Smoke and Mirrors

Over the past few weeks, there seem to have been a lot of government announcements, where the headline doesn’t match the reality.

Last week, Iain Duncan Smith announced that he had secured another £300m to support changes to his proposals for Universal Benefit which he said would be good news for working families. Sounds great, doesn’t it? However, closer examination of the detail showed that working families who claim the childcare element of working tax credit will lose £884 a year if they claim for one child and £1560 a year for two children. If that is good news, I hate to think what the bad news looks like.

Then, Eric Pickles announced that he would provide funds to councils so that council tax wouldn’t need to increase next year. Let’s just forget for a moment that this intervention runs totally contrary to his Localism policy, it sounds good doesn’t it? Unfortunately, when councils looked at the detail, they discovered that the additional funds were for one year only and, therefore, that would mean an automatic 5% increase in 2013 in addition to any other inflation. Not so good, eh?

And then, George Osborne welcomed the Bank of England’s announcement that it was going to pump another £75bn into the UK economy through quantitative easing – this is basically lending money to the banks so that they can lend it to businesses. This was clear recognition that the government’s policy of cutting spending and raising taxes too far and too fast is just not working, as the latest economic growth – or, rather, non-growth – figures show.

George Osborne’s welcome to this was a little surprising to those who remember his earlier statements where he had described quantitative easing as ‘the last resort of desperate governments’ and ‘carelessly irresponsible’ and ‘quantitative easing is an admission of failure and carries considerable risk”.

Smoke and mirrors?

Rewarding the wrong behaviour

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t believe that children thrive best and achieve most when they are brought up in a stable relationship. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t believe that the primary responsibility for nurturing and bringing up children rests with the parents. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t believe that the role of the state isn’t to support parents in fulfilling those responsibilities.

I believe that the last Labour government’s policies were entirely in line with those statements. In fact, I can’t think of any policy which that government pursued which ran counter to those views.

The introduction of the minimum wage and working families’ tax credits – and real-terms increases in child benefit - were primarily aimed at supporting families and produced dramatic improvements in the incomes of many families, helping them to be self-sustaining. Sure Start was all about helping parents to do the best for their children.

So, as the current government is making significant cuts in all that support for families – and especially working families – we need to look a little sceptically when Ministers say that they are going to support children by “giving married couples a tax break”. David Cameron says that “in this Parliament the government will recognise marriage in the tax system.”

On the face of it, that doesn’t sound unreasonable. But, just examine what it actually means in practice.

Over the years, I have spent considerable time in my surgeries trying to assist (usually) women who have found themselves in dire financial straits after the breakdown of their marriages. Too often, the departed (usually) husband has not been paying any or sufficient maintenance – either awarded by the court or through the Child Support Agency. Too frequently, the individual has described how the errant partner has divorced and re-married and appears to be enjoying a financially secure new life, whilst leaving the first wife and children in penury.

So, David Cameron now intends to reward the errant husband for being married, whilst penalizing the innocent wife and children of the first marriage just because they’re now a single family, but not of their choosing.

That doesn’t sound very moral to me.

On yer bike!

Older readers will remember back to 1981, when Conservative Minister Norman Tebbit told the unemployed to get on their bikes and look for work. This was in the middle of a five year period when Sheffield lost 50,000 jobs – mainly in steel and engineering.

Recently, in an echo of Tebbit’s comment, Conservative Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith said that the unemployed should “get on a bus” to look for work.

Again, older readers will recall with nostalgia, Sheffield’s cheap bus fares’ policy of the same era. Margaret Thatcher put an end to that when she deregulated and privatised bus services. Unsurprisingly, bus fares rose dramatically, bus frequencies declined, passenger numbers fell by 30% and we ended up with congested roads.

Now, as a result of the Government’s spending cuts, we should expect another round of big fare rises and cuts in services. Firstly, there is to be a front-loaded 28% cut to local transport funding. This is used to fund ‘non-profitable’ bus services – especially evening, weekend and rural routes. Then, next January, the threat to local bus services will become even more serious thanks to the 20% cut in the bus operators’ fuel subsidy (BSOG).

So, as bus fares rise and frequency declines, and as unemployment increases as the Government fails to have a growth strategy to go with its deficit reduction strategy, shall we hear a repeat of ‘on yer bike’?

Of course, pensioners will need to get their bikes out as well. David Cameron will be able to say that he kept his election promise to retain pensioners’ bus passes. But a pass isn’t much use if there isn’t a bus to travel on.

And now the Government has announced that it is withdrawing the subsidy which provides pensioners’ concessionary fares on coach services.

Happy pedaling!

Planning gains?

Any planning policy and system is ripe for criticism. Those who are stopped from doing something call it ‘unnecessary bureaucracy’; those who lose a battle to oppose a particular development call it a ‘useless bureaucracy’.

The reality is that a planning policy and system is there to try to provide a framework within which competing national, local and community interests are balanced. This inevitably means that someone will be disappointed by whatever decision is reached about a particular proposal.

Let’s take a simple example. A colleague has long-stated that the most difficult decision any councillors have to take is where to site a bus-stop. Everyone wants a bus-stop in their road, but no-one wants one outside their house. If no location in that road is agreed, every resident will complain that they are being ignored by public transport. So, someone will inevitably be upset when the decision is made to put the bus-stop in front of their home.

In the run-up to the last general election, the Conservatives made much of their opposition to what they described as a “top-down planning policy being imposed on local communities” and promised to ‘abolish regional planning and give power about stopping developments to local people’.

In truth, what the Conservative-led government is doing is to replace one national framework with another. The all-party Select Committee that I chair – after a detailed investigation - was very critical of parts of the government’s proposals. Recently, various groups, like the National Trust and the Campaign to Protect Rural England, have weighed in to the debate, being especially critical of the declaration that: “At the heart of the planning system is a presumption in favour of sustainable development, which should be seen as a golden thread running through both plan making and decision taking.”

Correctly, I think, they see this as a charter for developers to build on the green-field – not Green Belt – land that surrounds most towns and villages. This concern is enhanced because it will be combined with financial inducements to councils to get more homes built through the New Homes Bonus. There is no shortage of brown-field land with planning permission for new housing, but developers want to build on green-field sites.

Concerns have increased this week when it became public that the new planning rules were actually drafted by a four-strong panel, in which three of the members had direct involvement in property development. The revelation that the Conservative Party has received £3.3m in the past three years from property firms who could benefit from the Government’s planning reforms doesn’t assist its case.

DO YOU HAVE THE X FACTOR?

Our television screens, newspapers and magazines are full of stories about so-called ‘celebrities’.

Now, I have to admit that I haven’t the faintest idea who most of these people are or why we’re meant to celebrate them. However, I’ve agreed to help find people with some real X factor.

Let’s make it easy – these potential stars don’t have to be able to sing, dance, juggle, or tell jokes. But, they do need to be male and between 18 and 30 years old. Is that you or someone you know? Someone who wants to be special?

I’ll explain.

• On average, 65 people a day in the UK are diagnosed with a blood cancer – that’s one person every 23 minutes.
• There are nearly 1,600 people in the UK now in need of a bone marrow transplant.  This is usually their last chance of survival.
• Only 3 in 10 patients will find a matching donor within their families.
• There is a shortage of young male donors on the bone marrow register. Men aged 18-30 account for 80% of donations, but make up just 19% of the register.
• Right now, a matching donor can only be found for half the people in desperate need of a lifesaving transplant.

So, I’ve joined a number of other MPs who are aiming to recruit 10,000 more young men to the Anthony Nolan Register this year. Why young men? Because they have (on average) bigger bones and therefore produce more stem cells and because there is an improved prognosis for the patient if their donor is young.

Does becoming a donor make you special, a star, a celebrity? Certainly, those people who receive a transplant think you’re a star, and so do their families. And, most donors talk about how special it is to have saved someone’s life; and they’re right to be proud of what they’ve done.

Most donations are made at an out-patient clinic. It’s very similar to giving blood. You can find out more at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN2nEft7iAU.

So, to show you’ve got the real x factor, sign up at www.mp.anthonynolan.org and enter code PNW2.

Struggling for growth

Following the global banking collapse, with its impact on the UK’s finances and the consequent credit crunch, it was always clear that the UK’s economy would have to be built around a growth strategy.

Whereas the UK economy was growing healthily until the middle of last year, the Conservative-led coalition’s focus on debt reduction rather than growth has seen a significant slowdown in the UK economy to just 0.2% growth in the last year. The latest economic reports from the USA, together with troubled economies in the Euro-zone, simply compound the problems. Although manufacturing exports have shown a small increase, they cannot make up for a lack of demand in the UK economy.

Now we learn that the government’s flagship policy to promote growth and job creation in our region is set to cost more in administration and red tape than it has given in support for new businesses.

In his first Budget last June, the Chancellor George Osborne announced that a £1 billion 'national insurance holiday' to help new business starts-ups would help 400,000 new firms in the UK – equivalent to around 45,000 businesses in our region.

But since the scheme was launched last September only 645 firms in Yorkshire and Humberside have benefitted – just 1.5% of the number promised by the government. The position isn’t any different nationally, with just 5137 firms benefitting. With an average benefit per business of £2,000, that means around £10.3 million has been paid to businesses – less than the £12 million the Treasury says the scheme will cost to administer.

To put it bluntly, this keynote scheme – which the Government was relying on to promote new businesses and economic growth – has simply flopped.

Our region has been hit hard over the last year by stealth tax rises and spending cuts that go too far and too fast. The government has also abolished our regional development agency, and the resources being made available to local enterprise boards are pitiful by comparison.

Of course any help for businesses in our area should be welcomed. But this scheme has been a huge disappointment. It comes at a time when any national and economic recovery has been choked off by the government’s own economic policies.

The Chancellor, George Osborne, seems increasingly complacent and out of touch about the state of the economy. This is only compounded by the revelation that he’s paying more than £1000 a night for his holiday accommodation in the USA.

We urgently need a plan for jobs and growth to get the economy moving - which would get the deficit down for the long term - and to get the banks lending to small businesses again.