NW MP supports PCS 5% pay rise

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Syria bombings - why wasn't Parliament consulted?

Black humour about the most confusing war of modern times.

As you will recall, the UK joined the USA and France in bombing Syria last month. Much has been made of the fact that Theresa May ordered the missile strikes without consulting Parliament. Although we may not like it, she actually broke no UK laws or conventions in doing so.

The UK has no constitution. Defenders of the present system claim that we have an unwritten constitution that is flexible and can adapt to changing circumstances, but I'm not persuaded by this argument. Our political system consists of a combination of precedent, legislation and the royal prerogative that have all developed and, at times, been in conflict with each other over centuries. To put it another way, it's a convoluted labyrinth that is of benefit only to unscrupulous politicians and lawyers.

Precedent: put simply, this consists of what we might, in a less elevated context, refer to as custom and practice, in this case built up over centuries. The most obvious example is how Parliament itself evolved from the body summoned in 1265 by the French nobleman Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, which was a major step forward from previous councils of nobles and clergy because for the first time representatives from towns and shires were summoned. Its powers were gradually accumulated, often not peacefully, over subsequent centuries until the 1688 Dutch conquest of England led by William of Orange, who was offered the English throne provided he accepted the supremacy of Parliament over the Crown. The way Parliament operates today has been determined by multiple precedents established over centuries.

Royal prerogative: not all royal powers were surrendered to Parliament (more info here). The right to declare war remains reserved to the Crown and nowadays is exercised on the monarch's behalf by the Prime Minister with no need to consult Parliament. However, in recent years Parliament has been consulted:

• In 2003 - the Iraq War.
• Retrospectively in 2011 - Libya intervention.
• 2013 - the government was defeated over military action in Syria.
• 2014 - UK air strikes against Islamic State forces in Iraq. 
• 2015 - extension of air strikes against IS into Syrian territory.

One exception: there was no consultation over a small deployment of forces to Mali in 2013.

Legislation: there are no laws governing declarations of war, although there have been vague promises of one. Even if we had such a law, it could be overturned by a simple majority in a future Parliament, which is one reason why we should have a written constitution that would need at least a two thirds majority for change.

Why didn't May consult Parliament? I see three main reasons:

• Her government is weak, propped up by bribing the DUP, and there was a very good chance she'd lose the vote, as David Cameron did in 2013.
• A Parliamentary vote would reinforce the precedent that had been set several times already, and would further the process of eroding the royal prerogative. It's my view that May wished to retain the right to declare war without consultation because it's a form of power can be wielded independently of Parliament - both by herself and by her successors. 
• As a weak Prime Minister, she is desperate to hold on to whatever remnants of power she still has.

My conclusion: the principal reason May didn't consult Parliament was because she wanted to prevent such consultation evolving into an accepted precedent that, in time, would become binding on Prime Ministers. She has thus deliberately stifled a development that most of us would have welcomed in order to preserve the powers and privileges that Prime Ministers can exercise through the royal prerogative without any democratic accountability. 

Consigning this relic of the divine right of kings 

to history where it belongs is long overdue.

Neville Grundy

Chair

ARMS Mersey

Justice for sale - again

Hot on the heels of their defeat in the Supreme Court over fees for Employment Tribunals, the Government has surreptitiously published proposals for another way to rake in profits from our justice system by sneaking out plans during MPs' excessive summer holidays for a controversial privatisation.

The Ministry of Justice has announced today (1 August) it wants to outsource the collection of courts fines currently done by almost 150 civil servants. Two years ago an attempt to privatise all enforcement work was abandoned and a Freedom of Information request by our union revealed the five-year project cost taxpayers £8 million.

HM Courts and Tribunals Service civilian enforcement officers, who are subject to the civil service code governing standards of behaviour, have the authority to search premises and place defaulters in custody, and can access sensitive data held on government systems, including the Police National Computer. The code would not apply to staff working for private companies motivated by profit, and we share the concerns raised by Citizens Advice and other debt advice agencies earlier this year about the need for substantial reform to protect vulnerable people from rogue bailiffs.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: "The last time ministers tried to do something similar it ended up costing taxpayers £8 million before being abandoned, now they’re trying to avoid scrutiny by sneaking it out during the summer holiday. This work is highly sensitive and should remain in-house instead of being handed to private bailiffs whose motive is profit."

Most info from PCS website

Overpaid public sector workers?

The Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond’s statements about overpaid public sector workers may well be fading into the middle distance but they are true reflection of what the Tories really think. Not just do they deploy their age old tactic of divide and rule seeking to set private sector workers against public sector workers and young against old, they warn that doing anything other than following their dogma driven policies will lead to disaster.

It is useful to remember what Hammond said in a response to a question from Andrew Marr, which was: "When you take into account the very generous contributions that public sector employers have to pay in to their very generous pensions it is a simple fact: relative to private sector workers, they are paid a 10% premium."

The average pension of public sector workers is no more than £6,500 per annum. Many workers in the public sector are on poverty pay. The vast majority currently working along with those who have already retired will never receive the 'New State Pension' or anything close to it as the legislation debars those people who contracted out of SERPS.

Latterly millions of workers in their 30s and 40s in both public and private sectors have been told they will have to wait a year longer and lose up to £10,000 of whatever State Pension they will receive. Again we are told that to do anything else would lead to disaster. Little wonder in responding to the announcement that Labours Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Debbie Abrahams accused the Government of forcing "millions of people to work longer to pay for their failing austerity plans".

It is not just that Hammond is a hypocrite with a £9 million fortune and a Chancellor's pensionable salary of £134,000 a year. It is the fact that he is just plain wrong.

Many members of the public have written to try and correct Hammond’s misguided assertions and you can see some of the comments at this link.

It will be interesting to know what your thoughts are on this issue? You can join this debate and share any comments you have on this posting by clicking on the link to "comments" below.

Eddie Spence

ARMs

Government policy on housing disastrous

'Tory Housing policy disastrous' says the National Housing Federation along with their backdoor bedroom tax on pensioners reported in a recent issue of the ARMs Newsletter 'Up in ARMs'. The Independent recently reported that:

"From April 2019, housing benefit in all social housing will be capped at the level of the Local Housing Allowance (LHA), used in the private rented sector.

"Crucially, the LHA is calculated – like the removal of the 'spare-room subsidy' – on the basis of household size, rather than the size of the property.

"That means a single person, or a couple, living in a two-bedroom home will have their housing benefit capped at the one-bedroom LHA rate.

"The impact will be severe across the Midlands and the North, where lower private rents will mean a lower one-bedroom LHA rate, threatening tenants with huge benefit cuts."

Full article here.

Housing Associations are reluctant to commission the building of new houses because their income from rent is under threat. The consequence of a doctrinaire decision by the Tories, little noticed at the time, will almost certainly deepen the social housing crisis even further. 

Care in Crisis under the Tories

The Tory manifesto is a vague recipe for extending poverty not equality.

The Tory Government's 'Couldn't care less' attitude has led to record care home closures and an industry in crisis. Reports in the media have continued to reveal that since coming to office in 2010, the Tories promised improvement and delivered just the opposite. Their ideological dislike of local councils, cuts to their funding and deterioration of the 'care home industry' show no signs of stopping. £4.6 billion has been cut from Care funding since 2010 and when the human costs start to rise their best response is to say they may give £2 billion back - still leaving a massive £2.6 million credibility gap in their plans for Care.

Now the Tory manifesto promises that the cost of care will be met by the people who need the care themselves. Poverty amongst pensioners has increased under the Tories to almost 2 million. PM May now says the old in need of care must pay for themselves. There is of course no detail about how this is going to work. Vague references to 'means testing' criteria provide no detail about what that is and who will profit from their plans. More importantly: who will lose? The Manifesto refers to "those with modest or medium wealth". Where does that analysis start and end? Is it May’s own level of wealth? Well that is difficult to say as she has hidden her assets away in a Trust Fund. The only thing we have to go on is 7 years of broken Tory promises.

This isn't just about old people. When a person goes into a Care Home it involves whole families and different generations in managing not just the financial but the emotional cost of looking after their family member. The responsibility for the decline of 'Care' in our communities lies at the door of the Tory Government and even their own 'fanzine' the Mail recognises this. The following coverage looks more at these issues. This debate will run until and beyond the General Election.

Please share your thoughts on this Blog (comments section below).

Tory manifesto: more elderly people will have to pay for own social care - here.

More than 2,000 elderly and ill people die while waiting for care at home: Worse cases saw patients waiting nine months for treatment - here.

General election 2017: parties must be clear how they will solve social care crisis - here.

Eddie Spence
ARMS Vice Chair

This 'weak leader' is taking on the whole British Establishment

Corbyn has mass meetings.
May meets selected party loyalists.

For far too long there was precious little real choice at a general election. As Labour drifted to the right and both they and the Tories fought for the same centre ground, more and more of their policies converged, which left many voters struggling to distinguish between them. Thanks to Corbyn, this is no longer the case. The leaked Labour manifesto is a programme for serious change to the way this country is run, and for whose benefit it is run.

Gone are the days when timid Labour leaderships, cowed by Thatcher’s legacy, dared not mention the word 'socialism', were afraid to talk about wealth redistribution in case it caused a media backlash, and meekly fell in line with the military ambitions of the USA, which caused many traditional Labour voters to desert the party.

Now we have a Labour party that is taking aim at the UK's gross wealth inequality and is planning to do something about it, that recognises how adversely public service cuts affect working class people and intends to reverse them, and that is prepared to stand up against unhinged Trump's foolish and dangerous war games rather than give him unquestioning succour.

Corbyn is standing up for, and firmly defending, what he believes in, putting forward a strong case for making the fat cats and wealthy corporations pay more tax in order to improve the lives of ordinary people, and today telling the USA that he will not be their poodle.

It is difficult to overestimate the fortitude and courage of a politician who is prepared to challenge head-on the accumulated privilege of the whole of the British establishment, along with all the rich and powerful interests it protects, yet he seems to be relishing the task. In that respect, Corbyn is arguably a far stronger Labour leader than any since the 1980s (with the all too brief exception, perhaps, of John Smith).

Working class voters can no longer complain that they only have a choice between Tory and Tory-lite. They can now choose between a full-blooded Labour party that firmly has their interests at the core of its manifesto and a determination to carry it out, or a Tory party that has run out of ideas, will make their lives even worse, and whose manifesto, I predict, will contain barely any firm policies to 'help ordinary working families'. The choice this time will be stark.

The Tories portray Corbyn as spineless - even though nothing could be further from the truth - because they know that his policies are very popular (the leaked manifesto has very high approval ratings already) and that their best hope of stopping him is if they can maintain the myth that he is weak and unfit to be prime minister.

So, don't expect May's 'strong and stable' mantra to stop anytime soon.

Brian Nelson
ARMs Yorkshire and Humberside region

How do we reactivate lost voters?

Eddie Spence explains how so many voters are turned off by media distortions and political misdirection.

No prizes for guessing the issue that has headlined in the Media over the last week. I suppose it's typical, you wait 5 years for the General Election in 2015 and then two come along within two years.

Prime Minister May who promised that she wouldn't have an election until 2020 has now decided that she will and it's everyone else's fault. Apparently the general election will be about giving the UK a stronger hand in Brexit negotiations as it would appear that the tricky negotiating tactic of saying "Brexit means Brexit" and then staring into the middle distance isn’t making much progress. Plan B of saying it’s going to be "a red, white and blue Brexit" and then and staring doesn’t seem to be getting very far either. So what else is there to do apart from go to the nation in a general election and say trust me with everything. That's not just Brexit negotiations but other key issues and policies that will affect us all over the next 5 years as you can bet your bottom dollar that May's commitment to a fixed term parliament will return if she is able to secure a working majority.

Over coming weeks we can no doubt look forward to those old cheery Tory election campaign 'one-liners' such as: "The NHS is safe in our hands." Or maybe we will hear the one about controlling energy prices in the industry they privatised or rail fares in another industry they privatised. They could tell us about putting £2 billion into Social Care and forget to mention that they've taken £4.6 billion out. We could also hear how they are being tough on Tax Dodgers and big business. We may be told again that older people and pensioners will fare better under the Tories despite the total inequity created by the 2012 Pensions Act, cutting the State and public sector pensions link to RPI and driving down the value of any savings older people may have through a constant process of quantitative easing to keep interest rates low.

There will be much talk of May's strong leadership but based on what? She was last woman standing as Gove and Johnson stabbed each other in the back amidst Tory leadership in-fighting. No doubt much will be made of Theresa May's dazzling achievements as Secretary of State for Home Affairs since 2010. Erm, then again maybe not. Her track record was observed as follows by Alan Travis of the Guardian:

"Her six years at the Home Office were marked by an instinctive secrecy, a talent for 'going missing' or delegating when things went wrong, and a too careless approach to civil liberties.

"Her capacity to make herself scarce at key moments of political danger peaked during the referendum campaign. Her minimal public contribution not only failed to defend her record on immigration but instead focused on her personal pledge to withdraw from the European convention on human rights to demonstrate that she was a wafer-thin remainer."

A track record based on personal survival as opposed to public responsibility and achievement is hardly the best qualification with which to support her claim to be a 'strong leader'. How many in the media will test May on the reality of her record in public life? If anyone has the guts to do it you can guarantee that her lack of achievement will be everyone else's fault. Now where have we heard that before?

Of course more recently May has pledged to help those 'Just about managing' or 'Jams' as the media describe people in work who are struggling to make ends meet after 7 years of Tory Austerity policies. That will be the Tax Credit cuts will it, or maybe the pay freezes or minimalist 1% often unconsolidated pay increases in vast swathes of the public sector? MPs have borne the weight of austerity as well with their salaries only increasing between 2010 and 2017 from £65,738 to £74,962. But none of this has anything to do with Theresa May; it's not her fault.

Criticisms that the Tory Cabinet decision to call for a General Election simply amount to blatant political opportunism have been rebuffed. However no political party worth its salt can resist the opportunity to take its policies and its candidates to the voters and ask us to decide. Of course that requires us to vote and in 2015 there were 15.9 million people who were entitled to vote in the General Election who did not - that's 34% of the 'voting population' and much more than any one political party received in 2015.

What we can predict is the vested interest in much of the mainstream media will continue to attack and undermine the opposition to the Tories and in particular the Labour Party as the main opposition party. They will endeavour to ignore the policy commitments being promoted by Jeremy Corbyn and instead focus on attacking the image they have created of the man. In truth it is the policies that matter but the media won’t want to focus on them particularly as many will be aimed at tackling those vested interests that the media serves. We will see febrile attacks, sensationalism and attempts at character assassination all designed to take our eye off the real issues about what an incoming Government will do that matters to us and our families? It's up to us to see through that and to talk to friends and neighbours about what is at stake.

2017 may well be the year where we have clear policy differences on offer and if we haven't liked what has been done by past Governments then we have the chance to change that. The argument posed by some non-voters that 'politicians are all the same' will not stand up and so it is up to those people who haven't voted in the past to vote for real change in the society we live in.

Well, we have 7 weeks to look forward to and we will have the opportunity to question those candidates who are standing across the United (at least for the minute anyway) Kingdom and Northern Ireland. Members will no doubt have a lot of questions for all the candidates but as well as keeping in touch with developments in the media we will post thoughts on this Blog about those issues you may wish to probe candidates on in particular. We would also welcome your thoughts.

We welcome your views on all of this. For example how are we going to convince the 15.9 million people who didn’t vote in the 2015 General Election to at least play a part in the society we live in?