Fox Hunting

Allegations against Rt Hon Dr Liam Fox MP
Report by the Cabinet Secretary

Scope of Inquiry

1. Following the request of the then Defence Secretary to his Permanent Secretary to undertake a review of the allegations made against him, in particular in relation to security implications, you asked me to establish the facts of the case in relation to the former Defence Secretary’s conduct in the context of the Ministerial Code. Since then, more allegations about Dr Fox’s conduct have arisen many of which will be the responsibility of others to answer, including the Electoral Commission which regulates political parties and their funding. This report looks into allegations relating to potential breaches of the Ministerial Code.

Issues arising under the Ministerial Code

2. Dr Fox had been Secretary of State for Defence since May 2010. As a Minister, Dr Fox was required to observe the principles set out in Section 7 of the Ministerial Code that:

“Ministers must ensure that no conflict arises, or could reasonably be perceived to arise, between their public duties and their private interests, financial or otherwise.”

3. The Code goes onto say:

“On appointment to each new office, Ministers must provide their Permanent Secretary with a full list in writing of all interests which might be thought to give rise to a conflict......”

“Where is it proper for a Minister to retain a private interest, he or she should declare that interest to Ministerial colleagues if they have to discuss public business which in any way affects it and the Minister should remain entirely detached from the consideration of that business.

Similar steps may be necessary in relation to a Minister’s previous interests.” “Ministers must scrupulously avoid any danger of an actual or perceived conflict of interest between their Ministerial position and their private financial interests. They should be guided by the general principle that they should either dispose of the interest giving rise to the conflict or take alternative steps to prevent it. In reaching their decision they should be guided by the advice given to them by their Permanent Secretary and the independent adviser on Ministers’ interests. Ministers’ decisions should not be influenced by the hope or expectation of future employment with a particular firm or organisation.” “Where exceptionally it is decided that a Minister can retain an interest, the Minister and the department must put processes in place to prohibit access to certain papers and ensure that the Minister is not involved in certain decisions and discussions relating to that interest.”

My Inquiries

4. The Ministry of Defence published its initial findings on 10 October (Annex A). During the past week officials have continued their trawl for evidence. In addition, Cabinet Office officials have taken evidence from Mr Werritty and Mr Moulton volunteered to give evidence. I have also met Dr Fox.

Mr Werritty’s visits to MOD Main Building

5. Mr Werritty visited Dr Fox in MOD Main Building on 22 occasions (Annex B). 17 of these were for personal one-on-one discussions. A further two were bilateral meetings, but with a Private Secretary present because of potential links with government business in connection with Dr Fox’s forthcoming lecture in Sr Lanka.. A third was a meeting with Dr Peries from the Sri Lankan Ministry of Foreign Affairs in October 2010 at which a Private Secretary and a special adviser were present. The meeting was organised by Mr Werritty as part of a programme for Dr Peries’ visit to London. The fourth was a meeting with special advisers present to discuss Mr
Werritty’s business cards

6. This leaves a meeting between Dr Fox and Matthew Gould, the then UK Ambassador Designate to Israel in September 2010. I understand that this was a general discussion of international defence and security matters to enable Mr Gould better to understand MOD’s perspective of the security situation in the Middle East. Mr Werritty was invited to attend as an individual with some experience in these matters. As a private citizen, however, with no official locus, it was not appropriate for Mr Werritty to have attended this meeting. Dr Fox has since acknowledged this.

7. This highlights the blurring of lines between Dr Fox’s private and official responsibilities which he has since acknowledged was not appropriate and not acceptable. Mr Werritty’s use of business cards describing him as an adviser to Dr Fox gave the impression that Mr Werritty spoke on behalf of the UK Government and/or was associated with Dr Fox in some form of official capacity. This may have been confusing for foreign governments and representatives who may not have understood the differences between a person acting as an external adviser and an adviser to Government.

8. Details have separately been disclosed today of further meetings held between two MoD Ministers and Mr Werrity. Lord Astor of Hever the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State and Government Spokesperson had had: occasional social contact with Mr Werritty; contact as a result of their previous involvement with the Atlantic Bridge; and contact in passing when visiting Bahrain for the Mamama Dialogue in December 2010. None of these meetings involved official MOD business.

9. In addition, Mr Gerald Howarth, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for International Security Strategy, met Mr Werritty twice at social events and one official meeting at the suggestion of Dr Fox. There was no follow up to these meetings.

National Security

10. Dr Fox has stated to Parliament that Mr Werritty had no access to classified documents and was not briefed on classified matters. There is nothing in the evidence we have taken to contradict this.

Personal Security

11. The disclosure outside MOD of diary details about future visits overseas posed a degree of security risk not only to Dr Fox, but also to the accompanying official party. Dr Fox has accepted that such disclosures were not appropriate. Clearer and stricter guidance will be issued within MOD about revealing to third parties any information about Ministers’ future commitments, travel plans and accommodation arrangements, including in cases where the Minister wishes such details to be disclosed. I am of the view that this is an issue which was specific to Dr Fox. However, I will ensure that this guidance is made available to other departments.

Overseas Visits

12. Dr Fox made a total of 18 overseas visits on which he met Mr Werritty. An up-to-date programme is at Annex B. During some of these visits Mr Werritty attended informal meetings with Dr Fox at which foreign officials were present.

13. We have also identified two occasions where Dr Fox had pre-arranged meetings overseas at which a member of his private office should have been present because of the likelihood that government business would be discussed:
a. 17 June with Mr Boulter in Dubai. Dr Fox has explained to Parliament the background to this meeting, and the subjects discussed. Dr Fox has acknowledged that conducting this meeting without a private secretary present was unwise and inappropriate;
b. 6 February in Tel Aviv. This was a general discussion of international , affairs over a private dinner with senior Israelis. The UK Ambassador was present.

14. In addition to these occasions, there is a clear risk that some of Mr Werritty’s international contacts may have gained the impression that he was speaking for and/or representing the UK Government. As is made clear above about the handling of meetings in the MOD Main Building similar issues arise in relation to overseas visits. This illustrates the danger of a blurring of lines and a lack of clarity of roles which was unacceptable and Dr Fox must bear some responsibility for this. Private office attendance was offered for both the visits set out above and declined by Dr Fox. This should not have been allowed to happen. Ministers should respect the advice they are given particularly when there are security or propriety implications for the decisions they take.

Proper use of public funds

15. There is no evidence from this review that casts doubt on Dr Fox’s statement to Parliament that public funds were not misused.

Funding of Pargav

16. Mr Werritty describes the work of Pargav as a not-for-profit organisation which has supported his work in the Middle East. The company received donations from a number of individuals and companies, some of whom had donated previously to Dr Fox and/or the Conservative Party. Mr Werritty informed us that the donors to Pargav are Oceana Investments, Mr Jon Moulton, G3 Ltd, Tamares, IRG Ltd, Mr Michael Davis. Mr Werrity also has a company, Todiha Ltd, which is Mr Werritty’s personal company and this company invoiced Pargav for Mr Werritty’s services.

17. As has already been made public, Dr Fox facilitated an introduction between Mr Werritty and a donor. The links between Dr Fox and Mr Werritty means that the donations given to Mr Werritty could at least be seen as giving rise to the perception of a conflict of interest. There is no evidence that Pargav sought to win contracts from the MOD or to influence procurement decisions. Both Mr Werritty and Dr Fox are clear that Mr Werritty never lobbied Dr Fox on behalf of donors.

Proper conduct of Government business

18. Dr Fox’s close and visible association with Mr Werritty in the UK and overseas, and the latter’s use of business cards portraying himself as an advisor to Dr Fox, risked creating the impression that Mr Werritty spoke on behalf of the UK Government or was officially associated with Dr Fox. This was a particular problem in this case given the very large number of instances where Dr Fox met Mr Werritty overseas, and the damage arose because of the frequency and extent of these contacts and that they were not regulated as well as they should have been.

19. As the Foreign Secretary has separately made clear publicly, Dr Fox’s relationship with Mr Werritty did not impact on UK foreign or security policy. That is agreed by the National Security Council and the Cabinet. He also said of Dr Fox that “If I asked him not to go to Sri Lanka, then he didn’t go. Or if I asked him when he went to convey messages of the UK Government, messages from me, then he conveyed those messages”. However, for the future we should strengthen the safeguards around this, making clearer who is or is not a member of a Ministerial team/delegation, and that official members of delegations accompanying Ministers to meetings overseas must respect HMG’s foreign policy positions.

20. I therefore propose a stronger and clearer system which is better understood by Ministers and officials alike. Specifically, this episode has exposed a gap in dealing with matters that may appear initially only to be of minor concern, but give rise incrementally and over time to substantial concern. The system needs to be strengthened to allow such concerns to be aired between Permanent Secretaries and Ministers, and where issues cannot be resolved they are referred to me and ultimately to you.

Conclusion

21. Dr Fox has already accepted that his actions and judgement fell short of the standards of conduct required in the Ministerial Code and the evidence in this report supports the conclusion of a clear breach of the Ministerial Code. He should have declared to his Permanent Secretary that Mr Werritty was a friend who had a company, Pargav, which was funded by a number of donors, some of whom had provided funding to Dr Fox when in Opposition.

22. The Ministerial Code requires Ministers to ensure that no conflict arises, or could reasonably be perceived to arise, between their public duties and their private interests, financial or otherwise. Dr Fox’s actions clearly constitute a breach of the Ministerial Code which Dr Fox has already acknowledged. This was a failure of judgement on his part for which he has taken the ultimate responsibility in resigning office. Your foreword to the Ministerial Code makes clear that you expect Ministers to act in the national interest, above improper influence, and to serve to the highest standards of conduct. The Ministerial Code sets out very clearly the standards of behaviour required from Ministers. Dr Fox did not live up to these standards which he has since acknowledged.

23. Dr Fox’s close and visible association with Mr Werrity in the UK and overseas, and the latter’s use of misleading business cards, has fuelled a general impression that Mr Werritty spoke on behalf of the UK Government. The risks of Dr Fox’s association with Mr Werritty were raised with Dr Fox by both his private office and the Permanent Secretary. Dr Fox took action in respect of business cards but clearly made a judgement that his contact with Mr Werritty should continue. This may have been a reasonable judgement had the contacts been minimal and purely personal and had not involved Mr Werritty’s frequent attendance at meetings in the MoD main building and on overseas visits. The damage arose because the frequency, range and extent of these contacts were not regulated as well as they should have been and this was exacerbated by the fact that Dr Fox did not make his department aware of all the various contacts. I also conclude that the links and a lack of clarity of roles means that the donations given to Mr Werritty could be seen as giving rise to the perception of a conflict of interest.

24. In this case there was an inappropriate blurring of lines between official and personal relationships. Mr Werritty should not have been provided with access to Dr Fox’s diary and itinerary. Nor should he have been allowed to participate in the social elements of the then Defence Secretary’s overseas trips in a way which might have given rise to the impression that he was part of the official party. He should have had meetings in the MOD with such frequency as did occur, as this access may have provided others with a belief that Mr Werritty was speaking for Government and was part of an official entourage. This impression was of course reinforced by the business cards which Mr Werritty provided to people. However, I have found no evidence that Dr Fox gained financially in any way from this relationship.

25. The Cabinet Office was not aware of Mr Werritty. Mr Werritty was neither a special adviser nor an official unpaid adviser, but a personal friend of Dr Fox’s (and not himself a lobbyist). There therefore needs to be a more rigorous approach to avoid similar blurring of lines between personal and official business in the future and recommendations for handling this are covered later in my report..

26. The Government already publishes on a quarterly basis, details of meetings between Ministers and external organisations, including lobbyists. This is critical in ensuring complete transparency on who Ministers are meeting. The publication of contracts over £500 is also an important initiative and taken together ensure transparency and accountability Whilst Mr Werritty was not a lobbyist, the Government’s commitment to consult on a statutory register of lobbyists will bring further transparency to this area.

Recommendations

27. I therefore recommend that:
a. Where discussions take place with external organisations which raise substantive issues relating to departmental decisions or contracts and where an official is not present Ministers should inform their department.
b. On Ministerial visits, whether in the UK or abroad, departments should make sure there is no confusion about who is and is not a member of the Ministerial party.
c. Officials should accompany Ministers to all official visits and meetings overseas at which it is expected that official matters may be raised, and should seek guidance from the FCO if there is any uncertainty about the status of such meetings or the attendance of non-officials at them.
d. Permanent Secretaries should discuss with Ministers at the time of their appointment and regularly thereafter whether any acquaintances or advisers have contractual relationships with the department or are involved in policy development. The Minister and the Permanent Secretary should take action as necessary to ensure there can be no actual or perceived conflict of interest in line with the principles of the Ministerial Code.
e. Permanent Secretaries should take responsibility for ensuring departmental procedures are followed, and for raising any concerns with Ministers, advising the Cabinet Secretary and ultimately the Prime Minister where such concerns are not resolved.

23. If you accept my recommendations I will write to Permanent Secretaries to set out the processes that now need to be followed.

Sir Gus O’Donnell

Fox's replacement at MoD...

...Philip Hammond MP, has himself recieved donations and fundraising support from the same wealthy Australian that bankrolled Adam Werrity and the Atlantic Bridge, Liam Fox's dodgy charity, that was supported closely by core Tories George Osborne, William Hague and Michael Gove!

One would have thought that Cameron, when interviewing for the post vacated by the 'useful idiot' Fox, might have asked Philip if he himself had any connection to the ongoing excrement storm? Evidently did not?

As is ever the case with these people... follow the money. If they can circumvent the law on donations, on lobbying or campaigning... it seems they will take every and any opportunity. And just what is it with wealthy Australians fiddling about in our politics anyway?

Read more here:http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/16/adam-werritty-liam-fox-pargav

Our very own "useful idiot"?

According to the Daily Mail no less, Liam Fox and his best bunny buddy Werrity are, or rather were, "useful idiots'!

In some respects, only half of that story can possibly be new.

Read more here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2049642/Was-Mossad-using-Fox-Werritty-useful-idiots-Ex-Ambassador-reveals-links-advisers-set-alarm-bells-ringing.html

Pension age of 67 coming soon.

The state pension age is to rise to 67 for both men and women many years earlier than planned – possibly as soon as 2025.
This means millions of people currently in their 50s will have to work a year longer than they expected.

Whitehall sources said an announcement could come as early as next week.

Under the timetable set by Labour, the pension age was to reach 67 between 2034 and 2036. But Coalition ministers say the ageing population and spiralling pension costs mean this is no longer tenable.

Experts predicted that a higher state pension age of 67 would come into force as soon as the ‘mid-2020s’, though other sources suggested the date would be closer to 2030.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2048876/Pension-age-67--sooner-thought-Millions-work-longer-retirement-age-rise-brought-forward-decade.html#ixzz1ajy19SCD

'Our Angel of the North...but horizontal'

The Mail, today reports:

There has been a time in every comedian's career when they must have felt the writing was on the wall.
But for those who managed to rise to stardom despite those dreaded tumbleweed moments, their reward now comes in the form of writing on the floor.
The Comedy Carpet, a giant concrete and granite tribute to the greatest British comedians, is to be unveiled in Blackpool today by legendary stand-up Ken Dodd.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2047342/Our-Angel-North--horizontal-Blackpool-immortalises-comedy-greats-Morecambe-Wise-Bruce-Forsyth-giant-14m-carpet.html#ixzz1aNIaGDEG

Fox was chased from denials to embarrassing climbdown

Defence secretary left with questions to answer over nature of meeting in Dubai with investment fund manager

Liam Fox's political hero, Margaret Thatcher, was famous for her loathing of the U-turn, but the defence secretary's public handling of mounting questions concerning his relationship with close friend, former flatmate, best man and political ally Adam Werritty, has been littered with embarrassing corrections and clarifications that have left his position in doubt.

On 12 June, Fox may well have glossed over a small report in the Observer concerning a £41m-plus legal claim being brought in America against the US conglomerate 3M over alleged failure to develop and commercialise a technology invented by Ministry of Defence scientists for detecting the superbug MRSA.

Fox, at that time, was still smarting from the leak of a confidential letter to the prime minister, published weeks earlier in the Times, which appeared to challenge government plans to set in stone a promise to meet UN targets of overseas aid. It was the second letter from him to be leaked in as many years and had provoked open irritation in No 10 and the Foreign Office.
Fox retaliated by letting it be known he believed one of his cabinet colleagues may have been the source of the leak.

This spat had only just subsided when the Guardian and Observer reporter Rupert Neate, who had written the original 3M article, learned that the American group, best known as the manufacturer of Post-it notes, was pursuing a counter-claim containing sensational blackmail allegations which, if true, purported to have been made following a meeting at which Fox been present.

Neate immediately began contacting Fox's office with questions concerning allegations that Fox had held a meeting in Dubai to discuss the 3M litigation with Harvey Boulter, the chief executive of Porton Capital, an investment fund that had collaborated with the MoD on the MRSA technology before it was sold to 3M. Porton and the MoD's civilian research arm, Ploughshare Innovations, were parties behind the claim against 3M.

What did they discuss? Had Boulter been sanctioned to send what appeared to be a threatening email to 3M's British born chief executive, Sir George Buckley, in which he awkwardly hinted that Buckley's recently awarded knighthood might be reviewed by the British cabinet?
A response came from the MoD press office: "Dr Fox met with Mr Boulter to discuss an entirely different matter. At no point did he enter into any discussion about this legal case, nor was there any mention of anyone's knighthood."

The denial was emphatic. Fox clearly believed he was drawing a line under the matter. However, the Guardian was able to obtain statements from two witnesses who confirmed that they had heard the 3M case being discussed at the five-star Shangri-La hotel in Dubai. According to one, Boulter had updated Fox on progress in the 3M legal claim, to which the defence secretary allegedly replied: "I'm sure you're handling this [the case] in the best way possible."
It was evidence that provoked first of several embarrassing U-turns by Fox. The MoD issued another statement: "During their meeting Mr Boulter disclosed his involvement in a legal case as a matter of propriety, but Dr Fox did not enter into a discussion about this in any respect and at no point raised or discussed the issue of a knighthood."

At the same time questions were arising about how official the Dubai meeting had been. The evidence suggested that Fox's friend of 14 years, Adam Werritty, who had no official function in government, appeared to play a central role in brokering the meeting with Boulter, and was there in person . Emails between the Porton Capital boss and Fox's friend showed they had been meeting and corresponding on the subject of the 3M claim as far back as March.

Who exactly was Werritty? At first, the MoD simply said: "Adam Werritty is not an MoD employee." Two weeks later, on 17 August, the department added: "He is a friend of the secretary of state," adding that the MoD covers the costs of trips taken by only employees.
The department's responses on the subject of Werritty then quickly descended into the realms of the absurd, with statements such as: "As he is not an MoD employee, he has not been on any official MoD visits with the defence secretary." This was another statement – repeated almost verbatim in a written answer from Fox given in the House of Commons – that would not stand up to scrutiny.

Sri Lankan news footage, posted on the Guardian's website this weekend, clearly showed Werritty shaking the hand of President Mahinda Rajapaksa at a meeting between the Sri Lankan leader and Fox last December. While in opposition, there had been previous overseas trips by Fox – to Israel and Sri Lanka – where Werritty had also been present.

Before these facts had fully emerged, however, questions about the relationship between Fox and Werritty were repeatedly batted away by an MoD press officer. "I am afraid my answers are going to be rather disappointing since Adam is not an MoD employee ... If you need anything else in relation to Adam, I am not sure that I will be able to help."

The next piece of evidence unearthed would again force Fox to change his story. The Guardian was shown a business card used by Werritty, embossed with parliament's portcullis logo, on which he described himself as "adviser to Rt Hon Dr Liam Fox MP". It later emerged that Ursula Brennan, MoD permanent secretary, told Fox to stop him handing out the cards.

Last Thursday, Fox asked Brennan to launch an investigation into what he called "wild allegations". The defence secretary said: "I understand those cards are no longer used. I have made it very clear to him that it's unacceptable to carry a card saying that he is a personal adviser." The MoD said Brennan would "examine the access to departmental premises and information afforded to Mr Werritty, and establish that there has been no breach of security".
Over the weekend, as the political heat has been turned up, a flurry of comments from the embattled defence secretary have not all helped to clarify matters.

On Sunday night, however, he issued his most extensive statement, promising to take questions in parliament on Monday. "I do accept that, given Mr Werritty's defence-related business interests, my frequent contacts with him may have given an impression of wrongdoing, and may also have given third parties the misleading impression that Mr Werritty was an official adviser rather than simply a friend.

"With respect to my meeting with Mr Boulter in Dubai in June 2011, I accept that it was wrong to meet with a commercial supplier without the presence of an official. I have apologised to the prime minister and agreed with my permanent secretary to put in place new procedures to ensure that this does not happen again."
How Fox changed his tune

On the meeting in Dubai ...
24 June The MoD press office says: "Dr Fox met with Mr Boulter to discuss an entirely different matter. At no point did he enter into any discussion about this legal case."
17 August The MoD says: "During their meeting Mr Boulter disclosed his involvement in a legal matter of propriety but Dr Fox did not enter into a discussion about this in any respect."
8 October Fox tells the BBC: "Actually, the defence industry representatives asked for it [the meeting] when they happened to be sitting at a nearby table at a restaurant. So, it's not that unusual." Seven hours later a Fox spokesman says: "Dr Fox was referring to Mr Werritty, and not himself, bumping into Mr Boulter at a restaurant prior to the meeting on 17 June."
9 October Fox issues a statement: "With respect to my meeting with Mr Boulter in Dubai in June 2011, I accept that it was wrong to meet with a commercial supplier, without the presence of an official."

On the status of Adam Werritty ...

August email to the Guardian: "Adam Werritty is not an MoD employee. He is a friend of the secretary of state."
6 October Fox says: "I have made it very clear to him [Werritty] that it's unacceptable to carry a card saying that he is a personal adviser."
9 October In a statement Fox says: "I accept that ... my frequent contacts with him may have given ... the misleading impression that Mr Werritty was an official adviser rather than simply a friend."

Simon Bowers, The Guardian, Sunday 9th October 2011

Thousands plan protest camp

Protesters inspired by the growing 'Occupy Wall Street' movement in the U.S are planning to establish a tent city in London's financial district next weekend. A Facebook page titled 'Occupy London's Stock Exchange' has already amassed over 3,000 people who have agreed to attend the event on October 15 while 'Occupy London' on Twitter has over 1,000 followers.
The group, who were behind a protest that saw Westminster Bridge closed today posted on the social networking site that they are 'part of a global popular movement'.

Followers: Facebook page 'Occupy London's Stock Exchange' has already amassed over 3,000 people who have agreed to attend the event while 'Occupy London' on Twitter has over 1,000 followers. One post under the name 'Occupy The London Stock Exchange' said: 'Hundreds attended the General Assembly and we are growing stronger every day!

More...
We won't take this lying down: Thousands of demonstrators force Westminster Bridge to close with protest over Government health reforms

'We remained unified and respected each others opinions. We are part of a global popular movement and not supportive to one ideology or faction, we are the 99%.
'Only the General assemblies and occupations themselves truly speak for the movement.

Occupy London: The movement called for others to join the protest on October 15 at the hearty of the city's financial district. 'Please attend the General Assemblies, become involved in the Occupations have your say and combine your voice with millions - this is a global issue and must be fought in unity!'

According to the website occupations are also being planned in other areas of the country, including Worcester, Nottingham, Edinburgh, Liverpool and Bristol.

Kai Wargalla who co-created the Occupy London Facebook group told NBC: 'The Wall Street protests sort of inspired everything. 'It was just time to start here. We need people to step up and speak out.'The movement aims to unite the United Kingdom’s far-flung activist communities in addressing 'the inequality of the financial system,'

Occupy Wall Street: Having started in New York, Occupy Wall Street's demonstrations are now taking place all across the United States, as protesters speak out against corporate greed and the gap between the rich and the poor. Those behind the movement used their website to call for protesters to take part in a 'day of action'. It said: 'The problems we face in the UK echoes across the world. We are linked by the same root causes, so we cannot solve these problems in isolation.
'October 15th will be a global day of action calling for global change' In America, protests aimed at policies on Wall Street have spread to 45 cities while large crowds continue to occupy the financial district in New York.

Occupy Wall Street: thousands march in New York

Thousands of Occupy Wall Street supporters have marched on Wall Street, swelled by the backing of more big US unions and backed by a national student day of action.
Amid fine autumn sunshine and in a festive mood, an estimated 15,000 protesters brought Lower Manhattan to a standstill.

James P Hoffa, leader of the Teamsters Union, which represents 1.4m workers. confirmed its backing for Occupy Wall Street. Here's his statement:

"No one should be surprised that Occupy Wall Street is gaining support and spreading quickly around the country. The American Dream has disappeared for students, whose reality is debt and unemployment. The dream disappeared for workers forced to take wage cuts by employers sitting on billions of dollars in profits. The dream disappeared for working families who paid too steep a price for Wall Street's greed, stupidity and fraud."

"It's clear what this movement is all about. It's about taking America back from the CEOs and billionaires on Wall Street who have destroyed our nation's economy. It's about creating good jobs. It's about corporate America treating its workers and customers with honesty and fairness and paying its fair share to stimulate the economy."

"Teamsters all over the country are participating in Occupy Wall Street events, and I support and encourage them. We stand in solidarity with Americans who want better lives for themselves and for future generations."

In an earlier visit to Florida, Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential hopeful, prompted anger by suggesting the Occupy Wall Street protesters represented "class warfare".
Another candidate, Herman Cain, also angered the Occupy Wall Street protests. He said in a Wall Street Journal interview:

"I don't have facts to back this up, but I happen to believe that these demonstrations are planned and orchestrated to distract from the failed policies of the Obama administration. Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks, if you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself! It is not someone's fault if they succeeded."

Read More Here: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/laurie-penny/2011/10/wall-street-york-police-bridge

VA Branch members march in Manchester

Alison and Ian join 35,000 other trade unionists protesting against the governments economic policies during the Tory Party conference in Manchester on Sunday...

...or would that be 34,998?

It is revealed today in The Independent that the TUCs Brendan Barber held secret talks with George Osborne, Danny Alexander, Francis Maude and Oliver Letwin on trying to find a way to avoid the national public services strike scheduled for November.

Read More Here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/union-bosss-private-talks-with-ministers-to-avert-mass-strikes-2366148.html

Cameron goes off the rails

The PM's patronising demand for families to clear their debts is bad economics and terrible politics, according to George Eaton at The Spectator.

Leave aside the economics for now, David Cameron's call for households to clear their debts is terrible politics. In his speech at the Conservative conference today, he will say:
"The only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts. That means households - all of us - paying off the credit card and store card bills."

At a time when voters are facing the biggest fall in living standards since the 1920s (owing to a combination of rising prices, falling wages, lower benefits and higher taxes), Cameron's demand is hideously patronising. It is a perfect example of what the novelist Joyce Carey once described as a "tumbril remark" - the sort of statement seemingly designed to trigger class war. Marie Antoinette's infamous (and likely apocryphal) riposte to the news that the poor were suffering due to bread shortages ("let them eat cake") is the most celebrated historical example.

Now, Cameron, a man who has had never had a money worry in his life, insists that the poor must repay their debts, as if, up to this point, they have merely chosen not to do so. I cannot recall a less sensitive or more thoughtless remark from a serving Prime Minister.

But worse, Cameron's comments confirm that he has no grasp of basic economics. If we are to avoid an economic death spiral, we need people to spend, not save. Keynes's paradox of thrift explains why. The more people save, the more they reduce aggregate demand, thus further reducing (and eventually destroying) economic growth. They will be individually wise but collectively foolish. If no one spends (because they're paying off their debts) then businesses can't grow and unemployment willl soar. The paradox is that if everyone saves then savings eventually become worthless.

The final and greatest irony is that Cameron is leading a government whose own policies are increasing household debt. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that household debt will rise from £1,560bn in 2010 to £2,126bn in 2015, largely due to higher inflation (encouraged by Osborne's VAT rise) but also due to "the reductions in social security payments announced in the October Spending Review, which act to reduce household disposable income". In other words, George Osborne's decision to take an axe to the welfare state is helping to fuel the household debt bubble.

No one denies that household debt is too high. Indeed, UK households are more indebted than those of any other major economy. But if Cameron wants to address this problem he should have said something about the fact that 11 million low-to-middle earners have seen no rise in their real income since 2003. People borrowed to maintain their living standards as wages stagnated. Cameron's blunt demand for households to repay their debts suggests a man who not only can't solve the problem but doesn't even understand it. Today, we have seen the clearest indication yet that he is unfit to govern this country.

Fox faces questions for allowing former flatmate access to MoD

According to todays Guardian:

Liam Fox, the defence secretary, has been accused of putting national security at risk by allowing a close personal friend, who presents himself as an official adviser, access to the Ministry of Defence.

MPs have raised concerns that Adam Werritty has introduced himself as the defence secretary's adviser in order to gain information for financial gain. Werritty, who is not a government employee, hands out business cards with the portcullis logo that describe him as an "adviser to Rt Hon Dr Liam Fox MP".

One meeting that Werritty brokered in the Middle East has led to the defence secretary being dragged into a US blackmail lawsuit that is likely to lead to Fox being called to give evidence in a US court.

Werritty, a former flatmate of Fox, was best man at the minister's wedding in 2005. He has visited Fox at the MoD's building in Whitehall 14 times in the past 16 months, a Freedom of Information request shows. Werritty is planning to be in the auditorium when the defence secretary speaks at the Conservative party conference in Manchester on Wednesday.
Werritty has not been given security clearance and the MoD confirmed he was not an official adviser to Fox or a government employee in any capacity.

Kevan Jones, a former armed services minister, told the Guardian that Fox's unrecorded meetings with Werritty could pose "a threat to national security" if the pair discussed classified material.

Jim Murphy, the shadow defence secretary, said: "This is becoming a very murky business indeed. People will be surprised by these new revelations. Liam Fox has questions to answer. He and Mr Werritty should publish all emails between themselves relating to MoD business."
Murphy has asked Fox if Werritty is employed in any capacity or in receipt of any funds. Fox has not replied to Murphy's written questions sent a month ago.

Michael Dugher, parliamentary private secretary to Ed Miliband and a shadow defence minister, said the links between Fox and Werritty were "alarming" and "worrying". Questions have been raised about whether Werritty is seeking to profit financially from his links to Fox.

While Fox was shadow defence secretary from 2005 onwards, Werritty was a director of a company called Security Futures. Werritty accompanied him to several high-profile meetings, including dealings with politicians in the US, the Middle East and Sri Lanka. And, while Fox was shadow health secretary from 1999 and 2003, Werritty ran a health consultancy company.

Jones said: "It raises question about whether Werritty was looking to financially gain from their relationship."

The MoD refused to explain why Fox appeared to rely on the advice of a close friend rather than his team of highly-trained officials.

In a written parliamentary answer, Fox said: "I have met Mr Werritty 14 times at the Ministry of Defence main building over the past 16 months but not in an official capacity."

Fox denied that Werritty had accompanied him on official overseas visits. "Mr Werritty is not an employee of the Ministry of Defence and has, therefore, not travelled with me on any official overseas visits," Fox said in response to questions from John Mann, MP for Bassetlaw.

Werritty arranged talks between Fox and the MoD's private equity partner Porton Capital over a multimillion-pound legal battle between the MoD and US Post-it note maker 3M.

Hours after the meeting, which was not attended by officials and at which no notes were taken, Harvey Boulter, chief executive of Porton Capital, emailed 3M looking for a payment of $30m (£18m) to settle a dispute over the sale of a potentially lifesaving treatment to the US company and mentioning the award of a knighthood to 3M's British-born chief executive, Sir George Buckley.

The email said: "As a result of my meeting [with Liam Fox] you ought to understand that David Cameron's cabinet might very shortly be discussing the rather embarrassing situation of George's knighthood ... At a headline of $30m+ you will allow the MoD to internally save face."
3M is now suing Porton Capital and Boulter personally for "blackmail", raising the prospect of Fox being summoned to give evidence at a trial in the US.

Werritty was one of a team of advisers, both official and otherwise, who travelled with Fox on holiday to Spain this summer.

Dugher said: "Fox has serious questions to answer about this. The defence secretary is privy to the most serious and sensitive information. You can't have old friends going around Westminster with the portcullis on their business cards claiming to be your adviser."

Dugher, who once worked as a special advisor in the MoD, said it was "most irregular" for a defence minister to have so many unofficial meetings at MoD headquarters. He raised concerns that meetings between Fox and Werritty would not have been recorded or minuted by officials.
"There are strict rules governing the conduct of ministers and advisers. This issue will not go away until Fox explains exactly what the status of the relationship between himself and Mr Werritty. Is Mr Werritty an adviser to Dr Fox or not? If he is, on what basis?"

Jones, who worked in the MoD's headquarters as armed forces minister from 2008 until last year, says he was shocked that a civilian with no security clearance was able to visit the MoD's heavily secured building so regularly.

"Having 14 meetings in 16 months is extraordinary. This is more than a friend visiting occasionally – this is once a month more or less. There is a clear pattern here and it raises further questions about what exactly is going on between Fox and Werritty." He said it was "very concerning" that Werritty had been allowed to "present himself as an adviser in meetings with officials and politicians".

"There is a threat to national security if he's been attending meetings when classified information has been discussed," he said. "We don't know what they talked about because there are no records of the meetings.

"Fox needs to come clean about what his relationship is and why he is visiting so often."

"Having been a minister, I know that there are very clear rules about access to the main building. [One] is not allowed friends in the office – you have to book meetings in through the office. I once had a researcher who wasn't allowed into the building. "As an MoD minister, you get to know a lot of things that only ministers and special advisors have been cleared for."

Fox and Werritty are also linked by a rightwing charity that Fox set up, and Werritty ran. The charity, called The Atlantic Bridge, was suspended last year following a Charity Commission investigation.The charity, which had close links to neocons in America, is largely funded by billionaire hedge fund manager Michael Hintze. A trust set up by Hintze, the boss of CQS and the world's 880th most wealthy person, has donated £51,000 to The Atlantic Bridge.

The register of members' interests shows that Fox travelled on Hintze's private yet from Washington to the UK earlier this year, after giving a speech at an event to celebrate what would have been former US President Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday. Werritty was a guest at Fox's 50th birthday party at his official residence in Whitehall last month.

Theresa May gets it wrong about a cat

The Home Secretary's conference speech shows she does not know what her own department is doing.

Today the Home Secretary got her facts wrong about a cat.

Speaking to the Conservative Party conference, Theresa May said:
"We all know the stories about the Human Rights Act. The violent drug dealer who cannot be sent home because his daughter - for whom he pays no maintenance - lives here. The robber who cannot be removed because he has a girlfriend. The illegal immigrant who cannot be deported because - and I am not making this up - he had a pet cat."

This story - one of a number of myths which those hostile to human rights law invoke without ever bothering to actually check - has been published before in newspapers, and it has already been dealt with by respected critical sites such as Full Fact and Tabloid Watch. All this was available to her speechwriters.

But what makes it worse is what was also known to her very own department.
The full determination of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal is here [PDF]. As Barry O'Leary, Partner at Wesley Gryk Solicitors, who acted for the foreign national, explains:
This case was not decided on the basis of a cat. It was decided on the basis of a Home Office policy which the Home Office themselves had failed to apply. This was accepted by the Home Office before the Immigration Judge and the Home Office agreed the appeal should be allowed. The ownership of a cat was immaterial. Any press reports to the contrary are, unfortunately, not based on fact.

The case involved a foreign national in a long term committed relationship with a British Citizen (they had been living together for four years at the time of the appeal.) He was not a foreign national prisoner.

I had made an application on the foreign national's behalf for the right to remain in the United Kingdom on the basis of a Home Office policy known as DP3/96.
The application was refused [by the Home Secretary] and my client appealed against that decision.

As part of the application and as part of the appeal, the couple gave detailed statements of the life they had built together in the United Kingdom to show the genuine nature and duration of their relationship. One detail provided, amongst many, was that they had owned a cat together for some time.

The appeal was successful and when giving the reasons for the success the judge did comment on the couple's cat. It was taken into account as part of the couple's life together.
The [Home Secretary] asked for the decision to be reconsidered. They argued it should be reconsidered because the decision was wrong in law, and one error they cited was that too much consideration was given to the couple's cat.

The [Home Secretary] was given permission to put the arguments to the tribunal and the decision of the tribunal is that of [Senior Immigration Judge] Gleeson.

It was decided by [Senior Immigration Judge] Gleeson that the first judge's decision was correct. As is clear from the determination, she came to this decision because the [Home Secretary] in refusing the application had not applied their own policy DP3/96 (which had been withdrawn but the transitional provisions should have been applied to my client).

It was made clear by the initial judge and then by [Senior Immigration Judge] Gleeson that the Appellant should benefit from that policy and be granted the right to remain.

Furthermore, it was accepted by the Home Office representative at the hearing before [Senior Immigration Judge] Gleeson that the policy should apply and any other errors in the initial decision by the judge (including too much detail on the cat) were immaterial.
See paragraph 6 of the determination. It makes clear that it is the former policy DP3/96 which is the basis on which the appeal was won.

[Senior Immigration Judge] Gleeson does go on to make a joke about the cat, clearly because she recognized that the discussion of the cat was irrelevant to the serious issue of applying Home Office policies correctly.

This case was won because the Home Office had a policy which they did not initially apply but later, through their representative, they accepted should have been applied.
What this means is that not only was the cat immaterial to the tribunal decision for the foreign citizen to remain, but that the Home Secretary's own representative fully accepted that the cat was immaterial to the decision.

So the Home Secretary in making her speech today not only got the facts of the case wrong, she also said something known by her own department to be untrue.

And I am not making this up.

David Allen Green is legal correspondent of the New Statesman, 4th October 2011.

HP payout dwarfs new CEO's salary

Hewlett Packard Co will pay fired CEO Leo Apotheker nearly $10 million in severance and bonuses, a handsome payout for a much-criticised leader that dwarfs new chief Meg Whitman's $1-a-year base salary.

HP will pay Apotheker, who during an 11-month term slashed sales forecasts several times and engineered the unpopular acquisition of British software firm Autonomy, a $7.2-million severance and a $2.4-million annual bonus under a 2005 “pay-for-results plan,” the company said in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

In addition, he gets to keep and vest 156,000 previously awarded restricted shares, will be paid expenses for relocating to France or Belgium, and will be compensated for any losses on the sale of his home in California to the tune of $300,000.

HP appears to treat outgoing CEOs well, even though Apotheker was the third straight to be shown the door. His predecessor, Mark Hurd, got an exit package estimated at about $34.6 million after he was fired in August 2010.

In contrast, HP will pay former eBay Inc CEO Meg Whitman a base salary of just $1 per year. She has the option to buy 1.9 million of the company's shares and is eligible for a performance bonus of $2.4 million in 2012, the company said.

Whitman joins a select club of high-profile CEOs who have drawn dollar-a-year salaries, including Apple's Steve Jobs, Yahoo Inc founder Jerry Yang and Google executives Larry Page, Eric Schmidt and Sergey Brin.

The New York Times attacks Cameron's riots response

Cameron's measures risk "long-term damage to Britain’s already fraying social compact".

Today's New York Times features a thunderous editorial attacking David Cameron's response to the riots. You can read the paper's leader in full here but we've pulled out some of the most notable passages below.

On Cameron's double standards:

Mr. Cameron, a product of Britain's upper classes and schools, has blamed the looting and burning on a compound of national moral decline, bad parenting and perverse inner-city subcultures.

Would he find similar blame -- this time in the culture of the well housed and well off -- for Britain's recent tabloid phone hacking scandals or the egregious abuse of expense accounts by members of Parliament?

On rioters' benefits and social networks:

He talks about cutting off government benefits even to minor offenders and evicting them -- and, in a repellent form of collective punishment, perhaps their families, too -- from the publicly supported housing in which one of every six Britons lives.

He has also called for blocking access to social networks like Twitter during future outbreaks. And he has cheered on the excessive sentences some judges have been handing out for even minor offenses.

On Cameron's populism:

Such draconian proposals often win public applause in the traumatized aftermath of riots. But Mr. Cameron, and his Liberal Democrat coalition partners, should know better. They risk long-term damage to Britain's already fraying social compact.

The Grey Lady also criticises the coalition's economic strategy, warning that the government's "wrongheaded austertity policies" have hit the poorest hardest. What Britain's stagnant economy needs, the NYT argues, is "short-term stimulus", not more budget cutting.

It concludes: "Fair play is one traditional British value we have always admired. And one we fear is increasingly at risk."

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/08/cameron-britain-social-risk

PFI a costly 'drug' MPs warn Chancellor

Treasury select committee urges George Osborne to wean off PFIs as report shows them 1.7 times costlier than public purse
George Osborne must wean the Treasury off the "drug" of the private finance initiative (PFI), which offers poor value for money for Britain's taxpayers, according to a cross-party committee of MPs.

In a damning report, the Treasury select committee says that with the yield on government bonds at near-record lows, using a PFI deal for a new infrastructure project could end up costing up to 1.7 times as much as paying for it directly out of the public purse.

Andrew Tyrie, the committee's Conservative chairman, urged the chancellor to call an immediate review, and bring the costs of all previous projects on to the Treasury's balance sheet.

The independent office for budget responsibility recently estimated that the total liability from the capital costs of PFI projects alone was about £40bn, which would increase Britain's debt-to-GDP ratio by almost 3%.

The PFI was first announced by Norman Lamont in 1992, but the complex deals proliferated at Gordon Brown's Treasury. Private sector providers agree to build and run schools, hospitals and other infrastructure projects, typically over 30 years, in exchange for a stream of payments from the public purse.

But Tyrie said that instead of transferring risk to the private sector and cutting costs for the taxpayer, PFI had fooled the public – and Whitehall officials – into thinking they could get shiny new public services "on the never-never".

"PFI means getting something now and paying later. Any Whitehall department could be excused for becoming addicted to that," he said.

"It's like a drug. We can't carry on as we are, expecting the next generation of taxpayers to pick up the tab. We must first acknowledge we've got a problem. This will be tough in the short term but it should benefit the economy and public finances in the longer term."

The report finds that because they could be hidden off departments' balance sheets, PFI projects looked artificially attractive.

Allyson Pollock, professor of public health research and policy at Queen Mary, University of London, who has been a vocal critic of public-private partnerships over more than a decade, said: "The National Audit Office and the Treasury together have spent a long time promoting and advertising this policy, at home and abroad, including to some of the poorest countries in the world. It's time for a complete rethink."

She added that with PFI payments generally uprated in line with the RPI measure of inflation, which is currently running at 5%, the cost of many PFI-funded projects is rising rapidly at the same time as public sector budgets are being cut.

The select committee analysed one specific project, the Royal Liverpool hospital, currently in its procurement phase, and found that the higher cost of financing it privately could add £175m to the price over the life of the hospital. The yield on government bonds, or gilts, which determines the interest rate the Treasury pays on its debts, has slipped sharply since the credit crunch, making the argument against PFI appear all the more stark.

"The cost of capital for a typical PFI project is currently over 8% – double the long-term [30-year] government gilt rate of around 4%. The difference in finance costs means that PFI projects are significantly more expensive to fund over the life of a project. This represents a significant cost to taxpayers," the report finds.

Jesse Norman, a backbench Conservative member of the committee, called for an immediate one-year moratorium on the Royal Liverpool project. Pollock agreed, saying: "When you're in a hole, stop digging."

Business groups defended the PFI, however. Neil Bentley, deputy director-general of the CBI, said: "It's worth remembering that without PFI we would not have seen hundreds of much-needed hospitals, schools and homes delivered on time and within budget."

An aide to the chancellor said: "We have been saying for a long time that the PFI system we inherited was completely discredited and nothing more than a ploy to keep expensive projects off the balance sheet. That's why we are reforming it so it is genuinely transparent and only used when it provides value for money for the taxpayer." He added that PFI liabilities are now published as part of new Whole of Government Accounts, so they can no longer be hidden – but they are still not counted as public sector debt.

London Underground investment

Creaking along on ancient infrastructure, the London Underground was crying out for modernisation by the end of the 20th century. The then chancellor, Gordon Brown, decided to fix it with a 21st century solution: a public-private partnership. Labour traditionalists were furious that the maintenance and development of a prime public asset should be handed over to the private sector.

The £30bn project, due to run for 30 years, divided the upgrading and maintenance of the tube between two consortia: Metronet and Tube Lines. In exchange for carrying out complex work on a network that transported 3 million people a day, the businesses that made up the two consortia would receive a monthly payment that would increase or decrease depending on whether they hit targets for measures such as train cleanliness and reliability of services.

The collapse of the arrangement surprised even its most vociferous critics. Metronet went into administration in 2007 after racking up a projected overspend of up to £2bn, its costs not helped by the fact that it contracted work out to its five shareholders: construction firm Balfour Beatty, Thames Water, energy company EDF, engineering specialist WS Atkins and Canada's Bombardier.

Metronet was bought by the capital's transport authority, which by then was locked in an increasingly dysfunctional relationship with Tube Lines. The company did not have Metronet's overspend problems but it could not deliver an upgrade of the Jubilee Line on time and in 2010 London's mayor, Boris Johnson, bought it from its shareholders, Heathrow owner Ferrovial and US project manager Bechtel, for £310m.

Dan Milmo, The Guardian

MoD supply chain 'at risk of collapse'

The supply chain that provides vital equipment to frontline troops is at "critical risk of failure", MPs have warned in a damning report published today.

British forces serving in Afghanistan or around Libya could be hit by shortages within as little as 30 days if the system broke down, the Commons Public Accounts Committee revealed.

The committee said the Ministry of Defence accepted that the IT systems used to manage the complex military supply chain were "not adequate for the task" and thatits Defence Logistics Board rated the risk of failure of these warehouse inventory systems as "extremely high" and, at one point, "critical".

The committee chairman, Margaret Hodge, expressed exasperation at the failure of the MoD to get to grips with the problems.

The defence equipment minister, Peter Luff, said the complexity and challenges of supplying conflict zones should not be underestimated. "Ensuring our armed forces on the frontline have all they need is a top priority," he said.

Department of Health guidelines falsely inflate NHS costs

Over at False Economy (http://falseeconomy.org.uk/blog/hyped-up-nhs-treatment-costs-make-the-private-sector-look-cheaper) this article caught our eye:

In my last blog I talked about the Payment by Results (PbR) system where most treatments in an NHS hospital are paid at a rate called the National Tariff adjusted for local costs (essentially a London weighting) called the Market Forces Factor (MFF).

You can download the Payment by Results price list from the Department of Health. In this spreadsheet each procedure has a code called the Healthcare Resource Group (HRG) code, and the volume of treatments carried out by the NHS – listed by the HRG codes – can be downloaded from the HESonline website. You can combine these spreadsheets to see which procedures the NHS does most, and the cost of those procedures.

The Department of Health has recently produced a document called A simple guide to Payment by Results, which explains how the payment system works. Figure 1 caught my eye:

This suggests that an NHS hospital is paid £961 for a cataract removal. I know that this is not the case, so I investigated further. Figure 2 in the "simple guide" says that the cataract procedure has an HRG of BZ01Z Enhanced Cataract Surgery at a cost of £961. So I checked the National Tariff spreadsheet and found this:

Do you see what the Department of Health have done? They have quoted the higher cost procedure BZ01Z at £961 rather than the lower cost BZ02Z at £748. Perhaps this is because most cataract patients need the more expensive procedure? No. HESonline says this:

In 2009/10 there were 320,000 of the cheaper phacoemulsification operations and just 6,900 of the more expensive "enhanced" operations. So why did the Department of Health list the less common procedure that is 30% more expensive? A recent study by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine says that the NHS is one of the most cost-effective systems in the world and not only does it cost less than most, it saves more lives per head of population than most.

The government intends to privatise parts of the NHS through its Any Qualified Provider policy, and so it is in the government's interest to make it appear that the NHS is more expensive than it actually is, and make it appear that NHS costs are closer to the private sector. The last government set up Independent Sector Treatment Centres, profit-making private companies that perform the more common procedures for NHS patients: the "cream skimming" that I mentioned last week.

Netcare Healthcare was contracted to perform cataract removal for NHS patients. Hansard lists the Ophthalmic Chain Cataract Initiative and gives the contract as £42 million over 64 months. For this money Netcare performed 44,735 operations or £939 per procedure. Hansard does not give the HRG code, but it is well known that ISTC contracts allowed the private hospitals to "cherry-pick" the easy cases and re-refer harder cases back to the NHS, so it is more likely that these operations carried out by Netcare were the cheaper BZ02Z operations (where the NHS would be paid £748) rather than the more expensive BZ01Z (where the NHS is paid £961).

So referring back to the Department of Health guide, it looks like the department lists cataract operations at the more expensive £961 to make it appear that the NHS is performing cataract operations more expensively than the private sector ISTCs, which the current government is pushing as Any Qualified Providers.

In the next few months, to fulfil its intention to privatise the NHS, the government will try very hard to show that the private sector is cheaper than the NHS. This document seems to be just one example of the government bending the truth.

Richard Blogger writes about the NHS and social policy at NHS Vault.

PCS Update

CSCS ruling

You may have seen this week that Mr Justice McCombe agreed that our members had accrued their redundancy terms and that these shouldn't be interfered with, however he refused to rule that ministers had acted unlawfully in trying to impose new redundancy terms as they saw this as a legitimate way of tackling the deficit. We're seeking further legal advice on a challenge and further information will be circulated as we get more.

See our news piece and our comment piece on the judgement.

Relaunched pensions calculator

Earlier this week we relaunched our pensions calculator - www.pcs.org.uk/pensions to take account of the contribution increases announced by the government recently. We have produced detailed technical notes to inform members about the calculations. Please can you get the new calculator out to all your networks and encourage reps and members to use it.

Kids raised by single parents do just as well as other children

SOME politicians blame single mothers for a host of society's ills. But the latest research shows that children from single-parent homes often get off to a good start in life-and if they don't, the main factor seems to be their mothers' level of education, not the absence of a father.

In Britain, one in five children is born into a home where their mother is not living with a male partner. In the US, the figure is almost one in three. And some research has backed the popular impression that children raised by lone parents are more likely to do badly in school than those from traditional two-parent families.

Now Henry Ricciuti, a developmental psychologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, has completed one of the largest and best-controlled studies into the issue. He concludes that much of the previous work is misleading, because it confuses the effects of lone parenthood with that of the mothers' level of education and their coping skills.

Ricciuti tested 1700 children between six and eight years old whose mothers were participating in a long-term, multiethnic study of young people. Children raised by lone mothers did just as well on vocabulary, reading and mathematics as those from two-parent families. And the single mothers didn't report any more behavioural problems in their youngsters than mothers living with a partner (Journal of Family Psychology, vol 13, p 450). "I did not find any evidence for single parenthood being a risk in its own right," Ricciuti says. "The question is, how come?"

When Ricciuti looked at single-parent families in more detail, he found that two factors predicted how well the youngsters did in school: their mothers' education and their "general ability", based on a standard measure of problem-solving skills.

The children Ricciuti studied all had relatively young mothers-on average, they had given birth at 20 years old. In contrast to some previous studies, there was no tendency for the mothers living with a partner to have spent longer in education and have had their children later.

The single-parent families did differ in one important way: more than half of them fell below the poverty line, twice the rate of the two-parent families. Since many other studies have found that poorer children do worse on tests of their educational attainment and have more behaviour problems, Ricciuti's results are even more surprising. "Although these mothers are much poorer, their children are still not showing bad effects," he says. Ricciuti concludes that a mother's level of education and her coping skills can outweigh the effects of poverty, at least for younger children.

Marsha Weinraub, a developmental psychologist at Temple University in Philadelphia, applauds Ricciuti's findings. "They're important because they fly in the face of our stereotypes and easy explanations," she says. She has done smaller studies and obtained similar results. "At least until they enter school, these kids don't seem to be different from children in two-parent families."

Weinraub says it's not clear whether this remains the case as children get older. "Something may happen to these kids after they enter school," she says. "But it's dangerous to conclude that they are automatically at risk."

Author: Robert Adler http://www.newscientist.com

A Moral Bonfire

David Cameron, Ed Miliband and the entire British political class came together yesterday to denounce the rioters. They were of course right to say that the actions of these looters, arsonists and muggers were abhorrent and criminal, and that the police should be given more support.

But there was also something very phony and hypocritical about all the shock and outrage expressed in parliament. MPs spoke about the week’s dreadful events as if they were nothing to do with them.

by Peter Oborne, The Telegraph 12th August 2011

I cannot accept that this is the case. Indeed, I believe that the criminality in our streets cannot be dissociated from the moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society. The last two decades have seen a terrifying decline in standards among the British governing elite. It has become acceptable for our politicians to lie and to cheat. An almost universal culture of selfishness and greed has grown up.

It is not just the feral youth of Tottenham who have forgotten they have duties as well as rights. So have the feral rich of Chelsea and Kensington. A few years ago, my wife and I went to a dinner party in a large house in west London. A security guard prowled along the street outside, and there was much talk of the “north-south divide”, which I took literally for a while until I realised that my hosts were facetiously referring to the difference between those who lived north and south of Kensington High Street.

Most of the people in this very expensive street were every bit as deracinated and cut off from the rest of Britain as the young, unemployed men and women who have caused such terrible damage over the last few days. For them, the repellent Financial Times magazine How to Spend It is a bible. I’d guess that few of them bother to pay British tax if they can avoid it, and that fewer still feel the sense of obligation to society that only a few decades ago came naturally to the wealthy and better off.

Yet we celebrate people who live empty lives like this. A few weeks ago, I noticed an item in a newspaper saying that the business tycoon Sir Richard Branson was thinking of moving his headquarters to Switzerland. This move was represented as a potential blow to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, because it meant less tax revenue.

I couldn’t help thinking that in a sane and decent world such a move would be a blow to Sir Richard, not the Chancellor. People would note that a prominent and wealthy businessman was avoiding British tax and think less of him. Instead, he has a knighthood and is widely feted. The same is true of the brilliant retailer Sir Philip Green. Sir Philip’s businesses could never survive but for Britain’s famous social and political stability, our transport system to shift his goods and our schools to educate his workers.

Yet Sir Philip, who a few years ago sent an extraordinary £1 billion dividend offshore, seems to have little intention of paying for much of this. Why does nobody get angry or hold him culpable? I know that he employs expensive tax lawyers and that everything he does is legal, but he surely faces ethical and moral questions just as much as does a young thug who breaks into one of Sir Philip’s shops and steals from it?

Our politicians – standing sanctimoniously on their hind legs in the Commons yesterday – are just as bad. They have shown themselves prepared to ignore common decency and, in some cases, to break the law. David Cameron is happy to have some of the worst offenders in his Cabinet. Take the example of Francis Maude, who is charged with tackling public sector waste – which trade unions say is a euphemism for waging war on low‑paid workers. Yet Mr Maude made tens of thousands of pounds by breaching the spirit, though not the law, surrounding MPs’ allowances.

A great deal has been made over the past few days of the greed of the rioters for consumer goods, not least by Rotherham MP Denis MacShane who accurately remarked, “What the looters wanted was for a few minutes to enter the world of Sloane Street consumption.” This from a man who notoriously claimed £5,900 for eight laptops. Of course, as an MP he obtained these laptops legally through his expenses.

Yesterday, the veteran Labour MP Gerald Kaufman asked the Prime Minister to consider how these rioters can be “reclaimed” by society. Yes, this is indeed the same Gerald Kaufman who submitted a claim for three months’ expenses totalling £14,301.60, which included £8,865 for a Bang & Olufsen television.

Or take the Salford MP Hazel Blears, who has been loudly calling for draconian action against the looters. I find it very hard to make any kind of ethical distinction between Blears’s expense cheating and tax avoidance, and the straight robbery carried out by the looters.

The Prime Minister showed no sign that he understood that something stank about yesterday’s Commons debate. He spoke of morality, but only as something which applies to the very poor: “We will restore a stronger sense of morality and responsibility – in every town, in every street and in every estate.” He appeared not to grasp that this should apply to the rich and powerful as well.

The tragic truth is that Mr Cameron is himself guilty of failing this test. It is scarcely six weeks since he jauntily turned up at the News International summer party, even though the media group was at the time subject to not one but two police investigations. Even more notoriously, he awarded a senior Downing Street job to the former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, even though he knew at the time that Coulson had resigned after criminal acts were committed under his editorship. The Prime Minister excused his wretched judgment by proclaiming that “everybody deserves a second chance”. It was very telling yesterday that he did not talk of second chances as he pledged exemplary punishment for the rioters and looters.

These double standards from Downing Street are symptomatic of widespread double standards at the very top of our society. It should be stressed that most people (including, I know, Telegraph readers) continue to believe in honesty, decency, hard work, and putting back into society at least as much as they take out.

But there are those who do not. Certainly, the so-called feral youth seem oblivious to decency and morality. But so are the venal rich and powerful – too many of our bankers, footballers, wealthy businessmen and politicians.

Of course, most of them are smart and wealthy enough to make sure that they obey the law. That cannot be said of the sad young men and women, without hope or aspiration, who have caused such mayhem and chaos over the past few days. But the rioters have this defence: they are just following the example set by senior and respected figures in society. Let’s bear in mind that many of the youths in our inner cities have never been trained in decent values. All they have ever known is barbarism. Our politicians and bankers, in sharp contrast, tend to have been to good schools and universities and to have been given every opportunity in life.

Something has gone horribly wrong in Britain. If we are ever to confront the problems which have been exposed in the past week, it is essential to bear in mind that they do not only exist in inner-city housing estates.

The culture of greed and impunity we are witnessing on our TV screens stretches right up into corporate boardrooms and the Cabinet. It embraces the police and large parts of our media. It is not just its damaged youth, but Britain itself that needs a moral reformation.

Our view? Capitalism isn't working.

Next to nothing?

One wonders what has so disaffected the youth of today that leads them to view high street stores with such contempt as seen in recent days.

Then we discover that Next, in Blackpool, in common with other branches around the country are offering the youth opportunities such as Apprentice Stockroom Assistants (Delivery/Stockroom Department). These are temporary positions, and are limited to 24 part-time hours a week. Fine so far as it goes. However, it is scandolous that this multi-million pound company is paying a mere £2.50 an hour to these young people, clearly using this scheme to exploit the youth as a source of cheap labour.

It seems we are sowing what we reap.

HP to offshore DWP jobs

Workers employed on a sensitive government IT contract have begun industrial action over concerns that their jobs could be shifted to India.

Computer giant Hewlett Packard (HP), which has the contract to maintain the records of millions of people for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), has begun consulting over its plans to relocate up to 200 jobs overseas.

No final decision has been made as the plans are subject to approval by the DWP and the Cabinet Office for security reasons.

The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union urged the government to intervene to prevent the jobs being moved abroad.

PCS members employed by HP on the government contract voted almost unanimously for action short of a strike over concerns for their jobs and the security of the information.

The industrial action means staff will refuse to co-operate with the process of exporting their work from sites in Newcastle, Lytham and Sheffield to Bangalore.

The union said that if the move goes ahead it could set a precedent as contracts do not forbid the transfer of government IT work overseas.

Gold plated pensions?

The top company bosses retiring on £175,000 a year... but the typical worker gets just £6,000

Bosses of Britain’s top companies look forward to an average pension of £175,000 a year, while the average private sector worker will have to struggle by on less than £6,000.

A report has revealed the shocking scale of the pension divide in which company chiefs are retiring on the types of sums their employees can only dream of.

It showed the average FTSE 100 director has amassed a pension nest-egg worth £3.6million.

And, as if these giant sums were not enough, almost a third of executives are supplemented with additional cash payments averaging £161,000 – because they have filled their pension pots beyond the maximum allowed under generous tax relief rules.

Deborah Hargreaves, chairman of the High Pay Commission, accused bosses of hypocrisy for demanding that ordinary workers suffer cuts to their pension provision while laying up millions to finance a life of luxury in retirement for themselves.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2023518/The-company-bosses-retiring-175-000-year--typical-worker-gets-just-6-000.html#ixzz1UQMQij00

NHS among developed world's most efficient health systems, says study

Report in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine finds health service second only to Ireland for cost-effectiveness

The NHS is one of the most cost-effective health systems in the developed world, according to a study (pdf) published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.

The "surprising" findings show the NHS saving more lives for each pound spent as a proportion of national wealth than any other country apart from Ireland over 25 years. Among the 17 countries considered, the United States healthcare system was among the least efficient and effective.

Researchers said that this contradicted assertions by the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, that the NHS needed competition and choice to become more efficient.

"The government proposals to change the NHS are largely based on the idea that the NHS is less efficient and effective than other countries, especially the US," said Professor Colin Pritchard, of Bournemouth University, who analysed a quarter of a century's data from 1980.

"The results question why we need a big set of health reform proposals ... The system works well. Look at the US and you can see where choice and competition gets you. Pretty dismal results."

The study will be a blow for Lansley, who argues that patients should choose between competing hospital services and GPs.

Read more here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/aug/07/nhs-among-most-efficient-health-services