How do we live together and relate to one another?  How can we make sure that everyone has an equal chance to lead a fulfilling and secure life?  What’s the best way to help each other when things go wrong that we cannot cope with alone? These are just some of the challenges facing our society today. They raise wider questions about our relationship with each other and with the government, the role of the welfare state, and the quality of everyday life. In a major new report out today, ‘People, planet, power’ we set out proposals for a new social settlement. It defends and builds on the best of Britain’s welfare state but calls for urgent changes, because there are new risks that threaten our well-being and our future: widening social and economic inequalities; accumulations of power by wealthy elites; and the imminent danger of catastrophic damage to the natural environment. Our new social settlement has three goals:

• Social justice – wellbeing and equality are essential for people to lead a good, fulfilling life, and to participate in society.
• Environmental sustainability – we must live within environmental limits to ensure that the natural resources needed for life are protected and preserved for present and future generations.
• A more equal distribution of power – people should be able to participate in and influence decisions at local and national levels, reducing current inequalities in power.

To achieve these goals, the report sets out new priorities for policy and practice. It highlights issues that tend to be overlooked by policy-makers and points to a new direction of travel. It represents NEF’s contribution to wider debates about what kind of society we want for the future. For a start, we cannot rely on continuing economic growth to produce more and more tax revenues to pay for more and better public services.  Instead, we must shift investment and action upstream to measures that prevent harm, rather than simply cope with the consequences.  We must value and nurture the ‘core economy’ – all those everyday human resources and unpaid activities that underpin the formal economy.  And we must reclaim and strengthen the idea of solidarity: understanding each other’s needs and interests, and sharing responsibility – not just in close-knit groups, but between groups of different kinds and across generations.

Building on this approach, the report outlines proposals for practical change:

Rebalance work and time:

• a new industrial and labour market strategy to achieve high quality and sustainable jobs for all, with a stronger role for employees in decision-making
• ­a gradual move towards shorter and more flexible hours of paid work for all aiming for 30 hours as the new standard working week
• ­an offensive against low pay to achieve decent hourly rates for all
• high quality, affordable childcare for all who need it

Release human resources:

• support and encourage the unvalued and unpaid assets and activities that are found in everyday life beyond the formal economy
• adopt as standard the principles of co-production so that service users and providers work together to meet needs
• ­change the way public services are commissioned to focus on outcomes and co-production

Strengthen social security:

• turn the tide against markets and profit seeking, developing instead more diverse, open and collaborative public services
• ­build a more rounded, inclusive and democratic benefits system

Plan for a sustainable future:

• ­promote eco-social policies – such as active travel and retro-fitting homes – that help to achieve both social justice and environmental sustainability
• ­offset the socially regressive effects of carbon pricing and other pro-environmental policies
• ­ensure that public institutions lead by example
• ­establish new ways of future-proofing policies

Seven decades on from William Beveridge’s ground-breaking report, it is high time for a wider debate about a new social settlement that meets the challenges of the 21st century.

Austerity policies have put communities and organisations across the UK under intense pressure. While the negative social consequences are well documented, less attention has been paid to the range of creative responses to austerity measures coming from local authorities, housing associations, grant-makers and funders, charitable and voluntary sector, campaigners and activists.

While these are difficult times, groups across the UK are finding ways to maintain and even expand their activities. Driven by the aims of promoting wellbeing and tackling inequality, they are taking action to mitigate the effects of austerity, to challenge it, and to imagine alternative responses.

The landscape of responses

In our new report, out today, we draw together a set of existing examples to map out the range of strategies that communities throughout the UK are using to respond to austerity, building a strong knowledge base to support new groups in their ambitions and catalyse further pursuits that aim to achieve social justice.

We show how different groups across the UK have been:

• Adapting by making austerity more liveable or workable.
Innovative local authorities have taken creative approaches to public spending which foster local economies, and have tried to make the most of existing assets rather than selling them off. Examples include public service reforms intended to build upon and mobilise local assets to improve service delivery, as well as the delivery of services that help people meet basic needs of housing, food and energy. The Monkey project in County Durham was set up by a group of housing associations and charities to provide free support to social housing tenants struggling with the cost of living due to falling wages and benefit cuts. The project can provide one-to-one advice, affordable new and good-quality reused furniture, discounts on new carpets and low-cost home contents insurance.

• Challenging by speaking out against austerity.
Local authorities, charities, campaigners and activists have used research and evidence to show the negative effects of austerity on people’s lives. Others have developed campaigns that challenge landlords and payday lenders on business practices that capitalise on the desperate conditions of low income families, and have challenged government policies that advance austerity. Psychologists Against Austerity are an example of a new group, formed of community psychologists who are speaking out about the impact of austerity on mental health, using psychological and evidence-based research. Focus E15 Mothers are another example of a strong and articulate challenge to austerity. They challenged the local effects of austerity in Newham and the narrative that young, low income mothers do not have a right to affordable housing within London.

• Imagining by becoming advocates of alternatives and wider structural change.
A handful of groups are looking beyond present circumstances to envisage ways of organising politics, the economy and public services beyond the current era of austerity. This involves a mixture of theory and practice on ideas such as ‘guerilla’ local economic development, investing rather than cutting, and developing services that are able to prevent problems before they occur, rather than curing them at a late stage. Examples include groups such as the Early Action Task Force which have developed a series of recommendations for hardwiring prevention into public budgets, and Preston City Council which is working closely with the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) to spearhead new approaches to community wealth building through employee ownership.

Future possibilities

Austerity remains, for now, at the heart of the mainstream policy agenda. If cuts continue beyond this year’s election, local authorities’ budgets will be stretched to breaking point. The case against austerity and need for alternatives can only grow clearer.

“I don’t want to go to the Job Centre anymore. I’ve got bad blood pressure, and I don’t want to accept this pressure from them. These people are pushing you, pushing you, and in the end I feel like I am in dessert. There is no job, and I can’t take it….”
Nadya, a single mother from Sheffield.

Recently the Fawcett Society launched our new report: Where’s the Benefit? An Independent Inquiry into Women and Jobseeker’s Allowance.   The report was a culmination of months of work examining how changes made to the benefits system specifically Job Seekers Allowance (JSA), have impacted on women. The results were very concerning.   We found that the benefits system concerned with job seeking is making some groups of vulnerable women even more likely to experience poverty, ill-health, exploitation and abuse. Lone parents, women who suffer violence at home and women who have difficulties with English are being particularly hard hit.   We also found evidence of failings in both the design and the implementation of the JSA system. For example, although special arrangements should be made to protect claimants who are experiencing violence from a partner, claimants are not routinely told that this is possible. Lone parents, nine out of ten of whom are women, are often expected to look for full time work involving up to three hours travel every day even when this makes it impossible for them to also look after their children.

“Barbara called the Helpline in distress…the Work Programme Adviser gave her an appointment at 9.30am [but] she needed to travel on 2 buses [to take] her daughter to school. The Adviser told her to get her child into after school care even though the local service is full and also said it was alright to leave her for a couple of hours on her own.”
Submission from One Parent Families Scotland.

Some women are being expected to meet near impossible conditions in order to receive a basic benefit. When those conditions aren’t met these women are sanctioned, often losing all of their benefits – sometimes repeatedly – as the result of a system that doesn’t take account of the specific circumstances of many women’s lives.

“I think we’re a much easier target to be sanctioned, because, as women, we are less likely to kick off and be violent, much, much less likely, and I think that’s what makes us easier targets. And 99% of the time we’ve got children hanging off us so we haven’t got time to be arguing with these people, so you are having to take it and think, I’ll deal with that later, or I’ll deal with that tomorrow.”
Focus group participant.

We examined a vast amount of evidence including research that other people had written, undertook focus groups up and down the country, one to one interviews and had a day of evidence where we heard from women affected by the changes as well as NGOs, academics and expert practitioners who told us just what was happening.   An expert panel reviewed all the evidence before making recommendations, including Amanda Ariss – the CEO of the Equality and Diversity Forum who was the chair, Carlene Firmin MBE –  Head of the MsUnderstood Partnership and Research Fellow at the University of Bedfordshire, Baroness Meacher, Sir Keir Starmer QC and journalist Rosamund Urwin. The panel reviewed the evidence and attended the live hearing making recommendations for the final report.

The Inquiry made 12 recommendations including:

• Specialist advisers should be available to support claimants such as lone parents, women experiencing domestic and sexual violence and women with difficulties speaking and understanding English. These advisers could ensure that the policies already in place to protect vulnerable women are followed in practice.

• The conditions demanded of claimants should take account of the impact of caring responsibilities, language barriers and the impact of domestic and sexual violence.

• Claimants should be told about policies which are there for lone parents and people experiencing domestic or sexual violence.

• All claimants should receive a thorough diagnostic interview after three months of claiming JSA, to ensure they are receiving the support they need to move into sustainable, quality employment and are not being required to take up activities, at a cost to the public purse, that make little or no contribution to their job search.

Inquiry Chair Amanda Ariss said: “It is deeply worrying that a benefit that exists to support us all if we find ourselves out of work is putting vulnerable groups of women and their children at risk of unnecessary financial hardship, mental and physical ill-health and, in extreme cases, exploitation and abuse. This makes no sense.   These women are not being provided with the support they need to move into work, which would benefit the women themselves, their families and the wider economy. Instead they are forced to meet conditions that are sometimes close to impossible, with the constant threat of sanctions should they slip up.   It doesn’t have to be this way. With some modest changes to the design and implementation of JSA we could have a system that supports women to move into quality, sustainable work.”

Oxford Dictionary definition of infrastructure: The basic physical and organisational structures and facilities needed for the operation of a society or enterprise.

NAVCA launched the Commission’s report to a packed house of VCS representatives from across England at a House of Commons event last week. Although this marked the end of the Commission’s role, it was just the start of a process of change, not an end in itself.

There was no doubt in the room about the importance of infrastructure to the wellbeing of communities and the need to recognise, nurture and enable it, but there was always going to be disagreement about how infrastructure support should be provided and what might need to change to make it work

The economic downturn, austerity, the welfare reform agenda and reductions to central government and local authority budgets are all impacting on social action adversely, with a heady cocktail of rising needs, reduced resources and a climate of anger and fear. Local infrastructure bodies are themselves experiencing loss of income; many are facing uncertainty and looking for new ways to serve their communities with less cash.

The Commission’s task was to undertake an analysis of what the sector needs from its infrastructure and to make proposals about what needs to change for those needs to be met. We knew a call for more money and a return to the previous status quo was out of the question. Things have changed, we’re in a ‘new normal’, and proposals based on asking for things rather than offering a change agenda will fall on deaf ears.

So we went out on the road and talked to people in various parts of England, mindful of the different challenges of the North and South, rural, urban and city settings. Everywhere we went, we found good things happening. Everyone we talked to had good examples of proactive change and some of these are included in the report. Every change we are recommending is happening in some places.

There is every reason to be optimistic about the resilience of community action but no room for complacency about how best to support it. The real punch line is that yes, infrastructure does deserve and need to be financed, but that it also has to undergo a redesign. It needs to be leaner, meaner and more technologically savvy. It needs to act as a lever bringing in new resources to the sector, including social investment, crowd funding and pro bono support. It needs to be the enabler of voice and the advocate of community action. It needs to collaborate and share more cost effectively. Above all, it needs to help the sector with foresight and managing change, because the pace of change is not going to slow.

These were our conclusions, but what will happen next? NAVCA will support and promote the implementation of the Commission’s findings, publishing a review of progress in early 2016. It will provide opportunities for local infrastructure bodies and their partners to learn from each other and offer mutual advice and support, as well as hosting a series of round table events in partnership with NCVO for local, national and specialist infrastructure organisations to create a collaborative approach to shaping the future of local infrastructure, working with funders at all levels to develop creative and sustainable solutions to secure the future of infrastructure, ensure that NAVCA itself complies with and models the best qualities of an infrastructure body as described by the Commission, and continually challenge its members to do the same.

http://www.navca.org.uk   Download the report here.

“It was the best six days I have had since coming to the UK” Raga Gibreel tells me.   Campaign Bootcamp was a great learning experience. Raga met human rights campaigners from all over the world: Latin America, USA, Africa and other regions. She learnt effective campaign strategies and was made aware of how to use the media and engage with politicians – something she had not previously considered for her campaign.  Campaign Bootcamp also emphasised the need to take care of her personal health and wellbeing.

It was a rigorous six days.  The programme started at 8am and ended at 8pm every day. Raga explained to me that the experience inspired self-growth and made her aim for high goals for her organisation.   Raga Gibreel is a Sudanese refugee who has been living here in the UK for the past six years. She comes from Sourth Kordofan where there has been war on and off for many years. Raga’s story is a moving one.  Sadly it is representative of what many women and children face when there is political instability in a country. When she got to the UK it took her some time to get over the trauma and stress she had experienced during the war. Raga explained to me that her friends were the biggest support system for her.  Also helpful were Sudanese community groups.

The Trauma of civil war

She started volunteering for different human rights organisations, including at a detention centre, with Article 1. Raga couldn’t help but think how lucky she was because she met so many Sudanese refugees detained there. Fleeing from your home during war is very traumatic.  Many people die from lack of proper food, poor health facilities, and the long journeys can be difficult. Women and children are the most vulnerable as they are sometimes raped and even sold into sex trafficking businesses. She began to realise how much better off she was than many other Sudanese people.  So she decided to help bring change to her country.   She started a small organisation called Green Kordofan. Her aim was to provide the children in Yida refugee camp in Sudan with a sports and nutrition programme.   After completing Campaign Bootcamp Raga held a fundraising event for her organisation on 20 December 2014.  Some of those she had met at Campaign Bootcamp came to support her.  “I made friends for life at Campaign Bootcamp and I would not trade the experience for anything.  I really appreciate the opportunity Article 1 gave me.” During my interview with her it was evident that Raga has suffered a lot of pain because of the war.  However, she is now turning that pain into power to help others.

www.article1.org. Article 1 is a human rights charity whose aims are:

• To help asylum seekers from Darfur and other parts of Sudan to  navigate the UK’s complex immigration process
• To collaborate with the British government and relevant organisations to improve the UK’s policy and procedure for Sudanese asylum seekers
• To inform decision-makers and the public about the human rights situation in Sudan
• To raise awareness of Darfur and Sudan amongst the public

The 20^th Century can lay claim to being the suburban century. The growth of suburban housing development in the 1930s, the mass production of the car and slum clearance after the war all meant that suburbs became places where young families (both blue and white collar) flocked in their thousands. The opposite was true in city centres characterised by falling populations and growing concentrations of poverty.

However, since the turn of the 21^st Century the trend has been in reverse with many of our city suburbs suffering from relative economic decline and social deprivation. The socio-economic geography of suburbia is changing, and on current trends suburbs are losing out to now thriving inner cities.

Population growth in urban areas

Our work at the Smith Institute for Barrow Cadbury is showing that population growth in our major urban areas was significantly faster than outer areas. Greater Manchester’s urban population, for example, grew by 17% and the West Midlands by 16%, whilst their suburban populations have both grown by just 5%. What seems to be driving this change is a mix of policy interventions (including urban regeneration), businesses (re)locating to urban areas, and changes in perceptions of our cities.

In public policy terms, ‘placemaking’ (a people-centred approach to the planning, design and management of public spaces) has for the last decade been dominated by urban renewal and regeneration. As part of this agenda the focus has been on redeveloping city centres to make them attractive places for businesses, consumers and residents. The agglomeration of businesses (especially in service industries) has also led to economic activity becoming more concentrated in the heart of our cities. One of the more startling findings of our research to date has been jobs growth. For example, in outer London 11,000 additional jobs were created over the last ten years whilst in inner London the figure was a staggering 505,000. It is not just the number of jobs that have grown rapidly in city centres and stagnated in suburban areas, but also the quality of jobs, with more skilled work located away from suburbs.

The suburban job market

This could of course mean that those performing those jobs are suburban residents travelling into the centre, with suburbs remaining places of affluence. However, evidence shows that this is not the case. In Greater Manchester the number of jobs performed by suburban residents has increased by 6% versus a 47% rise for those living in urban areas.

This change in the economic fortunes of city centres is mirrored in other social indicators. Whilst it is still the case that urban areas have higher concentrations of deprivation, poverty rates seem to be narrowing. Other social indicators also seem to be following a similar trend, such as crime and education. In London, for example, educational achievement (5* A-Cs) is now the same in inner and outer London. In addition, the dynamics of the housing market and the way social housing is funded also means that more affordable housing is to be found in suburban areas.

Serious economic decline

All suburbs are different, and many remain places of relative affluence and wealth. However, a growing number have and are experiencing higher rates of poverty and are arguably in serious economic decline. This has significant implications for public policy and for those in the third sector providing support for people on low incomes. Challenges such as access to work may be more problematic in suburbs than urban areas, not least because public transport is not as regular or affordable. This is also true for other services which are more costly to provide over a larger distance. Over the coming months the Smith Institute will be examining some of these concerns and discussing what can be done to achieve a lasting suburban renaissance.

Creating places with access to jobs, high-quality public services, decent homes, and a safe environment are critical for growth in both urban and suburban neighbourhoods. However, the evidence suggests that many of the city suburbs are struggling with rising rates of poverty and relatively lower earnings. Knowing more about what is happening is critical to setting out a range  of policy responses that can prevent many of our suburbs slipping into a spiral of decline.

Find out more about the work of the Smith Institute.  Read Poverty in suburbia: a Smith Institute study into the growth of poverty in the suburbs of England and Wales published in April 2014.

About 100 million people enter the UK every year, and about 100 million leave. Net migration – involving those who come here to stay or leave for at least a year – is a tiny fraction of that, estimated at 260,000 last year. So last year there were 260,000 more immigrants than emigrants.   The accuracy of that net migration estimate is limited – it’s based on a survey of just 4-5,000 migrants interviewed at ports, and that means there’s a large grey area. It could very easily be nearly 40,000 less than that in reality, or 40,000 more. Little wonder, then, that it’s been described as “little better than a best guess” by Public Administration Select Committee Chair Bernard Jenkin MP.   To that you might well ask: “why not just count everyone in and count everyone out?” And you wouldn’t be alone: it used to be an aspiration shared by government, statisticians and politicians alike. It still is in some cases, but delays, management problems and data issues have made this a more distant prospect. 

So how have we got here? Who are we counting now? And can we count people entering and leaving our country in future?

Previous governments abolished paper-based checks

In 1994, the Conservative government of the time partially scrapped exit checks on passengers leaving the UK. In 1998, the Labour government finished the job. Those decisions have provided the background to often–heard criticisms that successive governments stopped ‘counting people in and counting people out’.   The justification at the time was that the then paper-based checks amounted to “an inefficient use of resources and that they contribute little to the integrity of the immigration control” according to the Home Office.

In spite of pledges, exit checks still not fully in place

Since then, the prospect of reintroducing exit checks electronically has gained widespread favour. For the past decade, pledges to reintroduce the checks have been made repeatedly, while the timetable for actually doing so has been repeatedly pushed back.  

Step forward, ‘e-borders’—the whole solution?

The government has rarely been explicit on how exactly it would implement such checks.  Initially a programme called ‘e-borders’ was assumed to be the answer.  E-borders was a project first conceived in 2003 aimed at gathering passenger and travel information electronically and using it to help strengthen the UK’s border records and security – similar to a system used in Australia.    Starting in 2008, it was expected to gather an increasing proportion of passenger data, culminating in 95% coverage by the end of 2010 (reflecting Gordon Brown’s claim above) and 100% coverage by 2014. In fact, by 2010 only about 60% of passengers were being recorded and today about 80% are.  As it stated in its 2007 business case, counting was to be one of the key benefits:

“There are also a number of wider socio-economic benefits, for example the ability, for the first time, to comprehensively count all foreign national passengers in and out of the UK, improving public confidence in the integrity of the border and enabling a more accurate count of migrants for future planning and for informing the population count.”

This sounds impressive. By scanning passports at check-in and departure and making use of other travel information, details such as people’s name, age and nationality can be combined with flight number, times and port of departure or arrival.  A survey of a few thousand migrants versus actual passport data on people entering and leaving the country doesn’t sound like much of a contest.  Except it is, because while counting everyone in and out is relatively straightforward (though no simple task, as has been found); counting migrants and filtering out everyone else is hard.  Passports provide names and numbers, but they don’t tell stories. Your passport doesn’t know why you’re travelling, how long you’re intending to stay, or whereabouts exactly you’re planning to stay. So neither do the authorities — unless you happen to be interviewed on your way in or out.

There are ways around this, but they don’t fully solve the problem. For instance recording the date a person arrives in and leaves the UK: if it was a stay of less than a year, they’re a visitor, if more than a year, they’re a migrant. But that’s not very helpful for finding out about people coming to the UK now.   Visas are another potential source of information, and integrating that into an electronic counting system was recommended by MPs last year. That would, of course, be limited to non-EU nationals because EU citizens don’t need a visa to enter the UK.   Using the Census every 10 years to help identify migration flows to local areas is another option, but those figures become obsolete very quickly, and they’re not without accuracy problems of their own.

Not the whole solution any more

Because of these limitations, and other problems with implementation, the government has backtracked from its original business case, saying in evidence to MPs last year:

“while valuable, this data is by itself insufficient to provide a direct measurement of migration flows. As the information on entries and exits from the UK gets more comprehensive however it will, when combined with other data sources, help improve our statistics in this area.”

A similar view has since been expressed by the UK Statistics Authority and—after feasibility testing the data itself—the Office for National Statistics. The Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration questioned why the government hasn’t realised this sooner:  “It was not clear why the language of counting in and counting out had survived in each of the business cases.”   As things now stand, the e-borders’ project has been terminated. The systems are still there, but they’re now referred to as ‘Semaphore data’ and there are separate systems for enforcement purposes. Still, the coverage isn’t comprehensive, and as of last month, rail routes into and out of the UK still weren’t being counted at all.   The future for counting is uncertain, but it’s not necessarily confined to electronic measurement.

One recommendation from MPs last year was the possible creation of a new “routine migrant survey”, an option the Home Office investigated back in 2011. That could provide more detailed information on migrants’ reasons for coming and what they’re contributing to the UK.  For now, though, the government thinks a new survey would be bad value for money, and continues to indicate its commitment towards bringing back full exit checks at the border.    As for meeting this particular commitment, 100% or near 100% coverage isn’t the only condition. As the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration has commented “it must be capable of facilitating physical interventions where appropriate” — i.e. intercepting departing passengers before they leave, instead of realising they’ve left afterwards. The time needed to do this is running out.

TIMELINE

Charles Clarke (then Home Secretary), 2005: “The new borders technology will record people’s departure from the country”
Home Office, 2006: “We will progressively reinstate exit—in other words, embarkation—controls in stages, starting with the higher-risk routes and people, identify who overstays and count everyone in and out by 2014.”
Gordon Brown, April 2010: “border controls have been brought in and we’re counting people out and in from the end of this year”
Coalition Programme for Government: “We support E-borders and will reintroduce exit checks.”
Home Office, 2012: “The Government have committed to the reintroduction of exit checks by March 2015″
Nick Clegg, March 2013: “we are reintroducing exit checks.”
Nick Clegg, July 2013: [quoted] “I’m not going to pretend to you that exit checks will be restored in full, according to the Home Office’s present plans, by the end of this Parliament”
Home Office, October 2014: “The Government is committed to introducing exit checks by April 2015″
David Cameron, November 2014: “We have also brought back vital exit checks at ports and airports”
Ed Miliband, December 2014: “We will introduce those [proper entry and exit] checks”  

The high court did not need to do anything fancy to find that restricting books for prisoners is unlawful.

Nine months of campaigning by the Howard League, together with English PEN and numerous authors, culminated in a fine legal judgment last Friday.  The case was brought by fearless public law lawyer, Sam Genen, with barristers Annabel Lee, Victoria Butler-Cole and Jenny Richards.

Mr Justice Collins was asked to rule on whether the restriction on books to prisoners was lawful.  He was provided with a web of complex legal arguments based on human rights and the Equality Act 2010.  In the end, he decided the restriction was unlawful quite simply because the policy’s effect was contrary to what the justice secretary said he intended.

Our law, built up case by case over time, says that a policy will be unlawful if its effect is contrary to the expressed intention and objectives that it was supposed to promote.

In the case of books for prisoners, the secretary of state and the deputy prime minister had said that there was no book ban.  The deputy prime minister went so far as to say: “If there was a ban on sending books to prisoners, I would be the first to demonstrate outside the local prison. It would be ridiculous. It’s outrageous…..Education and training, reading and learning are a critical part of [rehabilitation].”

Yet a forensic examination by the high court found that the policy clearly resulted in a restriction in books, that access through the library services was not sufficient to make up for not having your own books, whether for reference, such as Brewer’s Dictionary or a compendium of a particular author’s works, to be dipped into frequently. The court adopted the desert island philosophy in finding that “possession…can matter as much as access”.

He therefore found the privileges policy unlawful to the extent that it banned books.  This simple judgment is unimpeachable.  It is not based on human rights or equality but on old-fashioned common sense.  The government refused to reflect on the obvious truth that books are not a privilege and learning is central to its own ‘transforming rehabilitation’ agenda. It refused to accept the simple truth that the policy had the effect of banning books.  It refused to change the policy of its own accord.

Instead, it took a fully contested judicial review at taxpayers’ expense, with the prisoner’s lawyers acting pro-bono, to enable a high court judge to unravel the spin from the reality of prisoners’ experiences and determine the justice secretary’s policy unlawful on the basis that it was quite simply the opposite of what he said he wanted.

No wonder then that the justice secretary is so keen to restrict the ability of individuals and public interest groups to speak truth to power through the courts.  In the House of Commons last Monday, he revealed an astounding lack of knowledge of the way the law works, compounding his disregard for it in the case of books for prisoners.  He accepted he was “baffled” by attempts by peers to preserve judicial discretion and sought to reverse them.

Peers have a final chance this Tuesday to defeat the government’s current attempts to restrict judicial review cases. Let’s hope they take it.

Laura Janes is acting legal director at the Howard League for Penal Reform.  This blog was reproduced with kind permission of Howard League for Penal Reform. 

“We should keep business out of politics” Professor John Kay from the London School of Economics told a High Pay Centre event on 19 November . “We can’t ask business leaders to determine what is good for the public.”  Professor Kay was speaking at the launch of a collection of essays the High Pay Centre has published on corporate power entitled “Whoever you vote for, big business gets in.”  Professor Kay pointed out that the opinions reflected in the corporate lobby are generally those of the business leaders, not the workforce as a whole.

In recent years, the views of big business have had huge sway at Westminster – often driving the political agenda on to territory that is at odds with the views of the voting public.  There are numerous policy issues from taxation to relations with the EU to immigration to cutting the gap between rich and poor where business has an agenda that is different from public opinion.

At the High Pay Centre, we focus on excessive executive pay and the enormous gap that has opened up with the rest of the workforce.  Our polling suggests that an overwhelming majority of people support proposals to cap bosses’ pay at a fixed multiple of their lowest-paid worker. However, whenever we press policymakers on this issue, they defer to the business lobby.

Some of our recommendations for tackling top pay came into law last year, but they were mostly watered down by corporate opposition.

Our experience with policies over top remuneration prompted us to look at corporate power in more detail and the impact this has on democracy.  In our collection of essays, Richard Murphy from Tax Research UK, presents evidence to show that tax policy is driven largely by corporate interests. For example, on the board of HM Revenue & Customs, the UK’s tax authority, there are five non-executive directors all of whom come from a corporate or financial background, with no other interest group represented.  “The result is that … a key element of democracy has been captured for the benefit of a limited but very powerful group in society.”  Mr Murphy believes democracy is threatened by financial interests driving the tax system. “This is why, for example, the UK’s budget deficit is being closed by cutting spending and not raising tax.”

Tamasin Cave from Spinwatch, highlights the investment made by businesses in lobbying parliament. “Lobbyists regularly shape public debates through the media, feeding it information they want politicians to see and keeping out inconvenient facts they would rather they didn’t.”

Trust in business and politicians among the public is at record lows. One of the reasons for this is that the public has lost faith in MPs to protect us from rapacious corporations.  In a poll conducted for the High Pay Centre in April, 74% of respondents – from all political persuasions – agreed that big business has too much power over government.

The power of big business needs to be tackled if we are to restore people’s faith in our politics and economy.

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The Community Investment Coalition (CIC) campaigns for a radical re-shaping of the provision of affordable financial services in deprived communities.  This will reduce reliance on high cost credit, support innovation and competition in financial services markets and give people the financial tools they need to participate in the economy.

Key to achieving this change is increased transparency and public accountability of financial service providers to support consumer choice and allow effective intervention in under-served markets.  For this reason, we have championed the need for disclosure of bank lending data at a geographical level. Our campaign is supported by a range of politicians and organisations, including the Church of England.

In its final report, Changing Banking for Good, the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards stated that: ‘Increased disclosure of lending decisions by the banks is crucial to enable policy makers to more accurately identify markets and geographical areas currently poorly served by the mainstream banking sector’.

In 2013, a voluntary framework for the disclosure of bank lending data was agreed, with the first tranche of quarterly data released in December that year.  So nearly one year on, with four sets of data released, what do we know? A new report ‘Tackling Financial Exclusion: Data Disclosure and Area-Based Lending Data’ by Coventry and Newcastle Universities is the first significant analysis of the data.  Commissioned by Big Society Capital, CIC, Citi Community Development and Unity Trust Bank, the research found that currently, the lending data is limited and publication at postcode sector level increases the technical requirements and costs of meaningful analysis. The data does provide for some analysis of regional disparities of lending.  For example:

• Median personal lending per adult in Great Britain in 2013 was £602. Lending per adult in the lowest 10 per cent of postcode sectors was around two-thirds of this figure or less, whereas in most of the highest 10 per cent of postcode sectors lending per adult was around a third or more above the median figure. Data suggests that average personal lending tends to decline as the area’s deprivation level rises.

• Average median SME lending per business in Great Britain in 2013 was £47,072 with lending per business in the lowest 10 per cent of postcode areas below £35,000 and in the highest 10 per cent of postcode areas lending per business was over £68,000.

But this is not sufficient to support effective intervention to tackle under-served markets.

The study concludes that although the UK is now a world leader in disclosing area-based lending data, the existing data sets need to be strengthened and broadened to allow detailed and insightful analysis of which of the UK’s communities are under-served by the UK’s main high street banks.

The Parliamentary Commission, commenting on the voluntary framework, stated that ‘It will be important to ensure that the level of disclosure is meaningful..’ and that ‘the devil will be in the detail of the disclosure regime’. CIC has always and continues to welcome the significant step in bank transparency represented by the existing framework. But we believe that the quality, detail and type of data disclosed needs improvement for it to be able to identify markets and areas poorly served by the UK’s banks.

Jennifer Tankard is Director of the Community Investment Coalition