Though Cowards Flinch

Future address of the entire Tory parliamentary party, when their houses are requisitioned by local councils

A few further words to Paul’s previous post, entitled “Home truths about public housing”,  his counter to any Right-wing bloviation that the State or “taxpayers” shouldn’t be subsidising public housing rents for those who can afford to pay.

His premise rests on the notion that the Housing Revenue Account (the balance of income from rent and expenditure on stock and services) currently turns a profit.

That the profit is tiny compared to the amount spent on housing (£194m to £5.9bn, thus Iain Wright on 2008/9 figures) is neither here nor there. It should be nothing short of a scandal that the New Labour government was quite prepared to use money extracted in rent not to improve services or reduce rents for those who produced it, or even to public housing tenants as a whole, but to plug gaps in spending elsewhere.

Complaints about this begat New Labour consultations on what to replace the HRA with. Thus when New Labour were themselves replaced, the Tory/Lapdog-coalition minister responsible arrived to find the “localism” spiel of his boss, Dave Cameron, nicely dovetailing with New Labour’s pre-existing plans, announced in March 2010, to begin allowing local authorities to opt out of the Housing Revenue Account.

While this sounds like a good idea – what could be better than local councils being able to gain popularity by holding rents steady or improving services? – it’s only a small part of a much larger picture. For a start, the “self financing” plans announced by the DCLG involved councils paying the government a one-off fee for the right to opt out of the HRA (p4, DCH March 2009), which they would presumably earn back by increasing rents.

Not only this but a large proportion of councils – under the proposals outlined in Section2 of the previous government’s “Council Housing: a real future” prospectus – will inherit debt from the previous arrangement with the Housing Revenue Account.

Secondly, it puts council housing tenants at much greater risk from their own local authority. The urge to drive down costs by an attack on the jobs, terms and conditions of those who labour to provide services to tenants, or by increasing rents (even while right-to-buy still goes on siphoning off money from public housing, and maintenance and major repair costs continue to be below rental costs, channeling money away from housing) will always exist.

It will exist all the more in difficult economic circumstances – such as when councils go playing in financial markets, where my own Canterbury City Council lost £6m, and this is not the largest figure by a long chalk. In these circumstances normal sources of revenue like car parking fees drop too, but the need for secure, publicly subsidised housing actually increases. What then? For this none of the parties have made allowance.

Meanwhile, undermining the security of tenancy (in blatant contradiction of pre-election statements by Cameron’s “compassionate Conservatives”) is a neat attempt to exploit ignorant prejudices regarding public housing as a cover for the retreat by the Tory/Lapdog-coalition from tentative New Labour steps to build a new council house or two per year, squeezing as much money as possible from the guarantees any civilised society owes its citizens.

One wonders where the Tory battlecries of “choice” and “flexibility” are when it comes to providing a service to those who, thanks to Tory and New Labour reforms, depend on short-term work and a fluctuating income as the best deal they can get? Such smug wonderings on the part of the political class belie just how desperate the situation might very well get, if Guy of Osbourne really is planning to shave billions off what is spent on benefits and public housing.

There is and will be plenty of rightly outraged comment about the Coalition’s plans, now confirmed, to chuck people out of public housing if they’re earning too much, and to end secure tenanncies. 

As I set out here in satirical vein and here more straightforwardly, the contradiction between this policy and the rhetoric of big society and community togetherness is stark enough, and reveals in all its glory the fact the the Tories and their LibDem lapdogs simply do not understand or want to understand the world most of us inhabit.

For them, housing is about assets, not about homes.

I’ll leave others to do the outrage, though. Here I’ll simply do my bit to counter the inevitable argument by the Right, in papers and on talkshows up and down the land in the next few days. that the state shouldn’t be subsidising public housing rents for those who can afford private sector rents.

The state doesn’t subsidise public housing rents.  Tenant rents now subsidise the state.

This parliamentary report from June makes that clear enough:

In 2004-05 182 councils paid a total of £615.3 million into the HRA subsidy system……..The figures indicated that the subsidy regime was heading for surplus: in 2001-02 the Government contributed £351 million; this figure fell to £252 million in 2002-3 and £191 million in 2003-4.

There was “mounting speculation” in the housing industry that in 2008-9 the system would finally “tip over into surplus”, i.e. the Treasury would pay out less in HRA subsidy than it received from those authorities contributing to the pooling regime. Then Minister, Iain Wright, confirmed that the overall HRA did, in fact, move into surplus in 2008-09:

“In recent years the system of council housing subsidy has been in deficit throughout the country, with the Treasury making up the shortfall. It is only from 2008-09 that the position has reversed with the overall system moving into surplus…………….”

Public Finance Magazine carried an article on 18 January 2008 in which it claimed that figures based on projections by six councils taking part in a Government pilot to assess the implications of leaving the HRA indicated that in 2008-9 the national HRA “will be running at a surplus of £194 million.” The article claimed that “within in ten years, the annual surplus is forecast to exceed £500m, with the trend set to continue well beyond 2020.

This tip over into surplus, and continuing trend, is confirmed in this recent letter to the housing minister:

ARCH [Association of Retained Council Housing] members are net payers in to the national subsidy system. Our 56 members are likely to contribute an estimated £255m in net negative subsidy payments in 2010/11.

This plan is about ideology, not facts.

Will Hutton has said something about the Euro which I bring up every time I discuss it, with friends, colleagues or in blog entries. It is as follows:

Nobody pretends the euro is perfect. It was probably too ambitious to incorporate weak members with the strong so soon.

Too ambitious by half.

Plenty of bloggers are reminding themselves and each other that the euro is not to blame (lib dem voice; Phillip Legrain for example), and principally this is Hutton’s line as well, but rather thinks the union should be reformed – teasing out the difference between left and right wing euroscepticism along the way.

The right may have nationalist and sovereign interests as their main concern, but the left are not opposed to a single monetary union, just opposed to one geared at concentrated capital movement, reducing nations within that union to massive wealth disparities.

Though EU reformers recognise this, and it is precisely Hutton’s point – supporters of the EU, in the name of a free market, are not learning the lessons of history, favouring floating exchange rates and leaving the door wide open for explosions, caused by excessive deficits or surpluses.

The eurosceptic left were never principally opposed to european integration, but much of the convergence criteria in the Maastricht Treaty. But Hutton is one example of someone who is pro-EU addressing those very concerns. Ireland and Greece, if nothing else, will see those ideas taken far more seriously by politicians.

Being old, I’m not a great one for the latest techie news, but this story did interest me.

It seems that mobile network providers, including our friends at Vodafone, are very upset at the news that Apple have come up with its own integrated SIM card which will allow it to bypass the range of providers in Europe:

This would mean that customers could buy the phone directly from the Apple store and then choose which carrier to go with. Result: Apple controls all the sales, and makes more money, the consumer has more choice over which carrier to go with, and the carrier would be stuck with offering shorter, more customer-friendly contracts to iPhone users. The current situation of subsidized iPhones in return for a two-year, molto ‘spensivo contratto, would be kaput. Pronto.

These subsidies – compare shelling out $600 for an iPhone directly from Apple, with signing up for a free iPhone in return for paying a higher monthly amount ($80, say) for two years – have helped Apple shift units in Europe, units the like of which haven’t been shifted before.

Now, according to the FT, Vodafone and the like are planning “punitive action” by refusing to continue what they like to suggest is a “subsidy” which helps Apple sell its phones, but which less kindly souls might call it very old-fashioned Hire Purchase, or using their financial muscle to fleece customers.

As has been suggested, Vodafone don’t appear to be very good at capitalism. 

The idea that they might be prepared to throw their multinational weight about not just to avoid paying tax, but also to keep charging taxpayers over the odds for their phone use - through a distinctly unfreetrade cartel with other providers like France Telecom and Spain’s Telefonica – might just go down like a lead balloon.

When’s the next Vodafone direct action again?

A little known law

In the second in my occasional, when-I-remember series on cuts resistance for old people, here’s how to use a little known aspect of the Local Government Act 1972 to really get up the noses of local authorities while bringing good local publicity to whatever your anti-cuts cause is.

Part 3, schedule 12, paragraph 18, subparagraphs 4 and 5 of the Local Government Act 1972 allows people in many areas of the country to require, by law, that a local authority hold a referendum on any local topic of their choosing.  

‘Local topic’ can be defined fairly loosely, so may involve wider service cuts which impact upon a much more local area.

The law applies to ‘parished’ areas only, but note that Parish and town councils have the same legal status – they are just named differently. 

For unparished areas in cities and elsewhere, see below.

The legislation has been little used, though there have been examples of its use in campaigns against GM crops, and going further back, at Greenham Common in the 1980s.

This is odd, because it’s a relatively easy for ordinary voters to set up a local referendum and although the result is only be advisory, it does nonetheless serve to let the authorities know just what local people feel on an issue, and to raise the profile of a campaign.

I know because  we used it in Bickerstaffe in 2005 as part of a concerted (and successful) campaign against the sell off of public housing in West Lancashire.

Here’s what to do

1.  Choose an Issue over which people in your area feel strongly. The boundaries of “your area” are those governed by your local Parish Council (England), or Community Council (Wales).  Unfortunately provisions do not exist for similar procedures in Scotland or Ulster.

2.  Six voters on the Electoral Register for that Parish (available for viewing at a local Post Office or in a library) now need to sign a piece of paper calling for a Public Parish meeting on a specified date more than seven clear working days hence.  This ‘notice of meeting’ should specify date, time (after 6.00pm), venue, the names of the six, and the business to be transacted at the meeting (ie to call for a referendum on your chosen question).  As a minimum the notice should be pinned up at one prominent site in the area.

4.  Notify the Parish Council and the Chairman of the District Council of what you are doing.  Tell them that you are acting under Part 3, schedule 12, paragraph 18, subparagraphs 4 and 5 of the Local Government Act 1972.  You may well find that if your chosen issue arouses strong feelings locally, the Parish Council will come on board to help with the organisation of the meeting.

5.  For the meeting to be valid, you will need at least ten local voters present. The meeting may be chaired by the Chairman of the Parish council if willing, but this is not essential, as anyone chosen by the meeting can chair it.  Whatever else happens at the meeting, you will need to propose a motion calling for a referendum (Parish Poll) on your chosen question or questions.  If one third of those voters present, or ten of those present, whichever figure is smaller, call for a referendum, then your District Council is obliged by law to hold one.  Note this means that it is actually possible to loose a vote at the meeting, but still satisfy the requirements for calling a referendum.

6.  Go to your District/Borough Council and tell them the outcome of the vote at the meeting.  Quote the relevant legislation again.  They now have between 14 and 25 days to hold the referendum.

7.  You will be notified of the date of the referendum (Parish Poll).  Voters will not receive Poll cards, nor will postal or proxy voting be allowed, but in other respects the poll will be carried out by the council’s returning officer just as in an election.  Liase with the returning officer in advance if you wish to attend the count.

8.  It is now up to you to publicise the referendum, as the District Council is only obliged to display the minimum notices required in law.  Are you going to put up posters, or to leaflet the area?  One thing you should certainly do, and that is to talk to the local press, as this will make a good story for them.

9.  After the result is announced, you can again use the media to obtain maximum publicity for the outcome, should it have been the one you desired!  In particular, you may want to use the result as a key message in broader campaigns around the actual decision making points in Council and other public bodies where cuts are being planned.

(This section cribbed largely from here.)

What about the cities?

As set out above, the legislation applies only to ‘parished’ areas, and is a strange historical oddity.

However, my (very) lay reading of the The Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA), incorporating the rights contained in the European Convention of Human Rights, suggests that it might be possible to challenge a local authority with unparished areas (notably but not exclusively larger towns and cities) which refuses to undertake a referendum in the way set out above.

As set out here, Article 14 of the Convention prohibits discrimination on very wide range of grounds, which sex, race and religion, but also cover political opinion, economic or social status, as well as ‘any other status’; it may be that the courts might accept the argument that this ‘any other status’ covers geographical location, and therefore that it is unlawful for a local authority NOT to allow the use of the Local Government Act 1972 when it is allowed in other areas.

I’d certainly be interested in more experst views on this.

There has been a lot of recent interest by politicians and think tanks lately to support the empowerment of frontline workers, and nowhere is this more relevant than for social work.

Good social work can mean the world of difference for many in society, though the profession has suffered consistent set backs, hindered by inadequate recruitment, retention, resources, training, leadership and public understanding.

The debate on increasing professional standards, and making selection tougher, has come at the same time as the argument suggesting more families need close contact with social workers. The problem becomes quite clear; while caseloads should increase, and social work be more autonomous, it must become tougher to be a social worker, with extended training and rigorous selection.

Many academic reports on the subject call for government to increase incentives for social workers, such as introducing sabbaticals to ease the stress of full time social work. But already this necessitates a huge increase in the total workforce.

Projects like Progressive Conservatism at Demos have been enthusiastic about self-directed social work services, particularly in their report Leading from the Front. The idea is they combine operations and management functions rather than separate them, ridding stifling middle management and building a more autonomous profession.

Six pilots for GP-styled social work practices are currently underway in Blackburn with Darwen, Hillingdon, Kent, Liverpool, Staffordshire and Sandwell, which have already gained support from the Conservatives – even before the pilot results have been fed back – but they have not found favour with everyone across the sector.

Back in 2008 Sutton Council team manager Maureen Floyd noted that “social workers already criticise lack of direct work with children.” Rather than being an exercise in reducing bureaucracy, the finance management of social work practices could increase the time social workers spend in front of computer screens and further frustrate their desire to work directly with children.

Whether the benefits of a social work practice outweighed the problems was a problem even Julian Le Grand – who came up with the idea of social work practices before they were introduced in the Care Matters White Paper in 2007 – couldn’t solve. For him they could either save money having no hierarchies, or they could turn out to be more expensive because of an increase in staff pay.

It is no secret that Independent Fostering Agencies (IFAs) produce generous returns for their work – which could act as a incentive for the social workforce. Ian Crosby, an independent social worker and foster carer, has suggested that for every 22 children in placement they get a £1m turnover. But huge profits should not be the prime motivator for social work. Instead, these surgeries could be linked to social enterprise bonds, where the government only pays out if savings have been made, transferring risk onto the service providers, and in turn investors, themselves.

The need for more autonomy in social work does not necessarily lend itself to privatisation. If self-directed social work is feasible at all, then it is just as likely in the public sector as it is in the private sector. After all the complaints from social workers go deeper than financial rewards. Higher standards of social work need appropriate remuneration, but rewards need to reflect what the workforce is really calling for, including fewer hours and better investment for training.

Social work practices are certainly a relevant topic for this debate, but for a revolution to take place in social work, we do not have to reinvent the wheel, government just has to listen up.

I’m with Anton.  Lefties shouldn’t be getting all uppity about the Royal Wedding.

Workers might get a day off, and there’s nothing like a post-ironic summer street party to get the juices flowing.

More importantly, isn’t this kind of investment just what the Left has been calling for? 

Yes, it would be nice if the Royal Family shelled out the £200m or whatever from their private wealth to put the whole shebang on, but public investment in a range of activities likely to bring in, let’s just us say, £600 million into the economy is still a pretty good deal.

Kate’s obviously quite the Keynesian, what her history degree and all, and she’s got the government to backtrack on its flat-earth economic policies, by arranging her wedding at the time when deficit spending is needed, much more than Martin Wolf has managed to do with all his erudite FT columns.

Yes, of course it might be good if we got firms involved in building railways rather than making commemorative mugs for the happy day, but it’s a pretty good second best, and Kate did a history degree, you hear, not engineering.  Making mugs is still a perfectly valid pump to the economy, especially given the fondness of American people for mugs with pictures on.

There is, though, one additional area where I think Kate and Wills could develop their plans to give a selfless boost to the British economy.  

While it’s great that they’re choosing to start married life on Anglesey, bringing a huge economic boon to a beautiful but economically depressed region, they might also want to rethink their wedding venue with a view to overcoming regional economic disparities.

If they do, Mick the Vic at the Eccie is Skem stands ready, as do the all people of Skem, Bickerstaffe and the whole of West Lancashire, to welcome the couple on their joyous day

The Ecumenical Centre, as it’s never known, has a long, vibrant history as a church and meeting place, having stood in what was originally going to be a town centre for nearly 40 years now, and it would be a great send off for Mick before he goes to Barnsley next year, especially as the local Tories have failed to deliver on their grand promises for a town centre before he goes.

As an extra bonus, there are no traffic lights at all in Skem, so the carriages won’t get held up.  As is well-known, it’s important to get to the church in time.

First we had HM Treasury, who can’t spell “independent” when referring to the Office for Budget Responsibility.

Now, rather more embarrassingly, we have the Department of Health, who can’t spell “vegetable”, in a questionnaire about healthy eating.

I hate to think what the Department for Edukation will get up to.

(Hat tip: outraged wife)

In October, Will Hutton said this about China’s economic model:

[It] is built on sky-high saving and phenomenal export growth

The by-line for the same article was:

As America and China square up, the chancellor is ignoring the bigger picture with his ill-advised spending review

But nevermind the CSR, the House of Commons yesterday missed the chance to set a strategic limit on our reliance on imported soy, through the Sustainable Livestock Bill.

One part of China’s “phenomenal exporting” is soy; indeed phenomenal is an understatement:

China, the largest soybean consumer, may import more than a forecast 46 million metric tons of the oilseed this year on increased demand for vegetable oil and animal feed and amid plunging soybean oil shipments.

Granted, there is more than one way of curbing dependency on Chinese exports, but opposition to the bill noted it’s “red tape” – that’s pretty lame, given the need for sustainability and the durability of the planet.

Plus, missing out on a clever way to promote maximised livestock production in this country – which the bill was set to do – will probably be another own goal.

This is the first in an occasional series of posts about how old people like me might be part of the multi-faceted resistance that Adam at Libcon advocates, and which I suggested months ago (not that anyone took any notice.)

It’s only occasional as I’m quite old and forgetful. 

Realistically, people like me are not going to be on the demo frontline very much.  Indeed (and to my shame) one of the things that struck me most about Ian Tomlinson’s death was hearing him referred to by eye witnesses as an older man who seemed out of place (he was, in fact), and thinking to myself ”Blimey, he was my age!”. 

I will do what I have to when push comes to shove , but I’m not going to pretend that I’m “up for it” in the way I once was.  As I joke to friends, I’m all for the revolution as long as it comes with cocoa at the end and tasteful soft furnishings.

So what can old people like me get up to help the overall cause?

In a subsequent post I’ll cover the intricacies of the Local Government Act 1972 (part 3, schedule 12, para 18, subparas 4&5) as a weirdly effective though sadly forgotten tactic (though see here if you want to get a head’s start), and other stuff will no doubt occur to my addledness. 

But for starters, here’s an excerpt from a seemingly obscure Cabinet Office paper published last week: ’ Exposure of the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector [VCSE] to cuts in public funding: Information for Government Departments and Local Authorities’.

“The scale of the current deficit brings clear challenges to the sector as Government seeks to make necessary spending reductions. The VCSE cannot be immune from these cuts, which will fall on all sectors, but the Government is clear that cutting funding to the VCSE sector must not be seen as the easy option. To do so will risk a disproportionate impact on the sector, threatening the services the sector provides for some of the most vulnerable in our communities, and potentially slowing progress towards the vision of a stronger civil society.

With this in mind it is vital that central and local government have robust, local information on the sector to inform any decisions relating to cuts and ensure that the sector, and the social capital it generates, is not weakened.

The first and foremost source for information should be through direct communication with the local VCSE sector and infrastructure bodies in your local area, or area of work. Local Councils for Voluntary Service (CVS) agencies hold a wealth of knowledge on the scale and scope of the local sector, its impact on citizens and communities and the current challenges it may be facing. Discussions of the risks and impacts of potential spending cuts will be vital in mitigating the impact of any such cuts on the sector and the communities and citizens it supports” (my emphasis).

First, simply ignore the garbage about the cuts being necessary. It’s garbage.

Second, be clear from the outset that that this Cabinet Office guidance is aimed not just at local authorities but at all public bodies, including Primary Care Trusts (which tend to fund the VCSE as much as local authorities do or more).

Third, while obviously circumstances will differ from place to place and proposed cut to proposed cut, try to work the central government guidance into all statutory and democratic processes that you possibly can.

Fourth, and more specifically than the point above (which I only put in to get up to 10 steps), get on to sympathetic council groups (or individual councillors) and ask them to put forward general motion to Full Council (or carefully phrased formal question) about following both the spirit and letter of the Cabinet Office guidance, especially in respect of ‘direct communication’ with VCSE representative groups, and how this will be recorded and reported back to Council. Make sure you ask your sympathetic councillors to call for ‘recorded votes’, so that individual councillor votes are recorded in the minutes for future reference.

Fifth, ask councillors either to call-in decisions/proposals for cuts to the VCSE to Overview & Scrutiny meetings or take them to such meetings as Community Calls for Action (procedure established under the last Labour government but still under-used in many areas).  Again, ask them to focus specifically on whether the Cabinet office guidance has been/will be followed, exactly who will be involved in the “direct communications” and how and when they will be reported back to Council

Sixth, check out the Local Strategic Partnership structure, and write to the Chair of the LSP asking her/him how decisions/proposals for cuts to the VCSE have been discussed within the LSP function and how they may affect the Sustainable Communities Strategy.  Again structures differ from place to place, but the key is to ensure, where possible that you get the Cabinet Office requirement for ‘direct communication’  with the VCSE on the table.

Seventh, get in touch with the Primary Care Trust around the same issues. Write to the Chair and ask if he will put the issue on the Board’s agenda, again being specific about how the PCT will engage with the VCSE before making any decisions on funding, and how this will be reported both to the Board and to the Council’s Health and Overview & Scrutiny process.

Eighth, make sure you report your moves regularly to the press.  Obviously.

Ninth, make sure of regular attendance at the meetings where you get this stuff on the agenda.  Overview & Scrutiny meetings are open to the public, but no-one ever attends.  Change that.  This is the opportunity to interface with the different facets of the overall resistance, with you creating new and surprising sites of resistance for the more vocal demonstrators to get their teeth into.  The element of surprise is still useful.

Tenth and finally, don’t forget to work in Cameron’s weasel words, extracted him from him on 15^th September by the (very good) Labour MP Julie Hilling:

 We should say to every single council in the country, when it comes to looking at and trimming your budgets, don’t do the easy thing, which is to cut money to the voluntary bodies and organisations working in our communities. Look at your core costs. Look at how you can do more for less. Look at the value for money you get from working with the voluntary sector. The hon. Lady [Julie] should take that message to her local authority. That is the message that I would take to her local authority and everyone should try to work in that direction.