The decisions by the Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly to suspend all business as a result of strike action by the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union has drawn criticism from the CBI. In Scotland, Labour and Scottish National Party MSPs took the decision not to cross the picket lines of striking workers at Holyrood, causing all business at the Parliament to be cancelled.

In a statement, a spokesman for Scottish Labour said:

“Labour postponed its group meeting today till later in the week. It has been up to each individual MSP to make their own decision. Iain Gray did not come into the parliament today. Instead he brought forward business in his constituency. The committee conveners consulted with colleagues from all parties and the decision was made to hold them on another day.”

While the SNP said:

“No meetings of the SNP group have been cancelled and all SNP MSPs are working whether in Parliament or in their constituencies.”

However, CBI Scotland have attacked the decision of all but one MSP from either Labour or the SNP to turn up to Holyrood during the dispute. Ian McMillan, director of CBI Scotland, said:

“The Scottish Parliament is the seat of democracy. There is a duty on the members of parliament to make every effort to keep the parliament open and to conduct the business they are supposed to do. If they don’t turn up, they risk aiding and abetting this kind of militant behaviour throughout the civil service.”

In Wales, meanwhile, both Labour and Plaid Cymru assembly members joined picketing PCS staff in their protest over plans to save £500 million over three years by reducing payouts made to civil servants facing redundancy. In attacking the move - which saw the regular questioning of first minister Carwyn Jones cancelled - David Rosser, director of the CBI in Wales said:

“It would have been nice to see more leadership shown by our national politicians. At a time when the Government is urging all public sector bodies to make savings in order to protect services, this sends out completely the wrong message.”

In response, Labour AM Jeff Cuthbert, who chairs the Unite the Union group at Cardiff, said:

“They have a right, a democratic right, to organise industrial action and we will respect that. I hope it’s not necessary for further action, but we will see.“

In explaining their support for striking assembly staff, Plaid Cymru AM Leanne Wood said:

“There is no doubt the deficit needs to be reduced but the question is who should pay for that.”

In the spirit of Ms Woods’s remarks, the prime minister announced leading public sector managers, civil servants and officials would face pay freezes in 2010/11, dubbed by “mean spirited” by those affected. As public sector spending becomes ever more squeezed, as is inevitable under whichever party wins the election, the question will be not so much a matter of whether to make painful decisions, but where and to whom.

In a recent article for Policy Review magazine Andrew Lansley set out his plans to privatise parts of the NHS, as a means to deliver “equity, efficiency and excellence” at a time of “crisis in our public finances”. While writing “healthcare in time of need should be a right for all, rather than a privilege for the few”, the shadow health secretary looks beyond the State for a lead, adding “we can not go on seeing productivity fall in our public services, just as it rises in the private sector”.

Lansley’s comments come at the same time as his renewed emphasis on pushing for a “free market” in NHS provision, which Left Foot Forward reported on Monday. He had called for the Office of Fair Trading to investigate the government’s policy that NHS organisations should be the “preferred provider” of NHS care, accusing health secretary Andy Burnham of being “a puppet of the [health] trade unioins”.

On his remarks about private productivity compared to public, it is worth asking if Lansley making a fair comparison; is he right in saying private healthcare providers are more productive than the NHS? And will increases in productivity save all that much money? The ippr report into “Private Spending on Healthcare” looked at the question of productivity, finding:

• Improvements in productivity are necessary, but will not prevent the need for increased spending.

• Healthcare is a highly labour intensive service. Thus the scope for steady productivity gains is probably limited when compared with the average for other sectors of the economy. Healthcare could be exposed to a ‘cost disease‘ or Baumol’s effect (Baumol 1967, 1993) – in other words the prices of medical care services compared with other goods and services in the economy (where mechanisation has reduced production costs) rise.

• Productivity improvements will reduce the rate of increase in healthcare spending, yet the ‘fully engaged scenario’ (incorporating optimistic productivity and public health improvements) still projects an average annual increase in healthcare spending of 4.7 per cent, in real terms, from 1999/00 to 2022/23.

• There have recently been sharp increases in prices: between 2000 and 2005, average increases in real remiums were three per cent in the corporate market and six per cent in the individual market. This has been accompanied by ‘downgrading’, either by restricting cover or increasing excesses, and movement towards lower cost plans in the individual market. Gross margins (administrative costs plus profits) have recently reached higher levels: 23.5 per cent in 2003, their highest level since the late 1970s.

The report concluded that:

“There is still a need for better monitoring of the impact of privately-funded treatment on NHS practice and for continuing to tackle the potential perverse incentives and negative impacts of private practice on NHS work.”

The “Conservative Policies Dissected” blog has also taken a detailed looked at the question of NHS productivity vis-à-vis the private healthcare sector, concluding:

“It is quite clear from the figures given above [see post for full details] that the private sector is considerably more expensive than the NHS. Andrew Lansley may be right that productivity is increasing in the private sector, but it will need to have some very impressive improvements for it to reach the productivity of the NHS.

“When you analyse the NHS you can see that it has achieved remarkable increases in productivity since 1997, but it is the large costs of capital investment, making up for the underinvestment of the previous Conservative admini9strations [sic], that has produced a very small year-on-year drop in productivity. The private sector is a very expensive option for no apparent gain in quality…

“Lansley is deliberately trying to mislead the public by claiming that productivity is better in the private sector than in the public sector.”

The government’s ambition to get 50 per cent of young people into higher education has come under fire from graduate employers. The Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR), a body representing graduate employers, has called for the target to be scrapped, arguing that it has “driven down standards and devalued the currency of a degree and damaged the quality of the university experience”.

Its chief executive Carl Gilleard declares it should be part of a process to “reaffirm the value of a degree”. Though he is right in pushing for a renewed focus to improve higher education standards and educational quality, he is wrong in identifying the 50 per cent participation goal as an inhibiting factor.

Firstly, having a larger graduate pool benefits the British economy. In the past few decades we have gone through some major national and geo-political changes, which have redefined the nature of our economy.

Our future is a high-skilled and knowledge based economy, which is a world leader in intellectual and technology-based industries. This requires more, not less graduates, particularly with rising economic powers China and India producing graduates annually en masse.

Higher numbers of skilled graduates make the British economy more competitive. With record numbers attending University and applying for jobs, our labour market is one of the strongest in the world. The talent on offer is high. This helps attract foreign investment and inward trade, boosting our economic growth.

Additionally our strong labour market has helped businesses enjoy higher levels of productivity and standards in the calibre of employees. This in turn benefits UK PLC as graduates have higher earnings and income potential than non-graduates, raising GDP.

AGR’s report runs counter to our push for social mobility. Allowing and encouraging more people to acquire some form of higher education is a basic necessity in improving life chances for those from poorer and more disadvantaged backgrounds. With the advent of a knowledge-based economy, tertiary education and qualifications are of paramount importance in securing professional success, and should not be curtailed.

The long-term prospects for the British economy are more secure with a bigger graduate workforce, as powerful global forces can quickly re-define the nature of markets and economic relations. A dynamic and flexible labour market has the ability to quickly adapt. More, not less graduates, is the key to this successful economic strategy.

Agreement may be imminent between Andrew Lansley and Andy Burnham on a blueprint for elderly care funding, and David Cameron may well have pledged to “increase NHS funding”, yet, as with schools, key dividing lines remain – one of which is the Tories’ apparent desire to turn the NHS into a publicly funded free market.

At issue is the shadow health secretary’s opposition to the government’s policy that NHS organisations should be the “preferred provider” of NHS care – a stance that puts the Tories at odds with both health service unions and doctors, Unison and the British Medical Association (BMA) both backing the government’s position.

Lanlsley’s call for the Office of Fair Trading, which is meant to govern the free market, to make decisions about NHS services threatens to undermine the ability of the NHS to plan services were it to force primary care trusts to open all services up to open tender.

It also begs the following questions:

• Do the Tories want healthcare to be treated the same as supermarkets and telephone companies?

• Where does this leave Lansley’s commitment to putting power in the hands of doctors? (Since the majority of them are against commercialisation of the NHS).

On Friday, he had accused the health secretary of being “a puppet of the [health] trade unions”, adding:

“Mr Burnham is trying to constrain opportunities for the voluntary and independent sector to offer their services to NHS patients … Patients will lose out as a result. I am writing to the director-general of the Office of Fair Trading, urging him to investigate.”

Health service disquiet at the idea of private health companies tendering for NHS services came to the fore last month following the news Hinchingbrooke hospital in Huntingdon was set to become the first NHS general hospital to be operated by a private company, after the only wholly NHS bidder for the contract dropped out.

The process was described as “an unnecessary costly and dangerous experiment” by Unison, with the BMA warning the result would be that “the trust board’s responsibility will be to shareholders and not to the local population”.

Michael Gove came unstuck on the Daily Politics this lunchtime, skewered over his insistence on praising the underperforming Swedish schools system while doing down Britain’s higher-ranked schools.

Gove, in his haste to talk down Britain’s schools, even tried to brush aside the Trends in International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS) which ranked England in seventh place – eight places higher than Sweden.

The shadow schools secretary was also mocked over the Conservative party’s plans to prevent graduates with third-class degrees becoming teachers, people like Carol Vorderman – the Tories’ new maths adviser.

Watch it:

Earlier today, Left Foot Forward posed several questions for Gove, who will give a key-note speech at a Spectator conference tomorrow.

The Conservatives are limbering up for a grand showcase of their education policy at a conference organised by the Spectator tomorrow. With the bold title of “The Schools Revolution”, the event will gather together the leading thinkers behind the party’s schools strategy.

The shadow children’s secretary, Michael Gove, will give the keynote speech, hoping to make an impact comparable to Tony Blair’s famous “Education, Education, Education” speech of 1996.

Education is one area where the Conservatives have not shied away from outlining seemingly radical proposals relating to Ofsted inspections, excluding pupils, discipline and, most controversially, the adoption of the controversial Swedish “Free Schools” model which sees parents taking control of schools.

Mikael Sandstrom, the Swedish State Secretary – “one of the world’s leading authorities in school liberation”, according to the Spectator’s website – will be one of the speakers present, discussing such questions as “Will there be such a thing as an education industry?”

He has been calling for the Tories to commit to allowing such schools to make profit.

So far as it has been outlined, the Conservative education policy has raised other pertinent questions and failed to acknowledge others. In advance of the conference, we would like to ask:

Where is the evidence free schools will improve standards?

There is no clear evidence that a school re-branded as an academy improves for any other reason than it receives extra start-up funds and a less suffocating grip on student suspension/exclusion policies.

Why should we expect that a school independent from the local authority is intrinsically better? A recent report from the LSE concluded that free schools are not cost-effective and may not make any difference to the education status quo.

We need to be clear why we are going down this route.

How can the Tories ensure these schools won’t cream-off students from more affluent families?

The Tories have promised members of “parent promoter” groups that they will jump the admissions queue and automatically get places in their own schools.

These schools will create unfunded surplus places with the idea that unfettered competition drives up standards. This will cause havoc for head teachers and governors to plan year-on-year efficiencies.

Would free schools be encouraged to take poorer pupils?

Per Thulberg, director general of the Swedish National Agency for Education, has said that free schools have led not only to falling standards but to rising segregation in Sweden.

He told Newsnight last month that where these schools had improved their results, it was because the pupils they took had “better backgrounds” than those who attended the institutions the free schools had replaced.

How will the Tories afford the estimated £1bn cost of the pupil premium?

The Tories say they will encourage schools to take poor students with a pupil premium incentive but a study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies released yesterday claimed that the model the Tories are considering would lead to 57 per cent of secondaries and a third of primaries receiving less money.

We need to see detailed analysis.

Why should parents be denied a voice over academies?

One of Gove’s proposals is to deny parents a ballot on whether their child’s school should convert to become an academy or not – a clear piece of hypocrisy. If academies are so popular, why are the Tories so afraid to let the local community have its say?

What will the Tories do to address this problem of the middle-classes playing the system?

Last week, the Sutton Trust revealed that hundreds of the best-performing comprehensive schools are covertly selecting students from more affluent backgrounds and blocking those from more deprived families.

How will the proposed new exclusion policy help the most vulnerable children?

The Conservatives promise to scrap parents’ right to appeal if their child is permanently excluded as part of a drive to tackle bad behaviour in schools at the same time as think tank Demos publishes a report which said school exclusions should be abolished because they punish the most vulnerable children.

Who will ensure high standards are maintained?

One of Gove’s proposals is to make schools ranked outstanding by Ofsted exempt from further inspections. We already have an inspection system that sees weaker schools inspected more often and high performing schools less often.

Last year’s annual report by chief inspector of schools Christine Gilbert revealed that  – of the schools ranked outstanding in their previous inspection – 19 per cent had been rated as merely good in the following inspection, two per cent satisfactory and one per cent inadequate.

The Tories say that outstanding schools will be monitored by central government – perhaps Gove himself?

What will happen to Ofsted?

Ofsted in any case has become a discredited and expensive institution, costing the same as 5,000 teachers. The political parties are lurching from model to model again without clarifying what it wants from the inspectorate and why.

It sits as an external rather than an integrated force within a nationwide education strategy. A future government needs to hold a nationwide enquiry and consultation into what Ofsted is supposed to be achieving in light of national needs.

What’s with the micromanagement?

The Conservatives push a choice agenda, yet are strangely prescriptive when it comes to best practise in schools. Tories worry about uniform and standing up when the teacher enters the room.

The most obvious question still needs to be answered: Are we happy to stand by and watch the dissolution of state schooling as we know it?

Our guest writer is Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union (UCU)

The challenge of who pays for higher education was clearly laid out in a landmark report from Lord Dearing back in 1997. He said the main beneficiaries of a university education had to pay their fair share. Since 1997 students have been hit with university tuition fees, followed by top-up fees and there has been continued state support.

What we have not seen is any real contribution from the third beneficiary identified by Lord Dearing – the employer.

The UCU report released today, “In place of fees: time for a Business Education Tax“, recommends raising the level of corporation tax in the UK to the G7 countries’ average. This simple ‘business education tax’ would raise enough money to abolish all university tuition fees and would still leave our rate of corporation tax lower that of France, Japan and the United States.

It would also leave corporation tax at a lower rate than when the Tories were last in power. Crucially, it would only hit the really big boys – those earning more than £1.5 million a year in profits – leaving 96 per cent of companies in the UK unaffected by the change.

The simple fact is that despite benefiting from more generous business tax arrangements than other countries, UK employers spend less on employee training and development and invest less than the global average in supporting university research and development.

Without being forced to contribute business would continue to carp from the sidelines about standards and curriculum, but refuse to put its hand in its pockets. Our proposals are not going to give students a free ride. The investment still required from students will be a considerable one to meet the cost of rent, food, bills, books etc.

Our proposals are part of an emerging consensus that business must pay its fair share. We have seen the hugely popular Robin Hood Tax, the backlash against bankers’ bonuses and a special tax from Tory Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.

Johnson’s 2p in the pound tax on central London businesses has been introduced specifically to fund a project that the businesses will benefit from. The difference between Boris’s tax and our tax is that one in five businesses will be hit by his tax; just one in 25 will be hit by ours.

Employers also need to stop seeing investing in education or training as some kind of unnecessary evil.  A study in 2006 found that three-quarters of the gain from staff training goes to the employer, with the other quarter going to the staff member.

• Graduates generally enjoy higher productivity than other workers which is beneficial to the company.

• UK employers spent just 1.3% of total labour costs on training, whereas the EU average is 1.6%. France spends 2.3%; Holland 2% and Sweden 2.1%. We already spend less on training for the individual employee.

• UK employers spent €1,068 per training participant compared to the EU average of €1,385. Germany spends €1,637 and France €1,898. UK employees average 7 hours training per year; compared to nearly 14 in France. And a third (33%) of UK companies hadn’t delivered any formal training to their staff in last twelve months.

• On average, the Times Top 100 graduate employers will employ 138 graduates each in 2010. Our plans would favour tax breaks on our business education tax for companies who fund their employees to learn new skills, thus creating a virtuous cycle of positive practice.

Our proposals are based on fairness. The future for the UK is as a high-skilled knowledge economy and that requires business to pay its fair share towards something which benefits us all.

We believe our proposals will be welcomed by hardworking families who want their children to benefit from education, but are put off by the potential debts created by university fees.

A PoliticsHome poll has found that British voters think that shielding services is more important than reducing the budget deficit. The findings will be seen as a further blow to the Conservative party’s economic message about the “age of austerity“.

Politics Home interviewed 1,082 voters over the weekend who were “asked to say whether their greater worry about the next government was that it would cut public spending too deeply, or that it would fail to reduce the budget deficit quickly enough.” The website found:

“Forty per cent of people were more concerned that state services would be cut back too deeply. Meanwhile, only twenty five per cent said that their greater fear was that the deficit would not be tackled with sufficient speed.”

Floating voters were particularly sceptical about prioritising paying back the deficit quickly. According to Politics Home:

“Only sixteen per cent were more worried that debt reduction would be too slow. Meanwhile, more than double – thirty six per cent – are more concerned about the effect of a spending squeeze on public services.”

The finding corroborates polling by Ipsos-MORI last year which found that the public disagree by 48 per cent to 21 per cent that too much is spent on public services. Ipsos-MORI’s CEO Ben Page told Left Foot Forward last year:

“The public are not convinced that there will need to be massive cuts in front line services in order to balance the books. In fact, 50 per cent deny that the debt situation needs addressing in that way.”

Other surveys covered by Left Foot Forward show that, when pushed on bringing down the deficit, the public is split on tax rises versus spending cuts while another poll showed that 60 per cent favour tax increases to help close the budget deficit.

Rachel Reeves, Labour’s PPC for Leeds West and a leading left-wing economist, told Left Foot Forward:

“People want more than an age of austerity. We are one of the richest countries in the world with fantastic people and businesses. The age of austerity that Cameron and Osborne prescribe once again seeks to talk Britain down. It’s not surprising that voters are turned off.”

Yesterday’s short report from the Centre for Economic Performance at LSE marks another blow for the Tory party’s proposals to introduce “Swedish schools” into the UK education system.

Helena Holmlund and Sandra McNally analysis points to two key differences between the Swedish system and our own as evidence that the new model might not reap the great benefits the Conservatives currently claim it will.

Firstly, they rightly point out that the reforms to Sweden’s education system to introduce choice in to the school system was on a background of no school choice. As they say:

“All pupils had to attend the state school in their neighbourhood.”

The picture in the UK is quite different, with greater school choice having been at the heart of the UK education system throughout Labour’s time in office.

Secondly, while the Conservatives propose schools relatively free from state control, the Swedish schools are compelled to follow a national curriculum.

Perhaps most interestingly, the paper asks whether building and opening new schools is the most effective means of bringing about change in the education system:

“What about all the evidence on other things that work to improve educational performance, such as teacher quality, reducing class size, etc?”

Left Foot Forward has scrutinised the Conservative’s proposals a number of times over recent months:

• On the unaccounted £1 billion cost of the reforms;

• Their agenda of public service profit;

• The unanswered questions over funding the reforms;

• The abscence of any mention of Swedish schools in their draft education manifesto; and

• The head of Sweden’s Ofsted telling Newsnight that the reforms had led to falling standards and rising segregation

The evidence now seems to be stacking up against them.

While the Tories have been quick to adopt the Swedish model, they have not been so quick to spell out their wider theory of change for the education system.

And in a post-election public sector where tightened belts will be the order of the day, new schools built with private money will only be a success if matched by public money to provide good teachers and small classes.

More evidence has emerged of the financial squeeze set to confront the public sector, as policy makers turn their attention to how to plug budget deficits across the country.

• A report in the Herald newspaper has revealed that Scotland’s largest local authority is to spend £100 million in early redundancy payments on the 2,200 staff who have opted for voluntary redundancy. In 2009, the council announced plans to shed 4000 jobs as part of efforts to save £34 million over the coming year;

• On the Isle of Man, Health Minister Eddie Teare has warned of possible cuts to front line health services unless £8.5 million can be found to fill the overspend in staff pay rises and the costs of sending patients to the UK for treatment; and

• BBC South West’s Inside Out programme has reported that Cornwall county council has been left having to find £10 million to fix school buildings following the collapse of a major contract with a consortium called NewSchools Cornwall.

These developments come after the auditors, KPMG and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, warned that a third of public sector bodies were looking to make staff cuts, with the defence and public administration sectors likely to be badly hit.

In a bleak assessment, KPMG’s head of public sector Alan Downey said:

“These figures clearly show that the starting gun for a public sector recession has been fired. It is now only a matter of time before we are faced with the deepest and most prolonged cuts in public expenditure that anyone can remember.

“In fact, many public sector bodies have already started to feel the pain and are drawing up clear and radical plans to reduce costs. By definition that means identifying those services that are of lower priority and must be scaled back or terminated altogether.“

Unions, however, were hostile to the findings, with Unite’s assistant general secretary for the public sector saying:

“Public services and their staff are integral to the UK’s recovery from the global recession caused by reckless banking practices. According to TUC analysis, a 10 per cent cut in 2007/2008 public sector expenditure equates to 200,000 jobs.

“In cities, such as Newcastle where two thirds of the economically active are employed in the public sector, the impact of such cuts would be devastating to the local economy – reduced taxation, reduced spending and, ironically greater reliance, on public services such as Job Centres and increased government expenditure on supporting the unemployed and their families.”

The news came as Nigel Jump, chief economist of the south west regional development authority warned that if public sector cuts are brought forward too soon it will be difficult to prevent unemployment increasing across the region.

He said:

“I would be surprised if we got rid of the level of unemployment built up over the past 12 to 18 months. The main danger is it could be higher, because of the cuts to the public sector.”

David Cameron’s co-operative proposal should be judged on its merits. But mutual solutions must empower parents, patients, pupils and service users.

Veteran stalwarts of the Co-operative Movement may not be able to stifle a wry smile after seeing the Conservative pledge to give public-sector employees the right to form worker co-operatives, as covered on Left Foot Forward yesterday. They would quite rightly remember that when in Government, the Conservative Party abolished the National Co-operative Development Agency, which during its ten years of existence created almost 2,000 worker co-operatives and 25,000 jobs in the private sector. Not to mention their gross act of economic vandalism in facilitating the demutualisation of more than two thirds of the building society movement when they were last in power.

But to be generous, as argued previously on this blog, we should judge Conservative proposals on their merits, rather than their past record. Yet another hastily improvised policy on the hoof has shown the Conservatives to be “completely clueless” on co-operatives. They don’t understand the great strides that have already been taken in public services, nor the underlying philosophy behind public sector mutualism.

Worker co-operatives and employee ownership do certainly have something to offer. Giving employees a stake in their business provides workers with economic gains and creates companies that are responsive to their frontline staff. Firms where members of staff have a big ownership stake and a say in decisions do not just cre­ate happier workers, they also make more productive businesses. These organisations thrive across a range of sectors, and can provide a better and more stable future for our economy.

But public sector mutualism is not just about giving workers power – but all of us, not just as employees – but also as parents, patients, pupils and service users. This is where the Government’s track record on mutualism speaks for itself. As a result of partnership between the Labour and Co-operative Parties over the last twelve years, there are more than 1.5 million members of new mutuals across public services. Largely, these are not just run by employees – but allow everyone involved in the organisation, be they parents, patients, workers or pupils – a real say over how they are run.

There are now 126 foundation trust hospitals with over a million members drawn from patients, employees, carers and the wider community. There are over 25 co-operative trust schools, with a target of more than 200 by September, which give parents, pupils and staff real control over the school and its ethos.

All of us want to see services built on the experiences of frontline staff, but they should be built on our experiences as service users as well – as they are at UCLH, my local hospital. Mov­ing to the mutual model has changed the way that it is run, making it more responsive to the community that I live in and more focused on the needs of its patients. It resulted in the creation of a ‘patient experience’ working group that draws on the experiences of employees and users to tackle issues like the quality of food and time spent waiting on the phone - all of which had been traditional sources of discontent, yet often too low down in managerial priorities to be tackled effectively.

It’s not impossible that employee co-operatives could do this – in much the same way as it’s not impossible for the state to do it either. But there is not the same mechanism for engagement with the community that allows it to build on the needs of users, as well as the frontline experience of staff.

One may want to ask David Cameron what he is going to do about the public sector mutuals that already exist. Does his new announcement mean that he is going to take our rights as patients and parents away from us and place them solely in the hand of workers? Is he really going to tell more than 1.3 million members of NHS Foundation Trusts that their services are no longer required?

Essentially when we’re talking about public money, it’s important that the public have a real say over how they’re run – and can make sure that public sector organisations are run in all of our interests,  rather than the narrow sectional interests of one stakeholder against the other.

And once you get into the detail of the proposals, they seem to get even murkier, with their avowed intent to allow co-operatives to go into joint venture with outside organisations, and give them a share of the revenues. While these proposals lack the specificity that one would expect from a serious political party, there is a concern that this could just be a route to enabling significant revenues to go into the hands of the shareholders of private businesses rather than being reinvested in providing a better service for taxpayers and users.

For over 80 years the Labour and Co-operative Parties have stood for giving economic and political power to everyone in our society, and employee ownership is an important part of that. But the mutual solutions that we proposed are based on the experience of a movement that has been around for 150 years, rather than the need for something to say to decontaminate our brand. If mutualism is going to be one of the key battlegrounds of the next election – progressives from the Labour Movement will have nothing to fear.

Our guest writer is Robbie Erbmann, Policy Officer at The Co-operative Party

UPDATE 11.45:

There’s an interesting critique of the Conservative plans at Stumbling and Mumbling by Chris Dillow, who has in the past argued for public service delivery by co-ops.

Perhaps predictably, Tessa Jowell and the Co-operative Party have criticised George Osborne as he launched the Tory policy on public sector co-ops this morning. But if the Left truly wants to put progressive politics above partisan politics, then this morning’s Tory policy on public sector co-ops should be cheered, not attacked.

Tessa Jowell declared on Labour List this morning that, “the values of mutualism are inherently Labour values” while The Independent quotes the Co-operative Party General Secretary, Michael Stephenson, describing George Osborne as “clueless”.

But some on the Left take a more pluralistic view. At Prospect, James Crabtree praises the Tory’s “radical” and “daring” announcement. While on Coffee House, Martin Bright describes the principle of co-operatism as a “great one” concluding:

“What the shadow chancellor was saying this morning could have profound implications for the way we run our society. If, as he specifically said, Jobcentres could be run as co-operatives, we could break out of the silo-based approach to work creation that currently dogs attempts to get people back to work. And if we could link Jobcentres to co-operatively-run schools and FE colleges then this starts to look genuinely revolutionary.”

Make no mistake about it: this Tory policy is genuinely progressive. It retains the state’s role as the funder of public services, but allows workers to take far more control over the actual running of local services. The new co-operatives would be run as not-for-profits, with the potential to use surpluses both to improve services and increase wages.

Public sector workers would therefore have the incentive to run services efficiently – to increase the chances of an end-of-year surplus – combined with increased accountability to the users of local services. Peter Hoskin points out that, if a local service is run by a co-operative, local people know exactly who to blame if the service is bad. It is not a minister or invisible civil servant in Whitehall, but the public sector workers themselves. A successful implementation of this policy across the country should lead to higher standards of service and higher wages for workers: a true win-win situation. This is not to mention the benefits of freeing services from one-size-fits-all approaches forced upon then by central government and allowing them to adapt and develop in response to the specific needs of their communities.

Whatever the progressive Left feels about the Conservative Party, surely this is a policy that warrants support? Trying to discredit it will – perhaps – win the Left some political points and create false dividing lines between the parties. But this will damage progressive politics more widely. If the Left truly wants progressive reforms in Britain, then all progressive policies should be supported. Instead of attacking this policy, it should be welcomed: the way to cement a progressive, modernising strand firmly within the Conservative Party is to nuture progressive policies, not to undermine them.

Our guest writer is Thomas Haynes of the Conservative Co-operative Movement

Broadcaster Dame Joan Bakewell has launched a stinging attack on the Conservative’s tombstone poster campaign which attacked a mooted solution to the funding of Labour’s social care plan. Bakewell’s remarks came hours after Andrew Lansley admitted that he failed to tell David Cameron about his private talks on social care with Health Secretary, Andy Burnham.

Speaking on BBC’s ‘The World at One‘, Bakewell, who in November 2008 was made a ‘Voice of Older People‘ by the Government, said:

“You know we’ve had a lot of pious talk recently about how we must salvage the reputation of parliament because of the expenses scandal, but the scandal is still going on, because people are telling lies.

“That poster, which was that Gordon Brown wants 20,000 when you die, is merely one of a series of options being put forward as a way of stopping people having to sell their houses, people don’t want to have to sell their houses as they get older and this option, paying 20,000 out of your estate when you die is just one proposal put forward in good faith. To turn it into this grotesque poster is an insult to everybody and it damages the case for older people and their serious care.”

Bakewell also criticised Gordon Brown who, she said, “preempted a very sensible policy that was introduced in a green paper in July, put out to consultation. And then in order to have something to offer conference Gordon invented this new bill, which is currently in the Lords – the Personal Care at Home Bill, which rather prejudges all the thoughtful developments that were going forward.”

Earlier today, Andrew Lansley appeared on the Today programme where he discussed the private talks held with Andy Burnham and Lib Dem health spokesman Norman Lamb before Christmas to thrash out a consensus on social care. The Times is reporting that:

“Mr Lansley, meanwhile, confirmed today’s report in The Times that he was acting alone when he approached Mr Burnham and Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat spokesman, about talks.

“He has been accused of betraying trust by suddenly breaking off talks and attacking plans that were only put forward as an option in a Green Paper.”

Paul Waugh’s blog reports that:

“A Tory MP tells me that Burnham was so furious at the Tories’ RIP poster attack (on the very green paper option that had been discussed with Lansley secretly) that he confronted Lansley in the voting lobby on Tuesday.”

The Conservative party were on the defensive last night over their planned cuts to the Child Tax Credit amid accusations that their sums don’t add up.

A Conservative party press release accompanying George Osborne’s conference speech last year outlined that:

“The Government should stop paying tax credits to households with incomes over £50,000 by starting to means-test the Family Element of the Child Tax Credit at a lower threshold. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies this would save £400 million a year or £2.0 billion over the next Parliament.”

In fact, as Left Foot Forward showed last year and Channel 4 Fact Check reiterated last week, saving £400 million would require an even deeper cuts in the Child Tax Credit.

A Parliamentary Answer by the Treasury Minister Stephen Timms in December detailed that:

“To reduce total annual tax credit expenditure by £400 million, it is estimated that the second income threshold would need to be reduced to around £31,000.”

The independent Institute for Fiscal Studies outlined in their ‘Green Budget 2010‘ (p.168) that:

“An early estimate of the savings from this reform was produced by researchers at IFS and cited by the Conservative Party, and this was that the change could save £0.4 billion a year …

“It is likely that the estimate from the government is more accurate [than the Conservative estimate], because the [original] IFS estimate assumed full take-up of the child tax credit. Without access to HMRC’s data, it is not possible for us to say precisely how much money would be raised by the Conservative Party’s proposal having allowed for incomplete take-up, but it can be stated confidently that it would be less than £0.4 billion (because that would require lowering the threshold to £31,000), but more than £45 million (which is what would be raised if the threshold at £50,000 were replaced by a cliff-edge, as this is the total amount to which families with incomes exceeding £50,000 are entitled).”

Last year, Left Foot Forward reported that:

“calculations carried out by the ‘ippr tax/benefit calculator’ and seen by Left Foot Forward show that [the £50,000 threshold] policy would only save £65 million assuming full take-up of the family component. If take up were 73 per cent, the relevant HMRC figure in 2005-06, the total saving would fall to £47.5 million. (pdf, Table 3: CTC, family element or less).”

But last night, writing on the Blue Blog, Theresa May made the bold may of accusing the Government of an outright “lie” while sewing further confusion with an admission that families with incomes over £40,000 would now be caught by the policy:

“Our priority is to find a way to get spending under control that is fair and protects the poorest. Tax credits are designed to help families on low incomes, but we are now paying them to families earning over £50,000. We don’t think that is affordable anymore, so we have said that under a Conservative Government these families would stop receiving tax credits. No families with a combined household income of £40,000 or less will be affected by our policy.”

May did not detail the latest Conservative estimate of the cost saving from the policy. It is unclear where this leaves Philip Hammond’s claim, reiterated yesterday to Channel 4, that:

“I gave a figure, off the top of my head, of a billion to a billion-and-a-half … I stand by that figure.

“In 2010-11 we can save a £1 billion to £1.5 billion from those three measures: child tax credits, child trust funds, and the reduction in the Government advertising budget.”

Channel 4 say, “After consulting with the Institute of Fiscal Studies we concluded the Tories would be lucky to save £625m this year.”

UPDATE 10.45

Labour List have a good summary of how some of this row played out on twitter yesterday.

The latest report from Policy Exchange follows the CBI and other right wing commentators down the road of lazy conclusions when it comes to how best to fund our universities.

“More Fees Please?” spectacularly fails to consider any radical options for the funding of higher education and falls back on the lazy and tired option of students, and their parents, footing the bill.

The rationale for this decision seems to be that the state cannot pump any more cash in because times are tough and therefore the other ‘beneficiary’, the student, must pay.

What this argument misses is the fact that the likes of America, France and Germany are ring-fencing money for education as part of their recovery packages – these countries are happy to match the rhetoric about the need for a highly-skilled future workforce with the resources required to deliver it.

The Russell Group of research-intensive universities came closest to mentioning the elephant in the room in its response to the Policy Exchange report. Its director general, Wendy Piatt, said:

“The state, employers and graduates benefit hugely from universities, but at the moment the taxpayer still foots the lion’s share of the bill. One of the fairest and most effective sources of additional funding is a contribution from graduates.”

Piatt actually mentions employers as a beneficiary, but when moving back to discuss who pays, there is no mention of business; the bill is pushed back to the student. Lord Mandelson must have been hoping for something a little more creative when he called on universities to use his latest round of cuts to try and diversify their funding.

Simply asking the group that has been hit the hardest in recent years to pay more is not a new or bold approach to the problem.

It is in universities’ interests to try and be a bit creative, considering Mandelson has previously warned that they will have to demonstrate a higher level of value for money if they want to even consider raising fees. A task he has just made much harder with his punitive cuts throughout the sector.

The University and College Union (UCU) will be unveiling more details on what a proportionate and fair payment from business will look like at the start of next month. We do not believe that asking students to take on greater debt, or forcing their parents to put their house up as collateral against commercial levels of debt represents a sensible economic approach.

What the Policy Exchange, Wendy Piatt and other commentators fail to recognise is the impact debt already has on students and their families. Current graduates are going into an uncertain job market with record levels of debt. It is a myth that student loans do not accrue interest or that the repayments are barely noticeable.

Student loan debt takes years to pay off and is one of the monthly costs that is likely to delay people taking out some form of pension. It also makes getting onto the property ladder a pipe dream for the majority of graduates.

We do need a full and frank debate on the future of how we fund our universities, but we need a proper debate. We do not need the same old tired arguments in favour of students paying more from people with no understanding of the reality of student debt on graduates or their families.

And we certainly don’t need elaborate ways to put whole families’ assets at risk or even more complicated debt plans that are likely to enshrine the view amongst people from the poorest backgrounds that university is not for them.

UCU welcomes a fresh debate on the future funding of our universities, but it rejects the old arguments and believes it’s time business started to pay for the benefits it gets from graduates. Watch this space…

Our guest writer is Sally Hunt, general secretary of the UCU

Liberal Democrat schools spokesman David Laws has praised Labour’s record on education – in particular the improvement of pupils’ performance in the poorest schools, which he describes as “astonishing, dramatic, unbelievable”.

Mr Laws was speaking at the launch of Demos’s “Politics of Fairness” policy proposals in Parliament today. He said:

“There has been a breathtaking rise in performance in education since 1997. Inner London was a basket case pre-97; ninety per cent of students were failing to get decent grades at 16 back then.

“The improvement’s been astonishing, dramatic, unbelievable.

“Money, reform, leadership, pioneering methods, one-to-one tuition have all helped. That really counts, you cannot say they’ve done nothing.

“Sixty per cent of pupils on free school meals in some of the poorest areas now gain five GCSEs A-C, a massive rise from 13 years ago.”

The other speakers at the event were Conservative Shadow Universities Secretary David Willetts, former Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell and Professor Richard Wilkinson, director of The Equality Trust and co-author of “The Spirit Level“, which argued that more equal societies “almost always” do better than unequal ones.

Among the slides Professor Wilkinson presented was one showing income inequality rising sharply under Thatcher, peaking under Major, falling slightly under Blair and stabilising:

Earlier today Left Foot Forward reported on the One Society’s report into the negative impact of inequality and the recession on young people, which concluded that reducing income inequality would improve social mobility and the quality of life for all young people, across the social spectrum.

• Download the slides and the publications: Wealth of Opportunity by Julian Margo and William Bradley; Everyday Equality by Max Wind-Cowie; and Society of Equals by Left Foot Forward’s Graeme Cooke.

The head of Sweden’s Ofsted – the Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket) – has said that the reforms introduced in the country, reforms the Conservatives seek to emulate, have “not led to better results”.

Speaking on last night’s Newsnight, Per Thullberg, general director of Skolverket, added that although students in the new schools may have better standards, it is because of “their parents, their backgrounds; they come from well-educated families”.

Watch it:

Shadow Education Secretary Michael Gove has repeatedly praised the Swedish system, a position from which he’s refusing to back down. Following Mr Thullberg’s Newsnight interview Gove insisted:

“Standards have increased but also, there is no evidence of segregation.”

It is not only Mr Thullberg’s comments that should cause Gove to rethink, but the evidence from the Trends in International Maths and Science Study (TIMMS) which, as Left Foot Forward reported last month, revealed that England is ranked several places higher than Sweden in Maths and Science.

Questions also remain over the cost of the proposed reforms, with Gove claiming they would cost no more money – yet his deputy, Nick Gibb, last week said that there needed to be capacity in the system, though it would not be “a huge cost”.

In Sweden, according to a 2006 Skolverket report:

“90 per­cent of the municipalities with independent schools consider that independent schools being set up led to significant increases in costs to varying degrees.”

And, to make matters worse for the Shadow Education Secretary, several leading Conservative councillors have expressed concerns over the policy. Paul Carter, leader of Kent County Council, in an interview on The Politics Show last month, said:

“I’ve got enormous reservations. I’d like to talk about some of the consequences of freeing up too far.

“We have a duty to educate all children and if schools are going off randomly, setting out different standards, different rules and regulations, it’s very very difficult to have a coherent education system in a town, in a county the size and scale of Kent.”

Cllr David Kirk, speaking on the same programme, added:

“It is difficult to understand at the moment, where, in a time of constraint, financial constraint, when we are very worried actually about what our budget levels will be in future in the immediate future, how one could manage to effectively subsidise a number of surplus places throughout the area in order to provide this greater choice.

“Choice is something we would all dearly love to be able to offer – but choice costs.”

Today’s UCAS figures show record levels of people applying to university, which should not come as too much of a surprise. The current generation of 18-year-olds have been encouraged to apply to university for the whole of their school careers and in tough economic times, people look to boost their skills if they find themselves out of work.

The figures should be an opportunity for us to praise a job well done by the government in promoting the value of education, and a degree, and recognising the power of education to transform lives and act as a catalyst for social mobility.

Unfortunately, today’s figures just confirm that thousands of students will have their dreams of a university education shattered by government funding cuts. The combination of record numbers wanting to go to university and such savage cuts in funding is producing a crisis.

With courses already closing and teaching staff losing their jobs, Peter Mandelson risks becoming known as the Doctor Beeching of higher education. Those students who are fortunate enough to secure a place will face increased class sizes, less contact with lecturers and will still leave university with record levels of debt.

Not funding higher education places makes even less sense when one considers the alternative of pumping extra cash into the benefits system to prop up record levels of youth unemployment. Other leading economies are investing money in universities in order to help economic growth and widen participation, yet our government is intent on doing the opposite.

This approach is an insult and a snub to the thousands of students the government has been encouraging to reach for university for the entirety of their educational career.

As I have said before on Left Foot Forward, the government has been so close to getting it right when it comes to opening up university education, but it has always failed to be bold enough. It has got more people to work hard towards a university place, but has now restricted places so many talented and qualified people will miss out.

The bottom line is that you cannot make savage funding cuts without serious consequences, despite Lord Mandelson’s insulting efforts to sell the cuts as an opportunity. The government is abandoning a generation who, instead of benefiting from education, will find themselves on the dole queue alongside sacked teaching staff.

The government can come out with as many statements as it likes about the importance of education, how it will be protected from the recession and its own commitments to social mobility, but the hard facts and punitive cuts tell a much harsher and sadly more accurate story.

Our guest writer is Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union

Theresa Villiers and George Osborne sent out mixed messages over the Conservative party’s transport policies this week, Ms Villiers warning she could offer “no guarantees” over major rail projects the day after the Shadow Chancellor committed the Tories to both Crossrail and High Speed 2.

In an interview with Rail News, Ms Villiers, the Shadow Transport Secretary, refused to guarantee electrification of the Great Western Main Line and the rolling out of new Thameslink stock and the Intercity Express programme – in spite of saying she supports electrification “in principle” and “understood” the benefits new trains would bring.

Her remarks were in sharp contrast to those of Mr Osborne 24 hours previously when unveiling the Tories’ “New Economic Model”, in which he pledged funding for Crossrail and the new north-south high speed line to Scotland. The Association for Consultancy and Engineering, however, asked for “further details about how this ambitious programme would be financed”.

Ms Villiers’s comments also appear to contradict the Shadow Business Secretary Ken Clarke, who this week said that the Tories “will seek to ensure we don’t jeopardise key infrastructure projects”, telling the South Devon Herald Express:

“Historically, the easiest thing to cut has always been capital programmes. People get less annoyed if you cancel the future than if you cancel the past.

“But we are all too well aware it is dangerous to cancel real investment, including investment in infrastructure, at times like this.

“Having the proper infrastructure is going be essential to the South West taking part in the recovery.”

The latest passenger satisfaction figures, meanwhile, have revealed a record 83 per cent are satisfied with the overall service they receive, with the proportion satisfied with punctuality and reliability up two points to 83 per cent.

Less than half of those surveyed, however, believed they received value for money – only 45 per cent.

The operators with the highest satisfaction ratings were Wrexham & Shropshire (98%), Grand Central (95%) and Heathrow Express (93%); those with the lowest ratings were First Capital Connect (75%), National Express East Anglia (79%) and Southeastern (80%).