A small victory.

Back in March[1], I sounded the alert about the Government's latest proposal for a single tier pension that would mean that about 430,000 women born between 6 April 1952 and 6 July 1953 would not qualify for the new pension but men of the same age would.

That would have affected about 700 women in South-East Sheffield and more than 4000 women in Sheffield. Those women would have drawn a state pension income of around £1,900 a year (£36.55 a week) less than a man of the same age and, even if they did receive their pension earlier, they were still likely to be worse off.

I ridiculed Ministerial claims that those women would be better off simply because they were allowed to retire earlier. It was disingenuous. If these women were retired for 20 years they would lose considerably more than the pension received for the earlier retirement.

I told those women to make their views known and to shout about it. They did.

As a result, I’m pleased to be able to report that George Osborne has caved in and brought the reforms forward by one year. The move will mean that those women will be able to claim a single-tier pension, as the new scheme will be introduced on April 6, 2016, and not 2017 as was previously announced.

A small victory.

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[1] http://clivebettsmp.blogspot.co.uk/2013_03_17_archive.html

Trussed up!

Back in January, I asked “What has the government got against parents and children?”[1]

I pointed out that

• parents with 2 newborns will get a £1,700 Toddler Tax, because of cut changes to tax credits, maternity grants and child benefit this April and next
• 401 Sure Start Children’s Centres have closed since 2010, despite David Cameron and Nick Clegg both promising that they would back Sure Start
• there had already been a 40 per cent cut in the budgets to train nursery staff, and more cuts are to come later this year, and
• the government was proposing that the childcare staff:child ratios for two-year-olds should be increased from 1:4 to 1:6, while the ratio for under-twos should rise from 1:3 to 1:4 in nurseries.

Since then, in response to those childcare proposals, influential parent groups Mumsnet and Netmums have both added their support to the growing campaign[2] to stop Ministers increasing the number of children nursery staff and childminders can care for, after overwhelming opposition to the plans from their members.

Their intervention follows that of Professor Cathy Nutbrown - the Head of Education at Sheffield University, who was commissioned by the Government itself to advise on improving the quality of childcare – as she became the latest expert to describe the plans as “nonsense”. She said the proposals would “lead to worse, not 'great' childcare…”[3]

She joined Professors Helen Penn and Eva Lloyd, who had been commissioned to write a report on childcare costs which has been buried by the Government, warning that “increasing ratios would reduce the quality of care and create potential safety issues.”[4]

When the Childcare Minister Liz Truss, backed by DPM Nick Clegg, launched these proposals, she said “I have seen too many chaotic [childcare] settings, where children are running around. There’s no sense of purpose.”[5] Now we learn that, since she became the Childcare Minister in 2012, she has only visited 2 nurseries, both close to her Westminster office and both praised by OFSTED.[6]

What a disgrace; they should both be trussed up!

CLIVE BETTS MP [SHEFFIELD SOUTH EAST]

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[1] http://clivebettsmp.blogspot.co.uk/2013_01_27_archive.html

[2] http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/45887

[3] http://www.scribd.com/doc/131109473/Shaking-the-Foundations-of-Quality-Nutbrown-18th-March-2013

[4] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/relaxing-childminding-rules-will-worsen-quality-of-care-8449393.html

[5] http://goo.gl/jUO2B

[6] http://goo.gl/dDMPR

An accident waiting to happen

The latest national, regional and local statistics for NHS Accident and Emergency (A&E) services should give is all cause for concern. They figures show just how much A&E units are struggling in a way not seen since the bad old days of the 1990s. Simply because of the big investment in the NHS under Tony Blair’s government, which produced such dramatic improvements, we often forget just how bad our NHS had become twenty years ago.

Almost 4,500 nursing jobs have been lost since David Cameron entered Downing Street in May 2010 and those losses are now putting patients’ lives at risk. Nationally, more than half a million patients have waited more than 4 hours to be seen in A&E in the last 6 months.

Recently released figures show that major A&E units across Yorkshire and Humberside and the East Midlands are now seriously struggling and that they have consistently missed their waiting times targets. Wherever you turn, more people are waiting longer in A&E in Sheffield, Chesterfield, Rotherham, Barnsley, Doncaster, Nottingham and Derby.

I was proud of Labour’s NHS record in government. By 2010, patient satisfaction was at an all time high, waiting times were at a record low and we had increased the number of nurses by over 80,000. Earlier in this Parliament, I called on this government to abandon its massively expensive, top-down re-organisation of the NHS and instead use some of the money to save 6,000 nursing jobs.

Nurses are the backbone of our NHS but the Government has failed to grasp the seriousness of its cuts to nursing numbers and the impact that is having on A&E units. The Government must devise an urgent plan to bring all A&Es up to the required standard and ensure there are enough staff on duty to provide the safe care we all need.

IKEA

Like many people in Sheffield, I would like an IKEA to be built here. It would clearly be much better to shop locally rather than drive to Nottingham or Leeds.

However, like any other potential development, an application from IKEA has to be judged against the planning policy of the Government and the Local Plan adopted by the Council after lengthy consultation. The Council can’t  simply say ‘yes’ because of a vocal lobby of those who like IKEA as a place to shop.

There are two particular planning issues which IKEA has to address with regard to its current proposal. Firstly, both the Government and the Council have a policy of town and district centre first. In order to keep such centres vibrant and viable, any retail development should preferably be located there. This means that those without cars can access shops and others with their own car may choose to use public transport with the obvious environmental benefits. By locating shops together, shoppers can walk to a choice of shops. Town and district centres also offer public space, theatres, galleries and other facilities.

Only if no suitable sites exist in those centres should out-of-town sites be considered. If this process is not gone through, any new retail schemes would just try to locate where it’s cheapest to build and the city centre would simply die.

The second issue is a challenge facing all development near junction 34 on the M1. The government’s national Highways Agency assesses the junction as being at capacity. IKEA will have to convince the Agency that traffic from its scheme will not cause gridlock. It will also have to show that other development sites in the area which already have permission for office, manufacturing and other uses will not be sterilized, and their jobs lost, because junction 34 is too full to allow all to be built. It is not just a case of jobs at IKEA, but that other potential jobs should not be jeopardised.

We must also be cautious however about the forecast extra jobs from an IKEA store. If the forecast new jobs from every new store and supermarket in recent years had materialized, there would be no unemployment today. Ultimately, shoppers have only so much to spend and, if a new store opens, much of its trade simply transfers from existing shops. Over the years small shops have closed as more large ones have opened. I accept however if IKEA are going to build a new store we should work with them to ensure the jobs are created in Sheffield.

IKEA could also help their cause by encouraging people to travel by public transport. The site is next to a tram stop. Free home delivery within a prescribed distance of the store would do that and also help those without cars who would like to shop at IKEA.

I hope IKEA can work with the Council to address these important issues. I look forward to Sheffielders being able to shop in their own IKEA in the near future.

Being and Feeling Safe

A major report published last week confirmed that rates of violent crime in Britain have tumbled faster than anywhere else in Western Europe over the past decade. The rate of homicide has fallen by half since 2003, while every region of the UK has become more peaceful despite the country's economic turmoil. Sheffield was confirmed to be one of the most peaceful urban areas in the UK.

Yet people tend to perceive that Britain is much more violent than it is in reality. 17 per cent of people think they will fall victim to violent crime at some point, whereas only four per cent will actually do so.

Now, the statistics on murder and violent crime are fairly reliable indicators of reality. However, as the severity of the crime lessens, there is increasing disparity between the actual incidence of crimes and the reporting and recording of those crimes. To take the most obvious example, consider the actual number of instances of exceeding the speed limit and the number of those which are reported and recorded.

That is why in looking at crime patterns, you need to look at both the Reported Crime statistics and the British Crime Survey – the latter being an annual detailed survey into the actual crime experiences of about 40,000 citizens over the previous 12 months.

So what are we to make of the latest statistics on reported cases of anti-social behaviour, which suggest that South Yorkshire has the second highest rate of any police force after Greater Manchester?

Actually, there is plenty of both research and anecdotal evidence to confirm that reporting anti-social behaviour increases when people have confidence that it will be addressed. So, an increase in recorded ASB might simply be a reflection of increased confidence rather than an increase in the incidence.of the crime itself.

I know that people are far more confident than a decade ago about reporting anti-social behaviour and expecting that something will be done about it. But, I also know that anti-social behaviour happens too frequently.

That’s why I’m very concerned that the Government is turning the clock back with their plans to scrap the ASBO and replace it with a weaker power which carries no criminal sanction for a breach.  Similarly, the proposed community trigger, which demands a response if a person has complained three times just isn’t good enough.

People have the right to expect action right away and help to tackle an issue which is a huge worry.

Going backwards

Three years on it’s now as clear the Government's plan is failing, and failing badly.

Not only are more people unemployed than at the election, it’s soaring up. Seventy thousand more people are now on the dole than last month, youth unemployment rose by 20,000 and long term unemployment rose yet again to 900,000. In Yorkshire and Humberside and the East Midlands, the position was worse than nationally, with employment falling and unemployment increasing.

Research by the House of Commons’ Library shows that real terms’ wages are, on average, £1,700 lower than in May 2010. Wages were flat last year, but inflation continued at more than 3%, with inflation in essentials, like food and energy, rising faster than that. Although the UK might just miss a triple-dip recession, the squeeze on households is worsening as consumers are caught between falling incomes and rising living costs.

Four times as many households (32 per cent) said that their finances had worsened last month than reported an improvement (8 per cent). Families earning below £23,000 a year and those living in social rented housing were hit worst by the downturn, with 45 per cent of council tenants reporting deterioration in their household budgets, compared with only 2 per cent who said that their situations had improved.

To look at this another way, families earning below £23,000 a year are effectively having to work an extra 6 weeks a year to make what they did in 2010. It’s not surprising that they feel they're going backwards, because they are going backwards.

We urgently need action to get local people into work. That is why I’m supporting a compulsory jobs guarantee, which will get any adult out of work for more than two years - or young person out of work for a year - into a job they would be required to take. Without such action now, this government is condemning a whole generation to joblessness.

BARKING MAD!

We’ve made great strides in tackling anti-social behaviour over the last 15 years. However, this government is in real danger of both making a mess of the anti-social behaviour legislation and of missing some real opportunities to sort out some powers which are necessary to take action when people and communities are afraid.

The latest example of this is that the coalition government is planning to water down the powers to control dangerous dogs, despite a growing number of attacks. The government is planning to axe dog control orders in England and replace them with a general "public spaces protection order" which covers everything from crack houses to littering in parks.

An all-party committee of MPs has criticised the move, warning that merging dog control with other anti-social behaviour powers will make the menace of aggressive behaviour by dogs less of a priority for councils and police. An estimated 210,000 dog attacks on people occur every year, and, in 2011-12, 6,450 victims ended up in hospital.

The current dog control orders cover all breeds, not just the four specified breeds under the Dangerous Dogs Act. Owners face £1,000 fines if they fail to keep dogs on leads in specified public places or have six or more dogs per individual. In Scotland and Wales, there are new dog control notices that can be used to order that specific animals are muzzled, but Ministers are refusing to consider such orders in England.

The Dangerous Dogs Act covers only a narrow list of fighting breeds, including pit bull terriers, and does not address the problem of other breeds of dogs attacking in packs. Dog welfare charities say the government’s proposals don’t effectively tackle irresponsible dog ownership and are likely to make the problems worse.

We need tougher laws to tackle dangerous dogs, and councils and the police need powers to deal with aggressive behaviour before it turns into a vicious attack. There is huge public support for strong powers to tackle the issue. It’s difficult to understand why the coalition government Government is not responding to it.

Beware of the Leopard

It appears that this government prefers that we should conduct our relations in the world of science fiction.

Of course, that helps if you prefer policy development by assertion rather than being troubled by facts or evidence.

It was bad enough that Eric Pickles reminded me of a Sontaran.*

Now we have Eric’s Local Government Minister, Brandon Lewis, resorting to quoting the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in support of his decision to continue to require that councils should still be forced to publish details of planning applications and highways notices in local newspapers. **

Now, let me be clear that, in my view, the last government was completely wrong in deciding not to remove the statutory requirements to publish notices in newspapers. The reality is that councils are being forced to waste around £40m of taxpayers’ money each year to subsidise local newspapers.

In nearly 40 years of local and parliamentary representation, I can't remember having met a single person who has discovered a planning or highway proposal from the statutory notice. Has anybody else?

Actually, the position has got worse since the 2009 review. Local newspaper print sales have continued to drop – even in the big cities, readership is now less than 20% of the population. The same newspapers claim that their business case is now based on web access, supported by on-line advertising. Just as the national newspapers are rushing to put their web access behind a pay-wall, it will not be long before the local and regional print media follow suit. Yet, which local newspaper actually puts on-line the very statutory notices that councils have been forced to pay them a fortune to publish?

However, Brandon Lewis does well to link the Hitchhikers’ Guide to the government’s planning policies. It’s just that he quoted the wrong extract. Planning Minister Nick Boles is well cast as the local planning officer in the exchange with Arthur Dent, when his house is about to be demolished:

"But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months." 

"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything." 

"But the plans were on display ..." 

"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them." 

"That's the display department."

"With a flashlight."

"Ah, well the lights had probably gone." 

"So had the stairs." 

"But look, you found the notice didn't you?" 

"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'."

I rather suspect that in the coming months, there will be many people - following Arthur Dent’s example - throwing themselves to the ground in front of the bulldozers which Nick Boles has unleashed.

The government’s National Planning Policy Framework is just a year old. In its draft form, the All-Party Communities and Local Government Committee unanimously gave the NPPF a real mauling. We were quite clear that the policy, as drafted, the default ‘yes’ to development was likely to result in unsustainable development and that the absence of a specific reference to ‘brownfield first’ and ‘town centre first’ would inevitably result in ‘greenfield first’ and ‘out-of-town first’.

We were pleased when the then Planning Minister told us all that 30 of the 35 changes recommended by the CLG Committee had been adopted. Most commentators welcomed the outcome, although a few sceptics – CPRE, National Trust, Daily Mail – remained cautious at best.

They’ve now proved to have been correct. Planning and housing changes announced in the budget have apparently led Nick Boles to privately promise property developers that planning laws will be liberalised again within weeks to allow them to begin a house-building boom, and then tell house-building executives that he wanted to make it easier for property owners 'to do some things without having to ask for permission'.

The planning minister has admitted that new developments are “quite likely to be ugly” and will put pressure on the local infrastructure with few obvious benefits to local communities, and that planning rules limiting construction on greenfield sites will be relaxed.

At local level, the fact that developers are simply asserting that brownfield sites are ‘not viable’ is already forcing councils to bring forward more greenfield development sites just to meet their statutory obligations as brownfield sites lie empty. We might well ask what is happening to the sites already with permission to build 400,000 homes.

Last week, Eric Pickles told the Daily Telegraph “Trust me: I won't let the bulldozers wreck Middle England.” Is this more science fiction?

I’m reminded that, along with ‘the cheque is in the post’, the other claim you should never trust is “I’m from the planning department and I’m here to help you.”

Or, after another round of council cuts, should this be "I used to be from the planning department and  I used to be able to help you"?

Beware of the Leopard!

*

www.lgcplus.com/briefings/desperately-seeking-straight-answers/5053216.article

**

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmhansrd/cm130326/text/130326w0003.htm#13032680000141

Safe in his hands?

Before the election, David Cameron promised there would be no more top-down re-organisations of the NHS.

But, once inside Downing Street, David Cameron brought forward the biggest top-down re-organisation in NHS history. This is at a time of huge financial pressure - exposing the NHS to greater levels of risk.

David Cameron said he wanted to put NHS staff in control, but refused to listen to their concerns: less than one-in-ten NHS staff wanted to see his Bill passed, with the vast majority wanting to see it withdrawn, yet he ploughed on regardless. Both NHS staff and patients are concerned about the dangers the NHS faces as a result.

Despite assurances given by Ministers during the passage of the Bill, the re-organisation:

• fails to put doctors in control. Instead, it adds bureaucracy and empowers lawyers and accountants, rather than doctors;
• has taken over £3 billion away from patient care;
• brings in hundreds of new private companies through Any Qualified Provider tendering and new competition rules;
• fails to give the NHS the real service reform needed to meet the challenges of the 21st century, and
• risks discouraging integration and collaboration.

The Government’s reorganisation was clearly not ready to have gone live on 1st April. Too many of the organisations due to take control hadn’t been fully authorized. Confusion remains over who will be in charge, how the competition rules trapped in Parliament will operate and how potential conflict of interests will be handled.

Bizarrely,last month, the Department of Health handed £2.2 billion of NHS funds to the Treasury, rather than investing it in frontline care. This is hard to understand as the NHS struggles to cope with the re-organisation, plummeting nurse numbers and rising waiting-times for in-patient treatment.

And, contrary to all the government’s assertions that it is cutting quangos, this month it launched a brand new £60bn health quango, completely dwarfing the budgets of all the other quangos put together!

April 1st – no joke!

This week has seen a raft of changes that, taken together, represent the the biggest contraction in the welfare state since its foundations in the 1940s.

Millions of families – the majority being working households on low incomes – are seeing significant real reductions in their incomes. This government is committed to further real cuts in income for years to come. Bankers get bonuses, ordinary working families get battered.

The speed with which the government is moving to introduce Universal Credit is bringing considerable risks. The government had promised that the scheme was to be piloted in four areas starting this month. Now it has suddenly announced that three of those areas won’t start until July. It’s difficult to see how any lessons can be learned for a scheme to be implemented in October.

There is a very real risk that the new computer systems and software for Universal Credit will simply not be fit for purpose and, at best, there will be insufficient time to sort out any glitches. Further, the transition to Universal Credit almost certainly leaves the system more vulnerable to fraud.

Direct payment of rent to tenants rather than to landlords is almost certain to increase rent arrears, as families under financial pressure will find it difficult to resist the temptation to use their rent cash as an alternative to a pay-day loan. I don’t know of any council – of any political persuasion – or housing association which hasn’t increased its provision for rent arrears.

It is also inevitable that there will be huge confusion from the separation of housing and council tax benefits. I think people massively under-estimate the number of households and families who come in to and out of eligibility for various benefits during the course of any year. This is only going to increase as the number of temporary and short-term jobs increases.

It’s difficult to believe other than that there will be a very big rise this Autumn in the number of families who will be contacting MPs, Councillors and advice bureaux wanting urgent assistance with their benefit problems.

No, April 1^st is no joke this year.