Credit where credit’s due

The government has announced that it intends to legislate to cap the cost of credit.

This is a massive u-turn by George Osborne who has persistently refused to act as pay-day loan companies have charged interest rates of 4000% and more to the most desperate lenders.

Credit for this change is substantially due to MPs of all parties who have been campaigning to stop the obscene charges and interest rates being charged on these loans. In particular, I want to credit my Sheffield Central colleague, Paul Blomfield MP, who gathered large parliamentary support for his High Cost Credit Bill only to see it blocked by David Cameron and Nick Clegg in July.

That Bill also gathered big support from outside Parliament, from organisations like Citizens Advice Bureaux, Which and the Women’s Institute. But, instead of being downhearted when the Bill was blocked, the campaign continued with A Charter to Stop the Payday Loan Rip-off, which got even bigger support. Perhaps it was the scale of that lobby which eventually forced change, against George Osborne’s ideological belief that ‘the market should decide’.

Obviously, we will now have to wait to see the detail of what the government is actually proposing. We should expect that the proposals will address all the issues set out in the Charter. We need regulation, and then enforcement, of payday lenders to:

• stop them giving loans to people who can’t realistically afford to pay them back
• stop them repeatedly rolling over loans and creating spiralling debt
• stop hidden or excessive charges
• stop them raiding borrowers’ bank accounts without their knowledge and leaving them in hardship
• stop irresponsible advertising and instead provide clear and transparent information
• require lenders to promote free and independent debt advice, and ensure they co-operate with other services to help people get out of debt.

Not a sure start………

The day before the last general election, when asked for a guarantee that Surestart centres would continue to receive funding, David Cameron said he backed Surestart and that it was a disgrace for anyone to suggest that he would be cutting childcare support.

'Sure Start will stay, and we’ll improve it. We will keep flexible working, and extend it' he said.

Unfortunately, since 2010, parents have faced a childcare crunch with costs up by 30%, while hundreds of Sure Start centres have already closed and many more are likely to close over the next year. Even in the Prime Minister’s own Oxfordshire backyard, 37 Sure Start centres have been earmarked for closure.

It’s important to understand the scale of the childcare crunch of the last 3 years:

• the cost of nursery places has risen by 30% - five times faster than pay
• the average bill for a part time nursery place of 25 hours a week has gone up to £107.
• parents working part time on average wages now have to work from Monday until Thursday before they have paid off their weekly childcare costs. 
• there are 576 fewer Sure Start centres – with three being lost on average every week.
• there are 35,000 fewer childcare places
• the Government’s offer of childcare for some 2-year-olds is failing with 1 in 3 councils not having enough places

All this has taken place during a period when the number of under-4 children in England has risen by 125,000. 

But it isn’t just the parents of pre-school children who are being squeezed. Before 2010, 99% of schools provided access to breakfast clubs and after-school clubs. But more than a third of councils have reported that this is being scaled back in their areas.

These cuts in services and big hikes in charges have come as people have desperately searched for jobs – often part-time – which necessarily require access to affordable childcare.

That’s why I’m backing Ed Miliband’s plan to:

• extend free childcare for three and four year olds from 15 to 25 hours per week for working parents of three and four year-olds, funded by increasing the banking levy
• introduce a legal guarantee of access to wraparound care 8am to 6pm at primary schools

Just making it up?

I’m having a little problem with David Cameron at the moment.

In October, on a BBC's Sunday Politics programme, Mr Cameron said that the additional cuts that local councils will have to make as a result of George Osborne’s latest spending review announcement were ‘relatively modest…. just 2.3%’

Nobody knows where that figure has come from. It’s wildly different from the estimates of the independent experts, who suggest that the additional cut is nearer to 10%. The Treasury and Department of Communities and Local Government both refuse to comment.

So, nearly a month ago, I wrote to Mr Cameron to ask him to explain his statement. No 10 responded quickly saying that Mr Cameron was asking a Treasury Minister to respond. Needless to say, there has been no response, so I’ve had to write to Mr Cameron again asking him to explain.

Is it unreasonable for me to think that the reason for the failure to respond is that the 2.3% figure is an invention? I don’t think so. Mr Cameron has ‘form’ for telling porkies – it’s the parliamentary equivalent of a long criminal record!

Last week, all his speeches were wiped from the Conservative Party’s website – presumably to stop people contrasting the promises he’s made with what he’s delivered.

For example, he’s told us:

• “We’re paying down Britain’s debts.” – when debt will have risen 60% under his stewardship
• “We will have a bigger army for a safer Britain” – when he’s cutting 7000 soldiers
• “It’s just plain wrong to say that this government is cutting benefits for disabled children by over £1,300 a year” – when the Department for Work and Pensions confirmed it is
• “We will stop top-down reorganisations of the NHS” – and then undertook the biggest top-down reorganisation costing £3bn.

It was also revealed last week that pensioners in England face paying more than £150,000 for their residential care before they hit the so-called 'cap' on care costs. This is more than double the £72,000 which Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg have previously claimed as the maximum. In fact, it’s even worse at £159,000 in Yorkshire and Humberside and more than £190,000 in the East Midlands.

Analysis shows that more than nine out of ten elderly people in the region will have died before they reach the 'cap'. Older people and their families deserve better than to be conned in such an underhanded way. 

On probation

The work of the Probation Service gets little publicity when it is done successfully, but is thrust into the spotlight when something goes wrong.

However, re-offending rates are too high and more needs to be done to improve rehabilitation and break the cycle of re-offending. All the research demonstrates that success is built on partnership working between agencies - public, private and voluntary - and on the strength of the relationships between dedicated probation staff and individual offenders.

So, what are we to make of the government forcing through a wholesale privatisation of probation at breakneck speed, trying to avoid proper scrutiny and ignoring its own risk assessment which highlights major concerns with its proposals? Be alert that the government wants private companies to take over the supervision of nearly 9 out of 10 offenders released from prison or undertaking community sentences, including those convicted of domestic violence, burglary, robbery, violence against the person and sexual offences.

First, do we trust the Minister? He is Chris Grayling, who set up and forced through the massively failing Work Programme on the same payment-by-results basis. He has a track record of ignoring inconvenient facts, but being driven by ideology. Or, as he put it “Sometimes we just have to believe something is right and do it”.

Secondly, pilot schemes of these proposals were cancelled by Mr Grayling in his first week in the job. As the Economist magazine put it: “If the Work Programme fails, the cost is higher unemployment; if rehabilitation of offenders fails, the cost is worse: more crime: which is why those now-disregarded pilots were set up in the first place”

Thirdly, the list of private companies who are gearing to hoover up these contracts is dominated by the usual suspects, including G4S and Serco.

You will remember that G4S massively failed at the London Olympics, with security services having to be rescued by the police and armed forces. Further, it has already been found to have billed the government for tracking offenders who were dead, abroad or in prison, and is now the subject of a criminal fraud investigation. And, as I write, in the high court, Mr Justice Mostyn has referred a number of G4S employees for prosecution for forgery and contempt of court in a "truly shocking" case of what he called disgraceful behaviour. Similarly, the Serious Fraud Office has opened a criminal investigation into Serco's electronic monitoring contracts after it was found to have overcharged by millions of pounds for work it could not have done. Astonishingly, Mr Grayling has refused to rule G4S and Serco out of this process.

Under these proposals, it is inevitable that both national and local charities which play a significant role in crime prevention and resettlement of offenders will be totally squeezed out of the service in exactly the same way that they have been in the Work Programme.

Fourthly, because private companies delivering public services are exempt from the Freedom of Information legislation, they can’t be held to account for any failings in the same way that the current probation service can.

Fifthly, it is clear that the government is also trying to hide as much information as it can. For example, it simply refused to say how many offenders these proposals would affect. However, my Labour colleagues submitted Freedom of Information requests to all Probation Trusts in England and discovered that more than 200,000 offenders are covered, including more than 7500 in South Yorkshire, 3500 in Derbyshire and nearly 10,000 in Nottinghamshire.

Sixthly, by its own admission, the government has absolutely no idea how much this will cost. And, despite Ministers claiming this is a “payment only on delivery” system, we now learn that companies will still receive at least 90% of their fee whether they deliver or not.

Seventh, given the way the contracts have been designed, it is inevitable that – just like the Work Programme – companies will focus on the easiest cases and simply park the more complex and difficult offenders, increasing the risk to the public.

Eighth, the proposals create a suffocating bureaucracy between service providers for those offenders – some 25% of the total - whose risk level significantly fluctuates during the period of their supervision. It’s not only bureaucratic and costly, it provides a platform for buck-passing.

My view is that no government should be taking such a reckless approach to public safety. Handing over supervision for serious and violent offenders to the same companies that time and again let down the taxpayer is a recipe for disaster.

People need to be confident that those offenders under supervision in our local communities are not part of some giant ideological experiment.

We should all be worried that the Government have not brought their plans before Parliament to enable proper scrutiny. Instead, it has chosen to rush ahead at breakneck speed and impose its completely untried and untested privatisation on every community.

I strongly support carefully planned and monitored innovative work in our Probation Services – this privatisation isn’t. I am happy to support an approach that allowed faster sharing of best practice as well as even more collaboration with other providers -   this privatisation isn’t.

Rushing headlong into change, with no evidence to support it, is simply irresponsible.

Together

In 2010 the Government announced its intention to pilot Community Budgets as a method of integrating public services. It wasted time and effort by trying to re-invent a similar programme it had inherited.

Basically, Community Budgeting recognises that, if you are going to provide the best services, there must be freedom to redesign services locally. This follows through the policy of best value – focused on continual improvement to provide services that are efficient, effective, equitable and responsive. However, to achieve that, all the players have to be committed, flexible and willing to give up power and resources to get the best outcomes. 

This doesn’t happen easily. There are cultural barriers to overcome at all levels of government and their agencies - as well as service users and voluntary organisations –and new systems to put in place. The challenge of doing this in the current economic and financial climate conditions cannot be underestimated.

The all-party Communities and Local Government Committee, which I chair, has been reviewing the government’s pilots. These were four 'Whole Place' Community Budgets and ten 'Neighbourhood' Community Budget areas. We also looked at the progress of the Troubled Families Programme, the priorities of which—turning around "troubled families" by integrating public services and tailoring them to families—came out of the Community Budget programme.

We found that the pilots are already demonstrating the clear potential to facilitate cheaper, more integrated and more effective public services. However, achieving that potential requires strong local leadership and a commitment from central government to facilitate local flexibility. It also requires a framework for agreements on sharing the benefits of investment.

Getting the biggest benefits will also require risk-taking – including the risk of failing occasionally. There isn’t a successful company in the world which, even after doing all the essential research and analysis, doesn’t occasionally get a product wrong and have to withdraw it and go back to the drawing-board. Public services are no different, but politicians, the public and the media have to be a bit more grown-up about this. There aren’t any successful organisations which rely on a blame culture.

You can read more about the Committee’s findings at:

http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/communities-and-local-government-committee/news/cb-report-substantive/

Trusted with our NHS?

Back in 2010, David Cameron told us how he could be trusted with the NHS. All the evidence now tells us that he was wrong. The NHS is going backwards:

• Accident and Emergency is already in crisis with almost 1 million patients waiting longer than 4 hours in A&E over the last 12 months.
• There are over 5,000 fewer nurses since 2010
• £3 billion has been wasted on a reorganisation nobody wanted and nobody voted for.

The government has completely lost its way on public health

• David Cameron promised to get tough on smoking but, instead, just caved in to big tobacco and vested interests.
• 41 organisations have quit the Government’s public health responsibility deal, including Cancer Research UK and the Faculty of Public Health

 The government is now planning a massive switch of health resources from north to south, from urban to rural and from the poorest to the wealthiest communities. This month, University of Liverpool researchers said the proposals would penalise

• areas where people die earliest
• places with the worst quality of life
• areas hit hardest by council cuts 

Prof. Paul Johnstone, Public Health England’s regional director in the North, confirms that the biggest causes of early death under the age of 75 in England are cancer, heart disease and stroke, lung and liver disease, with figures showing most areas of the North are worst hit by premature deaths. Eleven out of 15 council areas in Yorkshire have among the worst rates of premature death from lung disease in the country and nine out of 15 have among the worst records on early deaths from heart disease and cancer. Five out of the 15 have the among the worst records on early deaths from liver disease

Yet the Yorkshire Post confirms that every part of the NHS in Yorkshire would lose out under the changes, costing the region £416m in total and the North £722m overall. Sheffield alone would lose health funding of nearly £50m every year to healthier and wealthier communities in the south.

And Cameron and Clegg continue to break their promises on transparency by:

• still refusing to publish the NHS Risk Register
• resorting to unprecedented measures to cover up the warnings they were given about their reckless re-organisation.
• refusing to extend Freedom of Information legislation to cover private providers delivering NHS services, against the recommendations of the regulator, Monitor.

Do I trust them with the NHS? No.

Where do we go from here?

Picture the public meeting. It’s been a rumbustious, packed, session with strong views being forcibly expressed throughout. The meeting’s chair is desperately trying to end the acrimony, find some common cause and bring the meeting to a close.

The advice I would give the chair at this point is “Whatever else you may be thinking, do NOT say ‘Now, where do we go from here?’” I can guarantee that the audience will tell you where to go…. and the route, destination and the method of transport are all likely to be unpleasant!

It seems that British Gas and its highly-paid PR agency have not learned this basic lesson.

Ed Miliband put cost-of-living and, particularly, energy prices centre-stage in the political debate last month. Cameron and Clegg have been all over the place in trying to position their responses, at the same time as they are having a big internal row over renewable and nuclear energy. And John Major has now waded in to the fray, saying energy price hikes and record energy company profits should get the response of a windfall tax.

But what did BG do?

First, it unveiled a 10.4% rise in electricity prices and an 8.4% increase in the gas tariff from 23 November. The announcement itself was rather like lighting the blue touch-paper of a massive unstable firework. Consumers and politicians alike didn’t just stand and watch. They all exploded in response, especially as Centrica (BG’s owner) had pledged earlier this year to use windfall profits from last winter to keep prices down.

Then, instead of taking stock, BG took to Twitter and turned the dreadful announcement into a complete PR disaster as well. It invited comments from customers. Inevitably, nearly 16,000 customers told BG precisely where it could go.

BG’s stupidity and insensitivity was compounded by its inability, or unwillingness, to answer customers’ questions about the price hikes.

And, what was Liberal Democrat Energy Minister Ed Davey’s response to this?  ‘Customers should shop around’, he said. Seemingly, he had forgotten that he’d made the very same suggestion a week earlier when SSE hiked its prices. Customers had followed his advice and switched to… you’ve guessed it……British Gas. 

I’m just waiting for him to ask ‘where should I go from here?’

Not listening on anti-social behaviour

Back in June this year I wrote:

“Vandalism, dangerous dogs and nuisance neighbours make families’ lives a misery. People want to know that if they are a victim of crime - or if they are being regularly harassed by yobs on their street - then the police will have the power and capability to restore peace as quickly and efficiently as possible. That’s why I strongly supported the measures – new laws, new penalties, additional resources – that Tony Blair’s government committed to the fight against crime and anti-social behaviour and, as a result, it fell considerably.

But, as I’ve argued before, I’m worried the clock is now being turned back. I make no apology for returning to the issue because it is so important. On top of big cuts to neighbourhood police, the Cameron/Clegg coalition wants to weaken police powers to fight anti-social behaviour. I’m clear that they need to rethink these policies, as we need stronger action against crime instead of their weak approach.”

Since then, colleagues and I have consistently told Conservative and Liberal Democrat Ministers that they are making it harder to fight antisocial behaviour and, unbelievably, wasting money in the process. We are not alone. 8 out of 10 people told the Office of National Statistics that antisocial behaviour had got worse in the last year.

Weakening antisocial behaviour powers is going to lead to lost police officer time

And the government is creating red tape to make it harder for the police and local councils to get CCTV will cost between £14m and £29m. – not my figures, but the government’s own assessment. The low estimate is equivalent to taking 400 police officers on the beat to deal with the new bureaucracy.

The Government’s proposed Community Trigger is weak, ineffective and doesn’t do what it says on the tin. In the pilot areas, the Trigger has been successfully activated just 13 times from a reported 44,011 antisocial behaviour incidents.

And the government is being far too weak on dangerous dogs. Scotland has already introduced Dog Control Notices which can enforce:

• Muzzling the dog whenever it is in a place to which the public have access;
• Keeping the dog on a lead whenever it is in a place to which the public have access;
• If the dog is male, neutering it; and
• The owner and their dog being required to attend and complete a training course in the control of dogs.

Why is the government not listening, when it could save money and provide far better protections for local people and communities?

Water, water

From a particularly mild and warm autumn, it appears that colder and wetter weather is now on the way. It’s timely, therefore, to reflect on water.

First, the water we do want. We should continue to celebrate the fact that we have permanent access – apart from the occasional hiccup -to fresh, clean, wholesome water, a situation not enjoyed by most of the world’s population.  But, are we now paying more than we should be?

Rising water bills are making their own contribution to David Cameron’s growing cost-of-living crisis. Water prices have risen faster than in any other major economy. The average cost of water bills rose by 3.8% in April 2013 to £388. According to OFWAT, more than 2.26 million UK households now spend more than 5% of their disposable income on water.

Yet, the water companies appear to be making exceptional profits whilst ducking their tax obligations. In September, Yorkshire Water revealed that it had made £186m profit last year, but not paid a penny in corporation tax. Severn Trent paid out dividends of almost £160m last year, as well as paying its chief executive more than £1m. David Cameron’s coalition government seems to have no interest in tackling rising water bills, so it will be left to some of us to try to keep this issue in the spotlight.

Then, there’s the water we don’t want. The 2012 Climate Change Risk Assessment said that flooding is the greatest environmental threat to the UK. For many of us in South Yorkshire and North East Derbyshire, the devastating 2007 floods remain in focus. And 8000 homes were flooded last year. Yet, in the comprehensive spending review, the government cut the flood capital budget by 27%, whilst the government itself estimates that the number of people at significant risk of flooding will double to at least 2m by 2020.  So the government is now planning to invest £138m less in 2015 than the minimum investment its own experts have said is required. That’s not clever.

And now we learn that, after the near collapse of the flood insurance negotiations, the government hasn’t done a deal, but has reached a ‘memorandum of understanding’ with the insurance industry. Some homes and businesses have been totally excluded from the arrangements, and the government itself says that it is more than likely that the scheme will run out of money in the first 20 years, so expect higher premiums.

Get the sandbags ready.

Not picture perfect

Last week, the Conservative Party unveiled a photograph of its MPs, which was promoted as the first ever picture of the Conservative parliamentary party in the Chamber of the House of Commons.

However, the photo was not all that it seemed. It didn’t take long before it was revealed that several of the MPs apparently smiling along with the Prime Minister were not actually there when the photograph was taken. Clearly photo-shopping is not just for fashion magazines.

Actually, it struck me that photo-shopping accurately sums up David Cameron’s whole approach to promoting his policies. Unlike Nick Clegg, who is perfectly happy to promise something he has no intention of keeping – like student fees, Cameron presents enough verifiable information to make you believe he’s presenting an accurate picture, whilst hoping to get away with ignoring key facts and issues which fatally undermine his case. Let’s take a few examples from the last week.

David Cameron has consistently told us how the steps he has taken will secure a range of Conservative parliamentary candidates for the next general election which is more representative. Now we learn that, of the 48 aspiring MPs chosen to fight the election to date, only 14 – less than one in three – are female and just one is from an ethnic minority background.

Then he said that Ed Miliband’s energy price freeze was ludicrous and unaffordable before, a few days’ later, revealing that George Osborne is going to announce parallel proposals in the Autumn Statement – presumably these will be unaffordable too?

Once, David Cameron was telling us all about his intention to ‘hug a hoodie’, when actually we can now see that his real intention was to make them homeless. According to the latest statistics, 16 to 24-year-olds have lost services worth 28 per cent of their income since 2010 and the announcements made at Conservative Conference will push that far higher.

And then there’s Help to Buy, which Cameron presents as helping those on lower incomes to get on the property ladder. Leaving aside the almost universal criticism, across the political and economic spectrum, that fuelling inflation in an already over-valued market is dangerous, we now learn more about the details. Those purchasing the lowest valued homes and having the least available deposit will pay significantly more than those getting help to buy a home worth £600,000. Clearly, it’s that latter group, who would need an annual income approaching £150,000, who Mr Cameron believes is most worthy of support and subsidy.