Patrick Mercer MP: We need a radically different approach to countering terrorism

Patrick Mercer is MP for Newark and Retford and former party spokesman on Homeland Security.

Britain is being completely failed by this Government’s feeble and weak-minded approach to protecting this country from terrorism.  Any faith I once had in the Home Office’s ability to combat the increasingly severe challenge we face as a nation has been replaced by a fear that, until we adopt radically different policies, this country will continue to be at serious risk of terrorist attack.

Whilst our superb troops fight our enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Government is doing very little to stop terrorists from residing and communicating with each other in Britain and from being financed by the State.  Our armed forces are being let down by the Government whilst our enemies are making a mockery of our counter terrorism strategy.

The Government has been funding the very individuals who mean Britons nothing but harm.  Two weeks ago, the Government admitted that individuals on control orders have been receiving regular instalments of Jobseeker’s Allowance.  A month ago, it emerged that in 2008 the Home Office also gave one of these individuals £9,000 for accommodation, utility bills, council tax payments and phone bills.  The Government has since given no indication that it will stop using our money in this way in 2009.

In February this year, the European Court of Human Rights ordered the Government to pay more than £70,000 in compensation to Abu Qatada and eight other terror suspects for breaches of their rights under this Government’s Human Rights Act and the total bill for the ‘Prevent’ strand of Project CONTEST has now exceeded £100 million since 2006.  This is the part of the Government’s counter terrorism strategy which focuses on preventing radicalisation amongst the UK population.  Money is handed down to local authorities and organisations in amounts which relate to the size of each area’s Muslim population.  I find it deeply offensive that the Government’s ‘Prevent’ strategy is based upon the belief that if we pour money into areas with high Muslim populations, we will prevent extremism and terrorist violence.

Patrick Barbour: Political management has failed the victims of C-Diff

Patrick Barbour was chairman of two public companies, is a trustee of Civitas, and was one of the three founders of Reform.  The author of the position paper for the TaxPayers’ Alliance Better Government Campaign, he argues that the NHS won't improve whilst it's managed by politicians.

The smoke is now clearing, just over a week after the Healthcare Commission released the results of its investigation on the scandal at the Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust where C. difficile infections have killed dozens of people and contributed to the deaths of hundreds.  The chairman and chief executive of the Trust have both resigned, Alan Johnson has set up inquiries to look into everything except how government policy contributed to the crisis and the Nurse of the Year has quit “in disgust at the pen pushers running the NHS”.

However, there is already a new crisis on the horizon.  Just a week after Johnson told the Today programme that the scandal at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells was an isolated incident a new scandal has emerged in Lancashire.  Before we go on to consider fresh scandals though, it is worth taking a little time to consider just why things have gone so wrong in Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust and whether there is a connection to broader problems in the health service.

Patrick Barbour: Better government

Patrick Barbour was chairman of two public companies, Barbour Index plc and Microgen plc, and has authored a new paper for the TaxPayers’ Alliance campaign on Better Government, available here.

“John Reid’s Brain is Missing” screamed the front-page headline of last Thursday’s Sun, together with a photo of an appropriately confused-looking and lobotomised Home Secretary.  According to the paper, there were “fears for his sanity” after his failure to get to grips with the crisis engulfing the prison service.

Reid deserves serious criticism for his performance, but the personal nature of the media’s attacks risks obscuring the bigger picture.  The successive Home Office debacles over the past year are much more a reflection of the dysfunctional system of government in Britain than of the short-term performance of the latest Home Secretary.  John Reid’s biggest mistake was accepting the job in the first place.  When the prison and probation services are close to full-scale breakdown and we face the prospect of prisoners being released early en masse, the person responsible for sorting out the mess was for many years a Labour Party apparatchik and has just a few short months’ knowledge of the criminal justice system and little real management experience.  Also, he will probably only be in this job for a couple of years at most, having had no less than eight jobs in ten years. 

A similar pattern of inexperience exists elsewhere.  We have a former press officer, Patricia Hewitt, running the National Health Service – the world’s third largest employer.  We have a former postman, Alan Johnson, managing the affairs of every school in the country.  We have a former solicitor, Des Browne, deciding on military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

This is not meant as a personal attack on these Ministers, each of them I am sure have their own skills.  But imagine if a major company like Tesco behaved in a similar fashion: in a time of crisis, replacing chief executive Terry Leahy with someone who had no experience of managing supermarkets (or anything complex, in fact) but who was nevertheless a very competent graphic designer.  It is, of course, a ridiculous scenario that could never happen.  But this is effectively how we choose to run the Government of the fifth largest economy in the world.

With this bizarre and archaic system, it is hardly surprising that British government malfunctions across the board, and has done so for decades.  Our education system is a shambles and there is no doubt it is already leaving us less able to compete with rising powers in Asia.  One in four children leave primary school without sufficient reading ability to tackle the secondary school curriculum and almost 60 per cent of 16-year-olds do not achieve a GCSE grade C or better in the three core subjects of English, Maths and Science.  The British Medical Journal has ranked the NHS second from bottom among 19 developed countries on quality of care.  Our criminal justice system has basically failed. 

As usual, the poorest in society suffer the most.  Only a quarter of pupils eligible for free school meals achieve five GCSEs at Grade A*-C; there is a huge gulf between the rich and poor in healthcare outcomes; the British Crime Survey shows the risk of almost every category of crime is significantly higher the poorer the population.  The risk of burglary is 63 per cent higher than the national average for those earning less than £5,000 a year.