It helps to understand eBay’s motives, Ms. Honeyball, or Why is eBay is fighting for you?

It’s amazing what eBay does these days. Now they even have their own MEP. Well, not quite, but eBay’s “Grassroots Campaign” has won the support of Labour MEP Mary Honeyball.

Writing on Labourlist today, she says:

I wanted to tell Labour supporters about a campaign I am promoting to ensure that goods bought online are freely available at a fair price. Currently, European rules do not adequately support online retailers & customers.

I am very pleased to be part of E-Bay’s drive for greater fairness in online selling. Having gained three quarters of a million signatures on their petition, E-Bay held a breakfast meeting with me as the main speaker yesterday morning to launch their campaign to reduce over-pricing by designer branded goods.

All very worthy you’d think. Our elected politicians uniting with an innovative business to protect consumers?

Not even close.

For some time now eBay has been in litigation on the Continent with LVMH, the luxury goods house. 

LVMH are particularly annoyed about the large numbers of counterfeit products on eBay – which they say eBay are doing too little to deal with, despite profiting from the sales via listing fees and PayPal charges.

eBay, for its part, says that this is just protectionism from LVMH – who have exclusive distribution agreements with retailers in different territories, that these are threatened by online competition, and that the agreement carve up territory and keep prices artificially high.

The saga has been something lawyers and retailers (or retail lawyers like me) have been following with interest for a while, as it raises some interesting intellectual property and competition issues.

What it certainly isn’t is some David versus Goliath fight in which eBay are standing up for the rights of consumers. They are standing up for their right to profit from sales (and resales) of LVMH’s products by eBay sellers. They rightly recognise that luxury goods which are much cheaper online will drive people to shop with online outlets – and eBay is by far the largest and best known.

eBay would like European Law changed so that they have greater protection from rights owners such as LVMH, and also so that LVMH cannot enter into the kind of exclusive distribution agreements that they have traditionally used.

It is disappointing in the extreme that Mary Honeyball does not mention this relevant history when extolling the virtues of eBay’s campaign. She may be wholly unaware of this (although this would in itself be a concern) but if she knows why eBay is pushing the campaign it is surely incumbent upon her to make these motivations clear to people whose support she is seeking to garner for that campaign.

Mary Honeyball concludes by saying this:

One of the reasons, albeit not the most important one, I am so keen to support E-Bay and on-line selling is my own personal experience.  E-Bay saved my bacon when I needed a fancy hat for a wedding.  Not being prepared to spend lots of money on an item I would more than likely only wear once, I turned to E-Bay where I found the very thing which was subsequently delivered the next day.  In fact, I liked the hat so much that it’s now had more than the expected one outing.

The E-Bay campaign has only just begun.  We now need to lobby the European Commission to change the rules.  I will continue to blog as the story unfolds.

(“This is an eBay Promotional Broadcast by the Labour Party”. Ed.)

We interfere with things like competition law and intellectual property rights at our peril, especially when we are asked to do so by vested interests. If someone asks for a change in the law, we should always seek to understand what they will get out of it.

It also bears saying that this campaign is a campaign against physical shops, and therefore in essence against the jobs they provide (the costs of which form part of the higher price paid offline). High street retail creates far more jobs than distance selling, and it is therefore odd that a Labour MEP should be supporting a campaign that necessarily seeks to reduce offline retail and increase online retail. Moreover, you cannot use a German worker to run a shop in London in quite the same way you can use German labour to operate a postal distribution hub in Germany.

This seems an odd position for a Labour MEP to be in, especially a Labour MEP representing London – an area with a significant number of the type of stores that eBay would like to undercut. I wonder how many of the relatively low-paid shop assistants whose jobs are at issue would be pleased with their MEPs efforts?

This post expands on a comment made on LabourList to Mary Honeyball’s original post.

No closed shop for GP surgeries

The government has apparently finally come around to the idea of abolishing the boundaries for GP surgeries.

We’ll have to read the detail of Andy Burnham’s speech to be sure this is for real – and he isn’t simply replacing one type of restriction on using particular surgeries with another.

If it is for real, then it’s about time; for all of their rhetoric about making the “providers” – the word Labour uses when it wants to criticise frontline or unionised staff, without actually mentioning them – more responsive to patient demands, much of what has been described as reform has had apparently unintended consequences (the new GP contract being the best example!) and been of questionable value to patients.

The NHS has historically tried artificial economic incentives – the Internal Market for example – but found that artificial markets are no match for the real thing. By allowing patients to vote with their feet, the NHS creates a real incentive for surgeries to provide better service, and attract and retain the best doctors.

That last is particularly important – many, if not most, patients don’t think of themselves as being with a particular surgery, but with a particular doctor, and that link is broken where accidents of geography prevent them from remaining with that doctor when they move.

There will be difficulties ahead, particularly if local planning laws make it difficult for popular surgeries to expand. It will also be problematic if people choose to register with surgeries near their workplace many miles from their home, and then need home visits or evening or weekend emergency appointments.

Computerised records can solve some of those problems, and you can see a space for “surgeries” with offices in different locations. A popular GP sitting mornings in the suburbs and lunchtimes in the city centre could maintain a large roster of patients and offer them the service and flexibility they need.

The real test of the Department of Health’s mettle will come when under-subscribed surgeries close. At that stage they must hold the line – and remind the public that this is the result of their choices, not government action. 

Some housekeeping for Baroness Scotland, or Whose responsibility is it to check?

So it turns out that Baroness Scotland, the Attorney General, has been employing an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper.

The story originally ran in the Daily Mail – who took no small pleasure in it – but even the Guardian couldn’t avoid covering it, although they kept it rather more factual.

It’s not quite as bad as it might be, of course -  Loloahi Tapui was an overstayer on a student visa, not an illegal entrant – but that’s going to be scant comfort for her (she’s been summarily dismissed) or the embarrassed government minister.

There remain legitimate questions to asked about Baroness Scotland’s conduct: what documents was she shown by Ms. Tapui, and what checks did she do?

The Government decided several years ago that it would be a good idea to create a whole series of offences around employment of illegal immigrats. They introduced a set of harsh civil penalties – read: fines – of up to £10,000 per worker, and passed the burden for checking documents to the employer (this is one of those rare examples of a situation ID cards really would make easier!).

The statutory Code of Practice on Civil Penalties for Employers gives a good flavour – if Baroness Scotland failed to inspect, check, and take copies of documents giving proof of entitlement to work before she employed her housekeeper this could turn out to be the most expensive cleaning she’s ever had done. 

And it gets worse for the Attorney General, since employers of individuals with time limited papers (such as the student visa that Tapui was in the UK on) are supposed to repeat those checks at regular points, and to note and track expiry dates.

The UK Border Agency is pretty hot on this sort of thing – it is basically their reason for being. They do dramatic things like dawn raids, and march off van loads of migrant workers found working illegally. You have to hope they also pluck the low hanging fruit, especially where the employer involved has admitted employing an illegal immigrant in the national press.

There are clearly prima facie grounds for the UKBA to conduct an investigation into the situation, and given the profile and role of the individual involved there has to be a public interest in imposing a penalty if there are found to be any failures to check documents.

It will be interesting to if they do investigate, and what they conclude.

It’ll be even more interesting if they don’t investigate at all.

Think of the Children! or Why liberals must fight the hardest battles most strongly.

I find the frequency with which illiberal positions are supported by personal testimony and anecdote, often as an alternative to argument, puzzling. Personally, I am not at all swayed by testimony from people who have had unpleasant experiences, when they are arguing that the government should step in to prevent such events. They may have had an unpleasant experience that was for them appalling, but justifying general and fundamental changes in civil liberties on the basis that they’d like the government to stop it happening again simply doesn’t wash. The frequency with which this approach is tried, however, suggests that for many people it does work. And that terrifies me.

It is trite, but true: hard cases make bad laws, and there is no worse basis for legislation than people horrified by events saying “Something must be done! This is Something! We must do This!” If we make fundamental changes to our civil liberties in the white heat that comes from the aftermath of such events we risk doing so without realising the implications.

Yet this shrill cry for action, any action, seems also to blind the people crying out for action to the flaws in the schemes and systems they are supporting of. In the case of the Independent Safeguard Authority and its vetting and barring scheme, for example, the strange  exclusion of parents, relatives, and family friends is simply glossed over by its supporters. 

After all, if the registering and monitoring of people who have contact with children will help keep children safe, surely they should support adding everyone who has contact with children to this register? We can monitor them all, stepping in to bar people having contact with any children (including, obviously, their own) if there is cause for concern. Indeed, given that the majority of abuse of children is by members of their own families and friends of the family, surely including parents, relatives and family friends in such a scheme is a perfectly proper and proportionate step?

As a country we have, after all, accepted the principle that you may bar a child, by civil injunction on pain of imprisonment, from wearing a particular hat or walking down a particular street, justifying this on the on the grounds that “anti-social behaviour” will be prevented. We have also accepted the principle that we may do this using low grade evidence and balance of probabilities standards of proof, that could never support a criminal conviction, and justified this on the basis we cannot secure criminal convictions. Why then should we adopt a higher threshold when dealing with the safety of children and vulnerable adults?

The government do not propose such a broad scheme, and it is obvious why – few even of the current vocal supporters of the ISA would stand for it, at least ab initio, and most would move from veherment support to decrying the intrusion into people’s lives, into “the family” (Normally, of course, one would expect such response to be led by the Daily Mail, but the ISA’s vetting and barring scheme is exceptional in that the rubicon of Daily Mail disapproval has already been passed).

Am I trying to extrapolate ad absurdum, to make a point? I don’t think so. I wonder how long it will be before such extension of the ISA’s scheme is proposed. 

If we have learned anything about the way in which civil liberties are corralled, constrained, restricted, and removed in western democracies, it is that matters proceed predictably:

1. An Unfortunate Event occurs.
2. Some cry out to the state “Something must be done!” and “Never again!”. 
3. The state harnesses the “Something must be done” mentality, introducing ‘Modest Proposals’ to do “Something” to ensure that the Unfortunate Event happens “Never again”. 
4. The “Something” fails to stop the Unfortunate Event happening again (this is, of course, inevitable – since risk cannot be eliminated)
5. The same people again cry “Something must be done!”.

Each time around, civil liberties are re-assailed, and each new assault takes place under cover of protecting the public, or vulnerable groups, or A N Other worthy figurehead. 

This last is partly deliberate – an argument framed in terms of protection of those who cannot protect themselves is viscerally harder to argue against, even if logically the argument is weak and flawed. It is all the better when the person making the argument can turn it into an anecdote or a testimony, such that attacking the argument becomes attacking the person. The flaws in the argument are temporarily obscured by the personalising of what should be more reasoned debate.

We also know, to our cost, that even when the systems and restrictions introduced become in whole or in part too obviously broken, they can too easily be hidden behind barriers of secrecy. These, again will be erected in the name of protection, via national security (special immigration courts), child protection (the family courts), or even commercial confidentiality (take your pick from a myriad FOI refusals). 

[Personally I await with interest the first reports (no doubt in the Daily Mail) of social services using ISA decisions to bar individuals from working with children in support of family court applications to take the children of those barred individuals into care. After all, such a finding by an Independent Safeguard Authority must surely merit examination by social services, and would surely carry no little weight when assessing the interests of the child. At that stage I suspect that even the more hardened supporters of this particular scheme (step forward Polly Toynbee) may come to see a little more clearly the place it holds in the totality of the edifice they have constructed in the name of "child protection".]

Make no mistake, this debate about the ISA is nothing less than a pitched battle in a war between two opposed mindsets, the liberal and the authoritarian.

The liberal mindset chooses not to delegate, let alone abdicate, responsibility to the state. With that choice comes some risk, some responsibility, and considerable freedom. Liberals accept that the state cannot protect them, and understand that the attempt to do so would itself rob them of an unacceptable portion of their freedom. 

By contrast, the authoritarian mindset willingly, indeed gladly, abdicates to the state responsibility in exchange for a different kind of freedom, freedom from decision, from responsibility, from worry. To the authoritarian what they lose is a price worth paying (or a thing unvalued) in exchange for the reassurance that the state will keep them safe. To a liberal, that is not freedom, but merely a poor facsimile accepted in exchange for a reassurance that will inevitably prove to be false.

Authoritarians will ask why liberals argue against schemes that are intended to protect, and when asking they will deploy totemic groups – such as children – in the hopes of making it more difficult for liberals to make their case.

But liberals know that civil liberties, once taken by the state, are extremely difficult to win back, and that any concession to those who would infringe those liberties only emboldens them to make further demands. It is for this reason that liberals must fight the hard battles most strongly and win the difficult arguments at all costs. 

We must above all give least quarter to the auth
oritarians when they show they are aware that their arguments will not stand. And we will know these occasions clearly, for the authoritarians will ask us to “Think of the children!”.

This post is an expansion and reworking of my response to a comment on another blog. The blog post in question attempted to argue that the Independent Safeguard Authority and its vetting and barring scheme were “liberal” – on the interesting (in the Sir Humphrey sense) basis that liberalism is about preventing unwanted interference, and so was the scheme (As an aside there’s surely an entire Adam Curtis documentary series to be made about the idea of “authoritarian liberalism”). The commenter related her shock at discovering that someone who was in contact with her children had been arrested and cautioned for possession of indecent images of children. It made me think about the regularity with which arguments from personal anecdote are deployed in support of authoritarian positions, and the way that most infringements of civil liberties are justified by “protection”.

This is the Taxpayers’ Alliance. This is the Taxpayers’ Alliance on drugs.

I’m fairly ambivalent on the Taxpayers’ Alliance. They do some good research, and when they stick to economics and respect the conclusions that it drives their views are fairly sound.

When they stray into social policy, however…

Consider this article from BBC News. Some selected highlights:

A scheme in which heroin is given to addicts in supervised clinics has led to big reductions in the use of street drugs and crime, the BBC has learned.
…
About three-quarters of those given heroin were said to have “substantially” reduced their use of street drugs.
…
The Randomised Injecting Opioid Treatment Trial (RIOTT) programme – which is funded by a number of agencies, including the Department of Health – began in 2005. It involved 127 chronic heroin addicts for whom conventional types of treatment had failed.
…
According to researchers, more than half of the heroin injecting group were said to be “largely abstinent” and one-in-five did not use street heroin at all. Before they began the programme, the addicts in the heroin injecting group were spending more than £300 a week on street drugs. After six months, this had reduced to an average of £50 a week. There was also a big drop in the number of offences addicts admitted committing to obtain money to feed their habit.

In summary then, offering controlled dosages of heroin to addicts for whom treatment has failed dramatically cuts both their use of “street drugs” and the level of crime they are responsible for.

This would be a good thing, no?

Not if you’re the Taxpayers’ Alliance.

Taking part in the Daily Mail’s slightly more hysterical reporting of the same story, the Taxpayers’ Alliance helpfully provided a quotes:

Susie Squire, Political Director at the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘Many taxpayers will have a massive problem paying for addicts’ heroin, particularly at a time when the NHS is unable to provide them with doctor’s appointments or life-saving cancer drugs. This approach also reflects a poverty of ambition, with the Government merely accepting hard drug use and instead of trying to crack down and stamp it out, giving out lethal drugs for free.’

I suspect that if you asked “Do you want the government to pay for heroin for junkies, or a new hip for grandma?” you will probably get the response Susie Squires anticipates. You would however be offering a false dichotomy and in essence lying to the public to get the answer you wanted.

In what fantasy land is heroin (a plant by-product, if a highly controlled one) more expensive than cancer drugs (patented chemical compounds sold for significant profit by the IP owners)?

And why has the TPA – ostensibly dedicated to reducing the burden of taxation – just ignored the potential savings from reduced crime and reduced health care costs that this approach offers? 

Let’s be honest; they are a right wing pressure group whose economic focus is subservient to a strong social conservativism – they’re conservatives with a small c, not a large one – and who aren’t about to allow their espoused purpose to lead them into endorsing a programme that conflicts with that social conservatism.

After all, anyone who was seriously interested in reducing the cost to taxpayers would be pushing legalisation (and taxation along the lines of alcohol and tobacco).

On a side note, I loved the quote from Mary Brett, UK representative of “Europe Against Drugs” (a group which can most accurately be described as ‘pro-prohibition’): 

‘Most drug addicts want to give up, and addiction can be cured. We should be trying to help them back to a normal life. But this isn’t even trying to cure them, it’s just giving them their heroin for free. It is defeatism. What are we going to do to help alcoholics? Give them alcohol on prescription?’

Leaving aside the fact this trial dealt specifically people for whom conventional treatment had failed, by this logic we wouldn’t provide nicotine patches on the NHS. They aren’t a cure, but simply a mechanism to remove the most harmful effects of cigarettes whilst an individual tries through their own will-power to quit smoking. The programme the BBC was reporting is very similar – it removes the most immediate and harmful effects of heroin addiction, which are of course social and criminal, not pharmacological.

I was interested to see from where Mary Brett’s perspective came. Presumably she’s a specialist in the treatment of addiction? Or an economist? Or a psychotherapist or psychiatrist? 

Nope.

She’s a former biology teacher. From Bucks.

[ hat tip to @antonvowl ]

Draft letter to local MPs regarding the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006

This is a draft letter to use when writing to your MP regarding the Independent Safeguard Authority and it’s vetting and barring scheme.

If you can, you should personalise the letter, as this will make it more effect and more likely to get a response.

To find details of your local MP, use WriteToThem.com

Dear [NAME],

I am writing to express my concern about the forthcoming implementation of the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006, and the “vetting and barring scheme” which the Independent Safeguard Authority (“ISA”) will administer.

The Government has recently sought to reassure the public about the effects of this Act, but I am not convinced by what I have heard and read. I believe that the implementation of the Act must be deferred until the vetting and barring scheme it will introduce has been properly considered and important questions about its efficacy and the role of the ISA answered.

The Act was introduced because of public outrage over the failures by the police and other public bodies to share information which might have prevented Ian Huntley from murdering Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002. At the time the Information Commissioner made it clear that this was the fault of the police forces involved, and did not reflect the fact that law had prevented them from sharing information. The new scheme will do nothing to solve this essential problem, because the ISA will still be reliant upon police forces and other bodies providing it with information, and as such a “Soham” could still happen under the new scheme.

I am also seriously concerned about the type of information that the Independent Safeguard Authority intends to use to to make its decisions. In addition to the information provided by the Criminal Records Bureau – which is already used to make checks on people working with children or vulnerable adults – the new scheme will expressly consider informal information about a wide range of behaviour that have been alleged to have occurred. 

The ISA’s own guidance admits that it will use the civil standard – the balance of probabilities – when deciding whether it believe that something happened. Given the long history of false allegations being made against parents and teachers – including allegations made by social workers and medical professional which subsequently proved to be unjustified, or straightforwardly untrue – it is extremely worrying that decisions, which can deny an individual their livelihood or brand them with the stigma of being barred, should be made in this way.

Whilst the barring scheme includes a right of appeal, it places the burden of proof upon the person being barred, and they will have to prove they are not a danger to children or vulnerable adults. This will be difficult, if not impossible, given the low quality of evidence which the ISA may use, abnd the low standard of proof it will apply.

On top of these problems with the information itself, the ISA takes no responsibility for ensuring that the information it provides is correct for a particular person. It places responsibility for accuracy of criminal records on the Criminal Records Bureau, despite the fact that in the twelve months to March 2009 the CRB made more than 1,500 mistakes when matching individuals to their criminal records. This is bad enough when dealing with criminal records – which involve criminal standards of proof – but, when combined with the low standards of evidence and proof to be used by the ISA, this is an accident waiting to happen.

I strongly believe that the Government has failed to answer the questions which have been raised about the effect of the vetting and barring scheme upon the willingness of individual adults to volunteer to work with children. At a time when rising youth violence and crime makes it vital that children are offered the opportunity to take part in organised activities, this scheme will make many adults think twice about becoming involved. The Government has only looked at the financial implications – by waiving the fee for unpaid volunteers – and failed to properly address the way in which individuals will respond when confronted with the need to be vetted and monitored by the ISA, simply in order to volunteer their time.

Martin Narey, the Chief Executive of Barnardo’s said recently that he believed that if the scheme prevented “…just one one child ending up a victim of a paedophile then it will be worth it.” The price that Mr. Narey is apparently willing to pay is the potential loss of tens of thousands of willing adult volunteers, and the blighting of the lives of millions of children who will lose the opportunities that those volunteers would otherwise have supported. I believe a balance must be struck between the concern to protect children from the appalling, but thankfully rare, instances of child sex abuse, and the detrimental effects which this draconian legislation may have.

Finally, I believe that the Act is designed to artificially reassure the public, without actually offering a real safeguard for children or vulnerable adults. Most child victims of sexual abuse suffer at the hands of someone within their family, or a friend of the family. Despite this, the Act specifically excludes from its scope adults interacting with a child in the context of a family relationship or a friendship with the parent or guardian of the child involved. 

The Government has gone even further, and created an exception to the provisions on fostering children, which would allow a local council to place a child in foster care with a member of their family who is barred from working with children. This exception in particular, and the general exception for family members and family friends, makes a mockery of the Government’s claim that this Act will protect children. At best, it will have only a very limited protective effect.

The intention behind the Act may well be to keep children and vulnerable adults safe from sexual or physical abuse, but I believe that it will both fail to achieve this and at the same time have serious unintended consequences which will adversely affect millions of children and adults in the UK.

I hope that you will read this letter, and choose to support the growing calls for a rethink of the vetting and barring scheme operated by the Independent Safeguard Authority. You could put questions about this matter to the minister responsible for this Act, Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, and I hope you will sign the Downing Street petition at [URL] and publicly support the campaign.

Yours sincerely,

[NAME]

Kite Flying: Part 2, or Make sure the supporters in the media get the memo.

I blogged earlier about the report in today’s Observer that the Government is actively considering cutting universal benefits.

It seems the memo didn’t reach all the left wing columnists, as today’s Andrew Rawnsley column in the same paper is more in line with Kerry McCarthy’s “Kite-flying” comments yesterday.

Rawnsley’s principal argument is that the Labour party can still persevere because it has a  story to tell which people want to hear, and it unlike the Conservatives is not wedded to cuts. 

He concludes by saying:

Labour still has a story to tell that it took measures that prevented a recession from turning into a depression and their opponents would have done the opposite. … The Conservatives remain outside the international consensus when they argue for immediate and deep cuts to public spending. … While David Cameron and George Osborne remain shy of detailing where their axe would fall, some of their fellow travellers have become emboldened to be harshly specific. The Institute of Directors and TaxPayers’ Alliance have just produced a shopping list of cuts for a Tory government, which include the abolition of all Sure Start centres, the end of child benefit and the withdrawal of free travel for pensioners.

[My emphasis]

Unfortunately, today’s Observer demonstrates that the Labour Government itself – and not merely ‘fellow travellers’ – are well ahead of the Conservatives on this!

Kite Flying, or Does Labour believe in universal benefits?

Yesterday this article in the Guardian prompted the Government’s ‘Twitter Czar’ Kerry McCarthy to say that the Tax Payers Alliance and Institute of Directors was “Kite-flying for the Tories“.

The article focused on a report by TPA and IoD which suggested measures to cut government spending – including axing SureStart and freezing the state pension and public sector salaries. It also specifically proposed axing Child Benefit. 

[Get the full Tax Payers Alliance / Institute of Directors report here.]

This exchange followed on Twitter:

MTPT: @KerryMP Agree or disagree with the proposals? I can’t support pensions freeze, but don’t see why gen. child benefit shouldn’t be removed.

KerryMP: @MTPT So you want to reduce household income of those on low-moderate pay struggling to bring up kids and make ends meet?

MTPT: @KerryMP Bluntly, yes; as an alternative to pensioners on far lower incomes or cutting education. Can’t please everyone – been tried, failed

[As an aside - I don't support "universal benefits" (everyone gets the same, irrespective of need) as it fundamentally goes against the supposed safety net function of the benefit system. Pensions are different; whilst my generation may now know the truth, today's pensioners paid their NI contributions in good faith, expecting that they were saving for their futures. It's bad enough that the state has been lying to them about that for almost a century, without compounding it by taking money from them to pay child benefit!]

This morning, The Observer carried a report which suggests that the Government is giving serious consideration to proposals in line with many of the TPA/IoD proposals, and in effect is ahead of the Conservative and Liberal Democrats in that regard. 

Under the headline “Labour set to target middle class benefits”, a ‘senior Cabinet aide’ and ‘senior government aide’ (that’ll be a couple of PPSs or SpAds presumably) plus a ‘former Cabinet minister’ are either trailing government policy, or flying one of those kites Kerry McCarthy thought the TPA and IoD were playing with.

It is particularly telling that where the Guardian’s piece tried to argue the TPA and the IoD were influential in the Conservative party, but had to acknowledge the Conservative party had not endorsed any of the recommendations, the Observer piece this morning quotes unnamed Labour party figures, who explicitly endorse measures similar to those proposed by the TPA/IoD report.

Some of the highlights from the Observer piece:

Another senior government aide said while debate was only beginning, there were questions over some payments, particularly to the elderly: “I personally think we have got to look at universal benefits. It is unsustainable.”

…

“I think there are some things to be looked at hard,” said one former cabinet minister. “I’ve just been sent my claim form for a winter warmer fuel payment – do I really need that? A bus pass? No National Insurance contributions after 60 to 65 no matter what you are earning? Free TV licences?”

Most telling, however, is this comment, from the ‘senior Cabinet aide’:

Asked whether that might trigger a rethink of universal benefits such as the “winter warmer” fuel payment worth up to £400 and free TV licences for the over-80s, the aide added: “That’s a good example. We have got to make a choice on that.

“When we are on 35% in the polls, we can go after southern England: our problem now is not the swath of people who have left us for the Tories, it’s the people going to the BNP and the Greens and the Liberals.”

Pure politicking, and as Labour’s poll numbers fail to improve it can only get worse. Interestingly, however, a decision by Labour to abandon the argument on universal benefits will clear the way for the Tories and Lib Dems to propose more fundamental changes, and the Tories at least seem to be thinking about this in economic, rather than simply political, terms. Philip Hammond – the only person quoted by name in the piece – said this:

“It’s superficially attractive thinking about means testing benefits that go to people who apparently don’t need them, but once you start introducing means testing you get perverse incentives.”

Different parties will suffer in different ways and with different constituencies as this proceeds, but by allowing Labour to make the running on the question of universality the Tories and Lib Dems can look for much more in terms of changes (or cuts).

There’s no price too high for safeguarding our children, or You know your policy is wrong when…

As a general rule, the Daily Mail sits somewhere north of Adolf Hitler on the Political Compass, exhibiting an appalling authoritarian streak. As a corrollary of that general rule, if the Daily Mail thinks you have gone too far, you have gone far too far. Yet the Daily Mail is squarely among those decrying the implementation of the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006.

That Act establishes procedures for monitoring people carrying out “prescribed activities” in connection with children and vulnerable adults, and procedures for barring certain people from doing so. The problem is that this scheme – like so much New Labour legislation – involves a redundant layering on top of existing safeguards, causes an exponential expansion of the number of people and types of activities involved, and is fundamentally and blatantly flawed.

The driver behind the Act was the murder of two school children by the caretaker of their school, Ian Huntley. After the event, question were rightly asked about how Huntley, an individual “known to police”, specifically to Humberside Police, in connection with a number of alleged sexual offences. The case exposed serious weaknesses in the ways police forces shared information, and also problems – largely relating to data protection, or more accurately the way it was interpreted by the police – with the ways police forces provided information to other interested parties, such as schools.

There was of course already a body which existed to provide such safeguards – the Criminal Records Bureau. Any person applying for certain types of role (including teachers) had to pass an enhanced criminal records check. Yet in the case of Ian Huntley no adverse information had come up.

You might assume the solution was to simply change the CRB system, but not if you are a New Labour government enamoured of gestures.

The government’s solution was to create the Independent Safeguard Authority, and to require any person engaged in specified activities to be vetted. The devil, as ever, is in the detail.

Here’s a list of “regulated activities” in connection with children:

(a) any form of teaching, training or instruction of children, unless the teaching, training or instruction is merely incidental to teaching, training or instruction of persons who are not children;
(b) any form of care for or supervision of children, unless the care or supervision is merely incidental to care for or supervision of persons who are not children;
(c) any form of advice or guidance provided wholly or mainly for children, if the advice or guidance relates to their physical, emotional or educational well-being;
(d) any form of treatment or therapy provided for a child;
(e) moderating a public electronic interactive communication service which is likely to be used wholly or mainly by children;
(f) driving a vehicle which is being used only for the purpose of conveying children and any person supervising or caring for the children pursuant to arrangements made in prescribed circumstances.

Much of the media attention to date has focused on the fact that any parent taking part in an organised scheme to provide transport – taking the primary school’s football team to a match for example – is likely to fall within the requirement of the act.

The reality is much more draconian. Point (b) – any form or care or supervision for children – covers any situation in which one adult temporarily looks after another’s children. Moreover, because the act is concerned with periodicity (how frequently an activity takes place) it catches a range of activities which do not happen often, but do happen regularly.

The Act will cover informal babysitting, people giving lifts to school, just about every type of voluntary activity involving children, and every Butlin’s Redcoat.

No doubt to prevent the most absurd consequences of this Act – grandparents hosting their grandchildren over night once having to register for monitoring – there is a saving provision.

58 Family and personal relationships

(1) This Act does not apply to any activity which is carried out in the course of a family relationship.
(2) This Act does not apply to any activity which is carried out–

(a) in the course of a personal relationship, and
(b) for no commercial consideration.

(3) A family relationship includes a relationship between two persons who–

(a) live in the same household, and
(b) treat each other as though they were members of the same family.

(4) A personal relationship is a relationship between or among friends.
(5) A friend of a person (A) includes a person who is a friend of a member of A’s family.
(6) The Secretary of State may by order provide that an activity carried out in specified circumstances either is or is not–

(a) carried out in the course of a family relationship;
(b) carried out in the course of a personal relationship.

This saving provision – saving in the sense of saving the Government’s blushes – in fact turns the act into a truly absurd gesture. The vast majority of physical and sexual abuse of children is not committed by strangers, or people in internet chatrooms, or even school caretakers. It is committed by family members and friends. Yet those family members and friends are exempted from monitoring by the Independent Safeguard Authority.

And even with this saving-the-blushes provision, it has been estimated that 25% of the adult population may theoretically be required to register and be monitored. The reality is most will never even consider the possibility, and it will be interesting to see whether the police give any priority to prosecuting technica
l breaches of the Act. I suspect a wave of cautions is more likely.

As with so many things the current government has done, this is a wonderful example of hysterical politicians saying “Something MUST be done! This is SOMETHING! We must do THIS!”

George Orwell – who would surely have died of more amused hysteria if confronted with some of today’s politics – famously noted that the names used by governments often invert the truth. The Independent Safeguard Authority is not in the league of the Ministry of Love, since whilst it is not providing a safeguard, it is excessively authoritarian, but it does fit nicely into an Orwellian view of government, in which everyone is monitored, watched, observed, and controlled.

Somebody needs to tell the Broon Eminence that 1984 wasn’t an instructional manual.

Gender in sport, or Is the IAAF in a spot of trouble?

It’s being widely reported that the IAAF’s testing has concluded that South African athlete Caster Semenya is a hermaphrodite (to be precise, a male psuedohermaphrodite). Whilst the IAAF is urging caution (read: trying to put off dealing with it) there’s a more interesting question to be asked.

So what if she is?

The IAAF has a policy on gender verification, significantly influenced by the IOC’s ‘Statement of the Stockholm Consensus on sex reassignment in sports’. That’s where the problem starts, because the emphasis of that statement is upon dealing with situations where people who change sex (i.e. alter their physical sexual characteristics to match their psychological gender) want to compete. The IAAF document deals with cheating (deliberately mis-declaring gender) and with sex reassignment, but not situations in which the athlete themselves is unaware that there is any ‘issue’.

In fact, the IAAF doesn’t appear to define either gender anywhere in its rules and regulations, even – bizarrely – in that policy on gender verification. That does lists out a number of “conditions that should be allowed” – on the basis that these confer no advantage – but has no corresponding list of conditions not allowed.

(I’d be interested to know whether Jake the Peg had a “condition that should be allowed”.)

Appendix 13 to the IAAF’s medical manual (Process for the Management of Gender-Related Issues - last page) provides no mechanism for final determination. It appears to assume the athlete will simply accept the IAAF advice, including (chillingly) advice:

“…as to the need to “withdraw” from competition until the problem is definitely resolved through appropriate medical and surgical measures.”

In other words, get out, and stay out until you’ve had the offending bits excised (which personally I think is entirely in keeping with the underlying philosophy of international organised competitive sport and its various unpleasant governing bodies).

What happens if an athlete refuses? I can see the Court of Arbitration for Sport being delighted to find itself asked to stand in for the International Court of Justice (or perhaps more aptly the European Court of Human Rights – as the IAAF is headquartered in Monaco – or the African Court on Human and People’s Rights). And what happens when the CAS decides in favour of the IAAF, and the athlete takes the matter to one of the international human rights courts?

As with Oscar Pistorius, the IAAF failed to anticipate a situation which should have been blindingly obvious, but unlike that case they have no safety net to fall back on. Caster Semenya is not using artifical aids or enhancements, nor drugs of any kind.

I’m sure the IOC and IAAF thought they were being compassionate and progressive when they dropped the chromosonal definition of gender, but by retaining sex classification, and abandoning the only objective – if fundamentally flawed – method of classifying individuals by sex, they’ve opened the door to a glorious legal mess.

If there’s benefit to be had from this, perhaps it’s that this might make people reading the story question their preconceptions of sex and gender (and perhaps even recognise that the two are not synonymous). Somehow I doubt the runner at the centre of it will get any kind of happy ending, and unlike Oscar Pistorius it would probably mean the end of her career.