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The anatomy of a 'car crash' interview: Boris Johnson and Eddie Mair, 24 March 2013
The Bozza interview was the very last thing I expected to wake up to this morning!
I cannot verify the truth of any of the statements in this interview above.
Maybe this should appear on Tim Shipman’s list of “car crash interviews”, purported to be the greatest interviews in political history (link here)? I remember many of these interviews when they first aired. My personal radio favourite is of George Osborne’s ding dong with Evan Davis, from 6 December 2012 (here).
It is hard to describe how Eddie Mair (@eddiemair) managed to execute such a successful interview. First of all, he did not throw any ‘hissy fits’ at any stage himself; he did not look angry, he was not condescending, he remained polite, and simply gave enough metaphorical rope for the interviewee to hang himself with. It was helped, in my view, by setting up the interview with some standard political questions, which Bozza would have been able to hit for six, but what caused him to be caught out middle stump is interesting. I think he may have underestimated the bowler, hoped perhaps the umpire might have called a ‘wide’ but never did, but I think part of Mair’s success was his ability to bowl a few easy bowls for a few balls in the over, before successfully declaring Bozza out in what turned out to be a maiden over
The big NHS underspend: Andy Burnham writes to Jeremy Hunt
This is the rather dramatic start of the HSJ article yesterday:
At a time of a huge financial squeeze being put on hospitals and when treatments of all sorts are being cut or delayed (or “rationed”), it turns out that the Department of Health – the unit in charge of the NHS – has a huge surplus that it is returning to the Treasury.
Andy Burnham MP has written to Jeremy Hunt MP as follows.
Dear Jeremy
NHS Budget underspend
Figures published today by the NHS Information Centre show that in December 2012 there were 4,887 fewer nurses working in the NHS than in May 2010. This followed the Care Quality Commission Care Update, published earlier this month, which warned that 11% of hospital services inspected were failing to meet the standard on adequate staffing levels.
You can therefore imagine my surprise when reading figures published in the detail of the Budget document yesterday that show the Department of Health is expected to underspend against its 2012-13 expenditure limit by £2.2bn.
Furthermore, the table on page 70 of the Budget document appears to show that none of this has been carried forward to be used in subsequent financial years as part of the Budget Exchange programme.
At a time when the NHS is facing its biggest financial challenge, when almost 5,000 nursing posts have been lost since the general election, and when one in ten hospitals are understaffed, I find it staggering that £2.2bn of the NHS budget is to be returned to the Treasury.
It would be helpful if you could therefore answer a number of important questions.
1. Were you aware of the £2.2bn underspend before yesterday and did you authorise the decision not make any use of the Budget Exchange programme? Or were you overruled by the Treasury?
2. If so, when did you make your decision?
3. Can you confirm that this means the Department’s underspend for 2012-13 would be 2%, higher than the 1.5% figure that your Department says is consistent with “prudent financial management”?
4. Do you accept the recent findings of the Care Quality Commission that one in ten hospitals are failing to meet the CQC standard on adequate staffing levels? Did you consider this when making your decision?
5. Why did you not make use of this underspend to prevent job losses and ensure all hospitals have adequate staffing levels?
6. Yesterday, a Department of Health spokeswoman told the Health Service Journal that the NHS underspend would “still be available for NHS organisations to ensure high quality, sustainable health services are delivered to patients now and in the future”. Can you confirm that this will not be the case, as none of the £2.2bn underspend has been carried forward for future use?
I look forward to your response.
Best wishes
Rt Hon Andy Burnham
The plot thickens…
Even with an open goal, Labour insists on aiming for the crossbar
It’s become worse than embarrassing. Even with an open goal, Labour insists on aiming for the crossbar. The economy couldn’t be worse, people are experiencing massive social injustices, the workforce is going to be easier to sack in future, more disabled citizens are having to appeal just to keep their benefits, the NHS is being privatised, and yet Labour has taken months to complete a policy review. On top of this, people are now calling for Liam Byrne to be sacked. He has failed to mount an effective opposition on disability benefits, and three friends of mine only yesterday quit the Labour Party to join the Greens.
Labour is a horrific mess. It supported this week rushed legislation to legitimise what for many is socially abhorrent a policy goal. The problem facing activists is that if they leave the main Party the resulting party will be occupied with people like Liam Byrne. John Healey might as well have gone to Barbados for a year while the Health and Social Care Bill was being discussed. We are now about a fortnight away from the NHS being privatised. Ed Balls was ‘correct’ on the economy, yet it is a sign of George Osborne’s confidence (or arrogance) that he feels able to talk about ‘an aspiration nation’.
The general perception now amongst many Labour members is that Labour could not really give a shit about its core membership, or even core values. Legislation is currently being proposed where workers can apply for ‘shares for rights’, thankfully throttled by Lord Pannick QC in the House of Lords; or where it is easier to make workers redundant. Coupled with this, there is a sense that Labour is complacent, and take their real core membership for granted. This is extremely worrying, and will turn out to be fatal for the Labour Party if unaddressed. The failure of Labour to stop the privatisation of the NHS is possibly the most humiliating failure of the modern Labour Party. On the economy, Ed Balls is right to an extent to say that a reason that people mistrust Labour on the economy is that the economy has not been fairly represented in the media, but Labour does not address other issues which matter to its membership; such as law centres being shut down, meaning that ordinary members of the public do not have access to legal advice about housing or employment issues, for example.
This really is an open goal for Labour, but the workfare abstention this week was nothing short of an own goal. If Ed Miliband doesn’t complete a ‘root-and-branch’ review of why Labour has lost his way as part of the policy review, he does not deserve to be leader of the Labour Party. It is completely inadequate for Labour to say it will repeal the Health and Social Care Act in 2015, if only four people will only sign the early day motion for the new set of regulations to be scrapped. Maybe Andy Burnham is waiting for Liz Kendall to take up the policy, or Liz Kendall is waiting for Andy Burnham to move onto something different, but a lot of people have a lot of faith in Burnham compared to Healey, and yet the privatisation of the NHS legally complete. There is an onrunning philosophy that many things are a ‘fait accompli’ – for example, we’re stuck with an austerity agenda until 2018, and there is nothing we can do about it.
The danger is that people will simply stop engaging with politics altogether, or stop voting. They will not feel any more shafted than they are at the moment. However, people currently feel angry, and very upset that they have been disenfranchised so much. Of course, the response has been that anyone is free to participate in the website offering a wikipedia approach to policy formulation, but this does not explain why the Labour Party abstained on workfare. To have abstained on Workfare was an endorsement of a working principle which is a complete anethema to the values of workers, and which is a Godsend for corporates who wish to find cheap or free labour to maximise shareholder dividend. For Labour to have supported this was morally bankrupt, and highly offensive. It is not a victory that Ed Miliband wished to spend all night discussing Leveson, talking about the victims of press hacking. Many more people are victims of a failing economy, and are about to sacked more readily if the Government is able to pursue this policy, even though there is no correlation between economic growth and employment rights (in fact there is an inverse correlation.) Labour is in a shambolic state, and the seeds of much of this failing policy can be seen in New Labour. The Conservatives can point to Labour’s support for workfare in defending their stance on workfare. In yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Question, David Cameron simply fielded the question from Dame Ruddock about the Lewisham Hospital situation by saying that Labour had introduced the PFI policy in the first place. This is correct – while the Conservatives and their accountancy friends in the City initiated this policy, this was pursued at full throttle by Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. This is a difficult situation Labour finds itself in.
Labour is not in this horrific situation because it has not apologised enough. It has apologised for everything, including recently immigration. Whilst Labour feels embarrassed about its immigration policy, getting positive words about the value that Asian citizens contribute to the NHS for example is like getting blood out-of-a-stone. Bloggers, while occasionally mounting campaigns, remain loyal to failing planks of policy, and often offer unreasonable deference over issues which are clearly incorrect in the pursuit of social justice. It is left only to a handful of MPs, like Ian Mearns, Ian Lavery and Grahame Morris, to keep the red flag flying, and frankly without them the soul of the Labour Party would be dead. Under such circumstances, Labour does not deserve to win an election, let alone be in a hung parliament. It is frankly an embarrassment.
Verdict from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee about No. 2 Regulations 2013 (SI 2013/500)
National Health Service (Procurement, Patient Choice and Competition) (No. 2) Regulations 2013 (SI 2013/500)
To revoke the original Regulations, the substitute Regulations have to come into effect no later than 1 April. The compressed timetable inhibited the Committee’s normal scrutiny process and, to enable the Committee to report before the House rises for the Easter recess, we conducted a short targeted consultation addressed to the organisations which made submissions to us about the original Regulations. In addition, we received a number of unsolicited submissions from individuals. In spite of the very short deadline, we have received some constructive and thoughtful comments on the substitute Regulations for which we are grateful. They are published in full on the Committee website and quoted selectively below.We regret that some were unable to contribute because the timescale prevented them giving a considered view of some highly technical changes to the legislation. As we have made clear before, not least in our report on the Government’s new approach to consultation, the Committee has no doubt that policy-making is improved by effective and genuine consultation, and we are firmly of the view that the Department has allowed insufficient time to set this system up properly and enable thorough scrutiny. This instrument is drawn to the special attention of the House on the ground that it may imperfectly achieve its policy objective.
…
As a general point, it seems to us that implementation of the policy underlying the Regulations has been left too close to the intended implementation date. The original Regulations were laid on 13 February, only seven and a half weeks before coming into operation and allowing little time for familiarisation and training staff, particularly when so many other changes are happening simultaneously. We are assured that the regulator, Monitor, which will be overseeing the operation of this legislation, intends to put its guidance out for consultation in March, but, at the time DH
responded to our questions on 14 March, that had not happened. The Monitor guidance may resolve or aggravate the doubts expressed but neither the Committee nor the health sector had access to the proposed guidance when considering the proposed legislation. We do not regard this as good practice.
Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee
@Ed_Miliband's #budget #budget2013 response in full
Ed Miliband’s 2013 Budget response was as follows:
Mr Deputy Speaker.
This is the Chancellor’s fourth Budget, but one thing unites them all.
Every Budget he comes to this house and things are worse not better for the country.
Compared to last year’s Budget
Growth last year, down.
Growth this year, down.
Growth next year, down.
They don’t think growth matters, but people in this country do.
And all he offers is more of the same.
A more of the same Budget from a downgraded Chancellor.
Britain deserves better than this.
I do have to say to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he almost need not have bother coming to the House because the whole Budget, including the market-sensitive fiscal forecast was in the Standard before he rose to his feet.
To be fair to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I sure he didn’t intend the whole of the Budget to be in the Standard before he rose to his feet and I hope he will investigate and report back to the House.
Now, what did the Prime Minister declare late last year, and I quote:
“The good news will keep coming”.
And what did the Chancellor tell us today?
Under this Government the bad news just doesn’t stop.
Back in June 2010 the Chancellor promised:
“a steady and sustained recovery…”
He was wrong.
We’ve had the slowest recovery for 100 years.
Last year he said in the Budget there would be no double dip recession.
He was wrong, there was.
He told us a year ago that growth would be 2% this year.
He was wrong.
Now he says it will be just 0.6%.
He told us that next year, growth would be 2.7%.
Wrong again.
Now just 1.8%.
Wait for tomorrow the Chancellor says, and I will be vindicated.
But with this Chancellor tomorrow never comes.
He’s the wrong man.
In the wrong place.
At the worst possible time for the country.
It’s a downgraded budget from a downgraded Chancellor.
He has secured one upgrade this year.
Travelling first class on a second class ticket from Crewe to London.
And the only time the country’s felt all in it together, was when he got booed by 80,000 people at the Paralympics.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I’ve got some advice for the Chancellor.
Stay away from the cup final, even if Chelsea get there.
And, who is paying the price for the Chancellor’s failure?
Britain’s families.
In his first Budget he predicted that living standards would rise over the Parliament.
But wages are flat.
Prices are rising.
And Britain’s families are squeezed.
And what the Chancellor didn’t tell us, is that the Office for Budget Responsibility has confirmed the British people will be worse off in 2015 than they were in 2010.
It’s official: you’re worse off under the Tories.
Worse off, year after year after year. And wasn’t there an extraordinary omission from his speech, no mention of the AAA rating.
What the Prime Minister called the “mark of trust”.
Which he told us had been “secured”.
The Chancellor said it would be a humiliation for Britain to be downgraded.
So not just a downgraded Chancellor.
A humiliated Chancellor too.
And what about borrowing?
The Chancellor made the extraordinary claim in his speech that he was “on course”.
Mr Deputy Speaker, even he can’t believe this nonsense.
Debt is higher in every year of this Parliament than he forecast at the last Budget.
He is going to borrow £200 billion more than he planned.
And what did he say in his June 2010 Budget:
He set two very clear benchmarks, and I quote, “We are on track to have debt falling and a balanced structural current budget” by 2014/15.
Or as he called it “our four-year plan”.
This was the deal he offered the British people.
These were the terms.
Four years of pain, tax rises ….
The Prime Minister says from a sedentary position, borrow more, you are borrowing more.
And he just needs to look down the road, because the Business Secretary was asked and he said: “We are borrowing more”. From his own Business Secretary.
So these were the terms: four years, tax rises, and spending cuts, and the public finances would be sorted.
So today he should have been telling us:
Just one more year of sacrifice.
In twelve months the good times will roll.
Job done.
Mission accomplished.
Election plan underway.
But three years on, what does he say?
Exactly what he said three years ago.
We still need four more years of pain, tax rises and spending cuts.
In other words, after all the misery, all the harsh medicine, all the suffering by the British people:
Three years.
No progress.
Deal broken.
Same old Tories.
And all he offers is more of the same.
It’s as if they really do believe their own propaganda.
That the failure is nothing to do with them.
We’ve heard all the excuses:
The snow, the royal wedding, the Jubilee, the eurozone.
And now they’re turning on each other.
The Prime Minister said last weekend, and I quote:
“Let the message go out from this hall and this party: We are here to fight”.
Mr Deputy Speaker, they’re certainly doing that.
The Business Secretary’s turned on the Chancellor.
The Home Secretary’s turned on the Prime Minister.
And the Education Secretary’s turned on her.
The whole country can see that’s what’s going on.
The blame game has begun in the Cabinet.
The truth is the Chancellor is lashed to the mast, not because of his judgement, but because of pride.
Not because of the facts, but because of ideology.
And why does he stay in his job?
Not because the country want him.
Not because his party want him.
But because he is the Prime Minister’s last line of defence.
The Bullingdon boys really are both in it together.
And they don’t understand, you need a recovery made by the many not just a few at the top.
It’s a year now since the omnishambles Budget.
We’ve had u-turns on charities, on churches, on caravans.
And yes, on pasties.
But there is one policy they are absolutely committed to.
The top rate tax cut.
John the banker, remember him?
He’s had a tough year, earning just £1m.
What does he get? He gets a tax cut of £42,500 next year.
£42,500, double the average wage.
His colleague, let’s call him George, his colleague has done a little better, bringing home £5 million. What does he get in a tax cut?
I know the Prime Minister doesn’t like to hear what he agreed to, what does he get? A tax cut of nearly £250,000.
And at the same time everyone else is paying the price.
The Chancellor is giving with one hand, and taking far more away with the other.
Hard working families hit by the strivers tax.
Pensioners hit by the granny tax.
Disabled people hit by the bedroom tax.
Millions paying more so millionaires can pay less.
Now the Chancellor mentioned childcare.
He wants a round of applause for cutting £7bn in help for families this Parliament, and offering £700m of help in the next.
But what are the families who are waiting for that childcare help told? They’ve got to wait over two years for help to arrive.
But for the richest in society, they just have to wait two weeks for the millionaires tax cut to kick in.
This is David Cameron’s Britain.
And still the Prime Minister refuses to tell us – despite repeated questions – whether he is getting the 50p tax cut.
Oh he’s getting embarrassed now, you can see.
He’s had a year to think about it.
He must have done the maths.
Even he should have worked it out by now.
So come on.
Nod your head if you are getting the 50p tax rate.
They ask am I?
No I am not getting the 50p tax rate, I am asking whether the PM is.
Come on answer.
After all, he is the person that said sunlight is the best disinfectant, let transparency win the day.
Now let’s try something else. What about the rest of the Cabinet, are they getting the 50p tax rate?
OK, hands up if you are not getting the 50p tax cut?
Come on, hands up.
Just put your hand up if you are not getting the 50p tax cut. They are obviously … they don’t like it do they?
At last the Cabinet are united, with a simple message:
Thanks George.
He’s cutting taxes for them, while raising them for everyone else.
Now the Chancellor announced some measures today that he said would boost growth.
Just like he does every year.
And every year they fail.
I could mention the “national loan guarantee scheme”, he trumpeted that last year.
And then he abolished just four months later.
The Funding for Lending scheme, that he said would transform the prospects for small business.
The work programme that is worse than doing nothing.
And today he talked a lot about housing.
And the Prime Minister said this in 2011. He launched his so-called housing strategy, and in his own understated way he labelled it “a radical and unashamedly ambitious strategy”. He said it would give the housing industry a shot in the arm, enable 100,000 people to buy their own home.
18 months later, how many families have been helped?
Not 100,000.
Not even 10,000.
Just fifteen hundred out of 100,000 promised
That’s 98,500 broken promises.
For all the launches, strategies and plans, housing completions are now at the lowest level since the 1920s.
And 130,000 jobs lost in construction because of their failing economic plan.
It’s a failing economic plan from a failing Chancellor.
The Chancellor has failed the tests of the British people:
Growth, living standards and hope.
But he has not just failed their tests. He has failed on his own as well.
All he has to offer is this more of the same Budget.
Today the Chancellor joined twitter.
He could have got it all into 140 characters.
Growth down. Borrowing up. Families hit. And millionaires laughing all the way to the bank. #downgradedChancellor.
Mr Deputy Speaker, more of the same is not the answer to the last three years.
More of the same is the answer of a downgraded Chancellor, in a downgraded Government.
Britain deserves better than this.
If the Labour frontbench pull any further stunts like today, they don't even deserve a 'hung parliament'
It is thought that part of the reason that Ed Miliband was so keen to pursue ‘press regulation’ was that this was the first topic where there was a sense the public were on the side of victims. Miliband has not shown the same passion for the privatisation of the NHS, for example. On the other hand, today, the anger on Twitter and Facebook was really ferocious. To give you some idea about what sort of country this is, this was not even considered newsworthy enough to be included on the BBC news website. Opposing workfare was not a question about playing politics: it was very much about the lives of real people, morality and justice. The result of the vote of the second reading of jobseekers bill (aka “workfare” bill) was 263 vote for, and only 52 vote against. Labour MPs were asked to abstain.
Some MPs did make a “principled stand”, like John McDonnell.
Members of Labour are genuinely seething. Owen Jones is correct to flag this up as a “red alert” for Labour:
This one episode in itself has blown up “One Labour”. Sunny Hundal has written a very elegant blogpost here about how the ‘concessions’ over Workfare can’t really be considered concessions in the scheme of things. To understand why this has dramatically driven a ‘coach and horses’ through ‘One Nation’, you have to consider what Ed Miliband had sold “one nation” as. It was an idea where the economy couldn’t be divided into private and public, but where everyone had a part to play, including Unions and invested bankers, provided that there were “no vested interests”. Consequently, this meant society pulling in the same direction, in other words no division between rich and poor, North and South, unemployed and employed, disabled or non-disabled, etc. Why “one society” is clearly ‘left wanting’ is perfectly clear to witness as disabled citizens continue to feel uncomfortable with the welfare reform, and continue not to be inspired by Liam Byrne’s perceived lack of concern about their plight. Finally, it depends on a political process which we can all trust in. However, the last few days has seen shabby behind-the-scenes political manoeuvring which Labour in its old days of ‘beer and sandwiches’ could only have possibly had dreamt of; with party leaders up to 4 in the morning, with ‘interested parties’ such as Hacked Off.
Shiv Malik explains extremely well how this workfare situation evolved, in his article from today:
“Labour is expected to support the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) in speeding a retroactive law through parliament that will overturn the outcome of a court of appeal judgment and ensure the government no longer has to pay £130m in benefit rebates to about a quarter of a million jobseekers.
The law has been hastily drafted by the government in response to last month’s ruling from three appeal court judges in favour of science graduate Cait Reilly and unemployed lorry driver Jamieson Wilson.
The court found that Reilly, who had been made to work unpaid in Poundland for weeks; Wilson, who was forced to work unpaid for six months, and up to 231,000 other benefit claimants had been unlawfully punished over the last few years because the government had failed to give them more than a few lines of regulatory information about the schemes they had to take part in.
In a move that has upset campaigners and activists, the parliamentary Labour party said it was likely to abstain from any vote expected on Tuesday and was pushing for concessions – including an independent review of the benefit sanctions regime – in return for allowing the jobseekers (back to work schemes) bill to be rushed through parliament at “lightning speed”.”
The situation is now an ugly one. The economy is about to enter a triple-dip, and Labour is still not trusted on the economy. Despite a perfect Keynesian narrative, people blame Labour for waste and profligacy, and there is no sign of this mistrust shifting. The current Coalition government have legislated for the privatisation of the NHS (all experts now agree it is a privatisation which is now experiencing difficult regulatory problems such as how to deal with ‘creamskimming’ aka ‘cherry picking’). John Healey was politically impotent in stopping the advance of the Bill through parliament. Labour implemented in its tenure a programme of PFI and now Trusts are saddled with debts from this ‘off ledger accounting’ at uncompetitive competitive rates – some hospitals will have to go into ‘managed decline’. Some Foundation Trusts, having been awarded ‘foundation status’, have had to declare themselves bankrupt, and it is generally conceded that setting up these hospitals was a convenient way of repackaging the NHS suitable for privatisation exactly like had happened in Spain.
Labour members have a right to be angry. Decisions like today show evidently that Labour is not afraid to ignore its key values or its core members. It has widely been advanced that the best that Labour can hope for in 2015 is a ‘hung parliament’, but this will be disaster with a ‘more of the same’ recipe for a stagnant economy, and a continued march of the privatisation of the NHS. Presumably Miliband will have to conclude his painfully protracted policy review at some stage, but his lack of concern about poor employment rights amongst workers has been conceded as nothing short of disgusting. We now have a maximum number of people in employment with no job security at all. Also, through the backdoor, this Government made it much easier to sack people, as George Eaton elegantly explains in the New Statesman:
“”While the Commons noisily debated press regulation, MPs elsewhere in the House quietly signed away workers’ rights. On a delegated legislation committee (a backdoor means of sneaking through contentious amendments), nine Conservatives and two Liberal Democrats voted to reduce the consultation period for collective redundancies from 90 days to 45.
At present, employers planning to make 100 or more redundancies are legally required to consult with trade unions and other employee representatives for this period to help minimise the impact and seek alternatives to job losses. Unite cites the example of Jaguar Land Rover, which proposed making over 1,000 staff redundant in 2009 but later avoided any job losses after identifying £70m of savings during the consultation.
The reduction to 45 days, based on a proposal in the infamous Beecroft report, means fewer companies will now adopt this enlightened approach. As John McDonnell, one of the seven Labour MPs who voted against the measure (only 18 MPs can sit on the committee), noted: “We know that the reduction to 45 days means that the opportunity for consultation is hopeless. It will not happen and will be meaningless. There will not be the time for the employees to work with the employers to look at alternative plans for that company.””
Liam Byrne is an influential member of the Shadow Cabinet. Nearly all of us are no longer “loving it”. It is a tragedy that many voters will not be able to turn to their MPs to stand up for their real-life concerns (though hats-off to Grahame Morris, John McDonnell and Ian Lavery who all voted “no” today). It had been a fairly safe bet that Labour would be in a “hung parliament”, but now, having clutched onto defeat from the jaws of victory, Labour could even look set to experience a resounding defeat, and they will have only themselves to blame. Some remnants of New Labour ideology clearly haven’t been excised from the Labour front bench; consequently we should be careful now.
Is it right for Labour "not to do God", nor even social justice?
Perhaps religion and politics don’t mix, but there is a certainly an appetite for moral and religious matters amongst some of the wider electorate at large. For ages, right wing critics have emphasised that the right wing “does” religion too, and the left does not have a monopoly on moral or religious issues. A fewer number on the left likewise feel that the right does not have a monopoly on business or enterprise, as they pursue, despite all the odds, the movement of “responsible capitalism”. In amidst all the turmoil of the implementation of the recommendations of the Leveson report, or furore about whether there was an ‘excess number of deaths’ at Mid Staffs (and if so, what to do about it), the Catholic Church elected a new Pope. Pope Francis has said that he wants “a poor Church, for the poor” following his election as head of the world’s 1.2bn Catholics on Wednesday. He said he chose the name Francis after 12-13th Century St Francis of Assisi, who represented “poverty and peace”. Spectators of UK politics will be mindful of the speech made by Margaret Thatcher on her election, for the first time, as Prime Minister outside Downing Street in 1979. Pope Francis urged journalists to get to know the Church with its “virtues and sins” and to share its focus on “truth, goodness and beauty”. He takes over from Benedict XVI, who abdicated last month. The former Argentine cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 76, was the surprise choice of cardinals meeting in Rome to choose a new head of the Church.
Changing the subject from religious figureheads to Mr Blair is interesting from the perspective of how the English political parties have latterly approached the issue of religion. There is a doctrine that religion does not play a part in politics, and particularly not when going to war with a non-Christian country. Tony Blair is reported to have said he had intended to echo the traditional closing remark of Presidents in the United States, in one of his speeches. These presidents typically sign-off television broadcasts by saying, “God Bless America”. For much of his time in office, Mr Blair was accused of adopting a “presidential” style of leadership, and became close to former American presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush. His former director of communications, Alastair Campbell, once famously declared “we don’t do God”, when the then Prime Minister was asked about his beliefs.
Wind on a few years and you find the new Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby warning that changes to the benefit system could drive children and families into poverty. He said society had a duty to support the “vulnerable and in need”. His comments backed an open letter from bishops criticising plans to limit rises in working-age benefits and some tax credits to 1% for three years. The Department for Work and Pensions said meanwhile stuck to their tried-and-tested line that changing the system will help get people “into work and out of poverty”. Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that Archbishop Welby was “absolutely right” to speak out and described the proposals as “immoral”. So is this the beginning of a divide between the Church and parliament? Probably not a big enough divide who wish to see the disestablishment of the Church altogether.
Many recently would have been alerted by a tweet that used the hashtag ‘blacknoseday’. The sentiment behind it is in fact interesting. David Cameron, alleged to be the man responsible for cutting welfare benefits for the most needy in society, played a cameo role in a Comic Relief video. Nonetheless, Comic Relief made a record amount of money, it is reported. There is a further accusation that Cameron is encouraging us to donate to the charity by waiving VAT from sales of the song and covering this loss to the exchequer with money from the Overseas Budget. So now those people overseas who would have won direct government funding are relying on the UK population downloading a One Direction track.
And are Labour much better? Today, Dr Eoin Clarke’s peaceful rallies against the Bedroom Tax went very successfully, but against a background of discontent within Labour amongst activists. Shadow Cabinet member Helen Goodman MP, who served in the Department of Work and Pensions in the last Labour administration, said in a TV interview that that “We’ve said that the bedroom tax should only apply if people have been offered a smaller place to live and turned it down”. It appears that, time and time again, Labour have made half-hearted criticisms of welfare cuts, but Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Liam Byrne has already said that Labour will make further cuts to the welfare budget if Labour wins in 2015.
Furthermore, Labour will not yet commit to reversing specific changes contained in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act, the shadow justice minister said this week. However, Andrew Slaughter MP promised a future Labour government would ‘rebalance the justice system’ in favour of those seeking civil redress. It would also make more savings from criminal legal aid. The challenge for a future Labour government will be to ‘rebalance the justice system so that it can be seen to give access to justice to all… irrespective of their means’. And in the near future Labour wishes to back Iain Duncan-Smith on some retroactive changes to the law over workfare also. The DWP has introduced emergency legislation to reverse the outcome of a court of appeal decision and “protect the national economy” from a £130m payout to jobseekers deemed to have been unlawfully punished. The retroactive legislation, published on Thursday evening and expected to be rushed through parliament on Tuesday, will effectively strike down a decision by three senior judges and deny benefit claimants an average payout of between £530 and £570 each. Apparently, Labour will support the fast-tracked bill with some further safeguards and that negotiations with the coalition are ongoing.
So is it right for Labour “not to do God”, nor even social justice? All of this appears to be screaming out for Labour to say to its membership, ‘Go back to your constituencies, and prepare once again for a hung parliament.’ Laurence Janta-Lipinski, a pollster from YouGov, has recently revealed his survey which has Labour on 43 percent, the Conservatives on 34 percent and the Lib Dems and Ukip both on 8 per cent – suggested a Labour majority. However, he said that unlike in 1995 and 1996, “Labour are not so far ahead in mid-term to be assured of victory”, and “anyone predicting an election at this time is on to a loser. This far out before an election, I wouldn’t feel comfortable predicting a Labour or Conservative government or a hung parliament because all three of them are still possible. There is a good chance of a hung parliament at the next election. Realistically, it is the best the Liberal Democrats can hope for. Vince Cable is probably right to prepare for a hung parliament.”
There is a real sense now of Labour making its own destiny, where bad luck meets lack of preparation. Having laid the groundwork for the privatisation of the NHS, it might be time for Labour to cut its losses, and to concentrate on its ‘core vote’, or even its ‘founding values’. And it can look this time for Margaret Thatcher ironically for inspiration.
It's time we spoke about the "friends and family test"
Friends and family test
Mr David Cameron introduced ‘the friends and family test’ (FFT) at the beginning of this year. However, the FFT is based on a model developed to test satisfaction with consumer products. Clare Gerada, Chair of the Council of the Royal College of GPs, rightly questioned whether friends and family are proper judges of the NHS in all its complexity:
“The NHS isn’t Facebook, and healthcare isn’t a commodity like eating in a restaurant. And we must make sure that we don’t confuse issues around the NHS such as shortages, with the care that patients get from the staff that look after them.”
Dr Kailash Chand from the BMA Council likewise posited,
“Who can disagree with that?”.
Prof Peter Lynn, an expert on survey methodology from Essex University, says the findings may be unreliable.
“I have concerns about whether the friends and family test will actually provide data that allows meaningful comparisons of the performance of trusts – partly because of reliance on a single rather vague question and partly because hospitals will vary in how they approach patients and encourage them to answer the question.”
The government insists the test will give everyone a clear idea of where to get the best care, without piling costs on trusts. It says by checking on the NHS choices website, people will be able to see which trusts are in the normal range, those among the best and those among the worst.
Meanwhile, in a different sector, owners of pubs, restaurants, hotels and bars are all too familiar with “TripAdvisor”, which is loved and loathed in equal measures.TripAdvisor, which claims to have 75 million online reviews, allows people to post anonymously and without even proving they have been to the place in question. Getting a high or low rating can make or break a business. Chris Emmins of KwikChex, which investigates online reviews, believes there are as many as ten million fake reviews on the site by ‘trolls’ – someone who posts a deliberately provocative message with the intention of causing maximum disruption – who are either disgruntled former employees or rival businesses.
Emmins said:
“It’s war out there. Getting a top rating is crucial and yet one bad one-star review can hit the ratings so hard that it takes 20 five-star reviews to get the rating back.”
This is a wider example of the phenomenon called “shilling” in marketing. A shill, also called a plant or a stooge, is a person who publicly helps a person or organization without disclosing that he has a close relationship with that person or organisation. “Shill” typically refers to someone who purposely gives onlookers the impression that he is an enthusiastic independent customer of a seller (or marketer of ideas) for whom he is secretly working. The person or group who hires the shill is using crowd psychology, to encourage other onlookers or audience members to purchase the goods or services (or accept the ideas being marketed). Shills are often employed by professional marketing campaigns, and there is a danger that, like the original FFT has been imported, the practice of “shilling” could be imported too. Shilling is illegal in many circumstances and in many jurisdictions, because of the potential for fraud and damage, however, if a shill does not place uninformed parties at a risk of loss, but merely generates “buzz,” the shill’s actions may be legal. For example, a person planted in an audience to laugh and applaud when desired, or to participate in on-stage activities as a “random member of the audience,” is a type of legal shill.
Why not being able to organise a piss-up in a brewery suddenly matters
There’s one big problem with the branding of George Osborne as “The Austerity Chancellor”. That is, as a direct result of his own policies, he has made the economy much worse. Borrowing is going up, we’ve lost the “triple A” rating which Osborne himself was very proud of, consumer demand is effectively dead, and job security appears to be at its worst. It is of course vaguely possible that George Osborne is ‘sensitive’ about his own failings, and, to onlookers, he did look genuinely surprised at his level of unpopularity at an occasion which should have caused him immense pride.
And yet the popularity of his unpopularity cannot be underestimated. The YouTube video above has had 929,641 views. It seems that people have clicked on this video with the same relish that some people on a motorway slow down to observe a pile-up on the opposite carriageway. It is in a way easy to identify why George Osborne is unpopular; he gave a perception of enormous arrogance, and yet drove the UK economy into retropulsion with remarkable efficiency. Due to his policy, his target of ‘paying off the deficit’ by 2015 is pure science-fiction. People are undoubtedly sick of the ‘it’s all Labour’s fault’, and yet Labour members are still very enthusiastic about blaming the current UK’s troubles on Margaret Thatcher. It could be that George Osborne, with his Bullingdon past, has activated the ‘politics of envy’ button, and so there is a perception that he and Iain Duncan-Smith are “punishing” the most vulnerable members of society such as disabled citizens, while pursuing policies which are ‘friendly’ to the members of society with higher incomes.
In politics, leopards can change their spots all too easily. My gut feeling is that there will be another hung parliament in 2015. Sure, Ed Miliband managed to shoot ‘on target’ at an open goal today, and quite miraculously for some managed to avoid the crossbar. And thankfully the Liberal Democrats have blocked David Cameron’s “boundary changes” plan. All Ed Miliband has to do is to avoid losing, and there is absolutely nothing in it for him to play dangerously. In a similar vein, after the shambles that was last year’s Budget, George Osborne doesn’t need to pull any rabbits out of his hat. Last year, he was bigging up a great ‘reforming budget’ which rapidly disintegrated into a slanging match over pasties, and whether a railway Cornish pasty stall in a railway station had in fact shut down. Osborne will obviously be keen to avoid a repeat performance of last year’s catastrophe.
Not being able to organise a piss-up in a brewery suddenly matters. Commentators have often discussed openly what the Achilles’ heel of this Coalition might be. It is not disunity – there is no narrative of people violently throwing wobblies or mobile phones, or a similar episode of political fratricide. It could be that this Coalition is simply ‘out of touch’, and this is to some extent supported by evidence such as the “Millionaire’s tax benefit” or the “Bedroom tax”. However, the label of sheer incompetence is still a crucial one. Despite the screw-up that is the UK economy under the Coalition’s watch, certain voters are not blaming the Liberal Democrats. Despite the never-ending list of things that have gone wrong, such as the recent section 75 NHS regulations, there always seems scope for things to get even worse. Michael Gove does not want any further shambles over his school qualifications, while Theresa May’s star appears to be ‘in the ascendant’ with a perennial blistering attack on human rights. However, both parties do not wish to scupper their chances of a leadership bid if David Cameron fails in June 2015, and certainly are mindful of the old adage that “He who wields the knife never wears the crown”, with numerous former casualties such as David Miliband and Michael Heseltine.
Nick Clegg may suddenly have got ‘second wind’ having won Eastleigh, but this victory was only because Labour would have needed a miracle to win it (with Eastleigh around 250th on his “hit list”), and Maria Hutchings amazingly came third in a two-horse race. His party’s slogan “strong economy and a fair society” is obscenely fradulent at so many levels, even if you generously park his blatant lie about Labour having been incompetent over the economy. He himself had conceded the need for a £1 TN bailout of the banks as an emergency measure in the global financial crisis, and this is clearly stated in Hansard. The economy which was in recovery when he took over in May 2010 is now virtually dead, and heading for a “triple dip”. And if his “fair society” is epitomised by bedroom taxes victimising narrow sections of society, library closures, withdrawal of education support allowance, privatisation of the NHS which had been universal and free-at-the-point-of-use, high street closures of law centres denying thousands of ‘access-to-justice’, reports of suicides following welfare claims, Nick Clegg and his party genuinely need help. However, both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are mindful that they have reached a “critical mass” of cock-ups, and the Liberal Democrats, lacking all insight and being in complete denial, still feel that they have a useful rôle to play in propping up any minority government. However, next time Labour intend to repeal the Health and Social Care Act, so it would be a joke for the Liberal Democrats to ‘support’ this if they found themselves in government again, but Labour might need their votes. The only way to avoid this scenario is for Ed Miliband after his lengthy policy review to convince voters that there are genuine reasons why he should be allowed to implement his ‘One Nation’ vision. However, all political parties are prepared to ditch symbols of their values. It could be that Labour has no problem with revisiting the issue of electoral reform, again, if the Liberal Democrats demanded it; Clegg couldn’t care less if this were to become yet another ‘once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity’.
The label of this Coalition is well deserved, in fairness. David Cameron knows himself that he is living on borrowed time, but it is the whole Cabinet which is incompetent. For all his perceived faults, Ed Balls is a committed Keynesian, and has called it right on the economy; the only reason David Cameron perseverates in his hate campaign of him is that he knows he is a threat. In fact, all of the opposition are, because the Coalition has somehow managed to alienate systematically disabled citizens, the chronically sick, lawyers, physicians, human rights activists, and so on, in fact anyone apart from big corporates. The fact that he has managed to piss off most of the country ultimately will be his downfall.
How is parliamentary procedure being followed to take the previous statutory instrument on NHS procurement out-of-action?
A Statutory Instrument is used when an Act of Parliament passed after 1947 confers a power to make, confirm or approve delegated legislation on: the Queen and states that it is to be exercisable by Order in Council; or a Minister of the Crown and states that it is to be exercisable by Statutory Instrument. 1.15 pm last Tuesday (5 March 2013) saw Andy Burnham MP, the Shadow Secretary of State for Health, go head-to-head with Norman Lamb (The Minister of State, Department of Health). Lamb was invited to comment on the regulations on procurement, patient choice and competition under section 75 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012.
The discussion is reported in Hansard.
Lamb describes an intention to ‘amend’ the legislation
Lamb explains:
“Concerns have been raised that Monitor would use the regulations to force commissioners to tender competitively. However, I recognise that the wording of the regulations has created uncertainty, so we will amend them to put this beyond doubt.”
The problem is that this statutory instrument would have become law automatically on 1 April 2013, and still promises to do so in the absence of anything else happening. The safest way to get this statutory instrument out-of-action is to ‘annul’ the law, rather than having the statutory instrument still in force but awaiting amendment. Experts are uncertain the extent to which statutory instruments can be so easily amended, while in force.
Most Statutory Instruments (SIs) are subject to one of two forms of control by Parliament, depending on what is specified in the parent Act.
Fatal motion
There is a constitutional convention that the House of Lords does not vote against delegated legislation. However, Andy Burnham has said the exceptional nature of the Section 75 regulations, which force all NHS services out to tender, meant he needed to table a ‘fatal’ motion in the second Chamber. Indeed, Lord Hunt later tweeted that this fatal chamber had forced a rethink on the original Regulations:
The main effect of delegated legislation being made by Statutory Instrument is that it is effective as soon as it is made, numbered, catalogued, printed, made available for sale, and published on the internet. This ensures that the public has easy access to the new laws. This statutory instrument (SI 2013/057:The National Health Service (Procurement, Patient Choice and Competition) Regulations 2013) is still available in its original form, with no declaration of its imminent amendment or annulment, on the official legislation website here.
The “Prayer”
The more common form of control is the ‘negative resolution procedure’. This requires that either the Instrument is laid before Parliament in draft, and can be made once 40 days (excluding any time during which Parliament is dissolved or prorogued, or during which both Houses are adjourned for more than four days) have passed unless either House passes a resolution disapproving it, or the Instrument is laid before Parliament after it is made (but before it comes into force), but will be revoked if either House passes a resolution annulling it within 40 days.
A motion to annul a Statutory Instrument is known as a ‘prayer’ and uses the following wording:
- That an humble address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the [name of Statutory Instrument] be annulled.
Any member of either House can put down a motion that an Instrument should be annulled, although in the Commons unless the motion is signed by a large number of Members, or is moved by the official Opposition, it is unlikely to be debated, and in the Lords they are seldom actually voted upon.
Indeed, this is exactly what happened. Ed Miliband submitted EDM 1104 on 26 February 2013, which currently – at the time of writing – has 183 signatures – with the exact wording:
“That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the National Health Service (Procurement, Patient Choice and Competition) Regulations 2013 (S.I., 2013, No. 257), dated 11 February 2013, a copy of which was laid before this House on 13 February, be annulled.”
The purpose of “amending” the legislation
Lamb later provides in his answer:
“Concerns have also been raised that competition would be allowed to trump integration and co-operation. The Future Forum recognised that competition and integration are not mutually exclusive. Competition, as the Government made clear during the passage of the Bill, can only be a means to improve services for patients—not an end in itself. What is important is what is in patients’ best interests. Where there is co-operation and integration, there would be nothing in the regulations to prevent this. Integration is a key tool that commissioners are under a duty to use to improve services for patients. We will amend the regulations to make that point absolutely clear.”
How the Government “amends” the legislation is clearly pivotal here. Integration is another “buzzword” in the privatisation ammunition. Colin Leys wrote in 2011:
“In the emerging vision of the Department of Health, however, integrated care has always been associated with the drive to enlarge private sector provision, and the Kaiser [Permanente] connection emphasised this. The competitive culture attached to integrated care in the Kaiser model, coupled with the keen interest of private providers in all integrated care initiatives, were constants, and put their stamp on official thinking about the future NHS market.”
A possible reason for why this emphasis on competition has failed is that in other markets, such as utilities, rail and telecoms, there is a strong case that competition has not driven down cost at all, because of shareholder dividend primacy. Another good reason for people in favour of the private market to discourage competition is that competition might even inhibit a drive to integration, and integration is strongly promoted by private providers (and, incidentally, New Labour).
What does the Act itself say about ‘annulling’ statutory instruments?
According to s. 304(3), “Subject to subsections (4) to (6), a statutory instrument containing regulations under this Act, or an order by the Secretary of State or the Privy Council under this Act, is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.” So, at the moment, we are clearly in limbo, with parliament yet to pass a EDM, and new redrafted Regulations yet to appear. However, it is still a very dangerous situation, as the original set of Regulations is still yet to be enacted on 1 April 2013.
