Behind the Leaflet III – Jobs AND Profits

I’m running out of time now before the elections (Vote for me!) – so this’ll be the last post in this series spelling out the bullet points behind my election leaflet:

“Commit seriously to local procurement, supporting local business and jobs, and keeping what money it has in the county
“If NCC decides to outsource – contract to local businesses, keeping both jobs and profits in the county”

The ‘jobs and profits’ tag is a paraphrase of the New Economic Foundation ‘Local Multiplier 3’ (LM3) which they actually developed with Northumberland CC a while back. Basically it argues that money spent with local businesses rather than with national or international companies (eg local shops and supermarkets) – because the wages, procurement and profits of local businesses are three times more likely to stay in and be ‘recycled’ the local economy than (at least procurement and profits) spend by nationals and multinationals. Relatively speaking, the big companies effectively drain money out of the local economy. 

So – even on a tight budget, NCC has a lot of money to spend in its operational budgets – we’re not talking about job guarantee funds or anything here – we are just talking about the money NCC spends on its day to day functioning. The more of that money that is spent in the county – or at least in the region – with locally owned businesses, the better the local and regional economy will be. The variously Development Trusts across the county are potentially particularly good vehicles for local service delivery.

And – if NCC does continue down the route of commissioning, contracting and outsourcing services and functions rather than keeping them in house – it’d create and protect  ‘more and better jobs’ (to borrow a phrase from the North East Independent Economic Review) if it commissioned local businesses rather than national and multinational conglomerates to take on the work. Creating and supporting local businesses is the only way out of the ‘branch economy’ mentality which has dogged the North East for well over sixty years and led to many ill-conceived ‘inward investment’ schemes. 
And better still – since a lot of businesses taking on outsourced work employ the people that have been made redundant by the outsourcing process, because they are the ones with the expertise – they know the job – NCC should make advice on in setting up businesses – better still cooperatives or social enterprises - part of their well-honed redundancy package. 

Behind the Leaflet II – Putting People First

Second in this series spelling out a little more of the thinking behind some of the bullet points in my election leaflet 

“Put people first in social services – the system may be complicated and cut to the bone, but that’s not a reason to make things confusing or even more difficult for service users”

OK – Government funding is such that health care, adult care, family support, education, the adoption service, benefits etc etc is managed through different funding pots by different agencies with different structures operating over different areas. Much of the work of social workers, health care workers, police, benefits advisers goes into multi-agency liaison panels, case conferences and general coordination of activities and interventions. And when things go wrong – the media and the politicians generally blame the workforce for not co-ordinating their activities better.

But all this necessary mechanism is just that – machinery for operating the system and managing budgets and resources. The people in need, the people being helped by these services, shouldn’t have to learn the system to get help. They shouldn’t be passed from one support worker to another according to how funding streams divide up the work, even when liaison between those support workers is great and they can signpost people to one another. 

From the point of view of the vulnerable and confused people – and their frustrated relatives – the appropriate help should be available from one or two people who can build up a good relationship. They should never be told “I can’t help you with that – you’ll need to get in touch with…”

The government has argued for better coordination between agencies whilst cutting resources, fragmenting services and abolishing the structures they co-operated too. I’m suggesting something a bit different – more like a ‘personal shopper’ system.

Behind the Leaflet I – Localisation of Welfare Benefits

Of necessity my election leaflet has a number of fairly cryptic bullet points which refer to ‘hidden’ manifesto ideas behind them. In the run-up to the local elections on May 2nd (Vote for me!), I intend to use this blog to spell some of these out in more detail. So – 

“Manage the localisation of welfare benefits with carefully thought-through schemes that support claimants through a difficult transition.”

The present government is devolving a number of benefits to local authorities to deliver – at the same time changing their character and criteria and reducing the amount of money available. The Green Party are obviously campaigning on this at a national level – but at a local council level, all that can be done is to manage the transition well, creating the minimum of bureaucracy-caused hardship. As Chair of Northumberland Credit Union, sitting on the county Financial Wellbeing Partnership – I’m on the fringes of these matters already.

I’ve already blogged about the localisation of council tax benefits – mainly concentrating on the unforeseen impact on parish council precepts. The government has awarded a ‘discretionary fund’ amounting to about 90% of the money previously spent on council tax benefits, then set a number of criteria prescribing how this should be allocated. NCC has topped this up by upping the council tax on second homes, so is mostly able to meet claims. But because this changes the local council tax base, it has turned parish precepts into a regressive tax, with lower taxes in areas with lots of second homes and higher council tax where there are a lot of people getting council tax benefit. 

As regards the cuts to housing benefits linked to house occupancy, the so-called ‘bedroom tax’ – I’m told that there are about 3,500 households affected in the county, with an estimated £38,000 per week reduction in benefits. The Government has awarded NCC £415,000 for ‘discretionary payments’ – but that won’t go far… I gather that many housing benefits recipients have said that they will ‘absorb’ the reduction – but housing associations are preparing for a spike in arrears when they do their four-weekly assessments at the end of April.

However – the Northumberland Emergency Transition Support scheme is perhaps more interesting: it replaces the former Social Fund Crisis Grants with a system of interest-free loans, ASDA food vouchers, food parcels and – as a last resort – cash. Claimants can claim up to twice a year (as opposed to three times a year under the national scheme). The assessment has been outsourced to DAWN and Voices, and is very stringent, I gather in the first ten days of the scheme running (it started ion 2nd April), there were 324 applications and only 9 were granted awards.   

So – the Council is in for a tough time running a local benefits system prescribed fairly tightly and under-resourced by the government, and will see real hardship and poverty in the county if they get it wrong. Isn’t this something candidates should be aware of and talking about? 

Vote Green and pay more tax?

“So” – asked Mark Denten, interviewing me for BBC’s Politics Show – “your manifesto says you would increase taxes to create a ‘fairer’ society. Are you telling people ‘Vote Green – and you’ll end up paying more tax’?”

Well – you can find out my response at the time when the show is broadcast on Sunday, but as they say ‘repartee is what you think of on the bus back home’ – so this is perhaps what I should have said:

“The Green Party manifesto addresses the recession, jobs, threats to public services, climate change and peak oil. We are trying to move towards a fairer, more equal, greener, lower carbon society. Our spending plans – centred on the Green New Deal – focus on this; where we propose cuts – they cut schemes and projects that do not contribute to these aims.
We are told that any government will need to introduce taxes equivalent to 6p on income tax – but while the other parties are taking an ad hoc, vote-garnering approach – but we propose to use the tax system constructively towards creating that greener, more equal society.

“So – yes, we will increase taxes – as would every other party – but we will be rehabilitating progressive taxation and Green taxes. The rich and those generating environmental damage will bear the brunt.
Our taxes to reduce inequality include:
• 50% income tax on earners over £100k
• abolish the upper limit on National Insurance contributions (and raise the lower limit)
• increase Corporation Tax to 30%, but reduce it to 20% for small firms
• base inheritance tax on the wealth of the recipient rather than the value of the estate
and – crack down on tax havens, tax evasion and tax avoidance”

That’s what I should have said – but then Mark asked two other questions, and I knew I only had 45 sec total time, so I think what I actually said was OK.

Transport in Northumberland

Seems the worst thing the LibDems have against us is ‘The Greens are against dualling the A1’ – which is true, I’ve never denied it, and I’m happy to give reasons if requested. But dualling the A1 is for central government to fund, it’d be too much for regional funding let alone the new Northumberland Council. However – there are a number of transport initiatives we would like the new council to undertake:

i) Make best use of ICT to avoid the need to travel in the first place
ii) Develop and use car sharing, travel plans etc, especially for trading estates and other employment centres.
iii) Make better use of bus services to feed the trains at rail stations
i) Develop the expanding concessionary bus fare plans to facilitate realistic journeys; and include local rail services in the scheme
ii) Provide bus information points (including maps) near the centre of all towns and villages, co-located with other services where possible.
iii) A single county-wide car parking scheme as part of integrated traffic management which balances the viability of towns and retail centres
iv) Better parking provision at all stations in the County to facilitate transfer to rail for the longer part of the journey.
v) Develop a strategic road policy to make best use of the County's key roads, recognising that increased capacity generates increased traffic.
vi) Re-classification of under-used rural roads as quiet lanes, re-directing road maintenance funds to key parallel roads used to get people to work education retail and leisure.
vii) Introduce a maximum 30mph speed restriction between the name signs of all named villages
viii) Relocate 30mph signs to include all junctions etc near to the existing signs, eliminating the need for early warning signs.

I’ll post more specific infrastructure proposals later…