Could the NHS Bill end up hurting Labour’s prospects?
At 9am yesterday morning, Labour shadow health secretary John Healey gave a speech calling for the NHS bill to be scrapped because it essentially meant the end of the NHS.
At around 11am Nick Clegg gave a press conference and pretty much did just that; saying it would most likely have to go back to the House of Commons for a debate. This sequence of events not only highlights the problems Labour have, but the coming battle over NHS ‘red lines’.
The Labour problem is simply this: John Healey’s speech in the morning was ignored by most of the national media, including the Guardian (though their NHS live-blog covered it).
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OECD caught back-tracking on cuts agenda
We reported yesterday that the OECD was sounding alarm over the UK’s growth slowing down
Later in the day the OECD’s spokesperson went on Sky News to try and back-track on what they said earlier. Typically, right-wingers did not miss a chance to crow about it.
But what did the OECD’s Pier Carlo Padoan say in his interview with The Times?
They have now released a transcript of the interview.
They key point here isn’t that they’re back-tracking on the cuts (welcome though as that is) but that they’re also alarmed that UK’s growth is slowing down unexpectedly.
And why has it slowed down so much? We said it months ago: that cuts would threaten our nascent economic recovery. And now its turning out to be true.
Full transcript
Q The OECD has been very supportive of the fiscal consolidation plans in the UK. Do you worry that they are going to bear down too hard on growth? I see you have taken your growth forecasts down again, from 1.7 to 1.4 per cent.
A We are incorporating new evidence. We are also saying that fiscal consolidation should be pursued, but at the same time we see merit in slowing the pace of fiscal consolidation if there is not so good news on the growth front, and we have seen good and bad news recently. So we not are saying just stick to it, we are saying take that into account. Especially given the fact that maybe monetary policy has less of a policy space to use because of the headline inflation story. So we fully recognize that in this transition phase while moving towards fiscal consolidation, which is needed because of the size of the deficit, that [the] pace of that could be modulated with respect to the performance results.
Q But even if that means potentially meeting fiscal targets a year later? Is that a worthwhile sacrifice to make in a sense?
A That is an intertemporal trade off. I would not say specifically a year later, I would say that you can slow down the pace over the next quarters, if things turn out to be weaker than expected.
Q But you are saying things are going to turn out weaker than expected because your growth forecasts are lower than the official forecasts.
A We have seen that they are a bit weaker than expected; should that continue to be the case then there is scope for, as I said, slowing the pace.
Q Does that mean slower cuts or reversing tax hikes? What’s the right way for a country in this situation to slow the pace of fiscal consolidation?
A I would not reverse the measures I have announced because that would bear down on credibility; I would slow down the pace of spending cuts rather.
The government’s migration policy is failing
contribution by Sean Bamford
Figures release by the National Office for Statistics this morning shows net migration at its highest level in more than five years. A major factor in producing these figures is the decline in the number of people leaving the UK. 344,000 people left the UK in the year to September 2010, down 20% from its peak of 427,000 in the 12 months to December 2008,
By contrast the number of migrants coming in to the UK has remained broadly constant at 586,000, taking net migration to 242,000, up from 198,000 at the end of 2009 and 163,000 the year before.
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Has Clegg ambushed Lansley on the NHS Bill?
Andrew Lansley’s troubled NHS bill will be delayed by at least six months following Nick Clegg’s announcement this morning.
But is that really the case? It seems the Department of Health aren’t sure and have been ambushed by Clegg.
This morning Clegg said the Health and Social Care Bill is to be sent back to MPs for detailed examination.
The Guardian summarised the proposed changes by Clegg as:
• The controversial health regulator Monitor will not “push competition”. Its main duty will be to protect the needs of patients.
• The membership of the GP-led consortiums, which lie at the heart of the reforms, will be opened up and no doctors will be forced to join. Lansley had hoped to hand around 65% of the NHS budget to the new consortiums, which are designed to hand commissioning powers to GPs.
• The NHS will continue to have a mix of providers but there will not be a “competition-driven dog-eat-dog market” in which the NHS is “flogged off to the highest bidder”. Clegg said there would be no privatisation of the NHS.
• There will be “no sudden, top-down opening up of all NHS services to any qualified provider”.
• Health and social care budgets will be brought closer together.
Well that sounds pretty concrete. So Nick Clegg is clearly opposed and the bill is going back, yes?
Erm, not exactly. The Department of Health has just emailed the Guardian’s NHS live-blog to say:
We won’t decide that until we have received the NHS Future Forum report and have responded to that. As the Secretary of State told the House of Commons on 4th April we would ensure proper scrutiny of the Bill – we have done that so far and we will continue to do so.
More importantly, it added:
Recommittal can include specific amendments, not necessarily the whole bill. It need not add greatly to the Parliamentary timetable.
That seems to contradict Clegg this morning.
I think we will need to send the bill back to committee. I have always said that it is best to take our time to get it right rather than move too fast and risk getting the details wrong.
If the entire Bill does not go back he’s going to look weak. Or else, Lansley will look weak.
Cuts to disabled services ruled ‘unlawful’
Third Sector magazine reports:
Disability charities might receive better than expected grants from local authorities after a ruling by the High Court that the process used to make cuts to disabled people’s services by Birmingham City Council was unlawful, according to a charity for blind people.
The Royal London Society for the Blind said councils should ensure that any cuts they made were lawful following a decision by the High Court last week that Birmingham City Council had breached the Disability Discrimination Act by proposing to limit council-funded social care to those deemed to be in critical need.
Birmingham’s proposed cuts were part of reductions totalling £212m across all sectors. According to the RLSB, £51m of the reductions affected disabled people’s services.
A spokesman for the RLSB said it was “almost inevitable” that the High Court ruling would mean many other councils would have to reduce the cuts they were making to disabled people’s services.
“All councils will have to revisit their plans to ensure that they are complying with the court judgement,” he said. “We think many councils will not be in compliance and will have to make sure that they conform with the Disability Discrimination Act.
“This is likely to mean that disability charities receive more generous grant settlements than they had previously been promised from local councils.”
Three in five rape charges now convicted
The Crown Prosection Service quietly slipped this news item under their radar earlier this week.
In a blog post, they said that rape conviction rates had gone up to nearly 60%.
There has been debate recently about the conviction rates in rape prosecutions. While it is accepted that the number of rapes reported to police which result in conviction is low, those that are prosecuted by the CPS usually result in conviction.
In fact, three in five (59.4%) of those rape cases which are charged by the CPS result in conviction.
They add that this is a rise of just under 5% since 2006-7.
CPS lawyers are required to explore every avenue with the police to find sufficient evidence to charge. The verdict has to be left to a jury, the CPS having gone through all the steps to support the complainant to give their best evidence.
The number of rapes reported to the police still remain low however.
Could this be Boris Johnson’s Achilles Heel next year?
Boris Johnson and National Rail have been accused of secretly hiking fares after they made a series of unannounced rises, the Scoop website reported yesterday.
Yup, you read that right, fares for Londoners have rise again. Though this time they did their best to keep it quiet. Coincidentally, a poll commissioned by London’s Mayor found that public concern over transport costs is now sky high. An opportunity for Ken?
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‘Labour didn’t create a balanced economy’
The Labour party “came late to effective action” in creating a balanced economy that was less dependent on banking, shadow business secretary John Denham will admit today.
In a major speech to ippr think-tank in Newcastle, Denham will say that a future Labour government would pursue a more inteventionist approach in the economy.
He will also admit that Labour played a part in developing an economy that is “dangerously dependent” on too many low skilled jobs.
In the wake of the banking crisis, there’s a consensus that our economy needs greater relative strength outside financial services. Advanced manufacturing must be part of this, but so must other sectors with huge growth potential: across a range of green technologies – which includes huge opportunities for greening traditional infrastructure as well as low carbon industries and innovation – and in the life sciences; our creative industries have a strong position in global markets, as does higher education and increasingly further education; business services from design and architecture to law and accountancy have global reach.
The speech is part of Ed Miliband’s efforts to push three themes as Labour’s message: a ‘national mission’ to rebalance the economy, warning about the impact of cuts on the ‘squeezed middle’ and lower income workers, and building ‘better community ties’.
John Denham’s speech focuses on the ‘national mission’ to create a better economy.
He will say that it is a fallacy to assume that supporting free markets means the ideal state is one in which government does as little as possible.
If the banking failure teaches us anything it is that unrestrained free markets can lead to catastrophic economic failures.
He will say that while governments should not try to pick and foster individual companies for protected and special treatment, they should still be willing to act as “enablers and shapers” for strong economic growth.
Government policies determine to a significant extent the size and shape of key domestic markets, the sectors which attract investment, the opportunities to ensure that research is exploited within the UK economy to development successful companies with new products which can achieve world markets.
Government policies can shape the balance between short term pursuit of profits and the long term growth on which greater profits and greater tax income can be based.
He admitted that Labour could not rely only on the government redistributing through taxes to compensate for lack of good jobs.
The speech only set out the general direction of travel however. The party is likely to announce specific headline-grabbing policies a year or two before the election.
Lessons on how to beat the Tories
contribution by Ben Singleton
From the way the media and unfortunately many people in the Labour Party itself are talking about the local elections, you’d think that such novel things as campaigning had nothing to do with election results.
“Labour did well in the north because the north is Labour and the south is Tory.” Or: “Labour did well against the Lib Dems because their national poll share collapsed but the Tory vote held up.” These comments look correct if you’re being remarkably lazy, like most of the media. But that is no basis for learning lessons about how to successfully gain the trust of the electorate and therefore win.
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Even the OECD tells Osborne to slow cuts
George Osborne had a lucky day yesterday in that President Obama’s visit over-shadowed the news.
Else he’d be more red-faced after one of his staunchest defenders started having second thoughts.
Today, the Times is reporting:
One of the leading advocates of George Osborne’s deficit-cutting plans has warned that they may need to be watered down in the face of disappointing growth.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said that the Chancellor should cut spending more slowly if the muted pace of expansion seen so far this year continues.
“We see merit in slowing the pace of fiscal consolidation if there is not so good news on the growth front,” Pier Carlo Padoan, the think-tank’s chief economist and deputy secretary-general, told The Times. “We have seen that [growth numbers] are a bit weaker than expected; should that continue to be the case, there is scope for slowing the pace.”
The advice marks a shift in stance from the OECD, which has been an enthusiastic backer of Mr Osborne’s austerity plans.
The Financial Times similarly reports:
The love affair between the Treasury and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development cooled on Wednesday as the chief economist of the international organisation cast doubt on the speed of Britain’s deficit reduction.
Following another downbeat assessment of the UK economy in which the Paris-based OECD revised down its predictions for UK growth, Pier Carlo Padoan, OECD chief economist and deputy general-secretary, told the Financial Times that slower growth meant there was scope to rein in the pace of deficit reduction. When the economy was slowing, Mr Padoan said, fiscal policy action should be designed to support it.
He added that the government should “be selective in the selection of spending cuts and their speed”. Monetary policy needed to be tightened to deal with inflationary pressures, and, given Britain’s difficult circumstances, its pace of deficit reduction could slow.
Odd, Mr Osborne has been so quiet lately. He refused to say anything about the high cost of borrowing in April too.
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