It's not exactly a surprise that things have got this bad. In fact, it's completely predictable. From the start the coalition has talked strongly about public sector cuts and the mantra of austerity. (Interesting to note, though, that austerity doesn't extend to their own public spending with £400,000 wasted on renting fig trees for Portcullis House.) But the public sector cuts were to be offset by private sector growth. The trouble has always been that there has never been a strategy for creating those jobs. What kinds of jobs? In what sectors? In what locations? How supported? If the public sector redundancies really are about cutting out waste, then those jobs won't be replaced in the private sector. And there are many functions carried out at present by the public sector that just couldn't generate a profit. at least not without dropping down wages and conditions, or increasing public purchasing budgets. Probably both.
The absence of any kind of growth strategy is really disturbing. It's fantasy economics and fantasy politics. I wrote in this blog back in October 2010 that government 'will also have to deal with the unfinished business from the 1980's of how to restore exporting industry, and what to do about all those communities that have lost the reason for their existence'. In contrast, their policy seems to be to cross their fingers and hope for the best.
This is a little PS. This morning I saw three young men emerge from the building that houses the local probation service and NHS addiction service. I don't know which they had been visiting, possibly both. All three were pasty, emaciated figures stumbling along in their matching Burberry baseball caps. (How Burberry must hate that : its a sort of anti-marketing to have your stuff adopted by your least welcome demographic.) One had crutches. Quite a common site around this building. It's because they damage their ability to walk by injecting in their groin.
Anyway, it got me thinking on what it would take to get that three into work. They have probably never worked. They are drug users. They probably have a criminal record. Who will ever employ them? The most worrying thing is that, if not already then soon they will have kids. Kids they will ignore but kids who will, in 20 years time, also look like these three : permanently unemployable. And what is the strategy for breaking that cycle? I suspect that, once again, it's cross your fingers and hope for the best.
Thursday, 16 February 2012
Wednesday, 15 February 2012
NHS REFORM
I'm so glad to be living in Scotland and out the way of these unnecessary and wrong NHS reforms. It has, incidentally, been a very long time since there was, as Labour likes to say, one NATIONAL health service. Things have been very different in Scotland and England for a long time. In fact some of the resentment that fuelled the rise of the SNP derives from the last time the Conservatives were in power when unacceptable policies were imposed : poll tax, de-industrialisation, introduction of markets into the NHS. That's why the Tories still have only one seat in Scotland.
The current NHS reforms are hard to understand. Why are they doing it? David Cameron said that the NHS would be safe in their hands and that there would be no 'top-down re-organisation'. While we are used to politicians telling lies, this is a breathtaking example of promising one thing to electors and then, once elected, of doing the opposite. Whatever else it is a gift to Labour. You can be sure that much will be made of it in the next general election campaign. And its the most important issue for many voters. I saw the NHS described as the closest we have in the UK to a state religion. For a PR professional the Prime Minister has a very uncertain touch.
So, why are they doing it? I think its in their DNA and its unfinished business. When the Thatcher government came to power in 1979, they did have a mandate to privatise and got busy on coal, steel, rail etc. They were then keen to extend this approach to the NHS but found that it was such a shambolic organisation in business information that there was no basis for either separating out elements of service (because everything was so integrated - generally regarded as a good thing) and because nothing was properly costed. No one, famously, could tell Ministers how much a hip replacement cost.
All of the re-organisations that have taken place in the intervening years have been attempts to resolve these structural problems. The NHS is now divided up into business units. And everything is costed. But these changes have largely been to the detriment of the NHS. The rot set in early. When they found that they couldn't privatise in 1979 the then government started to prepare the NHS for a future privatisation. They commissioned Roy Griffiths, then the Chairman of Sainsburys, to report. He found an organisation without adequate information and cost systems and recommended the introduction on general management.
I think Griffiths was probably correct and I don't agree with those who think his approach was to turn the NHS into a supermarket. The NHS in those days did need to modernise systems and management but the scale of the changes has gone far beyond anything Griffiths could have imagined. Part of the problem is that so many NHS managers are not really managers, they are at best administrators, and the sub-divisions of NHS business units are so unwieldy that integration, once in the bloodflow of the NHS, is now a full-time demand on those administrators. Another problem is that anytime anything becomes an issue civil servants advise Ministers to introduce another role to determine policy, monitor implementation and interpret results i.e. someone just like them. That's why there are so many civil servant type roles in the modern NHS.
So, Conservatives always want to privatise. It's the Conservative way. And they are completing the work they were frustrated in back in 1979. They are completing Keith Joseph's dream.
Whatever you think of it, it will lose them the next General Election.
The current NHS reforms are hard to understand. Why are they doing it? David Cameron said that the NHS would be safe in their hands and that there would be no 'top-down re-organisation'. While we are used to politicians telling lies, this is a breathtaking example of promising one thing to electors and then, once elected, of doing the opposite. Whatever else it is a gift to Labour. You can be sure that much will be made of it in the next general election campaign. And its the most important issue for many voters. I saw the NHS described as the closest we have in the UK to a state religion. For a PR professional the Prime Minister has a very uncertain touch.
So, why are they doing it? I think its in their DNA and its unfinished business. When the Thatcher government came to power in 1979, they did have a mandate to privatise and got busy on coal, steel, rail etc. They were then keen to extend this approach to the NHS but found that it was such a shambolic organisation in business information that there was no basis for either separating out elements of service (because everything was so integrated - generally regarded as a good thing) and because nothing was properly costed. No one, famously, could tell Ministers how much a hip replacement cost.
All of the re-organisations that have taken place in the intervening years have been attempts to resolve these structural problems. The NHS is now divided up into business units. And everything is costed. But these changes have largely been to the detriment of the NHS. The rot set in early. When they found that they couldn't privatise in 1979 the then government started to prepare the NHS for a future privatisation. They commissioned Roy Griffiths, then the Chairman of Sainsburys, to report. He found an organisation without adequate information and cost systems and recommended the introduction on general management.
I think Griffiths was probably correct and I don't agree with those who think his approach was to turn the NHS into a supermarket. The NHS in those days did need to modernise systems and management but the scale of the changes has gone far beyond anything Griffiths could have imagined. Part of the problem is that so many NHS managers are not really managers, they are at best administrators, and the sub-divisions of NHS business units are so unwieldy that integration, once in the bloodflow of the NHS, is now a full-time demand on those administrators. Another problem is that anytime anything becomes an issue civil servants advise Ministers to introduce another role to determine policy, monitor implementation and interpret results i.e. someone just like them. That's why there are so many civil servant type roles in the modern NHS.
So, Conservatives always want to privatise. It's the Conservative way. And they are completing the work they were frustrated in back in 1979. They are completing Keith Joseph's dream.
Whatever you think of it, it will lose them the next General Election.
Tuesday, 7 February 2012
BONUS vs. PUBLIC MOOD
Observing the backlash against those on top pay having to pay attention to the public mood by refusing bonuses. One top analyst says that big pay and bonuses are necessary to provide motivation, which will lead to success for the country.
I was thinking about all those who manage to do a good job without such additional financial motivation : bus drivers responsible for the safety of their passengers, nurses, home helps, teachers, technicians..........complete you own list.
And those who do need to be 'motivated' : investment bankers, financial traders, management consultants, hedge fund managers.........
No wonder Adam Smith backed off his original perception that 'greed is good' and concluded that social responsibility was important.
We are all in it together!
I was thinking about all those who manage to do a good job without such additional financial motivation : bus drivers responsible for the safety of their passengers, nurses, home helps, teachers, technicians..........complete you own list.
And those who do need to be 'motivated' : investment bankers, financial traders, management consultants, hedge fund managers.........
No wonder Adam Smith backed off his original perception that 'greed is good' and concluded that social responsibility was important.
We are all in it together!
Wednesday, 1 February 2012
THE POSSIBILITY OF REDEMPTION
Redemption? What does that have to do with welfare reform? Patience. Patience. One side of welfare reform is spending. The other side is Government income. All will be revealed.
While many have relished the downfall of Fred Goodwin, other, more careful, voices have taken a more considered line. Alistair Darling, always someone to listen to, asks : What about the others? Many top bankers and other speculative investors received honours. Many are now known to have taken outrageous risks with other people's money.
And Darling and others have warned against the too easy emotional spasm of vindictiveness against the demonised individual. It feels too much like mob mentality. And too much like a neat piece of political manipulation : it wasn't us guv, honest, it was them bankers over there. And Fred has fallen into being the scapegoat for the whole financial crisis.
Individuals can and do make mistakes. If they remain a danger to the public they get locked up. Sometimes forever. But that's not Fred and the other bankers. John Profumo famously made amends for his indiscretions (sufficiently serious at the time to bring down a government) by doing voluntary work in the East End. All prisoners are, at least theoretically, regarded as having the potential to be rehabilitated. I remember helping a friend, who had completed a long prison sentence for violent crime, to complete a job application. I told him (and I know that many would disagree with this advice) to declare every crime, every conviction, every sentence, including those regarded as spent in terms of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. The rationale was that he accepted what he had done, that it was now behind him, but that he was making a fresh start. The employer, a responsible national charity, took the measure of the man and took him on. Some years later I had the great privilege of completing his "fit person" reference to enable him to take charge of a home for people with disabilities. He deserved it. He had paid the price for his mistakes. He was now rehabilitated. Redeemed.
Fred Goodwin is 53. What is he going to do now? I have a suggestion. Why not offer the possibility of redemption? Why not get Fred, and the other errant bankers, to volunteer their services to the revenue. They know all the scams. Set them to be poachers turned gamekeepers. They could retrieve billions from top tax evaders and avoiders. Let them chase down tax havens, loopholes, 'products'.
It can't be a reward deal. The knighthoods can't be restored. The obituaries are always going to major on their part in the financial crisis. But, like Profumo, they could have their equivalent to 'voluntary work in the East End'. They could use their considerable skills and experience for the good of the country.
If I were Fred, I would be offering myself now. For the good of the country. And so should all the others. They know who they are.
While many have relished the downfall of Fred Goodwin, other, more careful, voices have taken a more considered line. Alistair Darling, always someone to listen to, asks : What about the others? Many top bankers and other speculative investors received honours. Many are now known to have taken outrageous risks with other people's money.
And Darling and others have warned against the too easy emotional spasm of vindictiveness against the demonised individual. It feels too much like mob mentality. And too much like a neat piece of political manipulation : it wasn't us guv, honest, it was them bankers over there. And Fred has fallen into being the scapegoat for the whole financial crisis.
Individuals can and do make mistakes. If they remain a danger to the public they get locked up. Sometimes forever. But that's not Fred and the other bankers. John Profumo famously made amends for his indiscretions (sufficiently serious at the time to bring down a government) by doing voluntary work in the East End. All prisoners are, at least theoretically, regarded as having the potential to be rehabilitated. I remember helping a friend, who had completed a long prison sentence for violent crime, to complete a job application. I told him (and I know that many would disagree with this advice) to declare every crime, every conviction, every sentence, including those regarded as spent in terms of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. The rationale was that he accepted what he had done, that it was now behind him, but that he was making a fresh start. The employer, a responsible national charity, took the measure of the man and took him on. Some years later I had the great privilege of completing his "fit person" reference to enable him to take charge of a home for people with disabilities. He deserved it. He had paid the price for his mistakes. He was now rehabilitated. Redeemed.
Fred Goodwin is 53. What is he going to do now? I have a suggestion. Why not offer the possibility of redemption? Why not get Fred, and the other errant bankers, to volunteer their services to the revenue. They know all the scams. Set them to be poachers turned gamekeepers. They could retrieve billions from top tax evaders and avoiders. Let them chase down tax havens, loopholes, 'products'.
It can't be a reward deal. The knighthoods can't be restored. The obituaries are always going to major on their part in the financial crisis. But, like Profumo, they could have their equivalent to 'voluntary work in the East End'. They could use their considerable skills and experience for the good of the country.
If I were Fred, I would be offering myself now. For the good of the country. And so should all the others. They know who they are.
Tuesday, 9 November 2010
UNFAIR! Part 1 in an indeterminate (but probably quite lengthy) series
It is reported that George Osborne has decided not to pursue Vodafone for a tax bill of £6billion. That's £6,000,000,000 when we are told that every £ counts. The BBC reported that Boots now declares its profits in low tax Switzerland despite making its income predominantly in the U.K. How much is that lost to the U.K. economy? Apparently around £90,000,000 a year. And we can be sure that other big companies are similarly failing to believe that "we are all in it together" by doing the same.
Just as there are those skilled at avoiding/evading tax, there are those skilled in the manipulation of the benefits system. I have just come across the first story I have seen of adaptation to the Government's new approach. One mother is complaining that she will have to return to work when her child reaches seven. Her friend tells her she just needs to get pregnant every sixth year and then she will always have a child under seven and thereby retain her benefit entitlement for the foreseeable future.
The unfairness will fall most heavily, and probably most quickly, on those who have paid their taxes and have expectations that services will be available when they need them. Those who are long term sick or disabled, and I mean genuinely so, will soon be experiencing a very hard time. Many will lose basic benefits because the systems put in place will have difficulty in making the correct distinction between those who cannot work and those who choose not to work. Local authorities will have to cut back hard on their social care budgets and will be removing services from many needy individuals. One London borough has already told one service user that she will have to wear incontinence pads rather than have the assistance with toileting that she has been receiving.
Over the past twenty years, when faced with potential spending constraints, local authorities have tended to raise charges rather than cut services. Social care has been particularly affected by this approach. I always tried to find scope for reasonable increases in charges, rather than cut back on services, when I was advising Councils. But the justification for social care charges was the additional income that service users were receiving from disability benefits. Reflecting changed circumstances and reducing charging systems for services is unlikely to figure very high in local government budget discussions now taking place.
So, many of those who are sick or disabled will experience a TRIPLE WHAMMY:
Just as there are those skilled at avoiding/evading tax, there are those skilled in the manipulation of the benefits system. I have just come across the first story I have seen of adaptation to the Government's new approach. One mother is complaining that she will have to return to work when her child reaches seven. Her friend tells her she just needs to get pregnant every sixth year and then she will always have a child under seven and thereby retain her benefit entitlement for the foreseeable future.
The unfairness will fall most heavily, and probably most quickly, on those who have paid their taxes and have expectations that services will be available when they need them. Those who are long term sick or disabled, and I mean genuinely so, will soon be experiencing a very hard time. Many will lose basic benefits because the systems put in place will have difficulty in making the correct distinction between those who cannot work and those who choose not to work. Local authorities will have to cut back hard on their social care budgets and will be removing services from many needy individuals. One London borough has already told one service user that she will have to wear incontinence pads rather than have the assistance with toileting that she has been receiving.
Over the past twenty years, when faced with potential spending constraints, local authorities have tended to raise charges rather than cut services. Social care has been particularly affected by this approach. I always tried to find scope for reasonable increases in charges, rather than cut back on services, when I was advising Councils. But the justification for social care charges was the additional income that service users were receiving from disability benefits. Reflecting changed circumstances and reducing charging systems for services is unlikely to figure very high in local government budget discussions now taking place.
So, many of those who are sick or disabled will experience a TRIPLE WHAMMY:
- Loss or reduction of benefits income
- Loss or reduction of services
- Continuing high charges not reflecting these losses or reductions
So, big business will be O.K.
Benefits manipulators will be O.K.
But those who are sick and disabled will bear the impact of the cuts. They are the real squeezed middle.
Sunday, 31 October 2010
Jobs for benefit leavers : SIMPLE!
The most popular pre-order book at present is the autobiography of Aleksander, the cartoon meerkat from those comparison site ads. His catchphrase is : SIMPLE!
This is probably too simple a thought but there does seem, with the news that the UK's contribution to the EU is to INCREASE while everything else is being cut, to be a more widespread questioning of the usefulness of EU membership. Undoubtedly, further revelations of the profligacy of the EU's bloated bureaucracy will follow and further shift public opinion against continuing UK membership of the EU.
In terms of welfare reform, the rhetoric is to 'make work pay'. So far, the coalition has been weak on specifics. They avoid specifying detail but that seems to be because they have not thought it through themselves. They have also failed to think through the implementation issues arising from their broad policy objectives. Will work be made to pay by increasing the minimum wage? That would be a no. Will benefit levels fall below minimum wage levels? Yes. Will benefits be time-limited? Yes. Will benefits be means-tested? Almost certainly, yes. But will any of these measures create the jobs for people to move to as they come off benefits? That is a different category of question. It's not about pushing people out of one system [the benefits system]; it's about providing places for them within a different system [employment].
How that will be achieved is, at best, vague. Ian Duncan Smith seems to presume that the private sector will fill the jobs gap. I am not even going to touch on the massive task of preparing the long-term benefit-dependent for useful work. That is yet another enormous challenge. I am just considering the potential for job creation during this parliament. What IDS has set out is how people will be moved out of benefits. Will there be employment destinations for them?
So, what has any of this got to do with Europe? Do you remember all those jobs Gordon Brown was so proud of having created? That was until it was established that 98.5% of them had gone to migrant labour. IDS and his colleagues talk about the global economy in terms of international trade. What they seem to have ignored is the European context for the job market. IDS can do all he likes to bring benefit levels and minimum wage into the 'appropriate' balance. That is a UK specific matter. A fruit farmer in Kent said that it was now more than 20 years since her apples were picked by English workers. Now the pickers are from Romania, Poland, Spain. One Polish worker in the UK told me that she could never foresee any economic future where it was to her financial advantage to return home. Are all of these migrant workers about to walk away from jobs they have uprooted themselves to get? They will stay as long as Britain's EU membership entitles them to stay.
In the international politico-economic forum it appears that the EU is preoccupied with the health of the Euro, a currency unrelated to Britain's economic recovery. If the EU is too expensive, not focussed on UK needs, destructive to UK industries [particularly fishing], and adversely influencing the UK job market, then maybe the radical option is to withdraw from membership. 'Think the unthinkable', they say.
If we withdraw from the EU, we would save £ 6.5bn every year in contributions and release the jobs needed for those moving on from benefits. As Aleksandr might say, SIMPLE!
This is probably too simple a thought but there does seem, with the news that the UK's contribution to the EU is to INCREASE while everything else is being cut, to be a more widespread questioning of the usefulness of EU membership. Undoubtedly, further revelations of the profligacy of the EU's bloated bureaucracy will follow and further shift public opinion against continuing UK membership of the EU.
In terms of welfare reform, the rhetoric is to 'make work pay'. So far, the coalition has been weak on specifics. They avoid specifying detail but that seems to be because they have not thought it through themselves. They have also failed to think through the implementation issues arising from their broad policy objectives. Will work be made to pay by increasing the minimum wage? That would be a no. Will benefit levels fall below minimum wage levels? Yes. Will benefits be time-limited? Yes. Will benefits be means-tested? Almost certainly, yes. But will any of these measures create the jobs for people to move to as they come off benefits? That is a different category of question. It's not about pushing people out of one system [the benefits system]; it's about providing places for them within a different system [employment].
How that will be achieved is, at best, vague. Ian Duncan Smith seems to presume that the private sector will fill the jobs gap. I am not even going to touch on the massive task of preparing the long-term benefit-dependent for useful work. That is yet another enormous challenge. I am just considering the potential for job creation during this parliament. What IDS has set out is how people will be moved out of benefits. Will there be employment destinations for them?
So, what has any of this got to do with Europe? Do you remember all those jobs Gordon Brown was so proud of having created? That was until it was established that 98.5% of them had gone to migrant labour. IDS and his colleagues talk about the global economy in terms of international trade. What they seem to have ignored is the European context for the job market. IDS can do all he likes to bring benefit levels and minimum wage into the 'appropriate' balance. That is a UK specific matter. A fruit farmer in Kent said that it was now more than 20 years since her apples were picked by English workers. Now the pickers are from Romania, Poland, Spain. One Polish worker in the UK told me that she could never foresee any economic future where it was to her financial advantage to return home. Are all of these migrant workers about to walk away from jobs they have uprooted themselves to get? They will stay as long as Britain's EU membership entitles them to stay.
In the international politico-economic forum it appears that the EU is preoccupied with the health of the Euro, a currency unrelated to Britain's economic recovery. If the EU is too expensive, not focussed on UK needs, destructive to UK industries [particularly fishing], and adversely influencing the UK job market, then maybe the radical option is to withdraw from membership. 'Think the unthinkable', they say.
If we withdraw from the EU, we would save £ 6.5bn every year in contributions and release the jobs needed for those moving on from benefits. As Aleksandr might say, SIMPLE!
Friday, 22 October 2010
SICK AND DISABLED TO BEAR BRUNT OF WELFARE CUTS
As the details of the spending review become available, it is clear that much of the Government’s plan to reform welfare is to be financed by attacking the sick and disabled. Their benefits are to be time-limited and means-tested. In addition, local authority care services are to be reduced to only the extremely vulnerable. How will extreme vulnerability be defined? How will local authorities rationalise the current massive inequities in levels of service provision? And what impact will such radical changes have in the lives of the sick, disabled and, where they exist, their carers?
I am always amused to hear those who say that they know no-one who chooses to be on benefits. They need to get out more. I know plenty. And they are people have accessed benefits by the manipulation of the system to their own advantage. They are agents of their own success, not passive recipients caught in a trap. I don’t blame them. They have simply made the rational choice to conform to the requirements of the financial incentives available to them. More like tax avoidance than tax evasion. But just as the rich will always find ways to avoid the tax that the rest of us have to pay, the benefits culture will adjust to meet whatever requirements are placed on it to ensure the continuation of state funding. It is hard to imagine the civil servants designing a system smart enough to end practices that have been perfected in some families over three and more generations.
And that leaves the real sick and disabled that these sickness and disability benefits were designed to help. They are the ones who will be vulnerable to being pushed out of benefits. They are also likely to be losing their local authority services. They already have to pay high charges for service in many local authorities. One Occupational Therapist told me that her authority was charging disabled people 80% of the cost of their stair-lift, an item that can cost £5000, and making the user responsible for funding a maintenance contract. These charges will inevitably rise further.
That same local authority already charges disabled people £20 for providing a disabled parking badge. That cost will no doubt rise, and the great irony is that it has to rise so that wealthy 60 year olds can continue to receive their winter fuel and their free bus pass. The sick and disabled will pay a high price for the maintenance of the universal principle in benefits.
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