget on Wednesday and compared the country's borrowing to wartime level.

There was no announcement on NHS pay, and in its submission to the NHS Pay Review Body today, the DHSC said that any higher than one per cent 'would require re-prioritisation'.

It added: 'COVID-19 has created unavoidable direct and indirect financial impacts in the 2020-21 financial year and contributed to a challenging wider economic context.'

The pay body will make a recommendation in May, but the final decision rests with ministers.

Unison head of health Sara Gorton said: 'A 1 per cent pay rise is the worst kind of insult the Government could give health workers who've given their absolute everything over the past year.

'The public will be horrified. Staff will think it's some kind of joke.'

Sir Keir attacked the pay rise, sharing the news on Twitter and writing: 'You can't rebuild a country by cutting nurses' pay. 'Give our Covid heroes a pay rise.'

Meanwhile, shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said: 'A pay cut for NHS staff is the ultimate kick in the teeth to our NHS heroes who have done so much to keep us safe over the past year.

'Rishi Sunak promised to be open and honest with the public yet shamefully insults every single member of NHS staff, sneaking out this announcement and failing to include any mention of NHS pay in the Budget.'

Jon Skewes of the Royal College of Midwives said the 1 per cent pay rise proposed in evidence to the NHS Pay Review Body would be an 'absolute insult'.

He added: 'Our members are working harder than they have ever done to deliver safe care to women and their families in the face of longstanding staffing shortages that existed prior to the pandemic.

'Do the Government have any idea what a pay proposal like this will do to morale? Midwives have already been eyeing the door and this will undoubtedly push many of them towards it.

Royal College of Nursing general secretary Dame Donna Kinnair said: 'This is pitiful and bitterly disappointing.

'The Government is dangerously out of touch with nursing staff, NHS workers and the public.

'It is not a done deal but the Government has revealed its hand for the first time. With the time remaining before the Pay Review Body recommendation, the Government can expect a backlash from a million NHS workers.

'Taxpayers are supportive of a significant and fair pay rise for NHS workers – this year of all years.

Jonathan Ashworth: NHS 1% pay rise "shocking" and "disgusting"




+11

In its submission to the NHS Pay Review Body today, the DHSC said that any higher than one per cent 'would require re-prioritisation' and said pandemic had created 'unavoidable impact'

'If the Pay Review Body accepts the Government view, a pay award as poor as this would amount to only an extra £3.50 per week take-home pay for an experienced nurse.

'Nobody would think that is fair in the middle of a pandemic and it will do nothing to prevent the exodus from nursing.'

Last night the NHS Confederation, which represents hospital trusts and other organisations, expressed alarm at the prospect of a strike.

'This is not the scenario anyone would want, but this clearly shows the depth of feeling at the RCN,' the confederation's chief executive, Danny Mortimer, said.

Meanwhile, a Government spokesman said: 'Over one million NHS staff continue to benefit from multi-year pay deals agreed with trade unions, which have delivered a pay rise of over 12 per cent for newly-qualified nurses and will increase junior doctors' pay scales by 8.2per cent.

'Pay rises in the rest of the public sector will be paused this year due to the challenging economic environment, but we will continue to provide pay rises for NHS workers, on top of a £513 million investment in professional development and increased recruitment.

'That's with record numbers of doctors and 10,600 more nurses working in our NHS, and with nursing university applications up by over a third.

'The independent pay review bodies will report in late spring and we will consider their recommendations carefully when we receive them.'

In the document, the DHSC says the pandemic has 'placed a huge strain on both public and NHS finances'.




'The economic outlook for 2021/22 remains uncertain and pay awards must be both fair and affordable,' it wrote.

'The government announced a pause in public sector pay rises for all workforces, with an exception for employees with basic full-time equivalent salaries of £24,000 or under and for the NHS.

'In settling the DHSC and NHS budget, the government assumed a headline pay award of 1 per cent for NHS staff. Anything higher would require re-prioritisation.'

They added that this increase was still above the CPI rate of inflation, whilst some staff would see a higher rise under a previously-agreed deal.

Around 1.3 million public sector workers will see a pay freeze while those earning less than £24,000 guaranteed a pay rise of at least £250.

Unite assistant general secretary Gail Cartmail said: 'The Government's evidence to the NHS Pay Review Body, due to report in May, saying that it wants the pay of NHS staff pegged at 1 per cent, is callous and takes no account of the public mood.'

Pictured: Dr Chaand Nagpaul, who chairs the British Medical Association council, described the one per cent pay rise as a 'kick in the teeth' to the NHS workforce keeping patients alive

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, who chairs the British Medical Association council, said: 'This is a total dereliction of the Government's moral duty and obligation to a workforce that is keeping the NHS on its feet and patients alive.'

He added: 'This comes as a kick in the teeth after a decade in which doctors have experienced real terms pay cuts of up to 30 per cent and in the same week as the Chancellor has announced a huge increase in the taxation on doctor's pensions that will leave virtually all doctors worse off.'

Rachel Harrison, GMB National Officer, said: 'This news will come as yet another kick in the teeth for NHS workers.

'A day after the Budget giveaways for some, the Government is attempting to impose either a 1 per cent pay rise on NHS workers or more cuts after a decade of austerity.

'Our members in the NHS have risked everything to battle the coronavirus and keep the public safe – a below inflation rise would be a paltry insult.'

Ms Dorries also insisted there would be 'no cuts' to NHS budgets going forward.

Budget documents revealed there is a planned cut of £30 billion in day-to-day spending at the Department for Health and Social Care from April of this year, falling from £199.2billion to £169.1billion.

Ms Dorries said: 'That £30billion, I believe, was a reduction on the pandemic spending – there are actually real-time increases going into the NHS budget year on year.

'That figure, I'm afraid, is completely wrong – that's not on our annual funding of the NHS, that was on our pandemic budget, which is completely separate.

'There are absolutely no cuts moving forward to frontline NHS services either in waiting lists, accident and emergency. There are just no cuts moving forward – there are real-time increases going into the NHS budget.'
1% pay rise a 'slap in the face' says national officer for health