Picking Losers

Francis Maude argued on tonight's Question Time that it would be good for there to be a serious contest for the leadership of the Labour Party, as Gordon needed to be tested. Was he admitting that members of his own party are not capable of testing the Chancellor?

Government

• The government last night won a key vote over plans to privatise parts of the probation service. There had been speculation that ministers could be defeated on the Offender Management Bill by a combination of Labour rebels and Conservative opposition. But MPs voted 293 to 268 in favour of the Bill - although the government's majority was cut from 62 to 25. The government also won a vote on an amendment tabled by Labour rebel Neil Gerrard by 267 to 111, a majority of 156. The amendment would have excluded firms and voluntary groups from carrying out "core" probation tasks
• The Government is to accept all the recommendations of the independent Casino Advisory Panel on the location of 17 new casinos - including the one regional casino in Manchester - Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell confirmed. Ms Jowell will formally lay a single draft order today, as the first stage in the process to ask Parliament to approve the panel's recommendations. The order confirms the seventeen local authorities who would be permitted to issue premises licences for the three types of new casino (regional, large and small) permitted by the Gambling Act 2005.
• The Commons is set to vote on whether the Trident nuclear weapons system should be replaced. Leader of the House Jack Straw told the Commons that the Trident debate would take place on Wednesday, March 14. The prime minister said in December that Britain must keep an independent nuclear deterrent by building a new generation of nuclear submarines, costing up to £20bn over 30 years.
• A new UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) report highlighting the UK's competitive position in the critical areas of climate change and environmental solutions was launched today by Trade and Investment Minister Ian McCartney. The UK: a world leader in environmental solutions is a business led review by UKTI's Environmental Sector Advisory Group (ESAG). The report highlights ten main advantages that differentiates the UK from its competitors in the £400bn international environmental goods and services (EGS) sector and provides case studies in each area.
• Community groups tackling gun crime and gangs will be able to apply for a share of £500,000 of Home Office funding from today. Each group is able to apply for up to £5,000 from the sixth round of the Connected Fund, which is focused on tackling gangs through educational, sporting and cultural activities. The aim of the fund is to help young people break away from gangs, provide support for victims and contribute to mentoring projects to keep young people out of trouble.

Conservatives

What is going on in the Treasury? They are ditching plans to promote good behaviour among "young people". The scheme that was to bribe the worst behaved kids on our streets with a £25 gift voucher for good behaviour. Has common sense prevailed over No.11? Have they realised (albeit rather later than one would have hoped for someone who is touted as our next PM) that this was the most ridiculous hair brain idea to come out of their loony policy machine yet? Have they realised that wasting millions of pounds on paying off these so called anti-social youths with a gift voucher was never going to work? No. Of course they haven't.

Education. Education. Education. Remember that? What actually has Tony Blair done though to back up the sound bites? There was the city academies idea - 21 semi-independent schools that are largely funded by the tax payer and cost £25 million to build. And guess what, they are not working. They are actually reporting below average results in national tests for 14 year olds - and these are the government's own figures. 16 of the 21 schools have failed to reach the average for level five (the standard expected for their age).

Government 

• The full implementation timetable for the Companies Act 2006 was announced by Industry and Regions Minister Margaret Hodge. All of the Act will be in place by October 2008 with many elements implemented earlier. The Companies Act introduces sweeping changes to company law.

Conservatives

• The shadow chancellor has said the EU has failed to focus on economic development. In a speech on European reform George Osborne claimed the union had become distracted by political integration rather than concentrating on improving citizens' quality of life.

The NHS has a pensions black hole that has risen by £61bn in just two years. That is incredible! According to the Telegraph the figures include an addition £2.7bn because, and I kid you not, the Government accidentally lost this sum on last year's accounts. You lose the car keys or on a bad day your mobile phone, you do not lose £2.7bn. There is a seriously incompetent accountant working for the government (though I suspect there maybe a whole army of them).

The Daily Telegraph reports today that John Prescott has (rather amusingly) "thrown his weight behind a growing campaign at Westminster to force a rethink of the decision to site Britain's first super-casino in Manchester". Apparently he thinks it should never have gone to Manchester and that the independent advisory panel got it wrong. Tessa Jowell was, apparently, "stunned" by the decision not to award to Blackpool. And now 100 backbench MPs have called for a reversal of the decision. And all I'm left to do is ask, so what??!!

Cowboy John Prescott did his best to get Greenwich the deal and failed. Those in Parliament felt that Blackpool should have got it, but in the end Manchester won because an independent body was set up to decide. Has this government really got its way now for so long that it will challenge everything it doesn't agree with? And with such arrogance. They have effectively set up a body to come up with an answer and if they don't like the answer they turn round and say you got it wrong. Why bother setting it up in the first place if you won't accept their advice? Why waste taxpayers' money with the time and effort it took them to reach an independent decision if you're not interested in the independent decision. This whole casino debate has been a nonsense from the start. It was clear that the government wanted Greenwich ever since Big John was pictured in his Texan hat. Others in the government have clearly wanted Blackpool. Unfortunately, the advisory panel didn't play ball and now that rootin', tootin' John Prescott is throwing his toys out. Pathetic.

Government

• Airbus will today announce plans to build a composites manufacturing facility near Bristol to supply the new family of A350 jets planned by the European aircraft maker under its €10bn (£6.7bn) development programme. The move represents a partial victory for the UK, which had fought hard to win manufacturing work using the next generation of composite materials. Airbus will create the manufacturing facility in a joint venture with a supplier, probably GKN, the UK engineering group. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/bbc6bf3a-c6d0-11db-8f4f-000b5df10621.html
• Three-quarters of NHS hospitals in England cannot guarantee the safety of children in their care, the government's health watchdog warned today in a "wake-up call" to shock doctors and managers into improving services.
  

He's at it again, our Chancellor, talking about Britishness. That is one paranoid Scot. Does he not realise that dissecting Britishness is profoundly unBritish, and that real Brits have the self-confidence in our culture not to need to define it endlessly? Has he not noticed that we've been pretty fond of some Scots even in recent times. If we don't like Gordon Brown as much as we liked Robin Cook or John Smith, or even as much as we like John Reid, Ming Campbell and Charlie Kennedy still, it is not because he is Scottish, but because he is Gordon.

It is one thing to be the pub bore on the subject. It is another to try to get sympathy by picking on others less fortunate than himself. Gordon thinks that "it is right to consider asking men and women seeking citizenship to undertake some community work in our country or something akin to that that introduces them to a wider range of institutions and people in our country prior to enjoying the benefits of citizenship". It's a garbled sentence expressing garbled thought.

What immigrants need as much, if not more than anyone, is to find a job and make a life. That is how they will fit into and contribute to our society. Why would we place on them a burden that is otherwise placed only on convicted petty criminals? What will that prove? How will that help them to adapt to a British way of life (other than the criminal British way of life)?

If we want a test by which we will judge whether an immigrant is fit to enjoy British citizenship, having held down a job for a sufficient period of time would be a much better test than having undertaken community work.

Lord McKenzie of Luton, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Lords) at the Department for Work and Pensions, today "called on the expertise of businesses, government and charities to discuss and agree what constitutes 'good work'." As he explained, "we need to figure out exactly what 'good work' is, so that we can ensure workplaces are happy, healthy and productive".

Here we go again. To Labour, everything is standardisable and reducible to the average or the lowest common denominator, and then enforceable by government mandate. In their eyes, my idea of what constitutes "good work" must be the same as yours, which must be the same as everyone else's. All they need to do is work out what this standard of "good work" consists of, and then insist that all jobs conform with this standard.

Why cannot I decide whether a job is acceptable to me, and accept or refuse employment offers accordingly? If the quality of my job disappoints, why can I not be left to decide whether it is sufficiently disappointing that I should look for a new job? If I can find nothing better than my existing job, am I better off having my unsatisfactory job regulated away (assuming my standards of satisfaction conform with the average), or putting up with something less than perfect until something better comes along? Why does government need to intervene in this area? My terms of employment are a matter for me and my employer alone.

Government

• Immigrants could be required to do community service before gaining UK citizenship, Gordon Brown has said.During a speech on Britishness the chancellor said adding the condition to language and culture tests for would-be citizens could foster "a stronger sense of national purpose".
• Education secretary Alan Johnson has warned that Labour should not penalise single parents. The Labour deputy leadership contender said in a speech that "family policy must be bias-free". The move comes after Conservative leader David Cameron said society must to do more to support marriage in the wake of the spate of shootings among teenagers in south London.
• Two leading former ministers have encouraged Labour MPs to engage in a "debate" about the party's future after Tony Blair. Alan Milburn and Charles Clarke have sent an email to all Labour MPs and peers inviting them to take part in an online discussion. The former health secretary and former home secretary have called a meeting in a Westminster hotel on Wednesday, sparking fresh speculation over a potential Blairite leadership challenge to Gordon Brown. The move is being seen as a suggestion that the chancellor has no automatic right to become the next prime minister.
• 328 Local authorities across England are to be awarded £316 million for encouraging business growth, Local Government Minister Phil Woolas and Treasury Minister John Healey have announced. The Local Authority Business Growth Incentive Scheme (LABGI) sees councils who have encouraged business growth in their area receiving an unringfenced reward from Government. This is the second year of a three year scheme which expects to see up to £1billion allocated to local authorities by 2007/08. Authorities have received more than two and a half times the £126m of grant paid last year, and 50 more authorities have received LABGI grant this year.
• A new UK strategy to improve the conditions in which ships are recycled is published. The aim is to ensure that Government-owned and commercial ships are recycled to acceptable health, safety and environmental standards, particularly in developing countries. The UK has taken the decision to develop its own strategy rather than wait for the outcome of international negotiations, which are likely to take several years to bring any agreement into force.

Conservatives

A Chamber of Commerce report released yesterday has shown that the cost of regulation and red tape to small businesses is running at £55bn. 70% of these businesses believe that the government is not doing enough to help them. One of the comments from the survey was "A risk culture needs to be encouraged in Government – try making a pound instead of trying to save one". This really sums up the government - they do not trust anyone to be able to run anything and so put all the regulation they can in place to put in the safe guards. All in order to save money - but what's the point in saving a pound when your the cost of saving it completely nullifies what you are trying to do?

It is a commonplace of economics that competition drives down prices. Economies of scale drive down costs. The combination of the two may achieve the lowest prices. But normally one would not expect cartels to deliver low prices, however much the privileged position of the cartel-members allowed them to achieve economies of scale. Rather the reverse.

Not according to this Government, though. In setting up Phase 2 of the Low Carbon Buildings Programme, they have consciously created a 7-member cartel in order to generate economies of scale. Here is the justification from the DTI website:

"Phase 2 has an innovative design – a framework-type arrangement has been set up in order to provide an element of certainty for those suppliers who successfully competed to be part of the framework. Recipients of grants will have to purchase their microgeneration technologies from these framework suppliers. This should allow those suppliers to offer lower costs (with the larger volumes bringing economies of scale) and, in the knowledge they will be receiving large numbers of orders, feel able to make the investments in the supply chain required to develop the microgeneration industry."

The £50 million scheme is limited to five technologies: biomass heating, ground-source heat-pumps (GSHPs), solar thermal, solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind. It is limited to projects of specific size (no more than 50 kW electrical or 45 kW thermal). It is limited to the public sector and charitable organisations. It is limited to seven "framework suppliers".

It does not even treat the selected technologies or suppliers equally (details obscured in the FAQ for the scheme). Some suppliers are eligible to supply some technologies, and some are eligible to supply others. Only one (British Gas) is eligible to supply all technologies. No more than three of the seven is eligible to supply any one type of technology. If you want a combination of more than one technology, your choice is likely to be down to one or two potential suppliers.

Even the technologies included within the limited range of options are treated differently. While some renewable technologies are excluded completely, even those technologies that have been included do not face a level playing-field within this very partial structure. Photovoltaics are eligible for 50% grants, GSHPs and wood-fired boilers for 35% and solar thermal and wind for 30%. The justification provided for this differential treatment is that "The grant percentages are based on analysis by the DTI." Very enlightening.

Government

• Changes to the way the Government assesses the cost of regulations for business are being planned to counter claims that companies have been loaded with £55bn worth of red tape since Labour came to power. Ministers are irritated by the British Chambers of Commerce's annual stab at the cost of regulation and officials have been examining the basis for the figures. The BCC Business Barometer uses the assessments to produce the headline figures, verified by Manchester Business School. The assessment takes a stab at what Whitehall economists think new legislation and regulation will cost business or the public. Officials are privately scathing about the BCC figures and the way they are calculated, describing them as "not credible" and based on "second rate methodology" which ignores the benefits of regulation. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/02/27/cbbcc27.xml
• Small businesses are bullish about prospects this year and relaxed about red tape and regulation, according to survey results. Almost two out of three of the 500 covered by the survey are either slightly or a lot more optimistic about this year's business outlook compared with last year. Despite yesterday's Chamber of Commerce report showing the cost of regulation is now running at £55bn a year, the survey by Accelerator, a new magazine for entrepreneurs, and Cisco identifies just 16pc as expressing concern about the cost of bureaucracy and Government rules. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/02/27/cbredtape27.xml
• Plans to split the Home Office and make John Reid, the Home Secretary, head of terrorism and security are being "actively considered" by Tony Blair. He is expected to give the go-ahead early next month for the radical shake-up of Mr Reid's department which would see him given control over security, policing and counter terrorism. Responsibilities for prisons and probation would go to the Department for Constitutional Affairs headed by Lord Falconer in what would be a Continental-style ministry of justice as his department is already responsible for the courts. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/27/nreid27.xml
• A detailed plan to slash London's carbon emissions by 60% within 20 years and place the city at the forefront of the battle against climate change will be announced by Ken Livingstone. The mayor will appeal to Londoners to stop using energy wastefully and will urge businesses to embrace green technology to heat and light offices and workplaces. Mr Livingstone wants a quarter of London's electricity supply to be shifted from the national grid to local combined heat-and-power systems by 2025. The city will offer "green gurus" to help families make their lifestyles more environmentally friendly, and will subsidise supplies of cavity wall and loft insulation. http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2022059,00.html
• Home Office ministers last night moved to stave off a humiliating defeat tomorrow over a key criminal justice bill. They tabled amendments to restore local accountability to the probation service and gave assurances that core tasks such as writing court reports will not be moved out of the public sector without further parliamentary approval. The government is in danger of defeat over the management of offenders bill because more than 40 Labour MPs have said they will vote to protect core probation tasks from takeover by voluntary organisations and the private sector. The Tories have said they will back the move. Defeat at the third reading tomorrow would be the government's first loss on an important bill since the row over incitement to religious hatred in January 2006, and would symbolise the limits of Tony Blair's drive to modernise the public services in his final days in Downing Street. http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,,2022102,00.html  
• Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, gave the green light yesterday to plans for seven new hospitals to be built under the private finance initiative at a cost of £1.5bn. Her decision to back the NHS's biggest ever tranche of investment will provide modern facilities for patients in Bristol, Peterborough, Middlesbrough, Wakefield, Tunbridge Wells, Chelmsford and Edmonton, north London. But it added to anxieties among health service managers and union leaders that the NHS is locking itself into repaying huge sums in 30-year deals with the private sector for buildings and equipment that may not meet changing medical needs. http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,,2022055,00.html    
• The Treasury is threatening to cut defence projects worth up to £35 billion in the Government's next spending round, The Times has learnt. Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, and Sir Jock Stirrup, the Chief of the Defence Staff, were at the Treasury last week to discuss the decision to send 1,400 extra troops to Afghanistan but also to lobby against cuts to key procurement projects. These cuts could leave British defence companies without the billion-pound contracts that they are counting on in coming years. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article1444192.ece
• Royal Mail is to call for a 6p rise in first and second class stamp prices under a radical relaxation of regulatory controls that the state-owned postal operator will argue is necessary to its survival. Businesses would also lose the legal right to have franked mail delivered to every address in the UK according to the proposals, which Royal Mail will this week put to Postcomm, its regulator. Royal Mail wants this "universal service obligation" (USO) to apply to stamped mail only. The operator is also calling for an end to all regulatory controls on bulk business mail, such as lucrative junk mailings. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/3257c6cc-c608-11db-b460-000b5df10621.html
• Tour operators have laun-ched a High Court challenge to Gordon Brown's increase in air passenger duty, saying the whole basis of the levy is flawed and in breach ofhuman rights legislation. The increase came into effect on February 1 but cannot legally be passed on to passengers, leaving tour operators with a bill of £50m. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/715ab6ae-c608-11db-b460-000b5df10621.html  

Conservatives

David Miliband has prepared (with the help of Alistair Darling and some big businesses) a manifesto for the development of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS) after 2012 (Phase 3). He has circulated it to trade associations and big business (or "British industry", as he likes to call it, forgetting as usual about the majority of smaller businesses), asking them to endorse it. The manifesto and its covering letter are attached.

His attitude to "UK business" is summed up in the following sentence from his covering letter:

"Our initial impression of the level of consensus on EU ETS was confirmed when we met some key industry figures to discuss the manifesto in November."

How can you test a level of consensus by meeting some key industry figures? Isn't the definition of consensus that it includes the many, not just the few? If the few tell you that there is consensus amongst the unconsulted many, are you a wise politician to believe them? Even if it were the view of many, should you do what is wanted by the majority (or even the consensus) amongst a particular interest-group, or what is right without reference to interests? Most of us want taxes to be lower, but his Government seems to care less about the consensus on that subject. How do they decide which consensus to listen to and which to ignore?

It used to be said that "UK business" wanted us to go in to the Euro. Now it is said that "UK business" does not want us to go in to the Euro. What is meant is that the majority of bosses of big City institutions and major corporations used to think that the Euro would be good for their businesses, and now the majority think it would be bad. That is not the same thing as the opinion of UK business (even if the Confederation of Big Industry says it is). The Government's reliance on the self-interested, vacillating, superficial assessments of this "elite" is what makes policy so inconsistent and unprincipled. The attitude to EU-ETS and their alliance to produce this manifesto is just another example.

Government  

• Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Alistair Darling, has today asked Ofcom to conduct an initial investigation into British Sky Broadcasting Group's acquisition of a 17.9% stake in ITV plc. This means Ofcom must provide advice to him by 27 April on whether the case raises public interest concerns about the number of different owners of media enterprises.  
• A fundamental overhaul of driver training and testing was confirmed by Road Safety Minister Dr Stephen Ladyman at the RoSPA Road Safety Congress this afternoon. For the first time, new parameters for educating young people about safe driving skills were set out, with a consultation expected later in the year.  
• The Liberal Democrats raised almost as much cash as Labour in the final three months of last year, according to the latest figures. As Labour struggles to bring its borrowing under control, the party received donations worth £2.6m in the fourth quarter of 2006. That was down on both the £3.2m raised in the previous quarter of 2006 and the £3m raised in the final quarter of 2005. The figures suggest the ongoing cash-for-honours investigation has hit Labour's fundraising efforts, particularly among private donors. The Lib Dems, meanwhile, raised £2.3m, while both parties lagged behind the Conservative Party, which raised almost £5.3m.  
• Supporters of a fully elected House of Lords have been stepping up their campaign ahead of next week's Commons vote on reform of the second chamber. Those championing the cause were holding a 'rally for a democratic House of Lords' in Parliament. The event was being chaired by Labour MP Chris Bryant with cross-party speakers including former Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy, Conservative MP John Bercow and Labour's Angela Eagle. MPs will vote next Wednesday on a series of options ranging from abolition of the Lords, retaining the status quo and a 100 per cent elected upper house. They will also get the chance to choose from a variety of hybrid options under which elected members mix with life peers.  

Liberal Democrats  

Ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the law. Enforcement of the law (and therefore social order) breaks down if this simple rule is not upheld. Is there not, then, a moral obligation on our legislators, enforcement-agencies, and judiciary to ensure that the law, its interpretation and its application, is reasonably comprehensible, memorable, consistent and capable of compliance by those to whom it applies? In other words, it is only reasonable to expect people to inform themselves of state-sanctioned standards of behaviour and to behave accordingly, if it is reasonably practical for them to do so.

The average council tax bill is set to rise another 3.8% this year - an incredible 90% increase since Labour came to power! And surprise, surprise - the lowest rises are in the 238 districts that face elections in May, weeks before Gordon Brown is expected to take over as Prime Minister. The government is doing its usual trick of going easier on the key voters in the run up to an important election; however it will probably deal them the sucker punch next year to make up for the short fall. It stinks.

The hardest hit are the pensioners, who will face massive increases which will come straight out of their pensions - Gordon's other favourite trick: to give with one hand and then take it all back with the other. And what are we getting for this 90% increase? Considering we will probably be charged extra to have our rubbish removed in the coming months (another example of raising money with the old environment debate as a smoke screen) not a lot. We do have to pay £9bn for that £3bn Olympics we "won", I suppose. Expect to see many pensioners stand up to this in the coming months and be criminalised by the government - there are 90 in Devon alone, apparently, who are willing to go to prison over this. I guess that will mean our council taxes will have to rise further to pay the police and courts then... not that there are any spaces left in our prisons to put them.

If ever proof were needed that this government is using the environment debate as a smoke screen to stealth taxes and pushing through their agenda, then just look at how they are acting in their everyday lives. You would think a government overly concerned with the changing climate would be going out of their way to get the public to buy in to the green debate by acting responsibly themselves. But no. The number of miles Ministers are driving each year has risen sharply. And even more worrying, they are making us pay for their luxury travel.