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Buried under your own bad news

Oct 15

Posted by James in Westminster | 5 Comments

After May’s election, the Lib Dems argued that to stay out of coalition would undermine their arguments for a more consensual politics, and for proportional representation itself. It’s a strong argument, too. If fair votes ever come to Westminster, coalition will be one of the two typical outcomes alongside minority administration, as currently being road-tested by Alex Salmond without the impediment of Tavish Scott. For those committed to power-sharing, like Lib Dems and Greens, it might indeed seem irresponsible not to share power when you’re offered it.

However persuasive an argument that may have been, the specific offer made to them was to go in with ideological state-cutters, and that’s a very different choice. They didn’t decide to work with the Tories because “the numbers made it inevitable”, any more than the Tories compromised because they “felt the hand of history on their gonads, squeezing hard“. They’re working together because the Orange Book Lib Dems have always had more in common with the Tories than with Labour or indeed anyone else. It’s a snug fit, at least for a significant chunk of both coalition parties, and when you look from one to the other it’s already becoming hard to say which is which.

Aside from civil liberties, where the Tories alone were committed to a position significantly more sensible than Labour in any case, the combined result is very consistently right-wing, and it almost looks like they’re trying to alienate their voters. This has been a particularly bad week for the Lib Dems in this regard. Most attention this week has been focused on the tuition fees debacle. Yesterday, the Lib Dems’ education web-page looked like this, but today those commitments have gone. In their place is a page discussing the Browne report and the supposed wins of Vince Cable following it. In passing, to compound my reputation as a grammar snob, it currently also has a typo, like most education press releases.

If you pledge to your voters to abolish tuition fees knowing very accurately what the state of the public finances is, you can’t spin actually increasing them as compromise. Compromise might be a freeze on the current fee regime, plus a bit of wait-and-see on the economy. Abolition postponed. I wouldn’t have supported it, but it wouldn’t have led to the mass outrage at the Lib Dems seen so clearly on Question Time last night.

That issue has been exhaustively covered elsewhere, but it provided a kind of perverse cover for two other decisions which will certainly appall both activists and voters. A cross-party move was made to amend the AV referendum bill to include an STV option, backed by Caroline Lucas, Austin Mitchell and Douglas Carswell. An MP or two from every party sitting in the Commons backed it … except for the Lib Dems. If Tories feel free enough to rebel simultaneously against the coalition document and their party policy on PR, how come not one Lib Dem was prepared to stick to party policy that night? This issue has also been given a good go-over on the blogs, but surprisingly little mainstream media coverage, even from the wonkish political correspondents who could tell you your d’Hondt from your Condorcet.

The third move against Lib Dem party policy by their Ministers this week may, if anything, have been the worst. Their Orange manifesto included a proposal to sell off 49% of the Royal Mail, something all three of the larger Westminster parties have a peculiar desire to do, against both common sense and public opinion. Yet when Vince Cable set out the coalition’s proposals mid-week, that 49% had become 100%, and the Post Office network, scene of so many Glum Councillor-style Lib Dem photo-ops, would be “mutualised”.

I love true mutuals and co-ops. I can’t get enough. Fans owning their clubs. Bring it on. Credit unions. Absolutely. But “mutualisation” of a national monopoly/utility, as also proposed by the Lib Dems for Scottish Water, is just code for privatisation, which is why it’s also Tory policy in Scotland. Along with the plans now for 100% privatisation of Royal Mail, this goes way beyond the manifesto offered to the public by the Lib Dems.

The savagery unleashed on the Post Office and the vote against STV both got buried under the avalanche of criticism over tuition fees. It’s an extraordinary week, in short, one in which their membership may finally have started to realise that their leadership’s apparent lack of any real principles really will risk a complete wipe-out for them. Government approval dropped in YouGov’s tracker by 11% in one day. I assume the Lib Dems noticed.

This administration, the first coalition any English resident below the age of 65 will have lived under, is giving definition to the word coalition in the minds of many. Compromises one can understand – coalitions cannot exist without them – but the sheer volume of betrayals and u-turns are damaging the reputation of coalition politics as a whole. It would be entirely understandable if the voters felt increasingly reluctant ever to elect a coalition again, or indeed to support proportional representation, if it means more of this kind of let-down. It’s an irony, given the claim this deed was done in May to defend the principle of cooperation, and also to reform the Westminster voting system. It may kill both stone dead, along with the Lib Dems.

Tartan Penny – We’re gonna Parly like it’s 1999

Oct 15

Posted by Jeff in Economy, Elections, Holyrood, Parties | 12 Comments

With October 20th and the detail of George Osborne’s Spending Review now less than one week away, the pressure on Finance Secretary John Swinney to point out where the requisite savings in Scotland’s budget will be made is building. Education Secretary Mike Russell has tried to take the sting out of the growing media focus on the spending problems facing Scotland by delaying a decision on university funding until after the election. However, procrastination of the big decisions will not work forever, particularly as the SNP has stated a big generous giveaway for the next parliamentary term in the shape of a continued Council tax freeze, a decision that has led to much of the press, unfairly I reckon, to attack the SNP’s supposed ‘lack of wisdom’.

It is difficult to predict where in Scotland’s budget a largely left wing public would accept significant slicing, particularly when the cost of policies is difficult to pin down (does abolition of student fees cost £15m or £1.5bn?). Consequently, if savings simply politically can’t be made, the growing pressure will result in having to let off some steam through tax rises.

Is it for financially squeezed moments like these that Scots decided to give the Scottish Parliament tax-varying powers for? Should political parties start looking at raising tax by 1p or 2p in the pound north of the border? It would be an enormously difficult decision.

Again, the numbers are hazy, but an undated Scottish Office document states that raising income tax by 1p in the pound would raise around £150m a year. I am, of course, happy to be corrected on that but if it is pensioners, students and the unemployed who deserve the most protection from cuts, then surely the employed are fair game. The question is, who is most likely to adopt this high-risk strategy in the election campaign.

For me, the SNP would be the most likely of the main five parties to resurrect their ‘tartan penny’ tactic from the 1999 election campaign. Alex Salmond has the most to lose from reversing policies that he presided over in the past four years and, over and above potential reversals, the FM will struggle to avoid committing to policies such as tuition fees, free care for the elderly and the latest Forth Bridge before May 5th. Increasing tax may well be the least worst option as the SNP seek to find that coveted fine line between financial credibility and public popularity.

The Lib Dems may join the SNP in pushing for an increase in tax rates, rekindling the party’s ‘Penny for Scotland’ campaign of 1999. Tavish Scott needs something as he must be keen to mark his party out in this election campaign for fear of anonymity or, worse, being seen only as Cameron’s little helpers down south. Mimicking an SNP penny in the pound would mark them out as frontrunners for coalition partners.

The Green Party may also consider campaigning on this extra tax. It’s not my position to say but investment in a renewable industry, keeping tuition fees abolished and bringing housing stock up to a higher standard of insulation appear to be top priorities, and expensive ones too.

The Conservatives, needless to say, will not be in favour of a tax rise in Scotland. The UK Tories preferred an austere 80/20 blend of cuts/tax rises to combat the deficit and will no doubt continue to ‘trust hard working families to spend their own money rather than the state’. Pah, the Scottish Government Finance Secretary can spend our hard-earned money better than any of us, everyone knows that… (I jest, sort of)

Labour, I would expect, will be staunchly against any use of the tax varying powers which would throw up an interesting dividing line for the voters if they had the choice of the SNP (higher income rates and frozen Council tax) or Labour (consistent income rates and increased Council Tax). Iain Gray would doubtless try to attack the SNP as both ‘cutters’ and ‘tax raisers’ which, while incongruous to me, may well go down well with certain parts of the electorate.

In short, will the 2011 election be 1999 all over again?

I personally hope so but with a different result. Scotland can be bold, brave and follow Finland and Sweden down the path of high tax, wide provision services, all the while climbing the regular ‘happiness indices’ that Scandinavian countries find themselves near the top of as a direct result of their relatively higher taxation levels.

(Update – It seems the SNP has already categorically denied raising income tax rates in the Parliament chamber, in response to a direct question from Lord George Foulkes. Courtesy of NewsnetScotland. I still have the Nats favourite to increase the income tax though. It is, after all, the right thing to do….)

Can we find a cure for asbestos-related diseases?

Oct 14

Posted by Guest Blog in Health, Holyrood | 6 Comments

In the interests of good debate, and in recognition of the fact that no one party will ever have all the answers, this blog will from time to time step out of its comfort zone and invite contributions from elsewhere on the political spectrum. We are therefore pleased to announce a guest post from one of Labour’s “new generation”, John Park MSP.

Since 1999 the Scottish Parliament has taken positive and far reaching decisions on health issues – free personal care and the smoking ban are two that immediately spring to mind.

Perhaps not appreciated more widely is that our parliament also has a proud record in tackling the major problems faced by sufferers of asbestos-related diseases and by their families. These haven’t been health measures but rather justice measures. Most recently the Scottish Parliament agreed legislation to overturn a House of Lords decision that would have prevented workers exposed to asbestos from claiming against employers for developing pleural plaques (benign localised scars that can develop from exposure to asbestos).

And in 2006, following a Members Bill from Clydebank MSP Des McNulty, the Rights of Relatives to Damages (Mesothelioma) (Scotland) Act 2007 was introduced. Before our parliament passed this legislation, those affected by an asbestos related disease would have to make a choice between either making a claim for damages for their own pain and suffering, or waiting until they passed away – thus allowing their surviving family members to make a claim for loss. This change in legislation meant that they could claim for both, removing an agonising burden from sufferers and their families at a difficult time.

We have moved forward in terms of justice due to the vigorous campaigns run by local asbestos groups (particularly those established in the former shipbuilding communities on the Clyde) and the wider Scottish trade union movement. But another more troubling reason for the concentration on a justice approach to ensure that sufferers and their families are properly compensated – rather looking to advancements in health – has been the long-held view that a cure for asbestos related diseases such as mesothelioma and asbestosis was virtually unattainable.

However there is growing evidence from across the globe that with intensive treatment patients can survive much longer than previously thought possible, and in some cases the cancer has gone into remission. I have met many people who have lost a family member to an asbestos-related disease and what is abundantly apparent is the desperation they all felt experienced knowing that there was no hope of their loved one living for more than a matter of months after diagnosis.

Asbestos related diseases are considered by some as from a time gone by: not as relevant in this new post-industrial era as they once were. Nothing could be further from the truth. Cases of asbestos related diseases have yet to peak in Scotland and many estimate that that peak will happen some time in the next 10 years. Furthermore, a danger continues to exist from exposure. Although it is not being used in the construction of buildings and engineering projects any longer in the UK, it can still be found in buildings and manufactured products that were built before the full effects of exposure to asbestos was known.

Worryingly, despite significant resources being invested by the Health and Safety Executive into campaigns highlighting the dangers of asbestos, over 88% of people working in industry are unaware that exposure can be fatal, and 74% have had no formal training in dealing with asbestos.

For all these reasons I believe that if we want to genuinely make Scotland a better place to live and work that we must establish and support a collaborative research network. This doesn’t need to be a physical building. A proposal last year by the All Party Group on Occupational Safety and Health at Westminster recommended the establishment of a National Centre for Asbestos Related Diseases (NCARD) – based on an example from Australia. This was agreed by the then UK Government but unfortunately the new coalition has decided not to support it and have scrapped the plans. I also raised the importance of this proposal having support from the Scottish Government during a Members Debate in January of this year. Unfortunately this received a lukewarm response from the Scottish Government – probably driven by officials in the health department rather than Ministers.

We have the powers, we have the need and we have shown in the past that we have the political will to tackle difficult issues such as this. Yes, of course there would be financial considerations, but surely the insurance industry would support such a move both in policy and financial terms? If the prognosis for those suffering from an asbestos related disease was better and there was a chance of a cure surely we could encourage insurance companies to make the necessary investment to support such an initiative? I hope so, because asbestos is a persisting scourge on Scotland’s proud industrial heritage and one we must tackle now.

What if Scotland just isn’t ready for cuts? (Or Spain)

Oct 12

Posted by Jeff in Economy, Sport | 33 Comments

Scotland play the Spanish wonder-kids tonight at Hampden and even though Craig Levein will try to arrange his team (and the Tartan Army sing their hearts out) in order to prevent a one-way thrashing, there is probably no stopping such an onslaught.

That’s fine though, that’s only 90 minutes of embarrassment and more bruises for the Scottish footballing ego. It’s nothing that a dark room and a couple of cans of Tennents Super Strength Lager won’t fix. OK, maybe three cans.

However, there may be a bigger ‘hiding to nothing’ coming Scotland’s way, and I don’t mean in football. What if we set up our nation’s structures to defend ourselves from cuts and those defences give way? What if coalition cuts start to run rings around our nation’s formation? What if we are not equipped to combat the destructive force that will be in front of us over the next half a decade? In short, is Scotland ready for the financial pain that is on its way and, if not, what will happen then?

There is currently a debate being held across the UK assessing whether increasing tuition fees in England & Wales is the correct future for further education. Such a debate would struggle to get off the ground in Scotland where support for universal and free access to university is fairly widespread.

However, how can a Scottish Government, with the best will in the world, deliver a policy of free access for students when its spending allowance does not take this option into account? And how can a Scottish Opposition realistically resist the temptation to exacerbate that difficulty for its own ends?

The obvious solution is a higher tax rate in Scotland to pay for universities centrally rather than through tuition fees but the current constitutional arrangement does not allow for this. There is a similar ideological divergence causing spending problems in benefits, the NHS and defence with no immediate solution to break the logjam.

Further evidence of Scotland not being ready to handle these cuts is the deficit that it holds. I don’t mean a Scottish Government deficit (none such exists as it can neither save nor borrow) and nor do I mean even the considerable Scottish slice of the UK deficit. I mean the £9bn that councils owe and are no doubt attracting onerous interest charges on.

I don’t mean this with disrespect but if the beancounters at HBOS, RBS and the Treasury can get their sums wrong and leave the UK vulnerable and exposed then the same can happen at any of the 32 councils across Scotland. £9bn is a lot of money for a small country of 5million to owe, it is £1,800 per person and it won’t be getting paid anytime soon while councillors focus on bins getting emptied and stocking dilapidated schools with jotters and textbooks.

Another aspect in which Scotland might not be ready for these cuts is just the simple presence of Conservatives back in Government. There is little doubt that the Tory brand remains toxic north of the border so although we should have had years to prepare ourselves for a Prime Minister Cameron, we may collectively be a little startled by it all and still unable to work grudgingly but constructively with the settled will of the Midlands and South of England. The temptation to lash out at anything forthcoming from George Osborne (a temptation albeit mitigated by a fuzzy Lib Dem presence) may count against us rather than for us when the final realisation that protests are not enough to save shrinking budgets. But even still, how do you adapt to spending less when you do not share in the philosophy that has caused that situation?

Scotland’s constitutional arrangement is regrettably similar to Craig Levein’s 4-6-0 and our politician’s approach to attack has been no more imaginative than throwing it up the line to try to win a throw-in. There needs to be a drastic rework of our political game so that, as a nation, our politicians can metaphorically run out onto the turf full of optimism, safe in the knowledge that we have the structures, the defences and the strategies to cope, adapt and succeed in the face of any challenge that comes our way.

These cuts, much like football, aren’t a matter of life and death.

It’s more important than that.

Anyway, first things first, bring it on Spain.

Unbelievably, graduates already pay tax

Oct 12

Posted by James in Education, Westminster | 12 Comments

It’s intriguing to watch when parties of government and opposition join forces to carry out a joint assault on some sacred cow or other. Take nuclear power. It’s now taken for granted Labour should be pro-nuclear, but in 2002 their White Paper declared that nuclear’s “current economics make it an unattractive option for new, carbon-free generating capacity” (pdf, p12). By 2006 they had changed their mind, and we had always been at war with Eastasia. Just the same with the Lib Dems. Less than a year before the General Election Chris Huhne was telling us “Our message is clear, No to nuclear, as it is not a short cut, but a dead end”, yet by last month apparently “there is an important place for new nuclear stations in our energy mix”.

In a couple of years no-one will really remember that either party used to be against nuclear power, and we’ll be saddled with a massive diversion from a low carbon future. The debate has “moved on”, and Government and opposition try to impart that fatalistic sense of fait accompli into the public consciousness. After all, if all three of the largest parties at Westminster want something, however insane, why bother resisting? Or indeed voting?

The boundaries of debate are now being closed down in another area – funding of higher education. In Scotland, the Lib Dems touted a change of name (from “tuition fees” to “graduate endowment”) and change in payment schedule (a delay) as abolition, a supposed achievement from their coalition with Labour. To be fair, when the political numbers stacked up for actual abolition came along in 2008, they voted with the Greens and the SNP to re-scrap them. Do it again and do it properly, as they say.

They then went into the 2010 UK General Election having given the NUS pledges not to raise fees – who have damning pictures ready should they sell out. I can see why NUS felt it necessary to extract this pledge, given their track record. This position, no increases, was already a substantial compromise on their outright abolition policy, but Nick Clegg had previously warned that he would ignore the party’s views on that.

Labour’s betrayal of students, of course, dates back much further, to those happy clappy early days of Blairism in 1997, when they not only brought in fees but also scrapped the residual grants for poorer students, an even more shameful decision and one with much worse consequences for equality. I was working at the time for St Andrews Students’ Union, not part of NUS and therefore free to campaign against Labour’s assault on equal access to higher education. Despite the reputation St Andrews has, in those days it was hardly the decadent administration some might have imagined. Again, against the stereotype, there were plenty of people there who counted towards the student poverty figures, and I ran surveys of them both before and after Labour’s changes were proposed. The demographics changed, the proportion working in term-time increased, and the anxiety about debt increased.

Now the UK government plans more changes as part of the cuts agenda, but the debate has been reframed. The choice now is between a graduate tax, we’re told, and the uncapped tuition fees beloved of highly paid university administrators. Even Jackie Ashley describes the former as “the only obvious alternative” to the latter, before urging Ed Miliband to back a hike in tuition fees instead of sticking to some supposedly principled graduate tax. Vince Cable’s rejection of the tax option is being portrayed as an inevitable move towards tuition fee increases. To be fair, given his current role, it probably is.

They’re trying to shut out those of us who think university tuition is a social good, that a good mix of arts and science graduates benefits the country enough to justify the investment. If you believe the intrinsic merit of education as well as the benefits it brings to the nation more than outweighs the expenditure, you’re an unrealistic, delusional “deficit denier” too. But neither fees nor a graduate tax can be regarded as acceptable. Fees simply do deter would-be students from poorer backgrounds, even where there are means-tests that can allow them to avoid paying. Above the poverty level, they are a factor in middle-income decision-making, but have virtually no impact on the wealthiest. And paying an additional tax after graduation on top of the debt incurred already will similarly skew admissions.

What’s more, a simple logical look at the situation shows graduates do pay more tax, but only where they earn more. It’s called income tax, and although it’s not particularly progressive, it does certainly ensure you pay more tax as your income rises. If a graduate gets a well-paid job in the City thanks in part to their degree, they pay more tax. If the same graduate decides to be a teacher instead, which their first degree will help, they’ll pay less, relatively. That sounds fair to me.

We can’t measure how much your income has been increased by education, but we can measure your income overall. Let’s just tax the latter, ideally more progressively (or look at charging business, given the way universities have come under increasing pressure to align with business’s interests). The total cost of UK higher education is currently just £7.8bn, not even a fifth of what we (largely) squander on so-called defence. It’s affordable.

Let’s be honest. Both of these measures, fees and a graduate tax, are rationing by price. Which means higher education will be disproportionately open for those able to pay, and it means a narrowing of access. Only if intelligence were somehow correlated to income would that perhaps be in the nation’s best interests.

We do need to ration, of course. We can’t afford for every school leaver and every would-be mature student to go to university, but the national interest is clearly aligned with taking the brightest and most committed. Rationing by ability, in other words.

There are problems with that too, most notably that the affluent pay for secondary education specifically designed to ensure that even the dim at private schools get university entrance-level qualifications, whereas the bright kids in poor schools have been failed long before they get to their Highers or A-levels. Those controversial measures to select students on more than just their exam results would have to be ramped up, no doubt to massive squealing from the Daily Mail. Or we could look again at Peter Wilby’s modest proposal from 1999 to admit students just from the top six in each school.

Choosing this alternative to a graduate tax or fees would incur another price. It would almost certainly mean a pause in, or even an end to, the long-term trend of rising numbers at university, the sacred cow that doesn’t get mentioned. So long as we’re looking beyond grades and taking the brightest from across the income levels, not just the pre-processed private school elite, that works for me. Even with organisation, unfortunately, it’ll probably require both Labour and Lib Dem MPs to grow a backbone. I fear a lot of damage will be to education done before that happens.

Update: yeah, Ian Bell made these points more concisely a month ago. Oh well.