County Council should abandon expensive legal battle

Liberal Democrats on Surrey County Council are calling for the Conservative administration to abandon their plans to replace professional staff in 10 of the County’s libraries with volunteers, rather than continue with a costly legal fight against Surrey residents in the High Court.

Following the High Court order on Friday by Hon. Mr Justice Wyn Williams, that the County Council should ‘take no irrevocable steps towards implementing the Community Partnered Libraries (CPLs) decision impugned in these proceedings until further order of this court’, Cllr Hazel Watson, the Liberal Democrat Leader of the Opposition on Surrey County Council, said:

“I am calling on the Conservative administration at Surrey County Council to immediately end its unpopular and ill-conceived plans to axe professional library staff and replace them with volunteers, and to abandon the squandering of council taxpayers money on an expensive and drawn out legal battle in the High Court.

“The Conservative administration should be listening to Surrey residents who value their local libraries and want to protect them from being downgraded and potentially being closed. Local communities want their libraries to be fully staffed with professional librarians to ensure a good service is maintained.

“Continuing with the ill-advised and unpopular High Court battle is not a good use of Surrey council taxpayers money. The Conservative controlled County Council should be serving Surrey’s residents, not fighting them in the High Court.

“At the Budget Meeting on 7 February Surrey County Council Liberal Democrats will be calling for a change to the County Council’s Budget for 2012/13 to reverse the Conservative administrations’ Community Partnered Libraries plan so every library across the County is fully staffed with professional librarians.”

In favour of means testing…

My parents don’t need a winter fuel allowance. They feel guilty accepting it. Alan Sugar certainly doesn’t need one. The Liberal Democrats are generally against means testing but I have never quite bought into that. My instinct is to target resources rather than scatter. If my parents didn’t get £200 a year Winter Fuel Allowance, then perhaps somebody that actually needs it could get more. I am delighted to see that Nick Clegg agrees: “We should be asking millionaire pensioners to perhaps make a little sacrifice on their free TV licence or their free bus passes”

There is a move towards greater means testing and I am aware of the concerns. The National Audit Office is currently considering this:

It is clear that means testing will be used extensively for the foreseeable future as it helps target state support at the people that need it most, but it can have many other important consequences. For example, there can be disincentives for recipients of means-tested benefits to return to work. Means testing also makes the administration of benefits more complex and is associated with higher costs as well as increased rates of fraud and error.

The difficulty, from what I understand, is that when benefits are means tested, many that would be eligible fail to make applications are get caught in a confusing and complex assessment process. But to me that is not a reason to give all equally, but more a reason to ensure the information is provided in plain language and that there is sufficient resources for personal support through the process.

Lib Dem MP Jenny Willot is right when she says “The principle of universality is important, people should feel that the system is there for everyone, but it doesn’t mean that all benefits should be universal.”

 

Conservative Surrey must take more care

 

Liberal Democrats on Surrey County Council are presenting a motion to next week’s Full Council raising concerns about the County’s performance with regard to child adoption and children in care.

Liberal Democrat leader of the Opposition Cllr Hazel Watson says:

“The Child in Care and Adoption Performance Tables published last month by the Department for Education show many major failings by Surrey County Council. Just taking two of the most concerning findings for Surrey County Council in the tables: Surrey came 139th out of 152 in the proportion of young people aged 19 who were looked after aged 16 who were in suitable accommodation, only 9 councils performed worse, and 2 of those – Rutland and the Isles of Scilly – had no figures reported.
Surrey also came 111th in the percentage of children looked after continuously for 12 months who achieved at least level 4 at Key Stage 2 in both English and Mathematics.

“If the Conservative-led Council cannot ensure the children in its care have a decent roof over their head and receive an education that prepares them for later life it is failing those children.

“When presenting the Budget Monitoring Report to the Cabinet on 1 November, the same day as the tables were published, the Leader of the Council said; ‘Our number one priority is looked after children’. At the meeting of the Overview and Scrutiny Communities Select Committee on 16 November the Leader restated that looked after children are his personal priority. It is time for the Leader to ensure Surrey’s Children in Care and adopted children are not left wanting.”

£500,000 extra for local schools

Local voters supported the Lib Dem “pupil premium” and now local schools will benefit from it. At the General Election last year I knocked on many doors and told local residents about the idea behind our “pupil premium”. This policy was to provide additional financial support for schools aimed at the pupils most in need.

The Government recently released the final Pupil Premium figures for every English local authority, constituency and school. I am delighted to announce that every school this year will receive an extra £488 for each child on free school meals they have on their roll.

Schools in Runnymede & Weybridge are getting an extra £537000 from the Pupil Premium to improve the education of the most disadvantaged children. You can find out what each school in your council area is getting by clicking here.

This is a real milestone for the Liberal Democrats. The Pupil Premium is a policy we devised and campaigned for, and put at the heart of our Coalition negotiations. Now it is more than good policy, it is a reality making a difference to the school down your road. It goes directly into classrooms and will benefit all pupils.

It is also a milestone in breaking the link between poverty and achievement, tackling Labour’s shocking legacy where the richest 16-year olds are three times as likely to get five good GCSEs as the poorest.

This is just the start. We know that some families eligible for free school meals don’t claim them, for example, because some don’t know they can, and so their schools are missing out on funding. We also need to find out what schools are doing that’s really making a difference.

If you’d like to help, you could contact your local school to find out how they are using their Pupil Premium funding, and how they are making sure they are reaching every child.

Being unemployed

I’m lucky. I’ve only been unemployed for a few months of my life so far. I was in my early twenties and was on unemployment benefit for about three months. I hated it. I hated walking into the Job Centre in case anybody saw me. I was embarrassed about my status. With hindsight I didn’t try hard enough though to find work. I sent off a few applications a week to employers but didn’t get the sense of urgency that I ought to have had.

Radio 4′s PM programme a few weeks ago interviewed a 17 year old girl from Croydon, one of the millions currently unemployed. But she made me angry because her attitude was so appalling – and not challenged by the interviewer at all. She quit a sales job because it was too difficult and couldn’t be bothered to go to the Job Centre because the office was in another borough. Whilst I am paraphrasing, she did seem to sum up all the stereotypes of idle Britain.

She wasn’t a good example. But there are hundreds of thousands who are. It was many years ago but I can still remember the mindset being unemployed gives. Constant rejection, bureaucracy, sense of isolation. It is not a good place to be.  The state must provide a support system for people in this position but, as we see nowadays, the balance between support and creating dependency is hard to manage. There are now generations of families who have never experienced the world of work, relying entirely on state support.

It is hard to grasp what the cuts mean to the unemployed. I understand that some schemes, such as the Interview Travel Scheme and the fund that can help with interview clothing, are gone. This makes no sense. Without these you either cannot attend or, if you can, you’re going to get into debt when buying interview clothes. Or just not buying them.

Whilst I am disappointed by the severity of some of the cuts, I very much recognise the need to break the dependency cycle, getting people off benefits into work. Some cuts are just too brutal and we need to ensure genuine support is there for those with real need. I didn’t support the recent union industrial action because, whilst there may be concerns over pensions, the strike was portrayed as an anti-cuts protest – and I’m not anti cuts. We do need to make cuts all across the public sector but need to be careful in how we do it.

I am not convinced that the Welfare to Work Scheme is approaching the issue right either. With multinational corporations such as Tesco reputedly laying off paid staff in order to take the free labour available through the scheme, it does seem like my tax money is going to Tesco’s shareholders. However I do believe in a compulsory element of work for benefit claimants. There is an argument that by forcing people into work it denies them the time to look for and apply to other jobs. I don’t buy that – many workers find and secure their next job whilst already being in employment.

One extreme model being considered by political commentators in Ireland is to stop giving unemployment claimants cash but providing them with a food box sufficient for their family needs. The argument is that money buys independence and at the moment there is no incentive to work because money is readily available. This is extreme but we probably do need to look again at the whole system and see what is really required as against funding programmes because we are scared of the political risk of cuts.

Annual Christmas Lunch

The annual Christmas lunch for Runnymede & Weybridge Liberal Democrats took place today in Weybridge. It was very well attended and great fun. Our hosts did themselves proud with an array of traditional Christmas food and drink. I wasn’t feeling Christmassy beforehand but this has helped. One of our members crafted this balloon floral display as part of our raffle. I didn’t win it.

It hasn’t been the easiest year to be a Liberal Democrat and yet the mood was positive. When you are a Lib Dem you tend to have to view the long-game. Our national polls are fairly consistent with previous electoral cycles and the media are beginning to recognise the positive impact of the party in coalition.

I am particularly proud of the delivery of many of our manifesto commitments. In the last couple of months I have welcomed over £500,000 extra funding for schools in the constituency to target the most disadvantaged pupils. Our pupil premium policy was one that I delivered on the doorstep during the general election, and now it is delivering for the community. I am also delighted that over 800,000 of the lowest paid workers have been taken out of tax completely – with more to follow as we raise the tax threshold to £10,000.

So a lot has been achieved and there will be more to come. I would like to thank local Lib Dem colleagues for their continued strength and support.

Time to reform the National Minimum Wage?

I give a lot of credit to the Labour government for introducing the National Minimum Wage. It was overdue and, despite some right-wing hysteria at the time, has been adopted by businesses around the country, improving the lives of their lower paid workers.  I find it disgusting when I see that, depsite this legal protection, there are many in the UK still not receiving the national minimum wage.

So why the picture of a Harris Hawk? Because legislation like the National Minimum Wage Act could be seen as too simplistic. The labour market is complex and the Act was too broad in its approach. On Sunday I had a wonderful hands-on introduction to falconry in Kent. Our falconer was a 22 year old who had become interested in falconry at the age of sixteen, volunteered in a falconry centre and is now working, full time, as a falconer. He was assisted by another sixteen year old volunteer. The problem is that this is probably unlawful. Because the organisation they volunteered for is an entirely commercial one, they must be paid the relevent national minimum wage according to their age.

Businesses can end up breaking the law. In many cases it is because the company may not be aware of the full implications of the Act or just may not be able to pay the full rate. Indeed I have needed the advice of high level lawyers to clarify the law because it isn’t always so clear.  However when I see multi-million pound international firms not paying for such experience, then that is a different case and suggests exploitation. There are very few exemptions within the Act and they are mostly non-profit organisations or those with specific educational outcomes. In my job I get approached by companies that are genuinely altruistic in trying to offer experience and improve a student’s employability but all of us end up frustrated by the Act. The organisation that I work for has unambiguous policies on compliance with the national minimum wage legislation.

There are certain sectors that thrive on unpaid work experience. The media (even the big television companies), PR firms (including the multinationals), marketing and advertising agencies and of course politics. Young people are expected to work for free in these sectors to build experience to enable them to secure their first job. Unfortunately that generally means that only those with the financial means to do so are able to undertake these opportunities. The National Minimum Wage effectively says that, even if you are in a financial position to work unpaid, you shouldn’t be able to.

There has been no crack-down on employers not paying the national minimum wage for such experience. The Act isn’t being enforced probably because the full force of the Act would hinder so many industries and the prospective careers of some of the UK’s brightest youths. This suggests that the Act has failed and needs reform. The Act must be able to safeguard the UK’s low paid workers, giving them the safety net of a national minimum wage (and preferably a London Living Wage too), requiring all employers to meet its requirements but also providing support to those seeking to offer opportunities for development. Which is why the Act has to be complex.

One solution would be to enforce the Act as it stands but to set up a social fund that small businesses and organisations could apply to enabling them to offer work experience at the national minimum wage. There is no excuse for multinationals not paying it, but smaller business may struggle with an added wage. This would open up the labour market for young people to gain valuable experience whilst supporting industry to deliver it within the national minimum wage.

The Government has been looking at this issue. One suggestion being considered is that of a lower rate of national minimum wage for work experience. I think this is problematic. The national minimum wage is set at a particular level because that is basic income at which, according to the Government, people need to live in the UK. Going back to £2.50 per hour would once again make such experience elitist as only those with financial support could undertake them. Businesses try to get around the current legislation by labelling experiences as “internships” whilst actually often just gaining from free labour. It is that which the Act has to stop. Work experience to help people develop themselves and their careers, the Act somehow has to encourage. And that balance is very hard to make.

Gay blood donation ban will continue

The lifting of the ban on gay men donating blood is welcome, but the 12 month restriction means that for most men, the ban will continue.

Currently, men who have ever had oral or anal sex with another man, even if a condom was used, are permanently excluded from blood donation in the UK. As a result of the lifting of the ban, in future only men who have had anal or oral sex with another man in the past 12 months, will be asked not to donate blood.

The criteria need to consider the personal lifestyles of those donating. There are many local gay and bisexual men living in monogamous partnerships who would willingly donate blood but even with the changes, will remain unable to do so.   And yet their heterosexual male neighbours may have had unprotected liaisons with several women and yet still be an eligible donor. There is not logic to that.

We know that blood supplies always need replenishing. It is unfortunate that even with these new measures, so many willing donors remain ineligible.

Liberal Democrat members from Runnymede & Weybridge will be attending our Federal Conference next week where this issue will be debated. The Liberal Youth conference motion “Science, not Stigma: Ending the Blood Ban” calls for greater transparancy in the criteria used to determine donors.

Is the Fat Tax the right approach?

The Independent reports that the obesity crises is really going to hit Britain over the next twenty years with increased levels of heart disease, diabetes and related health issues. The newspaper has called for the introduction of a Fat Tax:

Swingeing tobacco taxes have made smoking a minority pastime. We should tackle junk food in the same way. The argument that a fat (or soft-drink) tax would be regressive ignores the fact that the ill health caused by obesity (as by tobacco) falls disproportionately on the poor. They have the most to gain from cutting consumption. A fat tax would achieve more than a fistful of public health campaigns – and would help shore up health care budgets under pressure as never before. It awaits a government with the moral courage to drive it through.

This idea was also supported in some of the research from the Harvard School of Public Health.

“A one-cent-an-ounce tax on sweetened beverages would bring in $1.5bn (£920,000) a year in California, reduce obesity rates, reduce disease and lower healthcare costs,” Professor Gortaker said. “So why don’t people do it? It may be because there is a $50bn industry to counter that tax.”

The UK has always tried to work with industries to get them to self-regulate. It didn’t work with the alcohol, media, energy, freight and many other industries and it isn’t working with the food one either.

There have been several suggestions about how the industry should deal with this. Most of them call for more honesty in labels – avoiding phrases like “low-fat” that can be misleading. This is a fair point and one which the traffic light system was meant to support. Quantities also need to be addressed – moving away from the “grab-bags” or “sharing” portions. Even with microwave meals, single people will often have a double portion because they are more readily available. I particularly like the suggestion of banning the sale of discounted sweets and chocolates when buying non-food items. WHSmith are appalling on this – would you like to buy a massive bar of Galaxy for just 50p with this newspaper? Clearly the retailers have to develop a stronger moral code on this too.

Taxes have long been used as a means of changing behaviour – particularly with the green taxes. People nowadays choose cars based on the level of VED they’ll pay. But I think there is a threshold and the tax has to be significant enough to hurt – a penny here and there makes little difference. Therefore at this stage personally I’m leaning towards the Fat Tax approach.

The argument that the poor, those who tend to buy cheap fatty foods, would be disproportionately affected by the tax may have an element of truth. But it is also this group that disproportionately are likely to become obese. There are several websites where people demonstrate how they feed a family of four for £100 per month – bulk buying, cooking and freezing. It is probably offensive to suggest that just because you have a low income you cannot feed yourself healthily.

There is one word that kept popping up under Blair. Hypothecation: the principle of raising taxes for specific purposes. Paddy Ashdown’s remarkable “penny in the pound for education” was a brilliant example. Fat Tax could be hypothecated for spending on preventative healthcare and education, cooking lessons and vouchers to help those on lower incomes develop healthier lifestyles.

Britains need Human Rights too

Thanks to Lib Dem Voice for this:

Nick Clegg writes at Comment is Free on the need for the British government to uphold human rights at home as well as abroad. He describes the strengths of British human rights laws, and reminds that the Liberal Democrats will continue to support them in the face of the Tories’ rhetoric or moves to renegotiate them.

Britain has a proud history of international leadership on human rights. It was our political leadership and legal expertise that led to the creation of the European convention on human rights in 1950, a convention modelled on centuries of English law. That leadership matters now more than ever.

Yet something strange has happened in recent years: while governments have continued the call for greater rights abroad, they have belittled the relevance of rights at home. The Labour government that passed the Human Rights Act then spent years trashing it, allowing a myth to take root that human rights are a foreign invention, unwanted here, a charter for greedy lawyers and meddlesome bureaucrats.

This myth panders to a view that no rights, not even the most basic, come without responsibilities; that criminals ought to forfeit their very humanity the moment they step out of line; and that the punishment of lawbreakers ought not to be restrained by due process.

The reality is that those who need to make use of human rights laws to challenge the decisions of the authorities are nearly always people who are in the care of the state: children’s homes, mental hospitals, immigration detention, residential care. They are often vulnerable, powerless, or outsiders, and are sometimes people for whom the public feels little sympathy. But they are human beings, and our common humanity dictates that we treat them as such.

Nick goes on to warn against manipulation of the Human Rights Act by media and “overcautious lawyers and officials.”

The friends of human rights have the most to gain if we get a grip on this. We must give public officials back the confidence that reasonable decisions taken in the public interest will be defended by the courts – as they usually are when they actually reach the courts.

He concludes by saying that the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law under our own Human Rights Act was a “hugely positive step”:

So as we continue to promote human rights abroad, we must ensure we work to uphold them here at home. We have a proud record that we should never abandon.

Read the full piece at the Guardian.