Welfare reform

Don't often see a piece of this length - nor importance - in the Spectator blogs. Well worth a read. It starts with Labour's view from former spad Jo Moore -

'Sorting welfare comes at a political cost – and for what? Helping a bunch of people who tend not to vote. Far easier to shovel money at the poor, and leave them in decaying council estates.'

And that's exactly what they did. But as we all know, it's how you look after those you do not need that defines you. The piece ends 'how serious is he (Cameron) about fixing this broken society? In the next few months, we’ll see.'

Iain Duncan Smith and welfare reform is fast becoming the totemic issue for this coalition. And not before time.

Pakistan (and David Miliband) doth protest too much, methinks

So 'loudmouth' Cameron is making it up as he goes along is he? Not very likely Mr Miliband. Nor very polite. And being a victim of terrorism hardly makes Pakistan innocent. The connections and coincidences are now too great to ignore. The complacency of the ISI too freightening. The louder they protest, the more we wonder what they're trying to hide. Speak loud Mr Cameron. The world is listening.

The Losers

Labour: Ed Balls - too close. David Miliband - lacking courage. Harriet Harman - PMQless. Jack Straw - even worse. Lord Mandelson - too well rewarded for his disloyalty.

LibDems: David Laws - doh! Vince Cable - past form catching him up.

Conservatives: Liam Fox - completely out of touch. David Davis - off the scale.

Media: Andrew Marr - lost all his friends. Simon Heffer - the lunatics have taken over the asylum and are doing rather well. Polly Toynbee - run out of apologists. This Week - Diane still missing & four idiotic replacements.

Calmly Radical

The summer recess is here and politics is going away on holiday.

'Better than the last lot' was Jeff Randal's verdict. Not difficult really - and what a relief after the forces of anger, hatred and deceit finally left the stage.

So how have they done? Radical, that's for sure.

Eight short weeks into a government program scrambled together whilst assembling the first national coalition in half a century, and the government has embarked on the most radical reform program possible: halving Labours profligate borrowing, deep reforms in welfare, education, the NHS, policing, prisons, and immigration as well as constitutional changes the like of which we have not seen since women's suffrage in the 1920's.

And Labour always told us Cameron was policy light. Naughty Labour.

The most obvious change though has been in attitude. A quiet determination to apply real solutions to pressing problems, with calm and curtesy. None of the frenzy that characterised NewLabour and its spin machine.

And yet the big loser - at least in polling terms - appear to be the Liberal Democrats. The latest polls show them languishing at around 15%. So what, in policy terms, did the LibDems actually secure?

They agreed and are implementing the necessary deficit reductions from their own manifesto. They have secured constitutional reform including AV with a referendum set for 5th May next year. They have secured - through Michael Gove's educational reforms - the 'pupil premium' of their manifesto. They are set to take out a tier of buraucracy - strategic health authorities - from the NHS as outlined in their manifesto. They have secured a prison reform program that was widely criticised in the leader's debates during the election campaign. And perhaps most significantly, the tax threashold was increased towards their much publicised objective of £10,000 in George Osborne's emergency budget. Not a bad haul for a party providing just 59 of the 365 coalition MP's.

Vodka & Madmen

Started watching the first series of Madmen this week. Really baffling. Few good characters - Draper's wife a rare exception - no real storyline. Oddly stylised 1960's environment. And a whole series of seemingly unrelated mini-stories that don't seem to go anywhere: Draper's childhood, a long-lost brother, his wife's hand problem, babysitting loo incident, copy-writing secretary, gun-buying account executive, massed alcoholism. I could go on.

Still, the Bloody Mary's are great, smoking rules and what's the name for a Vodka & Milk?

All you need is a bike

Its summer and I need some exercise. Today - but not in honour of the Mayor's new bicycle scheme - I will buy a bike. A lean and beautiful bike. A road bike. With the thinest tyres I can find and the lightest frame possible.

Not like John Lennon's then.

Labour, principle & AV

Excellent piece by Martin Kettle called Labour is playing fast and loose on AV reform in today's Guardian. He writes:

"When Labour looks at this bill it sees Clegg – whom it now hates – not
electoral reform, which it should and until a few weeks ago did support. Nearly
two centuries after the Chartists, one is bound to ask whether the Labour party
is any longer a party of reform at all."

It is quite extraordinary how unprincipled the Labour party now appears to the electorate.

You've had the cowboys, now try the Indians...

I can't believe I've just heard Laura Kuenssberg - BBC Chief Political correspondent - saying on the 6 o'clock that honesty in foreign relations is part of the new politics and - by implication - very little to do with the old.

Cameron is apparently "determined to persue this new 'frank' style abroad - honesty he believes is the best foreign policy".

She obviously doesn't realise the forces of anger, hatred and deceit left office on 6th May...

Turkey votes for Christmas

Apparently Turkey still wants to join the EU. They really should know better.

So after a decade of New Labour's uncontrolled immigration to the UK 'just to rub the right's nose in it' and the apparent necessity of the coalition's new immigration cap in order to control integration, we now need 74 million young Turks enhancing our diversity.

I can only assume (always a dangerous course) that with so much reported opposition from Germany, Austria & France amongst others, Cameron knows he's on safe ground. Cynical or what?

Hilary Clinton

A North Korean border guard looks suspiciously at US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton on a recent visit to the disputed 1953 Military Demarcation Line that is the border.

What struck me was how aged she appeared after just two years in office.

Banksy's farce

Its entertaining. It uses an unlikely or improbable situation. It may involve disguise or mistaken identity. The potential for verbal humour including sexual innuendo and wordplay is enormous. The speed of the plot should increased to an endpoint involving an elaborate chase and unlikely outcome.

Its farce. And Banksy's image provides everything you need to know. Just enough naughtyness. Just that perfect moment representing all those wonderful moments in British farce.

And then there's the perfect positioning of hands. Left of course.

Licensing Heroin

300,000 heroin addicts throughout the UK currently commit more than £14 billion of criminal activity each year. Its an extraordinary total. Yet the fact that we measure drug addiction in terms of criminality and economics shows just how far we are from solving it.

In an article from Times 2 today - whose URL I am unable to link to because (a) you now need to subscribe for online content and (b) I read it on an iPad without any address bar - talks about an experiment that has been running in Zurich since 1994 to provide heroin for regular users in an effort to tackle street drugs and their associated criminality. The organisers say it costs £33.50 per patient per day, but produces a net saving of £27.60 per day after factoring in the reduction in crime & criminal justice system costs.

More importantly, 30% of Swiss users find jobs and pay taxes. A remarkable total. As Dr Adrian Kormann - Zoki 2's clinical director - suggests, '...their health and welbeing improve, they stop committing crimes and many can get back into education or work. They rebuild relations with their families and friends. And all of it comes at a saving to the state.' A similar limited experiment has apparently been tried in this country, with results so far unknown.

This is just the sort of bold, but vital initiative we need in the UK to start turning the tide against decades of ignorant attempts to treat, usually through the prison system, the symptoms of heroin addiction which blight families and communities up and down the country - street crime, burglary and prostitution. We must start returning addicts back to families and communities able to properly support them. Without the blight of criminal activity that so divides them from society.

Prison Reform

Just read Ben Gummer's maiden speech on penal reform. This really is an important area for the coalition - central to their vision of a 'broken society'. Prisons remain the main repository of family breakdown, educational underachievement and substance abuse in Britain.

With the exception of a small number of high security jails for serious long-term offenders, our prisons should be turned into adult education centres providing both basic reading, writing & arithmatic as well as vocationally-based qualifications allowing all inmates the chance of a future on release.

They must also be drug-free zones in which all detainees know before entry that drugs will not be tolerated and all warders change into prison uniforms on entry.

Swine Flu

The governments £1.2bn response to swine flu was apparently 'proportionate and effective' we learned from a report published this week and commissioned by that same government. It used just 5 million of 132 million doses of anti-viral drugs ordered (thats 3.8%) despite forcasting at one stage that 65,000 UK citizens could die from the worldwide pandemic. The outcome was 457 deaths (thats 0.7%).

No possibility then that Gordon Brown's nasty, incompetent, angry, spiteful and unpopular Labour government might have been feeling just a little vulnerable at the time?

Where's Labour?

Iain Martin writes witheringly of David Miliband's inability to engage in foreign policy debate. But it is no irony that the favourite for Labour leadership, foreign secretary for the last three years, leading Labour reformist and keeper of the Blairite flame, simply dismisses William Hague's speech as 'vacuous'. Brother Ed meanwhile (another leadership candidate), lazily attacks serious attempts at welfare reform as 'on yer bike Toryism'.

Time and again senior Labour figures - cabinet ministers up until a few short weeks ago - simply do not get it. From Harriet Harman's PMQ's performance downwards, the arguments have moved on. Labour has not.

Last nights Question Time reflected the same impoverished performance from Alan Johnson. 'I dont want to make it an Iain Duncan Smith benefit night' said David Dimbleby at one point as all four questions - on the budget, prison reform, immigration caps and job mobility -went unanswered by the former home secretary. Meanwhile Iain Duncan Smith argued lucidly on the geographic nature of poverty, its roots, the rehabilitation of first-time offenders and successfully absorbing immigration. No tribalism. No point scoring. Just intelligent and purposeful debate.

Later on This Week, Andy Burnham - yet another Labour leadership contender - could only muster the line 'it reminds me of the 1980s' as Michael Portillo (who left front-line politics five years ago) and a twenty-something indy folk singer (Roy Stride of Scouting For Girls), accurately took the pulse at the heart of coalition politics. Where's Labour?

Your Freedom

Entitled Your Ideas For Freedom this site is well worth a visit. I found it painfully slow to load, but nicely laid out with great ideas being voted on. But will it lead to reform?

VAT

Its extraordinary how outraged the comment on increasing VAT to 20% becomes. Its £3 a week for the average person for heavens sake. It excludes food, children's shoes & clothing, books, newspapers and includes a reduced rate on heating bills. Just how outraged do you think you should appear? Yes its not as progressive as increasing income tax, but its a lot cheaper to collect (retailers & businesses do all the work) and its collected every quarter on the dot - or serious fines ensue.

The coalition's mistake was not increasing VAT, but not to use that increase for a specific purpose. It should have been used as a locally-based sales tax covering all local government expenditure. Amounts raised in VAT and those spent by local authorities (roads, transport, care services etc) are remarkably similar in this country - around £90bn - and a whole layer of local bureaucracy could be saved in the process. This involves valuing properties, calculating council tax, printing & sending demands, collecting & enforcing late payers, legal fees etc. I'm sure you get the picture.

Throughout the US a local sales tax is used to pay for local services. It enhances democracy because local people become interested when their money is on the line and it puts people at the centre of local government. After all, the only way to increase local government revenues under such a system, is to increase either businesses or consumers in your area. Not exactly a nimby's charter then, and rather responsive to demographic changes from immigration, no?

Euro Disintegration

Reading Dan Hannan's post and the wonderful metaphor from the comments below it - 'We all want to be good neighbours, but see no need to knock through the adjoining walls of our houses and marry into the family in order to be considered good neighbours' - I realise that Cameron needs to be a little more honest with European partners.

Britain's position on the Euro is unequivocal, widely understood and correct. But Cameron should - at least in private - now be preparing his European partners for life beyond the Euro. All those countries in a fiscal mess should be actively planning for life outside the Euro. Leadership means setting out the economic and political imperatives needed for a stable and prosperous Euro area, whilst supporting those unable to commit to the financial prerequisites. I also note that Iceland, Norway & Switzerland participate in the Schengen Area despite being non-EU member states.

The disintegration of Euroland is going to be complicated, expensive and very messy. But Cameron, as a relative outsider and leader of Europe's primary financial hub, should now be suggesting at a level of some impartiality, the various routes out of this problem.

Treasury Questions

Managed to watch some of Treasury Questions this afternoon with George Osborne looking impressively in control of economic matters. But just how impressive were Justine Greening - on the front bench - and Margot James (who delivered her maiden speech yesterday) from the backbenches. What knowledge and confidence. Perhaps the Coalition should be thinking of an all women cabinet as well.

Harman for Labour leader

Matthew Parris is right on Harriet Harman. Labour needs a clean skin - someone unassociated with the more deceitful and incompetent (and largely economic) aspects of Gordon Brown and New Labour. Someone like Harriet Harman in fact. Big on equality; small on the economy.

She of course has suggested that half the shadow cabinet should be women. But as Chris Dillow points out in his excellent blog, '...women are only one group of many which is under-represented in government. So too are: single people; ethnic minorities; people without degrees; people educated at state school; the under-30s, the over-60s; and, of course, the 95% of people with lower incomes than MPs. Ms Harman is not calling for quotas for these groups. So why single out women?'

And while were on that agenda, why not go the whole nine yards? Since men have been unfairly over-represented for the last 50 years, why not introduce a women-only shadow cabinet for the next 50 years? That way Harriet Harman and Diane Abbott could both be leader. One after the other.

Christ preaching at Cookham regatta

The Welfare Revolution

Michael Meacher presents the old defeatist view of welfare reform, whilst Camilla Cavendish yet another symptom of social disfunction all around us. Meanwhile, Iain Duncan Smith sets out his stall. We'll have to wait a little longer for the solutions.

Complex and inter-dependent social forces are at work here. Iain Duncan Smith's Centre for Social Justice describes the five pathways to poverty, but in truth there are more - mental health for example - which will require multi-layered solutions across several government departments. Did anyone mention prison reform? Why aren't all prisons adult education institutes? And why aren't all prisoners serving more than three years coming out able to read, write and be professionally qualified for work? You get the idea.

With the initial focus on ending welfare dependency and the lack of incentive for work inherently built-in to the welfare system, the coalition needs to look positively at raising the tax threshold not just to £10,000 - as the LibDems are demanding - but to the minimum wage - around £11,400.

A permanent link between these two would provide the greatest incentive for enterprise generally and getting back into work in particular. It would also enable dismantling of the overly-complex and widely abused Tax Credits system, as well as providing a fairer and more balanced tax system which benefits all taxpayers.

Paying for it - around £22bn I understand - will mean substantially increasing the level of redistribution within the tax system. Ending the cap on NI contributions for instance, could raise £8bn, CGT increases to income tax bands around £2bn, the scrapping of tax credits a further £4bn, with the balance paid for by lowering the 40% tax threshold for higher rate payers.

I realise the howls of protest from the Tory right will be both substantial and sustained. But they should understand the real goal in this package. Properly incentivising people off welfare and back into employment not only gives them a real stake in society (and with it at least partly mending some of the broken bits) but enables them to contribute - through the tax system - towards Labour's debts and future public spending.

It might also reduce those welfare payments by around £22bn. Now there's a thought.

Eurozone crisis

Great piece from Adrian Hamilton in today’s Independent suggesting we are now witnessing the second phase of the Credit Crunch - the unwinding of debt. This is as much a political issue as a financial one, demanding political decisions about expenditure, tax and investment.

“The trouble with the trillion dollar rescue package put together by the Eurozone governments was that it once again bailed out the commercial banks with taxpayer's money, this time at the cost to the public of dramatic and early expenditure cuts.”

What needs to happen now is the rescheduling of the debt along time frames “more realistic to the national fiscal positions and popular acceptance.”

liberalConservatism

What a sense of relief as we enter the bold world of liberalConservatism. Thankfully consigning the forces of anger, hatred and deceit to the opposition benches. And with them, right on cue, an extraordinary piece from Simon Heffer in todays Telegraph. Apparently he doesn't want to be demonised as 'right wing'. Bless.

In that case Mr Heffer, it might be an idea to stop your weekly abuse of mainstream politicians with names like 'Lord Rumba of Rio', 'call me Dave' or 'boy George'. We expect such tribal hatred from Labour and the rabid right. Not the reasonable mainstream.

And whilst you and your fans from UKIP are thinking about it, may I congratulate you for depriving Cameron of those last 20 MP's in the recent election. Didn't get you a single seat in parliament, but it had the desired effect of bringing into the coalition the most Euro-enthusiastic party in British politics. Well done. Hope you enjoy the results.

Labour's Vision

Mary Riddell, writing in today's Telegraph under the title Gordon Brown must now tell the voters why they deserve more of him, sets out Labour's vision for the next five years of government.

Her suggestions that would demand we vote for five more years of Gordon Brown? Freeze VAT, split the banks between retail & casino varieties and lower the age of voting to sixteen - because 41% of that age group, she explains, would vote Labour.

Underwhelming.

Public Sector Pensions

This really is a staggering graph of public sector pensions over the next 50 years. With thanks to Burning Our Money:

Orange : Armed Forces

Light Blue : Civil Service

Yellow : NHS

Dark Blue : Teachers

Grey : Others

Non Dom Status

Harriet Harman on this mornings Andrew Marr show was very keen to keep the spotlight on Lord Ashcroft. We now know that more than £10 million pounds has been donated to Labour coffers by Lords Paul, Noonan and others - all of whom appear to be non doms - as well as similar sources to the Lib Dems.

Harman argues that Ashcroft has broken 'assurances' given at his enoblement and misled his own party, calling Cameron's judgement into doubt. Yet both the Cabinet Office and Parliamentary authorities have given the peer a clean bill of health in this weeks report.

Leaving aside the fact that Cameron had no role in Ashcroft's peerage - it was well before his time - the question nobody has asked is why were such 'assurances' not obtained from Labour or Lib Dem peers prior to their appointment? Or is it that 'a future fair for all' applies only to those that vote Labour?

Harman also needs to explain why - after thirteen years in government - did it take the intervention of Cameron in proposing that all members of parliament - both commons and peers - should renounce their non dom status and pay full UK tax in order to stay members, before the government acted?

The Great Clunking Fist

‘Gordon Brown's rages are... deeply destructive to good governance, and are a key to understanding why this man's government has been so unco-ordinated, unhappy and ineffectual in so many ways’ writes Jenni Russell in the Guardian. It’s well worth reading.

But it goes a lot deeper than just the personal fear that paralyses good government. It creates a paranoid, inward-looking and self-important elite unable to gain true perspective. Groupthink is the result, where individual creativity, uniqueness, and independent thinking are lost in the pursuit of a bunker mentality. All advantages of reasonable balance in choice and thought disappear.

And then we wonder why they failed to foresee the financial meltdown caused by the credit crunch, the longest and deepest recession in eighty years, MP’s expenses, the 10p tax disaster, or the deeply de-humanising effects of centrally imposed, top-down targets that distort our public services. And all of these in just the last two years of Labour government.

Cameron on Family

Coming back from work today I expected to hear of a speech by Cameron on the family. All I got from the 24/7 news channels was one line about keeping Sure Start, sandwiched between Clegg withdrawing policy commitments and Gordon Brown promising - yet again - to be nicer to his PLP.

Reading the full speech, it really is a thorough, thoughtful and comprehensive piece. If you’re looking for a narrative on the Conservative themes of family, responsibility and mending our broken society, Cameron clearly explains it here. From individual responsibility, through early years intervention and community participation, right through to the fundamental importance of good education in building social responsibility. Cameron’s point is that ”…If you do the responsible thing, you will be rewarded. If you don’t, you won’t.”

He begins describing “a whole host of severe social problems… caused in part from the wrong personal choices” suggesting “…that the state continue(s) to treat the symptoms of these problems instead of the root causes” and asking “…how do we help build responsible character in people?”

Cameron begins by looking at the crucial influence of family on the value of personal responsibility which, he says provides “…the ability to stick at your commitments. The power to bounce back from bad times. The capacity to identify with other people.” He continues “…we all know what good parenting looks like... It means setting boundaries as well as providing love and offering security. These are things that help foster commitment, resilience, empathy – and everything else we associate with responsibility.”

Cameron then outlines findings from Demos research showing that “…the differences in child outcomes between a child born in poverty and a child born in wealth are no longer statistically significant when both have been raised by “confident and able” parents… what matters most to a child’s life chances is not the wealth of their upbringing but the warmth of their parenting. If we want to give children the best chance in life – whatever background they are from – the right structures need to be in place, strong and secure families, confident and able parents, an ethic of responsibility instilled from a young age.”

A tribute to Labour MP Frank Field follows for identifying this and suggesting that the welfare state should…“openly reward good behaviour and ... be used to enhance those roles which the country values”. He continues “…the research shows that while the style of responsible (parenting)… is more likely to occur in wealthier households, children in poor households who are raised with that style of parenting do just as well”

On reversing family breakdown Cameron is at his most emphatic. “It is essential to say loudly and proudly that commitment is a core value of a responsible society and that's why we will recognise marriage, whether between a man and a woman, a woman and a woman or a man and another man, in the tax system. And yes, that is a commitment.” He goes on to outline other policy commitments: “we’ll extend the right to request flexible working to all parents with a child under eighteen… we’ll introduce Flexible Parental Leave, meaning both parents can share the responsibilities of caring for a new baby...” and “…we will increase the number of Sure Start health visitors by 4,200, giving families a much greater level of personal, professional support in the home when they need it most.”

Turning to Sure Start, Cameron commits to “…taking it back to its original purpose - early intervention, increasing its focus on those who need its help most and better involving organisations with a proven track record in parenting interventions”, whilst anchoring these changes within the three principals which lie behind all Conservative policy - decentralisation, transparency & accountability. Cameron names the type of third sector organisations which he expects to lead such intervention, Lifeline, 4Children and Homestart saying a Conservative government will “…contract them to run children’s centres and reach out to dysfunctional and disadvantaged local families. They will then be paid – at least in part - according to the results they achieve” with funding coming from the current Early Years Support Team at DCSF.
On schools Cameron expects “…disciplined, ordered classrooms, where children understand what is acceptable behaviour and what isn’t… an ethos that elevates aspiration… (and) a respect for authority… a culture of mentoring… competitive sport that teaches children about team-work, training and applying yourself.” As well as “…giving head teachers the final say when it comes to excluding disruptive children.” He says “…our long-term reforms are about spreading freedom and parent-power across the state system so more schools provide the kind of education we need to help raise the kind of responsible citizens we want”.

But it is his final words on community participation that will prove the most difficult feat: “…we all have a duty to ensure that children and young people are absorbing influences that encourage responsibility. Clearly, that must begin from the very top. Government must expect responsibility from others... Our plan for National Citizen Service for Young People will be led by charities and community groups and will bring together sixteen year olds from across the country in a programme of social engagement. There they will learn what it means to be socially responsible, to serve their community, and to get on and get along with people from different backgrounds.” He finishes with a memorable quote from the Archbishop of Canterbury: “If we want to give children a chance of experiencing childhood as they should ... we have to face the demands of being adults ourselves” explaining that our “…culture of suspicion and paranoia is increasingly preventing adults from even interacting with young people. We can’t go on like this. It’s time we gave children back their childhood and get adults to behave like adults”.

Aspiration

Another brilliant piece in todays Sunday Telegraph by Janet Daley. Please read and lift your spirit Mr Cameron.