Balls the Architect…

The nominatons to the Shadow Cabinet are closed and the voting will soon begin, with the result being announced on the 11th October, Ed Balls is vyeing for the post of Shadow Chancellor against his wife, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Yvette Cooper.

Balls claims he is the architect of New Labour’s economic policy, an economic policy that abandoned Labour principles by embracing the free market and the deregulation of banks that led to the arrogant claim of ending boom and bust. It can also be argued that such a policy led to the economic predicament we, as a country, now find ourselves. A post-recession economy where growth is still fragile, record levels of private and public debt – a clamp down on credit – all due to the liberalisation and deregulation of the economy and running the economy on debt and credit when times where good.

Labour’s new leader, Ed Miliband, has already distanced himself from the party of Blair and Brown – how will Ed Balls, the ‘architect’ of New Labour’s economic policy, fit in with Mr. Miliband’s vision?

On paper he won’t. In reality he will have a tough fight on his hands as Yvette Cooper is a competent economist and has transformed the DWP while she was there. Balls favours a slowing of the cuts to an impossible level instead relying on the proceeds of growth to reduce the deficit. As we have already discussed in a previous post, while he is technically correct in his approach, his approach is unrealistic. Cooper, as far as we are aware, is more in line with Mr. Miliband’s own approach to reducing the deficit – reduce the deficit by half over 4 years, but slow the rate of cuts by increasing taxes.

Balls, as is Ed Miliband, is tainted by the Blair-Brown era of Labour but, as Leader, Ed Miliband has the opportunity to redefine himself and the Party. Will Balls be able to do that? Yvette Cooper was not marked as a Brownite or a Blairite in the previous administration and already has the cleansheet to start in the New Generation.

Time will eventually tell who will be Shadow Chancellor, we hope it’ll be Yvette Cooper, we know that both will be in the Shadow Cabinet, but where we have no idea. Just don’t hold out for the outside contender grabbing the top spot.

Quangos: Cut the red tape, don’t jeopardise success.

In a series of measures to slash the deficit, a leaked government document has revealed fresh plans to scrap dozens of quangos ( non- governmental agencies funded by the state) including many with responsibility for education and families. This was almost inevitable, and of course, the theory behind it is logical. Most people would surely accept that taking steps such as cutting the salaries of chief executives and doing away with huge advertising bills is a step in the right direction, an area within which we can save government funds, without having a direct effect on public services.

The problem with quangos is that they all seem to be tarred with the same brush. We hear the name and assume they’re all bureaucratic associations which in all likelihood promise much and deliver little. Of course there will be several such agencies in existence, but when you look a little closer at the potential quangos up for being scrapped, it is worrying to see so many agencies which are known to have made a contribution to thousands of children being made to prove their value, yet again in financial terms, rather than personal progress. Take Becta, or to give it its Sunday name, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency. It was created in 1998 to promote the effective use of ICT in schools. From personal experience, the service provided by Becta has had a real and direct impact on schools. Since 2001, their influence has helped thousands of schools teach ICT as part of the curriculum, and helped ensure that it is used to aid develop literacy and numeracy skills. Their Home Access programme gave laptops and broadband capability to over 20,000 of the UK’s poorest homes, ensuring that no matter what resources parents have, all children have equal access to the Internet. This is a means by which to reduce inequalities in access to learning and I know several families who took full advantage of this scheme. The organisation employs 240 staff and 120 contractors, people who would, through no fault of their own, be at least temporarily dependent in state benefit should these quangos be closed down.  On its site, Becta admits to significant spending; £1.5bn has been spent through its procurement agreements since 2002, but they also claim that this has saved the education system £223m – which would be an average of about £28m per year. It also says it has made cost savings of £55m for educational institutions and providers including schools, local authorities and the skills sector in the past year alone. Becta has clearly proven itself to be successful, and it now has several business sponsors, meaning the government has to provide fewer funds itself. We need to look at the long-term view; is saving a few million pounds now really worth putting ICT competency for thousands of children at risk when technology is so crucial to our economy?

The leaked document (provided by ‘a Whitehall source’) revealed that the Schools Food Trust was another potential victim of the proposed cuts. According to its website, the SFT ‘is an independent body with the unique remit of transforming school food and food skills.’ It was initially created in response to chef Jamie Oliver’s TV documentary, ‘Jamie’s School Dinners’, which discovered that the food served to prison inmates had more nutritional value than many school dinners served across England’s local education authorities. The remit of the SFT was to ‘ensure all schools met the food based and nutrient based standards for lunch and non-lunch food and increase the take-up of school meals.’

So, just how effective has this agency been? In 2006, the Institute for Social and Economic Research (the ISER) commissioned a report into the effect of Oliver’s campaign. The research findings indicate an improvement in results for 11-year-olds leaving primary education between 2005 and 2007, during the initial stages of the SFT’s work. In English there was an increase of 3-6 percentage points in pupils reaching Level 4, the expected national average. In science there was an increase of 3-8 percentage points in pupils reaching Level 5. Considering the push for improvement in this area, this is surely a hugely positive result. There was also a 15% reduction in absences associated with sickness. The report found that “children seem to rely more on food provided at school now than they did three decades ago”, in which case there is no justification for bringing such a scheme to an end. It’s true that it has taken a long time to persuade some children to try the new menus on offer, but for those of less well-off parents who are given free school meals, the positive effect, both in terms of achievement and behaviour has been noticeable.

Beyond the statistics, it is clear to anyone who has spent time in schools over the last five years what a positive impact the new school meals have had. Alongside the improvement in lunches, all primary-age pupils are now given free fruit every day of the school week and bottled water, both of which help concentration. The majority of infant- age pupils are also provided with milk every morning. As a package, these measures have led to an improvement in behaviour, and ensure that for the children who may be nutritionally deficient or experience a lack of good food at home, there is at least one meal a day of which they can be guaranteed.

Cutting non-essential government spending is one of the cornerstones of reducing the deficit. The debate, however, needs to be focused on where these cuts will occur, and who can most easily afford to shoulder the burden. We have a duty as a society to ensure that children are not being made to suffer for the overspending of government departments. Yes, there are quangos we can and should do away with. What we can’t allow to happen is to let vulnerable members of our society be held to account for the mistakes of others.

How Red is Ed?

If his father, Ralph Miliband and famous Marxist historian, was alive he would probably laugh and call his son a Tory. As a Conservative Tweeter said: “he’s only red in comparison to his brother which everyone is doing.” By everyone it can only be assumed that he is referring to the right-wing press and the Lib Dems.

Ed won the Labour Leadership by 1.3% – an incredibly close competition by anyone’s standards. Some have pointed out that he only won due to a “Union bloc”. They have little understanding of how the college system works, how AV works and how the Labour Party works.

The college system is far from ideal as it gives an individual the potential for more than one vote, but one also has to recognise that the Labour Party was established by Trade Unions, Socialist Societies and individual left-wing Parliamentarians. By recognising the obscure construction of the Labour Party the college system becomes more self-proving. As many members of the affiliates and unions aren’t members of Labour, the college system limits their power to restrict outside influence on the party.

By saying that Ed won because of a Union Bloc disregards the turnout for the Union vote at 10%. And it is also individual union members that vote not the Union Leaders. However endorsement does help. Either this is because the Union Leaders have gauged the opinion of the majority of their members or it gives a banner for undecided members to aim for. Take, for example, ASLEF who gave their endorsement to Diane Abbott – the majority of ASLEF members voted for Diane and not Ed thus further disproving the ‘Union bloc’ theory.

Now moving onto AV. AV is a preferrential voting system whereby a candidate needs 50% of the vote plus 1 in order to win. Low and behold Ed received more than 50% of the vote because he was more preferrable than David. In order to obtain over 50% of the vote Ed had to appeal to the broad cross section of the party. He obtained an overwhelming majority in the Union and Affilates section. Was close behind David in the MP and MEP section as well as the Membership section. One can rely on ‘ifs’ but the reality is, is that the alternative didn’t happen.

Now that Ed has won he needs to start including the membership in decisions of the Party in order to win around members that didn’t vote for him in order to unite the party. The Top heavy structure that was developed so superbly under New Labour must be dismantled to usher in Ed’s “new generation”.

As a Labour Member and supporter of David I am disappointed that David lost, but I’m not disappointed that Ed won. I’m happy that Ed won, as I did vote for him, and Labour has a new Leader.