Rising to the challenge

We have a housing crisis. On just about every indicator, the direction of travel is wrong.

Housing costs as a proportion of earnings remain unsustainably high. We are spending 1.4 per cent of UK GDP on subsidising housing costs, compared with 0.14 per cent in Germany. UK housing benefit has doubled in a decade to £24.2bn.

Last week, Conservative Housing Minister Brandon Lewis claimed that his Housing and Planning Bill will  “kick-start a national crusade” that will “get one million homes built by 2020” and “help deliver the homes hard-working people rightly deserve, transforming generation rent into generation buy”. 

It’s nonsense. You should put even less faith in Lewis’s claim than that of his predecessor, Grant Shapps, who told me in 2010 that “Building more homes is the gold standard upon which we shall be judged”, before going on to deliver a post-WW2 record low of 135,500 new homes in 2012/13.

Meanwhile, David Cameron proudly proclaims his new Starter Homes’ initiative. These are set to cost no more than £250,000 outside of London and £450,000 within London.  Starter homes at £450,000? Cameron thinks that this is ‘affordable’? Only on Planet Eton! It’s no wonder that ordinary people think politicians are out of touch.

Cameron and Lewis have plucked a promise of “1 million new homes in this Parliament” out of mid-air. Let’s be clear; there is no chance of this being achieved, let alone the 250,000 minimum housing starts required each year, without a significant investment in social housing which is essential to meet housing needs as well as economic objectives. But Cameron, for ideological reasons alone, has set his face against social housing with his latest hugely subsidised right-to-buy scheme for housing associations. 

Tackling the housing crisis requires some radical interventions. Simply building more homes will not redress the problem of absurdly high house prices fuelled by the absurdly high cost of land.

Where planning permission is given for housing, it’s the public purse which should benefit from increase in value. This principle was enshrined in the 1947 Planning Act. The landowner would receive the current use value plus a helpful top up but not the windfall bonus of today’s system.

Denmark and Germany have led the way in addressing the challenge of brining housing land in to use at lower prices, using land value taxes and planning powers. It’s little wonder that they can deliver house-building rates double or treble ours, whilst cutting the cost of housing. If they can do it, so can we.

Building enough new homes is a huge challenge. Getting a fair deal for taxpayers is an even bigger challenge. Land value reform now has to be on the agenda.

Steeling ourselves

Between 1979 and 1984, Sheffield lost more than 50,000 jobs in steel and engineering – more than the whole of the UK coal industry lost in any 5 year period. We understand the devastating long-term impact that such changes have on the whole economic, social and environmental status of a community. 

With major changes in the technology of steel-making, the location of raw materials, costs of energy, production capacity and patterns of demand, it was inevitable that there would be massive implications for the UK steel industry. The key political issue was not about change itself but about how such change was managed. 

For Margaret Thatcher’s government, wholesale redundancies and the destruction of local economies were seen as ‘the price worth paying’. To add insult to injury, Thatcher then blamed the victims and used that as a justification for minimising investment in managing the transition. It is little wonder that anger about those policies is so ingrained in Sheffield, South Yorkshire and other communities which were similarly affected.

As a matter of interest, a few years’ later I visited Anshan – Sheffield’s twin city in China – which is dominated by coal and steel production. I met the small team from Davy’s (now DavyMarkham) in Sheffield who were installing some modernised plant to improve efficiency in the steelworks. They explained that the plant they were installing was by no means cutting-edge; it was 20 year old technology. However, its installation would ‘only involve the redundancy of about 10,000 steelworkers, which was the maximum number that it was felt could be redeployed and retrained over the course of the next year’. In other words, continuous improvement in efficiency and effectiveness, but at a pace which could be managed. 

Let us roll forward to today with is devastating news that the decision to end 170 years of steelmaking in Redcar has resulted in 2,200 direct job losses, 1,000 onsite contractors have been laid off, and 6,000 job losses are expected in the local economy. The decision by TATA Steel to close its Long Products business has resulted in 900 jobs being lost in Scunthorpe, and the closure of plants in Dalzell and Clydebridge in Scotland, with 270 job losses. Caparo Industries have also filed for administration which puts at risk 1,700 jobs across the country.

In addition to the immediate job losses, the British economy can ill-afford further loss because steel is fundamental to a number of important sectors in which the UK is world-leading, including aerospace, automotives, defence, construction and energy infrastructure.

The industry faces a number of key challenges which can only be overcome by adopting a co-ordinated and active industrial strategy for steel, aimed at securing a long-term future for the industry. The industry is also being adversely affected by Chinese dumping of low-price steel.

But, this Conservative government has not only been sleeping on the job, it is reluctant to become involved at all. The Business Secretary has made it clear that he is ideologically opposed to having an industrial strategy. The contrast with Germany and other European steel producers is dramatic.

To my mind, it is absolutely clear that Government needs to rethink its approach and take an active role in supporting industry and high skilled jobs. These are the actions that the Government, as a minimum, should be taking:

First, implement immediately the Energy Intensive Industry Compensation Package, which would address the high energy costs the sector faces; UK energy prices are far higher than our European competitors face, let alone those in SE Asia and S America;

Secondly, take action to stop low-cost dumping. The Government must work with the EU Commission to back anti-dumping measures and review how effectively the Commission responds;

Thirdly, the Government should explore what other support the industry could be offered, including temporary action on Business Rates, reviewing how regulatory frameworks impact the industry, and promoting local content and sustainability in procurement contracts.

Fourthly, as a matter of long-term security, we should ensure that the UK continues to have the ability and capacity to produce a minimum amount of steel for the UK economy.

Fifthly, we need an urgent assessment of the impact of the loss of bulk-steel production on the long-term prospects for the production of specialist steels and alloys and engineered products for which the Sheffield City Region is renowned.

Contradictions

Over the years, many people have drawn my attention to polls which suggest that a significant majority of people would be prepared to pay more tax or higher charges if the extra money raised was being directed to the NHS. As it happens, I support that view.

Unfortunately, the same people want to ignore all the research evidence which shows that, when actually offered that choice, people don’t vote to pay more. When challenged about the contradiction, people explain their decisions by saying “I didn’t believe the extra cash would go to the NHS” or “I would pay more…….. but only when the number of managers is cut, or there isn’t any waste,”.

Of course, we have the right to expect that all our public services are run efficiently, effectively and responsively and that there is a continuous quest for performance improvement. Actually, the evidence suggests that they are, despite the relentless flow of stories to the contrary from some parts of the media which are determined to promote a particular view of the world.

There is an irony in the fact that, as an important part of our democratic process, we devote resources to exposing and making transparent any failure in public performance. I’m the chair of an all-party select committee part of whose remit is to hold the government’s performance to public account and quite right too.

But, just imagine the outcry there would be if there was a proposal that all companies were required to fund overview and scrutiny of every aspect of their own performances and that all the information and findings had to be made public. 

I wonder what Volkswagen’s scrutiny committee would have disclosed about the technology for assessing noxious emissions? Or what would Tesco’s scrutiny committee have told us about its accounting practices? Or what would the banks’ scrutiny committees have told us about the integrity of their activities? 

As a matter of interest, the world’s biggest 20 banks have now paid getting on for £200bn in fines alone since 2008. But, despite the extent of public anger about the banks’ activities, in true contradictory style, when faced with the choice, the same people express reluctance to regulate to intervene.

It’s good to talk………..then act

In the recent cyber-attack on it's service, TalkTalk reported that the personal and banking details of up to 4 million UK citizens may have been accessed by hackers. This was the third time that the company had suffered a large scale data breach in the past year. TalkTalk have since said that the number of people affected is “materially lower” but they still do not know exactly who is affected and to what extent.

Over the weekend, there have been a number of media reports that TalkTalk customers have suffered a range of consequential damage including that their bank accounts have been cleared out. Other customers report that they have been harassed by criminals. Actually, I think it’s unlikely that these events are related to this data-loss; they are more likely to be coincidental. What we do know is that stolen data is sold and re-sold, even rented, many times and over many years after the original theft.

The only thing that is clear is the widespread confusion about the extent, timing and consequences of the breach and about the various responsibilities and actions to be taken by the Information 

Commissioners Office and the Police. It is obvious that the Government has to do more to ensure confidence in this vital industry and to protect the personal and sensitive data of millions of UK citizens from cyber-criminals. 

In answers to parliamentary questions last week, the Conservative government Minister, Ed Vaizey, said that guidance to companies experiencing a data breach is issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). But the ICO guidance is vague. It simply does not answer customers’ legitimate concerns and entitlement to compensation where appropriate. Whilst the ICO require businesses to notify them of breaches, they do not insist on customers being informed. This is clearly unacceptable. In this case, 4 million customers must wonder who they can trust with their data.

The inability of TalkTalk’s Chief Executive to confirm that, after the previous hacking attacks, she had acted to ensure that customers’ data was properly encrypted was telling. TalkTalk’s share price is down 10%. I expect that shareholders and customers will insist that heads roll in the boardroom.

Open or closed?

Transparency or confidentiality?

All too often we hear people talk about human rights as though they are clear principles and requirements which will take you to a logical conclusion about a particular issue.

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, there are a variety of human rights – often spelled out in conventions or legislation – which set out principles, but often in practice, there is a conflict between particular human rights.

One simple example, which we see played out every day in the media, is the conflict between the right to privacy and a public right to know. The media will attempt to justify an intrusion into an individual’s right to privacy by arguing that publication is in the public interest. Actually, too often, it seems more to be justified on the basis of the prurient interest of the public – who doesn’t like a bit of gossip? – than in the public interest itself.

It was a debate that was partly played out in the Leveson Inquiry, as the media sought to justify all sorts of hacking and abuse of the right to privacy in the public interest. Incidentally, I don’t think we have yet heard the last about the extent of hacking over the last twenty years.
There has been a lengthy on-going debate about transparency and confidentiality in the courts that deal with family matters – divorce, adoption, care proceedings for children, protection proceedings for vulnerable adults.

In some ways, life is slightly easier since the establishment in 2014 of a single Family Court for nearly all family proceedings to replace proceedings which had formerly taken place in magistrates’ courts, county courts and the High Court.

There are rules concerning the disclosure of information from the Family Courts. They were last substantially updated in 2010. These allow the disclosure of information in particular circumstances to specified individuals, for example lawyers, social workers or other parties in the proceedings. The court itself can allow wider disclosure. But, beware, as disclosure outside these rules is likely to lead to a heavy fine or even imprisonment for the guilty.

Since 2009, accredited representatives of the media – but not the general public – have been allowed to attend court for some, but not all, proceedings in the Family Court. Nor are they allowed to identify children publicly. Further, since last year, new guidance has applied to the publication of judgements.

The current provisions have been criticised by the media, some MPs and some campaigning organisations. They suggest that confidentiality rules have prevented them from highlighting perceived injustices, especially in some care proceedings and adoption cases. Fathers’ rights groups claim that the rules just adds to the perception of court bias against fathers. However, too often the words secrecy and privacy are wrongly transposed.

In August 2014, the President of the Family Division published a consultation paper Transparency – The Next Steps. The consultation is still open. If you have any views on these issues, especially if they are informed by personal experience, it would be a good time to make them known.

You can find more information about the recent history about transparency and confidentiality in the Family Court:

Confidentiality and openness in the family courts: current rules and history of their reform
http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-7306

Transparency – the Next Steps

https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/transparency-the-next-steps-consultation-paper.pdf