• I M H O •

Friday, 21 February 2014

ATOS seeks to exit DWP contract early

Persistent death threats against staff who decide whether sick and disabled people are eligible for benefits have forced the private company employing them to seek an early exit from a £500m government contract. With opposition Labour MPs also stepping up criticism, Atos Healthcare said the political environment had become untenable and that it was no longer fair to employees to leave them vulnerable to attack. “It is becoming incredibly difficult for our staff; it’s pretty unpleasant,” people close to the company said. About 163 incidents of the public assaulting or abusing staff were recorded each month last year, Atos said.

At protests outside 45 Atos offices this week, names of individual doctors were chanted, while many of the 2,000 staff employed to carry out the work had received threats both in person or on Facebook and Twitter, as well as bullying at the company’s assessment centres.

The French IT company has been in discussions with the Department for Work and Pensions with a view to exiting the deal since October last year, because it views the tests as outdated. “In its current form it is not working for claimants, for DWP or for Atos Healthcare,” Atos said. “For several months now we have been endeavouring to agree an early exit from the contract, which is due to expire in August 2015. Despite these ongoing discussions, we will not walk away from a front-line service. Our total focus remains on delivering the services we are contracted to provide in a professional and compassionate way, until a new service begins.”

Atos has become a lightning rod for discontent over the coalition’s welfare reforms, which aim to shift more people off social security benefits and into work. For the past three years, the company has been under fire for its handling of work capability tests, which assess whether people are well enough to apply for jobs. A third of its decisions were overturned on appeal, amid allegations that people with terminal cancer or other serious illnesses had been denied benefits as a result of its assessments. Last July, the DWP told Atos to improve the quality of written reports provided to the department.

Atos said it had improved processes and that appeal court judges had said its reports were the reason for a successful appeal in fewer than 1 per cent of cases. A National Audit Office report also warned there were “dangers” in viewing high numbers of appeals as a measure of the quality of medical assessment work undertaken by Atos. “An appeal may be successful because the information available to the tribunal was not known at the time of the original assessment,” the NAO said. “In addition, a decision made by the Department on benefit entitlement will draw on other sources of information as well as the medical assessment.”

Despite the furore, Atos was awarded a fresh deal last year to carry out tests for the new personal independence payment (Pip), with the aim of reducing the projected cost of the benefit by 20 per cent by 2015-16. It replaces the disability living allowance and determines whether people are entitled to extra money to help cope with disability – such as cars, equipment or nursing. Atos’s £400m Pip contracts over five years cover the south-east and north of the country, accounting for about 75 per cent of disability living allowance claimants. Capita, a rival outsourcing company, has the remainder.

Private providers likely to be in the frame for the next work capability contract include G4S, Serco, A4E and Capita. According to an NAO report on the government’s four biggest suppliers, Atos earned £700m in revenues from the public sector in the UK in 2012, of £7.2bn sales worldwide. The company made an average net profit margin of about 2 per cent over the past decade, rising to 3 per cent in 2012.

Gill Plimmer, Financial Times

Atos seeks early exit from fit-to-work tests contract

BBC News 21/2/14

Atos - Protesting will not change welfare policy

Derry Journal 20/2/14

Atos protests: Epileptic, diabetic and asthmatic man has benefits reinstated during country-wide demonstrations

Daily Mirror 20/2/14

Fit for work demo takes to the streets

Lancashire Evening Post 20/2/14

Disability rights campaigners demonstrate outside Atos HQ in Euston

Camden New Journal 20/2/14

Noisy Sunderland protesters in city centre ATOS demonstration

Sunderland Echo 20/2/14

Sick and terminally ill put through 'brutal' fitness to work tests for lifeline benefits, say Cambridge protestors Cambridge News 19/2/14

Woman chains herself to Brighton building in protest at sickness benefit assessments

Brighton Argus 19/2/14

Derbyshire disabled in protest against 'Frankenstein monster' medical assessments firm

Derby Telegraph 20/2/14

Dozens protest at Etruria base of Government's 'fit to work' test firm Atos

Stoke Sentinel 20/2/14

Protest in Chester over work fitness tests

Chester First 20/2/14

Disability protests hit Lincoln

The Linc 20/2/14

They don't give Atos: campaigners protest against disability assessors

Bolton News 20/2/14

Anti-Atos protesters in demo outside Leicester office

Leicester Mercury 19/2/14

Nottingham community protests against work capability assessments

Impact 19/2/14

End this vile war on the disabled

Morning Star 20/2/14

Protest against Atos assessments held in York

York Press 19/2/14

Saturday, 15 February 2014

Atos National Demo - Wednesday 19 February 2014

Listings for the Atos National Demo, updated 15 February

Atos National Demo Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ATOSNationalDemo

Atos National Demo website: http://ukrebellion.com/atosdemo/

Thursday, 16 January 2014

Cameron lies again: government forced to reveal that spending on flood protection was NOT protected from cuts

Labour’s Shadow Environment Secretary, Maria Eagle MP, responds to Defra’s correction to official figures on government funding for flood protection:

“It is humiliating for David Cameron and Owen Paterson that they have finally been forced to reveal that spending on flood protection was not protected when cuts to the Environment Department’s budget were made. The Prime Minister must now stop repeating his misleading claim that more is being spent in the current four year period than in the previous four years when these new figures reveal that is simply not true. The Government should also stop including money that they hope to attract from external contributions but have so far failed to secure.

“Instead of spending time spinning away their failure to prioritise flood protection, David Cameron and Owen Paterson should focus on completing the review that they have been forced to undertake under pressure from Ed Miliband.”

Thursday, 19 December 2013

Esther McVey talks shit (part 137)

“In the UK it is right that more people are ... going to food banks because, as times are tough, we are all having to pay back this £1.5 trillion debt personally which spiralled under Labour. We are all trying to live within our means, change the gear and make sure that we pay back all our debt which happened under them.”

Thursday, 5 December 2013

Capita's runaway success story

'More than a year has passed since the UK Border Agency awarded a four-year, £30m contract to a private firm, Capita, to track down immigrants who have overstayed their visas in the UK. Hiring a private firm for a task that is normally the responsibility of the state did not escape criticism. “We are appalled the Government has offered a contract of this size to a private company,” Ruth Grove-White, policy director at the Migrants Rights Network, told The Independent.

The Border Agency calculated at the time that there were 174,000 immigrants who had overstayed. If Capita could find them, it would be a solid sign of the Government being tough on illegal immigration. Capita tried hard. It sent 39,100 text messages telling recipients that they had to leave as they no longer have the right to remain. The texts set off an avalanche of complaints, including those from people who had lived in the UK legally for years.

So how successful has Capita been, overall? Yesterday, while minds were focused on the Autumn Statement, the Home Office posted online the reply to a Freedom of Information request, which revealed that, after 14 months, the Capita contract had caused 4,160 people to depart these shores. So only about another 170,000 to go.

The good news is that the contract specified that Capita will be paid by results, which must have saved a pile of money.'

Independent

Friday, 15 November 2013

George Osborne promises coal or cash for ex-miners - as is their right

During a visit to Thoresby Colliery in north Nottinghamshire this afternoon, the Chancellor George Osborne announced that he would reverse the decision to cut the entitlement of former miners' winter fuel allowance. Mind you, he didn't quite put it like that.

Osborne said the government would guarantee 400 pit workers, who had recently been made redundant, a free delivery of coal every year worth £1,300 or £600 in cash instead. A further 1,000 retired workers will also get help under a concessionary fuel scheme dating back to the 1980s.

Mr Osborne said it was "important to support a group of people who through no fault of their own had lost out" and demonstrated the government's wish to support workers in all industries across the country. "I am determined to help those ex-miners so the government is going to step in and pay for the concessionary coal," he added.

However, Labour MP for Bassetlaw, John Mann, who has been campaigning to save the miners' fuel allowance, said ministers had "caved" in to pressure in the face of potential legal action. "The concessionary fuel allowance is a contractual obligation to be paid to former miners and in some cases their widows," he said. "It is not a benefit, but part of what these former miners are owed."

The National Concessionary Fuel Agreements were put in place between the state-owned British Coal Corporation and the mining unions in the 1980s. When British Coal was privatised in 1994, the government retained the obligation to provide concessionary fuel to former British Coal workers entitled to it. The responsibility passed to UK Coal when the company restructured its operations and changed its name in 2001.

Osborne later tweeted: "When UK Coal went bust ex miners lost their coal allowance. A very unfair situation I have put right today."

Give me strength.

Wednesday, 13 November 2013

Conservatives 'attempt to delete record of all party speeches from internet'

The Conservatives have attempted to erase from the internet a record of all party speeches given in the decade before they came to power, it has been reported.

Computer Weekly said the party had not only removed its archive of speeches and press releases from 2000 to its election in May 2010 from its own website, it had also struck them from the record of search engines such as Google.

The party was said to have used a robot blocker to force the Internet Archive - described as the public record of the web - to remove the entire record of speeches and news it had collected in 1,158 snapshots from the Conservatives' website since May 1999.

The magazine said: "The erasure had the effect of hiding Conservative speeches in a secretive corner of the internet like those that shelter the military, secret services, gangsters and paedophiles." [Sounds about right]

Computer Weekly said that since it had raised the issue with the San Francisco-based Internet Archive, some speeches had re-appeared on the site.

A party spokesman said that it wanted to keep its website as easy to use as possible.

"We're making sure our website keeps the Conservative Party at the forefront of political campaigning," the spokesman said in a statement.

"These changes allow people to quickly and easily access the most important information we provide - how we are clearing up Labour's economic mess, taking the difficult decisions and standing up for hardworking people."

The Independent

Saturday, 9 November 2013

Iain Duncan Smith is no longer fit-for-work

What are Iain Duncan Smith's redeeming qualities? Today's public accounts committee report shines a spotlight on a department which is out of control. Bad news is ignored. Vast sums of money are authorised by personal assistants for work which has not always been specified. Up to £425 million has been wasted and may need to be written-off, including £140 million on IT equipment which is no longer suitable for the project. The left hand does not know, or even seem to care, what the right hand is doing.

Duncan Smith has undertaken the most ambitious restructuring of the welfare system in a generation and it is blowing up in his face. The report was one of the most damning to be published this year. Duncan Smith's response, according to the Times, was to demand MPs on the committee pin the blame on his permanent secretary, Robert Devereux.

It's all a day in the life for the work and pensions secretary, whose relationship with the truth is as tenuous as George Best's relationship with sobriety. He claimed the benefits cap had forced 8,000 people into work. This earned a slap on the wrist from the Office for National Statistics, which said it was not possible to find any causal link between the cap and those finding work. His response was very revealing.

"I have a belief I am right," he told Radio 4. "You cannot absolutely prove those two things are connected – you cannot disprove what I said. I believe this to be right. I believe we are already seeing people going back to work who were not going back to work until this group were capped." It's worth reading that quote twice. It is the product of a mind which is fundamentally unconcerned by reality, a loop playing constantly to itself.

It's just the tip of the iceberg. He said that every week half a million new jobs come through at the Jobcentre. This was false. He said Britain had the highest rate of jobless households in Europe. This was false. He said 70% of the four million jobs created when Labour was in office were taken by people from overseas. This was false. He claimed Shelter defined homelessness as two children sharing a room. This was false.

The list goes on and on. It's all part of a pattern that goes back to the start of his career, when Michael Crick found several inaccuracies in his CV. He said he had attended the University of Perugia, when it was in fact the Università per Stranieri – an institution which did not grant degrees. He said he attended Dunchurch College of Management, when in fact it was weekend courses at GEC Marconi's staff college.

Last week, the Supreme Court ruled Duncan Smith's back-to-work programme, which forced claimants to work for high street chains like Poundland for free, was illegal following a government appeal. It had failed to give recipients enough information about sanctions faced by people being told they had to work without a wage.

His response was to say that he was "very pleased that the supreme court unanimously upheld" his programme. "Ultimately, this judgment confirms that it is right that we expect people to take getting into work seriously," he added. Surely the British public are entitled to something less misleading than that? Is it too much to ask for even a hint of contrition for having broken the law, rather than rank evasion and a steadfast refusal to accept fault?

He went out of his way to smear the reputation of Cait Reilly, a 24-year-old who brought the case. Reilly had been volunteering at a Birmingham museum, hoping it would one day turn into a paid position. She was not overly keen on dropping that voluntary role to work for free in Poundland. Duncan Smith went on television and suggested she was part of "a group of people out there who think they are too good for this kind of stuff". For a secretary of state to treat a young person in this way is unspeakable.

Cynicism and Machiavellianism are common traits in politics. Many of the greatest politicians, from Churchill downwards, have been quite capable of making a case by focusing relentlessly on the attributes which most flatter them. But the smears against young people trying to make their way, the casual misuse of the facts, the glib indifference to the proper functioning of a system which affects the lives of the least privileged, is of a different magnitude altogether.

He's not even smart enough to pull it off. Matthew D'Ancona's history of the coalition sees George Osborne comment that "you see Iain giving presentations and realise he's just not clever enough". Last month John Major warned that the work and pensions secretary's welfare reform programme was "enormously complicated". He went on: "Unless he is very lucky, which he may not be, or a genius, which the last time I looked was unproven, he may get some of it wrong."

Duncan Smith's reply was belligerent, inelegant and supremely thin-skinned. "Well, as I say, I never really get too fussed about what people think about their own intellects," he said. It is, you may have noticed, a sentence which means nothing. Or, at best, is so lacking in meaning as to not be worth saying. "I'm always happy to be in awe of someone whose own intellect delivered us the cones hotline, I must say." The reference to Major's silliest policy was childlike and out of place. Barely anyone even remembers the cone hotline. But seeing as he wishes to reflect on the past, perhaps his audience should do so too.

Think back. When did Iain Duncan Smith ever achieve anything? Even Osborne, who plunged this country back into recession, can at least point to that time he called Gordon Brown's bluff on an election. Duncan Smith has been at the frontline of British politics for years and he has nothing to show for it.

He was the most incapable leader of the Conservative party in recent memory. He was inadequate in PMQs and his conference flourish that "the quiet man is turning up the volume" is still the butt of jokes a decade later. His comment to the mutineers in his own party was just as weird, but a little darker: "My message is simple and stark, unite or die". They chose to do neither.

Expelled from the leadership, he seduced the easily seduced by using the words 'social justice' while promoting an aggressive Victorian-era programme which had more to do with a glorified notion of the Protestant work ethic than practical solutions to poverty and welfare-dependency. And now he smears his opponents, whether they be MPs, young women trying to find work or the massed ranks of the unemployed recast as feckless scroungers.

We might worry less about his own personal failings if they were not being replicated with such uncanny precision at his department. But the refusal to hear bad news, the siege mentality, the waste of funds, the arrogance and bullying with which welfare reform is being pursued are all indistinguishable from the character of the man presiding over it.

Ian Dunt, Talking Politics, Yahoo News

Saturday, 2 November 2013

The NHS under David Cameron

Since coming to power in May 2010, the Coalition has axed 14,650 health workers, at a cost to the taxpayer of £395 million. One couple received almost £1m in redundancy payments, only to be re-hired by the NHS three months later. The Tories blame the contracts put in place by the last Labour government. That's the Tories who, at any other time of the year, break the rules and change the law as and when it suits them • Mirror

More than 10,000 NHS managers have seen their pay rise by 13 per cent in four years, with increases last year at three times the rate for nurses, official figures disclose • Telegraph

How the new NHS boss has helped ruin health services on two continents • Morning Star

"I love our NHS, and I never want to do it any harm." David Cameron, July 2013

Thursday, 31 October 2013

Conflict of incest: Energy minister Ed Davey and the brother who advises the energy industry

In 2012, upon being appointed to the Cabinet, Energy Secretary Ed Davey declared his brother's close links to the energy industry. Henry Davey is a partner at the energy department of leading London law firm Herbert Smith and has handled huge deals for the likes of Petrobas, Centrica and EDF. He has also been involved in briefing reports on Feed-in Tariff cuts for solar power and UK electricity market reforms.

Henry Davey is a corporate partner at Herbert Smith, where he leads the oil and gas team and has been advised on multi-million pound deals for corporations such as Petrobas. His website biography reads: “Henry has over 20 years' experience in the international energy industry, where he has advised on mergers and acquisitions. His practice encompasses energy mergers and acquisitions including electricity generation, distribution and transmission assets.”

The law firm, based in the City of London, claims it specialises in the acquisition and disposal of both upstream and downstream assets in the oil, gas and power markets. Henry Davey is credited for the following deals:

• Macquarie Bank on its acquisition of Wales & the West Gas Distribution Network from National Grid Transco in the UK for £1.2 billion

• EDF on the trading contracts relating to the acquisition of British Energy

• MidAmerican/Northern Electric on the £1.2 billion swap of its UK electricity and gas supply and metering businesses to Innogy for the acquisition of Yorkshire Electricity's distribution business

• Seeboard on the sale of their UK metering business to Invensys

• OFGEM on the establishment of the UK's offshore electricity transmission network

Other clients listed by Herbert Smith include BG Group, BP, Chevron, EDF, ENRC, Essar Group, Gazprom Neft, Mitsubishi Corporation, Mitsui, Rio Tinto, Sojitz and Tata Group.

Department of Energy and Climate Change officials insist that the relationship will not compromise Ed Davey's work on energy issues in the Cabinet. A spokesman said (in February 2012): "He has provided his Permanent Secretary with a full list of his interests, including details of his brother’s employment, which will be published in the List of Ministers’ Interests. Appropriate safeguards are being put in place to avoid any conflicts of interest."

Click Green/Mail Online/BBC News

Friday, 18 October 2013

Dr Martens for sale

The family owners of Dr Martens are on the verge of a £300m windfall as part of a deal to sell the famous boot brand to a private equity firm. Permira, which already owns high street names including New Look and Hugo Boss, is understood to be in advanced talks with the Griggs family, owners of Dr Martens since 1960.

Brighton 1986

Sources close to the deal said it could be completed within a month and it would be the second time the company has been put up for sale in the last two years. R Griggs Group held an auction last year but failed to attract high enough bids, despite interest from major investors and businesses.

Bill Griggs took control of the business in 1960 after reading an advertisement placed by Germans looking for investment in their air-cushioned sole. Originally the boots were designed as workwear for men but the comfortable soles made them a big hit with housewives. The first Dr Martens boots in the UK came out on 1 April 1960 and were popular with uniformed workers. They soon found their way into youth subculture and have become synonymous with skinheads, mods and punks. Over 100 million pairs of Dr Martens shoes were sold between 1960 and 2010.

Profits are expected to hit £30m this year with boots, shoes and accessories sold in 63 countries across the world, a decade after the company almost went bankrupt. It was saved by moving work to China and shutting down UK factories, leading to hundreds of job losses.

Monday, 14 October 2013

Ministers u-turn on slimmer standards regime

Ministers have been accused of politicising the standards regime after trade union members were singled out in a u-turn on the recently slimmed down standards regime. The Department for Communities & Local Government has issued new advice to councils emphasising that codes of conduct should require members to declare if they are members of a trade union just over a year after it scrapped the same legal requirement.

Announcing the new advice, local government minister Brandon Lewis (Con) said that “for too long residents have been kept in the dark about what union affiliations their councillors hold”. However, standards experts have pointed out that a requirement to declare trade union members existed as recently as 14 months ago but were scrapped by Mr Lewis’ government.

Paul Hoey, a standards adviser and the former head of strategic relations for the Standards Board for England, said it was incorrect for the government to herald this as a “new requirement”. He said: “It was actually a requirement under the previous code of conduct which the government got rid of last year.”

The national code of conduct which did require councillors to declare trade union membership, among other things, was scrapped last year along with the Standards for England board after ministers battled to introduce a lighter touch standards regime.

The government’s new guidance and illustrative code of conduct indicates a rethink on the part of ministers, although Mr Hoey warned that councils could ignore the latest advice. He added: “The government can say what it likes in guidance but people don’t have to do it. In fact, some councils did keep that requirement [about trade union membership] in and that was the sort of thing that Bob Neill was criticising as gold plated just a few months ago.”

DCLG’s official update aimed squarely at trade union members comes shortly after it lost a legal battle with the Public and Commercial Services union. The advice was also published two days before the opening of the Labour conference where the party’s links to trade unions are expected to come under scrutiny.

One local government standards and legal expert who did not want to be named said the government was politicising the standards regime. Ministers were “compounding the standards mess with more confusion based again on political prejudice, rather than evidence based discussion”, he said. “This is simply bad governance from central government. Even to only the most mildly cynical, it suggests that this government is only interested in ethical standards if it suits their politics.”

A department spokesman could not tell LGC if there was evidence of councillors hiding their trade union membership. The spokesman said there was no link between the timing of the publication of the guidance and the Labour conference and he dismissed suggestions that the publication indicated a politicisation of the civil service.

Unions have criticised the government but also argued the move is meaningless because councillors were proud of their links to trade unions. Heather Wakefield, Unison’s head of local government, described the singling out of trade union members as “outrageous” and said it should apply equally to members of any trade body or pressure group.

Brian Strutton, GMB national secretary for public services, said it was a “damp squib” as it was “requiring councillors to declare their trade union membership seemingly oblivious to the fact that they already do. While this is clearly meant to be another Tory attack on trade unions it will achieve very little because trade unions and councillors have nothing to fear from openness and transparency, unlike the Conservative party who won’t even admit how few members they have.”

A spokesman for the DCLG described the standards board as a “a discredited regime that cost taxpayers millions and was the refuge for malicious trouble makers. The new guidance on councillors’ interests makes clear that trade union membership should be declared to avoid conflicts of interest when councils consider issues directly affecting trade unions, such as reviews of taxpayer-funded subsidies”.

Local government minister Brandon Lewis said residents had been “kept in the dark about what union affiliations their councillors hold” for too long. “All councillors should disclose all their personal and financial interests on a public register, including registering union interests. Given the public debate about ‘facility time’ and ‘pilgrims’ in local government, it’s vital that conflicts of interest are avoided. These transparency reforms will give local people the confidence that their councillors are putting residents’ interests before their own.”

Ruth Keeling, Local Government Chronicle

Friday, 11 October 2013

22 Reasons for the Bedroom Tax

Because the Badgers are moving the goalposts.
The Ferrets are bending the rules.
The Weasels are taking the hindmost.
The Otters are downing tools.

The Hedgehogs are changing the game-plan
The Grass-snakes are spitting tacks.

The Squirrels are playing the blame-game.
The Skunks are twisting the facts.

The Pole-cats are upping the ante.
The Foxes are jumping the gun.
The Voles are crashing the party.
The Stoats are dismantling the Sun.

The Rabbits are taking the biscuit.
The Hares are losing the plot.
The Eagles are kicking the bucket.
The Rats are joining the dots.

The Herons are throwing a curveball.
The Shrews are fanning the flames.
The Field mice are sinking the 8-ball.
The Swans are passing the blame.

And the Pheasants are draining the oil from the tank-
but only the Bustards have broken the bank.

Carol Ann Duffy

Monday, 7 October 2013

Labour reshuffle - the new shadow cabinet

Labour has just released details of Ed Miliband's shadow cabinet reshuffle. A spokesman says Miliband is keen to point out that he is promoting talented young women. Here are the details:

• Rachel Reeves becomes shadow work and pensions secretary. She was shadow chief secretary to the Treasury.

• Gloria De Piero becomes shadow minister for women and equalities.

• Emma Reynolds becomes shadow housing minister. She will attend shadow cabinet. She was shadow Europe minister.

• Tristram Hunt becomes shadow education secretary. He was a shadow education minister.

• Stephen Twigg, the former shadow education secretary, becomes a shadow minister in the justice team, responsible for constitutional affairs.

• Chris Leslie becomes shadow chief secretary to the Treasury. He was a shadow Treasury minister.

• Vernon Coaker becomes shadow defence secretary. He was shadow Northern Ireland secretary.

• Jim Murphy becomes shadow international defence secretary. He was shadow defence secretary.

• Ivan Lewis becomes shadow Northern Ireland secretary. He was shadow international development secretary.

• Maria Eagle becomes shadow environment secretary. She was shadow transport secretary.

• Mary Creagh becomes shadow transport secretary. She was shadow environment secretary.

• Michael Dugher becomes shadow Cabinet Office minister. He also takes charge of political and campaign communications.

• Douglas Alexander, the shadow foreign secretary, also becomes chair of general election strategy. He will be responsible for election strategy and planning.

• Spencer Livermore, a former aide to Gordon Brown, has been appointed general election campaign director. He will start work later this year.

• Liam Byrne, the former shadow work and pensions secretary, joins the shadow business team, with responsibility for higher education and emerging markets.

• Lord Falconer, the former Lord Chancellor, will advise on planning and transition into government.

A Labour spokesman said that of the 32 people who now attend shadow cabinet, 14 (or 44% are women). And around a third of those attending shadow cabinet are from the 2010 intake.

Guardian

Friday, 4 October 2013

Planetpmc on Flipboard

There's now a new way to keep up with the stories that have grabbed my attention: DECORUM is my 'magazine' on Flipboard, a picturesque journey through the headlines with links to the original articles. It replaces all your Saturday supplements and Sunday magazines but doesn't quite cook you brunch. On the front page is a link to the app for tablets and mobiles which produces a neat little plaything. It's not perfect but will come in useful when time is short. Enjoy!

Planetpmc on Facebook, Twitter and now Flipboard

Also on Flipboard:
The U-turns of David Cameron's government

Monday, 30 September 2013

DWP looking at making it harder for sick and disabled to claim benefits

Iain Duncan Smith is examining how to make it harder for sick and disabled people to claim benefits, according to leaked documents from the Department of Work and Pensions.

The powers being discussed also include forcing sick and disabled people to take up offers of work. If those with serious but time-limited health conditions refuse the offer, DWP staff would then have the power to strip them of their benefits.

The revelation comes as the DWP told the Guardian it had indefinitely postponed a week-long staff "celebration" of a new, tougher sanctions regime for more than a million job seekers.

Guardian

Friday, 27 September 2013

DWP attempt to obtain NHS data rings 'alarm bells'

The Department for Work and Pensions attempted to obtain access to confidential patient data so that it could be linked to information about employment, tax credits and benefits claims, the Health Service Journal has learned.

Privacy campaigners said news of the abortive attempt “should be ringing alarm bells”, and warned that such activities by government departments could undermine public trust in the NHS. The DWP, however, insisted that it had intended to use the data only for “research purposes”, and to anonymise it “at the earliest possible opportunity”.

The DWP application, unreported until now, was rejected by the then NHS Commissioning Board’s ethics and confidentiality committee in December. Minutes of the committee meeting, uncovered by HSJ, said: “This application detailed the linkage of DWP, HM Revenue and Customs and National Treatment Agency data. This linkage would enable analysis of the effect that drug use has on employment [and] understanding of the role that employment plays in the recovery journey, and would help build a cost benefit case for further investment in employment support for this group.”

Access to “confidential patient information was requested to allow National Drug Treatment Monitoring System data to be transferred to DWP with an identifiable unique reference attached,” the minutes added. The minutes said this would allow the data to be linked to specified HMRC and DWP data relating to employment, tax credits and benefit claims. Committee members expressed concern that the medical purpose for the requested access was “not sufficiently defined”, and the request was turned down.

Phil Booth, coordinator with privacy campaign group medConfidential, said: “That government departments are already seeking to access highly sensitive patient information for non-medical purposes should be ringing alarm bells.” He added that such activities could undermine trust in the NHS and could lead to patients “withholding information or simply not seeking the care they need”.

A DWP spokesman said: “To better understand the recovery journeys of people with a drug or alcohol dependency, we draw on all available information, ensuring that legal and ethical procedures are followed at all times. Our plans were for the data to be anonymised at the earliest possible opportunity and only used for research purposes to understand the benefit and employment journeys of people in treatment.

“The DWP continues to work closely with organisations including Public Health England and drug and alcohol treatment providers to ensure our policies are based on the most robust evidence possible and we can help transform the lives of the most disadvantaged people, including those with a drug or alcohol dependency.”

James Illman, Health Service Journal

Osborne has now been proved wrong on austerity

The UK economy is recovering. The government is vindicated. Its critics should crawl into a hole. This, in essence, is what George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, claimed in a rousing speech delivered earlier this month. In particular, he argues, Plan A has worked. Those who have been advocating a Plan B – slower fiscal tightening – have proved to be wrong. Here, then, is my response.

Yes, the economy is recovering. But the performance since Mr Osborne took office in May 2010 has been dismal. Over three years, the economy has grown by a cumulative total of 2. 2 per cent. In June 2010 the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast that the economy would expand by 8.2 per cent between 2010 and 2013. The real figure may end up being a third of that. In the second quarter of this year, gross domestic product was still 3.3 per cent below the pre-crisis peak and 18 per cent below its 1980-2007 trend – the slowest British recovery on record.

Financial crises do cause havoc. That explains some of this awful performance. But Spencer Dale and James Talbot of the Bank of England have shown that UK performance is dismal even by the standards of other crisis-hit, high-income economies. The eurozone has performed as badly as the UK. But, given the mess there and the UK’s control over all policy levers, that is hardly something to boast about.

Mr Osborne can (and does) point to a strong labour market performance. This has been a saving grace for Britain. Had the UK enjoyed normal productivity performance, unemployment might now be more than 15 per cent. Unemployment has remained low because labour productivity has now fallen back to 2005 levels. That is hardly something to boast about.

Mr Osborne responds that fiscal policy did not cause the dismal under-performance. That was due to inflation shocks and the eurozone. Since Mr Osborne was a cheerleader for the eurozone’s austerity, he cannot wash his hands of all blame. But the more important point, as Simon Wren-Lewis of Oxford University has pointed out, is that the debate is not about what caused the unforecast slowdown. What matters is whether the economy has been weaker with austerity than without it.

Little doubt exists over the answer to this question. With interest rates at the zero bound, austerity weakened the economy relative to what might otherwise have happened. The question is only how much it has done so. It is impossible to know counterfactuals. But Oscar Jordà and Alan Taylor of the University of California, Davis, concluded that in 2013 UK GDP will be about 3 per cent smaller than it would otherwise have been. Is that right? Nobody knows. But it is in the right direction.

Oh no, it is not, proponents of austerity respond. This ignores the fact that the programme delivered credibility and lower interest rates. In the febrile circumstances of 2010, when people thought, foolishly, that the UK might become Greece, that view might have made some sense. But it soon became clear it did not. In June 2010, the OBR forecast cumulative net borrowing of £322bn between 2011-12 and 2015-16. In March 2013 this was up to £564bn. In June 2010 the structural current budget was forecast to be in surplus by 2014-15. By March 2013 this had slipped two years. In June 2010 the ratio of public sector net debt to GDP was forecast to start falling in 2014-15. By March 2013 this had moved back to 2017-18. The peak level of net debt also jumped from 70.3 per cent to 85.6 per cent of GDP. Yet the impact of this slippage on long-term interest rates was zero. Only improved prospects for recovery and so of earlier rises in short-term rates raised longer-term rates.

So the chancellor had other options. As I have argued before, he could have stuck to the same plans for current spending, while temporarily lowering rather than raising value added tax. He also could have taken advantage of low borrowing rates to increase rather than reduce public investment. In fact, he is too hard on himself. He has allowed the fiscal position to slip and used the public balance sheet to support investment and the housing market. Call it Plan A minus. But he could certainly have been more deliberate and aggressive about it.

To this the chancellor would reply that none of this matters because the economy is recovering strongly anyway. Moreover, he insists, his critics thought this was impossible. But nobody thought recovery would never happen under austerity, merely that it would be damagingly delayed. The politics of this policy may not be too bad for Mr Osborne if the unnecessarily slow recovery becomes a faster bounceback in the run-in to the 2015 election. But it is hard to see an economic case for it.

One thing ought to be quite clear: the fact that the economy grows in the end does not prove that needlessly weakening the recovery was a sound idea. This has been an unnecessarily protracted slump. It is good that recovery is here, though it is far too soon to tell its quality and durability. But this does not justify what remains a large unforced error.

Martin Wolf, Financial Times

Thursday, 26 September 2013

'Captain Invisible' replaced: Sir David Higgins named as new HS2 chief

HS2’s chairman Doug Oakervee has been dumped in favour of the knight who led the construction of the London 2012 Olympic Park. Sir David Higgins, who will earn almost £600,000 a year, will take up his new role in January. The Australian is currently chief executive at Network Rail, which looks after Britain’s existing rail infrastructure, and has been praised for restructuring and commercialising what has been viewed as a cumbersome, costly organisation.

Sir David said: “HS2 is vital for both passengers and the economy and will put the UK in a different league in terms of infrastructure. My first priority will be to rigorously scrutinise costs to ensure they remain under control.” His appointment suggests that Cameron and Osborne are determined to win over the doubters. Sir David was awarded a knighthood for bringing in the Olympics under budget and on time following a difficult start that had seen costs wildly underestimated.

HS2’s current chairman Doug Oakervee, dubbed “Captain Invisible”, will leave at the end of the year. He has endured a dreadful summer in which it has been claimed that the project could end up costing £80bn, while one-time supporters including former Chancellor Alistair Darling have had second thoughts about its merits. Mr Oakervee, 72, has dismissed HS2’s hundreds of thousands of opponents as a “quite vociferous small minority”.

Saturday, 21 September 2013

Rachel Reeves didn't say 'people on £60,000 aren't rich' - The Telegraph did!

Rachel Reeves has reason to feel hard done by this morning as hundreds of people take her to task for saying that people who earn £60,000 a year aren't rich. However, Reeves didn't quite say that.

Following an interview with The Telegraph, Tim Ross, Mary Riddell and James Kirkup came up with the headline "People on £60,000 aren’t rich, says Labour's Rachel Reeves". But that's not what Reeves said at all. What she tried to explain was that you'd have a hard time trying to convince people in London and the south-east on salaries of £50-60,000 that they were rich, given the amount of money they had to pay out every month. And that people earning this amount were just as angry as lower-paid workers about the highest earners getting a tax cut. Reeves's problem, however, is that she didn't put it that effectively and her statement has been deliberately misconstrued by The Telegraph - and then repeated all over the media.

Here are the appropriate paragraphs from the interview:

“I think the focus should be on those privileged few right at the top, and that’s not people earning £50,000 or £60,000 a year,” Miss Reeves said in an interview with The Telegraph. “We don’t have any plans or desire to increase taxes amongst people in that band of income.”

The Liberal Democrats have said they would find the money by taxing the richest, which a leaked party document suggested meant anyone earning more than £50,000.

Miss Reeves said that it was wrong to consider such people as “rich”. [?]

“If you’re a single-earner family in London or the South East on £50,000 or £60,000, you don’t feel particularly rich and you’d be equally aggrieved that people earning between £150,000 and £1 million are getting a tax cut at the same time your taxes are going up.”

Not quite the same as 'people on £60,000 aren't rich'.