Last night’s election results were bad for the Lib Dems in Bury. We lost another 3 Councillors. I am Chair of the local party, and here is a message I am sending to our members and supporters later today with my thoughts on the results:

Dear friends,

Election night in Bury was a bad night for the Liberal Democrats. We lost three seats in Prestwich as Labour increased their majority at the Town Hall.

Our unsuccessful Councillors – Vic D’Albert, Mary D’Albert and Ann Garner – have between them dedicated over 30 years to serving the local community and our party. I would like to personally thank them for their hard work over the years, and commiserate them on these results. My thanks also to our candidates in other wards, and for the many people who dedicated hours of their free time to the campaign over the last months. Thousands of people took the chance to vote Lib Dem in Bury as a result of your efforts. Thank you.

Vic  D’Albert represented Holyrood ward for over 20 years. He was the first Lib Dem ever elected to Bury Council, and an inspiration to dozens of activists who worked with him over the years, including me. Many of us can say that we wouldn’t have become involved in local politics if it weren’t for Vic. He led every important political campaign in our community for over two decades, and his loss to the Council is one of the saddest aspects of an election where national issues trumped local ones.

Ann was a tireless local activist who fought for Sedgley, Prestwich and Bury for a decade and whose passion for local people and their concerns was unrivalled by any Councillor from any party I have worked with. Her service to the party locally, regionally and nationally is enormously valued, and will continue despite this defeat. Many people in Prestwich will be very sad that there is no longer a Garner on Bury Council.

Mary was my own ward colleague for four years, a hard-working and dedicated champion for the people of St Mary’s, and instrumental in many local improvements that I know the community are thankful for. Her service on the Council was only matched by her many years of behind-the-scenes dedication to the local party. I am very sad that she has lost the opportunity to continue on the Council.

These are tough times for our party, as they are for the country. I take heart from the fact that even though we’ve lost some support and some seats, we’re doing what we’re doing, locally and nationally, for the right reasons. When the country gets through the tough times, so will we. Some parties might be celebrating this morning, but theirs is a hollow victory. We are taking the tough choices and dealing with the tough consequences. There is honour in that, and I am proud to be a part of an honourable party.

The Lib Dems in Bury are here to stay. Even though we lost last night, our share of the vote in our target wards went up compared to last year, and it’s clear that people are slowly beginning to understand our role in making the country better again.

We have fewer Councillors now than before, but we still have activists and supporters young and old, across Bury, to spread the message of the Lib Dems and to build up our support again. It will come back.

Richard Baum

Below is an email I was copied into out of the blue from someone. These come in to me from time to time, normally as pleas for help, as I wrote some blogs a couple of years ago about unsubstantiated information being included on CRB forms, and the damage that this could do. Basically, anyone accused of anything, regardless of who made the allegations, regardless of what level of judicial proceedings they resulted in, regardless of guilt and sometimes even despite a “not-guilty” verdict at trial, can have those allegations repeated forever on a CRB form.

So I could accuse you today of child abuse and that allegation could be revealed to every potential employer for the rest of your life, despite there was nothing to it. So could anybody else. The power to remove the disclosure rests entirely with the Police to remove it, and often they will not.

The email below is just one example of how this can effect someone’s life.

Apologies for the various “[name withheld]s” throughout, but hopefully it doesn’t detract from the issue. I think this should be of importance to anyone interested in criminal justice and civil liberties, as well as anyone working in social care, teaching etc.

From: [name withheld]

To: public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk 

Sent: 27 April 2012 13:59:04 

Dear Sir/Madam.

I am writing in the hopes that you can advise me and hopefully help me resolve a problem that has been caused by a statement on my CRB Disclosure.

I was dismissed from my post at a [name withheld] Council children’s home, within my extended probationary period, because it was claimed that I failed to meet the required standards. Following this I successfully attained a post with [name withheld] Care Group at another children’s home, under the condition that my CRB was satisfactory.

Upon receiving a copy of the CRB, [employer's name withheld] dismissed me from this post. I wrote to [employer's name withheld] to ask for their reasons for dismissal and was informed that my dismissal was as a direct result of the CRB they had received.

On my CRB dated 21/05/11, Under the heading ‘Other relevant information disclosed at the Chief Police Officers(s) discretion’, it states: “[Name withheld] was employed by [name withheld] City Council at [name withheld] Children’s home between 27.04.2009 until 11.03.2010 when he was dismissed following concerns about his conduct, namely inappropriate behaviour and comments to young people.’

I wrote to the CRB Bureau to challenge this statement as it is false and there is no evidence at all to support such claims. The CRB Bureau upheld my complaint and issued me with a new CRB certificate. I was hoping that the statement from Derbyshire Police would have been removed but instead the comment was simply expanded upon. In my CRB dated 19/08/11 under the heading ‘Other relevant information disclosed at the Chief Police Officers(s) discretion’, it states, ‘[Name withheld] was employed by [name withheld] City Council at [name withheld] Children’s home between 27.04.2009 until 11.03.2010. He was dismissed within his probationary period on 04/03/10 due to concerns about inappropriate dress on duty, inappropriate interaction with young people including accepting a gift, and discussing personal and confidential information with young people. There were also reported to be further concerns regarding his compliance with procedures and time keeping’.

Again, these statements are false and there is no evidence whatsoever to support these claims. I have complained via the telephone and in writing to both the CRB bureau and Derbyshire police but to no avail. I am currently seeking employment and yet these negative statements on my CRB are currently preventing me from applying for jobs that I am fully capable of doing.

I am also on an access course at University with a view to doing a degree in Psychology. This degree will essentially be useless whilst these comments remain on my CRB as I would be unable to gain employment within the field of psychology- i.e. working with vulnerable adults or young people. These comments have no basis in fact. A ‘concern’ is merely someone’s opinion. Not only was I very badly treated by the management at [name withheld], these comments on my CRB have cost me a position at another home and will also jeopardise my employment and career options in the long term. I have suffered a great deal personally, emotionally and financially as a result of this. I have physical evidence to refute some of the claims made against me and yet [name withheld] City Council have failed to respond to my letters and phone calls. I feel strongly, that is there is no evidence to support any of the claims made against me, that Derbyshire police should contact the CRB bureau to have these comments removed. Thus far, I have been unsuccessful in doing this. I would greatly appreciate any help or advice on how to proceed with this matter.

Yours faithfully…

I have had dozens of letters, emails and calls over the last few years from people in similar situations. It’s not fair and it’s not right. I continue to hope that someone will listen to me and these unfortunate victims of unjust CRB regulations, and reform a system which is clearly resulting in perverse, life-damaging outcomes for innocent people. Of course the vulnerable need protection, but a system of checks needs to be balanced.

Rick

The debate over the Health and Social Care Bill was the most divisive since tuition fees, and the most difficult for me as a Lib Dem since the coalition was formed. Labour’s bluster over some aspects of it was plain ridiculous. They honed their already ample skills in scare stories and plain lies, but here we are with the new law in place and the NHS survives. In fact, the only suggestion of a move away from an NHS being free at the point of use came from a Labour Council (Manchester, which suggested charging drunks for A&E treatment).

A lot of people are worried about “privatising” the NHS. But I wonder if they know what this actually means. There’s a difference between privatisation of the NHS and the imposition of charges for care, which I fear is lost on a lot of people. I suspect that a lot of people don’t know that in many cases their GP is operating as part of a private consortium, or that various aspects of their care is provided by a different part of the NHS to various other parts. The NHS is a fantastically complicated service made up of hundreds of autonomous Trusts. It’s not simple, and debates on NHS reform can’t be boiled down to simple slogans.

But there are some simple principles. One is a health service free at the point of use, which is a vital ideal which should remain. It’s the obvious cornerstone of the NHS. Who provides that care is of secondary importance to me, and so the idea of competition with the private sector (and possible privatisation) isn’t bad on paper either so long as the core “free at the point of use” concept remains. So long as quality standards are ensured, I don’t mind the private sector competing with publicly-funded NHS Trusts to provide care. Competition encourages innovation and efficiency, and drives up standards. If the private sector can deliver better, cheaper care, then fair play to them if they can make a profit at the same time. That should drive the NHS to become even better, and for me that’s the absolute ideal because although I don’t begrudge the private sector I prefer the public.

Private providers have been involved in the NHS for years. It’s nothing new, and it grew steadily under Labour. For Labour to equate privatisation with the death of the ideals of the NHS is disingenuous. The potential for further privatisation is bigger with the new law, and I don’t think this is a bad thing if done fairly.

However, the way that NHS decision making works means that this privatisation isn’t being done fairly, and this puts the public sector NHS providers at a particular disadvantage.

There are hundreds of different types of NHS services delivered in every local area in the country, from toenail cutting to brain surgery, and everything in between. NHS Trusts are paid to deliver them all by NHS Primary Care Trusts, who, in simple terms, “commission” (ie buy) services using money given to them by the government.

The NHS needs to find savings, and so obviously the PCTs are looking to get the best deal for their money. So they are putting various services out to tender, asking a range of providers to say what innovative ways of delivering that service they have, and how much it would cost. They judge what the range of potential providers say, and then appoint their favourite to receive the money to provide that service.

This is fine in theory, except that not all would-be providers start at the same place. NHS organisations have, on average, higher staff costs overheads than non-NHS organisations. They invest far more in training clinical staff than their competitors, and have old buildings to maintain like Victorian hospitals. They tend to have much stricter governance standards and, because they’re public bodies, more robust and costlier reporting and financial regimes to abide by. All of these costs make them automatically less competitive. I work in this field in the NHS. I see this every day.

Crucially, NHS organisations also have to provide all the services that local people need, regardless of whether or not there’s a tender fot them. So whereas a private sector health organisation can look at a service which is out to tender and decide not to bid because it’s not financially viable, the NHS Trust has no such luxury. It must provide the services, or patients die. Often this means cross-subsidising services, making NHS organisations even less competitive.

We’ve seen the unfairness in public v private competition in other sectors. It’s impossible for the Royal Mail to compete with private parcel delivery companies when it is bound by law to deliver mail to every address in the UK six days a week. BT can’t compete with private phone providers because the private providers don’t have to keep open loss-making phone boxes.

Now we’re seeing it in the NHS. The private sector can cherry-pick the best services, reducing the possibility for NHS cross-subsidies, and also reducing the chances of the NHS providers winning tenders. Some of these tenders are for services currently delivered by the NHS. If the tenders are won by a private sector organisation, it means staff leaving the NHS for that organisation. All those nurses, doctors, therapists, trained by the NHS, now working for a private organisation. Not fair.

“So what?” you might say? And, at first glance, whilst it’s a bit unfair to the NHS if it loses out to competition, it doesn’t seem that bad that cheaper, more innovative alternative providers can come in to deliver services. There’d be more choice for patients, and more innovation, right?

Actually, the idea of multiple providers in one area is a looming disaster for patients and a costly mess for commissioners.

Whereas now, regardless of what is wrong with a patient, the chances are that a single organisation or at least a collection of NHS organisations will deliver his or her care, this chance will become much less in future. Imagine an area where the local general hospital is run by an NHS Trust, but diabetes services are run by a private consortium of GPs, podiatry services by a private sector healthcare provider, and drug and alcohol services by a voluntary group. This is a perfectly feasible scenario which is being actively encouraged by the government.

A patient with diabetes and associated foot problems will require care from three separate organisations if he needs to go to hospital. If he has an associated alcohol problem (not uncommon) then that’s a fourth organisation. The governance, risk and cost issues around this are enormous, not to mention confusing for patients who, I wager, would rather have a single good provider than four. Staff won’t know each other, processes will differ, patients will fall through the gaps.

Having many hyper-local providers will lead to differing standards not only between areas but between services in different areas. I’m all for localism, so long as it’s done sensibly. I’m not sure that giving local PCTs (and their successor organisations) the power to put small services out to tender locally is sensible. The government’s “Any Qualified Provider” (AQP) plan, which would extend choice and competition even further, would be an even greater threat to local consistency and to the ability of any organisation to plan to meet local demand.

Competition is fine in theory, and actually commissioners could save longer-term problems by applying different judgement criteria to their tenders, such as the impact of fragmentation on an entire health economy, which would help to redress the imbalance. But in my experience this isn’t happening. Another fairer solution exists whereby entire local health budgets could be put out to tender, from primary care through to specialist hospital care. That would eliminate confusion, minimise duplication and cost, and allow for a choice in provider. But I suspect that the choice in that instance would be restricted to the single type of organisation which is expert at providing that full range of care already –the NHS Trust. Which begs the question as to why we’re bothering with choice at all.

The vagaries of competition policy don’t grab headlines like “Tories Kill NHS” does, but they are a worry whereas that cheap headline isn’t. Labour have done a disservice by not shining a light on the government’s policy in this area, but the Lib Dems have done a disservice in allowing the Tories to push through legislation which puts existing NHS providers at such a clear disadvantage.

We need to get competition in healthcare right if it’s to achieve the ideal of innovation and choice without the cost and confusion of hyper-localism.

Rick

 House of Lords reform is about as exciting to the man on the street as a four hour lecture on gutter-cleaning, but it doesn’t half get political people worked up. And I am slightly shame-faced to admit that I am one such person. And the debate about reform has got me hot under my geeky collar because I don’t think either of the options being talked about are right. I know there’s something in the air about a double-dip recession, and I know that someone’s talking somewhere about Jeremy Hunt basically bending over to Rupert Murdoch, but we all really want to talk about the Lords, right?

Right.

To recap 800 years of history in two sentences – the House of Lords used to be entirely hereditary. Now, the House of Lords is made up of about 100 hereditary Lords, a handful of judges, a few bishops, and lots of “life peers” appointed by political parties for the rest of their lives (e.g. John Prescott, David Owen, Norman Lamont from the world of politics, Alan Sugar, Seb Coe, Robert Winston and various other great and good people).

The main point of the Lords is, in basic terms, to analyse government legislation with a fine-toothed comb, plug any gaps, stop any unintended consequences, and make sure it works the way it’s supposed to.

Arguments have gone on for years about whether the composition of current Lords is OK, or whether it needs changing. Now that the Lib Dems are in government ,for some reason we are making a big deal over reform, despite the fact that there are one or two bigger fish to fry (like the economy disappearing off into the distance with all of our money) and despite the fact that trying to win votes by talking about House of Lords reform is like trying to get a corpse to dance the tango.

I think that it needs changing. It’s ridiculous that in 2012 the descendant of some eighteenth century aristocrat or other has a say on legislation just because his great great great great grandfather gave George III some money to fight France. The appointed bit is wrong too. Giving people peerages for big political donations is borderline corrupt, and whilst I respect our former politicians I don’t think the second chamber of the legislature is where the ancient ones should go to keep warm in their old age. We have bingo halls for that.

So yes, let’s change how it’s made up.

The change that’s now being proposed though is to have an elected Lords, with 15 year terms of office. People in favour of this, like the Lib Dems, say that it’ll be more democratic.  I can’t argue with this self-evident fact, but on the overall idea of electing the Lords, once again I find myself at odds with my party.

Arguments against electing a second chamber are well rehearsed. An elected Lords with a majority for the same party as the government won’t be much of a check. A conflicting majority might lead to gridlock. I don’t necessarily buy either of these arguments, and there are ways round them anyway. There are elected second chambers in various places that work well.

I am against an elected Lords because it’s unnecessary and because a more evolutionary approach would work better.

The composition of the Lords might be wrong, but it does its job well. It does scrutinise and change Bills, and thus it makes our laws better. It does all of this without any elections. Why risk that by chucking even more partisan politics into the mix?

More worrying for me though, is that elections for the Lords will create another confusing tier of expensive, elected politicians. We just don’t need them.

The government seems obsessed with having elections for everything. We will have elected police commissioners shortly, and lots of new elected Mayors. Now they’re floating elected Lords. And all at a time when faith in the existing cohort of elected people (MPs and Councillors) is lower than ever and bouncing along the bottom of a very dark cave. Adding lots more elected politicians to the mix won’t make things better. I am against elected Mayors and elected police commissioners. I think that elected Councillors should be responsible for all local things, that elected MPs should be responsible for all national things, and elected MEPs for all European things. Anything else just muddies the waters. It’s not necessary.

We should have an appointed Lords. But the way the appointments work should change. Giving political parties the right to choose the scrutineers of legislation is clearly not the best way of ensuring proper, independent scrutiny or of guaranteeing that the best people for the job end up in the Lords.

There should be an independent appointments committee established to appoint expert “Lords” in various fields who can serve their country by applying their expertise to making laws in that area better. They can do it as a job, for a set period of time. Some might be former politicians, but the appointments committee should be politically impartial.

Lord Steel suggested a not dissimilar idea recently, but had to drop it after pressure from both sides. Those in favour of the status quo don’t want any change at all, and those on the Lib Dem side want revolution rather than evolution, and won’t rest until there’s an elected second chamber. That’s a shame, since that might not happen, and we might end up with no change at all.

Rick

Hello!

After several months without blogging, I have decided to write a couple of posts, for a couple of reasons. I suspect that this last period of quiet has meant that whatever readership I had has trickled away to nothing, but I hope there’s someone out there, and I can do nothing but apologise for my recent silence. My reasons for returning are as follows…

First, I worry that my mental powers are dwindling. Yesterday at work I struggled to remember the names of a couple of colleagues I actually know quite well, and I fear that without exercising my brain by allowing it to splurge out onto a page occasionally, it will eventually turn to mush. The less one does, the less one is capable of doing, and since in these post-Council days I do much less, I don’t want to lose the capability of doing stuff again should I choose!

Second, there have been one or two recent political issues which have cropped up recently for which Twitter (my blog replacement medicine of choice – you can follow me @richardbaum should you be so inclined) is not the forum for a discussion. So I am doing it on here instead. I mightn’t  have anyone to read it, but it gets it off my chest at any rate.

So here we are again with the blogging. I don’t know if it’ll last. And if it does, it won’t be my talking about being a Prestwich Councillor, since I’m not one and am not standing to be one.

There are local elections on the way of course, and I’ll be voting for the lib Dem candidate here Cllr Mary D’Albert. If you want to know why, drop me a line.

In the meantime, if there’s anybody there, I hope you’re well, and please comment if you have anything to say on what I write.

Rick

It’s been several months since I last posted, and in that time a number of people have asked why I stopped. So I thought I’d write one more post for now, just explaining why that was.

It’s quite simple really – Since I’m no longer an elected Councillor, I know far less about what is happening locally. That makes it very hard to write a blog which is regular and interesting (although some would argue that it wasn’t interesting before!).

And besides, there are others who can let you know about those kinds of things, including the person elected to replace me as your Councillor.

I haven’t fallen out with the Lib Dems. I remain an active part of the local party, and now Chair the Bury Liberal Democrat Executive. But I have stopped campaigning to be a local Councillor in Prestwich, which is what the blog was largely about. I think it’s a good rule of thumb not to stay on the stage once the curtain has fallen, and so having been beaten in May I have left it. I won’t be campaigning to be a local Councillor in St Mary’s ward any time soon. There remain two very good Lib Dem Councillors in the ward, and there won’t be a vacancy until 2015 which is a long way off.

There might be a time when the blog gets revived. I hope so, but it’s difficult to see a situation that would facilitate that at the moment. Never say never though. In the meantime you can follow me on Twitter @richardbaum if you like. As always, it would be nice to hear from anyone who would like to say hello.

All the best,

Rick

The new leadership of Bury Council continue to do positive things and reverse the trends of their Tory predecessors in some of the exact ways I’d have done if I’d have been running the place. The latest innovation coming from the Town Hall is the Leader’s Blog, written by Cllr Mike Connolly and available to see via www.bury.gov.uk.

It could do with a publicly viewable comments function, but other than that I think it’s marvellous, and definitely a step in the right direction. Given that the former Council Leader was pathologically averse to conversing with the public, it’s a very refreshing change to have a Leader who doesn’t see the public as an irritant. Most of the Lib Dem Councillors in Bury (including the Council Group Leader and both parliamentary candidates) have had blogs for years, so it’s good to see the Council catching up. Credit to the Labour administration for doing it so quickly.

 I hope the blog is kept up and becomes a success. Anyone interested in Bury affairs should take up the chance of a direct line to the Council Leader.

Rick

Local MP and Shadow Culture Secretary Ivan Lewis has written an article in The Observer today setting out his latest thinking on Labour’s response to government policy. Unfortunately, despite clearly opposing much of what the government is doing, again there is no sign about what Ivan or Labour will actually do differently. It’s an article which, if party names were removed, could’ve been written by any politician from any party at just about any point in recent years.

In his article he promises that Labour will “vigorously oppose the Conservative-led government’s policies which are dividing Britain, entrenching inequality and will cause long-term damage to our country.” Sadly though, he needs to do three things to make this sentence anything more than a soundbite:

1) Provide evidence to back up claims of more division, less equality and long term damage.

2) Acknowledge that under the last Labour government inequality rose, as did the national debt and the deficit, and that economic necessity is the reason for a lot of government policy. 

3) Give any semblance of a clue about what Labour might actually do to reverse the problems he thinks the government are causing.

Sadly the article doesn’t do any of these things. He mentions some of the good things Labour did, and I don’t disagree with him on that. He mentions some of the reasons why they lost the last election, and I don’t disagree with him on that either. But he is supposed to be a political leader, not a history teacher.

To be fair to Ivan Lewis, he himself acknowledges a lack of detailed policy response at the moment. It’s not the right time, in his book, to have such a response. But that approach doesn’t chime with Labour calls for Lib Dems to desert the coalition (desert it for what?), nor is it fair on those who came back to voting Labour at the last local elections when it’s now clear that they were actually voting for a party which admits that it has no actual policies.

All we’re getting at the moment is lots of words around a central message that Labour don’t really like Tories (or Lib Dems). And we knew that before.

All of this soundbite stuff is a dereliction of what an opposition should be doing. Nowhere in the article are key policy battlegrounds mentioned. On the NHS, free schools, welfare and benefits, foreign interventions etc etc Ivan and Labour are silent. If they are as concerned as they claim about the government’s policies, now is the time to come up with at least an idea of some alternatives.

The degree of vagueness which is at the heart of Lewis’ article is very worrying for those who don’t like what the government is doing. Where is their alternative? What is it that the Opposition are doing to meet the obligations of their role? 

Ivan talks of the “clear sense of direction” which Ed Miliband has set the part on as part of its policy review. That direction “reaches out far beyond Labour’s traditional boundaries” apparently, and Ivan Lewis uses the “squeezed middle” as the one bit of evidence to prove it. But his definition of the squeezed middle is both muddled and contradictory. He describes it as referring to both middle-income and low-income earners, i.e. everyone except the richest. But he doesn’t give an income level, nor does he explain how people earning below a living wage can be in “the squeezed middle” when they’re clearly at the squeezed bottom. He also doesn’t explain how appealing to people on low and middle incomes reaches out far beyond Labour’s traditional boundaries. After all, Labour are the party of low and middle income earners, apparently. 

Even if we accept that Labour are working for a squeezed middle and that the government aren’t, once again it begs the question of how they’re actually doing it. And Ivan gives no answers.

The second half of the article is so vague that at times I struggled to see that it was actually there at all. If general platitude giving was an Olympic sport, British politicians would win all three medals and I would put money on Ivan Lewis bringing home the gold.  He talks about a “new economy” where businesses can “start up and scale up” and where everyone is treated with “fairness and transparency.” Marvellous Ivan, I agree entirely. But your job is to say how as well as what.

Unfortunately it gets worse. He could almost be writing a folk song when he says that “at the heart of Labour’s plan for the future is an ambition for the next generation to have better life chances than the last. It is a simple hope.”

I want to put flowers in my hair and rattle a tambourine as we march together towards this wonderland.But I don’t for a second think that the Tories or Lib Dems want anything different for the country. They’re just having to come up with the costed detail which Labour don’t, and the financial mess we’re in means that doing that is really very hard.

Ivan isn’t telling us how he’d actually achieve all those things, and that’s the hard part. He may as well have written “I want to make the world all full of sunshine, vote Labour.”

Lewis is right when he says that Labour need to be a party which is ”clearer about the responsibilities of government and citizens in a fair society, guarantees personalised help to people at times of transition in their lives, values older people and clarifies the relationship between contribution and benefit.” But that’s true of all parties. Again, the devil is in the detail.

Ivan set a challenge for Labour, explaining that their road to electoral recovery will mean that they “will challenge those who are rewriting history about our record while offering a credible and inspirational vision for the future.” At the moment they are doing plenty of the former and none of the latter. Until they start setting out that vision in specifics rather than slogans, then articles like these serve only to remind people that Labour exist at all. They don’t do any service to the country or to political debate.

Rick

The verdict in the latest round of Sharon Shoesmith’s legal battle against her sacking has shown the dangerous path we sometimes find ourselves on when politicians pander to the mob’s mentality.

The death of Baby P was a tragedy for so many reasons, of which maladministration at the Council concerned was certainly one. If, after a proper investigation, it was found that there were serious failings in practice and in leadership, then through the due process of employment law those responsible for that should have been disciplined. The courts have found that it was not right though for Ed Balls to circumvent this process entirely and announce on live TV that Sharon Shoesmith would be sacked. I am entirely in agreement.

In cases like that it is the responsibility of politicians not to follow the mob but to lead people towards rational conclusions. The Sun and The Mirror were calling for a head on a spike, and Ed Balls gave them one because he thought it would get him some votes. That’s completely wrong and the courts have now said so.

By behaving as he did, Balls has taken the focus off a proper debate about what went wrong and how it can be put right. Once again a leading politician has taken the easy route out of a problem without engaging in a discussion about the hard job of fixing it. Shoesmith was partly to blame for what happened, but to single her out and remove her from post without so much as a chance to hear the charges is plainly ridiculous and not how a democratic country abiding by the rule of law should be led.

Balls, like other politicians from all parties, bears some of the responsibility for what happened too. Baby P’s disfunctional family, reliant on an underfunded, complicated mess of bureaucratic services for support, meant that he would find true protection incredibly difficult. It was up to Shoesmith to manage some of that jumble of services, but certainly not all of them. And it certainly wasn’t up to her to sort out the social conditions which meant that families like Baby P’s could come to be in the first place. That job lay with Ed Balls, the latest in a long line of politicians who’ve tried and failed to accomplish it.

The actions of Ed Balls were completely wrong. A responsible, even-handed and steady response to the situation would have been to examine the evidence, present a case against Shoesmith if there was one, and allow her to defend herself. That though would have been awkward for politicians who may themselves have been left with difficult questions. It would also have been time-consuming and wouldn’t have satisfied the tabloid newspapers baying for blood. It would though have been right. In fact it would have been just about the only dignified part of the whole sorry tale. It may well have left Shoesmith without a job, but wouldn’t have denied her the pension she’d worked for over decades or left the taxpayer with the potential for a compensation bill.  And most importantly it may have brought us close to the answers to some of the still-outstanding questions on child protection, even if those answers are the types of uncomfortable truths that the tabloids or the politicians don’t like exploring.

Politicians can’t just do what they like to get cheap headlines and votes. It chips away people’s faith in just about everyone involved, cheapens the rule of law, and doesn’t solve any problems in the long run.

Rick

So, it’s official, Labour run Bury again. Bob Bibby isn’t Council Leader any more (nor is he Bury Conservative Leader, replaced in that role by Cllr Roger Brown – the Tories replacing with a barrister someone who was pleasant enough in private but who often struggled to string a sentence together in public, and let his frustrations show in the process).

In Bibby’s place leading Bury is Cllr Mike Connolly, whose previous misfortunes (like this one, which wasn’t particularly funny, and this one which was) have been forgotten since the tidal wave of “We don’t know what we like, but we know we don’t like cuts much” hysteria brought him and his policy-free party into unexpected power.

Many of their first few pronouncements have been predictable, but the devil is in the detail of such things as a “review” of youth service cuts. If they can find a sensible way of saving front line services whilst at the same time making the overall budget cuts that they need to make to pay off our share of the national debt and budget deficit, then I’ll praise them for it. But there are some very tough decisions ahead.

Labour have a good team in place. If I had to pick half a dozen Labour Councillors from the group I worked with until a fortnight ago to form a Cabinet, I’d have picked pretty much the ones who’ve been picked. They have immediately come good on their pre-election promise to make the Town Hall a more open place, in exactly the way the Lib Dems would have done were we to have been elected to lead. Straight away they have set about reforming the rules around asking questions at Council meetings. The Conservative system made it impossible to ask a question without almost a week’s worth of notice, which was ridiculous. Now a question can be asked on the night, with no notice, and that’s a good step forward. The “Strong Leader” model of governance has also been changed so that public Cabinet meetings will now be held, and membership extended to opposition groups leaders. Again, well done Labour, and silly Tories for not making the changes when they had the chance.

Another thing I am glad Labour have tackled immediately is the special responsibility allowances paid to some Councillors. I was in receipt of one of these myself last year, of almost £6,000 to chair a Scrutiny committee. This wasn’t an easy job, and it was time consuming, but had I wanted to I could simply have turned up to one of the half dozen meetings I had to Chair, and then gone home and pocketed my cash, which worked out at £1,000 per meeting. I did a lot more than that, but not £6,000 worth. A cut of 10% is being hinted at, but I think 50% would probably be nearer the mark. Of course, a chunk of all Councillor’s allowances are paid by Councillors to parties to fund campaigning etc, which may be why any party is reluctant to scale them back massively, but if we were starting from a blank piece of paper I’d set the special responsibility rate for committee chairs at a lot less than £6,000 (as well as doing various other things to allowances, like increasing the ones for Cabinet members, which is probably why I’d never be elected Leader in the first place!).

 I hope the trend towards increasing openness continues, and is matched by a change in tone from the Bibby years. There was a lot of arrogant, ill-judged stubbornness about the Tory former-leader’s approach – refusals to accept criticism, and a definite lack of contrition or empathy when things were going wrong. If people are to keep faith in the Council during hard times then we need less of that, and it seems like Labour recognise that. Mike Connolly’s first baby-steps as Leader are in the right direction.

Rick