I notice, slightly belatedly, that my Liberal Democrat colleague, Cllr Matt Davies of Fortis Green ward, has started blogging. Matt I wish you well with this. Bloggers unite!
INVESTIGATION NEEDED INTO BRIDGE NDC ACCOUNTS, SAYS LIB DEM
A Liberal Democrat councillor has renewed a demand for an independent forensic investigation into The Bridge NDC Accounts.
Lib Dem Deputy Leader Wayne Hoban has been looking into serious allegations which suggest that the £50 million New Deal for Communities (NDC) regeneration project in Seven Sisters ward in Tottenham has not been appropriately managed by Labour-run Haringey Council.
Cllr Hoban has repeatedly asked both The Bridge NDC Director and Haringey Council to provide him with copies of audited accounts and auditor’s notes for the five year period from 2001 to 2005 – during which the project has been running – but has repeatedly been informed that no specific accounts are available.
Although Cllr Hoban’s request for an independent forensic investigation has been refused so far, he has renewed his demand. The move follows a recent press report (Metro, 6 th December 2006), which reported that a Walsall Council employee who worked for the regeneration team in Walsallwas sacked for revealing how millions of pounds of taxpayers money had been misspent. The employee won £650,000 for unfair dismissal from an employment tribunal after being sacked for revealing that a £50,000 grant had been wrongly paid, £100,000 had been used to balance the books of Walsall Social Services and also that an £850,000 payment ‘could not be accounted for’ during an audit.
Cllr Hoban states: “It is clear that many of the now proven allegations made about poor financial management and inappropriate spending of regeneration monies in Walsall were initially similar to concerns raised about Haringey’s NDC regeneration scheme. It has now been confirmed that large sums of regeneration monies has been has been misspent by another council. Haringey residents need to be reassured that allegations about similar financial mismanagement of The Bridge NDC regeneration spending programme are unfounded. In the absence of any properly audited NDC accounts, an independent financial audit of the accounts is essential to restore confidence in this multi-million pound project.”
Cllr Hoban further states: “In view of reported problems with the Walsall Council regeneration project, I have again written to the Haringey Council Chief Executive and the District Auditor to ask them to support my call for an independent forensic audit investigation of The Bridge NDC accounts.”
LOCAL MP OPENS WOOD GREEN HIGH ROAD POLICE & FIRE CHRISTMAS CONTACT CENTRE
Lynne Featherstone, Lib Dem MP for Hornsey & Wood Green, together with Councillor Catherine Harris (Noel Park) and Councillor Ed Butcher (London Fire Brigade Authority Member) today opened Noel Park’s Safer Neighbourhood Team’s contact centre on Wood Green High Road.
Lynne Featherstone comments:
“Congratulations to the Noel Park Safer Neighbourhood Team for organising this great opportunity.It is fantastic to see such a successful local community venture which is a true partnership between local business and our police and fire services.
“The run up to Christmas will see the greatest numbers of shoppers visiting Wood Green and the High Road,so the contact centre will have an enormous impact.Prevention really is better than cure when it comes to both fire and crime,so the more people that take this on board the better, particularly over the Christmas period.”
Councillor Ed Butcher, Member of London Fire Brigade Authority and Liaison Member for Community Safety, was present and also comments:
“This is what local partnerships are all about.I hope as many people as possible will take five minutes out of the Christmas rush to find out how to protect themselves against fire and organise a home fire safety check.The fire safety message is certainly for life not just for Christmas.”
Introducing Father Christmas
Off to the YMCA Annual Christmas Show at St Mary’s in Hornsey earlier today. Children of all ages perform ballet, tap, modern and gymnastics – and it is so gorgeous. Watching the little ones beaming outwards into the darkness that is the audience – hoping to catch sight of their parents. And when they do – a little shy wave. All ranges of ability – all shapes and sizes – and every faith or culture imaginable. That is integration in action – far more effective than any legislation. When people have a common bond – differences fade into the background.
I get to go up at the end and make a speech. Given there were about 150+ children standing on the stage behind me having taken their bow – I thought brevity might be appreciated! Especially as at the end of my speech I was introducing and welcoming Father Christmas.
I just congratulated everyone and then basically – given our good fortune in Hornsey & Wood Green where we of different backgrounds can live together in peace – sent our thoughts to the people of the Middle East – of Palestine, of Lebanon, of Israel, Iraq and Afghanistan and of course, Darfur, to wish them peace on earth at this time of peace and goodwill.
An extra jail place or an extra police officer?
The 
cost of jailing someone for one year is roughly the same as the cost of employing a full time policeman for a year. That’s the starting point for my piece in this week’s Liberal Democrat News about fighting crime:
So when Tories and Labour thump their tubs about being tough on crime, we shouldn’t feel meek about pointing out the costs of their failed policies. Having a large prison population is not a sign of success – it is a sign of a failure to prevent crime and it leaches huge resources away from other parts of the justice system. Instead of prioritising preventative police work and rehabilitating re-offenders, money is sucked into cramming people into poor conditions. Now – you might say, they are criminals so who cares how bad their conditions are?
You can read my answer to this question in the full article on my website.
Hornsey CPZ
Haringey Council has dropped its plans for a CPZ in Hornsey.
Visiting 10 Downing Street
At the same time as the tornado hit Kensal Rise yesterday, the thunder clapped, the lightening lightened and the skies opened and bucketed down on me and my researcher Mette as I delivered the teacher cut outs by local children from Bounds Green School to 10 Downing Street.
As you can see in the picture I am holding two of the cut outs – there were hundreds in paper folders – but I couldn’t hold them for the picture without getting them soaked. But all were handed in and Mette and I got very, very wet.
Then I hosted a meeting on Shingles – which is a form of the herpes virus – to raise awareness of just how serious and debilitating an illness this is. It requires effective pain relief and relatively few GPs are truly experienced in this field and there are not many pain clinics. Also, there are drugs that can be prescribed if caught very early that prevent it actually coming full on – but the cost is not something some NHS primary care trusts will stomach with Patricia Hewitt’s job on the line if their budgets don’t come in on the line.
A new vaccine is hopefully soon going to come on the licensed market – but in the meantime, if raising awareness will help sufferers get the treatment and consideration for this painful disease that they need – then here is a bit of blog-awareness.
Last but certainly not least is a Westminster Hall debate on the reports of the Home Affairs Select Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights. It was a sensible debate and you can read what I said about the powers of detention under the Terrorism Act here.
Congratulations to Camden
Wake up to hear that Ralph Scott has won the heavily contested Kentish Town by-election over in Camden.
A very well-deserved result – well done to Ralph, Nick, Ed, Keith and the rest of the team. A good sign that after our big gains in May in Camden, we’re still making further progress. The next general election in Camden should be very interesting!
An extra jail place or an extra police officer? It’s your choice
If you love statistics, modern government must be heaven. Whether it’s due to the complexity of big government, the realities of modern life or the control freakery of New Labour, or some mix of all three, you can barely breathe in most policy areas without inhaling a lung full of statistics, normally sprinkled with a few decimal places for that added dash of veracity.
The area around crime is particularly prone to not just statistics, but arguments over statistics. So I find I always have to tread with care through all the numbers to try to pull out the essence of what’s going on.
One pair of numbers I have put together recently gets to the heart of much of the debate. It is this: the cost of jailing someone for one year is the same as the cost of employing a full time police officer for a year.
There are allowances you have to make for capital versus running costs and so on, but basically one extra person in prison equals one less police officer.
So when Tories and Labour thump their tubs about being tough on crime, we shouldn’t feel meek about pointing out the costs of their failed policies. Having a large prison population is not a sign of success – it is a sign of a failure to prevent crime and it leaches huge resources away from other parts of the justice system. Instead of prioritising preventative police work and rehabilitating re-offenders, money is sucked into cramming people into poor conditions.
Now – you might say, they are criminals so who cares how bad their conditions are? This is where the difference between those who emphasise the vindictive part course from those who emphasise the effective. For – whilst there are some people who should be locked up for life – nearly everyone else will leave jail at some point. Even if we abolish the controversial automatic reductions in jail sentences for good behaviour (which the Liberal Democrats opposed in Parliament) – the overwhelming proportion of prisoners will still be released at some point.
To me, a priority is to cut the crime rate amongst released prisoners. For if we can do that – then we can stop people becoming victims of crime. And it’s not just a few future crimes we can prevent – because re-offending rates for people released from prison are shockingly high. Just under six in ten of the prisoners released in 2003 were caught committing at least one offence in the subsequent two years. Amongst those who stole from vehicles, the re-offending rate was just under nine in ten. Clearly prison isn’t working for such offenders – which is why we need to make it work.
Prison certainly has its place – and there are those who should be locked up, and locked up for a long time. Longer jail sentences for some crimes (such as knife crimes, as we proposed in Parliament – but were blocked by Labour) have their place too. But prison isn’t the whole answer. If it was, we – with our massive and soaring prison population – would have plummeting crime rates. We don’t.
The alternative – as Alan Sherwell, the Lib Dem leader in Aylesbury Vale, put it well in Liberator no.314 – is to emphasise rehabilitation, re-education, offering people with mental health problems proper treatment and tackling drug addition.
We can’t go back in time and undo a crime a criminal has committed, but if we stop them re-offending – then we have zipped forward in time and stopped a crime before it occurs. If it is a choice between being vindictive about the past or effective in cutting crime in the future, my vote is for being effective.
So when Labour or the Tories attack us on crime, there is no need to be defensive or on the back foot. We should be on the front foot – harrying them over why they want to cram more and more people in bad jail conditions with the result that jail simply becomes a pause for rest between one crime and another. And all the while this failure to cut crime is taking resources away – at the cost of one police officer for every extra jail place needed – from the police and other parts of the justice system.
The same front-foot mentality should also apply to issues around civil liberties – pointing out that plans for ID cards etc mean putting huge amounts of money and effort into keeping tabs on innocent people. Wouldn’t it be better to concentrate on criminals and terrorists instead?
With the Criminal Records Bureau in such a mess, and all the problems we’ve seen this year keeping track of people who should be having deportation cases heard, simply keeping tabs on such people is clearly more than enough for the Government to struggle with, without adding in tens of millions of innocent people too.
It’s effective police focus on the criminals, not the innocent, that we need and should argue for with pride.
This article first appeared in Liberal Democrat News. For subscription details, click here.
The Pre Budget Report
Pre Budget Report! Sky News had booked me from 11-1.00pm to be on their budget panel. I did it last year – and although it looked like two hours then, in reality my panel was whisked in and out a couple of times for two x five minute slots. So I assumed this would be the same.
However – this time I found I was on the anchor panel which means that throughout the time Adam Boulton comes back to the panel to comment on each bit of the process. My co-panellists were Stephen Byers (ex-Labour minister) and David Ruffley (Tory front bench).
Not being a member of the Treasury Team, I am always slightly apprehensive about covering the Budget and similar areas – but it’s excellent practise and there is no other way of learning. So I am grateful to Sky for the opportunity.
The Pre Budget Report was pretty much like a budget with Gordon Brown playing Santa Claus. When you listen to him (and we watched it live on a monitor) he is magnanimous – he giveth. He will save the British Film industry, back excellence in science, ensure more young people go to university, give money for investment in school buildings and so on and so on.
Blinding us with reports and statistics – Gordon likes big volumes of commissioned research (well who wouldn’t) to back up his arguments. By the end of his speech you would have though the world would be set to rights – albeit there’s still much to be done and a long way to go.
But whilst the impression is Santa Claus, as the day unfolds and the experts do their analysis – the gilt comes off the presentation to reveal the truths underneath.
Adam B asked what we thought of Gordon, Prime Minister in waiting. Stephen Byers said that he never commented on such matters. However, I was not so unforthcoming as I have for years now said on this blog and elsewhere that I think Gordon doesn’t quite have the finishing punch – albeit clunking. When the going has got tough for Tony – where has Gordon been, other than brooding in the background?
And despite his recent charm offensive – he is still comes over as basically a rather serious man with a grumpy look. He will frighten Middle Earth! I suspect when he is PM he will find Prime Minister’s Questions very difficult. He is not, as far as I can tell, quick like Tony in terms of retort and I have hardly ever heard him speak outside of the narrow focus of his treasury portfolio in the ten years he has been at No 11.
So – back to the budget. What Gordon didn’t deal with at all is the risk to the stability of our economy caused by huge personal debt. We in this country are responsible for one third of the debt in western Europe and three quarters of a million people have already defaulted on one or more of their mortgage payments. We are at a peak in terms of house prices which has happened three times before this century – on each occasion a rebalancing has occurred. That would knock 30% of house prices and destabilise the economy.
We are calling for the Bank of England to measure house prices in their targeting of inflation – otherwise we are at risk!
As for Gordon’s environmental measure – some good things but on the biggy (air travel) he chose to tax the traveller rather than the producer. Adding tax to each ticket doesn’t help force airlines not to fly empty planes. Much better if he had taxed plane journeys – as that would encourage efficiency.
Anyway – two and a half hours later I left to rush late to an interview with Russia TV about Mr Litvinenko. The Russians are clearly somewhat sensitive about their possible connection with these goings on – but I don’t think that stating that they will not extradite anyone is particularly helpful. Yesterday the Washington Post phoned for an interview too – a reminder of just how this story has caught people’s emotions and interest.
Lynne Featherstone 