Though Cowards Flinch

I had a brief twitter conversation with Rupert Read, a Green party councillor from Norfolk.  Rupert was promoting an online petition:

Philip Hardy: Stand down as councillor for Thorpe Hamlet, Norwich, Norfolk.

The petition site explains:

Philip Hardy is the county councillor for the Thorpe Hamlet area. If you voted for him it would have been as a Green Party candidate. He has now, shockingly, defected to the conservatives, without standing down and putting himself up for re-election. Which means the Thorpe Hamlet voters have effectively voted for the Conservatives. The Green party won 46.16% of the vote whilst the Conservatives won 19.29%. Please circulate this to as many people in Norfolk as possible to put pressure on their representatives to force a by-election.

I googled, found a recent LibDem to Green defection welcomed by Hampshire Green party, and asked Rupert:

Out of interest, Rupert, do you think Alan Weeks should resign [fight by-election]?  A genuine question whether you think the two cases are different.

Rupert replied:

It’s a fair question, and here’s the answer: No. The difference is that the LibDems have betrayed themselves. Defections from LibDems to Greens (or to Labour, for that matter) are reasonable. But there is no excuse for going Green-Con.

The obvious reaction to this argument from Rupert would be to accuse the Green party of double standards, and I suspect this is the response that most people would give.  However, I think Rupert has a point which is worth exploring.

By arguing that the two cases are different because the LibDems are worse than Greens, Rupert is effectively making a case for the application of the first part of Rawls’ Second Principle of Justice:

Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are a) to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society; b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity (Rawls, 1971, A Theory of Justice , p.302).

That is, Rupert argues that the potential damage done to the least advantaged in society by the Norwich Green’s defection to the Conservatives – because Greens are interested in this group and because  Conservatives do bad things to it - makes it a separate case from a LibDems-to-Green defection, which will be good for disadvantaged people.  Social justice, therefore, is best served by an unequal arrangement; Green-to-Tory defectors should face by-election, but LibDem-to-Green defectors should not.

This is a reasonable argument, and not dissimilar to the one I made when I argued that socialists shouldn’t simply accept the idea of equal-sized constituencies as a ‘no-brainer’, because what liberals would have us believe are unjust inequalities in constituency size are actually socially just, in the Rawlsian sense, in that their very ineqaulity of size is of benefit to the otherwise least advantaged.

There are, however, arguments to be made against Rupert’s Rawlsianism.

First, and most obviously, it depends on Rupert being right about the LibDems having “betrayed themselves” and that there’s “no excuse” to defect from Green to Tory.  Clearly a LibDem/Tory is likely to argue the reverse – that if Rawlsian justice is pursued it’s the Hampshire LibDem-to-Green who should be standing down, and the Norfolk Green-to-Tory who is acting in the interests of the poor by staying put, because he’ll be in a position to put in place sensible local authority measures to benefit the most disadvantaged in the longer term.

That is, Rupert is favouring a system of justice which depends upon one side or other’s capacity to provide a convincing, but necessarily contestable, narrative about what is and what isn’t in the interests of the most disadvantaged.  He favours this over the rules currently in force (as there is no requirement for any defecting councillor to fight a by-election) which are set independent of any Rawlsian considerations.

He may be correct ethically, but this stance has complications.  For one thing, it sets a precedent for the application of Rawlsian methods which might be employed at a later time when Conservative forces are able to impose their own narrative more effectively (and they can already so pretty well); as such the negative unintended consequences for the most disadvantaged may end up greater than the positive ones he now envisages.  What may be right ethically may be wrong tactically.

More fundamentally, Rupert’s stance depends upon a particular conception of the grounds on which councillors are elected in the first place which in itself actually militates against the most disadvantaged.

Rupert’s argument is that Philip Hardy was elected as Green party councillor and that for him subsequently to become a Conservative renders the previous votes in some way invalid.  Yet, Philip Hardy was not elected as a Green party councillor.  He was elected primarily as the person in his ward deemed most able to carry out the role, and who used his Green party membership, and profession of alignment with Green policies, as some proof of this during his campaign.

That is to say, he was elected as a representative of his ward constituents, not as a Green party delegate.  The fact that he feels he can now best represent his constituents by adopting a totally different set of policies may be bizarre and reprehensible, but it does not make his election invalid.

To argue this is not to argue against the usefulness of party politics of a the most effective way of administering representative government (I happen to think it is the best way).  It is, though, an argument against representative government as it is currently conceived and implemented, with its confused picture as to whom representatives actually represent. 

More appropriate in the longer term, and in the pursuit of Rawlsian justice, is a system of delegatory democracy, under which those elected to serve know precisely who they serve, and (within agreed limits of discretion) how they will serve, because constituency and ‘party’ are effectively the same thing.   This, in turn, creates a democratic space in which assertions on how best to meet Rawlsian aims of social justice can be more properly contested, because function (what to do) takes precdence over form (the rules of democracy).  GDH Cole had a point in Guild Socialism Restated.

None of this means that Philip Hardy, the Tory councillor for Thorpe Hamlet, is anything other than a conniving scumbag who has put his own interests before those of the people of Thorpe Hamlet.

Tory-run Wandsworth Council is proposing to evict people who don’t get a job.  The council says:

If the policy is adopted, people would be given a council home on the condition that they find work or enrol on a training course. If they fail to stick to their side of the bargain they would face the prospect of losing that home.

This comes in the context of government policy being developed to evict people if they do get a job:

The PM said fixed term contracts should be issued so that people can be evicted if they get a job or start earning more.

Lord Hanningfield, the Tory peer released from jail in September after serving time for expenses fraud, has been on the radio as a first step in his rehabilitation:

I am pretty much destitute. I have never had that much money…I am now going to have real, real problems for the rest of my life surviving.

Some may feel the term “destitute” a little strong given that, as soon as he is eligible to return to the Lords in May 2012, he will be able to claim a tax-free £300 for every Lords’ sitting day, alongside other legitimate expenses. But I suppose he may feel destitution is relative.

Fair enough.  He has “paid his debt” to society and should be able to get on with his life.  If truth be told, I’ve always had the feeling that he was just the unlucky one that got found out treating his accommodation entitlement as a regular per diem whether or not he stayed over in London.  Like him, I suspect there were plenty more at it who didn’t end up serving time.

What interests me especially, though, is whether Lord Hanningfield’s newly acquired poverty will lead him to reassess the very detailed plans he had been making, as leader of Essex County Council right up to his arrest in 2009, to drive thousands of genuinely poor people in Essex towards utter destitution.

That plan was, if you remember, for the County Council to use the local freedoms provided under the Sustainable Communities Act 2007, and to take full control of the welfare benefits system; the Council would then tighten eligibility criteria and reduce benefit rates in order to redraw, for Essex economic conditions, the balance between a ‘decent standard of living’ and ‘an incentive to find work’.

In other words, Lord Hanningfield’s plan was to starve the poor in the name of ideology.

Now, that plan did not go away with Lord Hanningfield’s resignation from the Council and subsequent fall from grace.   While Labour’s Sustainable Communities Act has faded into the background, pretty well the same provisions have been set out in the General Power of Competence section of Localism Bill. Essex County Council were quick off the mark in support of this aspect of the bill, and made the connection explicit:

We are keen that the Secretary of State must consult and try to reach agreement with local authorities on the scope of any restrictions. This would ensure that central government moves to alter local powers would be subject to similar criteria as local action to change central government behaviour under the Sustainable Communities Act 2007 (Memorandum submitted by Essex County Council, February 2011)

The Localism Bill will have Royal Assent by the end of 2011, and from the tone of this memorandum, it looks as though Lord Hanninfield’s erstwhile Tory colleagues in Essex are keen to drive through what started under his leadership.

Lord Hanningfield says now:

I just want to get on and use the experience I have had over the past two to three years for the benefit of others.

It will be interesting to see if this new desire to benefit others will include a reappraisal of his plans to make thousands of his fellow Essex citizen destitute, and public opposition to their introduction.

If he does that, I’ll certainly support his rehabilitation in the Lords.

In November 2009, Cameron promised, in writing:

[T]he next Conservative Government will introduce a “community right-to-buy”….. This means that local people and organisations will be given first refusal to take over community amenities for the benefit of the community.

He was lying.

Yesterday, The Minister for Civil Society, Nick Hurd, wrote to the ’third sector’, and told them:

 [T]he Localism Bill provides radical new rights and powers for citizens and communities, not least the Right to Buy….

He was lying too.

The Localism Bill, now making its way from the Lords back to the Commons and on to Royal Assent, makes no mention of the a ‘community right to buy’; indeed the word ‘buy’ appears nowhere in the bill.

What Ch. 4, paras. 75-96 of the Localism Bill actually do is set out arrangements whereby communities can bid for ‘assets of community value’, but at no point is a right to buy – Cameron’s ‘first refusal’ – accorded.

This is perfectly clear in the consultation document on the bill’s provisions put out by government in February:

The provisions also introduce a window of opportunity for community groups, once a listed asset comes up for sale, in order to give them valuable time to organise and fundraise, so putting them in a better position to compete with other potential buyers (para 1.17).

Certainly there is scope for owners to sell to community groups ahead of other interested bidders at a lower price if they wish to (see para. 11.6), but there is absolutely no compulsion.

Furthermore, this provision is aimed explicitly (para 11.8) at local authorities and other public bodies, and they already have that discretionary power under the Local Government Act 1972 (General Disposal Consent 2003), which allows them to dispose of assets at less than market value where there is clear community benefit.

On Monday, the Tory Baroness Hanham successfully put amendments to the bill  (p.74 of Hansard record) which further restrict communities’ right even to bid for assets, because this right might interfere with rich people’s inheritance tax avoidance plans.

Yet even before that, the whole idea that communities would have any greater ‘right to buy’ than they ever had before was a simple Tory lie. 

It’s a lie that shows no sign of ending any time soon.

Chris Dillow has a really good post up on ‘the revenge effect’, taking as its hook the discovery of the CIA/MI6′s torture outsourcing to specialist firm Gadaffi Inc.:

An apparently humanitarian policy by the west has, therefore,  exposed its earlier lack of humanitarianism. Pessimists might add that this could mean that in supporting the overthrow of Gaddafi, the west has helped install a regime which has a grudge against us. These are examples of what Edward Tenner called the revenge effect - how our actions can rebound to bite us on the arse.

Chris gives us several other examples of arse-biting policy decisons, with his main focus on economic policy, but he left out the most salient recent example.

Back in the 19650s and 1960s, both Conservative and Labour governments, in collaboration with willing councils, pursued overtly racist housing, employment and education policies towards the people then immigrating from South Asia and the West Indies.

At the time, a sociologist who did have the “cognitive resources” needed to ”anticipate revenge effects” (which Chris says policy makers lack), said:

We have just about ten years to break down our ghettoes and to see to it that all men have the same opportunities in education and employment…The difficulties we face do not arise from our ignorance about how the problem should be tackled.  They arise from a lack of will or from opportunist electoral fear.  Yet trying to placate the electorate with semi-racialist policies, or keeping quite in the hope that you won’t be called a nigger-lover hasn’t paid off, while a deliberate assault on the ghettoes with a view to clearing them would eliminate one of the most important of all the secondary causes of racialism….. 

If we can now deal with those problems which are the secondary causes of racialism we may still be able to go on to create an unprejudiced generation”.

That didn’t happen, and 10 years later the same sociologist said:

[T]here are clear difference of life-chances between them and the white British…….Such differences of life-chances, if they were sustained over a period, would undoubtedly mean that consciousness of a common identity, common exploitation and oppression, and a common conflict with the host society would emerge and find expression in some kind of ethnic-class-for-itself.

But if this is true for the immigrant generation it is much more true for its children……Not merely is it the case, therefore, that immigrant class-consciousness will be reinforced with time by the mere repetition of the same experiences, but it will also be related to the consciousness which emerges amongst the young who have rising expectations not shared by their parents, and who are likely to be more fiercely frustrated by the experiences of discrimination.

That was in 1979. In 1981 these frustrations led to the summer riots.  30 years later, the frustrations were expressed differently both by grandchildren of immigrants and by a newer set of young people who have been at the receiving end of systematic discrimination.

None of this will be a surprise to John Rex, the sociologist who told us what would happen.  However belatedly, Cameron and (more likely) Miliband would do well to read Rex’s work and then address the real root causes of the recent “pure criminality”.

I know that pretty well everyone inhabiting the blogosphere logs on to Though Cowards Flinch as soon as they wake up in the morning, desperate for an update on two vitally important Freedom of Information requests I have in train.  So here’s a quick update.

1.  Lancashire County Council/BT contract (back story here and here)

 17 May 2011: FOI request made

I wish to request, under Freedom of Information legislation, a full copy of the contract between Lancashire County Council and BT as it pertains to the Joint Venture Company, One Connect Ltd.
 
In reviewing my request, you may want to take into account the Information Commissioner’s recent decision to order the publication of the contract between Liverpool City Council and BT in respect of the Liverpool Direct Joint Venture Company.

14 June : Reply from LCC stating that extension on 20 day time limit needed in order to conduct public interest test. Deadline for reply 14 July

15 July:  Follow up from me chasing reply, and reply from LCC saying views of BT being sought and apologising for delay

18 July: Reply from LCC saying reply of 15 July was wrong and that BT views are being examined by LCC legal services

01 August: Follow up from me asking about progress (unanswered)

24 August: Follow up from me requiing subsantive reply by 26th August, failing which formal complaint about Council misconduct will be made, along with direct approach to Information Commissioner on basis that Council have not acted reasonably.

2.  Regional Growth Fund funding application and scoring criteria (BIS) (back story and details here)

20 April 2011: FOI request made

I wish to make a request for information under the Freedom of Information legislation. Please provide:

1) Copies of all funding applications that were successful in attracting Regional Growth Funds, as announced on Tuesday 24th March 2011.

2) A copy of any assessment and scoring criteria used by the Regional Growth Fund panel used to decide which applications should be funded.

3) Any correspondence from BIS and the Western Morning News in relation to this organisation’s application to the Regional Growth Fund.

24 May: Reply from BIS stating that extension on 20 day time limit needed in order to conduct public interest test. Deadline for reply 22  June

22 June: Reply from BIS turning down sections 1 and 2 of the FOI request (section 3 complied with).

05 July: I request internal review of BIS decision, on these grounds.

24 August: I chase internal review process and receive immediate reply giving second week of September as expected response time.

Tony Blair’s Comment is Free article on the reason for the riots brought the inevitable howls of derision. Of the 1986 comments posted to date, the vast majority are either too vicious for the moderator to allow through, or focus on whether Tony Blair’s character and/or war criminal record really make him an authority on moral issues.  Relatively few people actually seem to have bothered to digest what he actually says.  This is a shame, because the article reveals a lot not just about Tony Blair’s deep revisionism concerning his record in office but, more importantly, gives an important insight into one of the very worst aspects of the New Labour paradox - its overbearing managerialism set alongside its refusal to engage with the murky but very real world of policy implementation.  As such, the article offers an important lesson for the Centre Left/Left on how to do things better the next time it gets the chance.

For our purposes, this is the crucial section in the article:

Most of them [those involved in the riots] are shaping up that way by the time they are in primary school or even in nursery. They then grow up in circumstances where their role models are drug dealers, pimps, people with knives and guns, people who will exploit them and abuse them but with whom they feel a belonging. Hence the gang culture that is so destructive…..

By the end of my time as prime minister, I concluded that the solution was specific and quite different from conventional policy. We had to be prepared to intervene literally family by family and at an early stage, even before any criminality had occurred. And we had to reform the laws around criminal justice, including on antisocial behaviour, organised crime and the treatment of persistent offenders. We had to treat the gangs in a completely different way to have any hope of success. The agenda that came out of this was conceived in my last years of office, but it had to be attempted against a constant backdrop of opposition, left and right, on civil liberty grounds and on the basis we were “stigmatising” young people. After I’d left, the agenda lost momentum. But the papers and the work are all there.

Let us leave aside the petty jibe that, had Blair remained in office, he would have sorted out gangs and gangs culture by now, so it must be Gordon Brown’s fault.  Let us also leave aside for now the evidence, ignored by Blair, that a large section of those who involved themselves in the rioting and looting actions are not actually in gangs, at least under any generally accepted definition of what a gang is (see Shiv Malik on this).  Let us instead focus on the Blair view that what is needed to sort out the problems, as he conceives them, is a radical new policy, specific to those who engage in anti-social behaviour, which he devised in his last years as PM and the like of which we had never seen before.

At one level, we can see this assertion as a simple lie by Blair.  We need only look at the Social Exclusion Policy Action Team No.8 report on anti-social behaviour, which was published in 2000, for very clear evidence that New Labour policy on anti-social behaviour and gang management was developed very early in the Blair period, and includes all the elements that Blair now says were lacking, and which he wanted to introduce.  All the factors that lead people towards anti-social behaviour/gangs, which Blair claims to have just discovered, are clearly set out (see para .1.32 for the ‘Risk Factors’ table), and all the measures that Blair now claims would be a total innovation in policy are present and correct (summarised at para. 6.12) throughout the report - early intervention, a family-focused approach, the use of ASBOs, evicting perpetrators, it’s all there.

But I think there is more to Blair’s article than a simply attempt to cast himself in the best light possible.  I think Blair’s revisionist narrative tells us a lot about the New Labour approach to social policy in general.  Underlying Blair’s revisionist narrative is New Labour’s core managerialist assumption that if a problem has not been resolved, it is because the policy designed to resolve it was wrong, and a new policy is needed.  In most cases under New Labour, this new policy tended to be a shift towards the authoritarian right. 

What New Labour’s consistently failed to grasp was that policy as implemented is hardly ever the same as policy devised, and that the main reason top-down policies fail to deliver on their objectives is that policy implementation is mediated by frontline workers,through their engagement with (often reluctant) service users, though in many cases gaming of targets and results allowed objectives to be met on paper, though not in reality.  New Labour’s obsession with targets in particular stopped it from realising that the best way to develop effective policy is not to insist a bit harder that frontline workers should be strategic and focused (through the creation of an Implementation Unit reporting directly to Blair), but to trust frontline workers to do their jobs, and resource them appropriately. 

I have covered in some detail the effects of New Labour’s failure to understand the dynamics of policy implementation when it comes to Welfare Reform, showing how policy designed to include people from society was bound to exclude people instead.  I have also covered how New Labour’s policy centralised Children’s Centre policymaking was great in theory, but ended up alienating those who needed the service most in practice.  The failure of New Labour to deal effectively with anti-social behaviour, through the further stigmatization and alienation of a section of people, is just another example.

None of this, of course, provides an answer to how government should deal with anti-social behaviour and gang culture.  The issues are deep, the problems intractable, and there is no silver bullet, though I have suggested here that a part of the solution MUST be to recognise that the problems we face today were caused by deliberate government action is the 1960s and 1970s, and that only be taking responsibility for these mistakes will any future Labour government be in a position to give a whole generation of disaffected young people a fresh stake in mainstream society.  Such a ‘truth and reconciliation’ process will need to be in addition to the creation of a material environment  through decent quality jobs and a public environment which nurture mutual respect. 

But before all of that, Milibandian Labour needs to recognise, and reflect upon, some very straightforward truths about what New Labour got wrong, and which Blair continues to get wrong (and it is not even in the Tory hierarchy’s interests even to understand the concepts covered here).  Effective policymaking and implementation are not just about ideas on what might work and then announcing the grand plan;  they are about handing over the power to make it happen.  That should be a central plank of what makes Labour different from the Tories.

To modify an old saying, my journalism skills knows some bounds!

I just put down the phone to one Richard Balfe, David Cameron’s envoy to the Trade Unions. During my minute long conversation with him I asked him if he’d heard about Plymouth’s Conservative-run City Council’s decision to “de-recognise” the biggest public sector union Unison.

He hadn’t. In fact he has just come back from Brussels and has not had a chance to catch up. I informed him about the details, which have come from the Political Scrapbook website. He replied that he was not going to comment, before politely putting down his receiver.

I quickly emailed him thanking him for taking the call, signing off by saying if he did feel like commenting not to hesitate in contacting me. He soon emailed back explaining, again, about having just returned to the UK, and not being up to speed on this matter.

When Mr Balfe does manage to get himself up to speed on matters I look forward to seeing what he has to say, particularly as this could prove very interesting for him, the link he has to his party the Conservatives (after leaving, or rather being thrown out of, the Labour Party in 2002) and the Trade Union movement who he will want to remain largely on good terms with – especially now that militancy is back on the cards.

Instead of offering Mr Balfe my own words of wisdom, I should like to remind him of his own, from ConservativeHome earlier this year: “let us not demonise the Unions, but realise they are doing what their members pay them for – that is getting the best deal possible for their members.”

If Mr Balfe really thinks this holds true, then the decision by Plymouth Council to tell Unison reps to vacate their offices, after refusing to sign up to what they say are discriminatory changes to terms and conditions, is contrary to his own heartfelt sentiments.

On meeting with David Cameron in his role as envoy, after he has settled back home and glanced over the papers (which, admittedly, will include a great many articles about riots and looters), I hope he puts forward serious reservations about these events.

Again, in his own words: “I don’t think I could have joined the [Conservative] party under Thatcher.” Possibly because its loathing for unions is much like Plymouth’s now. Let’s hope an arrangement is settled soon, and Unison offices are re-opened again pronto.

There are a number of things very wrong with the government’s proposals for Councils to retain the cash they collect from any local growth in business rate collection, a matter which Carl introduced to these pages a little while ago.  

Eoin Clarke has a good piece, for example, at on the way this ‘incentive’ to help business grow will actually end up militating against discretionary rate reliefs, in a way which is damaging in the longer term, especially in poorer areas.

But I think the biggest and most immediately quantifiable threat comes tucked away as ‘an option’ at the second bullet point of para 3.19 in the report:

The second option would be to retain the year one cash amounts and not uprate by RPI. Authorities paying a tariff and those receiving a top up would both see their collected rates uprated by RPI, as a result of the annual increase in the business rates multiplier. However, authorities in receipt of a top up would face a very strong incentive to grow their taxbase to offset real-terms reductions in their top up amount. This approach therefore creates a strong incentive for growth, but offers less protection to authorities with low taxbases and high needs (my emphasis).

I have done the maths. 

I have used two data sets (download excel file here).  These are  the formula grant for 2012-13 provisionally awarded to councils as the ‘baseline’ for what funding councils need; 2) the net yield from business rates for all Councils in the most recent available year (2010 data from The Green Benches), then uplifted by RPI of 4%.

From this, I have calculated the percentage of overall baseline funding which would come from business rates (more than 100% in areas where business rate collection outstrips funding need), and the percentage that would need to come from ‘top up’ (in those area where business rate collection is lower than funding need).

If this top up is NOT uplifted by RPI over, say, a three year period, we get the following kind of result:

• Birmingham loses £29.5m in core annual funding (4.1% of current formula grant)
• Liverpool loses £16.2m (5.1% of current formula grant)
• Bradford loses £14.9m (5.7% of current formula grant)
• Wolverhampton loses £10.1m (7.4% of current formula grant)
• Hackney loses £16.1m (7.7% of current formula grant)
• Knowsley loses £8.8m (8.0% of current formula grant)

And so on, and so on. Heh, the trend is not rocket science. The poorer areas with lower business rates, so those most dependent on ‘top up’, get steadily more screwed. 

In an area like Knowsley, where only 35% of core funding need is currently made up from its business rate collection, the council would need to income its business rate income by at least 23% just to stay level. 

The point is that, here, tucked away in the fine detail, is a mechanism to hit poorer areas even harder than they are being hit already, in direct contravention of the Pickles’ reassurances, set out in the ministerial foreword to these proposals:

We are determined that the repatriation of rates should happen in a fair and effective way. Those places with greatest dependency should, and will, continue to receive support, while being allowed to keep the products of enterprise.

Pickles is a liar, and this is how.

You would not have been able to turn a newspaper page or log on to your social networking sites yesterday without reading more about the tragic death of Amy Winehouse, a well regarded singer, troubled soul, and just 27 years of age.

Her drink and drug problem were well known, and though it is not confirmed, is believed to be the reason for her eventual demise. The Mail have reported that Winehouse was spotted buying drugs from a well known dealer in Camden – where the singer lived – while friends told the paper they believe it was a dodgy Ecstasy tablet which caused her death.

Though tragedies such as this occur all too frequently with young people, it often requires a high-profile case to wake the government up in order that they act.

But this government are doing the precise opposite. The independent drugs monitoring body DrugScope have published a report, the findings of which show how increasingly hard it is for young people to access drug and alcohol help, now that youth services are being cut and young people’s treatment services are being closed down altogether – like in the London boroughs of Hammersmith & Fulham, Newham and Merton.

The Drug Education Forum will also lose its funding from the Department of Education (DoE) from November.

This is very revealing of the flawed approach this government are taking with regards to prevention services. It is almost universally uncontested that investment in early intervention for services like drug and alcohol help, saves money in the long run. The government’s own reports are producing these exact findings too. Research conducted in February by the DoE concluded that for every £1 spent on treatment between £5 and £8 is saved by the NHS and other agencies, including for mental health services.

How public sector finances are controlled needs a massive culture change from the one where long-term investment is considered far riskier than short-term solutions at short-term prices (cheaper in the here and now, but costlier in the long run). With stinging public sector cutbacks, this culture is here to stay, but at a cost to important services that stop people from falling through the net.

Tanya Gold wrote yesterday:

Thousands like Winehouse die every year, and they are not venerated, or even pitied. We will not educate ourselves about the disease, or reform drug laws that plunge addicts into a shadow-world of criminality and dependence on criminals. Winehouse got away with too much said one copper, after a tape of her using was released. Did she? Did she really? Winehouse walked barefoot through the streets because that is where the drugs were, and even as her bewildered face splatters across the front pages, drug support charities are closing, expendable in this era of thrift.

It should not take for something like this to nudge the government into taking action – not least because it highlights the strange role celebrity has in this country, and the industry of watching people run themselves into the ground for entertainment – but something needed to happen. The DoE should now concern itself with trying to reduce the many more tragedies that will occur as a result of their cuts agenda.