EU DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT

The democratic deficit that some claim exists in the EU is not simply Anglo-Saxon angst, the German constitutional court does not recognise the European parliament as a genuine legislature, representing the will of a single European people, but as a representative body of member states.   The German court states that the European parliament does not behave like a true parliament. There is no formal opposition. There is no grouping that supports a government. The Lisbon treaty may increases the powers of the European parliament, but it does not, in the court’s view, fix its ultimate short-coming.    That is, the parliament does not constitute an effective control of EU executive power. However despite this ruling, and it is a ‘ruling’ relating to the ultimate authority of the German legislature, Germany have signed the Lisbon Treaty.  So does this mean that Germany has capitulated on the treaty.  Far from it, they have pointed out that Lisbon changes very little from previous treaties that have been signed.  So while the Lisbon Treaty gives more authority to Members of the European Parliament, the parliament remains very much a paper tiger.

It’s not unreasonable to assume that the EU electorate are well aware of this democratic deficit and that this views is reflected in their vote at European elections.  As LUCIA KUBOSOVA pointed out in the EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS, a lack of trust and interest in politics came out as the main reasons for a record low turnout in the June 2009 elections of the European Parliament, when the EU vote turnout dropped from 62 percent in 1979 to 43 percent in June 2009.  Almost a third of respondents (28%) to the Eurobarometer poll, published on 28 July2009, suggested that they do not trust or are not satisfied with politics in general and therefore did not cast their vote, with the argument mainly present in Greece (51%), Bulgaria (45%), Cyprus and Romania (both 44%). In Hungary, Malta and Spain, citizens who abstained from the EP vote said they were not interested in politics as such, while Latvians and Austrians overwhelmingly believed that the election of MEPs has no consequences and would not change anything – the third most frequent reason for ignoring the poll.

Across social groups in population, the lack of interest in politics was mainly present among young voters, aged 18 to 24, while disbelief that the EU’s legislature and its make-up after the vote would matter for their life was mainly voiced by the unemployed and people with difficulties in paying their bills.  The lowest turnout was recorded in Slovakia (19.6%) and Lithuania (20.9%), while the highest figures came from Luxembourg (91%) and Belgium (85.9%) – both countries where voting is compulsory. Malta, Italy and Denmark scored highest for countries with no obligation to vote.

While Mencken may have said that ‘democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance’, even the ignorant recognise shifts in their comfort zone and vote in their own perceived best interests, so that eventually there is a collective wisdom of the less (albeit selfish) ignorant. Regardless of its motivation , such collective wisdom fails in a simple democracy when the electorate fail to vote in sufficient numbers.  If the electorate of EU member states abrogate their responsibility, especially in a simple democracy, then the only defender of their democracy is the independence of their constitutional court and at the moment this is not the EU commission and certainly not the European Parliament.   This is recognised by the German constitutional court, and most likely by all those EU member states that have a written constitution.  Unfortunately the United Kingdom has no written constitution, it is a simple democracy in which the  ‘supremacy of parliament‘ prevails.  While a democratic deficit may well exist in the form of the EU commission, this parliamentary supremacy represents a far greater democratic deficit for the United Kingdom.

Government Debt

The true level of government debt is £2,200 billion (i.e. £85,610 per household) and not £805 billion as currently reported by the ONS.  In a report issued by The Centre for Policy Studies on Monday 19 October, Brooks Newmark MP in The Hidden Debt Bombshell claims that the official figures, which are due to be updated today, Tuesday 20 October, do not take into account:

1. the full cost of projects financed through the PFI (£139 billion)
2. unfunded public sector pension liabilities (£1,104 billion)
3. contingent liabilities such as Network Rail (£22 billion)
4. the cost of recent interventions in the financial sector (£130 billion).

These hidden liabilities total £1,395 billion (100% of GDP). The true public debt is therefore £805 billion + £1,395 billion = £2.2 trillion (157% of GDP). This is an increase of £346 billion since last year – almost £1 billion a day or £700,000 a minute - when the true level of debt was £1.85 trillion (127% of GDP). A debt clock illustrating the rate of increase can be found here.

This report is covered today in The Times, The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, The Sun, The Daily Express,City AM and Bloomberg.

While it’s true that adding all of these liabilities to the government debt produces the burden ‘bombshell’ that Newmark claims, it is an ‘old chestnut’. Fraser Nelson and Peter Hoskin writing in the Spectator in 2008 talked about PFI schemes in The great debt deceit: how Gordon Brown cooked the nation’s books. Public Sector pension liabilities have always been ‘unfunded’ (in that there is no fund set aside to service this liability). Contingent liabilities are a fact of government administration, as is government intervention funding. In the case of PFI, the private sector is bound to maximise the opportunity to benefit from public sector funded contracts, as it is with similar opportunities afforded by other public sector funded liabilities (e.g. a return of banking ‘bonuses’)!

While the debt burden is enormous, it is not unprecedented, as the above graph shows.  ‘Economics help’ points out that you could also say: “Look how much debt the UK had in 1945, yet, rather than focus on spending cuts, the government set up a very ambitious welfare state and universal health care. Despite public sector debt reaching over 200% in 1950, this did not cripple the economy in the coming decades. The relatively huge level of debt proved no barrier to one of the longest periods of economic expansion on records”.
This is true, but we now find ourselves in the a position where this ‘longest periods of economic expansion’ is either at end, or will not continue as an exclusive ‘Western Industrialised Nations Club’.  So economic expansion, if it is to be realised, is unlikely to ever mirror that from 1950 to 2000.  This is not necessarily the end of the world, however, the National Debt, or at least the interest payments on it, need to be serviced and this can only achieved  from sustained economic growth, or at a minimum, sustained economic stability.

As a writer on the blog ‘Economics help’ points out; From National Debt: What appears tragic from this is that Britain’s cultural history can be read off from the 1900 – 2000 PSBR debt burden chart from the Bank of England above. The chart’s peaks of PSBR above 100% of GDP mirror exactly the historical periods of social misery which George Orwell documented during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, with Britain characterised as a land of rootless tramps and unemployed all reliant on piecemeal charity, low paid jobs and money-lenders, a nation which even Orwell himself could not envisage having a universal welfare state. Our collective memories of this poverty finally begin to lift around 1965 and Beatlemania, a time exactly coinciding with PSBR finally falling below 100% of GDP.

No to democracy?

I’m sure that we all like to think that we live in a democracy and that a democracy is the most equitable form of government, and yet successive administrations in the UK have demonstrated how inequitable the democracy that we think we possess actually is.  Non more so than the present New Labour administration, but to imagine that a change of the administration will bring about a change to the UK ‘democratic system’ would be naive in the extreme.

“America is almost always described as a democracy in school textbooks, educational programs, and news outlets of every ideological stripe. Likewise, when talking of America, politicians from both sides of the aisle frequently mention “our democracy,” by which they mean American democracy”.  This was written by AWR Hawkins a regular contributor to Pyjamas Media, which is a conservative web site in the USA and AWR Hawkins is a conservative writer who holds a PhD in military history.

In his article AWR Hawkins goes on to discuss his contention that America is a Republic and not a Democracy. He contends that “Our Founding Fathers instituted a form of government guided by the rule of law rather than the desires of a majority of voters. They understood that a democracy is always in flux and given to “mob rule,” while a republic is fixed and stable, resting on “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” Because of the uncertainty of democracy, Benjamin Rush — a signer of the Declaration of Independence — wrote: “A simple democracy is one of the greatest of evils.”  The “evils” Rush saw in democracy are evident when we compare the basis for rights in a democracy with the basis for rights in a republic. In a democracy, rights ultimately flow from the majority, and every right — from keeping and bearing arms to possessing private property — is re-callable if the party in the majority so decides. In the constitutional republic that our Founders intended America to be, rights are seen as coming from God and because of this, are unassailable by government (regardless of which party is in the majority)”.

“In the Declaration of Independence these unassailable rights were described as “unalienable” and were clearly presented as rights over which the government has no say.  That our Founding Fathers were well aware of the temporality of democracy was evident in the words of America’s second president, John Adams, who said: “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.  Our Founders saw the dangers that democracy posed for our great experiment in freedom and risked “[their] Lives, [their] Fortunes, and [their] sacred Honour” to create a republic instead. It is to honour them and preserve our own liberty that we don’t just pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States, but also to “the republic for which it stands”.

I’m not sure that I would regard myself as a conservative , although my response to the world’s smallest political quiz would suggest otherwise.  I take comfort, or kid myself, that in the context of the quiz I am a conservative in the broadest sense.  For me, the crux of all of this is the unalienable rights written into the American Constitution, but perhaps this Constitution was a product its time. It may be that  such a time has now passed and is never to be repeated.  Nowhere is this more evident that in the EU and the Lisbon Treaty and will become even more evident in any ‘democratic reforms’ that the UK parliamentary oligarchy will introduce.  I think that Benjamin Rush was right in saying that “A simple democracy is one of the greatest of evils.”

The rich will always be with us.

Individuals with net assets of at least $1 million, excluding their primary residence and consumables, are classified as High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI), while those HNWI with net assets of at least $30 million are classified as Ultra-High Net Worth Individuals (Ultra-HNWI).  At least this is the criterion used by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini in their 13th Annual Wealth Report (pdf). It seems that the population of HNWI and their share of the worlds wealth has shrunk.  The worlds High Net Worth Population is now reduced to 8.6 Million with their share of the worlds wealth dropping to only $32.8 Trillion.  The net wealth of these individuals is only expected to reach $48.5 Trillion by 2013, a mere 44% growth over a three year period.

The Guardian reported in 2006 that the richest 1% of adults in the world own 40% of the planet’s wealth, Taken further, the UN report source indicates that 2% of the worlds population own 50% of the worlds wealth, while 1% of the worlds wealth is held by 50% of the worlds population. Wealth in this UN report is net worth: that is, the value of physical and financial assets less debts.  Here, wealth represents the ownership of capital, which in many cases  it may not be possible to realise or invest.  Given the disparity of wealth distribution in the world, excluding the primary residence and consumables, has little relevance to the 50% holders of 1% of the worlds wealth.  However, these exclusions do make a distinction between those who have ‘wealth’, however small, and those with the status of HNWI. This latter group make up considerably less than 1% of the worlds population and yet they have the abilty to manipulate the worlds economies through their wealth acquisitions.  Their status as High Net Worth Individuals (pdf), represents an ability to ‘maintain investments in wealth creation’ through the ownership of capital that can be realised and invested.

THE TOP 50 HNWI

In the UK, the Neo Liberal economics of Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown have provided professional politicians and professional financiers, virtually unfettered access to, and control of, the economy.  An economy based on the the policy that; ‘by increasing the wealth of the HNWI, this ensures wealth distribution as the increase in wealth will trickle down to be shared by all’.  In pursuit of this policy, these soi-disant professionals have literally ‘played with other peoples money’, both directly and indirectly, with no personal risk to their own acquisitions of the trappings of wealth. They continue to do so, and in doing so they must inevitably be influenced by High Net Worth Individuals.  So perhaps we should be grateful for the current crisis. Without it things would have become far worse before the gross ineptitude, personal greed and self aggrandisement, of these professionals was exposed.  As indeed was the naiveté of those who bought into their economic policies, as HNWI or simply as wealthy individuals.

As I commented in my previous post; New Labour – The Party of Inequality, wealth distribution in Britain under New Labour is now more unequal than at any time since modern records began in the early 1960s. While many  aspired to become HNWI, or simply acquire more wealth, it’s these soi-disant professionals who have succeeded in doing so above all others.  That these professionals should now claim that the present crisis was not the inevitable result of a boom fuelled in part, by Ponzi schemes and Fiat money, is simply disingenuous.  As would be, any claim that they have not shown a callous indifference to the consequences of their actions in their pursuit of personal wealth, coupled with their desire to sustain a self perpetuating plutocracy.

The Austrian economic school of Ludwig Von Mises have long held the view that, “The credit expansion boom is built on the sands of banknotes and deposits. It must collapse. There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved. The boom is called good business, prosperity, and upswing. Its unavoidable aftermath, the readjustment of conditions to the real data of the market, is called crisis, slump, bad business, depression“. The ultimate insult being, that these political and financial professionals, whilst fuelling the boom, have had their Net Worth, and aspirations to wealth, insured and assured by the the UK public purse.  Those contributing this purse must now face up to an inequitable distribution of the ‘price of failure’.

Aldous Huxley was right when he said; “It seems to me that the nature of the ultimate revolution with which we are now faced is precisely this: That we are in process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy who have always existed and presumably will always exist to get people to love their servitude.”

New Labour – The party of inequality

Britain under Gordon Brown is a more unequal country than at any time since modern records began in the early 1960s, after the incomes of the poor fell and those of the rich rose in the three years after the 2005 general election.  So reported The Guardian on Friday 8 May 2009.  Fortunately for New Labour and Gordon Brown, The Telegraph had broken the story on MPs expenses. From this point on, any other reports about the systemic failures of the New Labour administration were lost amongst the chaff of the expenses furore.

The Guardian reported that deprivation and inequality in the UK rose for a third successive year in 2007-08, according to data from the Department for Work and Pensions that prompted strong criticism from campaign groups for the government’s backsliding on its anti-poverty goals.  The government failed to make a dent in the number of children or pensioners living in poverty after big increases the previous year. Almost 17,000 more children in England are on free school meals this year compared with last, according to government data also published yesterday.

About 15% of pupils in state schools are now entitled to free school meals because their parents receive welfare payments or earn below £15,575 a year, the figures show. Last year, 14.5% of pupils were eligible.  Even before the onset of the UK’s deepest recession in a generation, official figures showed that only the better-off families were spared from a squeeze on living standards that saw median income virtually unchanged and fresh cuts in real pay for those on the lowest salaries.

The Guardian report notes that since Tony Blair’s third election victory, the poorest 10% of households have seen weekly incomes fall by £9 a week to £147 once inflation is accounted for, while those in the richest 10% of homes have enjoyed a £45 a week increase to £1,033. The data shows that the second poorest 10% of households has also had to make do with less since 2005. Overall, the poorest 20% saw real income fall by 2.6% in the three years to 2007-08, while those in the top fifth of the income distribution enjoyed a rise of 3.3%. As a result, income inequality at the end of Labour’s 11th year in power was higher than at any time during Margaret Thatcher’s premiership.

Further; the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Britain’s leading think tank on tax and benefits, reported that the increase in poverty in 2007-08 was due to weak income growth for the low paid. Rising inflation had also eroded the real value of state benefits and tax credits. Meanwhile, the number of working adults living below the official breadline rose by 300,000 to 11 million, with childless adults the worst affected. With financial help from the state concentrated on pensioners and the young, one in seven working-age adults without dependent children are now living in poverty – the highest ever level.  The IFS said the government had reduced child poverty by 16% and would need to spend £4.2bn a year to hit its 2010 target, but had allocated only £200m in last month’s budget. “Given the state of the public finances, it seems unlikely that the government will find the remaining £4bn needed in the 2009 pre-budget report”.

HMRC Newspeak – The Customer

It seems that taxpayers are ‘customers’ of HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC). Newspeak has pervaded all executive arms of government, non more so than HMRC. In the HMRC publication “Delivering our Vision Business Plan 2009-10″ the declared purpose of HMRC is to: -

1. Make sure that money is available to fund the UK’s public services.

2. Help families and individuals with targeted financial support.

To this end HMRC’s published ‘vision’ states, “We will close the ‘tax gap’, our customers will feel that the tax system for them is fair and even-handed, and we will be seen as a highly professional and efficient operation”. I find it somewhat difficult to imagine myself as being a customer of the exchequer, buying its services willingly with my tax contributions. Moreover, HMRC’s declared purpose is to ensure that monies are available to meet the demands of the UK’s public services. Given this purpose, I feel that I am more in thrall to the executive with no option to place my ‘custom’ elsewhere. I may of course seek some method of reducing the cost to me for these ’services’, which I am buying with my taxes. However, HMRC have declared that while they are ‘passionate in helping those who need it’, they are ‘relentless in pursuing those who bend or break the rules’.

By this they mean ‘tax avoidance’, against which they will mount a ‘robust response’ by taking necessary action to ensure the effectiveness of their disclosure regime. They will do this by actively engaging with their customers, and through investigation and legal action. In addition, they will advise ministers on new legislation to close down ‘tax avoidance schemes’. At which point, I, as a customer, don’t know whether to laugh or cry! I now find myself being the customer of a service provider, the contractor, who is in reality the exchequer, and who, in the real world of customer/contractor relationships, could be sued for trading while insolvent. But of course, in this case the contractor can never become insolvent. The contractor, being the exchequer, simply increases the price of the services to the customer, who is in reality, the thrall.

Parliamentary Ethics – Ms Elizabeth Filkin had it right.

Never has HM Revenue & Customs’ (HMRC) favourite phrase, “all claims must be supported by invoices”, been turned on its progenitors to such devastating effect. So says Simon Jenkins in the The Guardian article, This mother of all expenses cock-ups is the stuff of banana republics. He reminds us that there is a substantial bureaucracy devoted to political ethics, with MPs now pleading for it to show vigour in their defence – forgetting that a previous commissioner, Elizabeth Filkin, left in ­disgust. These bodies are armed with peashooters and are anyway subject t o the “will of parliament”, which regards itself as free to reject all advice.

In conclusion, Simon Jenkins says that , he cannot see what the Telegraph has done wrong. It presumably paid for material that had been stolen and which it has published. It thus offends the rule against profiting from crime. But a more glaring public interest defence cannot be imagined. Publication was the only way to reveal a systematic fraud on the public accounts, whose perpetrators had already shown they were determined to use the courts to suppress it. Those who chant the obituary of the “mainstream media” might care to cite any electronic organisation able to put together such an investigation. Like the Guardian’s recent disclosure of corporate tax avoidance, this work requires staff and resources. When the BBC tried to reveal the truth about the Iraq war dossiers, its cowering chairman and director general were driven by a mere Downing Street press officer into resignation.

Crude, unfair, bolshie, whatever, the old-fashioned newspaper is still ­desperately needed to keep democracy on its toes. God forbid that it should ever cease.

The Wisdom of Ludwig von Mises (1871-1973)

The Wisdom of Ludwig von Mises

Ludwig von Mises 1871 – 1973

“The credit expansion boom is built on the sands of banknotes and deposits. It must collapse.

“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.

“The boom is called good business, prosperity, and upswing. Its unavoidable aftermath, the readjustment of conditions to the real data of the market, is called crisis, slump, bad business, depression.

“The boom squanders through malinvestment scarce factors of production and reduces the stock available through overconsumption; its alleged blessings are paid for by impoverishment.

“The boom produces impoverishment. But still more disastrous are its moral ravages. It makes people despondent and dispirited. The more optimistic they were under the illusory prosperity of the boom, the greater is their despair and their feeling of frustration. The individual is always ready to ascribe his good luck to his own efficiency and to take it as a well-deserved reward for his talent, application, and probity. But reverses of fortune he always charges to other people, and most of all to the absurdity of social and political institutions. He does not blame the authorities for having fostered the boom. He reviles them for the inevitable collapse. In the opinion of the public, more inflation and more credit expansion are the only remedy against the evils which inflation and credit expansion have brought about.

“Credit expansion is the governments’ foremost tool in their struggle against the market economy. In their hands it is the magic wand designed to conjure away the scarcity of capital goods, to lower the rate of interest or to abolish it altogether, to finance lavish government spending, to expropriate the capitalists, to contrive everlasting booms, and to make everybody prosperous.

“The notion that it is possible to pursue a credit expansion without making stock prices rise and fixed investment expand is absurd.

“Firmly committed to the principles of interventionism, governments try to check the undesired result of their interference by reporting to those measures which are nowadays called full-employment policy: unemployment doles, arbitration of labor disputes, public works by means of lavish public spending, inflation, and credit expansion. All these remedies are worse than the evil they are designed to remove.

“It is important to remember that government interference always means either violent action or the threat of such action. The funds that a government spends for whatever purposes are levied by taxation. And taxes are paid because the taxpayers are afraid of offering resistance to the tax gatherers. They know that any disobedience or resistance is hopeless. As long as this is the state of affairs, the government is able to collect the money that it wants to spend. Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning. Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.”

Ludwig von Mises is internationally known as the head of the “Austrian school” of economics, the teacher of F. A. von Hayek and of many other economists. He was for twenty-five years Professor of Economics at the University of Vienna and from 1934 to 1940 Professor of International Economic Relations at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva. He has lectured at British, French, Dutch, Italian, German, and Mexican universities and

New Labour – Welfare and Unemployment (Part 1)

When Labour came to office in 1997, unemployment across the U.K. was close to 2 million. In 2004 the Government was claiming that unemployment was down to less than a million, the lowest for 29 years. In April 2004, government figures put the unemployment rate, which counts those claiming jobless benefits, at just 2.9 percent. This enabled the Government to claim that unemployment was at the lowest level for almost three decades. However, this figure of 2.9 percent did not match with the 4.7 percent calculation made by the International Labour Organization. There was certainly no shortage of people in work; according to U.K. government statistics, total employment had reached a record 28.4 million in 2003.

This was no economic miracle; the 2.9 percent unemployed claimed by the Government was simply a manipulation of statistical data. Unemployment was redefined rather than reduced. As the unemployment rate went down, disability cases rose. A paper published in 2004 by the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research, reported that Britain had more than 2.5 million non-employed adults of working age who claimed sickness-related benefits. This total questioned the contemporary perceptions of the UK labour market and indicated a high level of hidden unemployment.

The report stated that the numbers claiming incapacity benefit for more than six months was 570,000 in 1981, by 2003, that figure had risen to 2.13 million. In addition, there were 300,000 recipients of the Severe Disablement Allowance, and 200,000 short-term claimants of the incapacity benefit. The sum total of those non- employed people of working age who were receiving sickness-related benefits in August 2003 was almost 2.7 million, nearly a 500 percent increase on 1981. This figure was closer to 10 percent of the 28 million employed people in the U.K at the time. A significantly increase over the 2.9 percent unemployment rate, stated by the Government. Of course some, or all of those claiming incapacity benefit may be genuine cases, but a government welfare advisor has suggested in a recent report, that less than a third of the claimants are genuine

So here we are in 2008 with the Government now recognising that this high level of incapacity benefit payment, which is costing £12 billion per year, cannot be sustained. The Government Welfare Reform Bill comes into effect this year, which is an effective admission by the Government of another flawed policy. This Bill is meeting strong opposition from associations and pressure groups representing those who are incapacitated in some form or other. The opposition is not without some justification, like the recent 10p income tax fiasco, it indiscriminately penalises some of society’s most needy. Like many of the schemes introduced by this government, it is likely to cost more to implement than it will save. Taxpayers may welcome the initiative to reform this part of the welfare system, but any rejoicing may be premature. This is yet another indication that this government cannot continue with its policy of welfare largesse. More significantly, we now have a national spend and debt repayment economy. Yet even here, the Government is using data manipulation to disguise the true size of the debt, while promising increased public expenditure. Where is the money going to come from to service both needs? If you are a taxpayer, you know the answer.

New Labour and Crime is criminal

Contrary to the Government’s claims that it has crime under control and that it has reduced crime, the book ‘Cultures and Crimes: Policing in Four Nations’, published by Civitas, suggests quite the opposite. The book contends that Britain has one of the highest crime rates in the developed world, and one of the most ineffective police forces. The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College London add weight to findings of Civitas, in a report on Critical Thinking About The Uses Of Research. This report claims that, the government is reluctant to use the learning from critical, independent evidence based analysis and research to inform criminal justice policy making. The authors of the report argue that the government has no interest in learning from academics, and will not enter into any debate regarding independent academic research. Indeed, one of the contributors to the report, argues that: that it is a feature of the Home Office, acting as an arm of the Government, to suppresses criminological research that contradicts ministerial policy, and that having placed such a premium on evidence based policy, the government has failed to live up to that promise and has resorted to fixing both the process and publication of Home Office research publication to meet the political needs of the time. The Home Office remains silent on all those topics that have the potential to reflect poorly on government. This hardly makes an institution that represents the British public. The book by Civitas and the report from Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, expose the Home Office claims that in Britain ‘crime is low’, that ‘crime is at historically low levels’ and that ‘crime is falling’ as being specious.

The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, add further weight to the doubts about New Labour’s record on crime. A paper by its deputy director contends that a closer scrutiny of the evidence suggests that the success claimed by the government has been far less clear-cut than is claimed. The Government record on crime reduction, offences brought to justice and re-offending rates, are both examples of this. On crime levels, British Crime Survey (BCS) measured crime started declining before Labour entered office in 1997, following a record high in 1995. It fell by 22 per cent during Labour’s first term, when increases in expenditure were checked by Treasury commitments to Tory spending limits. The government’s target for a further 15 per cent reduction in the five years to 2007-08, during a period when criminal justice spending was increased, cannot be called ambitious. The paper adds that; as the BCS figures ignore many serious crimes such as childhood sexual or physical abuse, this casts further doubt on the government’s crime figures, also, the rises in homicides since 1997 puts New Labour’s claims to have improved public safety into question.

The Home Office has increased the number of suspected offences that result in an individual being cautioned, convicted or otherwise sanctioned, known as “offences brought to justice”. While the government has met its target ahead of the 2007-08 deadlines, with more than 1.25 million offences brought to justice, the target has not been met as a result of increases in successful convictions, but through increased cautions, penalty notices for disorder, and formal warnings for cannabis possession. The reality is, that as a proportion of the total number of offences brought to justice, successful convictions have actually fallen, from 69 per cent in 2003 to 49 per cent last year. Despite the drive to narrow the justice gap, there are only three convictions for every 100 estimated crimes. On re-offending, the government has set several targets since 1997 that have all have been modified, missed or dropped, with overall re-offending rates increasing. In using reconvictions as a proxy measure of re-offending, it adds to the lack of clarity over definitions and targets. In reality the government’s record is mixed. The Government has introduced four criminal justice plans since 2001, and has made significant extra investment. Spending on law and order now accounts for 2.5 per cent of GDP, the largest ever proportion, and the UK spends proportionately more than any other country in the OECD. However, this investment has not produced any significant step change in the reduction of criminal activities.

The Civitas book ‘Cultures and Crimes: Policing in Four Nations’, suggests that society in which crime is rising as rapidly as it is in Britain will always be an unpleasant and dangerous place to live, and argues that, whatever attempts are made to improve policing, the real problem is the loss of internalised moral principles that prevent people from committing crimes in the first place. Young people who grow up in troubled and dysfunctional households in which moral values are not inculcated, who attend schools where teachers are afraid or unwilling to teach the difference between right or wrong, who live in communities in which the influence of religious faith is negligible, will naturally be drawn towards the self-gratification and situational ethics that predominate in contemporary culture. Yet while this aspect of the crime problem that has become unmentionable, the problem itself cannot be understood other than in this context. In comparing the policing methods of Britain, France, Germany and the USA, the book notes that all four countries witnessed steep rises in crime and anti-social behaviour following the cultural revolution of the 1960s. However, in spite of the fact that they have very different policing traditions, the USA, France and Germany have all made a more effective job of combating rising crime than Britain. By the beginning of the 1990s, France, Germany and the United States had begun to confront their modern problems of crime and disorder, while Britain’s influential public intellectuals continued to claim that the ‘crime problem’ was mainly a figment of the imagination of the old and the ignorant. As a result of this ‘treason of the intellectuals’; by the late 1990s had Britain changed from being a society remarkably free of crime and disorder, especially from the middle of the nineteenth to the middle of the twentieth century, to one with a worse record than either France, Germany or the United States, even though each of these nations had far less favourable histories than Britain’s of democratic law-abiding consensus.

The Government’s vague pledge of a dedicated neighbourhood policing team in every area by 2008 is not being met. Only the Metropolitan Police now have “Safer Neighbourhood Teams” of one sergeant, two constables and three PCSOs in every ward. Nationally, less than 10 per cent of police officers in England and Wales are dedicated to neighbourhood policing. The Government will now provide 8,000 fewer PCSOs than it promised in its election manifesto. Figures published in January 2007 showed that for the first time since 2000 police numbers fell by 173 from March to September 2006. The latest Home Office figures have revealed that only 14 per cent of all police officer time is spent on patrol and that only one in 58 police officers is patrolling the streets at any given time. A case study in Basingstoke showed that on one day this town of nearly 150,000 people had effective response cover of just one sergeant and four officers.

Whatever statistics the Government roll out to support its claim that crime is on the decrease in the UK, the ordinary citizens who have seen this country change from one of the safest and most peaceable in the world to a seriously crime-afflicted and disintegrating society are not convinced. Between July and September 2007, research carried out on behalf of the Rowntree Foundation asked the public to consider what social evils face the UK today. It reveals a strong sense of unease about some of the changes shaping British society. This is one of those instances where ordinary people are closer to the truth than the experts.

Critical Thinking about the uses of research – Tim Hope and Reece Walters (March 2008)

http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/evidencebasedpolicy.html

Centre for Crime and Justice Studies

http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/

Jury still out on Labour’s crime promise Enver Solomon The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies

http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/opus567/Policyreviewmar08.pdf

Policing for the People Interim report of the Police Reform Taskforce

http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/opus567/Policyreviewmar08.pdf Tory

What are today’s social evils – Joseph Rowntree Foundation

http://www.socialevils.org.uk./