Picking Losers

The BBC is reporting that the MTAS online recruitment system is being completely withdrawn.  A belated good decision or the only option left?

If ever proof were needed that the more the government intervene the more damage they actually do here it is. The government think that the best way to improve policing is tell the policemen exactly how to their job. This has led to officers arresting more and more easy targets just to boost government figures. Rather like my previous post, it is easy for the government to get headline grabbing figures like - "Police arrest more criminals under Labour" - but that is not the point. What are they arresting people for is more relevant.

An interesting stat in today's Times: NHS funding has leapt from £35 billion when Labour took office to £92 billion in 2007-08. On the surface, I think most people would look at the basic piece of information and say well done New Labour. But as is the reality with many government interventions, the bare statistics do not tell the whole story. What has that £92bn been actually spent on?

Government

Government

• Today the Prime Minister announced there are now over 200 schools on track to get Trust status - double the number expected at this point. Over 140 primary, secondary and special schools have applied to become Trusts in the last six months, alongside 69 full pathfinder schools piloting Trust status. The first of the pathfinder schools plan to become Trust schools from September 2007. There are now plans to work towards having 300 schools who have become Trust schools or are in the pipeline by the end of the year. Organisations currently signed up to partner the pathfinder schools, strengthen their leadership and build their ethos, include Barnado's, Microsoft, the Co-operative Group, Unilever, Dyslexia Action and a range of FE colleges and universities.
• Fourteen councils and six NHS Trusts have joined together to save nearly £7 million in the latest IT hardware eAuction run by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) with the London Centre of Excellence (LCE). The councils and trusts auctioned IT hardware requirements worth £13.7 million at pre-auction benchmarked prices, achieving a price at the end of the five hour auction of £6.9 million: an average saving of 50 per cent across the six lots. This brings the number of central government and wider public sector organisations that have so far participated in OGC eAuctions to 325, saving a total of £21 million since the first eAuction in September 2005.
  

Below is a letter to the editor printed in today's Times. It makes very, interesting reading and has been signed by 18 members of the great and the good of the medical world: (I have highlighted some of the key statements)

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 was, at least in principle, a good piece of legislation. It is not perfect and as far as I'm concern had too many ambiguities and exemptions. But all in all it made for a far more open government and public sector. Unfortunately, it seems it has been too successful and there has been for some time a growing force within Parliament to make MPs exempt from the law. This is, as far as I'm concerned, the most open and obvious show of contempt for the electorate I have seen for a long time. What makes them so special that they feel they above the law?

Government

What do the following have in common?

• The top 16 in the Eurovision Song Contest consist of 14 former communist-block countries, plus Greece and Turkey. As usual, regional block-voting dominated the outcome.
• Zimbabwe was elected to head the UN's Commission on Sustainable Development, thanks to the African block choosing to put African solidarity and contempt for the first-world ahead of responsibility.
• Every member of the EU except Britain defrauds the first phase of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme by overestimating their potential emissions and setting themselves targets that are so easy to meet that they can profit from excess emissions rights without having to make serious efforts to reduce emissions. The value of carbon in EU-ETS collapses as a consequence, and no significant reductions of emissions are attributable to the first phase.
• Concerted action on Darfur is undermined by the self-interest of countries like China, India and Malaysia.
• Concerted action on Iran's nuclear programme is undermined by Russian self-interest.
• Russia is trying to put together a gas cartel along the lines of OPEC, in order to control the price of gas to its mainly Western customers.
• Progress on reform of agricultural support and protectionism at the WTO is hampered by regional blocks trying to maximise their advantage. Rich countries like France are quite prepared to sabotage the process in order to protect the profits of the 3% of their population now engaged in farming. Their old, supposedly right-wing government has refused to countenance any reduction of support under the EU Common Agricultural Policy. Their new, supposedly right-wing president has called for Europe to be more protectionist.

Government

How about this for a health policy? Instead of putting patients in the more cost effective hospital, move them to the ones that are losing loads of money and cost more to run and then close down the more cost effective ones. Well that is the policy in the South East at the moment. Seriously. New hospitals built under PFI have over run so much that they are likely to be in permanent deficit. Not only that, but to close them down now would risk even bigger debts.

Government

There was some accidentally revealing stuff today on Radio 5Live's reporting of Tony Blair's resignation and their review of his premiership. First Jane Garvey reported that the halls of Corporation House were awash with empty champagne bottles the morning after the 1997 election. Realising that this gave the lie to the BBC's supposed impartiality, she whittered briefly on the subject of whether this really indicated preference for Labour, before eventually saying that she wished she'd never brought it up. Oops.

Government

• As part of reforms to deliver a patient-led NHS and to meet targets to cut waiting times by 2008, the Department has involved the independent sector in delivering health services. These services are run by the independent sector, but funded by the NHS. The Department has signed a contract with to BUPA to provide approximately 6,000 NHS procedures a year across the region, including general surgery, gynaecology, neurosurgery, orthopaedics, ear, nose & throat surgery and plastic surgery.

It's been reported on the BBC website that the cost of the ID card scheme has risen to £5.31bn. Why can't the government make estimates that are even in the same ball park as the final figures? Every time they value it, the cost seems to rise by another few hundred million. And you just know it isn't going to work when we all have to take them up in 2010 - there are going to be errors left, right and centre - a hacker's dream.

And so to another story of exceptional financial waste and total incompetence of management that only a government oversee.  Back in 2000 one of the many, many legacies that Blair wanted to set in place was the city academy programme.  So far only 46 of the 400 of these academies have actually opened yet the government has managed to spend £20m on consultants and £28m on project managers!

The countdown continues until the HIPs fiasco hits - everyone knows it's coming but I have all confidence that nothing will be done about it. Currently there are just 57 qualified inspectors for the North East, 76 for Wales, and 152 for London. The Government itself has said it needs at least 7,500 qualified inspectors to carry out the required number of assessments. The Tories have hit out saying that due to the shortage there will be more miles racked up by the few inspectors as they race around the country trying to get to all the houses.

Government

I attended a lunchtime talk today by Harriet Sergeant, who has written a booklet ("Handle with Care", published by the Centre for Young Policy Studies back in September), on the disgrace that is our care system for children who have to be removed from the parental home. The booklet can be ordered or downloaded from the CPS website, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. I hope Harriet will forgive me for quoting the first couple of paragraphs, as the best way to illustrate what an important and depressing story she has to tell:

"THIS YEAR approximately 6,000 young people will emerge from the care of the state. What is their future?

Of these 6,000, 4,500 of them will leave with no educational qualifications whatsoever. Within two years of leaving care 3,000 will be unemployed, 2,100 will be mothers or pregnant and 1,200 will be homeless. Out of the 6,000 just 60 will make it to university. Care is failing on a scale that is catastrophic.

It is not just a tragedy for the individual. A successful system of care would transform this country. At a stroke, it would empty a third of our prisons and shift half of all prisoners under the age of 25 out of the criminal justice system. It would halve the number of prostitutes, reduce by between a third and a half the number of homeless and remove 80% of Big Issue sellers from our street corners. Not only is our system failing the young people in care, it is failing society and perpetuating an underclass."

Clemency Burton-Hill (a multi-talented individual and real fox to boot, so I'm sorry to have to take the piss, but this is too good to ignore) reports in this week's Spectator that the Tories are "fighting back" against Gordon Brown's lead on international development issues "with a plan to send MPs into poverty-stricken Africa." I bet the poor Africans can barely contain their excitement.