Though Cowards Flinch

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.

Chris Dillow is right to say that public service reform can be more than just about keeping costs down:

[There is] a possibility – that competition and choice in public services, regardless of its impact on overall standards, might be egalitarian. Introducing “exit” might redress the inequality caused by “voice” alone….

…Debate about public service reform has crystallized along boring left-right lines……This has led to neglect of a more interesting idea – that perhaps public services might be reformed in genuinely egalitarian directions.

But if we’re going to use the Exit, Voice Loyalty heuristic as a basis for knowing how public service reforms in the interests of the poor best fit with how people act, then we need to use all its bits, and apply it to all the bits that make up a public service.

That means focusing on those who provide the service as much as on those who receive it.  After all, on a day to day basis, that’s where the real power lies.  Whatever, the policy makers say, it’s how well your GP actually listens, diagnoses and and treats that matters most, and that happens best when the GP is interested and motivated.

As Lipsky has shown, loyalty to work the ‘profession’ tend to run deeper than any other, and are prioritised over other demands for loyalty, including those of the service user, when these are at odds with those of the profession.  Therein lies alienation and poor service delivery of the type that makes user ’exit’ sensible, for those who can afford or demand it.  In its most extreme and twisted form, therein lies Wintebourne, in which those with no possibility of exit, and no voice, suffer most.

So as Chris notes, the Left should be working out how best to design public services which meet the needs of the poor most.  Whether they are provided by the state should become something of an irrelevance  - a matter reserved for those interested in defining what a state is.  

The more important challenge is the development of  ‘professional pride’ – a term which in everday use is not limited to the current ’professions’ – in a system of public service provision that genuinely respects both sides of the provider/user whole.   Tawney had it about right:

If industry is to be organized as a profession, two changes are requisite, one negative and one positive. The first, is that it should cease to be conducted by the agents of property-owners for the advantage of property-owners, and should be carried on, instead, for the service of the public.

The second, is that, subject to rigorous public supervision, the responsibility for the maintenance of the service should rest upon the shoulders of those, from organizer and scientist to labourer, by whom, in effect, the work is conducted.

Unionisation, democratic oversight and incentives based on professional pride, not profit. Very old-fashioned, but maybe very modern.

Communities Minister Eric Pickles has revealed that councils will be able to keep the growth in rates they raise from local businesses, a change from the current system which sees councils collect rates on behalf of central government, which then redistributes it to councils according to need.

But critics have pointed out that poorer areas will benefit the least, since they’re the ones having difficulties in attracting local business. Pickles has promised central government will pay a fee to councils as a safety net, in case business rates fall – but this will not suffice to cover costs in area improvements or bids to attract businesses.

For the most deprived areas these changes, set to occur in 2013, will make local growth even more difficult – but then these places aren’t Tory hot spots anyway, so was Pickles really going to go out of his way to appease them?

In order to give areas what Pickles calls a “direct growth incentive” he is taking away from “councils which rely on business rates redistribution” without a plan of action for how those areas can attract growth too.

But thriving areas are incentives in themselves, and now local governments will have to compete with each other to attract business, without any change being done to how they set rates – which will still be set centrally by the Valuation Office Agency. The upshot of this will see a wider rich/poor divide between areas at a time when many services are being cut.

It’s hard not to see this is a typical Tory ploy: a deprived area is no longer a beneficiary of a re-distributive business rate system, it becomes less attractive to businesses looking to set up/invest/maintain residence in an area, the area loses out on rates, it relies on the new system of basic tariffs, and cannot afford to spend money on improvements to attract business. The poor stay poor, the rich get rich.

What chance does a deprived area have? Even if they were given control of how they set business rates, in order to attract business they would be forced to offer low rates which will have detrimental effects on how much they can raise anyway.

This is really the wrong direction for the empowerment of local councils, but is unsurprising of a Tory mindset (and championed by Nick Clegg – the yellow Tory) that wants to remove redistribution of wealth from affluent areas to ensure poorer communities don’t fall through the net.

Updated 15:41

In May I submitted a Freedom of Information request to Lancashire County Council, seeking publication of the full contract between the Council and BT in respect of its new Joint Venture Company One Connect, which is set to manage much of the County Council (and partnering District Councils’) back office function for the next ten years.

This new company is very similar to Liverpool Direct, about which a great deal of concern has been expressed; there have been substantial accusations that BT have earned million of pounds over the odds because, for example, they have been able to charge higher prices for equipment, and about very poor reporting and monitoring. The Information Commissioner finally ordered full disclosure of the Liverpool Direct contract in December 2010.

In June I received a ‘holding’  reply from Lancashire County Council:

We are currently in the process of conducting a public interest test as we believe the section 43(2) exemption may apply to some or all of the information you have requested. The public interest test entails a public authority deciding whether, in relation to a request for information, it serves the interests of the public either to disclose the information or to maintain an exemption or exception in respect of the information requested.

The next deadline for a response expired on 14th July, so I chased the matter. Yesterday I received that reply, which said no decision had yet been taken because the Council is

currently seeking the views of BT regarding disclosure of the contract. We have chased them for their comments but, unfortunately, they are not yet in a position to respond.

It seems to me that if BT cannot be bothered to offer a view on this matter, then it can’t be too bothered about the contractual information being disclosed, and that the County Council should get on with the completion of its public interest test.

Or maybe, just maybe, the Council and BT know they are going to lose this case, given the Liverpool precedent, and are just playing for time till their working arrangements are well-embedded and it’s harder to challenge them on the basis of the information released.

So, a massive corporate wielding power behind the scenes to get a public agency to hide from the public information which might reveal the motives and workings of said massive corporate.  Now, where have i heard about that kind of thing recently?

Sue Marsh at Liveral Conspiracy has called for tighter regulation/legislation on the editorial lines of newspapers:

I’ve never understood why we allow our print media to support a particular political viewpoint. Why is it that just before an election, our media line up in their separate camps and decide to tell us who to vote for? If there is a point of law I’m unaware of, perhaps someone will enlighten me, but just how is it in the public interest to seek to influence the outcome of general elections? Why do we need them to tell us what to do?

Sue has come in for some predictable flak over this from the rightwing commentators, though a lot of it is based on an assumption that she talks about media bias “just before an election” as an example, rather than – as she later clarifies – the substantive aspect of her call for change. I’ll happily acknowledge that I read it as an example too on first reading.

Even Sue’s narrower call for regulation around what papers can and can’t say, though, misses the point (well my point).

Legislative, or any other, restriction on the editorial line of a newspaper is neither desirable nor practicable, and I think it would be a strategic mistake for the Left to campaign for something that has any hint of press censorship, however well-meaning it is as a means to redress the undoubted power imbalances currently at play in the media.

A better strategic direction for the Left is to start to create alternative business models for media ownership, and thereby editorial line in the ideological space that Newscorp’s crisis (with others to follow?) is now creating. When else, after all, might we have a better opportunity than now, when the interests, the main organs of political and civil society, the general public, ‘decent’ journalists and even some celebrities are so explicitly aligned.

The medium term objective should therefore be nothing less than the establishment of one or more worker-run press organs, set up on a thoroughly professional basis, but in direct challenge to both the current editorial line AND business model of the current rightwing-dominated media set-up.  As a principle, any such newspaper should subscribe to the main ethical stance of the current NUJ around the conduct of journalists, while avoiding the constraining, and fundamentally illogical, commitment formally espoused by much of the journalism community to ‘fair and impartial’ coverage of events.

Of course, the idea of the NUJ joining forces with the new philanthropists Hugh Grant, Steve Coogan, George Michael and a strategically disinvesting  then reinvesting Church of England for a News International takeover bid does have its attractions (and I’m available, should Hugh and Steve want me to put together the business plan and then become editor-in-chief).

More realistically though, we need to acknowledge that the Left is mosty skint, and that it’s not easy to set up a national newspaper from scratch, without fairly massive financial backing, and only be a happy congruence of events of the type envisaged above might make this happen.

More realistically in the short term the NUJ, with the explicit backing and support of our newly energised Labour party leadership, should be putting its energies into the development of local and regional worker-led titles, particularly in areas where such press has either died off completely because of the way the title main owners, principally Trinity Mirror and Johnston Press, have squeezed what are fundamentally profitable ventures till their journalists and other staff squeak, in the pursuit of quick dividends.

The NUJ can’t do this alone, of course, with the resources at its disposal. It will need the help of other unions, whose regional officers should be chomping at the bit to support regional titles sympathetic to their current members concerns and to the idea of union recruitment, and that will need the policy support of Labour to set up.

In addition, bodies like the Media Trust, in alliance with higher education, have already done a lot of good groundwork to establish the latent market for decent quality regional and local journalism, and they should be encouraged and supported to take the next vital steps, which might include raising start-up loan finance from like-minded Trusts and Foundations, as well as ‘alternative equity’ from a range of investors as interested in long-term socially valid products as the are in short-term dividend income.

None of this is impossible. A lot of the stuff about how to develop alternative financing has been around for a while now, and social enterprise/co-operative structures are very well-established.

To date a mixture of journalistic introversion (and a slightly snobby reluctance to get hands dirty with the financial elements), has given a wider sense – despite the evidence to the contrary – that it just can’t happen in the face of rightwing press hegemony.

But it can, especially in this period, when the public would be right behind such ventures, and it should.

ps.  Assiduous TCF readers will note that much of this is cut and pasted from an earlier article which hardly anyone read, because they’re all lazy bastards who don’t deserve a free bleeding press anyway.

1.  The 1,500, not the 200

You could be forgiven for thinking that only 200 people this week got told they didn’t have a job.  In fact it’s only 3 days since 1,500 workers in Derby started to come to terms with being thrown on the industrial scrap-heap. 

This article is about why that happened, and what Labour in opposition can learn from this latest tragedy of capitalist errors.

2.  Paxman must go

On Tuesday’s Newsnight (from 34mins 30 secs) Jeremy Paxman showed that he is no longer competent to work as a television interviewer, and should be put out to grass.

Questioning Philip Hammond over the awarding of the Thameslink contract to Siemens rather than Bombardier, with the consequent job losses in Derby, Paxman’s hubris simply failed to register the information Hammond was trying to relay about European procurement law.

Thus an important opportunity to examine in public how Whitehall got this procurement exercise so badly wrong was lost.  We’ll try here to do what Paxman couldn’t manage.

3.  The detail Paxman missed

In fact Hammond was quite right when he tried, unsuccessfully, to explain to Paxman the position the government finds itself in, and how other governments in Europe deal differently with procurement:

The terms of the procurement were set by the previous government in 2008…[Paxman interrupts]….It is possible to add in socio-economic factors, but you have to add them in at the time – you specify the requirements of the procurement. Labour didn’t do that.

This method by which other governments add their ‘socio-economic factors’ into the tendering process needs to be spelt out.

The key conceptual leap the UK government needs to make is that, in order to secure local/regional socio-economic benefit, this benefit needs to be set out in the tender as an integral part of what is being purchased, rather than as a requirement about how the contract will be implemented. More simply, buying socio-economic benefit is legal under the European directive, but bolting it on to another purchase is likely to be illegal.

Configuring the tender document in this way would not have barred Siemens from tendering from the contract, but would have imposed on it the need to work out how it might achieve the required output not just of working trains but also 1,500 safeguarded jobs in Derby. Bombardier, on the other hand, would have had legitimate ‘home advantage’.

This may all seem a little odd to people coming to it for the first time, but it is hardly rocket science. Even I understand it. Indeed, I wrote about it two years ago. 

The great tragedy for the 1,500 workers in Derby is that I, and lots of other people in Britain, understand perfectly well how to put together tenders which satisfy the requirements of the EU Procurement Directive but in a way allows government organisations to secure specific local and regional benefits.

I was doing precisely this kind of thing 12 years ago when I worked on the development of  local labour schemes for the construction industry in Liverpool, and the key book on the matter, Richard MacFarlane’s  Using Local Labour in Construction was published in 1999.  Richard is still working in this area with anyone who will listen, and this short summary of how to include training and local recruitment provisions within contracts makes it clear that none of this stuff is difficult, as long as the essential conceptual leap about what is being bought is made (see also the toolkits he has developed).

4.  So what went wrong?

So what went wrong here?

Why, if all this stuff is perfectly well-known in the UK, is Vince Cable only now writing to the Prime Minister saying we need to look into how the UK does its procurement? Why, when Duncan Smith was spouting the other day about British jobs for British workers, didn’t he suggest that refreshed tender processes might be one way to achieve this?

And, more particularly, why was Cameron’s visit to Derby, in which he promised to support local jobs, not backed up by attention to detail about how this might be achieved while there may still have been time to try to negotiate some kind of deal (both Bombardier and Siemens, after all, have German bosses).

These are questions the people of Derby will, I hope, keep on putting – all the way to the ballot box.

Let us be clear, though, that the last Labour administration also has to take its share of the blame.

The tender documentation was signed off in 2008 under Labour, and Hammond is right, for the reasons I have set out, that socio-economic considerations needed to be built in at that point.

But the problem goes deeper than that.

People in Derby are losing their jobs not so much because of failed Labour ministerial oversight – although it is right that there is this line of political accountability – but because of a the neoliberal assumptions which are now hardwired into much of Whitehall, and in turn into the public procurement ‘profession’, about what governments should and should not do.

To see what’s happened we need look no further than the National Procurement Strategy for Local Government , published in 2003 as the New Labour flame ebbed, but developed earlier in the 2000′s by officials who still thought Labour might do things differently. In that strategy document a whole chapter is devoted to the concept of local socio-economic benefit through public procurement. It’s actually very good and clear thinking.

Unfortunately, none of it was ever implemented. In the battle between the two extreme procurement positions – tendering to get the lowest price, and tendering to get the best overall outcome – there was only ever going to be one winner. For civil servants fed a diet of very basic Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT) under 19 years of Tory rule, this new rich menu was too much to stomach.

Similarly, local government procurement officers who had already become very adept at bulk buying in concert with other authorities, often at the expense of local supplier contracts, still tend to see newfangled notions of spending a bit more upfront to get something much better as a slight on their professional standards.

Thus, when I raised with my own local authority procurement manager the potential for building local labour provisions into the (long stalled) Skelmersdale Town Centre Development Agreement, but was told in no uncertain terms that the EC didn’t allow that kind of thing (I’m still working on that one).  

And even though I managed to slip a local supply chain/public procurement action research project into the LSP action plan under cover of organisational inertia, the relevant Councol-dominated sub-group failed to take any notice of it until the sub-group was handily found to be superfluous the LSP’s needs.

Put simply, the civil servants and council officers who matter just prefer not to know this stuff.  There are partial exceptions, such as the reasonably holistic (though certainly not perfect) contracting approach built into the Building Schools for the Future programme, but of course Gove and Co were quick to stick an ignorant boot into this approach, with accusations of waste taken straight from the CCT-inspired Manual for Narrow Minded Penny Pinching. (In passing I’d note that it seems a bit rich for the Tories to now be blaming Labour for applying the principles to the Thameslink tender that they said should have been applied to the BSF tender, but this post is not principally about Tory hypocrisy and policy incoherence).

The NHS is no different when it comes to built-in procurement prejudice. Next time you go into a hospital canteen, check out where the packaged sandwiches are made. The last time I checked in Liverpool, they’d come all the way down the M62 from Hull. Maybe Hull hospitals have ones from Liverpool.

One reason for this nonsense is that, until 2010, the NHS had two different procurement bodies in it – the Procurement and Supplies Agency (PASA), which favoured (at least in part of the organisation) looking at outcome-based procurement but as far as I can see never got to do it, and NHS Logistics, which favoured low-cost bul-buying.

The two organisations’ functions are now mostly merged within NHS Supply Chain, with the main operation outsourced to DHL (EXcel Europe Ltd) and the bulk-buying has won out.  What, after all, would DHL know about outcome-based purchasing

Sadly, none of what I write here will save workers’ jobs in Derby, however widely it is picked up.  While there may be some flexibility around the fact that Siemens are still only at ‘preferred bidder’ stage, Hammond is ag correct to say that trying to pull the Siemens contract now would potentially do more harm than good:

If we decided, as some people have urged us, to simply ignore the terms of the procurement that Labour set out, and to award the contract to an underbidder, first of all we would face legal action from the successful bidder. Secondly, under the terms of the EU Remedies Directive, we would very likely be prevented by legal intervention from signing a contract anyway (about 35.00 mins into the programme).

What an ethically sound government would do, of course, would be to invest the kind of sums that might have gone on such fines back into the Unite General Secretary that would be a button I’d be trying to push with government. But this government is not motivated by ethics, and much less by the lives of working people, so I don’t think Derby will see anything other than some damp squib ’retraining’; initiative aimed at the Faludian emasculation of another tranche of the industrial working class, probably expressed as “Burger King is hiring. Oh, and your benefits are at risk….”

6.  What Labour can learn

Nevertheless, I think Labour should use this debacle to look hard at itself, reflecting on what it got wrong in government and why, and how it can serve working people better in this policy area when it returns to government. Simply getting John Denham to bleat on about the Tories not having done enough to scrutinise the tendering process as it came to its conclusion is not a sufficient response.

So if I were no longer the Unite General Secretary, but morphed into Ed Miliband, I’d be ordering the establishment of a task group to review not just what Labour gor wrong with the Thameslink contract specifically, but how the mistakes with this contract reflect wider failings of policy implementation during rthe New Labour years.

The following broad question might guide that review process:

1) Why did much of the (laudable) thinking by the early New Labour (1997-2001) about more holistic approaches to the use of government spending power come to such little fruition, and what does this tell us about how a fresh Labour government can more effectively implement (radical) policy.

2) More specifically, how can a future Labour government ensure that the correct expertise around government procurement (e.g. Richard MacFarlane and your truly) is brought into Whitehall, and that this expertise is allowed a fair hearing in the face institutional opposition?

3) What does the Thameslink experience tell us about some of the deeper neoliberal assumptions embedded both in Whitehall and the party’s core policy makers about the appropriate role of government as influencer of the broad economic geography of Britain? (Clue: this isn’t a matter of how ‘big’ government should or shouldn’t be, but about how neoliberal ‘small government’ orthodoxies have led to institutional prejudice about the whole idea of government as legitimate policy actor.)

4) When and how will Labour get serious about its understanding of the economic geography of Britain, in particular the infrastructural deficiency causes of regional and intra-regional disparity, and what  might to do to make it better? (Clue: building a High Speed Railway will NOT sort it out, though it may be a useful adjunct in time.)

Are you listening, Ed? After all, I’m sure you’ll agree that developing real policy (and mechanisms for its implementation) in the service of working people is more important than triangulating electoral reasons to ignore their concerns.

Today will see schools, prisons and courts employees, represented by trade unions, take strike action against the government on the grounds that public sector workers will work longer while contributing more towards their pension pots.

Union leaders have responded ahead of today explaining their positions. Christine Blower of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) has called the action “regrettable” but “due to the position that the government has taken, unavoidable”. TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber pointed out that pay has been frozen for two years despite high inflation, and that the feeling is public sector workers are being punished for a poor economic outlook they had no part in creating.

Strike

It is beyond despair that Ed Miliband has dismissed the strike out of hand, given that he is the leader of the Labour party. More depressing is he’ll gain nothing for it; David Cameron will continue accusing him of being in the pockets of the unions, while the laughing tabloid press continue running headlines to suit.

Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, has hardly pledged undivided support for mass action, but what he has said is of interest. Commenting on Osborne’s strategy, he called on public sector workers not to fall into the chancellor’s trap. The trap being laid out is one, not too dissimilar from the bad snow episode – where if recovery appears slow, Osborne can raise the alarm that public sector workers are the cause.

It would seem that if Balls is saying this he knows it to be dishonest – therefore him and his party should not be giving undue credence to Osborne’s trap by withdrawing strike support.

To be sure Balls knows, and opposes, Osborne’s plans (he calls Osborne joining the Treasury another “fork in the road moment”). At a speech given at the LSE earlier this month (seen to counter the chancellor’s speech at Mansion House the day before) Balls noted that Britain’s slow recovery could cost families £3,300 by 2015, as well as leaving Britain £58bn worse off. The economies in America, France and Germany have all returned to pre-crisis levels, whereas Britain is still below that by 4%.

Commenting on recent ONS figures for growth, Balls said “These final figures confirm that in the six months since George Osborne’s spending review and VAT rise the economy has flatlined and the recovery has been choked off.”

The former children’s minister can see the risks, has been keen to point out that this is ideological (or what William Keegan calls Osborne’s “political straitjacket”) and so should respond in turn by supporting strike action, while preparing to brush aside excuses given by the chancellor for possible poor economic recovery.

What Recovery?

Esther Armstrong writing for Interactive Investor yesterday said “This was supposed to be the year economies the world over got back on track.” In fact George Osborne was hoping the whole mess would be sorted by now, but his inability to change tack through fear of looking weak has meant the British economy is shooting below target (indeed Jonathan Portes, director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research and former chief economist at the cabinet office, was reported saying “you do not gain credibility by sticking to a strategy that isn’t working”).

The Office of Budget Responsibility (OBS) has downgraded UK growth projections for 2011 three times now, while we also face a wave of what Duncan Weldon has called “consumer recession”.

Osborne himself admitted that recovery will take longer than he expected, but this has also been compounded with the flatlining of many low and middle income earners. In fact real wages have fallen for the last 17 months and are likely to do so until 2013 – earnings falling below inflation does nothing for consumer confidence, and as Chris Dillow noted (as one of the differences between 1981 and 2010) the ability for people to run up personal debt through loans, in turn offsetting the decline in public spending, is a privilege (if you can call it that) we cannot enjoy today while banks are reluctant to lend.

If Osborne wasn’t so stubborn about saving face, he might have listened to Ed Balls’ idea for a temporary cut to VAT, which would instantly lower inflation, increase real wages, be as easy to implement as to reverse while the cost to do so is way under borrowing forecasts (the former being around £12-13bn versus the latter of £40bn). But alas the horrible show must go on.

What do we have to lose in striking?

In spite of proper Labour support, strike action is necessary. Unions are the only bargaining chip available to the workforce, and the government have been very clear they are not listening.

The damage being done by the cabinet of millionaires (whose pensions, along with other MPs, even after changes “will be among the most generous in the country“) must be challenged. As a Labour party member I’m loathe to say this; but we cannot wait for the opposition any longer – this fight will come from the bottom up, from those most affected by Tory/LibDem bullying, and it is high time this battle was won. This country will no longer be walked all over by the undeserving rich.