Civil servants' accountability

Oh dear, the wheels are coming off Wee Georgie Osborne's pledge to discipline civil servants who waste taxpayers' money.

Sue Cameron in the Financial Times explains mandarins' reservations. Of course we wouldn't expect them to be fascinated by the idea, but as they point out many of the daft ideas emanate from ministers. Who would walk the plank for spending on the increasingly absurd NHS grand IT system?

Osborne's proposal to remove administration of tax credits from the Treasury was also incoherent - see my benefit fraud blog.

However we can welcome his proposal for all items of government spending above a certain amount to be listed on the internet where we can all see them.

Will Gordon Brown follow Osborne down this Obama road? Maybe Cameron should ask him in PMQs.

Easier said than done

Maybe Alasdair Palmer was writing tongue in cheek on Sunday when he said, "Want to cut violent crime? It's quite simple". He reminds us that burglary and crimes of violence were up during the last three months of 2008, and violent crime has doubled since 1997 - and that's according to official figures.

It is not ... that difficult to improve the justice system and to bring down crimes of violence. It has been done in America: in Boston, for example, aggressive policing and the conviction and harsh sentencing of those carrying guns on the street brought violent crime levels down by 60 per cent. In 1995, there were five times as many street robberies in New York City as in London. Today, London has 14,000 more street robberies a year than does New York.

There are three basic steps, he says.

1. Provide incentives to the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to ensure that violent criminals are prosecuted rather than let off with cautions (the number of violent criminals given cautions has increased by 82 per cent over the past five years).
2. Increase significantly the minimum sentences for violent crimes: if you are part of a gang that rapes someone and douses them in caustic soda, for example, you should go to prison for life, not come up for release in two and half years (as will happen to Jason Brew, convicted of that crime last week).
3. Increase significantly the number of prison places so that the greater number of criminals sentenced to longer terms can be accommodated.

Attractive but not as easy as they sound.

First, why should the police and the CPS be given incentives for doing their jobs properly? Let's rather ask where the fault lies. The CPS can only look at cases the police bring to them. So presumably the CPS are the blockers.

How to stop the blocking? Perhaps require the CPS to use a lower likelihood of conviction as the bar to be jumped before they will prosecute allegations of violent crimes. Maybe the CPS has targets which militate against such an approach, in which case they should be dropped. The police may have other suggestions. We have different local forces, so different experiments can be tried in different parts of the country. Police forces - and the CPS - should make public suggestions.

The public also needs to understand why cautions for violence are rising. Is this uniform across the country? Is it deliberate police policy? If so, why?

The second proposal is a good one. Raising maximum sentences isn't working. Only five drug dealers have received the maximum jail sentence in the past decade.

The third policy is to increase significantly the number of prison places so that the greater number of criminals sentenced to longer terms can be accommodated. This is essential. We need realistic sentences, and truth in sentencing - the sentence the judge gives is what you get, with perhaps a few months off near the end for good behaviour. This takes time. Meanwhile, a government may have to find temporary accommodation, increase cell sharing, and suspend prisoners' human rights. Facilities should be withdrawn, work should be harder, prisons should become places you certainly don't want to be.

The political problem with this approach is that it reminds voters of Michael Howard, and look what happened to him politically. So Chris Grayling will probably have to keep his policies under the counter while highlighting Jacqui Smith's failures, which should give plenty of scope.

But the next Tory government should be ready to implement these approaches.

Two writers, same question

Strikingly, Liam Halligan and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard end their Sunday articles with the same issue. Both are worth reading in full, but you have to look for them in the Telegraph's Business section.

Halligan starts with the UK banks issue and repeats his contention that banks must be made to confess all the over-valued toxic assets they have on their books. At the end he turns his attention to international markets, and concludes

This column has long questioned the eurozone's long-term survival. Now global markets are doing the same. At the start of last year, the average 10-year government bond yield among the weaker member states (Portugal, Greece, Spain, Ireland and Italy) was just 25 basis points above the comparable number in Germany. That spread is now six times bigger.

Credit default swaps (the cost of insuring against a government default) among the most feckless eurozone members have reached Latin American levels. Would French and German taxpayers bail out another eurozone member? The longer this crisis goes on, the larger that incendiary question looms.

Just next to him, Ambrose writes that monetary union has left half of Europe trapped in depression. And he concludes that

Traders suspect that investors are dumping their Club Med and Irish debt immediately on the European Central Bank in "repo" actions.

In other words, the ECB is already providing a stealth bail-out for Europe's governments – though secrecy veils all.

An EU debt union is being created, in breach of EU law. Liabilities are being shifted quietly on to German taxpayers. What happens when Germany's hard-working citizens find out?

It's as if we're watching a speeded up film.

P.S. Today Ambrose reports that in Ireland "as yet, there is no public support for withdrawal from the euro".

Frank Field opposes third runway

Frank Field has joined the ranks of those opposed to the third runway.

The Government very bravely announces today a third runway for Heathrow while making it plain that they are not so brave to allow the Commons to vote on the issue. The Tories might well mess up this aspect of the Government’s intent by offering us a vote at the end of a day’s proceeding when they decide the issue to be discussed. I hope when that opportunity arises we will have a radical alternative on offer. It is surely madness to expand a country’s major airport, with even more planes, and thereby terrorist targets, flying over the capital city. Surely the next radical Prime Minister will announce when the last flight will leave Heathrow and link this with building up an airport in the Thames Estuary or the Bristol Channel. The Government is confident it can build up a Japanese-type bullet train network to get us from London to Manchester in 40 minutes, surely the first such line could be built bringing passengers for either the West or the East and delivering them in London in less than half an hour. I wonder what the odds bookmakers are offering against that third runway ever being built?

It's striking how the expansion process goes dishonestly step by step. When BAA got planning consent for T5, they promised not to build a third runway. Now we have government go ahead for a third runway without a vote.

Ed Miliband seemed to be claiming on The World At One with a straight face that if environmental constraints could not be met when the third runway had been built there would be no extra flights. Does anyone believe this?!

Maybe by then even the government will have realised that the case against carbon emissions is at best unproven. Environmental considerations should however include the extra noise and extra strains on our terrestrial transport system. If the third runway ever does get completed, fuel will by then be much more expensive again. And what will that do to demand?

No one would put a new airport where Heathrow is. The government's decision is at once dictatorial and timid.

Welsh rubbish

The Conservatives think Westminster representation should not be biased against the English in favour of the Welsh. The 40 Welsh MPs have an average of about 54,000 voters per seat, compared with 69,000 for the rest of the country. Bringing Wales into line with the rest of the country would be likely to remove 10 Welsh seats, reports the Financial Times.

Rentaquote Welsh MP Paul Flynn dubs this proposed fairness "a shameless piece of gerrymandering". No, Paul, that's what we have now.

Also spouting rubbish is Elfyn Llwyd, leader of Plaid Cymru in the House, who says reform could be necessary in the future, but only if Wales won full legislative powers. Like Berkshire then, Elfyn? Wales is a client nation, which certainly doesn't entitle it to greater representation than the English who pay for it.

Fair votes for Wales, say I.

Lib Dems highlight tax credit shambles

Tax credits are bound to be a shambles because they have to be too complicated to work properly, even if the computer systems and the staff were perfect, which they are not.

These figures come from a parliamentary answer:

Repeat overpayments

• 1.8m families have been overpaid tax credits more than once in the four years that the system has been running, an increase of 400,000 in just one year. That is one in five of all families who have claimed in the same period
• Over 60,000 families have been overpaid more than three times

Repeat underpayments

• 555,000 families have been underpaid more than once since 2003, an increase of 150,000 families in just one year
• 82,000 families have been underpaid more than twice
• 6,000 families have been underpaid more than 3 times

Government fiddles more figures

The government has been caught being economical with the truth again, reports the Telegraph.

It is claiming it has hit a target of cutting the number of juveniles entering the justice system for the first time. But thousands of youngsters were given out of court fixed penalties - which so conveniently means they are not counted as entering the court justice system.

In November, the Youth Justice Board, which oversees the management of youth offenders for the Government, announced there had been a 10.2 per cent cut in such number since 2005/06 - twice the target of five per cent - down to 87,367.

But ... the figure excluded juveniles handed an out-of-court fixed penalty - of which there were up to 20,000 in 2007/08.

But separately the government wants to show that more crimes are being detected.

Conversely the fines figure was included in the larger statistics of Offences Brought to Justice, including both juveniles and adults, which presents a picture of more people being punished for their crimes.

The Conservatives have promised that the Home office will no longer control crime statistics and will not see them before they are released.

Of course the government should match this but we shouldn't hold our breath.

Gordon Brown solves gas storage crisis

First the facts, from a piece in Investors Chronicle (no link)

The escalation of Russia's gas dispute with Ukraine just as Europe freezes under the lowest temperatures of the winter has once again highlighted the risks of a European energy crisis. Supplies of Russian gas have been cut to many countries in eastern Europe and the Balkans, with Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Macedonia and Turkey all having their Ukraine-routed Russian gas supplies halted. Supplies to western Europe have also been disrupted, with Germany, France and Italy reporting sharp reductions in flow pressure.

Although Britain has so far not been affected, it is potentially at great risk of disruption. Many western European countries are insulated from supply disruptions by substantial gas stores. France and Germany, for instance, have gas storage capacity of over 20 per cent of their annual consumption. In contrast, the UK, the world's third largest gas market, has a storage capacity of just 4 per cent of annual consumption. This represents around 15 days of normal consumption, although the winter cold snaps could exhaust the stored gas in under five days.

Roland Wessel, chief executive of StarEnergy, highlights two reasons for the UK's comparative lack of storage capacity. Firstly, having enjoyed plentiful North Sea gas for decades, no one foresaw the rapid decline in reserves that will see the UK shift from being a net exporter to an importer of 50 per cent of its gas by 2010 and 80 per cent by 2018. Secondly, obtaining planning consent for gas storage facilities is a tortuous process. StarEnergy has been developing onshore storage since 2000, but has only completed one project due to the time required to obtain consents.

Mr Wessel fears that the UK will face a gas supply shortfall if it doesn't increase its storage capacity. "It's like watching a slow motion train wreck. It might happen this year, it might happen next year, but gas is a depleting resource and there will be a crisis at some stage," he warns.

Never fear, The Sun reports that Gordo has it sorted.

GIANT caves are to be built under the sea to store Britain’s gas.

PM Gordon Brown hopes they will protect us from Russian threats to turn off supply lines.

The 19 caverns 3,300ft under the bed of the Irish Sea off Blackpool will be 650ft high and 280ft wide — each big enough to house the resort’s famous Tower. They will be created by blasting out salt deposits.

With a combined capacity of 15,000 Albert Halls, they will hold 1.5billion cubic metres of gas — enough to keep the country going for five days. Britain currently only has around 15 days worth of gas stored, while France has 122 days.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said last night: “North Sea gas has done us proud for years but it’s important that we build more storage capacity for the future.”

Russian PM Vladimir Putin has been blamed for cutting ALL gas supplies through Ukraine.

Now I wonder who pushed that line to them? Peter Oborne would be impressed.

Who can influence local authorities?

Are local authorities out of control? Paul Waugh's interesting blog picks up the news that thousands of people are being forced into bankruptcy by town halls aggressively chasing council tax arrears. The Lib Dems commented that

Public bodies should do everything they can to ensure that bankruptcy is avoided where possible.

Overstretched families are already struggling to meet their mortgage repayments and keep their homes but this survey shows that failing to pay council tax can have just as devastating an effect on householders.

Waugh adds that when you look at the list of most aggressive councils, top is Southwark, second is Sheffield and 10th is Hull. "Given that all of them are run by Lib Dems (in a minority or majority capacity), I wonder what they make of the criticism from their national party spokeswoman?"

One commenter says that Hull and Sheffield only changed hands in May 2008. It takes time to change things, he says. Why?

Remember the council which rejected the views of 3,100 residents on gispy camps because they were deemed to be racist? Mid-Bedfordshire District Council is Conservative controlled.

So are these local politicians in the same party as their MPs? Has local power gone to their heads? Or are the officials out of control?

Peter Oborne: The Triumph of the Political Class

Peter Oborne's book is a great read for anyone at all interested in politics.

He claims the old establishment pillars of society such as the monarchy, parliament, civil service and the judiciary are being undermined by a new political class who are more interested in staying in power by coralling and conniving with the media than they are concerned with the hard grind of governing.

He is good on set pieces such as the disgraceful treatment of parliamentary standards commissioner Elizabeth Filkin. Unsurprisingly he is at his strongest in analysing the media's subservience to New Labour. He emphasises the bias in their reporting when the government was putting out its case for going to war in Iraq. Several reporters must be ashamed to see their bias set out in the permanent record.

MPs have lazily connived at their own subversion. The case against New Labour for subverting the civil service is strong, but less one sided than Oborne claims. For decades the civil service had seen it as its main role to manage economic decline, and despite its rectitude it can reasonably be accused of amateurism when it employed a tiny number of accountants despite managing huge sums of money, and when for instance Treasury civil servants were able to overrule professionals in deciding how far apart the posts should be supporting railway overhead wiring.

Underneath, civil servants are regulatory. But that is underneath. To the new political tribe, the surface is all that matters. Anything below the surface - the consequences or practicality of policies (what consequences will large scale immigration have? will tax credits work?) - doesn't interest ministers who focus on headlines. What matters is a polished surface.

New Labour subverted the civil service through cavailier, ignorant impatience. They really thought government was easy. Tax credits? Piece of cake. Millennium Dome? Piece of cake. Integrated transport policy? Piece of cake. They thought it would be enough to give the orders and fix the media. The fascinating business of implementation was a black box. Things would just happen.

Anyone who has worked in a large organisation knows this isn't so. And of course Oborne is right in his withering criticisms of Blair - the man who pronounced that the Stern Report was the most important document he'd ever received.

Oborne - clearly of the old school - also attacks ministers for criticisng judges. Sometimes, it is true, sentencing policy has been constrained by ministers' failure to build enough prisons. But in other cases the judiciary is simply out of step. For instance, the average sentence for knife crime is less than the minimum sentence which judges are required to impose in all but exceptional cases.

So some sections of the old establishment order need to improve. Oborne's case is thus not quite as black and white as he paints it. Nonetheless, the Labour "modernisers" have a lot to answer for. So do MPs. And I will be more cynical about what I see in newspapers and on the BBC.

Enjoy the book.

"Heat may spark world food crisis"

Yes you may be shivering in freezing fog, the sun may be in a low cycle, but half the world's population could face climate-induced food crisis by 2100, a new report by US scientists warns.

Rapid warming is likely to reduce crop yields in the tropics and subtropics, according to Prof David Battisti of the University of Washington.

Barking.

What North's been up to - and other jottings

Booker writes in yesterday's Telegraph that "in recent weeks, drawing on a wealth of published and unpublished sources, my colleague Dr Richard North has been compiling the first comprehensive account of this story, for a book to be published this summer as our troops beat their final inglorious retreat".

A few stories that caught my eye:

• Taxpayers are facing a multi-million-pound bill to store 100,000 tons of waste paper and cardboard as the British recycling industry plunges into crisis.
  
  
• An international rail interchange could be built at Heathrow to compensate for the environmental harm caused by a new third runway at the airport, the transport minister Lord Adonis has indicated. More bills for taxpayers, then.
  
  
• Councils splurge £1m on junkets. More than just a silly story. Out of control councillors spending taxpayers' cash on themselves. Who will stop them? Nobody.
  
  
• A Tory local council labelled 3,100 objectors to a proposed gipsy camp as racist.
  
  
• Millions of middle-class home owners living in desirable neighbourhoods are facing higher council tax bills after the next election following a secret Government exercise to assess the "niceness" of different areas. Labour issued a non-denial denial., saying there were currently no plans to change the council tax system.

  "We have repeatedly made clear there will be no council tax revaluation during the lifetime of this Parliament and would not expect to consider it during the current three-year settlement for local government, even after that there would need to be clear benefits.

  "The Valuation Office Agency is responsible for the valuation of homes for council tax purposes and has a duty to maintain an accurate council tax valuation list. The VOA's powers have not changed since the introduction of council tax, by the previous Government, in 1993."
  
  So that's a Yes, then.
  

• At least a million extra families have been caught in the benefits poverty trap under Labour. About 1.9 million low-income households face being worse off if a family member gets a job.

• The National Grid chief says blackouts will be common in seven years.
  
  
• Cameron starts to get his act together on the economy. The astonishingly ridiculous VAT cut has been an "unbelievable and expensive failure".
  
  He follows up the Civitas analysis that children can become more than £5,000 a year better off if their parents split up or choose to live apart - 'what a crazy thing for a country to be saying to people when we all know that family breakdown has such terrible consequences. Split up and be better off – what a crazy thing for the family to do – it is madness that we have this approach and Gordon Brown needs to change it.'
  
  And he says he would scrap taxes on basic rate taxpayers' savings and would increase the level of non-taxable income for pensioners by £2,000 a year.

Idiots of the year?

Two early bids for idiot of the year.

One - naturally - is from a government minister. Prisons minister David Hanson says prison officers have been told not to refer to their charges as "inmates" because it might offend them. There follows hair-splitting about what terms are offensive to imprisoned conflicts, and which are not.

For once an Opposition spokesman managed to score in the open goal. Nick Herbert (one of the better guys) said

The government would do well to concentrate their efforts on stopping prisoners walking out of open jails, ending early release and tackling the drugs trade in prison which is rife, rather than this politically correct nonsense.

Also contending is Paul Farmer, chief executive of the mental health charity Mind. Deciding to turn over a new leaf in the new year could do more harm than good, he has warned.

The charity said resolutions which focus on issues such as the need to lose weight or job worries create a negative self-image.

And if the plans fail to materialise, that could trigger feelings of failure and inadequacy, the charity said.

Bizarrely, the charity goes on to suggest what they say are steps to improve all-round mental health in 2009:

• Being active - exercise releases endorphins and even a gentle stroll is beneficial for mental well-being
  
  
• Going green - evidence has shown that connecting with nature can boost moods
  
  
• Learn something new - it will keep minds stimulated and give confidence
  
  
• Give back to the community - it can be just as rewarding for you as those you choose to help.

Which sound strangely like politically correct new year's resolutions.