Category: Blog

Local means national. Devolution means better central control.

In Labour’s world of doublespeak there are many dictionaries telling us how words mean something else to the government.

Gordon Brown and Hazel Blears told us that they would free local government. They sought nothing less than a “reinvention of the way we govern”, “an historic transfer of power from Whitehall to the town hall..”

That was quite a promise. When Hazel Blears finished work on the policy behind it, it turned out very differently.

In the memorable work “The New Performance framework” we are told how 1200 indicators for local authority performance were being trimmed to a neat 198. These in turn would be boiled down to a modest 35 targets amongst the national indicators, supplemented by a trim 17 statutory targets on educational attainment.

We are assured that “The national indicator set will be the only measures on which central government will manage outcomes delivered by local government”. Well there’s a relief then. They only cover a few minor matters like the economy, the environment, equality, health and wellbeing, children and young people, stronger communities and safer communities. That should leave plenty of scope for local government to do other things that are different!

The detail of the slimmed down regime is bizarre. Local Authorities have to track the proportion of “local people who feel they can influence decisions in their locality”, the engagement in the arts, perceptions of anti social behaviour, satisfaction with how the police and the Council are dealing with it, the ethnic composition of offenders on Youth Justice systems disposals, the emotional health of children, healthy life expectancy, the proportion of decent Council homes, non principal roads needing maintenance, bus services running on time, active management of biodiversity sites, and many others.

The strategic objectives are as wide ranging as the indicators are detailed. Councils have to make communities safer, reduce the risk of terrorism, secure a healthy natural environment, encourage more widespread enjoyment of culture and sport, achieve world class standards in education and create sustainable patterns of consumption and production amongst others.

These Ministers are crazy. There is no way they can control the level of detail in 198 indicators, or fairly asses Councils in respect of so many wide ranging and grandiose aims. Anyone who has experience of managing knows you have to keep targets simple and few in number. They need to be stretching but achievable. You also understand that if you attempt to drive everything by such targets you are running a highly centralised system, not a devolved one.

Now wonder performance in the public sector is often so poor. An army of people is needed to collect the figures, to fathom out ways of presenting them more favourably or getting round them. They completely distort what Councils are trying to do. Money is doled out in part in relation to these targets and in part as a result of the star system of rating based on these targets.

The old idea was we elect Councillors to set a course and run the management of our local Council. If they do well we re-elect them, if they do not we replace them. That was accountability. The government has hijacked it with its rules, circulars and targets from Whitehall. Slimming down to 198 still leaves the whole system ossified and centalised. It makes it dear, reluctant to innovate, and resentful of the centre.

No wonder there is so little local democracy and so little interest in local elections. People realise their Council has been hijacked from the centre. Gordon Brown and Hazel Blears clearly hate local democracy, which is why they have invented this overweening set of levers, controls, circulars and regulations. It makes everything much dearer, and means better Councils cannot show how much better they could be.

I welcome the government’s decision to place the Northern Rock debt on the government’s own balance sheet. It always belonged there, as the Bank of England is wholly owned by the Treasury on behalf of taxpayers.
It is there as a reminder of the importance of getting this money back as quickly as possible. It does not help the government’s fianancial standing, given the high level of new borrowing being undertaken.

Richard Littlejohn says today there are no great issues and big ideas in UK politics.

Please Richard, read Hansard for this week. We are battling to try to keep a Parliamentary democracy in these islands, against a government which wishes to give what remains of our important powers of self government away.

We are battling to preserve and extend our civil liberties, damaged by this government’s surveillance society.

We are battling to try to deregulate the UK, to cut through the jungle of red tape, quangos and political correctness.

And yes, some of us are battling for lower taxes as well.

I would have thought that might count as some big ideas!

Today I learn that the Chancellor has become a mortgage salesman again. He is lecturing us to take long term mortgages at fixed rates. Has no-one reminded him that his government has made mortgage selling a regulated activity? I doubt if the Chancellor has bothered to fix himself up with the necessary regulatory approvals to start selling the fixed rate proposition so actively.

Is he aware that mortgage salesmen need to know their client? Does he grasp at all that long term fixed rate mortgages may work out dearer for some people? They do not make much sense if you plan to move on and repay the mortgage in a relatively short time period. The relative cost of floating rate and fixed rate mortgages can vary sharply as interest rates change. In a period of falling interest rates – which many think we are now in – locking yourself into a fixed rate mortgage may not be a good idea.

I hasten to add I am not a regulated mortgage salesman either, so anyone needing a new or different mortgage should go to a professional to seek advice geared to their own circumstances. This site general views and comments, but avoids individual advice on savings, borrowings and investments as these do require professional (and regulated) advice based on knowledge of the individual’s circumstances.

I find it extraordinary that our Chancellor is making this further foray into the world of lending and borrowing, after his last disastrous one just before the run on Northern Rock. Regular readers of this site will recall that I was very critical of his famous speech about how lending institutions had behaved irresponsibly, and would not in the UK be bailed out. His resolution to avoid helping the banks lasted but a few hectic days, before he bowed to the need to guarantee all deposits in all banks under pressure in UK jurisdiction!

He should also remember that as the taxpayer’s representative and principal bank manager to Northern Rock he is no longer above the fray on mortgage bank products. I just hope he has remembered to ask the management of Northern Rock to make sure they have plenty of the types of mortgages he favours available for their customers, before journalists come asking difficult questions about that.

On second thoughts, isn’t the government’s close involvement with a mortgage bank another very good reason why the Chancellor should have said nothing about mortgages to avoid any conflict of interest?

The main reason he seems to be offering us his thoughts is fear. He is afraid there will be a sharp fall in house prices. He does not seem to understand that it is in a way government policy to try to bring house prices down, as they are constantly telling us housing is not affordable and needs to become more affordable. He hopes that if more people take out fixed rate mortgages, more people will be able to pay the mortgage through difficult times. The only thing to be said about that is, at least he realises he is presiding over tricky times. Maybe spending a bit more time thinking about how to unstick them would be a better way to proceed. Lower interest rates will help. Lower interest rates make fixed rates a worse deal!

I was asked to write a piece on what the government should do next in the Northern Rock refinancing saga. Those most closely involved – the company, shareholders, the Bank of England and the government – will need to take professional advice on the legal, tax and investment complexities they have dug themselves into. The general position however, remains much simpler than those who clamour for nationalisation suppose. The government as main lender has all the power it needs to protect taxpayers, whcih should be its prime aim. I sent the following to the Guardian:

The government seems to have been mesmerised by shareholder power. I don’t know why. The truth of the position is simple. Northern Rock needs access to large sums of public money to keep its business going. There is no other source for this money in the short term. The government can therefore set out its terms.

It is wise to seek agreement with shareholders and the mortgage Bank, but foolish to underestimate the power in the government’s position. The taxpayer wants the government and the Bank of England to do a good deal, which saves the bank and ensures the taxpayer will get early repayment of the large sums with interest. The taxpayer should also be rewarded with stock warrants or options to give the taxpayer some share in success, if the rescue works well and the shares recover.

The rumoured decision to demand the end of the guarantee in three years rather than the originally floated five years changes the nature of the task any owner of Northern Rock faces. It means they need to generate more cash more quickly, or to be sure they can raise private finance more quickly. Assuming the government changed the terms on offer like this, it should ensure all potential bidders know, and each bidder has to be given a chance to change their bid in the light of the new circumstances. Presumably the government realises if they press for a shorter repayment period it will increase the pressure on management to cut costs, and may result in a smaller business. This does not mean it is wrong, as the taxpayer does want to know the money will be repaid sooner rather than later.

In order to decide between the competing bids, the shareholder representatives have to satisfy themselves they are recommending the best bid in the circumstances to improve shareholder value and give the business the best chance of future prosperity. It is not for the government to decide which bidder, but it is for the government to make its terms as Bank manager clear to all bidders. Given the scale of lending to the company the government has an effective veto on any bidder, as the government could decide (only if there were good reason) that a particular bidder did not satisfy the government that it was likely to be able to repay the loans in good time.

From the beginning the government has failed to tell us how much it has lent, what interest rate it will charge, when it will b e repaid and how much security it has taken for the loans. These are all elementary parts of good banking. Let us hope these necessary arrangements were made to protect the taxpayers’ interests. Now there is the chance of shareholders putting more money in, or a of a new plan by management to develop and finance the bank, the company needs to make a decision. To do so it needs to be sure how much money it can borrow for how long on what terms from the government. That will then help determine how quickly the business will have to be reduced in size to repay borrowings, and how much scope there is to try and trade their way out of cash shortage.

That perennial row about whether it is right to add fluoride to water is raging again. Our newish Health Secretary believes that children’s teeth will benefit hugely through compulsory mass medication. Instead of people taking fluoride topically, if they choose, by buying a fluoride toothpaste, we will all be forced to ingest it in the water if he has his way.

Nevermind that this shows a failure of the government’s stated policy to encourage healthier eating and drinking in young people, to teach them the importance of cleaning their teeth or to provide adequate NHS dentists. The latest government proposal is to force feed us all a chemical. What are people who react badly to fluoride to do?

There is a clear issue of freedom here. You are forced to use water from the tap. You need it to bathe in, cook in and to clean your teeth in. When you visit a friend, a bar or restaurant, everything they prepare will have used fluorinated water. So if you’re also one of the unlucky ones who can’t tolerate fluoride you have no escape.

Despite a subsidy from the government, heath authorities would be wise to turn down any attempt to make them impose mass medication on their unsuspecting communities. Most taxpayers don’t much like the idea of having their hard earned cash used for this purpose..

Last night was another sorry coda to our long and distinguished history of Parliamentary debate.

Once again we are allowed just one and half hours after 8pm to discuss a fistful of important amendments and complex issues about the government’s wish to bring the European Charter of Human Rights into our law codes through adopting the Constitutional treaty. The government had allowed four and half hours for a general debate on human rights, in order to prevent MPs getting into the important line by line analysis of the 358 Articles and 327 pages of the “Consolidated texts of the EU Treaties as amended by the Treaty of Lisbon”. Several MPs were unable to make the speech they wished to make on the first group of amendments. I had to cut my remarks down to a few minutes, preventing me from referring to any of the amendments in detail. Subsequent amendments on the order paper went undebated, thrown into the dustbin of history without word or vote.

This is a constitutional outrage. All previous governments have allowed substantial time for proper debate of constitutional bills on the floor of the House. Much of the time the House has met in committee, which means MPs have time to move amendments and speak to them. Some move probing amendments, to test out what Ministers think the words of the legislation they are recommending mean and will do. Some are important amendments designed to change the bill, to correct errors or remove harmful clauses and provisions.

Bill Cash invited a number of us concerned about this legislation to meetings before the debates began in the House. We all agreed that we needed to move a series of amendments to strike out the varying parts of the Treaty and Bill which transfer substantial powers from the UK to the EU. Bill kindly produced a wide ranging series of amendments which we co-signed and lodged. I am grateful to him for his hard work in producing them. Anyone who values a democracy in the UK should be glad he took the trouble and set out to make a fight of it before these powers are lost.

The government turned down the official Opposition’s request for 20 days of consideration. We were offered 12 in committee, plus a day on Second Reading to discuss the overall picture, and a day to discuss the so-called timetable motion. The Official Opposition argued passionately against the whole Treaty, and we voted against it on a three line whip. We all argued passionately against the very restrictive timetable, and voted against that on a three line whip.

We were promised by the government “line by line scrutiny” of this massive piece of legislation, as if this were new or a concession. “Line by line scrutiny” of legislation was what we usually had before this government. Most bills went through on no timetable, allowing the Opposition to table as many amendments as they wished and debate for as long as they liked. Parliament often met into the early hours in the morning to hammer out disagreements on complex bills.

What takes my breath away is the audacity of the government to introduce a constitutional outrage on this bill of all bills. Their decision to allow only one and half hours a day to stifle debate on amendments and to replace time in committee with a series of longer general debates is a cynical manoeuvre designed to prevent the Opposition revealing all the danger in the detail as we see it. It implies Ministers are unsure of their ground and their case, that they do not wish to be exposed to the usual cross examination on the wording of each part of this long and complex text.

Today is the 19th anniversay of Sky TV.
When they launched their first four channels in 1989, it was not easy for them, competing against two monoliths, BBC and ITV, offering free to air services. Sky offered choice, but it came at a price the viewer had to pay directly.
As competition Minister I had to take one of the most difficult decisions in that job for the Secretary of State, when the case came before me to merge Sky with its rival subscription service BSB as BSkyB.
I was a competition enthusiast. I wanted the benign power of competition to work its magic, so the UK could have better quality, more choice and lower prices like the richer countries of the world. My first reaction was to prevent the merger, to make the two fight it out for supermacy.
As I studied the market and the figures, I was persauded that the pay TV market was too small and fragile in its early days to sustain two competitors, against the formidable competition of the free to air channels. I came to the conclusion that a merged group would be strong enopugh to survive the early years of build up in the idea of pay TV, and that would provide in due course a serious competitor to the BBC and ITV.
We will never know what would have happened if the two fledgelings had had to slug it out for longer, but we do know that pay TV took off with a stronger played championing its cause.So I say Happy birthday to Sky – you have brought variety and choice into our lives, and have forced changes on the free to air incumbents into the bargain.

It was not a good day yesterday for Parliament to discuss an MP’s right to avoid the bugging of conversations that is now such a common characteristic of our enfeebled democracy. I listened to the exchanges but held my silence. There was so much I wanted to say, but so little that could be said in the form of a question to Jack Straw who had kicked the whole subject into touch by claiming he knew nothing on Saturday and still knew very little, two days on.

I thought we paid Ministers large salaries, gave them official cars and a growing army of officials so they could make decisions, keep us informed and answer when things went wrong. All he had to do on finding out an MP’s conversations appear to have been bugged was to ring the Governor of the Prison concerned and asked 1. Had the MP been bugged? 2. Who had required and authorised the bugging?

Armed with this information he could have told Parliament, and told us whether he was happy with this state of affairs or not. If he thought it a good idea to bug an MP in such circumstances then he should tell the House and change the policy accordingly. If he thought it a bad idea he should find out how it had happened and tell us how he intends to stop it happening again.

I am all in favour of bugging people who are suspected of terrorism. We need to know more of their networks and intercept more of their plans. It is the best way of making us more secure. I am not in favour of bugging many other people for a whole series of more minor offences, as local authorities are now empowered to do. That is all part of the surveillance society which Labour has built up with its fleet of speed cameras and other devices.

There are some important issues over the confidentiality of various people’s conversations with suspected criminals or proven criminals. I would be interested to hear views on when if ever the confidentiality of certain conversations should be broken. Let us examine the cases of four different groups who claim to offer confidentiality, and then consider whether there are things they might hear that they should pass on regardless.

1. The journalist. The journalist will rightly claim he or she needs to offer the promise of confidentiality to sources in order to find out things that are in the public interest to reveal, which authority – often government – wishes to conceal. Of course they should usually be protected by their own conduct and by their editors.

2. The MPs will claim that they need to offer confidentiality to people who wish to share with the MP private information about themselves so the MP can pursue their case with government. Someone may need an MP to represent their case to the Tax or benefit Authorities, or to the Health Service. People naturally want reassurance that the personal details of their income, circumstances or illnesses will not be made public.

3. The priest in the confessional will wish to assure the communicant that their secrets are safe with him. Who would want to confess a sin if the priest then broadcast it to the local community?

4. The lawyer acting for a defendant in a criminal trial will want to assure his or her client that anything they say is privileged. Under our combative system of justice the defence has a duty to put the best possible case for anyone pleading not guilty, whatever else they may have been told by their client.

.However, if any of the above learned during the course of their interviews of a planned terrorist attack which could cause huge harm and loss of life, should they not pass the information on to the authorities so they could collect more evidence on the conspirators and act in time to prevent the outrage? What should a journalist do if he or she learns of lesser offences committed by their source? What should the priest?

The doctrine of full confidentiality and privilege has already been changed for professional advisers. Lawyers and accountants advising individuals and companies on civil cases and on their tax and contractual affairs now have a duty to report their clients to the authorities if they come to suspect them of money laundering or fraud. Should further changes be made in law to qualify the confidentiality of these relationships? Whatever is done, it important that people coming to such a confidential discussion should know in advance if there are limits to that confidence. MPs are employed to change the law where necessary, and to help constituents to pursue cases against government where government has been unfair, incompetent or worse. MPs are not employed to condone or cover up crime: nor do I know of any MP who has done so.

The decision to rush the EU Constitution through this week in France with no referendum shows just how undemocratic a construct this whole EU edifice has become. It almost beggars belief that the French are told by their President they cannot have another referendum because that might trigger one in the UK where the project would be voted down!

Surely the French deserve another if their government is so determined to countermand their clearly expressed hostility to another Treaty expressed in their last referendum?

It also seems likely the Dutch will not be allowed another referendum, because they too got the answer wrong last time as far as the political class of the EU are concerned.

It makes it even more necessary for voters to maximise pressure on all those MPs in the UK who promised a referendum in the last General Election who are not currently inclined to keep their word and vote for one.

The people deserve a voice. It will be a disgrace if democracy is snuffed out on this crucial issue on both sides of the Channel.