Firstly, I’d like to thank Sunny, for saying that the campaign for Labour to support an EU referendum is “cool”.

He’s right; out of all the groups calling for the Labour Party to support a policy launched this week, Labour for a Referendum is the most in vogue.

However, on the main crux of his article, that our campaign is “Dead on Arrival”, we would have to, somewhat controversially, disagree.

Sunny outlines three main points for his argument. I will try and rebut each of these points as thoroughly, fairly and, crucially, quickly as possible.

1) Supporting a referendum would make Eurosceptic Tory backbenchers more demanding.

I don’t see this as being Ed Miliband’s problem. If Labour supported a referendum one suspects that Tory MPs would attempt to push their own leader into a more hardline position rather than ours.

Sure, Tory backbenchers might become more demanding, but that would only lead them to more internal bickering, rather than dividing our party?

2) You shouldn’t get involved when your opponents are infighting.

The idea that we should adopt a grab-the-popcorn approach to opposition and let the victory come to us seems flawed. While it makes perfect sense not to rush into policy commitments so far before the election, when we see the Tories in disarray we should capitalise on it as best we can.

Milk that subject for all it’s worth. Grab it and run. Put a spanner in the works. Use whatever metaphor you want, but sitting back and relaxing is easy, but it is no path to a Labour majority.

3) Labour’s line is settled, we can’t go back on it now.

We’re not expecting to change Labour’s policy by the end of the week. That’s not the plan. What we want is for a commitment to an EU referendum to be in our 2015 manifesto. We think it’s the right thing to do, we think it’s popular and we think it will help get Ed Miliband in 10 Downing Street.

But we’re happy to play the long game. 2017 is indeed “far, far away”, although it is likely/definitely going to be half as far away when we go into the next election. Everything Miliband has said about it so far has been couched in language that suggests that this is a policy liable to change if circumstances do.

Our job, as Labour for a Referendum, is to make sure that the pressure is kept on, and that Miliband knows just how helpful a pledge could be.

Finally, I can only apologise that Labour for a Referendum did not exist a year ago. Circumstances changed.

—
Dominic Moffitt is Campaign Director for Labour for a Referendum

Most Britons, including a majority of those who voted Conservative in 2010, think he is acting out of tactical calculation rather than because he feels deeply about the issue.

That’s the copnclusion offered by Peter Kellner today.

And this chart shows it.

Peter Kellner adds:

Voters, and especially floating voters, tend to decide which party to support on character more than policy. Parties and their leaders attract more support if they are regarded as principled and competent. If they are thought to be driven by tactics rather than belief, they risk being seen as weak and losing respect and votes.

That is the risk that Cameron now faces over Europe. He could end up losing more votes by appearing unprincipled than he gains from adopting a stance on the EU that appears to be closer to the public mood. In contrast, the popularity of UKIP and Farage is being driven not just by his stance on the EU, but also by respect for being thought to restore principles to politics

Ouch!

This entire EU Referendum episode has been a disaster for Cameron.

Panayiotis Iliopoulos condemned fellow MPs as ‘wretched sell-outs’ and ‘goats’, swearing as other Golden Dawn MPs also walked out.

At the :36 mark in this video you can hear a member of the party shout “Heil Hitler.”

via ekathimerini.com

People will be shocked by the evidence that Google is going to extraordinary lengths to avoid paying their fair share of tax.

It comes on top of other firms apparently engaging in similar practices.

It is evidence of a culture of corporate irresponsibility among certain firms which is totally unacceptable.

And of course we have now seen allegations about petrol fixing as well.

It comes at a time when ordinary families are seeing services cut, their taxes rising and so many businesses are struggling to make ends meet and are actually doing the right thing and paying their fair share of taxes.

As so often under this Government, I think it is evidence of one rule for those at the top and another rule for everyone else.

David Cameron says we have to just wait for international action. He is wrong.

Unfortunately, it is Dead on Arrival. Finished. The chances succeeding now are very near zero.

And there are very simple reasons for this.

1) Mad Euro-sceptic Tories have shown that once you feed the beast it only grows and gets more demanding. So Ed Miliband will not want to feed it at all.

2) When your opponents are in chaos and fighting against each other, why wade in too? It is much better for Ed Miliband to let the Tories carry on making a fool out of themselves. It’s not like the EU Referendum is going to come at an earlier date just because Tory backbenchers want it so.

3) The Labour leadership have settled on a position now: committing to a referendum now would only lead to more uncertainty over the UK’s relationship with Europe, given 2017 is so far away. It makes no sense to junk that position at now.

I was told by a senior shadow cabinet member, over a year ago, that at one point all three parties were negotiating a joint position on offering an EU Referendum. At that point I was optimistic that it would be in Labour’s next manifesto or materialise as a commitment even earlier.

But for some reason the negotiations broke down and the three parties could not agree on jointly offering an EU Referendum. And so everyone went their separate ways.

A more coordinated campaign to get Labour to agree to a referendum should have been launched over a year ago. At this stage, mostly thanks to the antics of the Tory right, there is no chance the Labour leadership will entertain the idea now.

But thy is Dorries even talking about the possibility of running on a joint Tory/UKIP ticket?

Well, the answer almost certainly lies in this recent YouGov poll:

New YouGov research conducted just before her party membership was reinstated reveals that 43% of Tories would have supported the party’s decision to reinstate her, while 45% think she should not be allowed to rejoin the party.

That’s right, more Tory voters would rather have seen Dorries left out in the cold than were happy to see her readmitted to the party and the figures amongst UKIP voters are not that much better:

The poll also suggests many UKIP voters may be relieved the Conservative Party took Dorries back. 35% of UKIP supporters think their party would be less credible if Nadine Dorries were to join it, compared to only 7% who think it would be more credible.

Oh dear…

Even allowing for UKIP recent performance in the local elections and expectations that it will perform extremely well in next year’s European elections, one would not normally expect to see a self-styled Eurosceptic MP in a historically very safe Tory seat sweating over the possibility of UKIP running a candidate against them at the next general election.

If nothing else, the majority of incumbent Tory Eurosceptics have a personal vote and a track record to call upon that means that’s unlikely that they local electorate will seek to punish them for what they perceive to be Cameron’s follies but Dorries is not in anything like that position thanks to her own past conduct – and I’m not just talking here about her skipping out her constituents for more than three weeks to appear on “I’m a Celebrity…”.

There’s also the little matter of her using her personal ‘blog’ to mislead her own constituents as to the actual location of her main home, while claiming for her constituency home on expenses, her habitual use of her own parliamentary office as a job creation scheme for her own daughter and, of course, the ongoing investigation by IPSA into expenses claimed since the last general election for the rental of flat in Pimlico that, as I revealed last week, she used overnight for a total of just 25 nights in the whole of 2012 while, at the same time, claiming just over £4,000 to cover the costs of make a daily commute to Westminster from her constituency home, and back, eighty-six times.

The full figures are, I think, well worth repeating:

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out, based on YouGov’s polling and her own track record, why Dorries is talking up the idea of trying run on an joint Tory/UKIP ticket.

It’s not that she fears that a UKIP candidate in her constituency will be able to exploit Tory divisions over Europe but rather that by running on anti-politics ticket, UKIP may very well be in a position to exploit her own personal unpopularity amongst her Tory voters and her dubious track record on expenses to, at the very least, take a sizeable chunk out of her majority, if not pose a serious threat of unseating her.

This is not about confusion amongst members of her own constituency association, it’s purely about trying to keep UKIP out of her constituency in the interests of self-preservation and not losing her main taxpayer-funded meal ticket.

She is, as Margaret Thatcher might have put it, ‘Frit’.

Peter Taylor-Gooby points out that, as inequality has risen, attitudes towards the poor and benefit recipients have hardened. He suggests several longer-term reasons for this, among them the decline of class alignment and rise of individualism. I'd add three other factors:

- A mistaken factual base. The public under-estimate bosses' pay and over-estimate welfare benefits.

- Recessions usually make people more mean-spirited.

- Capitalism generates cognitive biases (ideologies) that result in hostility to welfare recipients.

As Taylor-Goody says, it doesn't need to be this way: "Alternative approaches that emphasise reciprocity, solidarity and inclusion are possible."

This poses the question: how do we get to such approaches from where we are? One possibility is to look to a leftist party to argue for them. But there are good reasons to expect the Labour party not to do this. Just as companies' marketing strategies rarely work by telling potential customers they are stupid, so political campaigns rarely do so. This is why Labour panders to some of the worst aspects of public opinion, on immigration or welfare, rather than outrightly opposes it. The Labour party is a managerialist marketing strategy, not a force for truth and justice.

But if Labour is not an agency for radical change, what is? Sure, there are a few bloggers and columnists who are trying to shift the Overton window, but these tend to preach to smallish groups of the already-converted.

This, of course, is not to deny that social attitudes can change. For example, during my lifetime, attitudes to gays has improved considerably. But I fear that this progress has been like Max Planck's view of scientific advance – it has happened one funeral at a time.

And herein lies a paradox of the left. Whilst we have spent decades advocating social change, we have remarkably few answers to the question: through what mechanisms, exactly, can it be achieved?

Reading through the details of what the girls were subjected to is enough to make anyone physically sick, and feel angry at how this was allowed to happen for so long.

Anger also makes people want to reach for easy answers so they can deal with it.

I’m aware that the far-right are trying to exploit these cases for politician gain. But I think the focus should always be on doing what is right and highlighting injustices, even if it raises some uncomfortable issues that can be exploited by extremists. In other words, the presence of the far-right should not lead us to blunt our criticisms or arguments.

To what extent is race a relevant factor in the exploitation?

Let’s look at some evidence first.

After the Rochdale case, the children’s commissioner in England conducted an inquiry into what could be learnt from the case. They published a short briefing paper and later an interim report. The Foreword said:

The vast majority of the perpetrators of this terrible crime are male. They range in age from as young as fourteen to old men. They come from all ethnic groups and so do their victims – contrary to what some may wish to believe. The failure of agencies to recognise this means that too many child victims are not getting the protection and support they so desperately need.

Moreover, of the backgrounds of the victims who gave evidence to the inquiry, 42% were white British and 28% were ethnic minorities. I’m assuming the remaining were mixed or unknown backgrounds.

During the Rochdale case the Judge said: “You preyed on girls because they were not part of your community or religion” — this is repeatedly cited by some people. But it’s also untrue. As was revealed after the ring-leader in the Rochdale case also ‘repeatedly raped an Asian girl over many years.‘

My point is not that race is irrelevant – but that it’s not relevant to why the girls were targeted.

In some of the cases of gang-related child grooming and rape, the men were primarily of Pakistani backgrounds. I suspect this is simply because they congregated together for work and to commit crime. There are other similar cases where the gangs of men have been exclusively white.

To my mind, the key question is: did they target white girls because of their skin colour and because they hated white girls, or simply because they found it easier to groom white girls? The fact that there are instances of black and Asian girls also being raped implies that in the Oxford (and other similar cases) – the men simply found it easier to prey on young white girls.

Of course, in the Oxford case the men may have deliberately targeted young white girls – I can’t read their minds. But generalising that Asian men are pre-disposed to targeting white girls make no sense given the evidence. Furthermore, these generalisations make no sense since the Jimmy Savile revelations and other cases where not only did rape and abuse take place, but many more people were involved in the cover-up.

But we can make one generalisation with some certainty: too many men still find it acceptable to exploit, groom and rape young girls without much regret. Rape culture remains a serious and widely prevalent problem and we need to do more to help and listen to the victims, rather than using them to score political points.

.

No further comment needed.

London’s Metropolitan Police have been criticised today for reports that they are buying two water cannons to target protesters.

The report in today’s Times says:

The Metropolitan Police has asked the Home Office to approve the acquisition of two German-made water cannon vehicles, capable of holding 9,000 litres each, which would be used to soak rioters with powerful jets of spray.

The purchase of a third cannon, which would be held as a “national asset” available to other police forces for deployment in emergency situations, is also being considered.

The Metropolitan Police had hoped to have the vehicles for next month in case of disorder arising from protests which are planned for London before the G8 summit in Northern Ireland.

It is understood that, although Home Office ministers are broadly in favour of the proposal, they have asked for more details on how the riot control weapon would be deployed.

The plans were slammed as “deeply worrying” by London Labour today, who are asking the Met Police chief Bernard Hogan-Howe to fully consult with the public before purchasing the water cannons.

London Assembly Member Joanne McCartney has written to the Commissioner asking for clarification on the proposals.

In a statement sent to Liberal Conspiracy today she said:

A monumental decision like this cannot be snuck through under the public’s nose. We need a full public debate on this move. This is deeply worrying and it’s an indication that the Met are unsure whether they could cope. We have a low number of police officers with 2,682 lost since May 2010 and 1846 PCSOs.

The evidence for the effectiveness of water cannons is very unclear. Against the widespread rioting we saw in London water cannons would have been of very limited, if any, use.

The Mayor and the Met also need to do more to improve public trust and confidence in the police and prevent trouble starting in the first place. I would be extremely concerned if we were to see water cannons used on London’s streets against the public.

She says she has written urgently to London’s Mayor too, asking if these reports are accurate, and what evidence they had that water cannons were effective.

As others pointed out on Twitter

“including lack of manoeuvrability, quick exhaustion of water supply, and vulnerability to attack.” Home Office written answer in 1987.

— Brian Williams (@BriW74) May 13, 2013

Transport for London (TfL) last week owned up and made public the actual purchase price of the New Bus For London (NBfL), aka Boris Bus.

And that price, at £354,500 per vehicle, makes the NBfL around £50,000 more expensive than a comparable off-the-shelf hybrid double decker. So, despite Bozza’s promises, the NBfL will not be price competitive with alternatives.

As there are to be 600 production examples of the NBfL, this gives a premium of £30 million. Added to this is the cost of the eight prototypes, which, at £11.77 million, gives a premium over eight comparable hybrids of £9.37 million.

We cannot validate the claims for superior fuel consumption, as TfL have thus far declined to release the figures. So that’s a running premium total of £39.37 million.

For that money, Londoners could have had another 131 hybrid double deckers. And it gets worse: far from being the “greenest ever” bus, the NBfL will have to be retro-fitted with the means to enable it to meet 2014 emissions standards. So that means a further extra cost.

However, TfL would benefit if the design were to be sold to any other potential customers. What are the prospects of this? Sadly, they are precisely zero. This can be gleaned from the unwillingness of operators to take the vehicles on: uniquely for London, TfL is having to purchase them outright and then impose them on operators.

But it is in running costs that the truly scandalous scale of waste can be seen. Each NBfL requires a second crew member when its rear platform is in operation, and this has been estimated to add a cost of £62,000 per vehicle per year.

Do the math, as they say: over the 14-year lifetime of the 608-strong fleet, this will land Londoners with a whopping £527.74 million bill in total.

That’s an awfully large premium payment for Bozza’s vanity legacy.

The question begs itself as to how he has been allowed to get away with it: spraying £567 million up the wall merely for something that is “different”, “iconic”, or which may impress a few tourists.

Whilst on the other GDP per capita figures suggested that the hole we are currently in is much bigger than previously thought.

GDP per capita measures economic output per person. In many ways this is the most sensible way to measure growth over the medium term and the best way to compare growth across nations.

As the IMF mission arrives in the UK to assess our economic performance, the TUC have used IMF data to look at GDP per capita over the advanced economies.

As can be seen in the table below the UK’s performance is abysmal.

Over the decade 2008 to 2017 the UK will experience, according to the most recent IMF forecasts, GDP per capita growth of 0.0%.

In real terms GDP per capita was £23,777.32p in 2008; by 2017 it will have reached just £23,768.25p. In terms of growth per head the UK is set to have its own ‘lost decade’.

The data really tells us three things.

First that the UK experienced an especially severe recession in 2008/09, second that the recovery has been historically weak and drawn out and thirdly that in terms of the ‘global race’ that the government is so keen to talk about, we are doing especially badly. Amongst the G7 only Italy is expected to underperform the UK.

If there is a global race, then we are certainly losing.

The Resolution Foundation has calculated that median real wages are set to be well below 2008 levels in 2017. In fact real median wages are set to be below 1999 levels as late as 2017.

We face a lost decade of growth and two lost decades of living standards, we are losing the global race, deficit reduction is widely off track and yet the Chancellor still refuses to change course.

—
A longer version is at Touchstone blog

The next day her baby died. Bruises left from the attempted administration of CPR led the hospital staff, and subsequently the police, to question the young mother about the circumstances surrounding her son’s death.

Just one day after the death of her baby, Sabrina was arrested and interrogated.

She was then charged for the capital murder of her son, Walter Butler. On the 8th March 1990 Butler’s case went to trial. Prosecutors sought to prove that she had inflicted the wounds intentionally and caused the death of her baby.

She was convicted of both child abuse and murder and became the only woman on Mississippi’s death row at the time.

None of the facts presented by the prosecution were seriously contested by Butler’s attorneys during the trial, no defence witnesses were called and no other evidence was offered on her behalf.

By August 1992 the Supreme Court of Mississippi reversed and remanded Butler’s convictions declaring the “prosecution had failed to prove that the incident was anything more than an accident.”

She was exonerated in 1995.

Sabrina’s story is one of the ten stories covered in a series of short films, as part of the One for Ten project (we covered it on Liberal Conspiracy a few months ago)).

The tells the stories of 10 exonerees in the US that have been freed from death row after their innocence has been proven.

One For Ten are currently crowd funding to raise the money to make the last two films in this series. To read more about the cases featured in the last two films, have a look at their website here. If you want to make sure their work continues, you can contribute here.

The Alan Turing Statutory Pardon Bill has been published on the Houses of Parliament website.

Turing was a mathematician and philosopher who cracked the Nazi Enigma code and invented electronic computing. He was also a homosexual, and was convicted of “Gross indecency between men” in 1952. As a result he lost his security clearance, was subjected to chemical castration, and committed suicide when he was only 42.

This statutory pardon seeks to atone for the Government’s appalling treatment of a national hero.

Nevertheless, the idea of such a narrow pardon worries me a little.

The implication seems to be that Turing gets a pardon because he achieved so much. But that should not be how the law and justice works.

“Dear Alan, sorry we fucked you over. And thx for helping us win war and create computing. Yours, the Guv” services.parliament.uk/bills/2013-14/…
— David E (@Eastmad) May 10, 2013

What about all those under-achievers and ordinary men who were convicted under the same illiberal and unjust law? Why do they not get a pardon too?

The Hall case shows more than ever just how vital it is that we continue to name men accused of rape and sexual assault. Because it is this naming that can give survivors and victims the confidence to come forward. 

In Hall’s case, the police and CPS have been vocal in their argument for naming defendants. They have explained how naming Hall helped lead to his guilty admission. As survivors recognised that they were not alone, that he had attacked others, the police were able to gather the evidence they needed to charge and eventually prosecute.

We see the same pattern over and over again. Serial rapist John Worboys is a key example in how naming a defendant helped lead to his conviction. After he was named, it became impossible for the police to ignore the weight, the sheer amount, of women coming forward to name him as their rapist. Naming leads to evidence which helps lead to convictions. 

Some argue that if we name the accused we should name the alleged victim. But why? Naming the victim isn’t going to help lead to convictions, it’s not going to help secure justice for rape survivors.

People cry ‘false accusations’ but if a woman is charged with that specific crime, then of course she will be named as she will be a defendant herself. The case of Ched Evans shows what can happen when you name the survivor. His victim was victimised all over again when she was subjected to horrific abuse to the point that she had to change her name and flee her home. How can we have ended up in a situation where some treat rapists with more sympathy and respect than their victims?

When criticising the policy of naming defendants, I think people confuse two different issues. The first is the legal issue and the indisputable, mounting, continuing evidence that naming helps convict rapists. The second is media behaviour.

The fact that the media convict people in their pages and often seem to tread a very narrow line between reporting and contempt of court is not a reason to end the policy of naming defendants. It is too important a policy, too important in bringing justice to victims and survivors, to be dropped because the press behave intrusively.

Press behaviour is an issue for the press. If they harass and taunt and wrongly convict men in their pages then that is not the fault of a sensible law that helps bring justice to rape victims. Bad behaviour in some sections of the media is not a reason to deny women and girls up and down the UK justice.

—
A longer version of this blog-post is here.

We’ve been told that our insatiable desire for cheap clothing is what keeps wages down, and working conditions so poor that factory fires are endemic and corners cut so badly that buildings collapse, as Rana Plaza did.

But we think cash-strapped consumers aren’t the problem, and the TUC have researched and published a quick graphic to explain:

The suggestion that consumers are to blame struck us as a bit too convenient. So we asked the textile unions in Bangladesh how much their members were paid to make a t-shirt.

Believe it or not, there’s actually a term for how long it takes a textile worker to run up a basic t-shirt: the ‘Standard Minute Value’ or SMV. And the time it takes is 10.565 minutes. That’s a rough estimate, presumably!

Textile workers usually work over 200 hours a month, producing nearly six t-shirts every hour. So the princely wage they receive for each t-shirt is roughly 2p. We’ve found costs in high street shops ranging from £2 to £10, with the archetypal t-shirt mentioned in several reports costing £6.

So the price you’re charged for a t-shirt has nothing to do with the wages of the textile workers who made it. To double their wages would increase the production cost of a basic high-street t-shirt by 2p.

That all suggests that someone’s trying to pull the wool over our eyes about who’s really responsible for the low wages and poor health and safety standards in Dhaka’s RMG sector, and it’s the global brands and manufacturers who set the prices.

Bizarrely, some of them have insisted that they have no control over wages, hours of work, factory safety and the like. But they can determine the time it takes to manufacture a t-shirt down to three decimal places and determine what the stitching on the hems looks like! Pull the other one!

We’re supporting the global union for textile workers, IndustriALL, who are demanding that global brands, retailers and manufacturers sign up to an agreement on health and safety and wages. You can support them by by taking this e-action.

Crucially, workers in Bangladesh need the right to join a union and the right to negotiate terms and conditions with their employers. But they also need to work in safety, as the International Labour Organisation has insisted.

The people who should be feeling guilty are the people who run those global multinationals and the Government of Bangladesh. Not shoppers like you, struggling to get by on wages that are also not increasing, while the costs of food, fuel and accommodation continue to rise.

Workers everywhere need dignity at work, based on decent wages and decent jobs.

The Islamic Society of Britain (ISB) and anti-fascist group Hope not hate (HNH) plan to launch ‘Community Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation’ (CAASE) in Bradford on 10th May.

CAASE say they will meet the challenges raised by child sexual exploitation of vulnerable young girls and women head-on.

The initiative is being supported by groups including the Church of England, Muslim Council of Britain, Muslim Youth Helpline, Muslim Community Helpline, Federation of Muslim Organisations, Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board (MINAB), Faith Associates, the Christian Muslim Forum, City Sikhs Network, plus women’s rights networks including Inspire, the Henna Foundation, and Making Herstory.

Professional guidance will be provided by Victim Support, plus STREET, which works with at-risk young people, and NAPAC (the National Association for People Abused in Childhood) which specialises in support for abuse survivors.

Executive Director of the Islamic Society of Britain, Julie Siddiqi, says:

There are few crimes more horrific than the sexual exploitation of young women: these girls have been let down by everyone. I have been sickened reading about these cases. There should be no excuse, no hiding place, for those who perpetrate such crimes.

Nick Lowles from Hope not Hate said:

We want to encourage all our partners to help us remove the veils of secrecy and control that allow abuse to flourish. We also need to ensure that the media, and far-right groups, do not promote an anti-Muslim agenda over so-called ‘grooming’ trials either. HOPE not hate will focus on busting myths that groups such as the EDL and BNP like to promote in their quest for hate and division.

Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra from the Muslim Council of Britain added:

Some of those perpetrators who have recently been convicted happen to be from the Muslim community, so we need to be at the very front of the voice that is condemning this. It is important that leaders of religious communities speak out against this deplorable and abhorrent behaviour by adults toward vulnerable children.

Working with child protection services, local authorities, schools, faith communities and the police, CAASE say they hope to develop a proactive response to the growing problem of on-street grooming, raising awareness, educating and developing community-led responses.

My colleagues and I on Brighton and Hove Council have led this country’s first Green local authority since May 2011, although as a minority administration we can (and do) get over-ruled by Labour and the Tories when they choose to work together.

There’s much we’ve done over the last two years which has been widely welcomed including introducing the Living Wage, building more affordable homes, protecting third sector funding, becoming the world’s first One Planet City and progressing a City Deal, but it’s fair to say that staff pay has been the most controversial issue we have had to deal with.

We inherited a deeply flawed and muddled pay and allowances structure from previous administrations, and indeed from predecessor defunct local authorities.

The lowest paid were not getting a living wage and the work on resolving single status for employee take-home pay (regardless of gender) was incomplete.

The Tory-Lib Dem cuts to local government have also hit us hard: in fact, they are the second steepest faced by any council of our type. Furthermore, we cannot raise Council Tax beyond a level Labour or the Tories would support. Although senior management pay is down to its lowest level for over ten years, the budget is exceptionally tight.

So we’re consulting on a proposal that will bring in fair pay and allowances for all who work for the council.

Building on the Living Wage we’ve already introduced for the lowest paid, we now are seeking to complete the final step of ensuring single status for all council employees.

It is very clear that this is not about budget savings and not about ‘austerity’. In fact, based on the offer under consultation, the pay bill is likely to go up slightly. Which other Council in the country can claim that?

What is the offer then? The offer includes three key aspects:

1) A new fair and simple set of allowances which is easy to understand and helps the council meet the needs of our citizens.With these new allowances 90% of staff will see very little or no change at all in their take home pay. Of those that do, the majority will actually see an increase and a minority will see some detriment. Most of those seeing detriment will, it is estimated, lose less than £25 per week. I recognise even that is a lot to some people, but not the headline figures being used by some individuals.

2) Anyone who is unfortunately suffering detriment will be generously compensated for that loss with a lump sump payment. For example someone losing between £1,001 and £1,250 a year is proposed to receive £3,550 in one-off compensation.

3) We are keen to provide new opportunities for staff. We hope that, if agreed at a future committee, changes like Bank Holiday working can increase opportunities for waste and recycling staff whilst improving services to the city by eliminating changing collection days every time there is a Bank Holiday.

Some staff will regrettably see allowances reduced, but we can see no legal and affordable way merely to increase everyone’s pay up to those levels – and we therefore propose a lump sum to compensate those staff, worth very roughly about three years’ worth of any reduction.

We have to resolve these allowances now. To do so without any detriment to any member of staff would sadly be totally unaffordable, even with Council Tax rises that would certainly not be supported by Labour and Conservative councillors.

I know this process has been controversial and could have been communicated better. Some colleagues locally have concerns about it, to say the least.

I would therefore welcome suggestions from them, as well as from staff and the unions, on how to improve these proposals in any way which is legal, fair and can be afforded within the tight budget limits effectively set by the government as well as our Labour and Tory opposition.

—
For more on the proposals, see Jason’s blog here.
Jason Kitcat is a Green City Councillor. He is writing in his capacity as Convenor of the Green Group of councillors on Brighton & Hove City Council.

In fact, according to the most recent edition of the House of Commons Register of Members’ Interests she hasn’t declared any outside interests or earnings since June 2012, although she did register a gift in kind from Conservative Home in October 2012, which consisted of a Conference Pass, accommodation and travel for last year’s Conservative Party Conference, valued at £700.

That’s a little odd isn’t?

Between August 2011 and May 2012, the Register of Members’ Interests shows that Dorries was paid:

- £1,900 by the Daily Mail for two articles published between August October 2011,
- £5,000 by the Mail on Sunday for articles published between January and May 2012,
- £1,440 by Hat Trick Productions for an appearance on Have I got News For You in May 2012,
- £300 by The Sun for articles published in May 2012,
- £300 by H Bauer Publishing for articles published in Bella Magazine in May 2012, and
- £3,000 by Conservative Home for a writing weekly column between January and May 2012.

However, since that last set of registrations in June 2012, Dorries has registered nothing whatsoever in terms of remunerated outside interest despite appearing on ‘I’m a Celebrity…”,  continuing to write a regular weekly column for Conservative Home and signing with a showbiz agent, ASM Damage, where her profile notes an appearance on Channel 5′s ‘The Wright Stuff’ in June 2012 which has also yet to make an appearance on her register entry.

To be clear about the rules, MPs are required to update their register entry with any new registrable interests, such as payments for key work undertaken outside the House, within four weeks.

That being the case, how has Dorries managed to go almost six months without registering her payment for appearing on ‘I’m a Celebrity…’?

Her own private company?
One way in which Dorries could avoid registering payments for media work as paid employment would be to set up a service company to receive the money on her behalf and then pay it on to her as an employee of that company, or via a remunerated directorship or perhaps even in the form of shareholder’s dividend.

She would still have to declare any such payments on the register but this would at least help to avoid disclosing exactly how much she’d been paid for specific gigs and, depending on how these payments are made, she would also be able to pay a bit less tax on her outside income.

And sure enough, about a month before Dorries jetted off to the Australian jungle (3rd October 2012) records at Companies House show that Dorries was appointed as the sole director of a Staffordshire-based company called Averbrook Limited.

Averbrook Limited also has yet to make an appearance on Dorries’ register of interests.

Averbrook Limited
Now this is where it gets interesting because Averbrook Limited is not a new company at all.

It was originally set up in May 1994 by three business consultants but was then taken over in November 1995 by an Andrew James Rayment, a former teacher with a somewhat intriguing commercial history if an article which appeared in TES in June 2011 is anything to go by.

As recently as August 2010, so far as I can confirm, Rayment was also the Chairman of Mid-Bedfordshire Conservative Association. Averbrook’s financials show the company has been dormant since 2006 and that it hasn’t done any significant trading for a fair bit longer than that, with Rayment as its sole shareholder and Company Secretary, with a nominal holding of just £100, and his wife serving as its sole director.

Or at least that was the case right up until end of March 2012 when Rayment’s wife suddenly stepped down as a Director with Rayment seemingly following her out the door, at least on paper, six weeks later, at which point its registered office and the position of Company Secretary were both transferred to an accountancy firm in Newcastle-under-Lyme.

And there it sat, until early October 2012 and Dorries’s appointment as a director, in which she her occupation as  “writer/commentator/TV Radio personality” (but not MP), all of which came on the same day that the accountancy firm resigned as Company Secretary.

Why hasn’t Dorries declared it?
MPs are required to register any remunerated directorships, not matter how much remuneration they receive, and any directorships for which they are not individually remunerated but nevertheless receive payments for via another company in the same group.

There also required to register an interest in any company in which they hold at least a 15% shareholding.

So, if Dorries receives any kind of payment from Averbrook for media work that’s been routed through the company, as either an employee or as a director, or if she owns more than 15% of the shares in the company then it has to be registered with the House of Commons, which means either than she’s failed to register an interest in line with the rules or that she hasn’t received any payments from Averbrook and doesn’t own at least 15% of the company’s shares.

Which leads us back to the question of what, exactly, has happened to her appearance fee from ‘I’m a Celebrity…’?

This is all legal and above board, but nevertheless her constituents and even some members of her local association might be inclined to wonder why the MP isn’t showing more transparency.

—
A longer version of this post is on Unity’s blog.

Three of the key PR industry bodies have issued an unprecedented joint statement slamming the government for not introducing a register of lobbyists.

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA) and Association of Professional Political Consultants (APPC) said it was “incredibly disappointing” that the register was not included in the Queen’s Speech yesterday.

A joint statement sent to Liberal Conspiracy said:

In the Coalition Agreement and in its Mid-Term review the Government made a pledge to introduce a lobbying register. So it is incredibly disappointing that the Queen’s Speech does not include draft legislation to introduce a statutory register of lobbyists that we had been anticipating. It’s crucial that we now get clarity from the Government about their intentions. If they intend to drop legislation this Parliament then they have a duty to the general public to let their new intentions be known. If they do still plan to introduce legislation, then they must publish the detail of their plans.

It’s crucial, for example, that any new statutory lobbying register is universal, including all those who seek to influence public policy and law, and covers lobbying all levels of Government, not just Whitehall. Without a clear statement of intent from the Government it is difficult not to conclude that the Government is looking to quietly drop their plans for lobbying reform.

The industry wants a broad, transparent register, but say that government uncertainty is not helping.

Francis Ingham, PRCA Director General, added: “The industry desires – not fears – transparency, which makes the Government’s inaction all the more frustrating. It is disappointing that the Government is wasting time and resources, but also missing an opportunity to increase trust in the institutions that we lobby.”

There’s actually a simple answer to this, and it has major implications for both Labour and the Conservatives.

YouGov regularly track public opinion on a range of issue, asking the same question every time.

One of those questions is: ‘Which party is best able to handle the issue of Immigration and Asylum?‘

Here’s what is shows (you can click it for a bigger interactive chart).

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This has a few lessons I think.

1) Voters who think the Tories are better able to handle immigration have been shrinking consistently since the election. It partly explains the rise of UKIP, and is extraordinary given the number of speeches and announcements on immigration the government has made.

2) It shows how little attention voters pay to news, announcements, speeches and impact of policy. Immigration has fallen and been tightened up and yet the public still don’t believe it or don’t know about it. So their faith in the government’s handle on the issue keeps falling.

3) This has an instructive message for Labour too. As I’ve said repeatedly – posturing and ‘acting tough‘ on issues like welfare and immigration by Labour cuts little ice with the public. It didn’t during the New Labour years and it does so even less now.

Voter rarely pay attention to policy or speeches, but instead reach their opinions through vague mood music. In other words they expect Labour to be ‘soft’ on these issues and Tories to be ‘tough’ on these issues, and their general focus is instead on how ‘competent’ a party is on managing its affairs. If they think a party is competent then they’ll assume they’re doing a good job on immigration and welfare too.

This also means that if Labour act tough on welfare or immigration, the public doesn’t hear it or believe it. Which means the party is better of dropping the posturing and focusing on sensible policies and linking the issues to the economy.

Green Party MP and former leader Caroline Lucas today said she would join the picket line against her own party, over pay cuts to workers in Brighton.

The controversy flared up after the Green-controlled Brighton & Hove council announced plans for ‘pay modernisation’ for council workers. They say workers have to face up to pay cuts to avoid job cuts.

The local GMB union branch is opposed to the plans, as are the local Green party.

In a blog-post last week Lucas said she was opposed to the plans too:

I want to make clear my opposition to cuts to take-home pay, and that I am very aware of the devastating impact that the potential loss of as much as £95 a week would have on council workers – especially those already on low pay.

I’ve set out my position on this to the Council and made my opposition clear to the GMB union, who represent many of the workers facing changes to their pay and allowances.

In a tweet today she said she would also join the picket line against her own party’s policy.

@sussexlrc @bhgreens @gmbsouthern In answer to your question – Yes I will joinpicket line if Council forces pay cut on lowpaid staff

— Caroline Lucas (@CarolineLucas) May 8, 2013

In other words, the local Green MP and the local Green party are opposed to a policy put forward by the Green cabinet members in the council. Extraordinary.

This was always a highly dubious claim. Indeed the BNP actually opposed AV, presumably because they realised that under a system where a candidate needs to get broad support they would likely get no seats at all. At least under FPTP they can occasionally win, usually where the barrier is often considerably lower than 50%.

One of the results from the recent local elections amply demonstrates this point.

Collin Brewer was an independent councillor in Cornwall who before the elections attracted a lot of publicity having made some highly offensive comments about disabled children and how they cost too much money so should be “put down”. He resigned at the time but decided to stand again for the Wadebridge East ward and to the consternation of many was actually re-elected.

There is an online petition at the moment trying to get him to resign again which has gathered hundreds of signatures.

But it is worth bearing in mind how he managed to get re-elected. Here is the breakdown of the 2013 results for Wadebridge East taken from the Democracy Cornwall website:

Wadebridge East – results

Election Candidate	Party	Votes	%
Collin William Brewer	Independent	335	25%	Elected
Steve Knightley	Liberal Democrat	331	25%	Not elected
Roderick Harrison	UK Independence Party	208	16%	Not elected
Adrian Darrell Jones	Labour	161	12%	Not elected
Brian Aubone Bennetts	Conservative	150	11%	Not elected
Sarah Hannah Maguire	Independent	146	11%	Not elected

As you can see Collin only got 25% of the vote. Now I don’t know how many of those who voted for him were aware of his remarks but even if most of them were, 75% of voters voted for a candidate who does not have those views. And yet because of First Past the Post Collin was allowed to take the seat on only a quarter of the vote.

Far from preventing extreme candidates from being elected, FPTP actually allows it to happen by simply taking the candidate with the plurality of votes and giving them the seat no matter how low the vote share is. Elsewhere in Cornwall another candidate was elected on less than 20% of the vote.

We aren’t going to get AV or any other form of electoral reform any time soon I suspect but we have to accept that keeping FPTP means as a country we reap what we sow.

It is the first time a key think-tank has called for a LVT. The paper is authored by Andy Hull, a Labour councillor and a former senior research fellow at the IPPR think-tank.

The paper proposes that a Land Value Tax, targeted at unproductive wealth and speculation, could help deliver the house-building revolution – and the economic revival – our country desperately needs.

Author Andy Hull says that introducing a LVT would “take political courage”.

It will mean facing down vested interests, not least the big land-banking ‘developers’ who deliberately drip-feed properties onto the market, making large profits on small volumes of output, even though they have the land and the country desperately needs more homes.

It will take a manifesto commitment, a real mandate, and no doubt a battle in parliament. But, at least in some sense, this land is ours. And our tax system should reflect that fact.

The paper – ‘In Land Value: The Case for a Land Value Tax in the UK’ is available from here.

The Centre for Labour and Social Studies (Class) was established in 2012 by Unite the Union, GMB and the Institute of Employment Rights to act as a centre for left debate and discussion.

Obviously I didn’t mean the Greens should adopt UKIP’s half-baked policies, but that the latter were doing a much better job at sounding like they wanted to challenge the Westminster consensus.

I was reminded of that when Chris Dillow said UKIP’s rise is a triumph for the pro-establishment ruling class.

This sounds too much like it was inevitable the likes of UKIP and the ‘ruling class’ would triumph after the financial crash of 2008. I think it actually highlights the failure of the Left to get our shit together.

The rise of various Leftist movements across Europe has shown it’s not always the Right that triumphs from political and economic uncertainty. Of course, there are plenty of anarchist groups and anti-establishment movements in the UK. But they’re too busy infighting or competing with each other to be puritanical. The ‘threat’ they pose to the Westminster elite is, at best, vague. Moreover, I’ve barely seen any introspection or open discussion about why any movements have failed to take off (especially among students).

To my mind there are broadly two ways to broad political power: you either mobilise large numbers of people, or you can get them to vote for you. The British Left is failing on both counts.

This brings me back to the Greens. I was told that they did not want to ape UKIP for two reasons: first, they wanted to sound credible and viable rather than mad; second, their strategy was to slowly build up a base and win seats local rather than jumping for attention in the national media.

It’s a plausible strategy but not one of an insurgency trying to pull the consensus in their direction. The financial crash, ongoing austerity cuts or even the slew of dire warnings about climate change should have injected a sense of urgency into the Greens. Instead, the party is pottering along (they won 5 council seats in the local elections) and upsetting no one.

The rise of UKIP demonstrates two points I think:

1) To pose a threat to the system you don’t need detailed policies or an established base, but to latch on to a few issues and rile up enough people about them to give you a boost. Own those issues completely and find ways to inject urgency into the national discourse.

2) Voters are annoyed enough with the narrow consensus of the three parties that, when they see a viable alternative (Lucas in Brighton, Galloway in Tower Hamlets and Bradford, UKIP in Eastleigh etc), they vote for the alternative.

But the Greens have to sound like they pose a threat to the establishment; they have to radiate danger and insurgency (while not sounding angry), not fluffy middle-class sentiments.

PS: I’m not bidding to join the Greens and remain firmly committed to the Labour party. All I’m saying is that the rise of UKIP, as opposed to a more left-wing movement, wasn’t inevitable.

It reflects a failure on the left to be fail to mobilise large numbers of people or have a political party in Westminster that sounds like an insurgency.