Jill Kirby: Being a woman was intrinsic to Margaret Thatcher's rise. And it was also intrinsic to her fall

Jill Kirby is a writer and policy analyst, and was Director of the Centre for Policy Studies, 2007-2011.

“If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.” So Margaret Thatcher advised the Townswomen's Guild in a speech she gave in 1965. Ten years later, she became the first woman to lead the Conservative Party. The rest, as they say, is history – history made by a woman. Baroness Thatcher certainly lived up to her own famous aphorism, proving that a woman in politics could indeed get things done; she knew when it was time to cut through the chat and make it happen.

As a woman in a man's world (and there is no question that politics was dominated by men) gave Margaret Thatcher particular strengths; in my view, being female was an important factor in her success. As I will explain later in this piece, however, I believe it was also an ingredient in her downfall.

Jill Kirby: Michael Gove is right to change course

Was it the curse of Clegg, the EU, Whitehall intransigence or the advice of the Education Select Committee, or all of these, that forced Michael Gove's climbdown on E-bacc certificates? Whatever the reason, I believe the Education Secretary is right to accept that these certificates would be a “reform too far.” Indeed, I said as much last September, arguing that it's unwise and unnecessary to introduce this confusingly-named new qualification.

The steps Mr Gove has already put in place to make GCSEs more academically robust,  overhauling the curriculum content and cutting out retakes and coursework, will go a long way to restoring confidence in the exam; there is no need to scrap them. Especially since the E-bacc certificate idea was already neutered by the LibDems, who had insisted that it must be an exam for all, rather than targeted at the more academic.

So I'm glad Mr Gove has decided that this particular game is no longer worth the candle. I remain hopeful that he will instead adopt the approach I advocated at the same time: extending the use of  International GCSEs, already being offered alongside GCSEs in many independent and some state-maintained schools. As an internationally recognised qualification offering greater rigour for more academically-inclined children, the IGSCE offers all that the E-bacc would have achieved, without tearing down the existing system.

Jill Kirby: Martin Narey - Dangerous anti-family ideologue or inspired reformer?

By Jill Kirby

Martin Narey, the Government’s new "Adoption Czar", wants more children taken away from their parents and put into care. He thinks that local authorities are too willing to place neglected children with members of their extended family, rather than having them adopted by strangers. And he wants courts and social workers to be told that care is a good option for a neglected child, not a last resort.

So is he a dangerous ideologue who wants to break up families, or an inspired choice to shake up our sluggish adoption system and give vulnerable children a better chance in life?

Martin Narey and I have clashed in the past, on the subject of Sure Start (I don’t share his enthusiasm for it) as well as his approach to child poverty. But I find much to agree with in his adoption report for yesterday’s Times (£) and I believe that Michael Gove and Tim Loughton are right to give the former Barnardo’s chief the opportunity to put his recommendations into practice. Too many previous initiatives to speed up adoption have run into the sand. I think we need to look much more closely at the practices which allow damaged children to go back and forth between parents and temporary carers until their prospects of successful adoption have vanished. Narey’s report shows that he is prepared to overturn current assumptions and make some radical changes.

Jill Kirby: Does the MOJ really believe sentencing discounts will cut costs?

By Jill Kirby

By using rape as the example to make the case for bigger sentencing discounts, and by handling his media appearances so catastrophically, Ken Clarke highlighted a proposed change to sentencing policy that might otherwise have received very little attention. The government has tried to close down the controversy by withdrawing the suggestion that men accused of rape could get their sentences halved if they plead guilty early. But the possibility of halving other sentences in return for a guilty plea remains on the table. 

The consultation paper in which the sentence-halving proposal first surfaced was published by the Ministry of Justice last December. (Incidentally, the consultation period closed at the beginning of March, so Ken Clarke's suggestion last week that these proposals are still up for consultation seems like a hasty re-think.) The MOJ believes that the present policy of offering one-third sentence discounts in return for guilty pleas is not doing enough to reduce the courts' caseload. The consultation paper says that more than two-thirds of crown court cases end in a guilty plea, but that the pleas are made too late. In 2009, for example, 10,000 guilty please were made at the door of the court ie the last possible moment before trial. So a large proportion of the costs of the trial have already been incurred, not to mention the delay to all cases caused by the large – and increasing – number of cases waiting to be heard.

Jill Kirby: The Coalition should resist the allure of declaratory legislation

By Jill Kirby

I’m not going to speculate on who leaked the Fox letter, nor do I propose to comment here on the desirability of increasing overseas aid spending. But I’m interested in the concerns the Defence Secretary raises about enshrining objectives in legislation.

Fox expresses his fear that, in the case of the aid budget and also the passing into law of the ‘Military Covenant’, the Government is opening itself to the risk of expensive and damaging lawsuits based on those statutory commitments.

That's a reasonable objection. I think there’s also a bigger reason not to pass laws of this kind: legislation should not be used to make a political point. Back in 2008 I criticised the Blair and Brown governments for their propensity to pass “declaratory legislation”, which I then identified as one of the techniques used by Labour to disguise government failure. Unrealistic carbon targets (sound familiar?) and unattainable child poverty targets were just two examples I cited; everyone knew at the time that these were pie-in-the-sky (although, regrettably, rather than point this out, the Conservatives signed up to both). Not only does the subsequent failure to meet legislated targets leave government looking ineffective, it also creates widespread and justifiable cynicism about the political process.

The Coalition’s success in alleviating world poverty, or in respecting and rewarding its own armed forces, will rest on numerous day-by-day decisions, not on a clause in a bill. Nor should we ignore the possibility that making the right decisions may be hindered, rather than helped, by the existence of legal targets.

In decreeing a fixed-share aid budget and enacting terms for the treatment of our armed forces, it seems the Coalition is fast succumbing to the allure of declaratory legislation. It’s a temptation that should be resisted. Governments are judged according to their effectiveness, not by the laws they have passed.

Jill Kirby: The benefits of marriage are not coincidental

As hundreds of guests arrive at the Abbey this morning, thousands of spectators line the streets of Westminster and millions of viewers tune in on TV or Youtube, Prince William and Catherine Middleton will be aware that the promises they make to each other are being witnessed by more people than at any previous wedding in Britain (and probably the world). This must be terrifying for the couple: wedding nerves multiplied to an unimaginable extent. But to offset those nerves, what an extraordinary sense of confidence the bride and groom will have from the knowledge that millions of people are wishing them well, sharing their day and wanting this marriage to succeed.

No other married couple can count on goodwill on this scale. But every couple deciding to get married is making a public statement as well as a private commitment. Set aside for one moment the grandeur of today's ceremony, its constitutional implications and the media circus. Think about any couple of your acquaintance, and ask yourself how your attitude is changed by their decision to marry and to make their promises to each other in front of you, their family and their friends - whether in a church, a registry office, a stately home or hotel garden. Marriage does make a difference: these two people are telling you that they plan to spend their lives together and that they would like you to help them to stick with that decision. They are no longer just two people who started with a date and ended up living under the same roof.

Jill Kirby: Will it be left to Ed Miliband to speak up for families?

By Jill Kirby

As Ed Miliband finally confirms his plans to marry the mother of his children, the Office of National Statistics has released provisional figures showing marriage rates in England and Wales declined steeply through the Labour years, with fewer weddings taking place in 2009 than at any time since 1895. 

But does the Coalition have any aspirations to halt the trend away from marriage, or to boost the couple family? The Government’s failure to develop a pro-family narrative has been under fire from all sides lately.

On Monday the Fabian Society berated George Osborne for Budget changes that will push low and middle-income families further into tax, chiming with criticisms previously levelled by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Last month’s annual review of comparative family taxation by Christian charity Care showed that the UK tax system is still the most anti-family in Europe, with a bias against families that is growing, not shrinking; the Budget has widened the gap.

In Tuesday's Telegraph Mary Riddell launched an all-out attack, asserting that David Cameron has “turned his back on the family.”  Riddell’s opening claim, that the presence of parents with young children on Saturday’s protest march represents a tipping point, is simply fanciful. But the danger for the Coalition is that a story is developing in both left and right-wing press which may prove difficult to dispel.

Jill Kirby: Today's Budget contained rather too many shades of Brown

Jill Kirby is a writer and policy analyst with a particular interest in family and welfare issues. Click here to read her Budget preview.

Well, I guess it was a faint hope that this would be a Budget for families. But I really wasn't expecting the Chancellor's peroration to have so many shades of Brown.

Instead of simplification, what we heard today was complex and fiddly. Rather than a sweeping away of regulation, there was a long list of micro initiatives. There was also the glossing over of obscure but unwelcome changes (such as the indexing of tax allowances to CPI rather than RPI) whilst bigging up the pre-announced goodies.

The much-trailed increase in the personal allowance to £7,475 is welcome and right, but for most families it will be offset by the increase in NI combined with the loss of child-related support.

Cutting petrol duty provided the Chancellor with his feel-good moment, but paying for it by a windfall tax on oil companies is another Brownian wheeze – superficially attractive what are the implications for tax certainty, investment and energy independence? Wouldn't it be greener, fairer to families and indeed
more Lawsonian to help families through direct tax cuts?

My rather grumpy conclusion this afternoon: mix blue and orange and what you get is Brown.

Jill Kirby: George Osborne needs to think of families as engines of growth

Jill Kirby is a writer and policy analyst with a particular interest in family and welfare issues.

The Chancellor should reflect on the role of families in creating a thriving economy. Working families experiencing falling incomes are about to suffer NI rises and the loss of tax credits, while rampant inflation is severely denting their spending power. So it’s not surprising that yesterday’s ComRes poll for the Mail showed 64% of the public think the Government doesn’t understand the problems faced by ordinary families.

The Treasury’s decision to cut back on non means-tested payments - such as Child Benefit and the family and baby elements of tax credits – might seem like easy targets, but such moves exacerbate the damaging effect of high marginal tax rates, creating real disincentives to breadwinners to increase their earnings.

George Osborne needs to think of families as engines of growth. It would be great to hear him outline a pro-family fiscal policy with clear incentives for work and family stability, not just to ease the burden on today’s families but to create social and economic capital for the future.

Jill Kirby: Employment law reform - a good start, here's another suggestion

Welcome news in the Telegraph today of a Government announcement on employment law promised later this week. Responding to widespread complaints from businesses and persistent campaigning by employers' organisations, the Coalition is to make some modest but important changes to ease the burden of complying with a massive, complex - and still growing - list of employees' rights.

In a straight copy of a Thatcher government reform, the qualifying period a new employee will be required to serve before acquiring the right not to be unfairly dismissed is to be extended from twelve months to two years. No word yet on whether the qualification period to acquire other rights and benefits will be similarly changed, but it's a start, giving employers a bit more breathing space.

More important, in my view, is the proposal to introduce an upfront fee for employees making claims through industrial tribunals. A modest payment, repayable in the event of a successful claim, would probably be enough to discourage many "nuisance" claims. At the moment the downside risk to an employee - or ex-employee - of embarking on a claim is minimal. For employers, however, the expense (in terms of company time as well as legal fees) of defending a claim often means that the only sensible business decision is to make a settlement payment, regardless of the merits of the case. Almost any business owner or HR department will tell you that this is their biggest gripe about the current state of legislation: they feel that even where they have acted properly, observed good employment practices and are confident of winning in Tribunal, they cannot "afford" to defend their case. A downpayment by claimants would, in their view, require the employee to think a bit harder about the prospects of eventual success before embarking on a claim.

It will be interesting to see what else is in the mix this week. What businesses would be very glad to see, yet which remains unlikely, is a rolling back of the new rights introduced under last year's Equality Act, especially the right for employees to claim against employers for allegedly discriminatory conduct by third parties, with potentially unlimited damages. Placing a cap on maximum awards would be a useful way to limit the impact of this legislation before it becomes a troublemakers' charter. Such a cap, combined with the promised downpayment and time limit changes, would do much to cheer beleagured British businesses and give them the confidence that this Government wants them to concentrate on productive activity and job creation.

Jill Kirby: Your transparency, my data - news on digital privacy from the Cabinet Office

We want government to be accountable, you believe in transparency, they are putting all the data online - I want my privacy back. Could this be the new conjugation for the Coalition's project to float out government data on the internet?

The more information is published, the narrower the divide between the public and the personal. Should every public sector employee, for example, be obliged to accept that his or her salary is a matter of public knowledge?

One man's accountability might be another man (or woman's) breach of privacy. As a strong critic of the last Government's failure to protect personal data, in its infatuation with so-called Transformational Government, I have been worrying about the possibility of conflict between the potentially state-shrinking transparency agenda piloted by Francis Maude and the Cabinet Office and the loss of personal privacy this could entail. So I welcome the news that Francis has now launched a review specifically to address this conflict - especially since the expert he has asked to chair the review is Dr Kieron O'Hara of Southampton University.

Apart from being a CPS Research Fellow and blogger, Kieran combines his huge expertise in technology and computer science with a close interest in politics and political theory, especially in the area of trust, privacy and power. So if anyone can reconcile the conflict inherent in opening up data, protecting personal privacy and keeping the state in check, it is surely Kieran. I look forward to the publication of the review's interim findings next month.

See the Cabinet Office Transparency and Digital Engagement Blog for more details.

Jill Kirby: The Bank of England risks missing the return of inflation

Word in the Times today is that Andrew Sentance will remain a lone voice calling for an interest rate rise at this Wednesday's meeting of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee.

Yet signals of inflationary pressure continue to accumulate, suggesting that Sentance's view deserves serious consideration. Last week the OBR sounded confident that the risks of a double dip recession are negligible; Pricewaterhouse Coopers reckon British employers are fast creating jobs in the private sector to replace those lost in the public sector; in any case we are now told that public sector job cuts will be lower than previously forecast.

Today the Engineering Employers Federation says that its members expect demand for new workers to soar; significantly, the EEF also flag up members' concerns about a lack of skilled staff in the job market - which sounds to me like a clear case of wage inflation waiting to happen.

Combine all this with the upward pressure on prices and it's hard to see how the Bank of England can really keep a lid on inflation in the year ahead. In last month's Inflation Report the Bank acknowledged that the prospects for inflation remained "highly uncertain" but asserted that it was likely to fall back in the medium term. However, the Bank's record of consistently underestimating the short term inflation risk suggests that it has been erring on the wrong side of this particular balancing act.

It will be interesting to see what happens on Wednesday. Will the Bank decide to keep interest rates nailed to the floor, reckoning that a dose of inflation is a problem we must be prepared to live with? If so, Britain's savers and pensioners will continue to see their savings erode for a good while yet.

Jill Kirby: How to cut the £186 billion benefits bill

Jill Kirby is Director of the Centre for Policy Studies.

In its 1997 Manifesto, New Labour promised to “decrease the bills of economic and social failure” It has failed to do so. The Treasury expects total social security payments in 2009/10 to be £186 billion. That’s more than the government will receive in income tax and corporation tax combined; clearly this is not sustainable. Yet any attempts to reduce the cost of welfare will be impossible unless the benefits system is simplified. David Martin’s report for the CPS shows that welfare is out of control due to the error, fraud, overpayment, duplication and sheer confusion built into the present system.

Take the case of a young woman on benefits, let’s call her Kirsty. She lives alone and is out of work. She gets Income Support of £64.30 a week; her rent and council tax are paid by her local authority. Would she be better off working? If she takes a job, her income support is reduced pound for pound against her wages. So far, so straightforward. But her housing benefits are also withdrawn, at the rate of 85p for every pound she earns. If she works 30 hours a week she qualifies for working tax credit, say £30 a week - but then for every extra pound she earns, Kirsty will pay 31p in income tax and national insurance and will lose 39p in tax credit - a total of 70p. Her extra net income of 30p in the pound then reduces her housing benefits by another 25.5p – so that Kirsty will lose 95.5% of every extra pound she earns. Jobcentre staff have to provide claimants like Kirsty with “Better Off” calculations, but these are difficult to prepare and often inaccurate because the system is so complex.

Conservative Home's expert panel previews the Budget

In advance of today's Budget, ConservativeHome assembled an expert panel of political figures and commentators to outline what they hope to see from today's Budget in their area of interest or expertise. Their thoughts are below and once Alistair Darling has delivered the Budget, we will post their reactions here on Platform later this afternoon.

Andrew Lilico, Managing Director of Europe Economics, on Growth

The Budget should be realistic about the growth situation - planning against a recession at least as bad as the early 1980s and a material fall in the sustainable growth rate of the economy (to perhaps just 2-2.25%), cutting our spending cloth accordingly.  The Government should admit that on a recession that bad its previous plans would take spending above 50% of GDP, and that this is unacceptable. 

To keep down the growth of spending as a proportion of GDP, it should immediately announce a £50bn reduction in growth in spending between 2008-9 to 2010-11 (e.g., by freezing the cash budget of most departments), with a commitment to seek further reductions of up to £50bn, if necessary, for later years.

In addition, the annual inflation targeting regime should be replaced with a target of average inflation at 3% annually between now and 2015 - with the inflation measure changed to include housing costs.

Do we need to raise taxes?

On this morning's Today programme David Cameron refused to rule out tax rises to restore the nation's public finances.  Speaking at 8.35am BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson suggested it was only a matter of 'when' the Tories would be considering tax increases.  Last week a former adviser to George Osborne recommended higher taxes.  Yesterday, ConservativeHome asked some prominent centre right commentators to answer the question: 'Do we need to raise taxes?'  These are four 'no' answers.

Oliver March Hartwich, Chief Economist of Policy Exchange:

"There can be no doubt about it: The economic prospects for Britain do not look rosy. Nor are the forecasts for the public finances any better. For the time that a new Conservative government may be elected, in 2010, economists forecast a budget deficit between £95bn and £150bn - or 6 to 9% of GDP. Deficits of such proportions are not sustainable beyond a very short period of time without causing considerable damage, so a new government should make reducing the deficit its first priority. But does this mean raising taxes? Not necessarily. The alternative is to curb public spending. That's why all big government projects (e.g. the costly ID card scheme or other big IT projects) should be put on hold. While this would not endanger public service delivery, it would nevertheless help the consolidation of the state's finances. Cutting such spending is the better alternative to increasing the tax burden in economically difficult times."

Matthew Elliott, Chief Executive of The TaxPayers' Alliance:

"Winston Churchill is not often quoted in economic debates, but one of his pearls of wisdom is very apt for the current economic circumstances. Churchill likened raising taxes to generate prosperity to standing in a bucket and trying to lift yourself up. If a new Conservative government tries this approach to plug the deficit, it will be similarly futile. Instead, the Party should be looking to cut spending to generate the funds to either cut the deficit or, even better, cut taxes. For example, scrapping Regional Development Agencies would save £2.3 billion. Freezing civil service recruitment as Margaret Thatcher did in 1979 and Oliver Letwin proposed at the last election would, after ten years, save £3.3 billion a year. Just think what cutting civil service numbers would save. When Ronald Reagan was elected President, he appointed the Grace Commission to root out wasteful Federal Spending. By the 1990s, it had saved the US taxpayer $10 trillion. Boris Johnson has appoint Patience Wheatcroft to root out waste, and is now freezing the GLA precept. The first announcement of a Conservative Treasury should be the appointment of a Waste Tsar to go through Gordon Brown's dodgy books with a fine toothcomb. Then they will find the money to plug the deficit (and, hopefully, cut taxes) without imposing extra burdens on already over-stretched households."