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After the Love Has Gone

On this the day when people traditionally express their undying devotion to those that they either love, wished they had loved or given half a chance, would like to love – and sometimes all three – it has been somewhat amusing in recent days to see how certain people no longer feel the love for those organisations and institutions central to many of their and our lives, over many years.

First up is The Sun, which many of us myself included, would hesitate to call a newspaper even though in its heyday it could claim well over four million readers, or for the purists among us, for people with too little time to read properly. Former Political Editor, Trevor Kavanagh, took to the airwaves yesterday to give vent to the feelings of anger and frustration among the paper’s staff following the arrest of five senior journalists under the Prevention of Corruption Act 1906, aiding and abetting misconduct in a public office. In a BBC Radio Five Live interview he said, “the mood on the Sun was “despondent”, and there was “a feeling of being under siege” which doubtless raised an eyebrow or two among those whose reputations The Sun has trashed in the past.

Certainly fingers are being pointed at members of the powerful Management Standards committee (MSC) who are co-operating fully with the police investigation lest it be seen as obstructing the course of justice, among them Will Lewis, who as Editor of The Daily Telegraph broke the expenses scandal in 2009. It is with a sense of irony that Kavanagh complained about dawn raids and other tactics used by the police which he regarded as treating those arrested as though they were part of an organised crime gang. Given what has emerged over recent months regarding phone hacking, payments to police officers and others, that particular sobriquet may not be as far-fetched as it sounds, although there is still some way to go before the police investigation is complete.

Rupert Murdoch is due it town later this week for what was supposed to be a routine visit. Given the seriousness of what has befallen his most important UK title and the threat of an investigation by US authorities under the Corrupt Practices Act, speculation will intensify as to whether or not it suffers the same fate at the News of the World. When Rebekah Brooks made that ill-fated comment to the parliamentary select committee about paying police officers for information, no-one then could have predicted the can of worms which would open up afterwards with Leveson, three police investigations and more select committee hearings each of which has chipped away at the facade of invincibility News International and its titles thought it had cocooned itself in.

No story about lost or unrequited love would be complete without the ongoing crisis affecting the Euro with the Greek people once again taking to the streets to protest and the austerity measures imposed by the EU – Germany and France – in order to secure yet another bail out. Today came news that Moody’s ratings agency put the UK on “negative outlook” amid fears over weaker growth prospects and potential shocks from the eurozone crisis thereby increasing the chance of Britain being stripped of its triple-A status. Given that retention of this status is central to the Coalition Government’s deficit reduction strategy, Chancellor George Osborne, re-iterated his view that the austerity programme was the right one for the country and the warning from Moody’s as the reality check needed to face down the debt crisis. The Euro was the creation of bureaucrats and politicians who saw this as an integral part of the plan for political and economic union despite the disparity between rich northern european countries and poorer southern and eastern ones, the latter of which, had only in recent memory been under Soviet influence.

For many within the Eurozone with its stringent budget deficit rules and increasing austerity-inducing measures, one wonders if the Greeks will decide that maybe they might be better of defaulting after all and leaving the Euro? If they do, how long before Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Italy follow suit? Will the Germans eventually get fed up with playing banker to the weaker European economies deciding that perhaps like the Tory Eurosceptics, totally free markets should really be the arbiter of economic prosperity after all?

For those interested in governance and democratic accountability these are questions which will eventually need to be answered by those to whom we entrust decision-making responsibilities.

We at 2020UK are among those seeking such answers. Join in the debate and help us establish a platform where democratic accountability ensures co-operation replaces confrontation in our political, social and economic life.

Michael Cronogue

Democratic deficiency?

There is a disconnect between the people and their governments in a number of European countries as I write this blog.

The headline in The Times reads, “Rioters set Athens ablaze as MPs vote to save euro”. The Guardian’s take is rather different, “Greece approves austerity cut to secure bailout”. The Independent also opts for the popular reaction, “Greek MP’s warned of disaster as Athens erupts in violence”.

Meanwhile, closer to home we have a government pushing through two contentious bills whilst saying it is listening but acting as if it is deaf. These two are, of course, the Welfare Reform Bill and the Health and Social Care Bill.

There is a link between the events in Greece and these two bills. The politicians in Europe brought in the Euro without having a popular mandate so to do. The coalition has no mandate for either of these bills. Indeed, the coalition has no mandate – full stop. It has an agreement (which it calls a mandate) forged in the white heat of those heady days following the election but that is all.

There is a good argument that a coalition should behave like a caretaker government carrying out the business of the day and not getting involved in reform but rather just seeking through good housekeeping to ensure that everything is being done as well as possible within the existing framework.

That is not to suggest that our welfare arrangements and the NHS are not in need of reform – both do but the real question is ‘how?’.

It seems to me that in both cases we have left out the very first and most important step of all: to set the terms of the debate in the light of available resources. Who do we, as a nation, want our welfare system to support and at what level? What do we, as a nation, want from a National Health Service?

Obviously two questions follow immediately. What percentage of the national wealth are we, as a nation, prepared to spend on welfare? What percentage of the national wealth are we, as a nation, prepared to spend on health care?

As far as I can see, none of the questions has been fully explored. Surely major reforms need to be built on foundations stones that have been fully aired and which have the support of those involved (whether as providers of resource through taxes and beneficiaries).

I suspect that the reason these questions have not been asked is that there is no framework in place to ask them. In any event the party political system we have favours not the best that can attract a consensus from the vast majority of us (whose party political loyalties are frail or even non-existent) but anything – good, bad or indifferent – that stands a reasonable chance of winning the next election.

Perhaps we should be trying to answer those questions here, on 2020UK.

* * * * *

During this time of recession, government ministers are fond of the expression ‘difficult decisions’. However, who is making the decisions and are they really that difficult? Essentially it seems that central government reduces the funding available for their departments and, more controversially, local authorities. Then the fun starts. Is this council closing that library or care home because they really cannot make savings in needless paperwork, etc or is it that they want to score a political point over the government? Is this police chief right when he says that all the slack has been taken out of the system and front line police are going to have to be laid off or is the chairman of the police authority right when he says the reverse? The problem is that the system is a very long way from being transparent.

Looking after the welfare of disadvantaged children is hardly a fun subject. Action for Children takes it very seriously. Here is a quote from their site, “The proportion of children who experience neglect in the UK remains at an unacceptably high level; studies suggest that up to 10% of children experience neglect at some point in their lives, and it is still the most common reason for a child to need protection services.”

What I am going to say will sound as though I have no concern for disadvantaged children but that is not true: I hope I have as much compassion as anyone for the child who is truly disadvantaged through no fault of his or her fault. Nevertheless I want to take issue with that quote because this is the sort of thing that muddies the waters and is, in the long term, actually counter-productive.

There are two issues: “up to 10%” is the first. As I write this blog, up to 10% of the UK population is sitting with me in my study. The actual percentage is, of course, minuscule but because it is less than 10% I am being totally truthful in saying it is up to 10%. They explain that they have carried out a review in partnership with Stirling University. Good – that means they have some accurate data. Why not share it?

The second issue is “disadvantaged”. I have had a fairly thorough search of their site and I cannot find what definition of this word they use. This, too, is important. In actual fact not a child is brought up in this country who does not “experience neglect at some point in their lives” if by neglect you simply mean “left to get on with life in a free and unsupervised fashion”. I was brought up during the war and in the very lean years that followed and, as a child, experienced a great deal of neglect – benevolent neglect that enabled me to forge my own personality, follow my own enthusiasms and, very important this, learn a good deal about risk analysis through my own unsupervised stupidity (and I have a few scars as a result). I was one of the incredibly lucky ones.

So why the above? Well, it is all to do with looking at the way we run our affairs with 2020 vision. I am sorry to highlight Action for Children for they are an excellent organisation and the work they do very important and I could have selected any of a host of other examples. Blame random selection for that is what it was. However, ‘spin’ is bad policy even when the end that is being sought is good.

Rodney Willett

The Best of Times or The Worst of Times?

Not to pick a title for today’s blog without reference to the bi-centenary of one of English literature’s greatest authors, was too big a temptation to pass up I’m afraid. As the literary world celebrates the 200th birthday of the author, journalist and passionate advocate of social reform, I thought that this would be a good time to ponder where we as a country find ourselves now, and what lessons we can possibly draw as we progress further into a new century.

Certainly many of the problems from Charles Dickens’ time are still with us; the gap between rich and poor is as wide as ever; educational attainment is still predicated on attending the right kind of school along with entry into what we still call “the professions”; teenage pregnancies are still a common feature particularly in poorer working class areas along with shortages of suitable social housing; the consequences of poor diet and unhealthy lifestyles fuelled by excess alcohol in particular, continue to take their toll, with the supermarkets and bargain booze outlets replacing the gin houses of the Dickens era.

We may have got rid of the original Victorian built slums in the decades since the second world war, yet the high-rise blocks from the sixties which promised a revolution in housing, are gradually being torn down as planners belatedly realise that what creates communities are streets of houses where neighbours get to know each other, and where people put down roots and gain support networks.

The cap on housing benefits may yet force large numbers of families to move to cheaper areas, while governments of all persuasions seem in thrall to those landlords who charge extortionate rents safe in the knowledge that for many cash-strapped local authorities, there is little in the way of viable alternatives. How many MPs are themselves landlords thanks to generous tax-payer funded expenses, before the Daily Telegraph exposed the latent corruption beneath the whole system?

We may no longer imprison people for getting into debt, but finding oneself in hock to a loan shark – legal or otherwise – is in itself a form of servitude, along with those who find themselves struggling to pay off their debts to those other legalised practitioners of modern extortion, the banks and credit card companies.

In Dickens’ time London played host to the Great Exhibition of 1851, celebrating the best of the-then empire. Some hundred and fifty years later another great exhibition will descend on London in the form of the Olympic Games which like its football world cup cousin, is an excuse for global corporations to indulge themselves in an orgy of greed and self-publicity, and where audiences now measured in billions, are targeted by both sound and visual media each seeking their cut from the cake.

Of course there have been many advances which have benefited the world since Charles Dickens first took up his quill pen. Yet despite these gains, our political systems and their adherents seem as remote as ever from the people they are supposed to serve as they were before universal suffrage was introduced. Our electoral system is a case in point. Witness the bitter personal campaigns that took place during the AV referendum.

2020UK was set up to challenge these issues and to look afresh at a system of governance where co-operation replaces confrontation.

The fact that many of the social problems so graphically described in Charles Dickens’ novels are still with us today reminds us that in many ways, these are still  the best of times and still the worst of times.

Michael Cronogue

Oh the Irony!!!!

Having been absent from the blogosphere for the past seven days due to having to fulfill that most pressing of human endeavours, namely earning a living; I have spent the past few days checking the various news feeds, looking for those issues which reflect in an ironical sort of way the polarised system with which we live today, and which lies at the heart of why 2020UK came into being.

Politics has always been a tribal business.  From the times of the Ancient Greeks and Romans it has always been full of intrigue, one-upmanship and betrayal. Some two thousand years of so-called civilisation has failed to change the behaviour of our elected representatives, who while persistently telling us they are listening, then go and do the exact opposite immediately afterwards.  Such an instance occurred earlier today during the Education Select Committee hearing, when Michael Gove once again confirmed that when it comes to belligerence, he’s definitely in a class of his own.

On the BBC News website , it reported that during exchanges with select committee members who were being fed questions from the public using the twitter #AskGove hashtag, Mr Gove labelled opponents of his plan to turn Downhills Primary School in North London into an academy as “Trots” saying, “It’s a pity that the Labour party hasn’t spoken out against this Trot campaign.” Campaigners at the school, including governors, have argued that they should not be forced to adopt academy status. The twitter exchanges also included a response from the Save Downhills campaign who replied: “We are parents! Listen to us!”

In a further sign that Mr Gove is clearly not one to let the opinions of others colour his views, he was also asked via Twitter if he would want children to follow the example of how MPs behave in the House of Commons. Mr Gove defended the practice decrying what he called the “namby pamby tendency to anaesthetise public debate”, claiming it was all part of a raucous and rumbunctious House of Commons. This is a view clearly at odds with what most of the general public think, and which once again, brings our system of politics and governance into disrepute.

With the Welfare Reform Bill returning to the House of Commons for its final reading, and where the Government have said they will seek to reverse the recent Lords defeats, proving yet again that they only listen when it suits their agenda, attention is now turning to the Health & Social Care Bill – or Lansley’s Lament as it may yet become known. With the whole of the medical profession united in saying the bill is unworkable in its current form, Lansley went on the attack targeting in particular the British Medical Association, claiming that this was the same body which had originally opposed the creation of the NHS in 1948. Maybe those with longer memories than I can verify this, but from my limited reading, opinion among Doctors was fairly evenly split between the-then older and newer medical generations as to the practicality and viability of a national service. How ironic that some sixty-four years later, we once again have a Minister for Health criticising the medical establishment for standing in the way of progress!

In an ironical twist to the healthcare prevention debate, I saw a headline in the UK edition of the Huffington Post  which caused me not-a-little anxiety. Being part French – not sure which part but my mother should – I have always believed in the health-giving properties of vin rouge taken in “reasonable moderation” – mind you, my celtic side has also said the same thing about the water of life or Uisce Beatha to give it its gaelic translation. The headline which caused this unfortunate state of angst read, No Proof A Glass Of Wine A Day Is Good For The Heart. It’s too painful to provide a fuller synopsis, best click on the link yourselves, but the report does quote one of the medical experts who said referring to the conflicting findings on whether wine is healthy or not as, “It’s complicated” –  he’s not kidding!

Another recent report which caused some amusement during the past week, was the one which referred to the fact that mother nature and modern building techniques may have done for the Houses of Parliament what Guy Fawkes singularly failed to do, and send the whole edifice crashing into the Thames. Doubtless there will be some who would prefer this happen when the house is in session, but that wouldn’t be fair, would it?

If this was not ironic enough, the online Political Scrapbook today carried a report of the increasing possibility that the epetition submitted by conservative political blogger, Guido Fawkes, to restore capital punishment will be withdrawn due to lack of supporting signatures. At only 26,000 signatures, it is way short of the 100,000 needed to trigger a parliamentary debate, and is way below another epetition calling for the current ban to be retained.

As the PS report makes clear: all this on the day of the 406th anniversary of the original Mr Fawkes being hung, drawn and quartered for treason, for attempting to blow up the original Houses of Parliament.

Oh the irony!!!!

 

Michael Cronogue

Shifting Sands

By guest blogger Joanne Cannon

Acopia.

My spellchecker doesn’t even recognise this word and yet I see it written in so many patient histories. Acopia: the inability to cope. The shameful state of affairs where someone does not possess the correct physical or emotional armoury to deal with the world. God has short-changed them, life has trampled over them in its rush to get on with all the important things it has to do and society has left them to drift alone in an ocean of self-contempt.

I read acopia and I see an alcoholic.

I see him lectured to and tutted at. I hear him find the courage to admit to how much he drinks and then I listen to the silence around his bed as people evaluate a life they know nothing about. I watch as chlordiazepoxide is poured into his system and addiction is evicted from his body and I witness the struggle as he allows it to leave. When he is finished, I watch him walk from the ward in borrowed clothes, with a carrier bag filled with nothing, to be catapulted back into a society which neither cares nor even cares to understand.

I read acopia and I see a suicide attempt.

I see other patients listen through paper-thin curtains and hide their judgement behind Sunday morning newspapers. I watch someone whose mind is wrapped in so many layers of self-loathing, no one can hear its screams. I see someone who tries to walk through their day with the weighted pull of misery around their ankles and I watch as they try and fail to keep up with everyone else. I listen as they search for the words which will lead those with tranquil minds along a path of understanding and then I feel them admit defeat. I hear them recite from a script. An easy, deceitful script of regretful words and denial of recurrence and I watch as they put on a mask of untruth which is so tight, it won’t even allow a bead of misery to leak on to their face. Yet, as they walk away, I can smell the trapdoor. I feel its pull and I hear its comforting words and I know it lies waiting with patient self-assurance.

I read acopia and I see an old man.

I hear how he uses the edge of furniture to get from the kitchen to the sitting room. I look into his eyes and wonder who he used to be and I listen as he struggles to remember the answer for himself. I hear him tell people that he lost his wife and I watch as people regard this with such little significance, no one even bothers to write it in his notes. I sit in meetings where strangers calculate the worth of his life on sheets of A4 paper and I watch them sweep eighty years of existence into a neat manila folder. I see him stapled and paper-clipped and led away from one small life into another small life. And I see a new life which is so small, it doesn’t even allow room for the thin slice of himself he had managed to hold on to.

I read acopia and I see a cancer patient.

I see someone the same age as me. I see someone who knows the lyrics to the same songs, who marked their life with the same tape measure as I did, who assumed the same guarantee as I assumed. As I assume even now. I see failed chemotherapy. I read on, as the entries in their notes become shorter and shorter and I try to catch the hope which slips through their fingers, because somehow, I feel I have an obligation. As I stand by their bed, I think about the birthdays and the Christmases and the lyrics to the songs, and I see a mirror. The reflection in the mirror is almost unbearable, and yet I stare and stare because I must find the difference or I will never be able to look away.

I read acopia and I feel the shifting sands beneath my feet.

Joanne Cannon blogs at http://joannacannon.wordpress.com/

Tailpiece by Team 2020UK

We hope that you will agree that this is beautifully written and important. We feel that it underlines what we have being saying about the allocation of benefits. Ticking boxes doesn’t work. Every person is different: what a disability that one may find totally incapacitating another may find easy to manage. We are planning a major debate on disability benefits in the near future – please join in.

A culture of corruption

By guest blogger GPWayne

Corruption is concomitant in cultures driven by greed, the search for power and profit. It is difficult, and possibly suicidal, for a single actor to act ethically when the competition may not do so. No business can afford to underestimate the implications of competitive capitalism; where a competitor can gain legislative, supply chain or market advantage one must respond appropriately or watch as market share diminishes. The assumption that one’s customers will pay extra for ‘moral’ products is not consistent with broad experience, just a minority one – albeit admirable.

A study of history reveals that morality is usually trumped by self-interest and the search for power and wealth. The link between amoral behaviour and the profit motive seems unbreakable. A society which is fair and honourable and egalitarian, that rewards truth and honesty and disdains amorality has yet to be built. Consequently, history also records that well-meaning people have repeatedly tried to ‘fix’ this kind of system, and all seem to have failed.

Perhaps it is time we stopped trying to fix this system, and instead recognise that it cannot be fixed because the problems are a function of the system’s design and the imperatives that are its foundation. Only by rejecting this atavistic social paradigm can we replace it with something that values human experience over money, that values dignity of the individual over status, and does not place the work ethic at the heart of all human endeavour. As trite as the expression appears, none the less we should work to live, not live to work.

*   *   *

One argument frequently put to me places much faith in purchasing discrimination – both by businesses in their selection of suppliers and services, and by consumers choosing ‘ethical’ or ‘sustainable’ products in preference to – inevitably – cheaper ones.

I find this argument strangely naive. In the context of business to business, no company can chose to use more expensive (read ‘ethical’) suppliers of raw materials or services without disadvantaging that business and turning the enterprise toward some kind of philanthropic institution. Philanthropy and the adoption of social purpose and responsibility is at once a worthy aim and also a serious disadvantage: the putative loss of market share and potential reduction of ‘raw’ profit; these are hard to explain to shareholders who, in light of their pan-national demographic, will have less concern for the domestic betterment of other countries than for their dividends.

For the public, choice is clearly proscribed by banks, energy suppliers, supermarkets and the like. Can you buy many consumer electronic goods that are not made in China? Computer products not made by a Foxconn subsidiary?

In matters of choice, we are all held hostage to the implications of commercial trans-nationalism. The growth of global markets and the consolidation of the multi-nationals has made choice the prerogative only of those who can afford to pay extra for it. No matter how far you travel around the world, it is clear that most of us now dress the same. From Sidcup to Sidney we work in ubiquitously bland industrial estates. We eat the same burgers, enjoy the same entertainment on the same i-Pods and televisions. Uniformity is demanded of consumers everywhere, as the price for what choice we can afford. Economies of scale rule globalisation: to suggest we have any real choices in this globalised consumerist milieu smacks of apologia.

 *  *  *

That the ancient trading system can be fixed, patched up, modified and repaired, is what I call a ‘status quo’ argument since it does not ask the greater and more difficult question – whether the system is worth fixing yet again. Those that argue for social or commercial evolution depend on the premise that there is a way of exploiting labour and markets that is ethical and moral.

I do not believe that capitalism can be moral, for it depends far too much on two kinds of exploitation: of poor people by those less poor – a hierarchy of exploitation if you like – and the exploitation of desire and demand, where dissatisfaction and an artificial obsession with brands, status and novelty are manufactured by advertising in the same way obsolescence is built in to every product. One example alone demonstrates the moral vacuum at the heart of the consumer ethic: which manufacturer seeks product longevity when they know a longer lasting product, while plainly better value for the consumer, will also impinge on future sales?

For most of us, work is neither noble nor fulfilling. Most people do not work because they love to do so, but because they have to; those who can forge some kind of marriage between work and vocation are lucky indeed. Most of us work because we live in a system where, unless we maintain some kind of employment, we cannot survive. The work force is a resource whose compliance is manufactured. Many of us, no longer morally bound by echoes of the Protestant work ethic, are instead compelled to work so we can service our debts.

The idea that there is some kind of honourable way to exploit labour is naive, as it is to believe that sustainability and economic growth are mutually congruent aims. The entire chain of consumerism depends on acts that are amoral, manipulative and sometimes outright dishonourable. Nothing will make exploitation sustainable, no matter how we dress it up in fine sounding theories, laws, or high-minded rhetoric.

Where there is brass, there is muck; while we care more about brass than we do much else, we will always be wading in muck. Sustainable or ethical business practices, if they are to succeed, must be a subset of a greater morality, one that permeates our whole culture, and from the top down. When corruption is endemic at the level of government, for example when the Serious Fraud Office is prevented from investigating the bribes paid to Saudi princes by BAe, expecting the left hand of commerce to ignore the fact that the right hand is buried deep in the till is both unreasonable and self-defeating.

Good intentions will not save us: how many good people have discovered that, in a corrupt place, the only way to conduct business is on terms set by the proprietor? When the proprietors are governments, when corruption is an institution embedded in our culture, we are all compromised, our only options to participate to the extent we can bear, drop out altogether, or starve.

Or stop trying to fix a perpetually broken paradigm and invent a new one.

G.P.Wayne blogs at http://gpwayne.wordpress.com/

Rip-Off Britain

Ed Miliband has launched another crusade, this time against what he terms as ‘predatory’ companies helping to create a ‘rip-off Britain’. It surprises me that only now are politicians grasping how private companies exploit the public in various small ways that add up to a huge chunk out of a pay packet at the end of a month. Miliband is clearly trying to grasp an idea which resonates with the public but how effective can he promise to be in curbing these private firms?

Of course, some would argue that companies should be allowed to charge the best rates they possibly can for all their services. After all, if a company becomes rich then they can afford to employ more people and we could experience that ‘trickle-down’ effect that politicians are so keen on talking about. Whether it actually works like that is up for debate, and I suspect many would argue vehemently against it. However, that would be one argument in favour of letting companies do as they wish. What are the ones against?

Well, take car parking charges, for one. The Telegraph writer, Janet Daley, has already noted why she’s bemused about the focus Miliband has put on this particular issue: “He cites excessive parking charges. Well, amen to that, you might say. Except that he goes on to be quite specific and limited in his examples: the cost of  parking at railway stations has increased dramatically, he notes, Southeastern trains having raised their prices by 16 per cent. These charges (along with season tickets and rail fares generally) should be capped. Ed says nothing, oddly, about the humongous charges levied by local councils for ordinary street parking which do so much damage to high street businesses. Nor does he mention the peculiarly infuriating practice of (usually Labour) councils who charge for residents’ parking which means that home-owners cannot park in front of their own property without paying an annual fee. So he singles out the private company that over-charges for parking but not the branch of government that does the same thing on a much larger scale.” Miliband seems to have picked his battles with private companies (which he must believe will go down well with the public) and ignored the government posturing that costs so much more in the long run. Perhaps confronting the reasons behind local councils charging so much for parking would lead him into something of a thorny area – councils levy charges on parking to cover costs that would otherwise have been funded by money from elsewhere. Going into the depths of that particular argument would’ve bogged Miliband down.

Nevertheless, the problems he mentions do exist. Saving fees on pensions, airline levies, bank charges, premium rate consumer helplines, the muddy area around energy prices: they are all valid criticisms for Miliband to make. He plans to curb these costs. Admirable, yes, but something he could not do until at least 2015. So is he wasting his breath at this point?

2020UK would love your opinions. Are we living in ‘rip-off Britain’? Do private companies need pulling into line? What are your pet hates about hidden or excessive charges in your everyday life?

Lucy Brown

In a Democracy, Should We Have To Rely on Social Media To Get Noticed?

I pose the title of today’s blog having read the excellent Patrick Butler  in the Guardian online edition – the hard copy is available tomorrow – which focused on the astonishing success of what is now universally known as the Spartacus Report.

Over the past week or so my fellow bloggers and I, have been adding our own coverage to a report originally called Responsible Reform, which through its #spartacusreport hashtag on the micro-blogging site, Twitter, helped to inflict the Government’s triple defeat in the House of Lords last week at the report stage of the Welfare Reform Bill. Previous blogs have covered the circumstances into the creation of the report and its success in attracting the attention of parliament, as well as the mainstream media which had largely ignored it beforehand, and I do not intend to repeat them here.

However this afternoon, on day four of the report stage of the bill, the House of Lords will discuss the proposal to replace Disability Living Allowance (DLA) with a new system of Personal Independence Payments (PIPs) which are expected to realise savings of some 20% on current expenditure by 2015/16.  A number of peers including former paralympian, Tani Grey-Thompson, have added an amendment to clause 80 of the bill – now known on Twitter as #50E – as follows;

50E*

Page 58, line 26, at end insert—

“( ) The Secretary of State must lay before Parliament an independent review of the plans for implementation of the assessments under section 79 before the provisions are brought into effect, and such plans must in particular provide for—

(a) a trial period before any assessment process is implemented fully for new applicants and those transferring from DLA;

(b) disabled persons organisations to be involved in formulating the assessment process.”

In other words if passed, the amendment calls on the DWP to pause the legislation going through parliament until such time as a full review of the proposed system is carried out, and also calls for participation of those likely to be affected – the disabled – in any future assessment process.

The vote is expected to take place later this evening, but all eyes will be on how many Liberal Democrat peers will be whipped in to support the Government, or if Lord Freud tries to repeat the tactics of last week, in calling for another vote after most peers had gone home thinking there were no other substantive votes to be held.

Regardless of the outcome, the authors of the Spartacus Report and the associated campaigning by charities and others on behalf of disabled people can be rightly proud of what they have achieved, despite the odds. Sue Marsh in particular, has become an eloquent face and voice of the campaign both through her blog and her recent appearances on mainstream radio and television. While we naturally applaud what they have done – as a campaigner for Motor Neurone Disease I have more than a passing interest in the outcome – this would not have been possible but for the exposure on a social networking site and relying on the further endorsements of celebrities such as Stephen Fry.

I wrote last Friday that the media, in particular the BBC, seemed to be giving priority to the government’s agenda; although today there seemed to be an attempt to redress the balance, when Sue Marsh debated the issue with Minister for the Disabled, Maria Miller, on Radio 4’s World at One programme. Was this because of the largely negative reaction from fellow tweeters to the treatment of those opposing the government on the Vine Show and Newsnight last Thursday? Or was it the natural process of an issue which has now pricked the public consciousness to the extent, that even some tabloid newspapers are beginning to question their previous stance on the problems faced by disabled people?

Whatever the reason, the internet has certainly played its part in publicising how we treat vulnerable people when traditional methods of campaigning would appear to have failed. Such advances do have their place in raising awareness on how we as a country behave, that much is clear.

For those of us who believe in proper democratic accountability however; is it right that those tasked with enacting the laws by which we live by, should only be responsive to the media-savvy generation?

When the Government’s Agenda is the Only One Allowed

On Wednesday my colleague, Lucy Brown, wrote a very comprehensive piece on the Welfare Reform Bill and the government’s subsequent defeat in the House of Lords.  Later that same evening it transpired that Lord Freud, the welfare reform minister, had tabled another amendment after most peers had left parliament for the evening in the belief that there were no further substantive votes. This had led to accusations of the coalition abusing parliament with Labour Leader in the Lords, Lady Royall, pledging to get the later amendment reversed.

Peers had earlier rejected government plans to means-test employment and support allowance (ESA) payments for disabled people – plus cancer patients and stroke survivors – after only a year. Peers also rejected plans to time-limit ESA for cancer patients and to restrict access to ESA for disabled or ill young people. The minister’s amendment partially reversed the vote on young people.

Although the un-elected House of Lords cannot forever thwart the will of the elected House of Commons – the Parliamentary Act ensures the supremacy of the Commons – the fact that five Liberal Democrat peers were prepared to rebel against the coalition, should have been sufficient to force the government to bring alternative proposals during the third and final reading as laid down by parliamentary protocol.  Although Lord Freud’s amendment was considered “procedurally correct”, the tactics deployed must surely strike at the heart of democratic principles?

Peers may be unelected, but many cross-benchers in particular are appointed to the upper chamber usually because of their experience in fields other than politics. This experience has more than once in the past, forced governments of all persuasions, to amend badly drafted legislation. As Lucy points out in her blog, if/when a wholly elected second chamber comes into being will those members – many of whom will rely on party patronage – be free to reject future government policy as effectively as they did on Wednesday?

A further indication that the Government intend to press ahead regardless, is through the use of what is known as “financial privilege” thereby avoiding a state of parliamentary ping-pong in which the bill is shunted between both houses of parliament, as the lords are not allowed to block money bills. It does however,  have to be approved by the commons speaker John Bercow.

Earlier this week a report called Responsible Reform or the Spartacus Report, as it’s become known on social media and the internet, was published. Compiled by disability campaigners (many of them disabled people themselves), including Sue Marsh, Kayila Franklin and Declan Gaffney, it exposes the governments underhand tactics in brushing aside the concerns of disabled rights campaigners to the proposed changes in the Welfare Reform Bill. Mainstream media were slow to pick up the significance of the report until it’s exposure on the internet, twitter and Facebook.

Yesterday it was covered in some detail on the BBC, first on Jeremy Vine’s Radio 2 show, and later on BBC 2’s Newsnight programme where one of the report’s authors Sue Marsh, whose popular blog, Diary of a Benefit Scrounger, describes her struggle as a disabled person, went head to head with Employment Minister, Chris Grayling, who continued to trot out the same well-worn arguments he used on the Vine show, and earlier on Breakfast TV.

I believe it is fair to say for those who watched the progamme last night, that Grayling was given a fairly easy time by presenter Emily Maitlis, whereas Sue was often forced onto the defensive by Maitlis’s aggressive questioning. She did however manage a fine riposte to a question regarding means testing, which had been pitched to try to trap her into saying she opposed it, when all along it is disabled people themselves, have been in the forefront of calling for a fair and workable system of determining entitlement and fitness for work.

In a system which is both democratic and open, one expects the legislature to take into account the opinions of those who will be affected by the decisions and policies they seek to implement. On the issue of welfare reform, the Government is clearly intent on reducing the welfare bill regardless of the likely collateral damage.

By ignoring the views of the upper chamber and the disabled, and engaging in the kind of underhand tactics we have seen to press their case; even the once-fearless BBC, seems to have been drawn into ensuring only the Government’s deficit reducing agenda is allowed to hold sway.

Is this what David Cameron meant by a new kind of politics?

Michael Cronogue