AUSTERITY DRIVE COULD LEAD TO WELFARE STATE'S COLLAPSE

This letter is published in today's Leicester Mercury:

Austerity drive could lead to welfare state collapse

Under the Government's austerity programme, welfare benefits have begun to be hit across the board, especially since the introduction of the recently-announced changes.

The cuts which are being arbitrarily applied will become progressively deeper as time goes by.

The heydays of Britain's economic prosperity are now receding into history and it is unlikely that we shall regain the bygone peaks of our strength in the foreseeable future. After periods of intense activity and prosperity, nations enter into a phase of fatigue, and we in Britain are now experiencing this phenomenon, leading to our decline. Britain's much-lauded welfare state, which came into place after the end of the Second World War, is now just over 67 years old and history tells us that having become weak already, it could enter a state of collapse in a few years and then unravel altogether.

What we have to remind ourselves is that our highly successful welfare state is not something that is unique in the history of the world, although the perception is that we were the pioneers in introducing such a programme.

In the 10th century in Baghdad under Muslim rule, there was a highly developed and very successful welfare state in place which provided free education at all levels, free medical treatment including hospitalisation, care for the elderly, and many other benefits that are the attributes of a modern welfare state.

This model after a very successful period came to an end because the state was no longer able to fund it.

Our situation in Britain is now somewhat similar with the added burden of the massive abuse of the system through the laxity of our rules and the unscrupulous behaviour of thousands of claimants.

In addition, the Government is now set on a path of increasing privatisation of all services which will inevitably result in a poorer and less efficient levels of service.

All the service sectors are now going through a metamorphosis which will invariably change the face of Britain.

Already there is significant food poverty in the country which is being catered for by more than 200 food banks run by charity organisations.

Coincidentally, in this era of food poverty, the contribution of the Sikh community is proving very helpful. Many Sikh temples run daily open kitchens and distribute free food to all, irrespective of their caste, creed or colour.

The public outcry against the dwindling benefits and services face the juggernaut of the coalition Government which is determined to push through the changes at any cost.

We are indeed in a sorry state of affairs and no alternative seems to be on the horizon.

Manzoor Moghal, Leicester

WELFARE SHAKE-UP IS FUELLING BAD FEELING

This letter appears in today's Leicester Mercury:

Welfare shake-up is fuelling bad feeling

I am more and more worried about the racism in society today.

A lot of talk on social network sites about the Government's welfare reforms, and their impact on people in the city, contains bad feeling towards immigrants and their families.

I have heard people talking about throwing immigrants on to the streets and denying them help and assistance. This is worrying.

Surely, the Government must be aware of the amount of bad feeling in the country created by its reforms?

These kinds of situations can blow up on the street of our cities.

As for the situation concerning stateless immigrant children dumped on our streets by parents who believe we will not let children starve – don't you believe it. There are thousands of children starving in Britain.

I don't know what the answer is, but I don't think welfare reform is the way to go.

I can only see that hard-working, low-paid families are being put under stress yet again, creating tensions in our communities.

Concerned citizen, address supplied

HUMAN RIGHTS "POLICE" MUST GO

This article appears on the front page of today's Daily Express:

Human Rights "police" must go

Sense at last as money-wasting equality watchdog faces the axe

The watchdog set up to combat discrimination in the UK constantly talks Britain down and should be scrapped, a damning new report reveals today.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission peddles flawed philosophies and costs too much, the independent think-tank Civitas says.

And if it were disbanded, not only would taxpayers be saved millions but proper ways could be found to tackle unfairness.

The scathing report by academic Jon Gower Davies says the Commission looks at issues the wrong way. It blames British unfairness for differences in people’s lives that are beyond the Government’s control and too narrowly focuses on “rights” while ignoring responsibilities.

He also criticises pay and perks at the controversial organisation, which has been publicly rebuked by the official spending watchdog over its accounts.

The TaxPayers’ Alliance called on Home Secretary and Equalities Minister Theresa May last October to disband the body.

Last night its director, Matthew Sinclair, said: “The EHRC has mismanaged millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money too many times. It has shown that it can’t be trusted to use its budget properly and should be wound up.

“There are much better uses for the millions of pounds it spends every year than this politicised and wasteful quango.”

Conservative MP Dominic Raab said: “The EHRC is costly and counter-productive. Its fixation on positive discrimination and quotas is socially divisive, anti-meritocratic and out of touch with the aspirations of modern young Britons.”

Fellow Tory MP Priti Patel said: “I am not surprised by this report as I went through the EHRC annual reports and the waste is unbelievable. They add no value.”

The watchdog has continually been in the news for its controversial judgments. In March it was criticised after saying children should be asked from age 11 if they were gay, with records kept of any who were “questioning” their sexuality in case they fell victim to discrimination.

Football fans were furious when the quango backed Bath City club in offering Polish supporters an 80 per cent discount on match tickets.

It also warned full-body security scanners at British airports could be illegal and would be impossible to monitor if there were discrimination in the way passengers were selected for the checks.

The Coalition has already reduced funding for the EHRC, from £70 million in 2007 to £55 million in 2010-11 and plans further cuts to £26 million in 2014-15.

A spokesman for the Government Equalities Office said it would respond shortly to a consultation it launched in March on its plans to reform the body, which could lead to it being closed down. Dr Davies is a former head of Newcastle University’s Religious Studies department and a former Labour councillor in the city. He sets out detailed criticisms in his critique, Small Corroding Words: The Slighting of GreatBritain [by the EHRC].

The EHRC started work in 2007, merging the functions of the previous Equal Opportunities, Disability Rights and Racial Equality Commissions. Launching the report, a Civitas spokesman said: “The EHRC contributes very little to meaningful equality in Britain today and should be abolished.

“Ultimately, abolishing the EHRC itself would not just be a cost-saving exercise. It may well present an opportunity to channel resources into addressing the most pertinent issues holding back equality and fairness.’’

Dr Davies says the Commission’s goal of equality is impractical and it wrongly seeks to divorce outcomes such as health limitations and lifestyles. Focusing on the EHRC’s How Fair IsBritain? review he said: “It makes little attempt to establish what, if anything is responsible for these differences. Instead, when the differences appear to disadvantage some groups, it is assumed to be the result of Britain’s unfairness.”

Dr Davies told the Daily Express that the EHRC never puts the positive side of life in Britain: “Its review is a series of snivels and complaints. When you come from Pakistan or Bangladesh you are moving from not very good places to a much better one. Why not say that loud and clear?”

An EHRC spokeswoman insisted the review was only intended as a “snapshot” of Britain and had not set out to be an exhaustive comparison with other countries. Chief executive Mark Hammond said: “It’s our job to start a debate where we could see better outcomes for people suffering unfair disadvantages.”

In June the National Audit Office refused to sign off the body’s 2009-10 accounts in full after controversies that included spending millions without authorisation.

RED TAPE CHALLENGE: EQUALITY ACT 2010

The Coalition has set up a website called Red Tape Challenge. This has become quite controversial for a number of reasons, that I probably don't need to go into here. The Coalition has put the Equality Act 2010 on this website, asking for comments on whether the Act should be retained in full, amended in part or scrapped altogether.

The seven paragraphs immediately below are copied directly from the Red Tape Challenge website, explaining its purpose. Following that, you'll see the response by Leicester Council of Faiths to the consultation on the Equality Act 2010 as part of the Red Tape Challenge.

Good regulation is a good thing. It protects consumers, employees and the environment, it helps build a more fair society and can even save lives. But over the years, regulations – and the inspections and bureaucracy that go with them – have piled up and up. This has hurt business, doing real damage to our economy. And it’s done harm to our society too. When people are confronted by a raft of regulations whenever they try to volunteer or play a bigger part in their neighbourhood, they begin to think they shouldn’t bother.

If we want to reverse this trend and encourage greater responsibility in our society, then we have got to trust people and give them more freedom to do the right thing. So this government has set a clear aim: to leave office having reduced the overall burden of regulation. With more than 21,000 regulations active in the UK today, this won’t be an easy task – but we’re determined to cut red tape.

To do that, we need your help. You have to deal with these rules day-in, day-out. This website is for you to tell us which regulations are working and which are not; what should be scrapped, what should be saved and what should be simplified.

Every few weeks we’re publishing the regulations affecting one specific sector or industry – from retail to hospitality to construction. And throughout the process we’re publishing the general regulations that cut across all sectors – from rules on equality to those on employment. All these regulations will be open for your comments. So if you own a shop, if you’re running a small business, if you’re a volunteer who is fed up with pointless or outdated rules – get online and tell us.

Once you’ve had your say, Ministers will have three months to work out which regulations they want to keep and why. But here’s the most important bit – the default presumption will be that burdensome regulations will go. If Ministers want to keep them, they have to make a very good case for them to stay.

So get involved. If you’ve been frustrated by red tape for years, tell us about it. Together we can fight back – and free up business and society from the burden of excessive regulation.

This site is designed to promote open discussion of ways in which the aims of existing regulation can be fulfilled in the least burdensome way possible. The presence of a particular regulation or law on this website should not be read as implying any intention on the part of the Government to remove that regulation or law from the statute book. The purpose of this exercise is to open government up to the public.

***

Leicester Council of Faiths supports fully the retention of the Equality Act 2010 in its entirety. We are firmly opposed to the removal or reduction of any of its provisions. Indeed, the act has already been weakened needlessly by (for example) the failure to implement the Socio-Economic Duty and the provision for Dual Discrimination.

The Equality Act 2010 updates, replaces and unifies earlier legislation, built up over the last 40 years and more. If the Act were to be scrapped, what legislation would remain to protect and safeguard the rights of some of the most vulnerable members of society?

We have a special interest in the sections of the Equality Act 2010 related to religion or belief. We re pleased that this Act rewards the considerable effort that has been expended by individuals and organisations over many year to accord religion or belief the equivalent status to the other “protected characteristics”. We also acknowledge and applaud the fact that the Act in its totality recognises, for the first time in legislation, that individuals, families and communities are, more often than not, a bundle of differing characteristics. People for whom religion or belief has a central part in their lives can also be old or young, disabled, male or female (or be involved in gender reassignment), show certain characteristics identifiable with any racial or ethnic community, be gay, lesbian or transsexual. The approach taken in the Equality Act 2010 helps show how these characteristics can be reconciled and harmonised, rather than being seen as competing in a hierarchy of equalities. This aspect of the Act directly links equality with diversity, which is a positive factor in our present and future society.

Leicester Council of Faiths does not accept the assertion that someone is automatically disadvantaged or vulnerable simply because they possess or belong to one of the “protected characteristics”. The nature of these characteristics differs widely. Some have a positive influence on people’s lives, rather than a debilitating one. For example, we would not accept that being born into a tradition characterised by religion or belief, or being a member of a community identified with a religion or belief, is necessarily something to be compensated for by legislation. We are not arguing for special privileges for any group or community determined by religion or belief or any culture or identity associated with or determined by those factors. But we do believe that in twenty-first century Britain, we should be able to build a society where all people can live free of the threat of religion (either its presence or absence) being used as an excuse to discriminate against them.

Hopefully, the placing of the Equality Act 2010 on the Red Tape Challenge website will inspire those who care about equality, diversity, fairness and justice to find their voices and speak up in its favour. Reduction in the protection this Act affords would be a backward step and reprehensible in the extreme – not only for Britain today, but for future generations too.

Read our response on the Red Tape Challenge website. The Council of Faiths is currently sitting at the top of a total of 302 replies on this page.

CONNECTED COMMUNITIES: HEALTHCARE, MARKETS AND SERVICE DELIVERY

At Leicester Adult Education College today, for “Connected Communities: Healthcare, Markets and Service Delivery”. The workshop is being held in the college's Hansom Hall. This part of the college was recently renamed in honour of Joseph Aloysius Hansom (1803–82), the prolific architect who designed buildings that were to become the city's New Walk Museum & Art Gallery and part of Leicester Adult Education College. He's best known for inventing the Hansom Cab, a ubiquitous feature of 19th Century streets in several countries, which made its first journey on Hinckley's Coventry Road in 1835.

The Coalition Government envisages the future NHS as “the largest social enterprise sector in the world”. Part of this vision involves drawing the non-profit or ‘third sector’ into the welfare mix as a provider of care alongside statutory services. This workshop will clarify the nature and role of current and new relationships that will be needed for the “Big Society” to succeed.

This study is concerned with how diverse groups, communities and organisations hope to work and collaborate in order to play a productive and effective role in the fast-changing healthcare and social policy landscape. The aim of today's workshop is to provide a conducive environment and a safe forum for discussion of issues of common concern and so that further research can be conducted. 

The workshop is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), in partnership with other leading UK research councils. It is part of a scoping study and review on the theme, Connected Communities”.

The researchers aim to present the views of participants at workshops and other events in an impartial manner to that future research agendas can be established on sound evidence and practice. The research findings will be written up as academic journal papers, a report to the AHRC and will be presented at seminars and conferences.

We’ve been told beforehand that the research project has the following aims:

• To identify what connections and partnerships work in the sector at present and are likely to work in the future.
• To discover what kinds of new connectivities will be developed in the new markets for healthcare delivery.
• To examine what new sacrifices and new benefits the new environment will bring for patients and local communities. 
  

And that our participation will bring the following benefits to our communities of interest:

• Presentation of leading-edge research into what connections and partnerships matter for effective service delivery.
• Practical group exercises to identify key partnerships that currently work.
• Concrete ideas on next-generation connections and partnerships.
  

I get to display the Council of Faiths pop-up banner at the back of the hall. I was hoping that more of the community-based organisations represented today would want to display themselves in this way, but we’re the only one. We'd like to think that the Council of Faiths would be high up on the team sheet when this kind of event is being organised or this kind of project is being planned. We hope it could be said that the faith communities of Leicester are able to demonstrate a special kind of connectedness that can inform – and be informed by – such an event and project. On the other hand, when we put our minds to it we can also show a kind of disconnectedness – from each other and from society at large – that would probably beat virtually all others hands down!

Attendees are distributed around five tables, six people of mixed background, experience and interest round each one. I’m seated with Chino Cabon from The Race Equality Centre (TREC), Dee Martin from Leicestershire Centre for Integrated Living (LCIL) both of whom I work with on a regular basis in the Regional Equlity and Diversity Partnership (REDP) and Parmjit Basra from Leicester Adult Skills and Learning Service (LASALS) with whom I've worked most notably on Leicester Speaks. Some of us wonder if we’ve been corralled, so that we’re not able to mix our opinions in with others whom we don’t work with on a regular basis – a cynical notion that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, I hope! The facilitator on our table is Prof. Carlo Ruzza, Co-investigator, AHRC Funding Award on "Connected Communities" at the University of Leicester’s Department of Sociology.

The session is opened by Dr Ming Lim, Lead Investigator, AHRC Funding Award on "Connected Communities" at the University of Leicester’s School of Management. She directs us to two icebreaker questions for each table. Firstly: “If you were to describe the NHS as an animal, which animal would you choose and why?” Here are some of the answers that we came up with around our table:

• Gazelle: beautiful to behold, elegant and at home in its natural environment, blissfully unaware that just out of shot, a hungry lion is racing toward it, greedy death in its jaws.
• Ostrich: with its head in the sand, hiding from reality.
• Duck billed platypus: a bit of this and a bit of that, stitched together in an improbable unlikely and unconvincing manner.
• Giraffe: head in the clouds, with only a tenuous relationship with reality.
• Human being: claiming allegiance to one set of principles, but acting in a contrary way.
  

And secondly: “If the NHS’s service delivery was a form of transport, which one would it be and why?” Here are some of the answers that were offered around the tables:

• Edinburgh's ill-fated tram system: they’ve spent most of their budget laying the foundations of a new system and now find that it’s been ruined by having normal traffic drive over the rails. Now they don't think there's enough money left in the coffers either to finish it or to scrap it – which would cost more than the former! (oops – is my Glaswegain schadenfreude showing through?)
• Bus: involves queuing, sometimes not being able to get a seat and it not going all the way to where you want to go (amongst other drawbacks).
• Oil tanker: hard to manoeuvre, hard to change course, disastrous consequences if it sinks or runs aground.
• Bus in rural Africa: no timetable, no fixed route, too many people in too small a vehicle – but still it does the job.
• UFO: some people report having had a close encounter with it, others are sceptical about its very existence (a stage whisper mentioned something about both involving people being subjected to undue amounts of “probing” but it went by unremarked upon).
• Bennie railplane: a revolutionary system that was supposed to be the future of public transport, abandoned by the diversion of resources into war and eventually scrapped.
• Earliest motor car: capable of going much faster than it did, held back by the requirement that it be preceded by a man waving a red flag.

After the icebreakers, we’re invited to take part in group discussions to help further this study. Each table is asked to consider three questions:

Question 1 In 2010, the government released a White paper on proposed reform to the NHS. One of its key proposals is that, for patients thee should be “no decision about me without me.” What is the significance of this focus on patient and user engagement for your organisation? 

Question 2 How do you think you can improve relations with your users and the community you serve in this time of change in the NHS?

Question 3 How have financial pressures over the last couple of years affected your organisation and your level of service delivery? 

I’m just putting the questions themselves in this blog entry, rather than picking and choosing from the wide range of responses. Perhaps you may be able to think of what some of the responses might have been, faithful reader – and to come up with a few of your own.

During the lunch break, members of the research team take the notes from the five tables off into another room, identify some headline themes, topics and comments from them and compile them into some slides that Dr Lim presents to us all after lunch. There’s speed and efficiency for you! So the afternoon session comprises Dr Lim debriefing us all from slides, followed by a “roving mic”session, in which attendees respond to the content of these slides and whether they represent fairly the things we discussed earlier in the day.

After the formal end of the workshop, several attendees stay behind to be interviewed for the study individually or in small groups (anonymously).

This would appear to be an interesting, timely useful project. I hope that Leicester Council of Faiths has the opportunity to be involved in the long term and to contribute positively to its progress and outcomes. There are ways in which it would appear to be complementary to our Faith Communities Health Champions initiative. We'd hope that our involvement in each of these projects would offer some crossover experience and learning, by which could inform the other.

In the photo above: Prof. Carlo Ruzza (left) and Dr Ming Lim (right).