Rural pharmacies at risk

We read in some of today's papers that Government funding for rural pharmacies is set to fall by over £200m inthe next financial year   This is putting the future of many local businesses under threat, and a challenge against the cuts has today been mounted in the High Court.

The inconvenience these changes will cause to many people, mostly in rural areas, has been highlighted by a House of Lords library study that shows that 1.3m people in the UK could have to travel further to visit a pharmacy, with obvious knock on effects on demand for GP services.  The development is particularly costly for people in view of the fact that,in order to prevent overprescribing,  doctors are now only allowed to prescribe very low quantities of drugs at a time.  This means that visits to collect regular prescriptions must be made more often in what strikes me as yet another example of mindless 'cost shifting', this time by the NHS onto the hapless patient.

Coincidentally it seems Public Health Suffolk is currently consulting on the provision of pharmacy services in the County and residents have until the end of March to answer a questionnaire about the issue.

The survey can be accessed on www.healthysuffolk.org.uk and the closing date is Friday 31 March 2017. Hard copies of the questionnaire can be requested by emailing healthandwellbeing@suffolk.gov.uk or by telephoning 01473 260079.

Any information provided will be treated as confidential.

Have your say on Devolution

The public consultation on the Norfolk and Suffolk Devolution deal is now open for comment.

You can participate by clicking HERE.

I expressed my views about all this on this site back in June, and you can read my comments HERE.

Nothing that I heard in the debate at the County Council on 30th June has altered my opinion.

Local Government reorganisation (with a small amount of funding attached ...around £1bn over 30 years on a present value basis) may be a good thing for Suffolk, but I would be more positive towards the idea if it were presented honestly and not dressed up as some sort of devolution of power.

Anyway, now you can read the documentation, make up your own mind, and have your say!

Is Brexit the death of Devolution?

It is possible that the decision to leave the European Community will prove to be the death knell of the Government's current so called 'Devolution' initiative. (I wrote about this a few days ago)

On Thursday the County Council is due to debate and vote on the issue.  However, it is possible that the change of Prime Minister and all that this entails will now significantly alter matters.  The project was very much the initiative of George Osborne, backed by Euro enthusiast Michael Heseltine.  It is probable however that very shortly others will be in the driving seat.

Moreover, many of the proposals are predicated on the assumption that we remain members of the EU.  The regions into which different parts of England are being herded look remarkably like the European Economic Regions dictated by Brussels.  The idea of an elected Mayor is copied from European practice.  The 'combined authorities' are needed in order to be the recipients of EU regional funding.

All this now looks somewhat redundant.  I will be urging my colleagues to think about ditching this fraudulent initiative (if it is not halted in any event) and start to consider how we can devolve real power to the people.

Devolution, a deal emerges

Yesterday the shape of the so called 'Eastern Powerhouse' devolution deal emerged.

It seems that differences with Cambridgeshire (who thought that an alliance with the backwoodsmen of Suffolk and Norfolk would 'hold them back') have not been resolved.  So what is now proposed are two separate devolved areas, once including Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and one for Norfolk and Suffolk.  Each area will enjoy the privilege of their own elected mayor and each will see the creation of a new 'combined authority'.  In the case of Norfolk and Suffolk, a representative from each of the 23 local councils will sit on this body.

Thus, as I have been warning for some time, devolution = an additional layer of government.

Quite detailed information about the deal can be found HERE.

In preparation for a meeting tomorrow at which the new deal will be discussed I have been looking at this, and my preliminary conclusions are as follows:-

1. This is less about devolution (which to me involves tax raising powers as well as devolved decision making) than local government reorganisation (again).  The amounts of money being devolved from central government directly are tiny and any local taxation will come from levies on business rates.  It is questionable however whether business can actually cope with much higher rates.  Also, reading the small print, central government is retaining a strong level of supervision over the activities of the new combined authorities.

2.  Any talk of increased localism is eyewash.  The people making the decisions will be sitting in a new combined authority which is no nearer to a parish council for example than the Government is now.

3.  The new combined authorities have the potential to become quite expensive, representing as they do a new layer of government with various attached committees and boards. (I have counted about nine of these while going through the relevant information).  In theory the funding of the combined authorities is supposed to come from 'existing resources' .  I have my doubts about this concept for a number of reasons.

4.   Potentially the County Councils are likely to be diminished in power and influence at the expense of the Districts, who will be relatively unaffected.

I hope that some of these doubts will be allayed by the proponents of this so called 'devolution' in the days to come.  A vote on the matter will take place at full council at the end of the month.

EU Referendum Breakfast in Lavenham

Richard Bacon with Articulate's Jenna Cox

To the Swan Hotel in Lavenham yesterday morning for a ‘Business Breakfast’ meeting organised by Articulate HLC.  The theme was the EU Referendum and the speaker the very erudite and articulate Member of Parliament for South Norfolk, Richard Bacon.

Richard makes no secret of the fact that he is not a great enthusiast for the European 'project', and, although not one of the organisers of the Brexit campaign, he is in favour of voting ‘leave’.  He gave an interesting, wide ranging, talk which rested largely on issues of British culture and tradition.  He argued that our strong democratic roots, and long history as an independent nation state, mean that we will not thrive in an environment where we are ruled from elsewhere.  As a nation we have no reason to fear an independent future and have all it takes to flourish outside the EU. If we remain in the EU we will in the long term be unable to resist the pressure for ‘ever closer union’ and this is not something that will sit happily with the British approach to democracy and way of life.

After his speech Richard was asked questions on all manner of topics, and there is no room here to go into the detail.  However I found his response about the threats of Brexit to farmers particularly interesting.  He conceded that East Anglian grain barons might be worse off financially if their subsidies are removed, and not replaced by the UK Government, but he argued that many are still tempted to vote with their hearts and not with their heads.  For other farmers, and the countryside as a whole, the situation is less clear.   For those interested in the topic he suggested reading a speech made in January 2016 to the Oxford Farming Conference, by Owen Patterson, former Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.  In this Patterson makes a cogent case that UK agriculture would be better off were we to leave the EU.  The speech can be found in full HERE.

Richard mentioned in passing the two recent BBC documentaries presented by Nick Robinson, Europe them or Us which trace the history of the UK’s relationship with the EU.   Nick and I have watched these and found them very enlightening.  The message that comes across clearly is  that over time British leaders of all political persuasions  have repeatedly been prepared to lie and cheat and generally manipulate the political process despite evidence of clear popular opposition,  to maintain their position within the magic circle of self-generated importance, and to keep the European ‘project’ on the road. Even Mrs Thatcher was guilty of this until she saw the light.  Sadly that lying and cheating continues today.

These programmes can both be watched on the BBC i player, and will be available for 19 days from today.  I recommend them.

At the beginning of yesterday’s event a vote revealed that those present were split pretty evenly between ‘inners’ and ‘outers’ with some ‘don’t knows’.  Another vote at the end of the session showed a clear shift towards support for Brexit.  In part of course this was a vote for the elegance and eloquence of Richard’s performance.  However, he made the case for Brexit very convincingly.

A day in London, Part 2.

Much of the afternoon of my trip to London on Wednesday was absorbed by a ‘Question and Answer’ event held under the impressive portals of the Central Hall in Westminster. The Government has proposed some radical changes in the way that Local Authority Pension Funds are managed, and the aim was to shed light on the progress being made.

This is an arcane subject and I will not dwell on the issues in any detail. Suffice it to say that in insisting on reform the Government seems to have two big ideas, plus one major prejudice.

The first idea is that a good deal of money could be saved were the funds to be ‘pooled’ into larger units by combining with others.   The Suffolk Fund currently amounts to around £2.5 bn. and we are aiming to form an alliance with nearby authorities that will produce a pool of £35 bn.

Whether or not costs will actually be saved by this complex exercise is unproven.  If one takes the not inconsiderable up-front costs of effecting the reorganisation, and understands that  likely savings will only be realised several years in the future, it is not hard to see that the whole exercise is unlikely to offer positive value.

The second idea is that some of the billions currently sitting in the pension funds could usefully be pillaged in order to pay for much needed infrastructure investment across the country.

Here the government really seems to have got hold of the wrong end of the stick.  There is no shortage of funds looking for investment opportunities in infrastructure.   Indeed, the Suffolk Fund already has exposure to an international infrastructure fund.  If the Government brings forward the right sort of opportunities (that actually produce an income stream representing an acceptable return for our pensioners) Local Authority funds will be falling over themselves to invest.  There is a suspicion however that these sorts of projects are not what the Government has in mind.

Then we come to the prejudice.  For all the talk of Devolution, there is no doubt that by and large Whitehall holds local authority councillors in contempt.    This is well illustrated by the Government’s clear intention to remove the right of elected Pension Fund Committees to appoint their own investment managers in consultation with their professional advisers.  In future, in the words of one public servant on the panel, this task will be carried out by a committee comprising apparatchiks such as himself, whom he rather inadvisably described as ‘more intelligent’.

Of course, given that the audience was largely made up by elected members and investment managers, this issue generated some excitement.  In the overall scheme of things, apart from the transparent insult to elected members, the change will make little difference to fund performance.  What really matters here is asset allocation which will remain the remit of the individual Pension Fund Committee. 

But the big issue is this: council pension fund Committees meet in public.  Anyone can come along and see decision making in action. I have real concerns about the scope for corruption when a group of unelected officers and City ‘experts’, meeting in secret, wield considerable power over decisions about the management of what is ultimately residents’ money.

Academies? Fear for smaller rural primary schools.

I am pleased that a number of leading Conservative Councillors, including the Cabinet Member for Education in Oxfordshire, which includes David Camerons’s  Witney constituency, are speaking out against the forced ‘academisation’ of English schools.

There are many arguments against the government’s policy, which was announced in the recent  Budget speech.  My main concern however is for the future of small rural primary schools, some of which are doing an excellent job educating children in the Cosford Division.  As part of a chain of academies these will inevitably come under scrutiny from academy sponsors seeking to achieve economies of scale.  The closure of Monks Eleigh School a couple of years ago has taught me how damaging to a small community school closure can be.

The case for academies is unproven.  There is some evidence that in fact standards have not improved across the board under the leadership of academy trusts.   In Suffolk my work on the School Improvement Board, which seeks to drive up standards at all Suffolk schools, means that I am aware that by no means all academies are first rate, or improving. 

An education minister on the Today Programme this morning tried to argue that local authority schools appear doing better now on average because many of the worst schools have become academies so are no longer counted.  What the Minister failed to say was that many excellent schools have also been taken out of the local authority mix.

The Minister claimed that ‘one size does not fit all’ in education and that as academies schools will have more ‘freedom’.  In the same breath however, rather perversely, he stated that ‘two systems cannot exist side by side’, implying that indeed one size does fit all!

In my opinion each school is a small system in itself and is unique.  What matters most is the quality of teaching and robust governance.  Forcing top down structural change for its own sake, or for ideological reasons, which seems to be the case in this instance, seems wrong, particularly when the education of our children is at stake.

Like other Conservative councillors, I hope that the Government will reconsider.

Devo sucks?

This week almost 80 percent of voters in Bath and North East Somerset, when asked in a referendum whether they wanted an elected mayor, said no.

Today we hear that the new ‘Eastern Powerhouse’, the latest and most ambitious iteration of the devolution plans for the East is to be headed by, yes you guessed it, an elected Mayor.  As far as I can remember however no resident of Suffolk, Norfolk or Cambridgeshire has been asked their opinion on the subject.   I suspect if they were the answer would not be much different from that of the good people of Bath and North East Somerset.

The Government are clearly not in the mood to be contradicted in this matter.  ‘I will not impose this model on anyone. But nor will I settle for less’ was George Osborne’s comment when asked about elected mayors.  So that’s clear then!

Moreover, it appears that not every council in the East is that enthusiastic about the ‘Powerhouse’.  The Leader of Cambridge City Council poured cold water on the idea on Look East today and it has been no secret that Cambridgeshire as a whole was less than enthusiastic when belatedly instructed to join the process very recently.

I really do wonder whether central Government has a clue what it is doing with regard to devolution.  What was an ill thought through seat of the pants promise made to the English regions during the Scottish Referendum has developed into the most chaotic process imaginable.  At one stage it seemed that the Government genuinely wanted ideas to come from the bottom up.  Suffolk Leaders accordingly submitted their ideas for devolved powers, but these were quickly sent back so that Norfolk might be included in the mix. Weeks later cold water was poured on this second attempt because the Government now wanted to see Cambridgeshire (and possibly parts of North Essex) to be included.

This seems to me to be policy making as conducted in a madhouse.  I can do no better than quote a ‘local government source who has been involved in the East Anglian devolution discussion’ speaking to the MJ (formerly the Municipal Journal) of Thursday 3^rd March.

‘The Government is desperate to get some bids in so they can announce them in the Budget.  There’s a real pressure to get something agreed.

Its neither bottom up nor top down.  The Government only knows what it doesn’t want when it sees it, so everyone’s second guessing.

With the Government moving the goalposts every five minutes the devolution process feels really random, a bit panicky and rushed.’

Oh and then there’s the small matter of asking residents, and also most councillors, for their views….. Don’t even think about it!  Like the people of Bath and North Somerset they might give the wrong answers.