The IFS has recently released a report criticising the Coalition’s claim that the budget was “progressive” by stating that it will hit the poor hardest. Instead of criticising the IFS’ work, I believe it is more appropriate to discuss why any genuinely progressive government needs to reform the country and that only through reform can we tackle the structural problems in society.

The first tranche of reform came in the 1980s with the major liberalisation of the British economy. This freed up enterprise and risk takers and created a new and burgeoning middle class. It also was in an era of unbelievable ideological battles between the forces of collectivism and those of liberalism. Ultimately the latter won, but it left a bitter legacy for millions of British people who only remember unemployment, wasted lives and broken families.

The second tranche of reform begins today and we have learnt from the experience of the 1980s. The most vulnerable to change in society cannot be cast off because while some rise to the challenge, others fall by the wayside. The Coalition has been explicit in focusing on the needs of the most vulnerable in society at the expense of “easy” reform.

The most vulnerable in society are not just the poorest, but also the aspirational and middle classes. The recession has resulted in many Britons with lower incomes than before. Higher living costs mean that many are wary of what the future holds. People who have mortgages know that the low rates will not continue forever, but are fearful that they will not only be unable to afford higher interest rates but that they will be unable to realise any capital gains on the sale of their property. Indeed, the most vulnerable are not only those who are reliant on government largesse, but are many who have barely survived the most brutal downturn since the 1930s.

The people I have identified above are not only the most vulnerable; they are the forgotten people in Britain. They are forgotten because they do not have unions and others advocating for them. They are forgotten because the media bypass them. They are forgotten because they get the occasional outpouring of righteous indignation from politicians, only to see any promise of a New Jerusalem soon whither away to the stark reality of modern life. Luckily, these people are now at the heart of the Coalition’s agenda. Rather than the patronising smile of a Labour politician handing out cheques and then abandoning them to their fate, they will get a Coalition politician who understands the problems and the struggles and who does not leave them to fend for themselves.

The Coalition will be undertaking a second tranche of structural reform. The first achieved a liberalisation of the economy. The second is about converting the State into local community organisations and about achieving structural social change. The biggest problem with the past Government was their assumption that every problem could be handled centrally and that a State is most effective when dictating outcomes irrespective of the needs of individuals. This is simply wrong.

No two communities are the same and therefore public services cannot be universally applied in the same way. “Equality of outcome” is not universal public services with no difference in what is being offered, but rather public services that match the needs of the local community, that are socially and economically sustainable and that acknowledge the uniqueness of local communities. This idea, commonly known as the “Big Society”, combines the best of Conservative and Liberal intellectual thought. It also learns the bitter lessons of previous years and the accumulated wisdom of past experience.

Welfare reform is a major step to change the social culture of this country towards effort, hard-work and enterprise. The State now acts as a giant spin cycle with money coming in from taxpayers only to be spat out to the same taxpayers. This creates a reliance on government handouts for financial security irrespective of need. It also creates a reliance on handouts to maintain a standard of living. This will now change.

Education reform will see the most radical transformation in schooling in generations. It will allow individual’s unique talents to be properly appreciated in schools that match those talents rather than be forced to certain schools as a glorified social engineering project. Do not forget that the current system is designed for social engineering – yet humanity is too complex, too dynamic, to be fine-tuned like a motor. By forcing parents to go to a bad school the inevitable outcomes are parents who pretend to hold religious beliefs or to move house to secure a good school place. Parents care more about their children than the State ever could. These school reforms will help parents without punishing them. It is about liberating families across the country from the dead hand of government bureaucracy.

The economic reforms are about making our public finances sustainable for the long-term. We are facing massive challenges in welfare, education, pensions, energy, infrastructure and many other areas. Raising expectations about permanently high government spending is unrealistic, is unsustainable and is unfair. What on earth is fair about leaving the next generation with over £1 trillion in debt?

This government is progressive. It combines the best Liberal and Conservative traditions and despite what people think, it is a government that will create sustainable, long-term jobs in the face of an economic catastrophe and will help the forgotten people of this country.

On Friday evening, Iain Martin from the Wall Street Journal broke the news that the Chancellor and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions were close to agreeing a compromise on welfare reform.

“Under the proposals, If IDS can deliver the multi-billion savings that the Treasury demands, close to £3 billion of the savings will then be ring-fenced for him to use for his welfare reform programme.”

Welfare reform is an important indicator in signalling how the Coalition will square the circle of having to deliver both budget cuts and long lasting reform. In one corner you have the Treasury, focused on cutting state spending. In the opposing corner is IDS, the ‘quiet man’ who has spent much energy contemplating how to end state dependency. In the middle there is a £110 billion annual spend, which has failed to deliver opportunity, respect or engagement.

It is an open secrete that IDS threatened to resign if George Osborne had announced a benefits freeze in June’s emergency budget. That IDS is being an iron-willed Secretary of State should not have come as a surprise to anyone. This is his chance to implement the vision he has been working so hard on in the last four years, through his think-tank, The Centre for Social Justice. It is understandable if IDS believes that David Cameron appointed him because our leader wanted IDS to ‘CSJ’ the system.

But, having said all that, we are not in 1997. There isn’t an over-heating financial sector that the Government can use as a never-ending cash machine to fund projects. Politics is the art of the possible and at the moment it is not possible for a non-ring fenced department to ignore its budget tightening responsibility. The state of the economy cannot be ignored otherwise the long-term consequences will be negative for all of us.

Compromise is key, and the news that IDS and George Osborne are close to agreeing a deal is important as it signals a possible path for the inevitable other disputes that will arise. Cuts without reform will not resolve the problems this country faces. Reform without cuts is pointless because if the state continues to head towards bankruptcy all the good work will eventually be undone.

Despite claims to the contrary from the Labour party, it is simply not true that the scrapping of Building Schools for the Future was a breaking of a promise made by George Osborne not to cut the totals of capital spending. A casual glance towards the actual budget would make it clear: the Government will make no further cuts to capital spending compared with the plans that it inherited. It did make clear, however, that it would undertake a fundamental review of all capital spending plans to ensure they are affordable and to identify the areas of spending that will achieve the greatest economic returns. Michael Gove made it clear in his statement to the house that he was cancelling the approach of BSF because it was an expensive, long winded and inefficient way of building schools. He did not say he was cancelling all new schools building. According to the actual figures the Coalition government is going to spend as much on new capital projects as the outgoing Labour government, in that case they might end up building more schools than Labour for the same amount of money.

Looking at the cost of the programme in February 2004, the DCSF said that 200 schools would be built by 2008. In fact only 42 (just under a quarter) were ready in that timescale. The National Audit Office estimates that the overall cost of the programme has also increased by 16-23% in real terms, with delays being more and more frequent over the years it has been in place, in 2007, in a memorandum to the Select Committee for Education and Skills, the Government admitted: “There has been significant slippage in BSF projects in waves 1-3, with the majority of projects behind the ideal project timelines, an understatement given the actual number of these schools that have been opened , and recently Nottinghamshire county council spent £5 million on the scheme without a single brick being laid, another report by the Public Accounts Select Committee found that “the Department and PfS has wasted public money by relying on consultants to make up for shortfalls in its own skills and resources.” Has the Labour obsession with stocking up on masses of consultants been the driving factor around high cost and low results? The current approach isn’t good for school buildings, this isn’t good for the public finances, and it isn’t good for the both the children and teachers in any school across the country. Nor is it good for the people in the local area who object to some of the proposals made , a number of schools that local areas wanted to keep open or refurbish have been demolished. The Victorian Society says that a number of fine Victorian schools have either been demolished or taken out of use as a result of the programme. Many local authorities as well as a large number of other senior figures working on BSF have expressed concerns about the role of Partnerships for Schools (PfS) – the quango charged with delivering the BSF programme. One described them as “marching round the country in their jackboots, telling local authorities what to do” One example of which being that schools that were using BSf funds had to use 10% of the sizeable budget for computers and other technology, despite the spurious evidence it improves standards, and not being clearly taught how to use it (A common feature of all my old lessons.)

Why should we persist with an expensive bureaucratic programme which tramples on any concerns that don’t correspond with the wishes of Ed Balls? Some headteachers have said they had feared that their funding might be jeopardised if they were critical publicly of a programme representing such powerful interests, no-one denies that we need to build more schools, no-one denies that some schools need to be refurbished, but we can do this in a much better way, which some Tory MPs should attempt to understand.

As well as stamping out the message that has been blared out in the media that there will be ‘no new schools’ the coalition need to also quash the outlandish claims from the Labour party that BSF improved school standards, BSF is a bit like buying a new TV – the new set looks great when you put in the corner of your sitting room, but it’s the programmes that actually make you want to keep coming back for more – and after a while, you forget that you have even got a new telly! If the programmes haven’t improved in the meantime, everything goes back to how it used to be. The Labour party have repeatedly said that BSF is not just a “bricks and mortar programme” and that the buildings programme should act as a “catalyst” for wider scale “educational transformation”, they’ve attempted to define “educational transformation” many times, yet its definition has always been unclear. One senior advisor and former headteacher felt that the coupling of new buildings with “transformation” meant we might be erecting the 21st century equivalent of Victorian follies, saying: “I think there is a danger that we will build chrome and glass edifices to the egos of certain headteachers.” (Which judging by the treatment given to alocal headteacher that lent a lot of support for the Labour party in exchange for a glass palace may well be true.)

It isn’t just speculation that pours cold water on the claims that BSF drastically improved standards. An exhaustive report for the Design Council found “clear evidence that extremes of environmental elements (for example, poor ventilation or excessive noise) have negative effects on students and teachers and that improving these elements has significant benefits. However, once school environments come up to minimum standards, the evidence of effect is less clearcut. Our evaluation suggests that the nature of the improvements made in schools may have less to do with the specific element chosen for change than with how the process of change is managed.” PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for the Government in its first evaluation of BSF in 2007 following a review of the literature in the US and the UK this report concluded that, while there was a clear negative impact of poor design on attainment, the claim that good design brings benefits needed to be tested further in the BSF programme because the causality could not be proved. Other factors affecting attainment are, unsurprisingly, school leadership, pedagogical factors, socio-cultural factors and the curriculum. Its second evaluation, published in January 2009, reinforced this view: “In the statistical analysis of the impact of capital expenditure on pupil attainment, our results mirror the existing literature in not finding a strong correlation between the two. The results as a whole suggest a positive impact of capital on attainment, but the magnitude is likely to be very small. We also found evidence for considerable diminishing returns to capital investment.”

The coalition must stress that pedagogical factors that were mentioned in the PSC review are going to be tackled through the introduction of ‘Free Schools’ and the expansion of the Academy programme which will allow for different styles of teaching to thrive, rather than focus on school buildings like the Labour party will insist on doing as it is the most obvious thing to attack , it’s key to highlight that Ofsted recently failed one of the first schools to be built through the BSF programme, Sandon High, in Stokeon- Trent, to give weight to the idea that other things must be tackled other than buildings, and can achieve emphasis on different style of teaching through holding up examples like Toby Young’s grammar comprehensive, and Lord Young’s technical colleges . We must stress the waste of money and the use of consultants, the crippling of autonomy of teachers, and constantly remind as to what benefits these new schools can bring.

We base our results on what our children learn, not the number of glass palaces we claim (and fail!) to build, and as for Gove’s delivery when he announced the policy? Well, there may well have been some stichup on the way….

The sun was shining in Liverpool for the NHS Confederation Conference last week but inside the conference centre clouds gathered as NHS managers congregated to review the issues of the day. Dark mutterings of discontent could be heard in the corridors and seminars about the prospects of managing cost and efficiencies and in particular the removal of commissioning from Primary Care Trusts, the Confederation’s main constituency, to GPs – regarded by some as the biggest fly in the ointment of efficient and cost effective distribution of care.

Attention focussed on the arrival of the new Secretary of State for Health Andrew Lansley, the purveyor of the unwelcome reform and shortly of a controversial strategic White Paper which is to set out the transferral of some £60- 80 billion pounds to GPs control and said by one ‘unnamed’ yet ‘senior’ Department of Health source to herald the end of the age of PCT autonomy. Besides being a surprise to many commentators, who believed that the freedom given to PCTs under the Labour Government would be continued or even extended under the Coalition, the policy raises as many questions as it answers with details of the practicalities and process of reform remaining unclear.  In the absence of clear information, an air of panic prevailed as delegates attending discussions expressed doubt that a cooperative relationship between primary and acute care could be continued and asked whether they would be wise to jump ship from PCTs before it was too late.

The press presence at this year’s conference was unusually high for what was otherwise agreed to be a relatively low key event and it promised to be an intriguing show-down as Andrew Lansley faced a sceptical crowd. Mr Lansley had made an uncertain visit last year shortly after deviating from Conservative Party policy on Departmental spending and someone was heard to remark that he might bring a bodyguard and leave his car running for this year’s speech – given the likely hostility of his audience.

In the end, Mr Lansley’s speech was deemed by many to be underwhelming and uninformative. He was clearly keen to win over the delegates, who refrained from heckling but made their feelings clear by grumbling to themselves and roundly applauding those questioners who expressed their doubt about the direction and feasibility of his plans.

No one left the conference much clearer on the implications for PCTs or the wider NHS although they were soon greeted with the news that the Treasury are reluctant to give Lansley the GP money after all – which did not surprise the assembled health commentators and gifted the Opposition health spokesman, and former darling of the NHS Confederation, Andy Burnham, with a wonderful opportunity to pitch in and help boost his profile ahead of the forthcoming Labour leadership election.

Overall, however, the Treasury’s decision didn’t make the delegates much happier as, whatever the outcome of the White Paper, they know they will face competing demands to cut costs whilst remaining flexible enough to accommodate a new system which may threaten their existence. It is clear that Andrew Lansley already faces a battle to keep the NHS workforce onside, from executive level through to the grass roots, and the success of any reforms depends on their cooperation and agreement. In the end, his more detailed proposals may not meet with as much opposition as he faces now and there are many elements – GP consortia for example – who will view it as an interesting opportunity. But for now, in the shadow of a Budget of heavy cuts, it is the lack of information and the fear of being thrust into ill-thought out and articulated reform that is as much a factor in the anger of NHS managers as any.

Posted by Administrator on behalf of Isabella Sharp

In American politics, it all too often looks like tribalism, political positioning and gridlock are the order of the day – with all too little actually getting done.  Last week, this impression was fundamentally left for dust as Barack Obama succeeded where mighty predecessors, such as Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Bill Clinton had tried and failed before him – with the passage into of health care legislation.  Despite Republican fear mongering and scare tactics of the worst kind, the legislation designed to help the most vulnerable in society became law.

With one stroke of a pen, Obama today signed into law the most important piece of domestic legislation, benefiting poorer Americans, since LBJ left office.  Obama was elected on the promise of reforming healthcare and he has delivered on that promise.  After eight years of Bush’s Presidency that saw the divide between rich and poor widen; the economy reach its lowest nadir since the disaster of Hooverism;  and the number of Americans without health insurance sky rocket, it is greatly heartening to see health care pass.  It is legislation in the great tradition of William Jennings Bryan and Franklin D Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Lyndon B Johnson.

At the same time as Obama is delivering on his campaign promises, the Republicans have grown further and further away from the traditions of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.  The campaign against health care reform was, all too often small minded and petty – driven by a bandying around of words like ‘socialism’; an irresponsible use of scare tactics such as Sarah Palin’s ‘death panels’; and an increasingly primitive ideology.  They are further away from the election winning centre ground than at any time since Barry Goldwater’s humiliation.    I have seen little evidence of opponents of healthcare reform coming up with suggestions about how to deal with the issue of 30 million plus Americans without health insurance or the problem of sky rocketing health care costs.  I have seen little evidence that they are concerned with Americans losing their homes because of the cost of healthcare.

It is time to stand back and salute a tremendous achievement on the part of President Obama.  This was the week when ‘Yes We Can’ became ‘Yes We Did’.