CentreRight

Planes, trains and automobiles

Niche, sector-specific media is a strange world. In my time I've come across a weird and wonderful range of publications, many of which would not look out of place as Have I Got News For You guest publications.

This one really takes the biscuit, though. Doesn't it say everything about the bloated size of the state that there is now a whole magazine dedicated to "Public Sector Travel"?

Cough up

Henry Featherstone is Head of Policy Exchange's Health Unit.

Smoking remains a controversial issue in our society.  And today, our report, Cough up, has re-ignited the debate.  First, let’s be clear that smoking remains the biggest single preventable cause of death and serious disease in our society – 83,000 deaths in England last year.   But it’s legal, some people enjoy it and tobacco duty raises £10 billion for the Treasury.  

So why all the fuss?  Well, because for the first time we have exploded the popular myth that smoking is a net contributor to the economy.  Our research finds that every single cigarette smoked costs the country money - 6.5 pence each time someone lights up.  That’s £2.82 billion in lost revenue each year, when we’re running a budget deficit of £177 billion.   So following earlier Policy Exchange research that indicates that tobacco taxes are the most popular way to raise additional revenue, we suggest that tobacco taxation should be increased by 5% in the next Budget.  This would see the price of a typical pack of cigarettes rise by 23 pence from £6.13 to £6.36 per packet and generate over £400 million for HM Treasury.

Ah! I hear you say, but won’t increasing taxes just increases smuggling?  Not necessarily.  Since 2000 there has been a concerted effort to tackle tobacco smuggling into the UK and as a result the market share of smuggled cigarettes has fallen by 50%.  This has been achieved through increased co-operation with some tobacco companies, but sadly not all of them.   It should also be noted that the type of tobacco that is most frequently smuggled, hand rolled tobacco, is the tobacco which enjoys the lowest level of duty.

Of course the risk of just ratcheting up tobacco tax is that it ends up being regressive, since poorer people are more likely to smoke.  So we had identified about £180 million of interventions to reduce smoking prevalence aimed at particularly hard to reach groups like pregnant teenagers.  We suggest that direct financial incentives to stop smoking of £10 per week should be offered to pregnant women of, or below, the age of 20. This would cost £36 million annually and would be very cost-effective, with NICE already identifying huge cost benefits for reducing smoking in pregnancy.   If we’re going to be serious in our attempts at reducing health inequalities and stopping the cycle of tobacco addiction, then we need to do what works.

Attacks on YouGov are just plain silly

Another election, another round of irrationality about polling. On this site there have been any amount of attacks on YouGov, including a suggestion from one commenter that Conservative activists would soon be suing us. The last time we saw this was from Ken Livingstone’s team, who said they would make a formal complaint against us to the Market Research Society. Why? Because we showed Boris Johnson comfortably winning the London Mayorality, while Mori had Livingstone ahead. Pundits said, “This time YouGov will be proved wrong. This is the Big Test.” Our final pre-election poll showed Boris 6% ahead. The others had a tie, or a Livingstone lead. Boris won by 6%. Surprise surprise, there was no complaint to the MRS.

Now it’s some Conservatives who are complaining, because YouGov shows a lower Conservative lead than the other pollsters. The critics attribute this to some tweaks we have made to our sampling and weighting (see here). But surely anyone should understand this: you have to continuously tweak these things in order to stay accurate. It’s because we adapt the methodology that we have remained so accurate over our ten years of polling. It’s because the industry failed to adjust when things were changing that they go things so wrong in the past. For example, most pollsters use some form of past vote recall in order to weight their data. Past vote recall has some bias in it, and that bias changes from a few months after the last election to a few years after. Does anyone suggest there should be no adaptation? YouGov has a panel methodology, which means that we can compare what the same people say and do over many years. This helps us to be better at adapting our methodology (see here for our full record, compared to other pollsters and actual results.) Time will tell if we’re right this time.

But consider the graphs below. They show our 2005 general election tracker, with comparisons to those of Mori, ICM, NOP and Populus, and the actual result. What do you notice? True, NOP pipped us with their final poll. But look at the movement! In their final polls, all of them trend sharply toward YouGov’s numbers!

Maybe the same will happen this time, maybe it won’t. Maybe we’ll turn out to be closest, maybe we’ll be furthest. Impossible to say. But people should base their pronouncements on evidence, not on fantasy. Can anyone really believe – as some have actually claimed on this site – that either I (a Conservative supporter) or my colleague Peter Kellner (a Labour supporter) would deliberately distort our results in order to please one side or another? And thereby knowingly damage a company that has built up its business in 12 countries on the basis of its record for accuracy? Now that’s plain silly.

Most Unite members oppose donations to the Labour Party

Michael Gove has been doing an excellent job challenging the Labour Party over their dependence on the Unite union. But one point that deserves more attention is this Populus poll of Unite members taken a year ago.

Among the findings in the survey was that only 34% were Labour voters. There were 31% for the Conservatives and the Conservatives went into the lead among Unite members among those who said they were certain to vote and when there was a "forced choice" question between Labour and Conservatives. Yet 80% of Unite members are paying a Political Levy to the Labour Party. There must be over 100,000 Conservative supporters among Unite's membership in the position of having their money  being used to fund the Labour Party.

But the really significant question in the survey was:"Would you support or oppose Unite the union making further large financial donations to the Labour Party in the future?"

Support 31%.

Oppose 54%.

Don''t know 15%.

Would a company make donations against the wishes of its shareholders? Would any other membership organisation be so cavalier towards the views of its members over making political donations?

The Thatcher Government transfered power from the trade union leaders to the trade union members. The Cameron Government needs to do the same.

Fewer hospitals, more competition

Patrick Nolan, Chief Economist, Reform

The NHS occupies a unique place in British politics. MORI polling has shown that the most important issue to the country in this election campaign is the future of the service. As a result, as Andrew Haldenby and Nick Bosanquet have written, “Party leaders proclaim their lifelong love of it, MPs vow to fight for their local hospitals, but few dare spell out the difficult realities it faces – not least, unprecedented pressure on funding in the next few years.” But this political denial is doing no one any favours. It is time to have an honest debate on the NHS.

This honest debate should include discussion on the role that hospitals play in the health system.

The importance of change in health services can be shown by the example of coronary artery disease. Treatment used to require open heart bypass surgery – a costly and dangerous procedure which would require around a week in a hospital. Innovation now means that a more affordable and convenient treatment (angioplasty) is now available, meaning more people receive treatment and hospital stays are now only 48 hours. This treatment is being, in turn, replaced by pharmaceuticals (statins) which, when used as a preventative measures, reduces the need to enter hospital at all.

Next week’s Budget will mean that the poor state of the public finances will again come into focus. But debate around the Budget should not overlook the contribution of the NHS to the government’s financial woes. The NHS accounted for 40 per cent of the increase in inputs across the whole public sector between 1997 and 2007. Since 1997 spending on the NHS has doubled in real terms to £102 billion. One in every six pounds the government spends now goes on the health budget.

Blocking the Best

Alex Massey is a Research Fellow Policy Exchange's Education Unit.

On Monday evening a debate was held between the education spokesmen of the three main parties. Predictably, it wasn't long before the discussion turned to Sweden. As one frustrated audience member pointed out, Messrs Balls,  Gove and Laws mention the state of Swedish schools so regularly these days that one could be forgiven for thinking they are competing to become mayor of Stockholm - the small Nordic nation having become a convenient form of shorthand for the concept of independent, state-funded schools.

All three main parties have to some degree signalled support for the idea of encouraging new independent state schools. However, what this means in practice remains unclear. There are already about 200 'academies' in the UK, run by non-state providers notionally outside the control of local government. Many have been successful- some, like Mossbourne in Hackney, astonishingly so. But any party wishing to expand this small system will face big problems. There remain significant local obstacles to new schools being set up, while the range of potential providers is far more limited here than in Sweden and elsewhere. Moreover, many of the freedoms which new academies in theory enjoy are curtailed by bureaucratic realities, or have been severely eroded since the replacement of Andrew Adonis and Tony Blair by Ed Balls and Gordon Brown.

In Blair's words, the whole point of academies was “about schools feeling ownership of their own future, the power and the responsibility that comes from being free to chart their own course, experiment, innovate... the decision-makers in their own destiny.”    But Ed Balls made his suspicion of such thinking very clear during Monday's debate, when he denounced the false idol of independence and extolled the virtues of local authority-run education systems.   During his three years as Education Secretary, Balls has given local authorities a de facto veto on the creation of new academies (undermining the original purpose of the academies programme -  to reverse local authority failure); removed the freedom academies once enjoyed to set their own curriculum; and forced academies to co-operate with local authority-wide plans for the provision of children’s services, diluting their focus on improving educational outcomes.

If we are to attract more new providers to run new, high-quality schools, we must not only restore their independence, but also address the bureaucratic restrictions, regulations and inconsistencies that stand in their way.  This means overhauling prescriptive planning and building requirements, reforming school accountability, and sorting out the postcode lottery of local per-pupil funding, whereby an academy provider sets up two schools in deprived areas sixty miles apart - and the difference in funding between the two areas is £1,000 per pupil or more.

Policy Exchange’s report Blocking the Best is released today, and sets out the ways in which we might overcome the obstacles that confront new providers entering the schools system.  Additionally, it assesses the level of genuine independence available to academy sponsors, and points to where freedom must be granted or restored in areas such as curriculum, discipline, admissions and staff terms.  In summary, it’s an overview of what must be done to create a flourishing system of truly independent state schools.   Now we need to see who’ll go for it.

The Electoral Commission tells Returning Officers that failing to take reasonable steps to count votes on General Election Nights could see them prosecuted

Last week, Eric Pickles called for the Electoral Commission to give Returning Officers an "unambiguous steer" that General Election counts must take place on the Thursday night.

Yesterday, the Electoral Commission published a draft of its guidance (it won't be definitive until the Constitutional  Reform and Governance Bill becomes law) which is by all accounts quite encouraging.

It instructs Returning Officers who were thinking of counting on the Friday morning that they

"will now need actively to re-consider what steps it is reasonable to take in order to be able to commence counting the votes before 2am"

before reminding them that

"if they do not take reasonable steps, a court may find them to be in breach of their official duty under Section 63 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 (as amended)."

The draft guidance goes through some of the factors which Returning Officers will need to bear in mind when making their decision (eg venue availability, staffing, geography etc) and reminds the that anyone who does decide on a Friday count will by law have to be able to "provide an audit trail demonstrating their decision making process".

Read the draft guidance in its entirety here.

Mr Pickles responded to the publication of the draft guidance by reiterating his call for Returning Officers to do as Parliament has bid and prepare for a General Election Night count:

"Parliament has made a clear change to the law, creating a presumption in favour of overnight counts in the forthcoming general election. With the exception of the most geographically remote parts of the United Kingdom, town hall Returning Officers should now be actively planning to count their Parliamentary election on election night. Those who announced Friday counts should be making the necessary arrangements to revert back to Thursday evening counts. If unelected Returning Officers intend to defy the will of Parliament, they should come clean and say so now. There is still time for the Bill to be amended to make it more robust so that Parliament’s democratically expressed wishes can be duly implemented."

Return of the Jedi

I've written before about the plight of the Jedi in these intolerant times (for the avoidance of doubt here on the interweb, where everything is taken literally by somebody, tongue is currently embedded in cheek).

Part of the motivation behind the declaration of themselves as "Jedi" is perhaps a result of Government nosiness with censuses.

In any case, the Sun brings us the news that

1) a hoodie refused to take his hood off in a Job Centre

2) he was asked to leave as a result

3) he pointed out that he was a member of the International Church of Jediism

4) he was sent a written apology from the Job Centre for failing to respect his religion.

Political correctness in extremis, no? This is what you get when you pander to nonsense. 

And given that he was in a Job Centre, it seems apposite to ask - how do you think he might get on in a job where he refused to put his hood down..?

Hat tip: AW

Self-care is a vital component of sustainable care

The BBC have covered this morning a report by the Self-Care Campaign that is singing from the same hymn sheet as 2020health's reports on Responsibility in Healthcare and our What Women Want manifesto: unless we encourage, nudge, educate, incentivise, whatever towards self-care, the 'dependency culture' will continue to drain the NHS of vital resources that are desperately needed for those with serious illness.

Using stats published in August last year, today's report identifies that one fifth of GP appointments are a waste of their time - coughs, colds, backache, dermatitis, constipation. (Even now I can hear the relevant campaign groups reaching for their keypads to write and tell me of all the deadly diseases of which these 'innocuous' symptoms can be the first sign - no need please - we're simply advocating common sense and discretion). Privately I have had GPs tell me it's up to 40% that are unnecessary. And there are no tears being shed over the potential loss of these patients as they are currently having to be fitted in around the greater number of patients being treated 'in the community' i.e.by the same GPs. 

Some say this 'dependency' dates back to the inception of the NHS; I'm not sure about that - but what I am sure of is that over the last 12 years, the emphasis on easier access to health professionals, extension of 'free' prescriptions and knowledge that we are treated no matter what has been interpreted by too many as an entitlement with no obligation. It's unaffordable.

All Parties should be embracing self-care as a common sense part-solution to a long term sustainable healthcare system. It's simple: more self-care = fewer cutbacks. It should be part of a four way deal: industry should be providing more health services; individuals should be using health services more wisely; professionals should be enabling self-care and the government should be ensuring the highest standards of care, practice and information are disseminated and implemented.

Modernising and Modernising*

Finkelstein says that the "simple case  for modernising" is that the Conservatives were crushed in 1997, 2001 and 2005.  "The basis for modernisation was crushing defeat, underpinned by a long term decline. The basis is social change and political change that require a proper response...I am continually astonished by those who believe that essentially repeating the strategies employed in three monumental, terrible, dreadful defeats can possibly be a solution for the Tories."

I think Finkelstein is badly wrong here, in two ways.  One is not deeply important, but is worth noting.  The other is crucial.  I shall explain...

NHS spending is different to Department of Health spending

I wrote a piecefor the Daily Mail Online today about the Department of Health spending a staggering £487 million on management consultants over the last five years. But this is small beer compared to the spending on consultants by the NHS - which according to a report from the Royal College of Nursing is £350 million a year.

This reminded me that Department of Health spending and NHS spending are not quite the same. This helpful atlas by The Guardian shows that the Department of Health is spending £109.4 billion this year. But it is apparently only passing on £94.5 billion to the NHS. There one a half billion on Personal Social Services. There is also £13.4 billion on NHS pensions. There is £170 million that goes to the Health Protection Agency which appears as a separate entity to either the NHS or the Department of Health.

Apart from the management cconsultants the Department of Health also spends £632 million on Quangos (according to the Government narrow definition of a Quango.) Then how much money is being spent b the Department of Health on spin doctors, target setters and data crunchers? The Conservative transparency rules mean we shall soon know. Yet surely this will mean a Cameron Government will be pen to challenge on one of its sending plans. I can understand the reasons why the Conservatives are pledged to ringfence NHS spending. But why extend this to health spending generally? Why should Department of Health spending be ringfenced.

"Health and safety fears" call a halt to an English tradition after more than 200 years

Is there any corner of our lives which is not intruded upon by the Health and Safety brigade?

The latest casualty is the Cheese Rolling at Cooper's Hill in Gloucestershire, where people have chased a round of Double Gloucester cheese down the hill near Gloucester every spring bank holiday for at least 200 years.

It has been cancelled due to fears for the safety of the large crowd expected to attend.

The Gloucestershire Echo reports the reaction of Tewkesbury Borough Councillor Mike Collins, who is a Liberal Democrat:

"I'm incredibly disappointed the event has been cancelled, but I think it was the right decision. It's gone from being a community event to an international phenomenon, and there just isn't room for that number of people on the hill."

Thankfully there is more common sense from local County Councillor Mark Hawthorne, a Conservative:

"The cheese rolling is a great Gloucestershire event that brings thousands of visitors in to the county. I am really disappointed to hear about the cancellation, which had nothing to do with the county council. I have been told that the event was cancelled by the organisers following a problem with their insurers. I'm going to get in touch with them to see if there's anything we can do to help get this great Gloucestershire event back on track. Cheese rolling has been going on for hundreds of years and we must ensure that this great tradition continues."

For now, you can still enjoy last year's highlights.

James Bethell: Nick Griffin is playing a game with the courts and the continuing judicial challenge to the BNP risks playing into his hands

By James Bethell, Director of Nothing British.

Two attempts to legislate against the BNP reached different conclusions today, revealing a muddle at the heart of government which plays into the hands of Nick Griffin during the important build-up to his key election battles in Barking and Stoke this May.

This morning the Maurice Smith Review rejected the suggestion made by a teaching union of an “endemic culture of institutional racism” in the schools system. The former Chief Inspector of Schools turned down calls for a specific ban on teachers who are members of the BNP. The review was a wrong-headed initiative in the first place, an opportunistically-timed autumn headline for the Education Secretary, it was redolent of the hapless cynicism of Yes, Minister’s Jim Hacker.

The misleading impression given by Ed Balls suggested a racist conspiracy to subvert our 500,000 teachers which required firm central government action. Smith found no such evidence and limited the damage by producing a short report with minimal fuss (and no expensive touchy-feely pictures, which is a nice change) that rehearses the well-known argument that there are already multiple protections for our children against the unproven threat of racist teachers peddling sectarianism in the classroom. He has wisely recommended that no further measures against the BNP are necessary (and it’s worth noting that his remit did not include any other extremist organisations like the Islamic Forum of Europe or Hizb ut-Tahrir).

A few hours later, the courts rejected draft amendments from the BNP to their illegal whites-only constitution. Gone is the notorious “indigenous Caucasian” genetic test. Instead there is a loyalty test, with the BNP requiring potential members to be "implacably opposed to the promotion, by any means, of integration or assimilation". Another clause expresses opposition to mixed-race marriages. An intimidating two-hour test in people’s homes gives potential members a chance to demonstrate their commitment to these points.

Cameron reiterates promise to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir

David Cameron talks to Martin Bright in this week's Jewish Chronicle about how a Conservative government would deal with certain issues relating to extremism in the UK.

His comments are a mixed bag. It was encouraging to see Cameron talk about addressing Islamist radicalisation flourishing on campus, although his comments were frustratingly light on substantive policy. He was also badly briefed. Cameron mentioned that under the Conservatives, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader, and Ibrahim el-Moussaoui, Hizbollah's media relations officer, would both be banned from the country. Admirable sentiments; the only problem being that Labour already banned Qaradawi from entering the UK in 2008, and did the same to Moussaoui a year later.

What I found most interesting was that Cameron again insisted, this close to the election, that revolutionary Islamist party Hizb ut-Tahrir will be banned by a Conservative government. This has been repeated so many times now, not only by Cameron but also by Chris Grayling and Pauline Neville-Jones, that I find it hard to believe it will be quietly dropped should the Conservatives win power.

As I have written previously, the legal grounds for banning Hizb are extremely shaky indeed. While they provide the ideological basis for terrorist acts, there is no evidence that the group has direct links to terrorism. Russia is the only European country to have banned the group outright. In Germany it is illegal to conduct any activity in the group's name, although membership of the group remains legal. However the ban that is in effect there relates specifically to Hizb's antisemitism, and is something unique to the German constitution. The Public Order Act of 1986 already protects Jewish communities from racial hatred here in the UK.

Should Cameron win power, how he plans to go about making good on this promise can be added to the list of significant challenges he is going to face.

Soldiers need proxy votes

As I trudge around canvassing I am reminded by colleagues that it is more productive to spend time checking if existing Conservative supporters need Postal Vote forms rather than trying to convert opponents.

But what of those serving abroad in the armed forces? They need to be sent Proxy Vote forms rather than Postal Vote forms. The issue was raised in Parliament today.

Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby) (Con): I draw my hon. Friend’s attention to column 288 at yesterday’s Prime Minister’s questions, when it was pointed out that the Army Families Federation has carried out trials showing that the majority of troops serving overseas will be unable to vote. In order to maximise voter participation, will my hon. Friend speak again to the Electoral Commission and take on board the point that I have made before, which is that there should be one registration when people join the armed forces and an encouragement to cast proxy votes, so that when they serve their country abroad, which involves the possibility of dying for their country, they have the opportunity to vote?

Mr. Streeter: That is a very important matter, and the Electoral Commission is extremely alive to it. The commission is working closely with the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Defence, Royal Mail, the British Forces Post Office and electoral administrators to ensure that everything is done to improve the situation. Given the tight time scales involved in exercising a postal vote once a general election is called, my hon. Friend makes an extremely important point that proxy voting may be the right answer. The commission is certainly aware of that.

I would have thought that rather than relying on the Government or the Electoral Commission to do anything about it friends and relatives of soldiers should post them off Proxy Vote forms straight away to ensure they are not disenfranchised.

Powerless parents

Sometimes a story comes along that is literally jaw-dropping. One of those is in today's Daily Mail. As part of a programme teaching children about the Holocaust, teachers at St Hilary's Primary School in East Kilbride took an unbelievably irresponsible approach to impressing the horrors of the Final Solution on their pupils.

Instead of presenting the class of 11 year olds with the facts, which are shocking and disturbing enough in themselves to communicate the grim reality of the Holocaust, they decided to subject their pupils to a traumatic experience of their very own.

The Deputy Headmistress, it is reported, announced that by order of the Scottish Executive some of the children judged to have "low IQ" were to be separated from their classmates and sent away - perhaps to an orphanage. They would never be allowed to see their parents again. She then went on to tell them that their parents had been made aware of the decision, too, implying that they endorsed it.

Understandably, the children picked out were worried and upset. An authority figure in their school had told them that she, the Government and their parents had agreed that they were to be separated from their families.

As a lesson, it is unlikely to be forgotten, but it is of no perceivable value. These young children were put through a wholly unpleasant experience, and humiliated in front of their classmates. The teachers in charge seem to have a low opinion of their own ability to communicate history through normal teaching, twinned with a reckless disregard for the well-being of their pupils.

This is not a case for crying "something must be done", or demanding central government produces a new set of rules banning teachers from scaring schoolchildren. In the best case scenario, such a move would produce irrelevant rules at large expense. In the worst case, the clause against scaring children would undoubtedly be used to clamp down on genuinely worthwhile activities such as outward bound events.

What we really need to stop teachers like these from pursuing such abject nonsense is for parents to be given real power over schools. At the moment, you have to pack your child off to school where the teachers can be as irresponsible, incompetent or downright harmful as they want and as a parent you have very little power to change things.

The parents of children subjected to this deeply unpleasant experience should have the power to gather the support of other parents and change the school's policy, get the person responsible dismissed or punish the school as an institution by moving their children elsewhere.

Daniel Kawczynski MP: Why was a Labour MP allowed to use a room in Parliament to promote his book when I was told by the Commons authorities that it would be an abuse of taxpayer-funded facilities if I did the same thing?

Daniel Kawczynski is Conservative MP for Shrewsbury and Atcham. Here he shares the letter he has written this week to John Lyon, the the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, seeking an investigation into a Labour MP allegedly using parliamentary facilities for his own commercial benefit.

Dear Mr Lyon,

I write to request your attention with regards to a matter that has caused me considerable frustration. I hope that given the flagrant disregard shown towards the rules governing the Parliamentary estate, you will investigate the following matter and take the serious action the situation warrants.

On March 8th, from 18:00 – 20:00, the Thatcher Room in Portcullis House was booked for a private event by the Hon member for Newport West, Mr Paul Flynn MP. It is my understanding however that the event in question is promoting the honourable member’s book that has recently been published.

The rules of the House with regards room bookings are clear, and to quote the Parliamentary commissioner for standards:

The Rules on booking rooms make clear that they can be booked for purposes connected to the Parliamentary duties of the Member booking the room. This excludes "events of a commercial nature."

Any disregard of these rules causes me great frustration, as it brings the House, through use of its facilities by members, into disrepute; causing the standing of Parliament to fall even further in the eyes of the electorate. This case becomes even more pertinent to myself as in my own endeavours to be as transparent and accountable as possible in using facilities that have been funded by the taxpayer, I recently held the launch of my book, a biography of Colonel Gaddafi, at the Royal Institute of Mechanical Engineers on Birdcage Walk. This I did at considerable cost as I felt and was indeed advised by Commons Authorities that to use a room in the Commons to launch my book would be inappropriate and an abuse of taxpayers' money.

For Mr Flynn to be able to use facilities on the Parliamentary estate in order to host an event which promotes his own book I find to be a blatant breach of Commons rules and is wholly unacceptable.

I implore you therefore to take up this matter with the honourable member, as I believe him to be entirely culpable for breaching regulations governing the use of rooms on the Parliamentary estate. Should this be the case, I feel the right course of action would be for the member to be invoiced with the equivalent rates for hiring the same sized room for duration of two hours in a central London location in SW1A.

I sincerely hope that this matter will be dealt with the utmost seriousness and vigour, and I look forward very much to receiving your response in due course.

Daniel Kawczynski MP

Conservatives move towards a Freedom of Data Act

Stephan Shakespeare is Chairman of the Network for the Post-Bureaucratic Age.

Today at a gathering of the Network for the Post-Bureaucratic Age the Conservatives are launching their 'Tech Manifesto'. It contains a bold new commitment: a 'Right to Government Data'.

This is truly game-changing, responding to the huge opportunities offered by technology and mashable data. It's more than an opportunity, it's an imperative, as technology will be driving the development of business, democracy and culture. A government that fails to respond to the changes happening through the online/mobile-apped behaviour of its population will be failing its economy and its society. Only radical openness will make the most of this golden moment.

I won't rehearse the arguments again because I've already gone over them on here, here and (with Janan Ganesh) here. So let me briefly focus on where we (enthusiasts of the Post-Bureaucratic Age) need to press for more.

Firstly, it's not quite a "Freedom of Data Act" (as we called for at the Feb22 conference launching the Network for the Post-Bureaucratic Age) but "Right to Government Data". What's in a name? Maybe not much, and just represents caution. I’m assured they want to get on with this as quickly as possible, and not have to wait for legislation, which will inevitably take a while. But we must eventually have the principle enshrined in legislation, not just tweaks to regulation and top-down directives. Would we have got the expenses data if there hadn’t been an Act?

And in the announcement made today, I’m worried about this detail: the Conservatives say people will have the right to request and receive government data sets. But the onus should be placed on government to make these available automatically. One of the weaknesses of the Freedom of Information Act is that people have to request, and in that process hangs the tale: it allows for obfuscation and obstruction. The right should be actively, automatically pursued by government, we should not be supplicants for data that we paid for, that we supplied, that is about and for us. The principle to which I'd like to see a commitment is: "The data belongs to the citizens, any withholding not democratically sanctioned by citizens is theft".

That principle would also address my second niggle: the document from the Conservatives talks of setting free "a wide range of government data sets" but not of all. How far does the 'right' extend? The question demands careful consideration around contradictions between the demands of openness and personal privacy, openness and security, and it will take a while to work through that, so I accept a cautious approach today. But what is the principle behind it? Is it accepted that citizens own all the data and the decisions are democratic rather than administrative? In other words, who will decide what must be released, will it be for the public to decide the limits, or will it be left for government administrators to engineer them?

This new policy from the Conservatives is an exciting, important new instalment of the post-bureaucratic age which clearly provides the 'hard edge' people have been looking for, something that has direct and profound economic value, as well as social and democratic value. What we now need to see is all the parties trying to trump each other with ever bolder commitments to ever-extending openness, until we get what we need: a true Freedom of Data Act.

Conservatives and the environment – the next step in a long tradition

He was not like Party leaders that came before him. This leader of the Conservative Party was modern, dynamic and forward looking. There were a number of policy priorities that he wanted to push to realise his modernising vision, and the environment was one of them.

Conservatives, he reasoned, were natural stewards of the environment, keen to conserve its vitality and pass its benefits and beauty on to future generations.

He faced grumbles from some and protest from others, but he pressed on, confident that prioritising this issue was not just good for his Party, but good for Britain. 

That was in 1876 and the Conservative Party leader was Benjamin Disraeli. The River Pollution Prevention Act, which his government put into law that year to prevent the dumping of raw sewage into Britain’s rivers, proved seminal, going on to influence environmental legislation well into the 20^th century. 

The greening of the Conservative Party under David Cameron in the 21^st Century is neither a recent conversion nor a simple re-branding exercise. It is a philosophical homecoming. Tories have a long and proud history of environmental preservation, going back to Edmund Burke’s 18^th Century views on generational stewardship.

It was a Conservative government that rid London of pea-soup smog with the Clean Air Act. It was the Tories who introduced the Green Belt across England to preserve our countryside in the 1950s. It was Margaret Thatcher who was the first international leader to speak to the UN General Assembly on the dangers of climate change.

Three new blogs worth bookmarking

ITN's political editor, Tom Bradby has started blogging.

Nick Watt and Patrick Wintour of The Guardian's politics team are now writing a joint blog.

And there's Professor Philip Cowley's Election 2010 blog; an interesting attempt to bring academic insights to a wider audience.

It's time to change how the Commons honours our war dead

By Paul Goodman MP.

Each week, Prime Minister's Questions begins with a roll of honour - as it will today.  The Prime Minister pays tribute to members of our armed forces killed in Afghanistan.  The Leader of the Opposition does likewise. So does the Leader of the Liberal Democrats.  So may other MPs.

Am I alone in believing that the Commons could improve upon this practice?

I'm not suggesting that  our present-day war dead shouldn't be commemorated in the Commons.  They should and must be. There are better ways of remembering them - which I'll return to later.  But I want to pause for a moment to explain why the Chamber could do better than the present custom.

The roll of honour was introduced by Tony Blair.  I don't want to suggest that his motives were entirely self-interested. But the innovation was extremely convenient for him.  PMQs is essentially adversarial. The Leader of the Opposition attacks.  The Prime Minister defends - and counter-attacks. Everything else tends to be secondary.

It's that little bit harder after the roll of honour has been read for MPs to press the Prime Minister about anything from new Cabinet splits to lost computer discs.  Set against men making the ultimate sacrifice for their country, even the most legitimate criticism, undertaken by people who aren't laying their lives on the line, seems somehow petty and tawdry.  Which Blair would have known when he introduced the practice.

He'd also have grasped something else.  By bringing in the roll-call, he was identifying honouring our dead with the Executive - and with himself - rather than with the legislature as a whole.  It's right that the Government, through its Ministers, should commemorate our losses.  But Ministers shouldn't own the Commons and its business and procedures.  MPs should.  It would therefore be appropriate for the legislature itself - which represents the whole country, rather than the Executive, which by its nature can't do so - to take the lead in paying tribute to those who've fallen.

Which brings me to alternatives to the present practice.  I've heard two mooted.  The first is that the names of the dead should be read during the prayers that precede Commons business each day.  The second is that, since prayers take place in private, their names should be read out in public - by the Speaker in the moments between the end of daily prayers and the beginning of daily questions.  I've no fixed view: perhaps the two ideas could in some way be combined.  Maybe Conservative Home readers have other suggestions.  Either way, the Commons could surely honour better those who've lain down their lives for their country.

The Renewal of Government

By Neil O'Brien

The little groups of forlorn-looking smokers you normally see outside Government buildings have been replaced over the last few days by gangs of official pickets in fluorescent jackets.  The PCS union has been striking in protest at government plans to reform the generous redundancy payouts regime which currently applies in the civil service.  As a result, court hearings have been postponed, job centres have been operating a skeleton service and 2,000 driving tests were cancelled.  People have found it difficult to get their passports or benefits.

This is just a little taster of things to come.

Whoever wins the election faces a really tough slog, and many battles with the public sector unions. Labour have set out plans for tax rises and spending cuts worth £77 billion.  Oddly enough, they still don’t want to say where the axe will fall.

Even so, the Treasury grimly forecasts that our debts will rise to £1.5 trillion - more than twice the upper ceiling level for debt which Gordon Brown promised to remain below.  And in reality a bigger tightening is needed to stop our debt from soaring ever upwards, because the Treasury forecasts assume that we will immediately bounce back into a wonderful economic boom.  But, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out, there are good reasons to think growth will be weak for years - unless something big changes.

As we point out today in a new book - The Renewal of Government - getting spending back under control will not be enough to solve our problems.  The next government must unashamedly go for growth if we are going to get out of this mess.

On the supply side, we must staunch the flow of business regulation, make it easier and cheaper to build, and reduce the huge cost of energy and climate policies.  Government must encourage house building and business development. We need to ensure that local authorities directly benefit from development, so that they have a powerful incentive to grant planning permission.  We should consider innovative answers to the problem of housing in the South East, including docklands style development zones in areas people want to live.  Government must also facilitate investment in our creaking energy and transport infrastructure, services that are the life blood of any healthy economy.

DNA Q&A

My question here, your answer in the comments...

If, as Alan Johnson's new "hard hitting" video suggests, the acquisition by the state of as many DNA samples as possible (including from innocent people) is a good thing, then why aren't samples from Johnson and his Cabinet colleagues on the database?

How Parliament should confront anti-Muslim hatred and violence

By Paul Goodman MP.

I have in front of me as I write a meticulously-compiled document from the Community Security Trust – its “Antisemitic Incidents Report 2009”.

The report details such incidents, breaks them down into different types, and reports trends within those categories.  There’s an active All-Party Group on Anti-Semitism in Parliament.  The Government has an inter-departmental working group to combat the prejudice.  Ministers can be held to account in relation to it during an annual Parliamentary debate.

There are no comparable figures for incidents relating to Islamophobia or the hatred of Muslims.  (The two are not quite the same – a point that I’ll return to later.)  Perhaps this is because there is no Muslim equivalent of the Community Security Trust to collect and order data.  Certainly, there’s no All-Party Group on Islamophobia and anti-Muslim prejudice to date, no similar Government working group, no annual Parliamentary debate.

To suggest that anti-semitism and Islamophobia/hatred of Muslims are equivalent is controversial.  There are obvious differences.  One is based primarily on race (though containing a religious element); the other is based mainly on religion (though containing a racial element – often a very significant one).  Comparing and contrasting can take one round in loops and get one nowhere.

Debt relief can do more harm than good

By Roger Helmer MEP.

Labour's attempts to promote debt relief for poor countries appear superficially admirable.  In reality, the Private Member's Bill sponsored by Labour MP Andrew Gwynne, which has reached committee stage in the House of Commons (March 9) is one-sided and ill-informed, and will serve only to limit developing countries' access to secondary capital markets, isolating them from future prospects of public and private lending.  It is beset with perverse incentives and unintended consequences.

Susceptible to the charms of celebrities like Jason Donovan, the British public is deceived about the probable outcomes of this legislation. The only way to alleviate poverty and spur growth in the developing world is (God forbid!) to let free markets flourish.  Gwynne's Bill forces investors to comply with arbitrary levels of debt forgiveness and denies creditors access to due process to recover reasonable levels of debt from sovereigns with the ability to pay.  More importantly, the Bill potentially encourages corruption in the developing world by allowing debt relief for kleptocrats who have continuously looted such loans from their citizens.  Does Labour want the UK to become a safe haven for the attachable assets of corrupt governments? Or is it a jurisdiction where contracts are respected?

Unilateral and arbitrary debt relief rewards the profligate and punishes the prudent.  It creates moral hazard.  It cuts off the recipients from future access to funds -- and may thus increase the demand for foreign aid from the British tax-payer.

As Conservative MP Christopher Chope (Christchurch) observed in the Commons debate on the Bill:

“My heart goes out to the people of heavily indebted poor countries. They are heavily indebted because, for the most part, their leaders have been corrupt. We need only take a look at the leaders of Liberia and other countries. Many of them have substantial funds in, for instance, Swiss bank accounts. For such countries that are essentially corrupt, we seem, in effect, to be saying that we should indulge that corruption by writing off these debts, even when they have been incurred as a result of commercial transactions.”

Private Members Bills are usually a flash in the pan – an opportunity to score points with constituents or against the opposition. However, the Gwynne Bill, backed by the government and an emotive public campaign by Jubilee Debt, has the potential to become British law, and British taxpayers will pick up the costs for the developing world’s continued reliance on aid.