Monday 13 February 2012

Trap, Not Springboard

Clegg should take advice from Miliband on coalition government... Ralph Miliband:

"Social-democratic ministers have generally been able to achieve little in these hybrid formations. Far from presenting a threat to the established order, their main function has been to contain their own parties and and to persuade them to accept the essentially conservative policies which they themselves have sanctioned. For the most part, participation on this basis has been a trap and not a springboard." 1

These words ring true today, particularly with reference to two bills that are ping-ponging their way through parliament; the welfare reform bill (WRB) and health bill. The bills are examples of truly awful legislation, the consequences of which have been poorly thought out or completely disregarded. I will not bore you with details, but the essence of the WRB is an attempt to balance the books by targeting the most vulnerable in society for cuts. The WRB has been widely reported as stopping benefit cheats, which if it was, it would be welcomed. Cutting benefits to disabled children, and declaring cancer patients who are still undergoing chemotherapy, fit for work, is not the same as tackling fraud.

An alternative would be to draft a 'fraud prevention bill'. This would build on the progress of the Labour government in reducing benefit fraud and errors: The bill could be a dual purpose bill addressing both large-scale as well as this small-scale fraud. The bill could close loopholes, tighten up regulation relating to non-domicile status and address tax evasion which is really defrauding the exchequer, or to put it another way, stealing from budgets that should be used to educate the young and heal the sick.

The £26,000 cap is really a smoke screen which lets Tory boy Grant Shapps in the Department of Housing off the hook. The only reason that anyone would ever receive £26,000 in benefits is because there is an abject lack of social housing. This problem has never really been addressed since Thatcher began selling off housing stock 30 years ago. The majority of this £26,000 goes directly into the pockets of private landlords, so who exactly is sponging off the taxpayer?  In the North East of England private landlords now own a large proportion of former council housing stock, collecting rent from the taxpayer in the form of housing benefit. The ironic thing is that it was the taxpayer who paid for the houses to be built in the first place. The council stock is largely better maintined, particularly in terms of energy efficiency with loft insulation and double glazing. Those in private rented 'council houses' are at greater risk of high bills and fuel poverty.

It is difficult to offer an alternative to the health bill; it is toxic.
Giving GPs a greater strategic role was already labour policy and Shadow Health secretary Andy Burnham offered to talk with Tories if they wanted to drop the bill but still pursue the idea of GP commissioning, as it would not require legislation.2 The Health bill is now so unpopular that even some Tories are against it; some backbenchers may even defy the whip and vote against the bill or abstain. (Traditionally you can count on the odd Tory to defy the whip in a big vote; they really have no concept of collective action).

It is the Lib Dems who will push these reforms through. Clegg wants them to go through; he is furious that they might be stopped.3 This shows that he really has turned blue, putting the interests of private health care providers ahead of patients. I suspect that the real reason he wants them to go through is so that he can take credit every for every amendment made to this shoddy, needless legislation, painting himself as the moderator of the Nasty Conservative Party.

It is a trap, Nick. Destroying the NHS is the road to electoral ruin, and if Lib Dems are keen to play a part in this privatisation of the NHS then they deserve the consequences that will follow at the ballot box. Miliband was right. Participation in a Conservative led coalition was a trap 1969 and remains a trap today.

Grass roots Lib Dems have now voted not to bother having a vote that could the Health bill at their conference in Gateshead. These are normal activists who must agree with Clegg that the changes have to go through. Many of these activists are sitting or prospective local Councillors. You would have thought they would have got a clear message from the public on this one. They may hear the message more clearly in terms of votes in the next local governement elections.


1. From 'The State in Capitalist Society' R. Miliband 1969
2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17002166
3. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/47bcc354-53f8-11e1-bacb-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1mDU8GUG8

3 comments:

Malcolm Clarke said...

Absolutely right Liam, the Lib Dems stand up and make protests in the chamber but on the whole they walk the lobbies with the Tories and allow their reforms to move into legislation.

My message to voters: check the voting record.

David Lindsay said...

Convinced beyond argument that any public provision can only be for the very poor, the Coalition is preparing, both to kick people out of their council houses if they are deemed to be earning too much, and to withdraw Housing Benefit from anyone with a spare bedroom. So much for getting on. And have a maiden aunt over for the Christmas season? Who do you think you are, and who does she think she is? Has she no telly?

Presumably, David Laws is to be evicted from the house for which he made large, fraudulent withdrawals from the public purse, and David Cameron is to be evicted from the spacious and well-appointed abode that he, too, charged to the community at large despite the fact he had a purely inherited fortune of 30 million pounds even then, before his father had died. It must be at least double that now, and is quite possibly in the hundred million area. Yet we are paying the mortgage on his third house. What's that about?

The sale of council housing compelled the State to make gifts of significant capital assets to people who were thus enabled to enter the property market ahead of private tenants who had saved for their deposits. And, as part of Thatcher's invention of mass benefit dependency, it created the Housing Benefit racket, which is vastly more expensive than the maintenance of a stock of council housing.

Already, under New Labour, the powers that be apparently could not distinguish between the respectable working class and the characters from Shameless. So council and housing association tenants were to lose security of tenure so that Shameless characters could be moved in next door to them, or even in place of them. And now, Conservative-voting landlords, the sort of people who become councillors for that party, are preparing to go bankrupt because of the cuts in Housing Benefit. There could be no more perfect illustration of the fallacy of a private sector independent of State action except to the extent of paying for it.

Nor could the effects of those impending cuts in driving bartenders, waiters, taxi drivers and so forth out of city centres and out of the entire South East be surpassed for illustrating the folly of having a Government composed exclusively of people who believe, if they think about it at all, that such workers and the services that they provide are somehow "just there".

Disability campaigners are now in such despair over the Welfare Reform Bill that some of them are even petitioning for the first refusal of Royal Assent since 1708. But it is only by convention that the Lords obey financial privilege, the same convention being that the Commons invoke it only "sparingly". One House is in flagrant breach of the deal. The other retains the power to reject this Bill outright, officially delaying it for a year, but effectively killing it off. That ought now to happen.

Anonymous said...

I voted and campaigned for the lib dems. How embarrassing is that. Never again, roll on the election, then they'll see how annoyed their core voters are.

Best wishes

Stum