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Hacking, bribes, real and fake circus bans, fire centres, Bombardier

Hi all,

Lots of interesting things to discuss this time…

1. Hacking and bribery
I'm not sure which is worse – tapping phone messages of murder victims and relatives of dead soldiers, or bribing the police – but I don't think there can be any reasonable doubt that sections of the press have abandoned all restraint.

The issue is a little like the MPs' expenses scandal. In both cases, a lack of serious supervision allowed the impression to gain hold that people could do anything they liked. It's a fundamental sad fact about human nature that some people will then take all the advantage that they can, regardless of the impact on others. You see the same pattern of malpractice in other contexts where the offenders think themselves immune to being caught – some nursing homes for dementia patients, some prisons, some refugee centres, some children's homes. It's always wrong to assume that the wrongdoers are typical of everyone, but equally it's naïve to assume that people without some more of monitoring won't exploit their power.

There seems to be a belief in the press that statutory regulation (with something like the Advertising Standards Agency) would be a hideous breach of press freedom. I'm not convinced. I think we've just seen that self-regulation doesn't work. Naturally we don't want politicians censoring the press, but an independent body that has teeth and can punish newspapers that lie, cheat, distort, torment private individuals and bribe the police? Sounds good to me.

Meanwhile, I won't comment on Andy Coulson since his position may be sub judice, but I'm glad that Ed Miliband has broken with the pattern of all recent party leaders on both sides of being ingratiating to Mr Murdoch. I didn't vote for him as leader, but I think he's starting to prove that he has a backbone – something not as common in public life as we'd like.

2. Backbones and circuses

Speaking of backbones, I approvingly quoted Mark Pritchard (the Conservative MP who pushed through the motion calling for a ban on wild animals in circuses) last time, after he mourned the lack of backbones in politics. According to the Mail, he was subjected to a personal attack for pressing the issue by Anna Soubry, but she has since said this, which might give you the impression that she agreed with him:

"I am very pleased Parliament has finally decided to ban wild animals from circuses. I signed a motion supporting the ban but it was not chosen for debate by the Speaker. The motion that was chosen included a deadline for the Government to introduce the ban. That motion went through without the need for a vote because it attracted widespread support."

You might think from the wording of this that there was going to be a ban? Not so. A little explanation may be helpful. The Pritchard motion proposed that Parliament instruct the Government to introduce a ban by a specified deadline. The Government introduced a wrecking amendment, which stripped the deadline away and merely said vaguely that it should be done when all legal issues had been resolved – this, not the main motion, is what Miss Soubry and other ultra-loyalists signed. The amendment wasn't called, so the diversionary tactic failed, and the Government whips then told their loyalists to let the motion go through without a vote, since they'd have lost.

So will the Government accept the view of Parliament? Oh, no. I went to a meeting with the Animal Welfare Minister, who said that the Government would not be introducing a ban at all, unless time was found for primary legislation (which he made clear isn't going to happen for the foreseeable future). Instead, they will introduce some sort of further regulation on how circus animals are kept, perhaps in about 18 months' time. The Parliamentary vote will apparently simply be ignored.

Regular readers will know I'm interested in animal welfare issues, so I hope you'll forgive me writing about it again. Why Mr Cameron has made it a personal mission to let animals continue to be tormented into unnatural performances in circus rings is beyond me. I could sort of understand if he didn't care either way and was too busy with other matters. But he seems to have made support for the wrecking amendment into a test of loyalty, which anyone wishing for promotion had to pass. That's bizarre, as well as wrong.

3. Speaking of loyalty…

Although I wasn't always willing to support what the last Government did, one issue where I let loyalty overcome judgment was the regional control centres for the Fire Service. These were supposed to provide greater expertise and resilience for the network, by having a few really well-equipped centres instead of lots of smaller ones. The Fire Brigades Union lobbied MPs against them, but although I helped arrange meetings for them I was never persuaded myself, mainly because it seemed to me likely that the management had a good overview of what was needed and the FBU was opposing it just because of generally bad industrial relations. I did have qualms about the size of the project, but swallowed them.

Well, they went ahead and it's turned out that the FBU was right – the project has gone wildly over budget and run into the sand. The Audit Commission report on the project is completely scathing, and I should have listened more closely to the arguments at the time.

4. The Bombardier decision

The decision not to give the recent train contract to Bombardier, and to have the main work done in Germany, is a serious blow to manufacturing in the region. There is a petition to ask the Government to reverse the decision, and if you want to support that you can find it on the website of a Derby MP:

http://www.chriswilliamson.org/ .

Alternatively or in addition, you may want to write to the Secretary of State for Transport, Philip Hammond MP (House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA) to urge that the tender for the Crossrail rolling stock is brought forward. This is probably the more realistic chance, and the reason it's both reasonable and would make a difference is that if the tender only goes out in 2013 as planned, Bombardier may have closed the factory and be unable to bid, whereas if it's issued in 2012, they can bid and keep going if they win. The cost to the Government would be very small – it's mainly a practical issue of getting on with it.

5. Local news

• Kimberley governors have "almost unanimously" (I don't have the exact figures) voted to register interest in academy status – see my last email for the arguments for and against. They will now consult parents, staff, pupils, feeder schools and the wider community, before making a final decision early next year.

• Unemployed people now outnumber jobs locally by an 8:1 ratio. A constituent has been looking into details of how people out of work can improve their skills. He writes:

Local training organisations offer advice and guidance, help with job seeking skills and free training in work-related skills. The skill areas include business, IT, health and social care, childcare, retail, customer service, bookkeeping, secretarial, health and safety. However, they may be able to offer training in other areas dependent on funding and availability. Key Skills in English and maths can be offered if needed. You need to be 18 and over and one of the following:

• claiming Job Seekers Allowance for less than 12 months
• claiming Employment Support Allowance ( the Work-Related part of it)
• recently been made redundant, or
• under threat of redundancy.

If you are on this programme any benefits you are claiming will not be affected. The programme is fairly short as you attend part-time for up to six weeks. There are various providers, but one local one is Pitmans, on 0115 950 2003.

6. Local events

Fund-raiser for Middle Street charity

There will be a fund-raising party at the White Hart in Lenton on July 16 from 8pm to 1230am, for the charity Mindset, who are based in Beeston and support the Middle Street centre. Five live bands are promised.

11th Stapleford & District Garden Holders Annual Show

Open to residents of Stapleford & District, a colourful and inspiring display of the results of local horticultural enthusiasm. And the produce is all auctioned at the end… It's on Saturday, 20th August, in the Maycliffe Hall, Toton Lane, Stapleford, and any eligible contestant can deliver produce from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. Doors open to the public (admission 25p) at 1.00 p.m. Refreshments are served throughout. Proceeds from the Show Raffle will this year go to Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research, in memory of Diane Halford who had organised all the previous events.

Best wishes

Nick

Council leadership - the outcome / crime, prison and rape / local events

19th May 2011

Hi all,

1. The new Broxtowe council leadership

This has now been agreed. Labour councillors consulted extensively with members first, since there was considerable unease about both the coalition with the Liberal Democrats after what Labour members felt had been an unfair campaign, as well as giving several Cabinet places to the Conservatives.

However, the majority view among both members and councillors was that, having been elected, it was important to take responsibility, and they wanted to include the Conservatives to show that it was possible to take a more inclusive and mature approach than we normally associate with British politics. The Conservatives will have three of the eight seats, but will not take portfolio responsibility (so they won't initiate policy but will have a say on it before it's enacted). In addition, the Mayor and Deputy Mayor positions have been given to Jacky Williams (LibDems) and Margaret Handley (Conservatives), recognising their personal work for the community.

The outcome is this:

The council leader will be Labour's Milan Radulovic, with a Labour deputy who will be either Pat Lally or Richard Robinson. These three will be joined in the Cabinet by two LibDems, Stan Heptinstall and David Watts, and the three Conservatives (I'm not sure which yet). The all-party working group tackling Beeston town centre as it evolves with the new tram and square development will continue.

The bottom line is that it will be a clearly Labour-led council, but all three parties will get a significant say in looking at and deciding on policies proposed. It's an interesting experiment and I wish it well.

By the way, David Watts says the Beestonia blog was mistaken to report that a LibDem had threatened to resign if they joined the Conservatives, and asks me to pass on this correction.

2. Rape, sentencing, policing and alternatives to prison

Some comments on the controversies surrounding Ken Clarke and Teresa May on crime, policing and punishment. I heard nearly the whole of the controversial interview with Ken C on Radio 5, as I was stuck in a huge traffic jam for over an hour. I like Ken personally but he has a tendency to bluff his way through an argument without mugging up on the facts, and this issue is important enough to deserve better.

- Rape of any kind is serious and it's usually unhelpful to try to draw distinctions between the worst and less bad cases as part of a political argument about prison policy. The courts will impose higher or lower sentences according to the case anyway so it's relevant to the actual policy change – see next point.

- The Government's policy change is an increased reduction in sentence if the offender (however serious) admits guilt early on. This is clearly about reducing cost, and not at Ken pretends about saving embarrassment for victims – since it's being applied to all crimes, not just rape. (Would you be embarrassed to give evidence against a burglar or a drunken driver?)

- The reduction in prison numbers by earlier release of offenders also seems to be about saving money. As I've said before, I'm absolutely in favour of earlier release if it's combined with increased supervision and help after release to give a decent chance of rehabilitation. In this case, it's being combined with a *reduction* in supervision and help – which is also clearly to save money.

- Ken Clarke in his position should know better than to argue his case on the basis of teenage sex with one partner under 16. Contrary to what he said in the interview, this isn't treated as rape at all, so it's simply a diversion to bring it up.

- Rather than all these blustering smokescreens, I prefer Teresa May's straightforward admission: her Department is short of cash, so she's reducing police numbers and worsening their pay and conditions. It's a clear statement and makes a proper discussion of priorities possible.

The bottom line: the combination of fewer police, shorter prison sentences AND less supervision and support after release is simply toxic. It isn't liberal or authoritarian but just factual to say that it's almost bound to lead to more crime, and in my opinion it does show the wrong priorities. For example, why is the Government spending more and more money on trying to replace the Government of Libya and building new aircraft carriers without aircraft, if we're short of money for basic services like the police?

What would I do in their place?

* Argue that voters of all parties would like a higher priority and greater protection given to combating crime than most other areas.

*If the Treasury was still requiring me to cut the crime budgets, protect the post-release supervision and support system – especially drug rehabilitation – and release prisoners on very short sentences as quickly as the system can supervise them.

* Encourage more pilot projects on different forms of rehabilitation – we don't know enough about what works to impose one model everywhere.

* Make changes to terms and conditions for police apply to new recruits (there's a big surplus of applicants), including the use of more non-uniformed police at lower pay for routine work, but don't demoralise existing police by retrospective change to their conditions.

* And if the Treasury squeezed me so hard that I couldn't do these things, resign from the Cabinet – not because I'd blundered in a radio interview, but because my job was being made impossible.

3. Coming events

St John's C of E School is holding a summer May fair on the 21st May at St Helens Church Hall, starting at 10am till 2pm. There will be stalls, refreshments and the local fire station will be bringing one of their engines.

RADCLIFFE on Trent Male Voice Choir will be performing at St Mary's Church, Greasley, near Eastwood, on Saturday June 4th at 7pm to help raise cash for the roof repair.

The church needs to raise half of the £30,000 needed to repair the roof following the theft of lead last autumn and is holding a series of events throughout the year to help reach the target.

Tickets are priced at £6 and are available by calling Ian Kiddie on 0115 849 4278 or by emailing the church administrator at office@greasleychurch.org.uk.

Best wishes

Nick

What's happening on the council?/the NHS debate explained/debts vs deficits

14th May 2011

Hi all,

1. What's happening on the council?

As you know, the election result was Conservatives 18 (no change) Labour 17 (+7), LibDems 9 (-7), Independents 0 (-2 uncontested). Interesting, Labour actually got most votes in both the borough and the parliamentary constituency (we increased by 13.5% on last time), which bodes well for the County and next Parliamentary election, though there's lots of water to flow under the bridge before that.

This leaves the LibDems holding the balance of power. According to the well-informed Beestonia blog, their first move was to approach the Tories, to discuss forming a local coalition to match the national one. However, there were serious disagreements within the LibDem group on pursuing this, with one councillor reportedly saying he'd leave the group rather than support a Tory coalition, and the current proposal is a Labour-led coalition, effectively continuing the current partnership but with Labour taking over the lead. The LibDems have now agreed to this; Labour is consulting its members about the details and there will be a deciding vote on this proposal on Tuesday.

2. The NHS debate explained

There was so much positive feedback about my balanced presentation of the AV issue that I thought I'd have a go at a similarly balanced briefing on the NHS reforms. People are aware that there's a row going on, but it's quite hard to make out the details. I do have a definite view which I'll put at the end, but I'll try to summarise the issues fairly first.

The starting point is that the NHS is working reasonably well at the moment in most places, with some obvious exceptions: waiting times are much shorter than they were, and although I get occasional bad feedback of patients' experiences, it's outweighed by much more positive feedback. Our health outcomes (how long we live, for instance) are comparable to countries like the US where vastly more money is spent. However, with people living longer and medical technology advancing, there are twin pressures on costs, and everyone agrees that even if the budget is kept steady in real terms, we have to keep making the system as efficient as possible.

Up to now, NHS budgets were managed by Primary Care Trusts, who were ultimately responsible to the Department of Health. They were staffed by professional planners, who would weigh up which hospital to use most, how many GPs were needed, whether to launch an anti-smoking drive, and so on. Their performance was judged on national criteria ("targets"), such as rapid access to treatment. They were encouraged to use some private sector expertise where they thought it would improve efficiency, up to around 15% of total services.

The changes pushed through the Commons by the Government abolish PCTs and replace them with GP-led commissioning groups, with financial incentives to keep costs down. Two important constraints that applied to PCTs are being taken away: they can use as much private sector services as they like ("why not use whatever is most efficient?"), and the Secretary of State no longer imposes national targets for things like waiting times.

These are the arguments in favour:

a) Rather than have priorities set for the whole country by the Government, isn't it better to have them set by local GPs, who are in daily contact with patients? Although this will lead to different levels of service depending where you live, perhaps that will reflect genuine variations in need? For example, as Worthing has a lot of elderly people, probably Worthing ought to invest more in geriatric treatment than a consortium in Central London.

b) Getting rid of national targets frees professionals to decide whatever they think best.

c) The service will still be free, yet behind the scenes there will be the efficiency gains that supporters expect from a free market economy. Many supporters of the proposals believe that ultimately only competition really creates efficiency.

The reasons these changes are controversial are:

a) It was a specific Conservative election promise not to impose a major new reorganisation on the NHS. Everyone now admits this has turned out to be hooey – the reorganisation is the largest in the history of the NHS.

b) GPs are busy people, and mostly don't really want to stop treating patients and use their time to act as planners, a role they're not necessarily trained for. So in practice they will recruit medical planners to run the consortia for them, and the obvious place to find medical planners is… the planners who have just been sacked by the PCTs. So there is a great deal of hassle and worry for everyone but we'll probably mostly have the same people doing the planning.

c) The removal of targets and opening to the private sector does give scope for real cost-cutting, but at the expense of patients. For instance, it's obviously feasible to run a hospital more cheaply if you have no pressure to do operations in any particular timeframe – you simply postpone operations when you're busy and ask the patients to come back a few months later if they're still alive and things are quieter. So there's a risk that the private company will take its profit by cutting services, and the GP consortia will accept it because it helps their own bottom line.

For what it's worth, this is my view. I don't, personally, oppose the use of some private services. The NHS doesn't make its own tables: it buys them from expert makers of furniture. In the same way, if they can buy in expert teams of eye surgeons, as they did in Ilkeston, then if the results are good, that's fine. However, it seems to me essential that control of the system is kept by the Government of the day, so that we know who to complain to if we have to wait two years for a hip replacement – writing to "New Hips plc" isn't going to get us anywhere, any more than grumbling to East Midlands Trains makes them run better. The combination of opening up to privatisation and abolishing the performance requirements is what makes the changes so dangerous.

So I'd have been happy to support adding some GPs to PCT management – a much less disruptive way of getting that local expert input than tearing up the whole system. I'd have been willing to go along with some increase in private sector involvement, say to 20%. But the changes seem to me much too drastic and likely to lead to serious disruption and long-term damage to the NHS. It's not, in my view, what anyone voted for – not, in fact, even most Conservatives. The changes should not just be tinkered with; they should be halted and a rethink followed by some extended local pilot schemes should follow.

3. Debt vs deficit – a quick guide

Another area of confusion is the whole debate around debts and deficits. Two interesting questions to reflect on:

(a) How does our debt to GDP ratio really compare with other countries? Answer: we're 9th – with a better ratio than France and Germany.

(b) Which major country is cutting its spending most drastically? We are.

So what are Ministers talking about when they say we need the cuts because they've inherited a very large debt? If they say this, they're (whether accidentally or deliberately) confusing debt and deficit. Our debt level is not particularly high compared with other countries. But our deficit level (the annual gap) is high.

At some point this deficit has to be reduced, as otherwise our total debt would rise until it really *was* above other countries. The disagreement between the Government and Labour is that the Government sees this as the overriding priority, worth all the cuts that are being made; Labour would just aim to halve the deficit by 2015, so as to avoid stifling the recovery. Germany and France, which are cutting less than us, are recovering faster, so their tax revenue is going up and they're reducing the deficit that way.

In personal terms, the equivalent would be if you had a normal sized mortgage but you were spending more than you earned because you've been ill. You clearly need over time to earn more or spend less, and you might well skip an expensive holiday, but it would be counter-productive to stop eating, since that would just extend your illness and your ability to start earning more again. Personal examples can be misleading, but I hope this helps illustrate the position.

There is a separate argument on what particular cuts are being made, of course. A good test of whether a cut is really just for deficit reduction is to ask whether the Government plans to restore it when funds permit. In some cases (e.g. support for the road network) the answer is probably yes. In others (e.g. social care services) I'm afraid the answer is probably no.

4. Rylands Methodists celebrate

I've been asked to pass on the events surrounding the 60th anniversary of the Rylands Methodist Church in Victory Road:

Celebration Weekend May 21st/22nd

Saturday 21st Community Celebration 10am -4pm
includes Sunshine Puppets, Patricia Eyre School of Dancing, Cake stall, Bible sale, Barbecue and refreshments.

Sunday May 22nd 10.30 All Age Worship; 6.00pm Celebration Worship
I'm sometimes asked how I select which local events to publicise. The answer is that I don't. I'll pass on anything that I'm asked to pass on, if it seems likely to interest a fair number of you, unless it is actively hostile (for instance I wouldn't help to publicise a BNP rally). Please don't hesitate to let me know about events you'd like publicised, ideally a couple of weeks in advance.

Best wishes

Nick

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