The TaxPayers' Alliance - Burning our Money

Spending Without Result

Special plugholes for public spending surges

Education, education, education.

And as everyone should have understood, that was going to cost money, money, money.

Since Labour came to power, spending on Britain's state schools has more than doubled. Last year they spent £44.7bn, up from £22.2bn in 1996-97 (see here and prior PESAs). Even adjusting for general inflation, the increase is over 60%, a massive uplift.

Fair enough you say. That's what the voters wanted.

But spending money is easy. What we haven't had is the results.

Let's just recap the latest revelations:

• Pre-primary skills among five-year olds are unchanged despite a £21bn programme to improve them (see this blog)
• 3Rs skills among seven-year olds are stalled, with eg 20% failing to reach the minimum expected standard in writing (see here)
• 3Rs skills among eleven-year olds are stalled, with 60% failing to reach the minimum expected standard in reading, writing, and maths (see this blog and this)
• Core attainment among fourteen-year olds is also stalled, with nearly 40% failing to reach the minimum expected standard in English, maths, and science (see here)
• At GCSE 54% still fail to gain 5 A-C grades including both English and Maths (see excellent Chris Woodhead article here)
• A Level results continue to soar, but we now know they are two whole grades easier than twenty years ago (see this blog)

Once again- as if we needed any further proof- the dirigiste techniques of Stalinist central planning and tractor output targets have simply failed to deliver.

And today, we have an update on a key reason behind the failure: the escalating crisis in head teacher recruitment. Suitably qualified candidates are simply not putting themselves forward, because they don't fancy being the stressed-out disempowered middle management sandwich meat stuck between the commissars and the parents. And who can blame them?

We've blogged this many times (eg see here), but until now the main problem has been in secondary schools. It's now spread to primaries, with more than one-third of schools being unable to appoint after advertising the post.

As we've noted before, this problem simply doesn't exist in the independent sector. There, head teachers are much more firmly in charge of their schools. And they answer directly to the paying customers rather than indirectly through those ignorant self-serving spineless commissars.

The bottom line?

We're now spending 60% more in real terms on our schools, but our children's education is no better than it was. Indeed, given that schools now routinely teach to the test, it may very well be worse (see this blog).

Another Bonus Farce

No wonder he's laughing

As regular BOM readers will know, the Learning and Skills Council is a complete and utter waste of money.

It presides over the nationalised "skills industry", an underperforming quagmire of 500 separate organisations and bureaucracies which costs us over £10bn pa (see previous blogs here - including video - here, and here).

Worse, the "skills" it produces are not wanted or valued by employers, who constantly complain about its dire performance and have to spend a further £20bn pa of their own money training people properly. Indeed its latest effort- the "flagship" skills project Train to Gain- hasn't even been able to spend its budget allocation because most employers won't touch it with bargepole.

If there was ever a candidate for the chop, this dismal quango is it.

And yet... now, you'd better sit down... its CEO has just been awarded a £36,000 performance bonus.

Yes, you heard right. CEO Mark Haysom was handed the money because "he and the organisation had exceeded their targets".

So just what targets might they have been? Holding more than 100,000 internal meetings? Pushing paperclip consumption to new highs? Nobody knows.

Of course this is by no means the first bonus farce in the public sector. Officials routinely seem to get them whether the organisations they run are performing or not (eg the £20m bonuses recently paid out to bosses at the dysfunctional imploding BBC). All they have to do is make sure the appropriate internal boxes get ticked.

Traditionally, Civil Servants didn't get bonuses. They got their salaries and that was that. But at some point the mandarins obviously looked at the City and elsewhere in the private sector, and decided superior performance there must reflect the payment of bonuses. They concluded that Civil Service performance could be improved by following suit.

But there are important differences.

For one thing, City bonuses originated in the old partnership structures, less as an incentive scheme, and more as a way of de-risking the volatility of earnings. By paying partners- and later employees- a share of the profit in the form of variable bonus, staff costs could be kept more in line with the firm's year to year capacity to pay.

Of course, there was always an element of individual incentive, and this gradually became more important. But as all those Canary Wharf bankers will doubtless discover this Christmas, overall profit is still the key driver.

The public sector is not targeting profit, or any such clearcut objective. Indeed, that's one of its manifold organisational problems.

So there is no transparent and robust linkage back to a real world objective. Just another pile of box ticking that has us paying out more than we need for things we never wanted in the first place.

Public sector bonuses are awarded pretty well irrespective of overall performance. All the indications are that senior management is too weak to withold them even if everyone can see performance isn't up to the mark.

As the BBC spokesman put it, “bonuses are part of staff’s contractual entitlement”. In other words, they're not about incentivising at all, but simply extra salary.

Politics Of Envy Meets Winter Of Discontent

How come he's got such a big lyre? It's not fair

The media has been crammed with politics of envy stories this week.

Those egregious investment bankers, private equity gangsters, and hedge fund cowboys in the City have apparently helped themselves to £14bn! Just like that. Even though everyone knows they hardly lift a finger. 4,200 of them got bonuses of over £1m each! Shameful.

Closer to the real world, the Guardian has surveyed the scene in British boardrooms and reckons bosses are now getting 100 times what they pay their own workers! Although oddly the BBC has surveyed the same scene and reckons they're only getting 67 times more. Which would imply they're getting hundreds of thousands less than the Guardian figure...

Well, whatever. The main thing is they're getting a shed load of dosh and there's no way they deserve it. Impartial observer Brendon Barber says:

"This growing gap is not just morally offensive but hits workforce morale, feeds through into house price inflation and threatens social cohesion. Britain's boardrooms are slowly losing touch with reality."

Well, don't worry Brendon- reality is biting back. Because as you will also know, the same lib media has been chortling with delight at the thick black smoke pouring out of the credit markets. Mammon has hurled down one of his periodic thunderbolts on the unrighteous, bank profits are set to halve, the money changers are being slaughtered, and great is the rejoicing in the land. Those stinking piles of bonus ordure and long-term incentive evil will surely be cleansed from the face of the earth.

Ah. Well. Hmmm.

There may be one or two slightly less welcome knock-ons.

Jobs may go. The financial sector has grown massively over the last twenty years and now accounts for almost 10% of GDP (see here):

If that goes into reverse- as it did in the nineties recession- there'll be a world of pain. The City itself provides about 350,000 direct finance jobs, plus hundreds of thousands of support jobs. And in a credit crunch environment, the jobs outlook in other more traditional sectors would be little better.

None of which need worry Brendon Barber overmuch of course. As General Secretary of the TUC, around 60% of his 6.5m brothers and sisters work in the public sector (see here), so will be sheltered from the worst consequences.

Or will they? Because there is one small problem.

It turns out that - odious though they may be - those appalling bankers and other assorted high-rollers have been contributing one big fat wad of cash to the Treasury.

Consider this chart taken from the NAO Report we blogged yesterday. It shows which sectors paid most Corporation Tax in 2005-06:

As we can see, banking and insurance accounted for over £10bn in 2005-06, about one-quarter of the total. A 50% fall in their profits would therefore blow a pretty big hole in the Treasury's revenue forecasts - maybe £5-6bn. Plus, the corresponding cut in those bonus payments would slash personal tax receipts - PWC estimates that could cost another £2bn (see here). So we could easily be looking at a £7-8bn shortfall.

And Treasury finances are already rocky enough. After the spending binge, the hangover is heading our way (see many previous blogs). And as always, much of the pain will be felt on public sector pay.

The total public sector paybill is currently running at around £170bn pa, so every 1% increase costs around £1.7bn pa cumulative. Which is why last year Gordon Brown decreed future settlements must not exceed 2% (see this blog).

Sadly, the real world is a lot trickier than simply issuing a decree. For one thing, the government's own "independent" pay review bodies may award more than that, as they've done for both nurses and prison officers. Obviously government can respond with its usual dirty old-time incomes policy trick of "phasing" the awards, but nobody is fooled by that any more.

Anyway, aren't public servants grotesquely underpaid relative to those bankers and bosses? The BBC says they are.

All of which means strikes, even if they are illegal (yeah? wotyougonnadoabahtit?). And more Alan Johnson style pay cave-ins. A world of pain that will spill over to affect everyone.

So after all the promises, and all the money, we're right back to staring at another Winter of Discontent. And don't bank on this sun of manse making it glorious summer.

There's just one slim hope. Maybe those bankers can find some way to put out the fires, somehow keep the pain to themselves, and somehow keep the whole show on the road. Fingers crossed. Evil they may be, but boy, do we need them now.

Non-job of the week

This week’s non-job is rather sobering.  Given the anarchy sweeping the UK, with gangs attacking children and other innocents, the political classes recognise the crisis on our streets.  Calls for more police are one thing.  People recognise that police on the beat cut crime.  A police presence makes our most vulnerable feel safe and secure; free to walk the streets they have every right to be on.  Yet no one is calling for more “community safety coordinators”, bureaucrats with fancy titles whose good intentions feed inaction and ineffectiveness against the scourge of crime on our streets.  Every penny siphoned off to town hall apparatchiks fighting crime with bits of paper behind a desk is one less penny put to frontline policing.  That’s fewer funds to train and employ new police who can fight crime.

Our non-job of the week therefore comes from Hackney council:

“Community Safety Co-ordinator

£32,961 - £35,593 p.a. inc.

Hackney Community Safety Team

Hackney Council works in partnership with the local community, the police and other partners to reduce crime and anti-social behaviour.  The Council’s Community Safety Team has an excellent track record of partnership work and crime reduction achievement.

We are now looking to recruit a temporary neighbourhood based Community Safety Co-ordinator to further the successful implementation of the Crime and Disorder Partnership’s crime and disorder reduction programme and to develop the community safety activities in one of our busy neighbourhoods.

Through the Local Government Pension Scheme, the Council offer a generous and competitive final salary scheme”

Tell Hackney residents that they should join our calls for the authorities to fund police not overly generous public sector pensions and bureaucrats.  Write to:

Letters Editor
The Hackney Gazette
138 Cambridge Heath Road,
London,
E1 5QJ,
United Kingdom

Email: hg.editorial@archant.co.uk

And

Letters Editor
Hackney Today
Room 83,
Town Hall,
Mare Street,
London,
E8 1EA,
United Kingdom

Email: htnews@hackney.gov.uk

The Taxman's trips abroad

The Daily Mail this morning reveals how tax inspectors are travelling round the world, notching up some 200,000 miles, to investigate new ways to “raise bills at home”.

Staff from the Valuation Office Agency mocked taxpayers over dinner, stayed in five-star-hotels and even cashed in on a ‘free’ trip to Disneyland.  They were on a so-called ‘fact finding mission’ to look at ways to ‘recalculate bills’ by using Big Brother style databases and surveillance.  If there were any more euphemisms I think we’d start to get suspicious…until we read more of the article.

Apparently government snoopers have taken more than 1.3million pictures of homes to re-calculate council tax bills as well as giving £10million of taxpayer’s money to estate agents in return for details on homes.

It’s like two different worlds.  You work for the government; you get free junkets and the ability to snoop on people’s property, if only to revaluate council tax bills.  The rest of us, however, are left in shock at how these bureaucrats behave.  And what do they say when faced with this:  “When necessary the department undertakes some business trips linked to developing policy”.  Value for money, eh?!

Early Learning Programme Flops

Resignation no longer gets rid of them

Nursery education is meant to be one of the most cost effective ways of raising overall attainment. Head start, flying start, whatever snappy name the lobbyists and politicos hang on it, it's money well spent.

So you can understand why Labour has pumped money in, launching a raft of programmes and extending free nursery education to all three-year olds. So far it's cost us £21bn.

The trouble is, it's flopped.

New research from Durham University's Curriculum, Evaluation and Management Centre reveals that children's development and skills as they enter primary school are no different today than they were in 2000. No progress at all.

Naturally the government's response is to shrug it off. Minister for Children Beverley Hughes (the one who was forced to resign from the Home Office over the scandal of visas being issued on false papers) says:

"Early indications are that this investment is improving outcomes for children. However, as the author of this report acknowledges, it is still too early to measure this with any great authority."

I'm just listening to the author of the report on BBC R4 Today. She actually says we should have seen some measurable changes by now, and we haven't.

So what's gone wrong?

Nobody seems quite sure, but I think we can guess:

• Great Leap Forward- this is yet another top-down plan imposed from above- eg the boilerplate early childhood curriculum
• Social engineering disguised as education
• Unintended consequences- we already know Sure Start has been a disaster, making life worse for the most disadvantaged kids (eg see this blog)

£21bn.

There are no changes in prospect: as always, the Commissars' response to inconvenient evidence is to press on regardless. Just like Stalingrad.

Non-job of the week

You can always expect a green, taxpayer-funded non-job in the Guardian Society pages every week.  Over the weeks the proliferation of adverts for "climate change officers" and their lackeys is clear to the eye.  And it’s worrying too as we're the ones paying for them.  They mean well, yes, but the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

If you are a climate change officer at Guildford council you may think you can save the world, but you can't.  Instead you're using up our money just to appease the guilt-ridden consciences of establishment politicians.  If you want to help, join the bandwagon to get India and China to lower their carbon emissions and don't use taxpayers' money just to appease liberal guilt.

So, our non-job of the week is the "principal climate change officer" at Guildford council:

"Principal Climate Change Officer
Hours: Full Time
Salary: Grade B/C £28,286 pa - £36,130 pa with possible progression to £38,801 pa

This is an excellent opportunity for somebody to take the lead role in managing, implementing and reviewing the Council's Climate Change strategy.

You should have broad experience of dealing with sustainability issues and full understanding of how this relates to services provided by local authorities. You should be educated to degree standard in a relevant subject area and will need to manage the works of other highly motivated staff whose workload includes environmental issues and project delivery, including an ongoing programme for schools of promoting energy efficiency and use of renewable technology.

We need you to be self-motivated and flexible with excellent presentation and communication skills. The post will occasionally involve working irregular hours."

Annoyed?  Frustrated?  Then let the Surrey Newspapers know about the waste going on at Guildford Council:

Letters Editor
The Surrey Advertiser
Stoke Mill,
Woking Road,
Guildford,
GU1 1QA,
United Kingdom

Email: editorial@surreyad.co.uk

The Non-Courses Report 2007

The TaxPayers’ Alliance has compiled Britain’s first ever list of university “non-courses” – university degrees that lend the respectability of scholarly qualifications to non-academic subjects – and calculated their annual cost to students and taxpayers.

The huge expansion in student numbers in recent years, encouraged by the Government’s 50 per cent higher education target, has resulted in a proliferation of different degree courses on offer.

Unfortunately, a number of these new courses are of dubious academic merit, offering training better learned on-the-job.  In the worst cases, they offer neither intellectual stimulation nor any improvement in employment prospects. 

The cost of these “non-courses” falls on tw o groups: students, who are diverted from useful training and work experience by the lure of a degree; and taxpayers, who still pay for most of the cost of educating every student, despite university tuition fees.

Download The Non-Courses Report 2007 (PDF)

The key findings of this report are:

• “Non-courses” are costing taxpayers over £40 million a year. 
• If the £40 million cost of “non-courses” was spent on other undergraduates, it could cut their fees by £104 a year, or pay for a pint of beer a week for each student.
• There are 401 “non-courses” across Britain in the 2007-08 academic year.
• 89 different institutions offer one or more “non-courses”.
• The institution with the greatest number of “non-courses” on offer is the University of Derby, which offers 41 “non-courses”.
• In our judgement, top of the list for “non-courses” is “Outdoor Adventure with Philosophy” at Marjon College in Plymouth.

More branding waste

The Child Support Agency, now scrapped for being utterly useless, spent £60,000 just on consultants to "research brand development" according to the Express today.  Between that, big bonuses for its staff and £3.5 billion in uncollected fines it's hard to think of a government body that has represented worse value for the taxpayer.  Collecting unpaid child maintenance is basically a debt collection exercise and the same kind of thing is done day in, day out, in the private sector.  There is no underlying reason, beyond classic government mismanagement, for the agency's failure.

The BBC has been up to the same trick.  While it might be best paying attention to recent scandals it is putting in place a £120,000 rebrand of its radio idents (that's "logos" to you and me").  License-payers' money being poured down the drain.

Cost Of Renewable Fantasies

EU renewables plan

I've taken a look at the leaked Whitehall paper that spells out for ministers the likely costs to Britain of accepting the EU's fantasy target for renewable energy.

It's part of the dismal Blair legacy, the part where he spent his last few months jetting off to Europe and agreeing to everything they asked for- the Constitution, the abolition of the UK budget rebate (official cost £1bn, real cost more like £20bn), and this 2020 target for 20% of energy usage to come from renewables.

Reading the paper (here) the first thing you realise is that it's even less well baked than the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). We estimated that costs British taxpaying consumers about £1bn pa, largely to the benefit of the big energy companies (see this blog).

But this new policy is something else again. To start with, nobody has a clue how it fits with the existing ETS. The paper says:

"The renewables target and energy efficiency measures risk making the existing EU ETS redundant, and prices prone to collapse. Given that the ETS is the EU's main existing vehicle for delivering least cost reductions in greenhouse gases, and the basis on which the EU seeks to build a global carbon market, this is a major risk."

We might say that to impose one half-baked eco cost burden may be regarded as a misfortune; to impose two looks like sheer blithering incompetence. Especially when the second directly undermines the first.

The new approach will also cost much much more than even the ETS. That's because, although ETS was implemented in an extraordinarily cack-handed manner, in essence it harnesses a market mechanism to seek out the cheapest and most efficient ways of reducing emissions, be that renewables or something else.

Specifying a fixed quantified target for the proportion of energy use that must come from renewables means the Commissars not only want to set the target for reducing emissions, but also specify how that reduction must be achieved. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, they still reckon they know better than the market how to get stuff done. It is a return to traditional EU Stalinist planning. The paper says:

"The costs of increasing renewable energy technology... is around three times higher than allowing flexibility in reduction options through emissions trading."

The paper models five possible cost scenarios, based on different ways in which the overall 20% EU target could get divied up between member states. For future reference here's the key table:

As we can see, in the event that we are forced to accept the full 20% target (and given the way our negotiators roll over, who'd want to bet against that), the estimated costs to us taxpaying consumers are put at about £20bn pa. That's a jaw-dropping £800 per household per year, or 6p on the standard rate of income tax.

But our guess is that the real costs will be even higher than that. As the paper acknowledges, its cost projections assume a very high availability of biomass technologies- way beyond anything we currently have, and way beyond anything Whitehall's own studies have previously envisaged as being realistic. It's akin to assuming we can somehow invent a perpetual motion machine. The paper warns:

"If less biomass is available and other heat technologies need to be deployed, costs would rise rapidly."

There are also big uncertainties about the cost of using biofuels in transport.

So what shall we say?

Double the £20bn estimate?

Treble?

The truth is nobody has the foggiest idea. Our rulers have entered into yet another half baked, open ended commitment they haven't a clue how to deliver.

The only thing we can really be sure about is that we're committed to paying a huge amount of money for technology that doesn't really exist and may not be the best way forward in pursuit of a dragon that may yet turn out to be largely a statistical artefact.

Non-job of the week

                                 

It’s that time of the week again.  Our weekly trawl through the Guardian Society pages never fails to surprise us with their banal array of jobs on offer.  Our pick this week is from the London NHS.  They’re advertising for a doctor.  No, not the kind of doctor who saves lives but a spin doctor – employed by the taxpayer – to save reputations.

In advertising for a ‘communications media manager’, the London NHS needs a hack to place good news in the press and rebut the bad.  This is £42,054 of your money on a spin doctor.  Compare that with the pitiful £17,000 nurse’s starting salary and it’s enough to make you feel sick.

Our non job of the week:

“Communications Media Manager
Band 7 Salary £33,146 - £42,054

We are recruiting a communications media manager who will have day-to-day responsibility for ensuring NHS London’s voice is heard in the media.  We need someone who is a good operator with a proven record in placing positive stories and rebutting bad news.  The successful applicant will have excellent oral and written communications skills.  They will work in a busy office, often giving advice to communications teams in London’s 71 trusts and PCTs.  The postholder will receive an allowance for being part of an out-of-hours on-call rota.”

Weekly Waste Round-Up 71

He's meant to work for us

In the news this week:

£17,300 to hide MPs expenses from us- "A committee run by the Speaker of the Commons squandered more than £17,000 of taxpayers' money on barristers in an attempt to keep MPs' travel expenses secret. The House of Commons Commission - chaired by Michael Martin - spent two years trying to keep MPs' car, train and plane claims, which ran into millions of pounds, from the public. It forked out nearly £17,300 on lawyers and barristers to challenge a ruling by Information Commissioner Richard Thomas that taxpayers had a right to know much public money was being spent on politicians' travel." (Mail 11.8.07)

Balls junket costs us £5,000- "Cabinet minister Ed Balls spent thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money attending a private meeting of one of the world's most powerful and secretive organisations. Mr Balls travelled to Canada for the four-day conference of the shadowy Bilderberg Group of businessmen and politicians... The cost of the trip, in air fares, hotel bills and expenses is estimated at up to £5,000. The group's rules insist that "all participants attend in a private and not an official capacity". However, a Treasury spokesman said Mr Balls had attended "in his capacity as a minister" and confirmed that all expenses had been met from public funds." (Sunday Telegraph 12.8.07)

£1.7m wasted on re-importing radiocative waste- "DOUNREAY officials yesterday defended the £1.7 million cost of returning a batch of radioactive waste which was exported from the site to Peru nine years ago... As Peru lacks any specialist treatment or disposal facilities, a dozen-strong team from Dounreay went over to Lima... to move the 43 drums of the waste... Dounreay director Simon Middlemas denied the £1.7 million bill was a waste of money that could otherwise have been devoted to the clean-up of the site. He said: "I suppose you could look at it like that but... I wouldn't say it's been an embarrassment... that was in the past and practices then are completely different to what they are now." (John O'Groat Journal 10.8.07)

Human rights commissariate costs £1m pa- "MSPs last night demanded that Holyrood abandon moves to appoint a £75,000-a-year human rights "tsar". The calls came after advertisements were published for a full-time chairman of the Scottish Human Rights Commission, who will head a panel of four part-time members and have an annual budget of £1 million." (Scotsman 21.7.07)

Council teaches vandals how to waste £400K pa- "Daft council chiefs who paid £400,000 to clean up paint-daubed walls are giving kids free lessons - in GRAFFITI. Teenagers will be taught techniques in spray painting as part of a summer scheme. The classes are the brainwave of Islington council, north London, whose workers scrubbed off 25,000 square metres of graffiti last year." (People 12.8.07)

Total for week- £3,122,300

Defra Disasters

The Surrey foot and mouth outbreak is only the latest in a string of disasters visited on farmers by the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs. They also cost taxpayers a fortune.

Living very close to the Pirbright labs from which the virus escaped, I've been down to find out what's going on (see previous blogs here and here). I've also totted up what Defra's bungling is costing us.

Dentistry Fiasco Update

Open your wallet very wide please

We've blogged the NHS dentist fiasco many times (eg here). And today we hear that the Department of Health's latest convoluted attempt to increase availability has flopped.

Their new contract for NHS dentists was supposed to end the piecework "drill and fill" culture, yet at the same time somehow expand supply. In reality it's made even more dentists jump ship altogether: in the year to end-March, the number of NHS dentists actually fell from 21,111 to 21,038.

Health minister Ann Keen ludicrously claims:

"Putting right nearly two decades of deterioration in NHS coverage is not the work of 12 months. It will take longer to develop services to a position where all primary care trusts are able to meet local requirements fully."

She's clearly overlooked Tony Blair's notorious "pledge" nearly a decade ago:

"Everyone within the next two years will be able once again to see an NHS dentist."

NHS dentistry now costs us nearly £2bn pa. Yet patient numbers are lower than ever.

The hopeless Department of Health is incapable of even managing itself (eg see this blog). So why on earth should we believe its claims to manage dentistry?

Non-job of the week

Two things stand out in this week’s non-job.  The first is the proliferation of ‘welfare rights’ advisors and other local government apparatchiks who are paid generous amounts to explain to people how to claim benefits.  This raises the question of whether councils are actively pursuing take-up of benefits and that when people do need to go on benefits, the system is too complex to give essential relief to those in greatest need.

A simple system of benefits, such as in Charles Murray’s plan to give each taxpayer a lump sum to deal with their own welfare, would erase the need for employing bureaucrats to ‘manage’ welfare provision.

To add insult to injury, Salford taxpayers are funding a bureaucrat to only deal with a minority of the community.  How is that for value for money?  Salford taxpayers put into the pot to pay for services they all expect.  Yet when the council decide on service provision they use taxpayers’ money to fund extra services for the Urdu and Punjabi community.  This isn’t an attack on minorities, but it is a severe condemnation of liberal-left do-gooders wilfully wasting taxpayers’ money and dividing communities.

So, with all the anger and disgust generated from this week’s Guardian Society pages, we give you our non-job of the week from Salford Council:

“Welfare Rights Linkworker (Urdu/Punjabi)
Welfare Rights and Debt Advice Service

£18, 450 – £24, 708 p.a.

You’ll provide welfare rights advice and case-work together with advice/practical assistance to the Urdu/Punjabi speaking communities in Salford in accessing local services.  This would include telephone advice, home visits, advice sessions, talks to local groups and general benefit take-up work.

A knowledge of the basic rules for means-tested, non-means tested and disability benefits as well as tax credits is essential.  The ability to communicate sympathetically and effectively in Urdu, Punjabi and English is also essential.  A detailed knowledge of the social security system, an ability to represent at social security tribunals and beyond, an ability to train and an understanding of local authorities, health services and adult social care in particular would be a significant advantage.

You should be able to work on your own, as well as part of a team, whilst being committed to the promotion of anti-poverty and social inclusion work.

The post carries an entitlement to an Essential Car User’s Allowance”

If you’re outraged at this waste of money, then get involved!  You can write to the local Salford Advertiser expressing exasperation at the constant waste of taxpayers’ money going on in our town halls.  The address for their letters page is:

Letters Editor
The Salford Advertiser and Salford City Reporter
30 Church Street,
Eccles,
Salford,
M30 0DF,

Or you can email a letter in to: salfordadvertiser@gmwn.co.uk

It’s time we stood up and made our voice heard against these non-jobs.  Do get involved so people know there is a movement out there standing up for lower taxation and responsible, better government.

Teaching To The Test Update

Further Excellent News!

Lord Adonis of the Department for Children, Schools and Families (National) has hailed the latest Key Stage 2 school test results:

"Today's primary school children have achieved the best set of Key Stage 2 results we have ever seen, and I congratulate all pupils and teachers for their hard work and achievements.

Over the last ten years there has been substantial and sustained improvement at Key Stage 2. Compared to 1997, 100,000 more 11 year olds are achieving the target level for their age in English and 90,000 in Maths.

But there is still more to do."

Er, yes... there certainly is, My Lord.

True, the percentage of 11 year olds hitting KS2 target level 4 has crept up again since last year. But one in five kids are still failing to reach what is a pretty basic level of achievement- which means they are leaving primary school functionally illiterate and/or innumerate.

Moreover, as we blogged here, even those who pass the test may well not have the skills. It's now well established that, with such high stakes, schools routinely teach to the test rather than teaching for understanding. And they routinely adopt "triage" techniques to concentrate resources on marginal pupils, rather than those at the bottom who have the really serious problems.

The Commissars were tickled pink with their little selves when all their tests and national strategies seemed to crank up 3Rs performance virtually overnight- see table below. But as everybody now understands, that mainly reflected schools learning how to teach to the test. The problems of the hardcore 20% at the very bottom haven't been addressed at all.

Shocking bonuses at the BBC

Trust in the BBC is non-existent. Its most popular programmes were recently rumbled, exposing a widespread phone-in scam that fleeced thousands of license-fee payers who thought they were taking part in legitimate competitions. They were even caught out in the Telegraph this morning by digitally generating parts of their ‘factual’ programming.

The BBC name is now associated with left-wing bias, incompetence and mistrust. So, our readers will be incensed to hear that the BBC has gone on a bonus-spending-spree, handing out £20 MILLION worth of bonuses to its employees. In a shocking INCREASE on last year’s bonuses, the equivalent to 143,000 license fees were handed to BBC staff in what has been assumed to be its worst year on record.

Are we getting value for money? Not in anyone’s books.

In the real world – usually outside the domain of government subsides and state monopolies – when someone fails miserably, they don’t receive a bonus. But things are different for the Beeb. They argue their bonuses are part of the staff’s “contractual entitlement”, meaning there is no incentive whatsoever to provide high-quality programming, impartial news and worthwhile entertainment.

This is what happens when there’s no competition on the box. We have to pay a tax to even be allowed to watch TV – a levy going to subsidise the BBC who quite clearly aren’t worth the money. Let’s scrap the TV tax and see if the BBC survives on subscriptions from those who actually want to pay for the BBC. If it’s good for other TV stations, it’s good for the BBC too.

Taxpayers funding births abroad

So we hear news about NHS budget deficits and hospitals not having enough money to clean wards properly.  Apparently, however, there’s enough money to pay for treatment abroad rather than spending the money on the NHS at home.

Taken from the public purse, 269 women took advantage of the EU scheme to shop around for healthcare.  A further 88 were sent abroad to have treatment for hearing aids, blood tests and speech therapy, the government has admitted.

Rather than paying people to go abroad to have hospital treatment, perhaps the government should put our money to frontline services.  Recruiting and training doctors and nurses, rather than administrators and bureaucrats, would be a start to curing the sickness within our healthcare system.                                              

Weekly Waste Round-Up 70

That will be £12 grand

In the even-sillier-than-usual season news this week-

£12k on probing towels hazard- "HEALTH and safety bureaucrats wasted £12,000 — studying BATH TOWELS. Boffins wanted to know if laying them on the bathroom floor makes you more or less likely to slip. But the Government-funded project failed to draw any conclusions. Astonishingly the boffins now want ANOTHER £12,000 of taxpayers’ cash to fund an extra YEAR of research." (Sun 4.8.07)

'Pointless relic' costs £6.6m pa- "THE Scotland Office has been branded the most pointless department in Whitehall after figures showed it received just 39 letters a year from MPs and peers, put out an average of only one press release a week yet managed to spend 32 per cent more on hospitality than in the previous year... Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dems' Scotland spokesman said the Scotland Office was "more concerned with hosting soirées than communicating with Edinburgh... Employing 20 staff to write an average of two official letters each year is indefensible." The Scotland Office and Office of the Advocate General had a combined budget of £6.6 million last year." (Scotsman 3.8.07; htp The Huntsman)

Politicians chomp through £5m pa- "Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly have got a bit huffy in the past when people questioned the subsidy paid for Assembly eating places. During one 12-month period during suspension, the subsidy came to £308,591 - a fairly hefty sum. But Stormont still has some way to go to catch up with the Houses of Parliament. Catering facilities there have been bankrolled by the public purse to the tune of some £4.7m in a single year." (Belfast Telegraph 2.8.07)

Prezza spent £0.5m on fun- "JOHN Prescott’s office landed taxpayers with a “scandalous” bill of more than £500,000 for travel and hospitality, it was revealed yesterday. Accounts for the now-defunct Office of the Deputy Prime Minister showed the massive cost of visits and parties for Mr Prescott and his staff." (Sunday Express 4.8.07)

£100,000 for Donny Osmond concert- "SINGING star Donny Osmond’s homecoming concert came at a price to the taxpayers of Merthyr Tydfil – £100,000... Council leader Harvey Jones told the Echo he understood the overall cost of the event was "astronomical... We could have said ‘no, it’s too expensive’ but we looked at it. We thought ‘it’s Donny Osmond, a one-off’. It was a first for Merthyr"... but Merthyr Donny fan Julie Powell, a 46-year-old mother of two, said: “It’s a lot of money. I don’t think the council should have been asked to contribute and especially not that amount. It should have come out of the concert profits.” (Western Mail and Echo 24.8.07)

Total for week- £12,212,000

NHS Supercomputer Unfit For Purpose

The £12-20bn NHS Supercomputer - the National Programme for IT - continues to lurch from crisis to crisis. In June the programme's head, Richard Granger, suddenly resigned. Now users are discovering the software is not fit for purpose, and is significantly inferior to their existing systems.

A survey of Foundation Hospital Trusts has just revealed the horrible truth.

It was hospitals which were supposedly going to be the NPfIT's principal beneficiaries, but in practice, they have “widespread concerns about functionality".

"The biggest concerns ...centre on problems with the Care Records System, mental health systems and maternity, but also extend to picture archiving and communications systems (PACS) – often cited as the great successes of the programme.

The survey results make damning reading, detailing concerns about the limitations of key systems. “Almost every respondent had concerns about the functionality of some part of the system and most had opted out of certain parts of the NPfIT system”.

For example, in the case of the Patient Administration System, a quarter of Trusts reported “major problems, with one having identified 60 areas less efficient than current system, where new processes will need to be introduced at significant additional costs.”

Most extraordinarily, because of its limited functionality, many hospitals don't want the core Care Records System at all, "even though it comes at zero cost".

Just let that sink in. After all those taxpayer billions, the Supercomputer is so bad, and so expensive to operate, that hospitals don't want it even though they're getting it for nothing.

And the Commissars' response?

Simple. If the hospitals won't use it, they'll be fined until they do.

Fined. That's right. One has already been told it will be fined £20m if it delays implementation, and another is looking at £11m.

Thus do the Commissars' manage our healthcare system- terrible strategic blunders, shockingly poor implementation, and those on the frontline simply forced to obey orders whatever the consequences.

Bad, bad, bad.

In fact, so catastrophically bad, that even in Whitehall the Department of Health has been identified as a basket case. As regular BOM readers will recall, it received a shocking Report Card from the Cabinet Office a couple of months back. And they were forced to promise A Plan To Get Back On Track.

But talk is cheap: has anything actually been done?

Ah, no. The DoH's own deadline of end-July has just come and gone with no Plan. According to them, they've been too busy "engaging with staff".

"Engaging with staff". Try telling that to the hundreds of thousands of demoralised NHS staff who are fed up to the back teeth with the hopeless disfunctional DoH "engaging" with them, and would just like the chance to get on with their jobs.

Ministers told to back off from the Beeb

The appointment of Sir Michael Lyons, author of the expensive and ineffective Lyons report into local government finance, to the Chairmanship of the BBC was seen as just another act of cronyism. 

The Daily Mail reports today (not online) that the House of Lords communications committee has criticised ministers’ roles in public service appointments.  Keeping politicians in key roles over public appointments, they argue, leads to promotions based on cronyism and not merit.

While the report doesn’t comment on Sir Michael’s ability to perform competently in his new role, despite being a professional bureaucrat with no history in broadcasting, the committee suggests that politicians meddle too much in the selection of senior officials.  Tessa Jowell, then culture minister, appointed the committee who drew up the short list that led to Sir Michael’s appointment as BBC Chairman.  At the time Sir Michael was a member of the Labour Party with close ties to Gordon Brown.

To avoid future cronyism, Lord Fowler – who chairs the Lords Communications Committee – called on future appointments to be completely non-political and subject to greater parliamentary scrutiny.

While this report was seldom reported, it is another step forward for the better government campaign.  Political interference in services, such as the BBC, has clearly led to a collapse in faith in our politician’s ability to deliver high quality public services. 

Non-Job of the Week

We have often wondered where all those Environmental Science graduates that new universities are so good at producing find employment on graduation.  The answer, it seems, lies in the Guardian Society supplement, which, every week advertises pages of non-jobs in local councils that all seem to require environmental or earth sciences degrees.

One such job that stands out, from Buckinghamshire County Council, is our non-job of the week:

Natural Environment and Green Infrastructure Manager Planning and Environment Service
£32,697 - £37,278

Leading a team of professionals engaged in HIS, Landscape Characterisation and Biodiversity work.  You will need to produce a Buckinghamshire Green Infrastructure Strategy and ensure that the Buckinghamshire Environmental Character System (BECs) and its various components are integrated into a single resource, and made available as a one stop GIS system.

NHS Pay- A Triumph Of Simple Shopping

The magic beans were even more useless than we imagined

Our very first blog about the Simple Shopper was on the new GPs contract (see here). We asked how the Department of Health could possibly have given away such a heavy milking cash cow in exchange for a few magic beans that never even germinated.

Right across the NHS, the Department stuffed mouths with Gordon's Gold (make that our gold), and got virtually nothing in exchange. The authoritative King's Fund reckons around 80% of the extra money went on higher costs (eg see this blog). What's more, right across the board, the pay reforms cost much more than planned:

Yesterday we got confirmation of just how badly the Department of Health fumbled the new GPs contract:

"The NHS work of the average GP in England has been cut by about seven hours a week since the government introduced a new contract in 2004, official figures revealed yesterday.

The contract, which removed GPs responsibility for treating patients outside normal office hours, increased their earnings by 25% in the first year, raising the average for a dispensing partner in a GP practice to £117,000. Many doctors boosted earnings by selling out-of-hours services to their primary care trust that they used to provide for free.

A report from the government's information centre for health and social care showed the average GP worked 36.3 hours a week for the NHS in 2006-07, compared with 43.5 hours in 1992-93. The reduction was due to more part-time working and fewer out-of-hours responsibilities.

The latest figures showed only 62% of GP partners and 22% of salaried GPs work full-time."

But why? Why would the DoH give away all that money without getting anything in exchange? We know they're incompetent, but surely even a two year old would want at least a few sweeties in exchange.

It turns out that the DoH really did believe they were getting something in exchange: staff and contractors' buy-in to reforms with portentous titles like Agenda for Change. The idea seems to have been that in exchange for a mountain of cash, workers would consent to being managed by the commissars and their legions of bureaucrats.

Earlier in the week the King's Fund reported on the implementation of Agenda for Change, which was the reform programme for pretty well everyone in the NHS except doctors.

The bottom line is familiar: this was a top-down programme imposed on local managers and staff without any detailed consideration as to how it was to be implemented.

A key part of the "reforms" was to be a much closer dialogue between staff and their managers, based around all the usual paraphernalia of the HR consultant's art: formalised "job design", personal development plans, regular appraisal/performance reviews, more training, etc etc.

Now, anyone who has ever attempted to implement such schemes in the real world knows they are much easier to talk about than to use. Even if you manage to tick all the boxes- making sure everyone has a job description and a regular documented appraisal review etc- that by no means assures better management. Badly handled, they can make working relationships much more difficult.

Which is precisely what seems to have happened in the NHS. The King's Fund reports its own survey results showing that actually things have gone backwards since the reforms (see report table 4). Fewer staff now have appraisal reviews, fewer staff think their job is "well designed", and fewer staff express job satisfaction.

The appalling upshot is that only one quarter of staff now feel their work is valued by their employer. A total collapse in morale.

Finally, fewer than half of staff now "have a positive view of patient care" (42% vs 54% in 2003). Alarming.

As we've said many times, there's simply no way of managing a guargantuan blob like the NHS. Top down perestroikan reforms like Agenda For Change will never work.

The government has now hit the panic button and put in union man Johnson to stop the engines. So we are now into a long and dangerous drift downstream.

What we desperately need is a government that will bite the bullet, grasp the nettle, and carpe the diem. We need to break up the whole monstrous edifice. Competing social insurers is the way forward.

Sadly, our centrist first past the post electoral system looks incapable of delivering it any time soon.

Which is A Problem.