Tuesday, December 31, 2024
A failure of equality
They say that the UK’s tax system is meant to operate progressively, asking the richest to contribute more in order to tax the middle and poorest in society less, which is a principle that is still widely supported by the public, however their analysis found something completely different. They say that:
* The poorest 10% of households paid on average 48% of their income in tax in 2022/23
* The richest 10% of households, however, paid on average just 39% of their income in tax
* Council tax is a key source of disproportionate taxation, with the poorest 10% paying 7% while the richest 10% pay just 1.2%
* Similarly, VAT hits the poorest harder, with the poorest 10% paying 12% while the richest 10% pay just 3%
* The post-tax income for the richest 10% is £112,874, over 12 times higher than the poorest 10%’s post-tax income of £9,651.00
Unfortunately, this is merely the tip of the iceberg of the inequality in our tax system. The super-rich are shifting massive amounts into wealth and income from wealth, where taxation is even more disproportionate. This is how we get situations where millionaires like former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak can pay a tax rate of only 23% on £2.2m of income. As you get higher up the scale of the super-rich, the distortion becomes even more extreme. In 2024, billionaire James Dyson, 5th on the Sunday Times Rich List, paid just 0.68% of their total wealth in tax.
Now we have a Labour government one would think that they might be keen to correct these discrepancies, however it is clear already that this is not a priority for them. Will any party find the courage to propose changes to correct this imbalance? I'm not holding my breath.
Monday, December 30, 2024
Businesses under pressure
The news site says that restructuring bosses have cautioned that impending cost rises linked to the autumn Budget could particularly weigh on the retail, hospitality and care sectors after official figures pointed towards an uptick in insolvencies at the end of this year:
Company insolvencies lifted by 13% in November compared with the previous month, although they were lower year-on-year, according to the Office for National Statistics.
DIY and garden retailer Homebase was among firms to collapse into administration in November.
Insolvency practitioners said they have witnessed an increase in inquiries in the run up to the new year.
Nicky Fisher, immediate past president of R3, the UK’s insolvency and restructuring trade body, and a partner at Herron Fisher, said: “Our members are telling us that inquiries from directors increased in November, as they looked to understand more about their insolvency or restructuring options and discuss their financial concerns ahead of January.
“The December period will either be a lifeline or the tipping point for a number of businesses – especially those in the retail and hospitality sectors, who have had a challenging year of continued rising costs coupled with cautious customer spending.”
Firms are set to face significant costs increases as a result of increases to National Insurance contributions, the rise in the minimum wage and some other tax rises.
The policies were announced by the Chancellor Rachel Reeves in the autumn Budget in order to support a jump in spending.
Ms Fisher added: “With the changes to employer National Insurance and National Minimum Wage being introduced in April, the next three months will be critical for firms in these industries and others as they work out how they will manage the impact this additional cost will have on their finances.
“This could lead to an uptick in restructuring work in the first quarter of this year or a rise in corporate insolvencies between March and June – but at this stage it’s too early to tell which of these outcomes is most likely.”
If Starmer's government are serious about growing the economy, then this is an issue that should be at the top of their agenda rather than their misguided attempt to undo regulations that protect the public.
Sunday, December 29, 2024
Have Labour taken another wrong turn?
They say that they have learnt that the prime minister has written to more than ten regulators - including Ofgem, Ofwat, the Financial Conduct Authority and the Competition and Markets Authority - on Christmas Eve to demand they submit a range of pro-growth initiatives to Downing Street by the middle of January:
One recipient of the letter, which was also signed by Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, and Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, said it was unambiguous in its direction to regulators to prioritise growth and investment.
It comes after a torrid first few months in office for the PM, who has been forced onto the back foot by a series of damaging sleaze rows and turbulent policymaking.
October's budget, which involved pledges to raise taxes by tens of billions of pounds, triggered a bruising backlash from the private sector, with bosses in a string of sectors warning that it will fuel inflation and cause job losses and business closures.
One regulatory source said this weekend that the letter to watchdogs and a wider drive for regulatory reform emanating from Downing Street were the brainchild of Varun Chandra, the PM's special adviser on business and investment.
Sir Keir's letter is understood to have referred to a need for every government department and regulator to support growth, and called on each recipient to submit five ideas for delivering that mandate by 16 January.
The letter also urged regulators to identify how the government could remove barriers to economic growth and where regulatory objectives were either conflicting or confused.
Mr Chandra is said by government insiders to have ruffled feathers in Whitehall since his appointment shortly after Labour's massive general election victory in July.
A former managing partner at Hakluyt, the strategic advisory firm, Mr Chandra has been "relentlessly" emphasising the urgency of transforming business sentiment to drive growth, according to one Whitehall source.
The insider added that the letter to watchdogs was expected to be the first step in a broader programme of supply-side reforms to be overseen by Downing Street during the coming months.
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
The push for watchdogs to have greater regard for economic competitiveness has already triggered a series of flashpoints, most notably in the financial services industry, where ministers have clashed with FCA officials over a number of policy areas.
The point of regulators is to protect the public from poor practice. The idea that the regulations they oversee hold back growth is a myth put about by businesses who are trying to increase profits at any cost. Any relaxation should be carried out carefully and after a full risk analysis.
We have already seen the consequences of regulators not having sufficient powers to rein in companies with all the sewage pouring into our waterways, and that is before we even get to the financial crash of 2008 which nearly wrecked our economy.
If Starmer and Reeves really are focussed on growth then perhaps they should have thought of that before choosing to burden businesses with additional costs through employee national insurance increases.
Saturday, December 28, 2024
Culture in crisis
The paper says that leaders in the sector are urgently demanding major investment from the new Labour government as they grapple with fresh challenges including rising energy bills and the hike to employer national insurance contributions in the Budget:
After years of cutbacks and underfunding, they have warned of “the danger of cultural wastelands” in a direct appeal to the chancellor Rachel Reeves and the culture secretary Lisa Nandy.
According to a report by the Society of London Theatre (SOLT) and UK Theatre, one in five venues needs at least £5m of investment over the next decade just to continue operating, and without significant capital investment 40 per cent could close in the next five years.
There are around 1,110 theatres currently operating across the UK, according to the Theatres Trust.
The report also warns that:
* £20m is needed to save museums from shutting down
* 525 museums have already shut since the year 2000
* In the last year, London’s Jewish Museum, along with the Simon Lee, Fold, and Darren Flook galleries in Mayfair and Fitzrovia have closed
* Literary festivals are also under threat, with the announcement in September that Chipping Norton’s ChipLitFest will no longer take place
SOLT and UK Theatre co-chief executive Hannah Essex said: “We have a world-leading theatre sector that prides itself on its creativity and passion and is beloved by audiences across the country. However, theatres are having to cope with ever-increasing financial pressures.
“Production costs are rising faster than inflation, with energy bills up 120 per cent since 2019. Public investment in the arts has declined by 48 per cent in real terms over the past 14 years, and 40 per cent of venues risk closure over the next five years without significant capital investment.”
Looking at the impact of Rachel Reeves’s Budget, Ms Essex added: “Theatres are now facing additional challenges, with the rises in business costs with national insurance and national living wage increases, adding to the fragility of the sector and resulting in many theatres facing difficult decisions.
“We are working with the government to identify ways to put the sector on a more stable footing and unleash the potential for growth in communities across the country.”
The report points out that for every £1 spent on a theatre ticket, an additional spend of £1.40 is generated in the local economy.
Meanwhile, the director of the Museums Association, Sharon Heal, told The Independent: “In the 20 years that I have worked in the sector, this is the most challenging period, with many museums facing outright closure, loss of expert staff, and restricted opening hours.”
She continued: “Museums hold our national and local collections and contribute to our understanding of where we have come from, as well as offering many health, wellbeing, and learning opportunities. Without them, our towns and cities would be far less rich and vibrant places to live.”
The biggest problem faced by museums is that many are reliant on local authorities to provide funding and support, but drops in revenue often mean that they are the first to lose out when councils look for savings.
Ms Heal said: “The Museums Association and the English Civic Museums Network had asked for a £20m stabilisation fund for town and city museums, to prevent immediate threats of closure and insolvency, and although we didn’t get that in the Budget, we are still hopeful that the government will recognise the dire situation that many of these museums face.
“The rise in NI contributions will mean that some museums will come out of the Budget worse off, and we are calling for an exemption for museums to recognise that many of them are charities, often operating with very small margins.”
This is an issue facing all parts of the UK, and if action is not taken soon then the cultural future of this country will be very bleak indeed.
Friday, December 27, 2024
Greenland not for sale
Some have speculated that Trump's interest in the largely uninhabited land mass off America's east coast is because of its vast mineral wealth. but it is also the case that Greenland has its own internet network and does not allow Musk's Starlink to operate there. That would all change if the country came under the auspices of the US government.
As the Independent reports, the Danish government, who currently govern the Greenland territories think Trump's plan is a terrible idea.
The paper adds that a Danish official has said that an announcement that the country is boosting defense spending for Greenland, was an “irony of fate.” Troels Lund Poulsen, the Danish defense minister, told the paper Jyllands-Posten that the country plans to spend a “double-digit billion amount” in krone — about $1.5 billion — to make sure they have a “stronger presence” in the Arctic:
The London Economic records a blunter response:
“We are open for business, but we’re NOT for sale,” said Denmark’s foreign minister Ane Lone Bagger.
Danish politicians could not believe that Trump thought they would sell Greenland, the world’s largest island.
“If he is truly contemplating this, then this is final proof, that he has gone mad,” foreign affairs spokesman for the Danish People’s Party, Soren Espersen, told broadcaster.
“The thought of Denmark selling 50,000 citizens to the United States is completely ridiculous,“ he said.
This one may run and run.
Thursday, December 26, 2024
Tories show their true colours
They say that Conservative MPs on the bill’s scrutiny committee, the Shadow Business Minister Greg Smith, Assistant Whips Nick Timothy and Sir Ashley Fox and Peter Bedford have sought to table amendments to Labour’s Employment Rights Bill that would strip workplace protections from millions of British workers, including the complete removal of maximum working hours regulations:
The rights are already a watered-down version of tougher restrictions in the EU after the UK secured an ‘opt out’ to maximum hours if workers agreed.
An amendment pushed by Conservatives on the committee demands “revocation of the Working Time Regulations 1998”. The MPs explained their amendment in black and white, as “This new clause revokes the Working Time Regulations 1998 together with other Regulations which give effect to the Working Time Directive in UK law.”
Conservatives have also suggested that new prohibitions on workplace harassment could infringe freedom of speech, pushing for an amendment that would assess the measures’ impact on the matter. The legislation would ensure that “employers to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment.”
Conservative frontbencher Greg Smith MP said in a recent committee debate on the bill: “We must question whether the benefits of these clauses will be outweighed by the burden on employers and, in certain respects, by the chilling impact on free speech.” He said he was concerned that employers would be burdened by having to “police that which most of us…would call more innocent banter.”
Labour’s Alex McIntyre MP replied at one point: “There is already a test within the current law to avoid some of the free speech arguments the shadow Minister is making. He is seeking to trivialise the experience of many people in those industries who face unacceptable harassment in the workplace.”
Legal experts warn the move could breach the UK’s post-Brexit trade agreement with the European Union.
Speaking to Byline Times, Prof Keith Ewing, professor of public law at King’s College London, pointed out that the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement explicitly prevents either party from weakening labour protections below levels in place at the end of the Brexit transition period.
He noted it could abolish the right to paid holidays, adding: “The question for the Tories is how it is compatible with the trade and co-operation agreement with the EU which the Tories themselves negotiated to govern post Brexit relations.”
The Conservatives’ own Brexit deal states in Article 387(2): “A Party [i.e. the UK or EU] shall not weaken or reduce, in a manner affecting trade or investment between the Parties, its labour and social levels of protection below the levels in place at the end of the transition period, including by failing to effectively enforce its law and standards.”
Prof Ewing added: “The purpose is to ensure that there should be no significant regression from standards derived from EU law during our membership which were in place at the time of Brexit. They need to be reminded of the commitments they made and the undertakings they undertook at the time of Brexit.”
Lord John Hendy KC, a leading employment law expert and Labour peer, told Byline Times the Conservatives “always hated” the Working Time Directive. “[They] thought Brexit would rid them of it.”
Conservative MPs are also pushing to allow companies employing fewer than 500 people to unfairly sack staff within two years.
Their move states, in their own words: “This amendment would exclude employers with fewer than 500 employees from the removal of the qualifying period for the right not to be unfairly dismissed.”
That means at least 18 million employees – the number currently employed by small and medium sized businesses – could continue to be unfairly dismissed until two years in the same job.
It is unlikely of course, that any of these amendments will be passed but they do give an indication of the direction of travel the Conservatives are now taking, and also the dangers inherent in Brexit, despite promises to the contrary during the 2016 referendum. The Tories really have shown their true colours.
Wednesday, December 25, 2024
Merry Christmas everybody
Tuesday, December 24, 2024
Another argument to take water back into public ownership immediately
The paper says that the company, which serves more than 16 million customers, cut the funds after senior managers assessed the potential risks of such a move:
Discussions – held in secret – considered the risk of a public and regulatory backlash if it emerged that cash set aside for work such as cutting river pollution had been spent elsewhere.
This could be seen as a breach of the company’s licence commitments and leave it vulnerable to accusations it had broken the law, according to sources and material seen by the Guardian.
Thames Water continued to pay staff bonuses worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, and also paid tens of millions in dividends as recently as March this year, while cutting back on its spending promises. The company did so despite public claims from its leaders that improvements to its environmental performance, including on pollution, were a priority.
Sources told the Guardian that internal deliberations about cutting back on the environmental works occurred as early as the end of 2021 and throughout 2022, when bosses weighed up the political and reputational risks of such a move.
Meanwhile, Thames continued to charge customers for the works and Ofwat was only formally told of some of the company’s plans not to deliver these major projects in August 2023. A letter, seen by the Guardian, was sent to the head of the regulator Ofwat, David Black, by the company’s then interim co-chief executive and former boss of the watchdog, Cathryn Ross.
In its response to the Guardian and the 2023 letter to Ofwat, Thames said sharp increases in its costs such as energy and chemicals – which it claims went beyond standard measures of inflation – lay behind its decisions to delay the works.
It told the regulator that it would not deliver 98 of 826 schemes under the water industry national environment programme (Winep) during the five-year window it had promised. The delivery of these projects, which include schemes to reduce phosphorus pollution in rivers, was a key justification for how much Thames was allowed to charge customers.
The revelation comes as Britain’s biggest water company fights for its survival. It is trying to secure £3bn in emergency funding and at least £3.25bn more in equity investment to prevent its collapse, after years of poor performance, fines and hefty dividend payouts.
Winep projects include statutory obligations for water companies with potential criminal liability if they breach their licence by failing to deliver them.
Thames decided behind the scenes to hold up almost 100 projects as early as 2022 without first warning its regulators. Sources said of some of the projects Thames delayed were among the largest it agreed to do when it asked Ofwat for higher bills as part of its 2019 price review.
The cuts to environmental works did not stop the company from paying dividends or bonuses to staff. It continued to pay both throughout the 2020-25 billing period, for which it claimed it lacked the funds to complete works.
Ofwat fined the company £18.2m on 19 December for breaching rules on paying “unjustified” dividends, after the company paid out £37.5m in October 2023 and £158.3m in March 2024. On the same day it also gave Thames permission to increase consumer bills by 35% by 2030.
The privatisation of water has been a disaster. Not only has it led to money that should have been used to improve infrastructure being paid out to shareholders, but it has led to a near environmental catastrophe, with most of our waterways polluted and unsafe.
At the same time water bills are due to soar over the next five years to try and fund the clean-up, putting many families in a situation where they will struggle to pay them.
The government should seriously consider taking these companies back into public ownership.
The government should seriously consider taking these companies back into public ownership.
Monday, December 23, 2024
Winter fuel payment delays add to Labour government's festive woes
The Independent reports that pensioners are facing waits of more than 100 days to secure their winter fuel payment as Labour reforms put a major strain on the Department for Work and Pensions.
The paper says that their investigation has uncovered dozens of cases where pensioners face a wait of more than three months for the benefit, with many more feared to be in a similar situation:
Welfare advisers from several organisations have said that these long waiting times have become a serious issue, with little recourse available through DWP agents. The delays mean that many of those who are eligible and applied in good time are still unlikely to receive the payment until 2025.
The issue follows changes announced by Rachel Reeves in late July, with only those in receipt of pension credit eligible for the winter fuel payment. In previous years, all pensioners would receive the payment every winter.
The DWP says the change has sparked a major increase in pension credit claims, with about 150,000 made in the 16 weeks since the chancellor’s announcement. This is up from 61,300 in the previous 16 weeks.
Around 500 staff have been brought in by the department to process claims faster, but there is still a massive backlog to form. By the middle of November, there were 91,075 outstanding claims.
Caroline Abrahams, of Age UK, said: “The benefits system was never designed to cope with such an upsurge in demand and the Treasury should have factored that in before pressing ahead with their ill-fated reform.”
Christopher Hewett, 69, has been waiting over 120 days for a decision on his pension credit claim. After hearing about the changes to the winter fuel payment, the Norfolk resident says he “applied straight away” and was informed by the DWP that he would hear back by October.
After hearing nothing, Mr Hewett got in touch with an adviser – despite the long helpline hold times – and was told he would hear back in due course. By December, he had still not been contacted and was growing more concerned.
He explains what the cold weather benefit would mean to him: “To be honest, it’s a bit tight as things are at the moment. I’ve had several falls recently, and I had a big one a few weeks ago and ended up with fractured vertebrae, ribs and pelvis.”
Mr Hewett says he and his wife have moved in with his daughter, a single mother of one, as he recovers from his injuries. He says he had “factored in” the winter fuel payment to help pay for the heating bills he will require.
After an intervention by The Independent, Mr Hewett’s claim has now been placed on the DWP’s priority list and advisers have been in touch. But his case is just one of many.
Latest figures reveal that the average waiting time for pension credit has grown to 65 working days. This is 15 working days above the DWP’s target time of 50 days, already raised from 30 days after Labour’s changes were announced.
The paper quotes Steve Darling, the Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokesperson, as saying:
"First the government slashes winter fuel support for vulnerable pensioners, then they keep people worried for months at a time as they wait for the result of their application. Simply put, it’s unacceptable.
“It should go without saying that people deserve timely responses on such a critical issue. It seems the government has no qualms about adding to the worries of those already having to choose between heating and eating this winter.
“The government must listen to public outcry and climb down from their misguided winter fuel cut.”
He is absolutely right. And as a note for Labour spokespeople quoting the pension triple lock as if that makes up for the cut in fuel allowance, it doesn't, the UK still pays out one of the smallest old age pensions in Europe and the triple lock was not a Labour idea, it was brought in by the Liberal Democrats in an attempt to shore up our inadequate pension system in a time of austerity.
“It should go without saying that people deserve timely responses on such a critical issue. It seems the government has no qualms about adding to the worries of those already having to choose between heating and eating this winter.
“The government must listen to public outcry and climb down from their misguided winter fuel cut.”
He is absolutely right. And as a note for Labour spokespeople quoting the pension triple lock as if that makes up for the cut in fuel allowance, it doesn't, the UK still pays out one of the smallest old age pensions in Europe and the triple lock was not a Labour idea, it was brought in by the Liberal Democrats in an attempt to shore up our inadequate pension system in a time of austerity.
Sunday, December 22, 2024
Lib Dems may force vote on Waspi betrayal
They say that if this happens then up to 100 Labour MPs could vote against the government’s decision to rule out spending £10bn compensating Waspi women, encapsulating the fury on Keir Starmer’s own benches:
The work and pensions secretary, Liz Kendall, announced on Tuesday there would be no compensation for women born in the 1950s who were not aware of changes to the state pension age, despite a recommendation from the parliamentary ombudsman in March that £1,000 to £2,950 should be paid out to each of the more than 3 million women affected.
The prime minister denied MPs a vote on the issue and told the Commons that taxpayers could not afford the £10.5bn compensation package that had been recommended, as his own MPs accused him of “betrayal” during PMQs on Wednesday.
However, it is understood that the Liberal Democratsintend to press the government to hold a vote. Should that be denied, the party could then consider other means, such as as a backbench debate or opposition day.
One Labour MP called it the party’s “tuition fee moment”, given how many Labour MPs had stood with campaign groups in solidarity with the women hit by the rising state pension age. Many privately feel embarrassed by the move and had thought they were following Labour policy in showing solidarity with the women.
The veteran Labour MP and mother of the house, Diane Abbott, criticised the government during PMQs as she said: “We did promise them that we will give them justice. I understand the issue about the cost, but does the prime minister really understand how let down Waspi women feel today?”
If a revolt on that scale happens then Starmer may have to rely on the Tories to avoid being defeated.
Saturday, December 21, 2024
Failing on House of Lords reform
The Mirror reports that the Prime Minister is expected to name around 30 new peers on Thursday - with a gong for former aide Sue Gray. This is despite a manifesto commitment to slim down this unelected body:
Despite commitment to reform the Lords, the Government is concerned about getting legislation through the upper chamber.
There are currently 273 Tories, 187 Labour, 78 Lib Dems and 184 cross-benchers, meaning no party has a majority.
Ms Gray, who hit the headlines when she led a probe into Partygate, quit as the PM’s chief of staff in October after a slew of internal rows.
She is expected to be among a string of appointments of Labour figures, which are believed to outnumber the Tory peerages that will also be announced.
Tom Brake, Director of Unlock Democracy, said Labour needed to stick to its commitment not to pack out the Lords.
He said: "We hope at least that all new peers will be committed to wholesale reform of the Lords. This would provide some consolation for their swelling numbers.
“Although new appointees to the Lords will now have to be ‘justified’, this falls far short of Labour’s pre-election pledges.
"At the very least, the government must rapidly deliver on its manifesto promise of a proper consultation on the future of the Lords.”
It is the same old story, a Prime Minister who cannot let go of the opportunity for patronage that the House of Lords offers him, eschewing democratic reform in the process.
Friday, December 20, 2024
Brexit cost UK £27bn in lost trade in first two years
The paper says that researchers based at the London School of Economics found that trade barriers had been a “disaster” for small businesses and had forced thousands to stop trading with EU nations:
The academics from the Centre for Economic Performance looked at evidence from more than 100,000 firms, and found that by the end of 2022, two years after the UK signed the trade and cooperation agreement (TCA) with Brussels, total British goods exports had fallen by 6.4% and imports by 3.1%.
An assessment by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has forecast that the UK will suffer a 15% slump in trade, leading to a 4% reduction in national income, over the longer term.
CEP researchers said that while it was possible the UK might still experience a fall of the magnitude envisaged by the OBR, the government’s independent economic forecaster, there would need to be a further deterioration in imports and exports with the UK’s largest trading partner.
Thomas Sampson, one of the report’s authors, said: “We find that, through the end of 2022, the TCA reduced goods trade by less than half as much as the OBR projected. That said, the OBR number is a long-run projection and we only study the first two years of the TCA.
“Whether the decline in trade will get bigger over time remains to be seen. But the additional fall would have to be larger than what we’ve seen so far in order to match the OBR’s projections.”
Rachel Reeves is likely to welcome the findings, which show the resilience of the economy when confronted by a large trade shock. But it will also put pressure on the chancellor to support efforts to lower trade barriers over the next couple of years to prevent the damage from getting worse.
A review by the OBR of its previous predictions may result in higher growth forecasts once the relatively brighter prospects for UK trade are included.
The UK is due to start negotiations next year on the next phase of the TCA. Ministers are expected to resist calls for the UK to open its agriculture markets to competition from EU farmers and fishing trawlers in return for greater access for UK goods to the bloc.
Examining the first two years of the TCA, the authors said it was clear large firms had mostly carried on trading at the same level with EU partners.
However, smaller exporters – those with fewer than 100 employees – had suffered badly. More than 14,000 of the 100,000 firms examined had quit trading with the EU altogether. Almost all were smaller businesses.
Imports held up better than exports after larger firms found ways to source components and raw materials from countries outside the EU.
Sampson, an associate professor of economics at the LSE, said: “The TCA has been a disaster for small exporters, many of which have simply stopped exporting to the EU. At the same time, larger firms have adapted well to the new trade barriers. Consequently, total exports have, at least so far, declined less than expected.”
Yet another statistic for the side of Nigel Farage's bus.
Thursday, December 19, 2024
Protecting our democracy
The paper says that Vijay Rangarajan, chief executive of the elections watchdog, has said that linking donations to political parties to the UK profits of companies owned by foreigners was one of the urgent changes needed to retain the trust of voters:
The move, which the Guardian understands is being considered by the government, could cap the amount that Musk, the world’s richest man, could donate through the British arm of his social media company X (formerly Twitter).
Twitter UK’s latest publicly available accounts show pre-tax profits of £8.5m in 2022, on a turnover of £205m, substantially lower than the $100m (£80m) that Musk was initially said to be willing to donate.
After a meeting with Musk this week at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Florida estate, Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, said the multi-billionaire was giving “serious thought” to bankrolling the party.
The prospect has been met with alarm inside the Labour government, with sources suggesting that it would “not be within the spirit” of the existing party funding rules and that it underlined the need for the legislation to be tightened up.
Electoral law in the UK currently stipulates that all donations and loans to political parties worth more than £500 should come from “permissible donors” registered in the UK. These include voters on the electoral register or companies registered in the UK.
The watchdog also wants political parties to be legally bound to make enhanced checks on donations to assess their risk, and to ensure those who donate to “unincorporated associations” are permissible donors.
“It’s crucial that UK voters have trust in the financing of our political system, so they need to see how parties and campaigners are financed and how they spend that money at elections,” Rangarajan told the Guardian.
“Our current laws include checks on the permissibility of donations and are intended to provide transparency over the source of political donations. But the system needs strengthening, and we have been calling for changes to the law since 2013, to protect the electoral system from foreign interference.
“We recommend three key changes: limit company donations to the money that they have made in the UK; legally require parties to conduct know-your-donor checks on donations to assess and manage their risks; and ensure those who donate to unincorporated associations are permissible donors. We are discussing these proposals with the government.”
Let's hope that the government listens and acts.
Wednesday, December 18, 2024
Now Labour abandon Waspi women
I can certainly rememeber my then local Labour MP, the current Chancellor of the Exchequer, Work and Pensions Minister and even Keir Starmer joining protests pledging to compensate women who had lost out due to a failure of communications over their pensions, and yet, once they are in power with the ability to come good on all they campaigned for, the same politicians have gaslit those women.
The Guardian reports that campaigners for “Waspi women” hit by the rising state pension age reacted with fury on Tuesday, after work and pensions secretary, Liz Kendall, announced they will not be compensated by the taxpayer.
The paper says that Kendall told MPs the government accepted the parliamentary and health service ombudsman’s findings earlier this year that her department had failed to communicate the changes adequately, but she rejected its recommendation for a flat-rate compensation scheme, paying out £1,000 to £2,950 to each of the more than 3 million women affected:
Explaining the government’s decision, Kendall pointed to survey evidence from 2006, suggesting 90% of women in the relevant age group knew about the planned changes.
“Given the vast majority of women knew the state pension age was increasing, the government does not believe paying a flat rate to all women at a cost of up to £10.5bn would be fair or proportionate to taxpayers,” she told MPs.
The chair of the Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi) campaign, Angela Madden, condemned the announcement.
“This is a bizarre and totally unjustified move which will leave everyone asking what the point of an ombudsman is if ministers can simply ignore their decisions. It feels like a decision that would make the likes of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump blush,” she said.
The Liberal Democrats’ work and pensions spokesperson, Steve Darling, said it was a “day of shame” for Labour. “The new government has turned its back on millions of pension-age women who were wronged through no fault of their own, ignoring the independent ombudsman’s recommendations, and that is frankly disgraceful,” he said.
There was a letter to my local paper earlier this week from a Swansea Labour councillor arguing that people should not be attacking the Labour government as they have achieved so much already. Her problem of course is that people only see the failures and the betrayals, and these negatives are multiplying daily.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves stuck the knife in just weeks after the election, instantly stripping 10 million pensioners of their winter fuel payment. She then twisted the blade by axing the proposed £86,000 cap on social care costs, meaning that tens of thousands of older people will now be forced to sell their homes to cover care fees. Neither of those measures appeared in the Labour manifesto.
Then in her Budget, Reeves geared up to inheritance tax on unused pension pots from 2027, with a potential income tax bill on top, imposed a massive employers national insurance hike and brought famers into the inheritance tax regime. And now this.
This really is beginning to look like a pattern.
Tuesday, December 17, 2024
Is English council reorganisation a serious misstep for Labour?
The paper says that the reforms give with one hand while taking away with the other:
The government’s devolution white paper promises to empower local councils in England while simultaneously telling them what to do. Like their Conservative predecessors, ministers are mainly interested in local authorities because they recognise that they are key to economic growth. The kind of development that the government is desperate to see will not happen unless councils can work with businesses to address the need for investment in skills, transport and housing as well as jobs.
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The new council of the nations and regions is meant to signal the government’s seriousness. But despite Angela Rayner’s rhetoric about places “taking back control”, the reality is that her white paper is light on carrot and heavy on stick.
From a local government perspective, the most politically provocative measure is the promised abolition of district councils, which face being merged with counties to form unitary authorities. This is a technocratic and cost-cutting move presented as modernisation. If carried through, it would mean a greater degree of uniformity in place of the current patchwork of arrangements in different parts of England. It would also bring an end to the split in responsibilities between districts, which handle services including rubbish collection, and counties, with their statutory duties including social care and special educational needs.
Such streamlining could bring some benefits. Most people don’t grasp the different duties of the various government tiers (in rural areas this usually includes parish as well as district and county councils). But disrupting local democracy is not a thing to be done lightly, especially when public trust in politics is widely understood to be fragile. Organisational change directs huge amounts of energy inwards and there is no good evidence that larger councils are more effective. Ministers should be mindful of the towns and villages where a district council is the most visible elected body – and may also be different, politically, from the surrounding county. When larger councils are under colossal strain due to long-term underfunding of their social care obligations, there are benefits to keeping some services separate.
The proposals would be more palatable overall if they addressed such problems. A more radical settlement would include a greater degree of fiscal devolution, while a progressive tax policy ought to include the long-delayed reform of council tax. In the absence of a meaningful power shift away from Westminster, these reforms look like more of the same from an already overmighty central government. Even the new unitary authorities will not be placed in charge of decisions such as housebuilding numbers and energy infrastructure. Local councils risk being reshaped not to make their own choices but the better to carry out Whitehall’s orders.
What the Guardian misses is the cost of this reorganisation both in monetary terms and in the disruption of services. There is never a good time for reorganising government structures, but doing so in the middle of a financial crisis where many councils are struggling to avoid bankruptcy, have massive overspends on social care budgets and are scaling back basic services is very risky indeed.
Restructuring is disruptive and costs money, in terms of redundancy costs but also for recruitment and marrying up different systems and cultures. It can take years for things to settle down properly. Who is going to pay for all this? I doubt if the Chancellor of the Exchequer has money to spare. If she has then perhaps she could use some of it to restore the winter fuel allowance and abolish the two child cap on child benefit.
A more rational approach to local government is to be welcomed, but it must be properly financed, properly empower local politicians to make a difference while devolving additional responsibilities to them, and be carried out at the appropriate time.
Monday, December 16, 2024
The failure of levelling up
Chiefly, it was the way the whole agenda was managed, cherry-picking projects, making local councils jump through hoops to access the cash and telling them they had to find matched funding from scarece resources, failing to tackle the real structural problems, red tape, top-down control freakery, and, it now transpires, not actually spending the money allocated to the project.
The Guardian reports on freedom of information requests that reveal that the Tory government spent only a quarter of the money allocated to Michael Gove’s flagship regional spending scheme.
They say that the previous government allocated £10.6bn to the three main schemes under the levelling up programme, which provided funding for regeneration projects as diverse as leisure centres and local transport networks, but local government expert Jack Shaw has found that it managed to spend only £2.5bn of that money, which experts blame on a mixture of high inflation, bureaucracy and poor decision-making:
Shaw said: “It is clear that short-term, competitive funding is not the most effective way of investing in communities. The Conservatives spent too long requiring local authorities to bid for funding, didn’t get it out on time and changed the rules of the game throughout – making it very difficult for places to invest.”
Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, promised that his levelling up programme would help solve Britain’s longstanding regional inequalities. He put Gove in charge of the scheme, which was designed to secure value for money for the taxpayer by making local authorities bid against each other for pots of money handed out by the central government.
Experts say the scheme was beset with problems from the start, however, including changing the bid criteria and heavy-handed intervention from Whitehall.
Even when the money was allocated, local officials struggled to spend it, thanks in part to rapidly escalating costs. With inflation spiking, local authorities found the money they had been allocated did not cover the cost of the planned programmes, and had to go back to Whitehall for more money or permission to change the scope of the work.
Shaw’s figures show officials found it hardest to spend money from the main levelling up fund, with only £875m of £4.8bn having been spent. Just £1bn of the £3.2bn towns fund was spent, while officials spent £616m of the £2.6bn allocated to the shared prosperity fund, which was meant to replace EU funding.
The figures add to mounting evidence that the entire levelling up agenda has failed to live up to its billing.
Just how misconceived the scheme was is illustrated by a report by the parliamentary public accounts committee which found “absolutely astonishing” levels of delays:
Meg Hillier, the chair of the committee at the time, said: “The vast majority of levelling up projects that were successful in early rounds of funding are now being delivered late, with further delays likely baked in.”
Another problem, say experts, was that councils were bidding for money for projects they thought would get approved by central government, rather than projects that were really needed by their local communities. When costs escalated, some say, councils put these projects on the backburner to focus on their true priorities.
Clive Betts, a Labour member of the current public accounts committee, said: “The reality is that the schemes that were accepted were not the ones which tallied with councils’ priorities, but they were designed to hit the priorities of the central government.
“This is the problem with single pots of money which councils have to bid for, and it shows why we need proper long-term strategic funding for local government.”
The Labour government has cancelled the levelling up scheme altogether, rebranding the entire department as the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
Ministers have promised to allow local authorities to decide for themselves how to use regeneration funds. Several councils, however, remain financially stretched, with a recent study showing one in four are set to go bankrupt in the next two years without a further cash injection from the central government.
We' see how that works out.
The Guardian reports on freedom of information requests that reveal that the Tory government spent only a quarter of the money allocated to Michael Gove’s flagship regional spending scheme.
They say that the previous government allocated £10.6bn to the three main schemes under the levelling up programme, which provided funding for regeneration projects as diverse as leisure centres and local transport networks, but local government expert Jack Shaw has found that it managed to spend only £2.5bn of that money, which experts blame on a mixture of high inflation, bureaucracy and poor decision-making:
Shaw said: “It is clear that short-term, competitive funding is not the most effective way of investing in communities. The Conservatives spent too long requiring local authorities to bid for funding, didn’t get it out on time and changed the rules of the game throughout – making it very difficult for places to invest.”
Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, promised that his levelling up programme would help solve Britain’s longstanding regional inequalities. He put Gove in charge of the scheme, which was designed to secure value for money for the taxpayer by making local authorities bid against each other for pots of money handed out by the central government.
Experts say the scheme was beset with problems from the start, however, including changing the bid criteria and heavy-handed intervention from Whitehall.
Even when the money was allocated, local officials struggled to spend it, thanks in part to rapidly escalating costs. With inflation spiking, local authorities found the money they had been allocated did not cover the cost of the planned programmes, and had to go back to Whitehall for more money or permission to change the scope of the work.
Shaw’s figures show officials found it hardest to spend money from the main levelling up fund, with only £875m of £4.8bn having been spent. Just £1bn of the £3.2bn towns fund was spent, while officials spent £616m of the £2.6bn allocated to the shared prosperity fund, which was meant to replace EU funding.
The figures add to mounting evidence that the entire levelling up agenda has failed to live up to its billing.
Just how misconceived the scheme was is illustrated by a report by the parliamentary public accounts committee which found “absolutely astonishing” levels of delays:
Meg Hillier, the chair of the committee at the time, said: “The vast majority of levelling up projects that were successful in early rounds of funding are now being delivered late, with further delays likely baked in.”
Another problem, say experts, was that councils were bidding for money for projects they thought would get approved by central government, rather than projects that were really needed by their local communities. When costs escalated, some say, councils put these projects on the backburner to focus on their true priorities.
Clive Betts, a Labour member of the current public accounts committee, said: “The reality is that the schemes that were accepted were not the ones which tallied with councils’ priorities, but they were designed to hit the priorities of the central government.
“This is the problem with single pots of money which councils have to bid for, and it shows why we need proper long-term strategic funding for local government.”
The Labour government has cancelled the levelling up scheme altogether, rebranding the entire department as the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
Ministers have promised to allow local authorities to decide for themselves how to use regeneration funds. Several councils, however, remain financially stretched, with a recent study showing one in four are set to go bankrupt in the next two years without a further cash injection from the central government.
We' see how that works out.
Sunday, December 15, 2024
Are Labour's English housebuilding targets achieveable?
Now, with proposals having been published to set individual targets for each planning authority and new rules that will allow for housebuilding on poorer quality green-belt land, one leading housebuilder has stepped in to point out that it isn't as simple as reducing 'red tape' and centrally mandated diktat.
The Guardian reports that the Barratt Redrow chief executive, David Thomas, when asked by the BBC if there were enough workers to build the extra homes promised by Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner, said: “The short answer is no.”
These plans are already meeting resistance within local government, with councils sharing the ambition but uneasy over the means. The Local Government Association Housing Spokesperson, Councillor Adam Hug is quoted on their website as saying there needs to be a collaborative approach to this issue:
It is councils and communities who know their local areas and are therefore best placed to make judgement decisions on how to manage competing demand for land use through the local plan-led system. Getting housebuilding targets in the right place is a difficult task, so any national algorithms and formulas should be supplemented with local knowledge and involvement by councils and communities who know their areas best.
“Planning is about creating communities linked with the right economic activity and public services, whilst conserving and enhancing the natural and local environment. Local democratic discretion and flexibility need to remain important elements of the planning system.
“Planning reform also needs to be supported by further work to tackle workforce challenges, the costs of construction and the financial headroom of local authorities and housing associations to build the social and truly affordable homes we desperately need.
“In order to deliver the homes we need, government must work with councils and the housebuilding industry to ensure there is a suitable pipeline of sustainable sites, which once allocated in a Local Plan and / or given planning permission, are indeed built out. While councils recognise that swift decision-making on planning applications is critical, with nearly 9 in 10 applications granted, people cannot and do not live in planning permissions. Local authorities must be given greater powers to ensure prompt build out of sites with planning permission, as well as the ability to set planning fees at a local level.”
David Thomas has other concerns. He believes that the government would have to “revolutionise the market, revolutionise planning, revolutionise methods of production” to make their target achievable:
The Home Builders Federation (HBF) echoed Thomas’ sentiments.
The HBF told the BBC the UK “does not have a sufficient talent pipeline” of builders to meet Labour’s goal, citing recruitment constraints with poor perception and lack of training within schools, not enough apprenticeships, and the cost of taking on apprentices.
The industry body said the sector had not “attracted” enough recruits in recent years, saying a quarter of tradespeople were aged over 50.
The concerns from within the construction industry have dampened prospects for the prime minister’s construction targets, after he said on 5 December his government would “absolutely” push development through.
At the end of the day, this programme depends on finance. Private housebuilders will not play ball with the government's ambition if there is no profit in it for them, while building social homes will require a big injection of government cash.
And then to add to that there are the inevitable delays in getting the programme off the ground, including surveys, flood risk assessments, highway concerns, educational requirements, wildlife surveys, drainage, heritage and a host of other factors that form part of the modern planning system.
No matter how you fast track the system, these deveelopments have to be the right ones in the right places, linked to communities, jobs and services. You can't just conjure them out of thin air.
Already, the feeling is developing that government has bitten off more than it can chew with an overly ambitious target.
And one more thing. A lot of the new Labour MPs have been elected for constituencies in leafy countryside with quaint English towns. Standby for the uproar when the first applications come in for green belt land.
And one more thing. A lot of the new Labour MPs have been elected for constituencies in leafy countryside with quaint English towns. Standby for the uproar when the first applications come in for green belt land.
Saturday, December 14, 2024
Lunch is for wimps
The Mirror reports that Keir Starmer has defended sandwiches as a "great British institution" after Kemi Badenoch dismissed them as not "real food".
The paper says that Badenoch sparked a backlash after saying "lunch is for wimps" and ranting about sandwiches, telling a magazine interview that she sometimes has a steak brought to her as she works:
The PM was surprised to learn this, his official spokesman said. The sarnie clash broke out after Ms Badenoch said: "I don't think sandwiches are a real food, it's what you have for breakfast." No10 was having none of it.
Mr Starmer's spokesman said: "I think he was surprised to hear that the leader of the Opposition has a steak brought in for lunch. The Prime Minister is quite happy with a sandwich lunch."
The spokesman described the sandwich as a "great British institution" which, according to the British Sandwich Association, brings in £8 billion a year to the UK economy. Asked what the Prime Minister's favourite sandwich is, the spokesman said: "I think he enjoys a tuna sandwich and occasionally a cheese toastie."
Describing her daily routine, Ms Badenoch said: "What's a lunch break? Lunch is for wimps. I have food brought in and I work and eat at the same time." She added that she "will not touch bread if it’s moist”.
Her remarks sparked a backlash, with Good Morning Britain host Kate Garraway saying: "It's made our viewers very cross". Former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng said: "I get where she's coming on with sandwiches because, you know, those of us we have low carb diets and all of that sort of business, but it's an individual choice.
"I don't think that's going to be a plank of the next Tory manifesto." He jokingly distanced himself from the controversial remark, saying: "I don't think she's expressing a party line or anything."
There was though an interesting take on this row in the Financial Times in which Stephen Bush says that there is a serious point:
If I were to ask, say, my grandmother — a white South African who came to the UK aged 21, heavily pregnant, because she knew that her mixed-race child (my mother) would not be able to enjoy the opportunities and freedoms she wanted for her in apartheid era South Africa — about British sandwiches, she too would use words like “moist” and would probably say it wasn’t a real food either.
And I, being a British-born mixed-race liberal, would probably say “that’s pretty weird, grandma” and think nothing more of it. Like my grandmother, Kemi Badenoch grew up in another country: she was born in the UK but spent the first 16 years of her life in Nigeria, and like my grandmother she came to this country because of politics. As Tomiwa Owolade wrote a few weeks back in an excellent column for the Times, it is impossible to understand Badenoch’s politics without understanding the upheaval and chaos of Nigeria in the 1990s.
This isn’t the first time Badenoch has said something that to most British ears might have sounded a bit odd. During the leadership election she said she “became working class” when working at McDonald's at the age of 16, having come to the UK as a result of the upheaval in Nigeria — which was suspended from the Commonwealth for violating the Harare Declaration a year earlier.
This is something I also recognise from my grandmother’s story: having got an art degree from the University of Cape Town, the only job she could get here in Britain was as a cleaner. (Whether that is because she had come from Cape Town or because of the pulling power of art degrees, I leave to you to decide.)
Now, I think that for most British people, who do not have that direct relationship to someone like Badenoch in living memory, the things she has said in interviews seem pretty weird. To most British people, the idea that you can “become working class” seems pretty foreign to most of us. That the sandwiches you buy in our supermarkets are oddly moist, again, seems pretty weird.
What Badenoch badly needs to do is find a way of talking about the fact she is a first-generation immigrant. There are, in my view, all sorts of ways that makes her a valuable addition to our politics. I am the first person in my family not to have to move countries because of politics — that is a stability that we here in the UK often take for granted, and Badenoch does not. I don’t always agree with her political positions but she is right to talk about the importance of British stability and to warn that we take it for granted at our peril. And part of what makes this country great in my view is that a first-generation immigrant can rise to become leader of the main party of the British right, as Badenoch herself has noted.
But unless she can make that a central part of her leadership pitch, she is going to be defined by interventions that to most people seem pretty odd and out of keeping with how they see politics.
Still with so many people in poverty and struggling to put a meal on the table this Christmas, one would think that our party leaders had better things to talk about.
Friday, December 13, 2024
Welsh councils still facing financial difficulties
The BBC reports that the Welsh First Minister, Eluned Morgan is confident that Wales will not see local authorities going bust, after the Labour leader of Flintshire council warned the threat of bankruptcy had not gone away.
They say that an average 4.3% funding increase for councils that was announced on Wednesday, a £253m increase for the next financial year, is less than half the budget shortfall councils are facing.
Speaking to BBC Radio Wales Breakfast, Morgan said she recognised the "massive pressure" facing local authorities, but that money was being made available for the first time "in a very very long time".
On the threat of bankruptcy, she said the government had been keeping a close eye on councils.
"We check their reserves, we check where they're at. We are confident that we are not in the situation that they are in England, where many, many councils have gone bust.
"So of course, we will keep monitoring that situation," she said.
Morgan also criticised what she called the "ridiculous system" to deal with funding to cover the increase in national insurance (NI) contributions for public sector employers.
Welsh ministers will not find out how much funding will be available until May or June next year, from the Treasury at Westminster.
The changes to NI begin at the start of next April.
She said she would be urging Chancellor Rachel Reeves to give the Welsh government better foresight.
She said she was "pretty miffed", but that she expected increased contributions for people employed directly by the public sector to be fully covered.
There is still uncertainty over whether private companies or charities who provide services for the public sector will be included.
The first minister said that the 4.3% average funding boost for councils would - to an extent - alleviate any shortfall.
Charities and voluntary groups, the private care sector as well as many GP and dental practices have warned of the potentially damaging affects of NI increases on them.
The financial pressures are bad enough, but the UK government is adding to them. The Chancellor may have said that she will cover the employers' national insurance for public sector employees but she has not specified that she will pay for all of it, while the definition of what exactly a public sector employee is in unclear.
This is a point covered by the Welsh Finance Secretary, here. He told the Senedd Finance Committee that the the UK Government plans to use the Barnett formula to decide how much Wales will receive based on the costs in England and that Wales' share may turn out to be less than we need. Furthermore Directors of Finance are unlikely to see any of that money until June.
The cost to councils that will not be met by the UK government is the additional employers NI and the minimum wage bill for external providers. This is particularly acute in social care where social service departments rely on these companies and will have to pay extra from April to meet additional costs.
The shortfall in meeting external providers' additional NI contributions could be about £60m across Wales with an additional £60m cost to meet the increase in the minimum wage. So in addition to the millions social service departments are overspent so far this year there will be an additional financial burden councils will need to find of about £120m.
That is not an insignificant amount. What a mess Labour have made of this so early in their administration.
Thursday, December 12, 2024
DWP imposing misery on carers
The paper says that more than 262,000 repayable overpayments totalling in excess of £325m were clawed back from carers who had – mostly unwittingly – fallen foul of carer’s allowance rules, while 600 carers were prosecuted and received criminal records after DWP civil servants referred their cases to the Crown Prosecution Service.
They add that campaigners have claimed that the National Audit Office (NAO) report highlights the scale of the misery and hardship inflicted on carers over the period as well as the extent of the failure by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to tackle overpayments:
A Guardian investigation this year revealed how Conservative ministers allowed overpayments to grow almost unchecked for years, despite senior officials promising MPs in 2019 that new data-matching technology would eradicate the problem.
There are currently more than 134,500 unpaid carers repaying overpayment debts of more than £251m after falling foul of “cliff-edge” rules on earnings limits. A carer who earned £1 more than the £151 threshold for 52 weeks would have to pay back not £52 but £4,258.80.
The NAO report revealed that staffing levels in the carer’s allowance processing unit were designed to meet internal financial savings targets rather than to ensure carers were prevented from inadvertently accruing overpayments.
As a result, only half the electronic alerts identifying potential benefit overpayments were investigated annually. The number of staff assigned to check alerts and investigate cases was cut by 14% over the past two years.
The DWP has repeatedly refused to accept that it has any responsibility to identify all earnings breaches or alert individuals to potential overpayments, arguing that in law the onus is on claimants to inform it of any changes that could affect their eligibility for carer’s allowance.
On average, family carers – most of whom are in poverty – ended up repaying nearly £1,000 in earnings-related overpayments last year, although the Guardian has revealed that since April two cases had accrued more than £20,000 in overpayments, suggesting the DWP failed to spot the breaches for nearly five years.
That so many family carers have been caught up in this scandal of the DWP’s own making is scandalous.
Wednesday, December 11, 2024
How national insurance increase will undermine homeless services
He has warned of hundreds of possible job losses among youth homelessness charities due to the employer national insurance hike in the latest Budget:
Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced in her autumn statement that the rate of employer national insurance would rise from 13.8 per cent to 15 per cent in April next year.
The secondary threshold, meaning the level at which employers start paying the tax on each employee’s salary, will also be reduced from £9,100 a year to £5,000.
Mr Connolly said EveryYouth’s network of youth homelessness charities across the UK is set to lose £1.73m from collective budgets – the equivalent of axing more than 60 frontline workers from the network’s government-funded services.
“Our services have already been cut down to the bone,” he told The Independent. “There is already a very minimal standard of support available, and this national insurance increase will only make the charities’ situation worse.
“This will affect the network’s ability to help young people learn independent living skills and navigate the transition to adulthood.
“It will also make it more difficult to provide additional wrap-around support, addressing childhood trauma and educational deficits, which is funded by donors and is essential if we want our most disadvantaged young people to thrive.”
The charity network has helped 327 people aged between 16 and 25 move into a home this year and has assisted a further 564 young people into employment.
Mr Connolly has called on the government to protect youth homelessness services from the national insurance increase and requested an urgent meeting with the deputy prime minister.
“The young people we support are some of the most disadvantaged in the country, and a very high proportion are care leavers,” he wrote in the letter. “Many are neurodiverse and have faced discrimination due to their sexuality, gender identification, or race. It cannot be right that the overall increase in investment in public services results in the most vulnerable young people being penalised.”
This is yet another example of the impact that Labour's employers' national insurance hike is going to have on the third sector and key services for disadvantaged and vulnerable individuals. How can they justify allowing these organisations to go to the wall, like this?
Tuesday, December 10, 2024
Big brother state
They say that in 2012, the high court ruled that keeping the images of people who faced no action or who were charged and then acquitted was unlawful. However, despite the ruling, custody images of innocent people are still on the Police national database, which is available to all UK police forces and selected law enforcement agencies. They add that the images can be used for facial recognition checks of potential suspects:
The annual report of the biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner stated: “Forces continue to retain and use images of people who, while having been arrested, have never subsequently been charged or summonsed.
“The use of these custody images of unconvicted individuals may include for facial recognition purposes.” The report said work was “under way” to ensure the retention of images was proportionate and lawful.
Charlie Whelton, policy and campaigns officer at Liberty, said: “It is deeply concerning that people who have never been charged with a crime are finding their sensitive biometric data not only unlawfully retained by police, but used to fuel the unregulated and deeply invasive use of facial recognition technology as well.
“The police need to answer as to why they are still holding this highly personal data more than 10 years after the courts said this is against the law. This is even more concerning as police forge ahead with dangerous facial recognition technology that makes our photos as sensitive as our fingerprints.” He called on parliament to “urgently act to regulate the use of this technology”.
It was reported in 2012 that police may be forced to destroy custody images of innocent people after the high court ruled the Metropolitan police had breached the human rights of a woman and a boy they arrested by keeping their custody pictures.
Forces failed to comply with the ruling, and the government published a review in 2017 that reported there were more than 19 million custody images on the database, with more than 16 million in a searchable “facial recognition gallery”.
The review concluded those who had not been convicted should be able to apply to have the images deleted, but campaigners want stricter rules to prevent the images being used in a facial recognition database.
In Scotland, custody images are only uploaded to the Police National Database if a person has been charged with an offence. Police Scotland also reviews custody images to delete those not linked to a live prosecution or conviction.
The previous government urged police forces to make wider use of facial recognition searches against the police national database. Big Brother Watch, a campaign group, has described the deployment of the technology as “dangerously authoritarian surveillance”.
Jake Hurfurt, head of research and investigations at Big Brother Watch, said: “Police and the Home Office have no idea how many people’s photographs they hold unlawfully, and more than a decade after the high court demanded these be deleted, look to have made next to no effort to comply with the law.
“Removing these images is not impossible, as Police Scotland have shown, and other forces must do the same rather than remain complicit in a decade-old breach of privacy rights on an industrial scale. Facial recognition searches must not be conducted against images that are held outside of the law.”
If the police can't keep to the letter of the law then what hope is there for the rest of us.
Monday, December 09, 2024
Brexit putting England and Wales tap water safety at risk
The paper says that people in the industry have called it a “Brexit problem” because EU countries will share laboratory capacity from 2026, meaning that if the UK was still in the EU, water companies would be able to use products that passed tests on the continent. However, UK rules mean products cannot be tested abroad; they have to be tested in the country in a certified lab, of which there are now none:
If companies are unable to keep contaminants out of the water supply, it can cause a danger to health. This year, thousands of people in Devon became unwell after the cryptosporidium parasite was detected in the supply. Schools and businesses had to temporarily close and it negatively affected the local economy. Some households had to boil their tap water for a month to remove the contaminant.
Under the rules of water regulators across the UK, including the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI), every item or chemical that comes into contact with drinking water has to be tested in stringent conditions, under an EU-derived law known as regulation 31. This ensures these products are safe to use, do not leach dangerous chemicals into the drinking water supply and do not encourage the growth of dangerous microbes.
Laboratories have to be regulation 31 certified, meaning they carry out all the tests on chemicals, pipes or other items to a certain standard. There used to be three such laboratories in the UK, but since 2021 there have been none as they all shut down because they are expensive to run.
This means new products cannot be tested or used to clean water, and that products that have to be retested every five years also cannot be approved. Whistleblowers at water companies havesaid this “limits the availability of products in the market which both risks safety and reduces competition, which will drive up prices and reduce service quality”. There is a backlog of dozens of products awaiting testing.
There are no plans for new labs. The DWI could not give a date for when a new lab could be opened or when the problem will be solved. Water company insiders say the rule has indefinitely stopped the use of all new products that remove contaminants from the water supply.
Those charged with cleaning the UK’s tap water at water companies said the gap in testing capacity has caused the compliance of existing products to lapse, and that they have since come off the market. They said many of these products that cannot now be used actively prevent contamination from entering the water supply.
The trade group British Water has told the industry: “The closure of laboratories offering this vital testing service has not only disrupted production lines but also left suppliers struggling to meet the stringent requirements of their clients.”
Yet another fine mess Farage and his cronies have got us into.
Update: it transpires that Scotland have two testing labs, one in Edinburgh and one in Inverness. So lazy journalism by the Guardian. The point about Brexit not allowing us to use EU tested products remains however. And no doubt the Nats will be pleased that the whole of the UK is now reliant on Scotland to ensure their drinking water is safe.
Sunday, December 08, 2024
Winter fuel cuts worsening poverty
The paper says that the fresh study also suggests that millions are already cutting down on their heating, with warnings about the impact on the NHS.
Meanwhile, a spike in applications for pension credit, currently running at 10,000 new claims a week, which enables people to receive the winter fuel payments, also means that even some of those who qualify are having to wait up to 12 weeks to receive it because Whitehall has been “overwhelmed” with claims:
With Storm Darragh ravaging parts of Britain this weekend, more than 7 million pensioners say they are turning down their heating or reducing the hours they turn it on to help them cope financially.
The research by the Age UK charity also estimates that the figure includes two-thirds of those over 66 living with long-term health conditions.
More than 1 million people aged 66 or over have been skipping meals, according to Age UK’s data. Again, vulnerable groups are seriously affected, with 620,000 pensioners suffering long-term conditions estimated to be missing meals.
Similar numbers were found to be reducing the number of hot meals they had. Four in nine pensioners – about 5.5 million people – said they were worried that they would not be able to heat their home enough this winter. More than 900,000 pensioners with long-term conditions said they were worried about getting into debt.
The Lib Dem Work and Pensions spokesperson, Steve Darling is quite right when he says: “The government needs to swallow its pride and reverse these reckless cuts that will leave millions of vulnerable people having to choose between heating and eating this winter,” said Steve Darling, the Lib Dem work and pensions spokesperson. “We are reaching the point of no return.”
This is not what most people expected from a new Labour government.
With Storm Darragh ravaging parts of Britain this weekend, more than 7 million pensioners say they are turning down their heating or reducing the hours they turn it on to help them cope financially.
The research by the Age UK charity also estimates that the figure includes two-thirds of those over 66 living with long-term health conditions.
More than 1 million people aged 66 or over have been skipping meals, according to Age UK’s data. Again, vulnerable groups are seriously affected, with 620,000 pensioners suffering long-term conditions estimated to be missing meals.
Similar numbers were found to be reducing the number of hot meals they had. Four in nine pensioners – about 5.5 million people – said they were worried that they would not be able to heat their home enough this winter. More than 900,000 pensioners with long-term conditions said they were worried about getting into debt.
The Lib Dem Work and Pensions spokesperson, Steve Darling is quite right when he says: “The government needs to swallow its pride and reverse these reckless cuts that will leave millions of vulnerable people having to choose between heating and eating this winter,” said Steve Darling, the Lib Dem work and pensions spokesperson. “We are reaching the point of no return.”
This is not what most people expected from a new Labour government.
