Picking Losers

Government

• Grants to help climate-conscious householders to install microgeneration technologies will be up for grabs again later this month, Alistair Darling announced today. The Low Carbon Buildings Programme (LCBP) has already allocated £6.8m in grants to householders and, following the addition an extra £6m in the Budget, applications for the remaining £11.9m will be open from 29 May. Since it launched in April 2006 the LCBP has directly funded 2175 installations on homes. This includes 242 mini-turbines, 313 Solar PV projects and 1467 solar thermal heating systems.
• Twenty-five local highway authorities and their partners across England will share the first award of a new £4 million road safety grant, Dr Stephen Ladyman, Road Safety Minister, announced today. The Road Safety Partnership Grant Scheme will provide funding to local highway authorities who are taking an innovative and collaborative approach to improving road safety.
• US and UK companies need to face up to the realities of climate change and the risks that it poses to their long term interests, Environment and Climate Change Minister Ian Pearson will say today. Mr Pearson, addressing a meeting of US businesses in New York, will say that a business's vulnerability to the threats of climate change is of increasing concern to investors and shareholders. Companies need to respond to this to stay ahead of the game.
• The prime minister's final ministerial reshuffle has taken effect, with changes to three government departments. Lord Falconer, previously constitutional affairs secretary, becomes secretary of state for justice at the head of the Ministry of Justice. The MoJ is the new name for the Department of Constitutional Affairs, which will take on new criminal justice functions from the Home Office. Lord Falconer, who also remains lord chancellor, is joined by David Hanson, currently Northern Ireland Office minister, also becomes minister of state at the MoJ. Following the restoration of devolved government at Stormont on Tuesday, Hanson will not be replaced at the Northern Ireland Office. Neither will parliamentary undersecretary David Cairns, who previously held that post in both the Northern Ireland and Scotland, but is now "full time" at the Scotland office. Gerry Sutcliffe, previously parliamentary undersecretary at the Home Office responsible for probation, moves to the MoJ. Harriet Harman remains a minister of state in the MoJ, along with junior ministers Baroness Ashton of Upholland, Bridget Prentice and Vera Baird.

An interesting story today about the British Medical Association and their calls for an independent NHS free from political control - not in keeping with the current poll on PL. The paper includes a broad outline of how they would like to see the NHS run in the future. Firstly they want to see the board appointed by Parliament, comparing their set up to a cross between the BBC and a board run nationalised industry. They would have a constitution setting out rights and responsibilities. It is hoped that by removing the politics from the NHS and day to day tinkering, it will avoid headline grabbing interference and let the professionals get on with the job. It will also allow a more localised service.

Secondly, there is reference to an inevitable "rationing" of services. This goes back to a phrase I first heard less than 12 months ago - providing "core" services. For me this is a minefield - what is a core service? Is an elderly granny with a poor hip part of the core service? Is someone with self inflicted lung cancer part of the core service? Is a new born baby with a 50/50 chance of living a core service? Who is going to define this? As far as I can see, health care is either a core service or it isn't - you don't draw the line a one kidney or age or anything else, surely? It is reported that the list of services provided should be decided through debate between politicians, professionals and the public. Well if that isn't going to be the most controversial impossible debate since we (apparently) solved the Irish question, I'm not sure what is.

Gordon Brown's tax credit scheme. Mr Prudent showing that, once again, he really does not deserve that nickname. Afterall, it is reported today that he is about to write off £2bn as unrecoverable after payments had been made out incorrectly or fraudulantly. That is equivilant to 1p on income tax. So that brilliant budget you did a couple of months ago, Gordon, where you took 2p off income tax (then abolished the lower rate and increased National Insurance contributions) was not only giving with one hand and taking with the other, it was also a waste of time because you've lost 1p in every pound all ready with this numbskull scheme of yours. It could have been 3p in the pound if your department could do some basic accounting. Ministers have already admitted that £5.8bn has been paid to people who should not have received the money! This is incompetence on an NHS scale and this is the man who will be running the country in little over six weeks.

Do I sense a Government climb down over Bingate? In what has become an issue of electoral importance, the fortnightly collections fiasco may have had an impact on the recent local elections. The Government can pour billions of pounds away on an ineffectual health service or go to war with another country based on lies and mis-information yet still keep the electorate onside; but inconvience our every day lives by not collecting our bins and voters will punish you. And punish those councillors they have. The Telegraph today picks up various councils that have introduced fortnightly collections and their opponants have picked up seats.

This may just be a case of putting two and two together and making any number you wish, but it is enough to have got this out of Ruth "Yvette Cooper is more respected than me and everyone knows it" Kelly - "Local councils may decide that the weekly bin collection is one aspect of their policy and they may want to introduce other measures to increase the rate of recycling. That is completely their prerogative. But whatever is done should be done in close consultation with local communities." Ahhh! The consultation word. So it's not a climb down afterall, just a consultaltion to make us all feel like we played a part on the democratic process. Oh well, better keep those bins in for another week then...

Government  

• Tony Blair planned to divide Gordon Brown's fiefdom of the Treasury into two after the 2005 election under proposals drawn up in intense secrecy for the prime minister. The idea was fleshed out in a 200-page document prepared for Mr Blair by his strategy adviser, Lord Birt; the head of the No 10 strategy unit at the time, David Halpern; and another senior No 10 aide, Gareth Davies. Had the plan gone ahead, Mr Brown may have been asked to move to the Foreign Office. It was abandoned when political advisers told Mr Blair voters wanted him to cooperate with his chancellor.

It is a general rule that legislation often has the opposite effect to that intended, and that government action usually hurts most those that it is intended to help. We have a beautiful example reported in The Times today. One consequence of recent legislation to outlaw age-discrimination, is that Saga, provider of holidays tailored to the over-50s, is to be forced to open its holidays to all ages. If a group of 18-30-year-olds wish to book a Saga holiday and behave as they would on a Club 18-30 holiday, Saga are not allowed to prevent them.

Government

• A new proportionate code of conduct for local councillors in England is now in force. The code will remove rules which have stood in the way of councillors acting as advocates for and leaders of their local communities, as proposed in last year's Local Government White Paper. The revised code is part of the Government's wider vision for a more devolved conduct regime, including more locally-based decision-making with most misconduct allegations being investigated and dealt with at local level.

What is the word for a story that reached the level of fiasco some time ago and continued to deteriorate? Fiasco seems inadequate as a decription of the failures of the NHS IT system, several of which have been noted on this site by JG.

One of the worst pieces of privatisation ever embarked on by a government was the Railways Act 1993 under John Major. It was a complex piece of legislation and opposed by just about everyone - including the Labour party. They disliked it so much they promised to renationalise the railways when they got in and the Tory MP and chairman of the Transport Committee at the time, Robert Adley, described it as the "poll tax on wheels".

The proposed split of the Home Office is fast approaching.  In a department that has just taken its latest victim with John Reid announcing his retirement from front bench politics at the weekend (nothing to do with the fact the Brown would have pushed him anyway), it has been deemed too difficult a department for one man to run.  In the past 6 years, Straw, Blunkett, Clarke and Reid have all failed where many have before them.  So, the solution is to split the department up leaving the Home Office to largely tackle terrorism and merge the National Offender Management part with the Department for Constitutional Affairs.  This is what has become known by the press as the Ministry of Justice.   Brilliant.  Not sure what benefit we will be from this, but the Ministry of Justice sounds very Marvel comic.  I also can not tell you how much it will cost, because the Government won't tell anyone.  However, expect it to be mind boggling large as government estimates (and we all know how short they often come up) suggest.

Traffic Wardens. They have to be, rightly or wrongly, in the top ten least liked people on planet earth. Right up there with estate agents, lawyers and well, MPs probably. I personally can not stand them, though I'm sure as individuals out of that ridiculous "trying to look very official" uniform there are one or two nice ones. After all, they are just doing their job. And, if you follow that logic to it's conclusion, I blame and dislike the councillors even more! And they are only making it worse for themselves.

Government

• Alex Salmond, almost certain to be elected Scotland's next First Minister, conceded last night that his failure to attract the Liberal Democrats into a ruling coalition meant that the country was now heading for minority devolved government for the first time. The Scottish National Party leader, speaking the day after the Lib Dems had comprehensively rejected a power-sharing coalition, said that the bulk of his party's preparations for taking power for the first time was now based on "the responsibilities of government as a minority". Mr Salmond, who led his party to an historic one-seat victory in last week's Scottish elections, said that minority rule was "not entirely a bad thing" and that, while his preference was still for a majority coalition, it could be "exciting" to govern without a majority.

Patricia Hewitt, interviewed on News 24 on Saturday morning, explained that she should not take responsibility for the MTAS fiasco because the new system had been widely consulted and widely supported prior to deployment. In other words, doctors liked the look of the system, and if they didn't tell her she'd got it wrong, whose fault was that?

Fascinating briefing by Peter Riddell in today's Times on the ideas of Oliver Letwin. Of course, Riddell is limited by the space constraints of newspaper reporting. On the one hand, he could have got by with a lot less space, if he had accurately and succinctly represented the essential vacuity of Letwin's "big idea". On the other, he could have filled the whole paper several times over if he had given a full exposition of the many layers of glossy pseudo-philosophising in which Letwin has wrapped the empty box of his intellectual bankruptcy.

Letwin's "big idea", Riddell reports, is that he wants to "shift the debate from an econo-centric paradigm to a socio-centric paradigm". In other words, we should forget about economics because capitalism has won the battle with socialism, and focus instead on "how we live".

So long as we live within the law, it is none of the government's business how we live. Perhaps he thinks the government is entitled to intervene in our lives because the way of life of a minority (the "underclass") affects everyone else's lives. But that is for two reasons - law and order, which the government should uphold without any need to venture more deeply into our lives, and costs of welfare provision. If it's the latter, we are back to economics.

If this is the "big idea", it is no more than a restatement of the old-fashioned Tory position in the classic divide - both sides want to interfere in our lives, but the Tories want to interfere in our personal lives, whereas Labour and the LibDems want to interfere in our economic lives. What about an option for government to interfere as little as possible in all aspects of our lives? 

Big brother really is watching you. From a discrete plane fitted with military spy equipment. Unlike the Big Brother from Orwell's 1984 though, the version of Big Brother the local councils are producing is more of an intrusive, nagging, holier than thou mother in law. Incredibly, spy cameras are being used to monitor the energy efficiency of our homes. This information is then being put on a website, presumably so mobs of green nutters can come and throw stones at your window and sing songs about flowers and the sun gods.

A friend of mine wrote me an email yesterday saying that every time he reads a story on Picking Losers about the NHS it puts him in a bad mood. I promised him I would try and post a positive one as soon as I can. Well, here goes...

Government

• Reviews of big government IT projects that track progress and problems could be made available to the public following a ruling by the High Court yesterday. Projects ranging from ID cards to the £12.4bn National Health Service electronic patient record are reviewed regularly and given traffic light status: red, amber or green coding. But the Office of Government Commerce has refused to release the findings of the so-called gateway reviews, arguing that to do so would discourage openness about problems and the involvement of IT companies as assessors. That would "fundamentally undermine" the process and defeat its objective, the OGC argues. The information tribunal has upheld a ruling by Richard Thomas, the information commissioner, that the first- stage review of the ID cards project and its coding be published. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/65b302a0-f9db-11db-9b6b-000b5df10621.html
• Britain is being promoted as a "tax haven" on a government website, highlighting the unusually generous tax treatment of foreign residents. "It is also perhaps the only tax haven which has the high degree of respectability sought by the international business community," says the article by Mike Curran, of PwC, the professional services firm, on the UK Trade and Investment website. The message aims to attract wealth creators. But it is likely to stoke the un-ease about the perceived unfairness of the rules, already fuelled by the non-domiciled status of some political donors and the prominence of wealthy foreigners in league tables of the UK's richest people. In most countries, residents are taxed on their worldwide income and gains. But UK residents who are not domiciled in the UK - usually because their fathers were not British - are liable for tax on their overseas income and gains only if they are brought in to Britain. By bringing capital rather than income into the country, very wealthy people can pay little tax. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0cf4a2d0-f9dc-11db-9b6b-000b5df10621.html
• Spy-in-the-sky cameras are being used to identify householders who are wasting the most energy and to shame them into turning the central heating down. Thermal images of homes have been taken by a light aircraft fitted with military spy technology to record the heat escaping from people's houses. Maps identifying individual homes have now been placed on the internet to encourage occupiers to reduce their wastage and carbon emissions by fitting insulation and turning the thermostat down. Haringey Council, in London, has become the first authority in England to place house-by-house thermal maps on the web, after the example of Aberdeen in Scotland. Making the information available to the public is intended to raise awareness of how much energy is being used needlessly, putting up bills and contributing to global warming. It is hoped that homeowners with high wastage levels will be shamed into improving the property's insulation. http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/article1744293.ece
• More children are attending independent schools than ever before despite steep increases in fees and six years of education being the Government's "number one priority", the Independent Schools Council (ISC) said yesterday. Smaller classes, more individual attention, a wide range of extra-curricular activities and increasingly elaborate facilities were the main reasons heads cited for their success in attracting a record 620,000 pupils. Among the 80 per cent who attend the 1,300 schools represented by the ISC, numbers rose last year by more than 5,000, the eighth successive annual increase and the 16th in the past 21 years. Contributing to the increase was a small rise in boarding numbers for only the second time in living memory. The ISC attributed this to schools' huge investment in improving their boarding accommodation, amounting to nearly £70 million in the last year alone. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/main.jhtml?xml=/education/2003/05/05/tenindy01.xml
• Tony Blair will seek an "executive role" after he stands down as prime minister this summer, which could include a new post of president of the European Union. Mr Blair, who is expected to leave office at the beginning of July, is unlikely simply to take to the international lecture circuit, according to Downing Street insiders. He has not ruled out the possibility of a heavyweight job representing his former fellow heads of government as the president of the European Council in two years' time, assuming such a position is created under an overhaul of the EU treaty later this year. Mr Blair will formally announce his resignation as prime minister next week. His spokesman yesterday denied reports that he intended to stand down as an MP at the same time, which would trigger a potentially awkward by-election for his successor, almost certain to be Gordon Brown. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/4918db06-f9db-11db-9b6b-000b5df10621.html
• However, according to the Daily Telegraph, Tony Blair is to become a roving ambassador in Africa and the Middle East in an attempt to rebuild his tarnished reputation. The paper discloses that the Prime Minister is to spurn the chance to earn up to £10 million a year on the international lecture circuit by concentrating on raising money for his new Blair Foundation, which will fund humanitarian work in Africa. Mr Blair has also agreed to a request from President George W Bush that he will fly in to the Middle East when requested as a special envoy to try to revive the stalled peace process. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/04/nblair04.xml

EU

Conservatives  

• Animal rights supporters reacted angrily to plans by Tory leader David Cameron to give MPs a free vote to repeal the fox hunting ban. The Witney MP told GMTV: "I have always believed that country sports are something that have taken place for years and they do not need the approach of the criminal law. "In a new Parliament, it should have a new vote, on a free vote basis, on the issue of hunting." The MP's spokesman confirmed that Mr Cameron, who voted against Labour's 2005 ban, would also vote to scrap it if he became Pr

From one IT system to another. The MTAS chaos rumbles on and the full reprocussions are going to be felt by the mugs that paid for it in the place - the users and funders of the NHS, you and me. Patricia "only a few weeks left and I'm out of the job" Hewitt has insisted that the system will not be put back up until the DoH is satisfied that all the problems with it have been resolved. And quite rightly, though it doesn't mean that the knock on effects aren't going to create even more trouble. This has led to warnings from consultants that operations could postponed this summer due to a shortage of junior doctors.

"Chaos as Government IT system grinds to a halt". Guess which IT system I'm talking about. MTAS? The Child Support Agency's IT phone system? The NHS's £12bn upgrade system? The criminal records bureau? The answer, of course, could be all of them. However today I'm referring to the latest incredible waste of public money and seemingly unending incompetence of the government when it comes to IT projects that is occurring in our registry offices.