What now for Essex

Essex County Council has been blazing a trail in local government in recent years.   The council has been ambitious in its role, sometimes generating controversy.   From opening post offices to proposing a new municipal bank, via Facebook campaigns, major service reconfiguration, and an innovative Chief Executive jobshare with a local district council, Essex has been in the headlines.    I sometimes hear grumblings in the local government world that these innovations are not yet proven, and that other councils are also trying similar things.   That may be so, but I do think we should credit Essex for helping the cause of localism and the reputation of local government by being prepared to push the boundaries, often in the face of Whitehall opposition.      Lord Hanningfield, who readers will know has resigned as Leader over allegations about his parliamentary expenses,  brought together a talented team at Essex in the Cabinet and amongst the senior officers.  This will be an uncertain time at Essex County Hall but with the election of the new Leader today, Cllr Peter Martin, Essex can get back to focusing on what it does best: doing things differently and leading the way.

If it ain’t broken Britain, don’t fix it

There’s a very important leader in The Economist this week that takes David Cameron (and a youthful Tony Blair) to task for the claim that Britain is broken. It uses a broad sweep of statistics to show that Britain’s social problems are not as bad as they once were and that the situation is getting better. The leader notes that the police have just recorded the lowest number of murders for 19 years. And that burglaries and car theft are about half as common as they were 15 years ago. It provides a compelling counter to the broken Britain argument that David Cameron has made a major plank of his campaign. It’s a shame, however, that The Economist only takes the Tories to task for pandering to the broken Britain thesis. The Government may well present a more accurate picture of British society. That hasn’t, however, been reflected in its policies. The Economist notes that child homicides have fallen by more than two-thirds since the 1970s. So why then is the Government about to make millions of innocent adults subject to a draconian new vetting scheme of dubious utility?

Gordon speaks

I attended Gordon Brown’s speech for the ippr this morning and it was pretty hard not to be impressed.

The Prime Minister’s often accused of being stiff but he spoke passionately about the need to make politics the focus for people’s idealism and about the power of politics to resolve conflict and drive progress. He was at his best in the Q&A afterwards, when pressed to sum up his vision in two sentences he said:

“That every citizen in this country should have the chance to fulfil their potential: to bridge the gap between what they have and what they have it in them to become.”

Hard to argue with that but hard to achieve it too.

There were some pretty meaty announcements though:

Beyond Belief

In its report Beyond Tolerance: Making sexual orientation a public matter the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) recommends that local authorities and all other public agencies survey their staff and users of public services to ascertain the respondents sexual orientation. This is a potentially huge undertaking. It could involve surveying millions of citizens and having to manage the data provided.

An end to national pay bargaining?

An interesting report was launched to day by the think tank Centre Forum.

In More Than We Bargained For, Professor Alison Wolf argues that national wage bargaining in the public sector is damaging and should be replaced by individual contracts.

The argument in essence is that public services in wealthy areas are unable to recruit quality staff who prefer to work in poorer regions where the cost of living is lower and their salaries go further. Conversely, economically disadvantaged regions suffer because the private sector is forced to compete with high, nationally set public sector salaries.

The recommendation that national pay scales should be scrapped is certain to generate a great deal of debate and indeed there has already been a rather heated discussion between Professor Wolf and the TUC on the Today programme this morning.

I’ll leave it to more expert colleagues to comment on the economics of the labour market, but for me the report raises three important questions about the nature of public sector work:

Boom? What boom?

The oft-quoted phrase is that the economic party is over and we’re now left nursing the hangover. But, on closer inspection, it doesn’t appear to have been much of a party at all. Researchers at Manchester University have today presented a pretty stark portrait of the boom. They show that the booming finance sector provided big tax revenues but almost no new jobs. Instead, the tax revenues from finance helped bankroll an expansion of the public sector. In the north-east, for instance, 79 per cent of new jobs were created in the state sector. This compares with 41 per cent in London and the south-east. Of course, demand for services is likely to be higher in poorer areas – and so this rise is likely to be related to local need. But it does also suggest that we need to think carefully about the unintended consequences of expanding the state in relation to the private sector. The state – as Lord Mandelson emphasised today – can be a vital source of demand during a recession. But it can also crowd out private initiative by making workers less willing to plump for the typically poorer pay and conditions of the private sector. This makes it harder for new businesses to get off the ground – especially in the current environment.

Bad Boy Boris

Boris Johnson, London Mayor has today announced an increase in business taxes for all London businesses with revenues in excess of £55,000. The charge will apply from April 2010 across all thirty three London Boroughs. This increase represents the full two pence in the pound increase on business rates he is allowed to levy. The fee, will contribute £4.1 billion towards the £15.9 billion Crossrail commuter line. The levy is scheduled to apply for thirty one years. It will be paid by 46,500 medium and large firms but eighty per cent of London firms will not be charged.

I welcome the empowerment of local politicians to make decisions about the appropriate level of taxation in their area. However, as a London voter I do question the value of a tax hike on London business in a time of economic recession. This increase comes on top of the fare increases the mayor has already announced in the cost of bus and tube travel in London this year.

I accept that the Mayor faced a deficit in Transport for London (TFL) finances inherited from the last administration. A deficit he attributes to the decision of the former Mayor Ken Livingstone to hold down tube fares in the year before the 2008 Mayoral election (a decision which Boris Johnson describes as ‘cynical’). However, there are better ways of reducing the deficit and funding necessary capital expenditure than increasing taxes.

In 2010/11 the London Mayor has discretion over a £126.1 million budget and oversight over a budget of £3.25 billion. The savings Boris Johnson identified in 2009 were welcome but they amount to less than ten per cent of his budget (£7.5 million per annum). Instead of increasing taxes on business and charges on commuters perhaps the Mayor could consider the following:

• Further cutting the costs of running City Hall.
• Funding Crossrail through private investment and having it run as a private enterprise.
• Identifying assets which could be privatised to raise the necessary funds.

In the interests of fairness Harry Phibbs at ConservativeHome has listed 100 achievements of Boris Johnson since the latter became Mayor which readers may be interested in.

The views expressed above are my own and do not reflect the corporate policy of the LGiU or its component members.

Citizen empowerment: John Denham’s speech on the Labour vision

Unlock Democracy held the second in a series of lectures in the run up to the election about ‘Citizenship Empowerment’ yesterday. The first, in November was given by Oliver Letwin who gave the Conservative take on empowerment, and yesterday, John Denham gave Labour’s vision for the agenda.

John Denham outlined that Labour strongly believe that citizens have the right to shape the community and services they receive but acknowledged that busy lives meant citizens can’t be involved in participative processes everyday. Labour believe that the best way to make sure that people can shape services is to give them information through readily accessible means, primarily, the internet. He said that this would enable citizens to health check what is happening in their area and use the information to press for change.

Cameron, character and councils

It’s taken me a while to get around to blogging about David Cameron’s speech on character and responsibility at the launch of the Demos Character Inquiry last week. But it’s worth returning to because it was a serious and compelling speech which gave a crucial insight into Cameron’s political philosophy while indicating that this narrative is a lot better developed and more coherent that some critics have suggested.

The basic thesis was that a good society is made up of good people, but good people are not just born they’re made, the products of effective parenting. It’s therefore a crucial role for the State to encourage and support families in bringing up children.

As well as the core narrative there were some pretty meaty policy announcements: more money for sure start, extra health visitors, tax breaks for couples in civil partnerships.

Most of the media attention focused on the claim that “warmth not wealth” is the key determinant of a child’s life chances and debated whether this was an accurate interpretation of Demos’ research on character, whether it meant Cameron really was a progressive conservative and which of those terms carried more weight.

Labour changes Leader: where next for LGA Labour

Talk of a Labour leadership contest, with all the backbiting, plots, and attempted coups, centres on a position that is not, at present, vacant.  But while Gordon Brown stands firm, a vacancy has arisen for the position of Labour’s leader in local government.   Jeremy Beecham is stepping down after leading the LGA Labour Group, and being LGA Chair or Vice Chair, since 1997.     Whilst all Labour councillors will get to vote, the system is weighted, like the wider LGA proportionality system.  The effect of this, and given Labour’s current low point in councillor numbers, puts the Northern metropolitan authorities in the driving seat.  But with the three candidates hailing from the West Midlands, Yorkshire and the North West, the votes of Labour councillors in London and elsewhere in the South will be the swing constituency.    Dudley Labour Leader, Cllr David Sparks, a long time senior Labour figure at the LGA, had been expected to stand, and is known to be close to Sir Jeremy.   John Merry, Leader in Salford, has been involved in the LGA in recent years and has a strong reputation in the North West.  Peter Box, Leader of Wakefield, is the outside candidate, positioning himself with a ‘change’ message.  Cllr Box has challenged Jeremy Beecham in LGA Labour Group and Labour National Executive Elections in that past without success.    If the next Labour leader at the LGA is half as long serving and nationally important as Jeremy Beecham, who became a key figure in Labour’s ruling National Executive, then this election is one to watch.     While on the subject of national leadership in local government, it was good to see Cllr Margaret Eaton, the Conservative Chairman of the LGA, becoming a Dame in the New Years Honours list.