Richard Baum

I have written on here many times about what I see as the unfairness in the current system of Criminal Records Bureau checks, which I and lots of others feel unfairly discriminate on former offenders and sometimes even on those who have never committed an offence at all but who have had allegations made against them.

A new campaign has been launched by Nacro, the crime reduction charity, called Change the Record: Giving reformed offenders the chance to work.   

It focuses on two areas - Reform of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, 1974 and the practice of criminal records checks.

The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (ROA) was a good piece of legislation which has helped thousands of people back to work by giving a date by which sentences have been spent, and therefore don’t have to be declared to employers. The trouble is that sentence inflation means that people are getting longer sentences nowadays so offences stay on record for longer. And as many employers are reluctant to take on people who have a record, people are finding it harder to find work when their sentences end. Criminal Records Bureau checks allow employers to do find out the criminal records of applicants whether the offences are spent or not.

While it’s clearly important to carry out checks for people working with children and vulnerable adults, there’s a growing concern that these checks are being carried out indiscriminately with the result that anyone with a record will find it difficult to find work once their record is disclosed. This is particularly worrying given that many CRB disclosures contain information not only on convictions, but also on unproven or untried allegations, acquittals, or even rumours. The disclosures are virtually beyond challenge in many cases. 

Anyone with an interest in this area may wish to become a supporter of the campaign. For more information about the campaign, feel free to visit www.changetherecord.org

Rick

Liberal Democrat Health Minister Paul Burstow says the new NHS 111 service will benefit patients. The Coalition Government announced the intention to establish NHS 111 in the Health White Paper in July. The new service is being piloted in four areas before being rolled out in 2013.

Commenting Liberal Democrat Health Minister, Paul Burstow said:

“NHS 111 will build on NHS Direct but will go further providing a much more integrated service for the public.

“Unlike NHS Direct NHS 111 will be free to call.  Where NHS Direct can only signpost other services NHS 111 will be able to book a GP appointment and go straight through to local out of hours services.  If you do need an ambulance the 111 service will cut out the need to go through the 999 service assessment.

“NHS 111 will ensure people are put in touch with the right health professional first time.  By doing that the new service will reduce the pressure on 999 services and A&E departments.

“This is a simple, cost effective idea: from 2013 people can ring 111 for non life threatening health concerns and 999 when it is a matter of life or death.”

I returned home last night to discover that my new wife had nearly had her head chopped off by the door to our loft, which had mysteriously swung open as she walked underneath.

Spousal decapitation would have been a sad end to the day, although on the plus side, my mortgage would have been paid off. She escaped with merely a grazed neck, and my disappointment in having to do some emergency DIY was only compounded when I opened my post to discover the new issue of “Intelligent Life,” the lifestyle magazine I get with my subscription to the Economist.

It tells stories of lives so wealthy and sophisticated that they are light-years out of my reach. In my tattered suit returning grubby from a day at work and then the Town Hall, all these Rolex-sporting outdoorsy-types on their sail boats appearing in stories about baking your own bread and holidaying in Martha’s Vineyard seem a world away.

I don’t know whether I am truly envious, or whether I’d actually get bored of being a wealthy member of the east coast elite in about a fortnight, and long to return to Prestwich. What I do know is that that type of free and easy lifestyle is infinitely preferable to attending Council scrutiny meetings, which is where I was last night as my loft was imploding.

In an ideal world (well, a world in I remain in Prestwich as opposed to Cape Cod, but one in which scrutiny functions correctly) scrutiny would play a crucial role in the workings of the Council. We back bench members would have our say in the decisions of the Council, and feel equipped to give voice to local people and support or oppose what those in charge are doing.

Sadly, under the new “strong leader” model of local government, which was imposed in the last months of the Labour government and under which Bury Council now operates despite it being wanted by nobody, there isn’t much room for scrutiny. The leader and his cabinet can do more or less what they wish, unimpeded by such trivial irritants as other Councillors. It doesn’t only make scrutiny fairly pointless, but it makes me wonder why any Councillors are elected (and paid £8k a year each) at all.

Thankfully we had a good discussion about this at Scrutiny last night and have a plan to work to improve the situation. The new scrutiny arrangements are still bedding in, and I think there is a consensus that we want them to work. It’s just a shame that, right now, they aren’t. Still, at least I know what to do with anyone actively stopping them from improving. I just need to stand them underneath the door to my loft, and wait.

Rick

Tonight is another meeting of the Council’s Internal Scrutiny committee. Its name might induce sniggers in the occasional teenage boy, but its purpose is more serious. It is the only body scrutinising the work of the Council’s Cabinet, which is the group of top Councillors running Bury.

There’s a new system of scrutiny in Bury this year, and I don’t think it’s working very well at the moment. The way it should work is that the Cabinet make decisions which affect Bury, and we get to take a look at them after, or preferably before, they’ve been taken to ensure that everything is being done properly and in the interests if Bury. Obviously we might disagree with the end decision, and it’s not necessarily about changing it, but it is certainly about giving Councillors of all political views a say.

Until last year there were about 5 scrutiny panels. They looked at lots of interesting, but often irrelevant, things. Now there’s just one, which is supposed to look at fewer things, all of them important.

Sadly, the change in arrangements has coincided with the new “Strong Leader” model for the Council, which has changed the way that the Cabinet makes decisions. As a result, in the three months which we are to scrutinise tonight, only a handful of decisions have apparently been made, very few of them important.

Hopefully tonight we will discuss ways to improve the situation, as it’s evidently not right that the Cabinet have made so few decisions when, in reality, the Council is doing lots which affects the borough, like making big financial decisions about cuts.

I am looking forward to our discussion tonight and to ways of improving the situation. If you’ve really nothing better to do and don’t want to watch the last ever episode of The Bill, you can watch the drama unfold, as the meeting is open to the public and free to attend! At the Town Hall, tonight at 7!

Rick

The new St Mary’s Focus hits the streets today, in what can only be described as the biggest publishing phenomenon since J K Rowling’s unpopular foray into adult entertainment - “Harry Potter and Hermione: What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” 

Because Focus is delivered entirely by hand by volunteers (as well as being paid for, written, edited, published, printed and folded by the same hardy bunch) it might be some weeks before your copy floats serenely down from your letterbox to your door mat. I suspect most people will be able to wait though.

In the meantime, if you do see us out and about delivering, in between the showers which are making August so cheerful this year, do stop and say hello. You never know, if you’ve a problem we can sort out, it might make the next issue of Focus!

Rick

An odd bit of press from the “one press release a week if you’re lucky” Lib Dem media centre today:

Commenting on the 10-fold rise in the number of obesity-related surgeries carried out on the NHS in less than a decade, Liberal Democrat health minister Paul Burstow said:

“Over the last 13 years we’ve become the country with the highest rate of obesity in the whole of Europe.”

I like to imagine that he said that in between bites of a Big Mac Meal whilst funnelling pints of ale down his gullet and ordering a Chinese takeaway. But I doubt it.

Regardless of his culinary status at the time, he continued: “Obesity related surgeries are procedures that can transform lives, save lives and save money for the taxpayer.

“The 10-fold increase in less than a decade shows the last Government failed to get a grip on public health issues.

“We are committed to a real drive to consistently deliver public health messages about changes in lifestyles that people can make, both in diet and exercise, that can significantly reduce the need for these procedures.”

I was slightly confused by that press release, since on the one hand it says how great obesity related surgery is, but on the other criticises the increase in obesity related surgery… But I get the point that obesity itself is bad, and that more survery for obese people means more obese people in general.

Which is fine, but I think the approach in the press release is not exactly fair on the previous Labour government, nor does it really reflect the type of small-government liberalism that the coalition professes to be about.

Nobody doubts that obesity is a growing problem (pardon my pun). But there’s only so much that our solution of ”consistently delivering public health messages” can do. Labour could, and perhaps should, have done more to tackle this problem. But I don’t think the coalition has started well in terms of righting any Labour wrongs. We could be doing lots more. 

How about reversing the cuts in free swimming, or having some targeted investment in local leisure centres so that they can be realistic, cheaper alternatives than private gyms? How about better lighting and security in parks, or exercise equipment in parks? Or better enforcement of traffic laws that would make it safer for cyclists? All of those would make exercise easier. We might not be able to afford them right now, but we could at least mention them.

On the food side, how about working with retailers, not necessarily to tax bad foods, but to make good foods more appealing. Ready meals are often discounted or made buy one get one free. Why not more bags of fruit and veg? Double Clubcard points for every carrot? I dunno, but it’s a start. We need people in the Department of Health to come up with innovative ideas. People like Paul Burstow.

Granted, Labour did none of the things I suggest above, and maybe deserve some criticism for it. But we now have much better food labelling and a greater understanding of nutrition than we did in 1997, and things like the need for 5-a-day have entered the public consciousness far more than they were before. I’m not sure we’ve done anything in government yet.

Increasing obesity is a worry, and we need to sort it out. I think Labour were unfortunate to be in government when games consoles, the internet, multi-channel TV, 24 supermarkets and lots of other things developed to make exercise less appealing and slobbing out more attractive. To blame them entirely is silly “old” politics, and I don’t like it. People do stupid things like get fat. Government can only do so much, and should only do so much. We shouldn’t blame the government for people being stupid.

For goodness sake, there’s enough to have a genuine go at Labour at without making stuff up like this. 

I don’t think the solution to the obesity problem is to blame Labour and say we’ll tell people a bit louder to be good. It’s not sensible, nor is it liberal.

We accused Labour of being excessively nannying, and yet now we accuse them of not being nannying enough when it comes to public health messages? We should make our minds up, at the same time as coming up with an actual plan to tackle this problem.

Rick

The Institute for Fiscal Studies have concluded that the coalition’s first budget is regressive. That my party voted for it is sad. But I still haven’t heard of a viable progressive alternative, and still think that the Lib Dems made the situation better than it would otherwise have been.

It’s not surprising that a budget cutting government services hits hardest those who use those services most. The NHS’s budget is protected, so the next biggest spending government department is the Department of Work and Pensions. Cuts there mean fewer benefits, and the poorest suffering most.

These are Conservative measures, and ones which under normal circumstances I wouldn’t support. But of course we did support them, and whilst it makes me sad there are reasons why which I think are valid and which need considering.

The Conservatives took more votes and seats at the election than anyone else. This annoyed me because I’d worked hard for the Lib Dems to win. But we didn’t. We’d said throughout that, if a coalition was required, we’d look to form one with the party with most support. I guess I’m more left-leaning than not, so it was a shame that it had to be the Tories. It would also have been a shame though if it had have been Labour, since I disagreed with many of their policies then, and do now.

So we did form a coalition with the Tories. I was upset to be in league with people whose philosophy, especially at a grass roots level, I really don’t like. But that’s what was needed. The alternatives were an unworkable centre-left coalition which would have meant a broken promise and wouldn’t have stacked up in terms of numbers, or a minority Tory government unable to govern at a time when that really wasn’t a wise move.

The budget itself was, of course, massively Tory. Lib Dems are one sixth of the coalition, and probably have about one sixth of the policies in the budget. These include a rise in corporation tax and in the income tax threshold, both of which help the poorest. Of course, the two parties always did have things in common too. We have also enthusiastically supported some common policies like reforms to banking, for example.

There was lots in the budget that wasn’t Lib Dem. The bulk of it, in fact. Our own budget would’ve been massively different, but we aren’t the only governing party. The Tories have the huge majority of government votes because they won the election. This wasn’t a Lib Dem / Tory budget of two equal parties, as Labour will try to claim. It was, as the electorate determined, a Tory budget tempered a little by the Lib Dems.

We had to vote for it because we are in this coalition. It’s how coalitions work. Lots of Lib Dems are, I’m sure, privately upset about it. Lots of Tories are too, because they didn’t want to put Corporation Tax up or put the income tax threshold up. But what are the alternatives?

Labour are, of course, making the most of the regressiveness. I would if I were them. But their argument must rest on a viable alternative, and so far they haven’t provided one. Yes, it’s a shame that the budget is regressive, but where is the progressive alternative they say they have which will also deal with the debt and deficit? At election time, hey too promised bigger-than-Thatcher cuts. Would they have been progressive? Don’t think that they automatically would have been. I don’t see how.

Perhaps they’d have taxed the rich more, or cut different things in different ways. We don’t know, because they haven’t said. What we do know is that the Conservatives got more votes and seats than them, and so have a bigger mandate to govern on their own terms.

Let’s remember that in thirteen years under Labour, good years when cuts weren’t on the cards, the gap between rich and poor got bigger, and social mobility reduced. That looks like thirteen regressive years to me, compounded by things like doubling the income tax rate for the lowest earners as Gordon Brown did.

This is a difficult time. A sad time. I don’t like seeing those with the least getting even less, whilst those at the top don’t pay their share. It’s why I’m not a Conservative. But solutions are far more difficult than pointing out problems (as I am finding very clearly having moved from supporting the opposition to supporting the government) especially when the solutions are mainly from a party you don’t like.

It’s disappointing that the government have rejected the IFS’s conclusion. This conclusion wasn’t clear before, but I think it is now.

A better tactic, in my view, would be to honestly say that these are the measures which the government believe will work in the long term, relieving the whole country of a debt and deficit which will leave everyone more free to prosper in the future. That, to me, has the potential to be truly progressive.

By rejecting these findings the government looks churlish, plays into the hands of Labour, and by not yet coming out with any sort of differentiating line between the two governing parties, the Lib Dems in the government once more seem to be worryingly keen on standing by it.

My new wife commented the other day that summer seems to have shifted forward three months. These days, it’s lovely between about March and June, but then horrible between July and August, the months where in the long-gone days of my youth I seem to remember it being quite sunny.

I floated this meteorological proposition to some colleagues today, as we looked out at the storm lashing Ashton-under-Lyne. The response was that the lovely April weather I was referring to was what has always been known as “spring,” and that all that’s happened is that summer has disappeared.

Whatever’s going on, at least it’s cleared up now and I am free to resume the summer-evening surveying that local Lib Dems have been doing across Prestwich and Whitefield. It’s been great meeting lots of people, almost none of whom are spewing the type of anti-coalition bile I am terrified of when reading the letters page of the Bury Times (written almost exclusively, I have learned over the years, by politically active people from the various parties rather than genuine members of the public).

It’s all remarkably pleasant, in fact, and it’s good to be able to hear people’s problems and respond positively like good councillors should.

So I’ll be doing that in a bit.

All this rain is slightly ironic because tonight is also the night when my family expands by precisely one bag full of tiny little fish, all of whom would feel quite at home in the puddles outside. I thought that my recent wedding should be the prelude to some familial expansion, and so we’ve decided to add to the cat by purchasing some fish, and storing them in a (hopefully) cat proof tank. It’s all a prelude to the hens which we’re hoping to get for our soon-to-be zoo-like abode in the autumn.

I used to keep goldfish when I was a kid. I remember the drill was to either win one at the fair, or nip down to the pet shop and return with one in a polythene bag. Things have moved on somewhat now, as my trip to Pets @ Home tonight will be my third attempt to persuade them to let me have a goldfish.

The first time I went in to buy the tank they said that it would be wise to let the water settle first. I returned two days later with the sample of water they asked me to provide (!) so that they could test it. It passed the test, but they said that I had to wait 72 hours to let the filter bed in, and they still wouldn’t give me my fish. So I am hoping that tonight I will be able to make it third time lucky.

I feel slightly guilty that I am clearly unfit to look after even a goldfish, apparently, although slightly baffled because the last one I owned (when I was a child) lived for about 8 years.

Anyway, enough about my rollercoaster life. It’s time to go out surveying.

Rick

It was great to see hundreds of local people at the Farmers’ Market in Prestwich on Sunday.

It was another great success, but sadly it was spoiled for many by ill-timed roadworks nearby. It makes me wonder why the Council scheduled noisy roadworks which caused traffic problems right next to the market on what was a very busy day?

On a normal Sunday the area would have been quiet, but obviously not on a Farmers’ Market day. Since the Farmer’s Market was a Council-run event, I’d have thought the Council would have used some brains and not decided to close and dig up the road. Could they not have waited a week?

Sadly they didn’t seem to be aware of the likely problems, and certainly didn’t ask ward Councillors, residents or the Local Area Manager before digging up the road. Another example of poor management of the Council by the Conservatives running it.

Rick

As part of his ambitious plans to create a sustainable low-carbon economy, the Liberal Democrat Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne has written to all local authorities to announce that they are now allowed to sell renewable electricity to the grid.

Until now only 0.01% of electricity in England is generated by local authority-owned renewables, despite the scope that exists to install projects on their land and buildings.  In Germany the equivalent figure is 100 times higher.

At present local authorities are able to put any renewable electricity they generate to local use, and to benefit from the associated feed-in tariff for projects smaller than 5MW.  But they are restricted from selling any excess renewable electricity into the grid. 

The steps that are now being taken could mean up to £200m a year in income for local authorities across England and Wales.

This is good news. Sensible, green, and putting power in the hands of locally electable and accountable councillors. I’d like to see more like this. It’s a shame that at the moment the Tories’ big idea of the “Big Society” seems to bypass Councils altogether, but hopefully the Lib Dem influence on the coalition can be positive and change things for the better as its doing here.

Rick