Speaking in the House of Commons, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has confirmed that two republican Paramilitary groups, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) and the Official IRA and the loyalist South East Antrim Ulster Defence Association have decommissioned their weapons.

The news came as the Independent Body on Arms Decommissioning, established to over see and independently verify the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons, under the Chairmanship of former Canadian General, John de Chastelain was official disbanded under legislation passed by Westminster.

In a statement to MPs, the Prime Minister said:

“I think the house would want to record our thanks to the international commission which has now overseen decommissioning by the UDA, UVF, PIRA and now INLA and the Official IRA.”

Of the three groups whose decommissioning was announced, perhaps the most significant was that of the Irish National Liberation Army. A splinter group of the IRA, the group was responsible for over 120 deaths during Northern Ireland’s troubles, including that of Airey Neave, a close ally of Margaret Thatcher, who as Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary was assassinated by the INLA in the car Park of the House of Commons in 1979.

In a statement made by a former member of the INLA, Martin McMonagle, who was released from prison under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, the group said:

“We make no apology for our part in the conflict.

“We believe conditions have now changed in such a way that other options are open to revolutionaries to pursue and ultimately achieve our objectives.

“We can also confirm that the INLA has disarmed through a joint facilitation group consisting of local, a national and an international organisation. This was done in accordance with international standards. We hope that this will further enhance the primacy of politics and that it will in time unite and advance the working-class struggle in Ireland.”

Sinn Fein Junior Minister, Gerry Kelly welcomed the move, concluding:

“The peace process has ensured that a peaceful and democratic path to a united Ireland exists. There is no support for or appetite for armed actions within the republican community.

“The INLA has recognised this by engaging with the IICD in this action.”

However, the events were tinged with sadness as many reflected on some of the barbaric acts perpetrated by the group. For the DUP, East Londonderry MP, Gregory Campbell said:

“All too often when moves like this occur, there is a tendency to forget what was carried out by these groups.

“All of them should decommission their weapons, none of them should have been armed and able to murder in the first instance and the regret is that there are still people mourning their previous actions and the heartache they left behind.”

And speaking to the Newsletter, the mother of one former RUC Police Officer, murdered by the INLA in 1997 stated simply, “It is 13 years too late for my son.”

The decision by the three groups announced today, to decommission their arms does not however end Northern Ireland’s “troubles”.

In 2008, Northern Ireland Secretary, Shaun Woodward announced that paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland would have until mid February to decommission all their weapons. With that deadline fast approaching, the Real IRA, responsible for last year’s attack on the Massereene army barracks; the Continuity IRA which is alleged to have been responsible for shooting dead a police officer last year in Craigavon; and the Continuity Irish Republican splinter group have so far failed to begin any process of disarming.

In an sign of the continued dangers posed by these groups, in an article for Ireland’s “Tribune News”, its Northern Editor Suzanne Breen has quoted a Real IRA sources as concluding that anyone who thought they would decommission their arms was living “on another planet”.

The moves by the INLA will undoubtedly put pressure on the remaining republican paramilitary groups to follow suit. However, what happens if they do not do so by the deadline set by the Secretary of State remains unclear.

Given their capacity, as proven last year with brutal murders of a police officer and serving soldiers, to threaten the stability of Northern Ireland’s fragile peace process, all eyes will be on Westminster, Stormont and Dublin as to what to do with those groups that refuse to disarm.

For some the news of further decommission will be a line under much of Northern Ireland’s troubled passed. For many other however, such as Pauline Bradshaw, it will serve only to reignite painful memories of loved ones lost at the hands to terrorist groups.

It again highlights the extent to which whilst Northern Ireland might be on the road to peaceful nation, for many, the memories are such that they cannot and will not be able to feel at peace within themselves.

A wide range of organisations representing or working with young people have joined together with campaign group One Society to call for a more equal society. Social welfare charities, NUS and the youth wings of a range of trade unions and parties have issued a joint statement calling for policies that would close the gap between rich and poor.

Income inequality matters. Young people, already hit hard by the recession and now bearing the costs of the recovery, are doubly disadvantaged as they have come of age in a more unequal society than previous generations. Reducing income inequality would improve social mobility and the quality of life for all young people, across the social spectrum.

The good news is that inequality is not inevitable, and can be reversed. Government policy makes a big difference. It already has in staunching the rate of inequality growth. But now the challenge is to go further – to actually tackle the entrenched inequalities that have emerged over the past thirty years.

Today, Demos publishes three pamphlets which recommend a range of policies to tackle income and wealth inequality; not just at the bottom, but at the top-end too. One Society will be taking forward this menu of policy options to push the case that a more equal society is possible, plausible and would benefit all.

Politicians must grasp this issue quickly though, to start alleviating the shrinking of opportunities and the greater pressures many young people are currently faced with.

Our guest writer is Malcolm Clark, campaign director of One Society, a new campaign (set up in association with The Equality Trust) to highlight the negative effects of income inequality, bringing together people and organisations in support of a more equal society

• Visit www.onesociety.org.uk and follow @one_society

Leading secularists have said an accommodation with religious groups needs to be found in the light of a judge’s comments that Sikh children should be allowed to wear the Kirpan, the Sikh ceremonial dagger, to school.

Sir Mota Singh QC, Britain’s first Asian judge, in an interview with the BBC, had said that it is “not right” to prevent Sikhs wearing the Kirpan.

Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, told Left Foot Forward:

“The issue of the Kirpan is unlike those of the turban, niqab or cross. We need to work together to find an accommodation with Sikhs – one way to do this could be to insist the Kirpan is glued inside its sheath so it cannot be used to cause harm.

“This issue is of paramount importance, no one should be allowed to carry weapons into schools. In our society now you cannot carry daggers and expect to get through security and detectors, which some inner-city schools now have.”

There were real fears of what could happen if the daggers weren’t banned, he added:

“Pupils wearing turbans could be robbed of their daggers by bigger kids, who could use them on them or others.

“It’s not racist to say that the Sikhs will have to accept that and find a way of abiding by society’s rules.

“There is no government guidance on this; schools have to make their own decisions.”

The Kirpan is one of five Sikh “Articles of Faith“, alongside Kes (unshorn hair), the Kangha (comb), Kara (steel bracelet) and Kaccehra (soldier’s shorts), designed “to unify and bind them to the beliefs of the religion and to remind them of their commitment to the Sikh Gurus at all times”.

Following Chris Grayling’s very public slap on the wrist for manipulating crime statistics yesterday, it has emerged that it is not only the Shadow Home Secretary engaging in sharp practice – backbench Tory MPs are doing the same off their own backs.

As far back as last autumn, long before Grayling’s memos to Tory candidates, Putney MP Justine Greening falsely claimed on her blog that there had been a “burglary rise locally”, writing “locally we’ve recently also seen burglaries rise which is very concerning indeed”.

The statistics, however, tell a very different story: The burglary rate in every single ward in Putney fell in the year to October 2009.

And in July, she said:

“We’ve recently seen a large increase in burglaries”

The stats, again, prove her wrong – from May 2007 to July 2009 the burglary rate in Putney fell from more than 15 burglaries per thousand of the population to less than 10.

Earlier this week, Left Foot Forward reported Grayling’s ignorance on the inclusion of under-16s in the British Crime Survey, following the BBC’s eposé of his misrepresentation of crime statistics and his disastrous appearance on the Today programme.

• Hat tip: Stuart King

The Herald newspaper has reported a warning from the Scottish Police Federation that budget cuts to the police will see crime rates increase across Scotland.

According to the newspaper, research published by the Federation found:

• Police forces in Scotland are facing overall losses of £11 million from councils since the introduction by the SNP in 2008 of the Government’s concordat with local authorities;

• The overall proportion of funding for the police from local councils dropped from 10 per cent prior to the concordat to 8.8 per cent last year; and

• Whilst the concordat between the Government in Edinburgh and Scotland’s Local Government Association, Cosla, resulted in a modest increase in councils’ share of the budget, it removed ring-fencing of budgets such as on policing.

Les Gray, Chairman of the Scottish Police Federation said of the findings:

“There seems to be some sort of blissful ignorance at the minute that the cuts won’t really affect anyone. The reality is that there will be a drastic reduction in police numbers and that more people will become victims of crime as a result.

“Calls will go unanswered. The crime rate will rise unnecessarily. Detections will go down because there will not be the officers available. This is not scaremongering. It’s the reality. History has taught us that crime goes up in a recession anyway.

“It is a false economy, too. More crimes will lead to hikes in insurance and additional costs for the hospitals having to stitch people up. Taking a serious assault to trial costs £250,000. Taking a murder costs £1m. And that doesn’t even take account of the human cost to the victims.”

The research came however just days after it was reported that Strathclyde Police, Scotland’s largest force announced it was considering a £45 million move to a new headquarters in Glasgow, with a feasibility study into the move likely to cost £1 million.

The warning on the likely impact on crime of cuts to the police came as the Scottish Parliament voted to support the SNP Government’s £30 billion budget for 2010-11, though not without a number of concessions to gain opposition support.

Among the key highlights are:

• A new Independent Budget Review process will be established to consider the implications of forecasts of reducing public spending across Scotland, and make recommendations on how to deliver services within a much tighter fiscal environment. This had previously been called for by Conservative Leader, Annabel Goldie. Likewise, Conservative calls for the Government, every month, to publish online all spending above £25,000 will come into force in April;

• Total public sector pay will fall by 5.5% with Ministers taking a pay freeze and quango bosses expected to waive their bonuses, a key Liberal Democrat demand;

• An additional £31 million will be spent on affordable housing. Furthermore, following pressure by Scottish Labour, the Government will introduce a boiler scrappage scheme similar to England, with those who qualify able to receive £400 towards the cost of a more efficient boiler;

• £10 million will be spent on a new Home Insulation Scheme as called for by the Scottish Green Party; and

• A £20 million fund to meet the surge in demand for college places will be established in line with Liberal Democrat demands.

For the SNP, it’s Finance Secretary, John Swinney concluded:

“This is a Budget that will support economic recovery and protect frontline services – a Budget for all of Scotland.”

Labour rejected the budget plans, in protest over Mr Swinney’s decision to cancel the Glasgow Airport rail link project. Senior Labour MSP for Glasgow Baillieston, Margaret Curran was critical of the decision, making clear:

“The SNP and the Conservatives have stabbed Glasgow in the back by voting down Labour’s efforts to save the Glasgow Airport Rail Link. They will not be forgiven for betraying their constituents in this way.”

Despite efforts to gain their support, the Liberal Democrat took the decision to abstain in a belief that the proposed pay cuts for senior public sector managers did not go far enough.

The SNP were therefore only able to secure its budget as a result of the support of the Conservatives and Greens.

Speaking about the concessions they had received on an Independent Budget Review process and the publication of all public sector spending over £25,000, Conservative Finance Spokesman, Derek Brownlee hailed the budget “a transparency revolution”.

The decision by the Tories to support the SNP’s budget was a repeat of events last year which saw the SNP relying on the Conservatives to secure its budget for 2009-10. Could this be what Labour Leader, Iain Gray meant when he spoke in First Minister’s Question’s last week of the SNP’s “Tory budget buddies”.

Chris Grayling’s attack on the British Crime Survey (BCS), which he described as “fundamentally flawed” on the Today programme this morning, is unravelling fast. Living up to his reputation as the weak link in the Tory line-up, he claimed there had been a “98 PER CENT INCREASE in serious violent crime” – the true figure, as the BBC’s Mark Easton reminded him, is a “50 PER CENT FALL in violent crime since 1995″.

He also claimed the BCS “didn’t take account of crimes committed by people under the age of 16″ – again, the Shadow Home Secretary is simply wrong.

Not only were crimes committed by under-16s against adults already included in the survey, but from last January – January 2009 – the experiences of under-16s were included as well.

Grayling also said a major flaw of the survey was that it didn’t include murder or manslaughter. Using the figures which do include those crimes, however, reveals a downward trend – a fact Grayling failed to mention, claiming that “since the start of the decade there have been steady year-by-year increases in violent crime”.

As Left Foot Forward reported last month, the “Home Office Statistical Bulletin: Homicides, Firearm Offences and Intimate Violence 2008/09″ shows a 14 per cent fall in homicides year-on-year, from 753 to 651 – the lowest level for ten years – with shooting homicides down 26 per cent since 2007/8 from 53 to 39.

• Listen to Grayling’s interview and read the transcript.

UPDATE 12:30

Andrew Pakes, Labour PPC for Milton Keynes North, has told Left Foot Forward that the Tories’ false claims that there had been 6,000 violent attacks in Milton Keynes in 2008/09 – a 236 per cent increase, equivalent to a violent attack every 90 mins – were a “disgraceful attempt” to play politics with crime.

He said:

“It is incredible to see just how far the Tories are prepared to go in manipulating the figures for their own partisan gain. No wonder the local police and BBC felt the need to speak out on this issue and make clear that the Tories were misleading the public.

“I am really proud of the work done by our local police and their dedication to helping make our city a safer place to live. This is a disgraceful attempt to play party politics with crime and the fear of anti-social behaviour. The Tories should start standing up our city and not simply spinning for his party bosses in London.”

The drugs adviser sacked by the Government last year has said that they will eventually “have to accept” that his scientific view is “correct”. In an interview with Left Foot Forward’s Mark Thompson, David Nutt explained why he felt his new drugs committe would work where the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) had failed.

Professor Nutt said of the new Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs:

“It contains 20 top scientists, a lot of them from the ACMD, spanning all the range of science right through from chemistry to human pharmacology and clinical experience. I think this will become the voice of science on drugs in the country. The ACMD science group has pretty much disbanded – there’s only two scientists left. They cannot do the science.

“I’m hoping eventually the Government may well say “ok, we’ll let the independent committee do the science and we’ll contract them to produce some scientific reports”, and then the ACMD can do policy and we can do science and then people will know exactly where they stand because at present everything gets mixed up with political interference.

“I think the Government will have to listen because the people will listen, the public will listen, the media will come, and they’re already coming to us as the opinion on drugs and I think eventually the Government will have to accept that we are the correct, we’re the best scientific opinion they can get on drugs and why not come to us?

“To do something other than that would actually, there would be endless battles between our scientists and their scientists and our scientists are stronger, we’ve got very strong scientists; people would see that we were telling the truth and they would never believe what the Government scientists say.”

Watch the interview:

Earlier, he had described the problems with the present system, saying:

“We need to have a re-think and go to a science based policy. At the moment, a bit of it is science based, a bit of it is moral based and a bit of it politically based and it just confuses people – no one knows for sure exactly what it means when a drug is in a particular class…

“I think also people are confused because drugs like alcohol and tobacco are legal and they kind of deny the fact that they’re drugs and so a lot of people are very comfortable with the fact that other drugs are things that bad people take, the underclass…”

He added:

“I would completely dismantle the classification system and rebuild it in an evidence-based way and I would remove the penalties for drug posession. I think people shouldn’t be penalised for posessing drugs or using drugs – they should be treated in a different way like they do in Portugal.

“We should understand why they use them and try to minimise the harms and i think imprisoning people for using drugs is truly the most expensive and ridiculous way of dealing with the problem.”

• Read Mark’s review of “An Audience with Professor David Nutt”, an event at Reading University last week in which he outlined how best to proceed.

Twenty contributors spent last week debating the way poverty is portrayed in the media on the Community Links blog. Last night’s Channel 4 programme Tower block of Commons illustrates many of the problems we found.

It puts MPs into council estates for a week, and faithfully records all the most incongruous moments.

Already on the Channel 4 site, members of the communities featured are voicing their fear that the programme will focus ghoulishly on the negative, ignoring the positive, playing into the hands of those crying Broken Britain.

Last week we discovered that the way the media portrays people on low incomes is neither positive nor reflective of the true situation.

Those covered are often the tiny minority who are also criminal or antisocial – the ‘visible poor‘. Meanwhile poor people of the past are portrayed as nobly struggling, while those of the present are seen as feckless scroungers.

And young people often get a particularly raw deal in the media.

There was less agreement on why this distortion occurs. Some focussed on the role of journalists, highlighting how little many journalists know about the lives of those they report on, and how they often don’t take the trouble to find out.

Others blamed it not on the journalists themselves but the media as a whole, where a desire to shock and sensationalise can override all other considerations, as in the case of the Tower Block.

On the other hand, perhaps charities have to shoulder some of the blame for being overly hostile towards those journalists who are genuinely interested, and even promoting their very own enterprise myth. Politicians and their language have a powerful influence, both in promoting negative stereotypes, and reacting to them. Indeed, it could be argued that government have thwarted their own ambitions for tackling poverty by turning the public against poor people.

So finally, what do we do about it? There’s perhaps a role for better understanding between journalists and charities, ensuring they work together rather than against each other. Perhaps ignoring the mainstream media and producing your own content or starting conversations in communities is the way forward. And JRF’s excellent guide to reporting poverty is being taken into journalism schools and promoted to students, hopefully influencing the next generation of reporters.

In the meantime, however, we’re left with the likes of Tower Block of Commons. Watch it, but don’t for a moment believe that it portrays the realities of life in those communities featured, nor that the residents are happy with it.

Our guest writer is Will Horwitz

A report by a top judge into the costs of legal cases by people who have been injured by someone else’s negligence, including at work, was launched last year after a decade of insurance industry complaints that they were costing too much. The Jackson Review of Civil Costs was published on 14 January and claimants will be the ultimate losers if his recommendations are adopted by this or a future government.

The Jackson report is good news for insurers and their shareholders, while the proposals will make it far harder for unions to provide a comprehensive legal service to their members. In a recent letter in the Guardian the Association of British Insurers accused claimant lawyers, including Thompsons, of being interested only in defending their income. Yes lawyers, including Thompsons, will lose income if the Jackson review of civil costs is implemented in full. And nobody sheds tears for lawyers’ earnings. But implementation of the Jackson review will rob injured people of up to 50 per cent of their compensation while insurers get extra profits.

Jackson condones deductions from claimant’s damages of up to 25 per cent. This is because the money that insurers pay when they lose a claim – a success fee – which is meant to cover the cost of unsuccessful cases will no longer be paid by them but by the claimant (the fee will be capped at 25 per cent).

Claimants will also have to pay for unrecovered disbursements i.e. the costs of medical reports and court fees. So potential deductions are up to 50 per cent. Perhaps Jackson has forgotten the furore about no-win-no-fee lawyers taking money from compensation.

The report was always going to recommend fixed costs in personal injury claims. These are the amount of the costs of pursuing a claim that can be recovered from the defendant in personal injury claims, where the likely value of the whole claim is less than £25,000 compensation.

We have always opposed fixed costs. We have seen the massive disparities in damages recovered in the fixed costs coal health schemes (we recovered the highest damages across the schemes while other firms got very little for their clients by comparison). We pointed this out to the Jackson team but inconvenient truths are hidden away in the voluminous report.

Fixed costs also herald the day that employers can estimate what the cost of injuring a worker would be and whether it is a price worth paying. That will hurt claimants far more than lawyers.

It is unsurprising that the insurance industry is delighted with Jackson. Allianz said it “will allow insurers to return to an environment of underwriting-led pricing, untainted by non-risk income”. In plain English: it’s a return to the good old days of making money by paying out less and an end to the discredited practice of extortionate referral fees paid by claimant lawyers for cases.

In the Guardian letter, the ABI’s acting director Maggie Craig repeated their predictable line that “for every pound paid in compensation an extra 40 pence is paid in legal costs”. That’s a statistic that the ABI has never been able to stand up. And we’ve asked them many times for the evidence.

Yes there are cases where the legal costs of a claim have been disproportionate to the cheque finally received by the injured party. But who is to blame? We say it is the insurers by failing to respond within the time limits and dragging claims that should have been settled all the way to court.

The insurance industry has complained long and loud to the government and judiciary about legal costs and has got almost everything it wanted from the Jackson report. Craig said that, as a result of Jackson, she was looking forward to “a new world where consumers can make an informed choice on which law firm they use based on quality and value for money”. With a race to the bottom as the inevitable result of this report it is it looking like Hobson’s choice for consumers who aren’t in trade unions.

Far from promoting quality, Jackson’s proposals will make taking risks with difficult cases and pushing for maximum damages a rare trait to be found in a lawyer.

Our guest writer is Tom Jones, Thompsons Solicitors

John Denham is at war with the ‘broken Britain’ narrative. The Local Government Minster’s speech at Unlock Democracy’s Citizenship Empowerment event on Wednesday left it pockmarked with facts from a Britain not nearly so broken.

Denham recognises that despite reduced crime, Sure Start centres and neighbourhood policing in every area, better school standards, public spaces improved, and many families better off through tax credits, many people still do not feel like they have control over their circumstances.

The recession has underlined how subject to economic winds people are: businesses close, relocate, get replaced by less skilled, less secure work, and Labour’s investment is lost from view.

Into this gap between facts and attitudes comes David Cameron’s broken Britain narrative, a go-to font of fear for certain pundits seeking a frame for their paintings.

Joining them in this gap, Denham has jumped right in with his charge on citizenship empowerment, addressed to the same discrepancy between beliefs and actuality in which Cameron has built his fane.

But if Denham has taken the narrative battle to the Tories, it has not been at the expense of the facts, but at their service: joining them into a picture of progress, whilst Cameron spins political capital from the Doncaster torture.

Central to this push is increasing access to data. Denham wants problems solved more locally, and this cannot be done if only central government has the information.

A billion pounds has been invested in housing since Gordon Brown’s housing pledge in June, but for Denham it is access to data that “gives us the chance both to discuss whether allocations policy is meeting local needs and challenge the many myths which are around”.

There is a risk, however, that there appears a class of people brimful of information, connected via myriad RSS feed updates, blogs, twitter, and a class of people simply not party to the information age.

Here is the difference between Denham’s speech and the speaker at Unlock Democracy’s first Citizenship Empowerment talk: Oliver Letwin.

Denham does envisage an empowered citizenry making use of Fix My Street, Talk About Local, and Health Maps, but he also wants the scrutiny role handed to councils by the Sustainable Communities Act to be extended, so that when you go to see a councilor to complain about a rubbish school, they cannot say that it is not in their domain, because it all is, with the council obliged to keep watch.

In procuring services, the cheapest contract will not be always be the best – councils will be under pressure from their own awareness, unable to isolate the decision from its area implications.

The greater the information at their disposal, the greater the obligation to act on it. A better informed third sector will hold them to it. Empowerment is thus a tripartite relationship, the citizen as strong as his community networks.

“Turkey’s Voting For Christmas”, David Runciman’s investigation into why those who stand to benefit are resisting Obama’s healthcare reforms, described a culture polarised between fact-based and gut-based politics. He signed off with the prediction that this will soon characterise the British political landscape. It is already here.

On one side the ‘Broken Britain’ mantra, on the other the Government tries to make attitudes grow into the service improvement that has left it behind. The Right are peddling myths; Denham and Left Foot Forward are marshalling the facts.

The Prime Minister yesterday leant his support to the second anniversary celebrations of BeOnsite, a national not for profit organisation established by Bovis Lend Lease to address the skills shortage in the construction industry, held at the Treasury.

Whilst not able to be there in person he sent a message of support to the scheme:

“Thanks to your efforts you are helping people turn their lives around by securing them apprenticeships and jobs and, most importantly, the chance to show what they can do.”

Since its launch in 2008, BeOnsite has worked in partnership with government, industry and local communities to train a number of people from all types of backgrounds, including those from socially excluded groups who normally would find it hard to find employment and to be given a second chance.

One success story is Meurika Stewart, an ex-offender with a history of drug abuse and crime.

Through a rehabilitation project, she took the opportunity offered by BeOnsite to learn new skills as a dry-lining trainee whilst still in prison and upon her release has continued in the job she had been doing for the previous eleven months, providing stability in a new and uncertain future.

Ms Stewart said BeOnsite gave her a chance and changed her life:

“Not a lot of people want to give you a chance but BeOnsite is not looking at the past, it’s looking at what, given the support, you can give in the future.

“For me personally I now see a light at the end of the tunnel. Having this opportunity has changed my life dramatically.”

A number of other BeOnsite trainees attended the event where they spoke of their hopes and dreams for the future. Whether long-term unemployed, formerly homeless or with a prison record they were united in their determination to move forward with their lives.

Many are hoping to participate in a scheme that BeOnsite will be working on with the GLA to help change the lives of young offenders.

The facts on youth reoffending are that:

“The rate of re-offending for youngsters leaving custody stands at a shocking 75 per cent.

“This is coupled with the average of £55,000 that it costs to detain each young offender for a year. It makes sense both economically and socially to break young people out of the cycle of crime.”

The scheme will see BeOnsite providing young offenders with current BeOnsite ex-offender employees, like Meurika, as role models to offer in-work 1:1 mentoring pre and post release.

They will then be offered the structured, tried and tested BeOnsite entry into the industry which sustains employment through supporting and establishing routes to progression based on industry need.

BeOnsite works within the industry to identify the exact training needs of the individual contractor. It then sources both the funding and the training provider to deliver specialist training.

Successful candidates are then employed by BeOnsite to begin working on-site for the contractor, under their supervision, before eventually moving on to work directly in the supply chain.

Ministers Jim Knight from Department for Work and Pensions and Maria Eagle from the Ministry of Justice both spoke of the important need for BeOnsite’s work citing the value of peer mentoring and the need to unlock the potential of each and every individual whilst BeOnsite’s Managing Director Val Lowman ended the event by saying:

“We are so pleased to see BeOnsite succeeding in not only supporting the training requirement of the construction industry supply chain, but working to build a more diverse workforce and showing government a new way of tackling reoffending, city centre worklessness and the skills shortage.”

Our guest writer is Jessica Mellor-Clark, communications manager of BeOnsite

Yesterday’s Save the Children report on severe child poverty makes for depressing reading, confirming what the DWP’s official poverty figures told us in June – between 2004-05 and 2007-08 the number of children living in poverty increased.

Save the Children highlight “poverty depth” as a key issue, defining this as living below 50 per cent of median income, and lacking in a range of key necessities. But this must not be taken to imply that for children normally defined as being below the poverty line, that is, living below 60 per cent of median income, this poverty is somehow not “severe”. We know that poverty defined in this way has a seriously detrimental impact on children’s life chances.

The Government argues that measures in the last two Budgets will lift another 500,000 children out of poverty by 2010. But the target to halve child poverty by this date will still be well out of reach. The Child Poverty Bill currently in Parliament means that Government must set out a strategy to ensure that the 2020 target for child poverty eradication is met. But it’s clear that progress needs to be much faster.

As the Save the Children report makes clear we know which children are at risk of poverty. Families without work, single parent families, large families, and those from minority ethnic groups are all significantly more likely to be poor. We also have a fairly good idea of what worked when poverty rates were falling – help for parents to find jobs, and investment in additional financial support for all families.

Additional financial support for families is unlikely to be a popular demand in a budget squeeze. But there is cross party support for meeting the 2020 target, and as the Save the Children report shows, tight finances in Government does not mean that family budgets have got any easier.

Our guest writer is Kate Bell, Director of policy, advice and communications at Gingerbread

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling’s plans for a “grossly disproportionate” test for household defence against intruders have been branded “horrible” by the lawyer who defended Munir Hussain – the man whose case Grayling has hijacked to justify his new policy.

Hussain was originally sentenced to 30 months’ imprisonment for chasing down and tackling a burglar who held his family at knife-point – a sentence suspended by the Court of Appeal last week. His lawyer, Michael Wolkind QC, of top criminal chambers 2 Bedford Row, told yesterday’s Politics Show that the law didn’t need to be changed. He said:

“The law already recognises that people react a certain way in the heat of the moment, but grossly disproportionate is a horrible idea. I’m not sure this would allow people to respond outside the home or this is just for homeowners; If I’m outside the home and someone tries to abduct my child why shouldn’t I have the same rights to defend my child there as I would inside the home…

“It sounds like state-sponsored revenge. I don’t understand why sentencing should take place in the home. Why can’t it go through the courts, why can’t the jury, as they always do, decide what’s reasonable?

“Juries decide at the moment whether the action of the householder or a victim is reasonable and that’s how it should be, sentencing for the judge, for the police originally whether to prosecute, and there are cases where they don’t prosecute, where the imbalance is so clear that they don’t prosecute to begin with.”

Watch the exchange below:

Grayling once again cited Ireland’s new laws on household defence – dubbed a “licence to kill” – as an example Britain should follow. It’s a law he has spoken of before. In December, Left Foot Forward reported his inability to give direct answers to certain hypothetical situations that could ensue if such a law was implemented, answers he again failed to provide yesterday.

On the day the Edlington Two were sent down, David Cameron has been accused of “easy populism” and “playing politics“ after giving a major speech on what he called the “social recession” and “moral failure” at the heart of “broken Britain”.

In the speech, the Conservative leader defended his controversial marriage proposals, which had been dismissed as “social engineering” by Shadow Business Secretary Ken Clarke last year, imploring the public to “think of the signals” government was sending out.

He also said that he would support “every sort of family” and would “back Sure Start” – a completely mixed signal itself given his marriage tax plans and Shadow Universities Minister David Willetts’s remarks yesterday that “only a few” of the 3,197 Sure Start centres wouldn’t be abolished under a Tory government.

And, answering questions after his address, he brushed over the 8 per cent fall in crime, claiming “we have a problem with violent crime” and “we have had violent crime rising” – this in spite of the British Crime Survey’s 2008/09 figures, released yesterday, which showed a 4% fall in violent offences, burglaries down 8%, robberies down 9% and car crime down a fifth.

Further analysis of the “Home Office Statistical Bulletin: Homicides, Firearm Offences and Intimate Violence 2008/09″ report reveals that:

• Homicides (651) are down 14% from 2007/8 (753) – the lowest level for ten years, since 1998/9 (642);

• “Sharp instrument” homicides are down 6% from 271 to 255;

• Shooting homicides are down an even sharper 26% from 53 to 39;

• All firearms offences are down 18% from 17,378 to 14,250 – the fifth consecutive fall;

• Firearms offences resulting in injury were down from 4,164 (24% injury rate) to 2,458 (17%); and

• Prevalance of domestic abuse is down for men (5%-4%) and women (7%-6%) since 2004/5.

Longer term, violent crime – classed as robbery, sexual offences, assault and murder – is down nearly half (48%) since its peak in 1995.

Sources: Office For National Statistics, British Crime Survey, Home Office

David Cameron today launched the latest draft of the Conservative manifesto, which highlights what he calls the ‘social recession’ – a new riff on the old tune of ‘Broken Britain’.
 

The conclusion echoes those of a 2008 IPPR report, further busting the popular myth that Britain is ‘swamped’ with migrant workers.

Increasing labour shortages and an ageing population may well shape this debate in the coming decades, but of more immediate concern are the links between true population demographics and appropriate levels of funding for our public services.

Much of this is allocated via the Barnett formula, using electoral registration figures as a measure of funding allocation. Many London boroughs have for some time been highlighting the shortcomings of this system on their ability to provide adequate levels of public service locally.

The issue is now being picked up by the London Regional Select Committee (LRSC), who are seeking evidence from, amongst others, London’s charity sector on the links between public service provision and excluded or marginalised communities – uncounted through electoral registration.

Groups such as London Citizens have for some time campaigned for official recognition for the more obviously excluded communities, such as refugees and asylum seekers. What the Committee’s investigation could do however is to broaden this focus, to include those communities on the margins of exclusion – well known to many of London’s charities but poorly served by the public purse.

The politics of migration clearly requires a deeper understand than the surface discussion attributed by the mainstream media. And David Cameron may well be right about a social recession, just perhaps not the one he articulates.

Our guest writer is Gethyn Williams

The determination of our mainstream politicians to tackle the enormous challenges of the twenty-first century with timid twentieth-century ideas remains undimmed. The policies and speeches tumbling out in the pre-election phoney war positively reek of the mid-1990s.

If there is one theme emerging it is the almost ritualistic invocation of social mobility as a cure-all for our ills. But just how long do we have to wait until social mobility kicks in? The available evidence suggests that we may have to wait a long time. This bleak picture was strongly corroborated by the Milburn report last year on social mobility.

Why does the UK do so badly? In a word: inequality. This brute fact will always swamp all the various well-meaning initiatives designed to address inequality and poverty by promoting greater equality of opportunity and encouraging social mobility.

Take education – studying in a vastly unequal society is an overwhelming uphill struggle where low social status relative to others often damages performance. Where there is a narrower gap between rich and poor there are reduced status differentiations and educational performance is much better as a result. It is perhaps then no surprise that more equal societies tend to gain more patents per head than more unequal societies.

The evidence assembled by Wilkinson & Pickett in The Spirit Level indicates that moving the UK from being one of the most unequal developed world societies to being one of the most equal would yield huge benefits (illustrated above) such as:

• Homicide rates – halved

• Mental illness – reduced by two thirds

• Obesity – halved

• Imprisonment – reduced by 80%

• Teen births – reduced by 80%

• Levels of trust – increased by 85%

What democratic government would not want to deliver that sort of improvement? Also, how can this sort of grand vision not be politically attractive? The scale of the improvements within grasp are far too large to be confined just to the poorest sections of society – the benefits of greater equality clearly “cascade up” the social hierarchy almost to the very top (a neat contrast to the obvious failures of “trickle-down”).

This must surely offer a real chance to construct a broad electoral majority in favour of the policies required.

All we need now are people, politicians and parties bold enough to set out the vision, make the case and develop the policies. To aid this process The Equality Trust is about to launch the One Society campaign which will seek to make inequality a central election issue across the political spectrum.

We hope you’ll support this campaign and help us advance the case that narrowing the gap between rich and poor is the only comprehensive and serious way to improve our society.

Our guest writer is Bill Kerry, Director of The Equality Trust

News over the weekend that Scots drink 20 per cent more alcohol than the rest of Britain – equating to the average Scot consuming 540 pints of beer, 46 bottle of Vodka or 130 bottles of wine a year – has once again re-ignited debate over the SNP Governmnet’s plans for a minimum alcohol price, within its Alcohol Bill, currently going through Parliament.

The figures come just days after research by the University of York found that alcohol abuse and its consequences cost Scotland between £2.48 billion and £4.64 billion, equating to costs of roughly £900 per person in Scotland.

Responding to these figures, Scottish Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon used the developments to make the case for minimum pricing. She said:

“All the evidence tells us the big rise in Scottish consumption in recent decades is closely linked with the 70 per cent drop in relative cost. Currently there is nothing to stop supermarkets selling alcohol more cheaply than bottled water and that’s why it’s possible to exceed the weekly guidelines for a man for less than £3.50.

“We believe setting a minimum price for alcohol, while not the whole answer, is a key weapon in the battle against alcohol misuse.”

For Scottish Labour, however, Shadow Health Secretary Jackie Baillie reiterated Labour’s opposition to minimum pricing as the best option for tackling alcohol abuse, saying:

“I believe that alcohol abuse is the most important public health issue we face in Scotland today. We need to consider radical measures to reduce the level of problem drinking but minimum unit pricing is not the answer.

“The truth is that Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon are promoting a scheme that will increase the profits of the supermarkets, but won’t provide a single penny for more police officers or alcohol treatment. The challenge now is for us to come up with something better. That is why we have created a commission under the chairmanship of Professor Sally Brown to consider ways of restricting cheap booze and tackling alcohol abuse.

“I am inviting the Scottish Government to engage in the debate about alternative pricing mechanisms and other measures, such as alcohol treatment and testing orders and a mandatory Challenge 25 scheme.”

Ms Baillie’s statement, however, masks a possible shift in Labour’s policy on minimum pricing for alcohol UK wide. Last week, the House of Commons Health Select Committee, a majority of whose members are Labour MP’s, published its report on Alcohol in which it came out in favour of minimum pricing. It said:

“Increasing the price of alcohol is the most powerful tool at the disposal of a government. The key argument made by the drinks industry and others opposed to a rise in price is that it would be unfair on moderate drinkers. We do not think this is a serious argument.”

Commenting on the government’s less than enthusiastic response in March last year to a recommendation by the Chief Medical Officer for England in his most recent annual report for a minimum price, the Select Committee made clear:

“It is time the government listened more to the Chief Medical Officer and the President of the Royal College of Physicians and less to the drinks and retail industry. If everyone drank responsibly the alcohol industry might lose about 40 per cent of its sales and some estimates are higher.

“In formulating its alcohol strategy the government must be more sceptical about the industry’s claims that it is in favour of responsible drinking.”

In December, Left Foot Forward assessed the views of the various Governments across the country towards a minimum price for alcohol, which found Whitehall cool on the idea. However, such hostility could now be budging.

Speaking following the Select Committee’s report, Health Secretary Andy Burnahm indicated that Labour might be prepared to look at the issue of cheep booze. He said:

“We need to balance the rights of people who drink responsibly with those who buy ludicrously cheap booze and cause harm.”

Whilst the Daily Mail reported that Gordon Brown had rebuked Mr Burnham for his comments, Downing Street has left room open for such a move at a later date, indicating that such a move would not be “sensible” at this stage.

On Wednesday, The Telegraph reported that tackling alcohol abuse would form a major part of Labour’s manifesto, suggesting that the Government would set the minimum price for alcoholic drinks in an effort to combat heavily discounted drinks promotions.

On the same day, the Conservatives unveiled their proposals for an improved labelling system for alcohol to better assist people in making informed choices on their drinking habits.

Similarly, during the recent Welsh Labour leadership contest, Edwina Hart, who currently continues in her position as Health Minister, suggested that there might be a need to break the link between price and alcohol consumption. She said:

“We also have to look at licensing laws – where we sell it [alcohol], how obtainable it is, how we sell alcohol and how cheap it is and we need to take some strong lines on this if we are going to stamp out some of the anti-social behaviour problems.”

The cross-party Justice Committee today published a report calling for the prison population to be cut by a third, and the extent of British prisons policy is highlighted by the international context.

The eighth edition of the World Prison Population List, produced by King’s College London’s International Centre for Prison Studies, which details the number of prisoners per 100,000 of the population, shows the UK (153) entrenched in second place amongst G7 countries, behind only the USA (756). The UK is also ahead of Turkey (142), Burma (126) and Pakistan (55).

The Justice Committee’s report prioritises the transfer of female prisoners, repeat low-level offenders, drug and alcohol addicts and prisoners will mental illnesses, urging rehabilitation closer to the communities to which they struggle to return.

The Ministry of Justice, however, is working on a £4.2bn prison building plan which, at £170,000 per place, is set to propel the United Kingdom past most of our Eastern European neighbours. Numbers fluctuate but in 16 years the United Kingdom, with an imprisonment rate of 153 per 100,000 of the population, has become the top incarcerator in Western Europe.

This despite the reduction in crimes recorded over the past ten years, and the Government’s expansion of the role of community punishments. Neither has translated into an effective reduction in the prison population, rather the prison population has kept up with prison building, a market judged by Premier Custodial Group to be worth £2 billion annually, with immediate market opportunities worth a further £3.4 billion now in the offing.

Yesterday the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled that the use in the UK of counter-terrorism stop and search powers under Section 44 (s44) of the Terrorist Act 2000 is illegal.

In December 2006, at a public meeting, Andy Hayman, then the Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations, had said:

“It’s a power that’s well intended: it’s there to try and prevent, deter and disrupt terrorist activity. So, the test is: to what extent does it achieve that aim? And I have to say, it doesn’t… There’s a big price to pay for probably a very small benefit.”

Following 7/7, in the year from October 2005 to September 2006, the Met conducted 22,672 s44 stop-and-searches in London. Of these, 269 resulted in an arrest being made. Of these arrests, 27 were on suspicion of terrorism-related offences. Of them, 0 were subsequently charged with a terrorism-related offence. That’s a whole lot of grief for almost no reward.

The response was always that s44 is about disruption, not detection: about putting people off, not catching them at it. Disruption, of course, is hard to measure, unless you’re from Special Branch or MI5.

Hayman’s tune, however, changed dramatically after the Haymarket and Glasgow attempted bombings in June 2007. As Chair of the Association of Chief Police Officers’ Terrorism and Allied Matters Committee, he oversaw at that time a huge nationwide escalation in the number of s44 stop-and-searches performed by Britain’s police.

Between October 2008 and September 2009 the Met alone carried out 162,846 such stops and searches, seven times more than in the same period three years earlier.

The Met’s use of s44 stop-and-search has been disproportionately targeted at young Asian males, angering many in the capital’s Asian communities, and undermining their much-needed trust and confidence in the police who are there to serve and protect them. Hayman, now retired, defended this profiling approach last week in The Times.

But targeting young Asian males is fraught with risk. Plenty of suicide bombers and their senders have been white, such as Nicky Reilly, or old, such as Samira Ahmed Jassim, or female, like Muriel Degauque. One of the failed 21/7 London bombers fled the capital dressed as a woman.

And the security and intelligence services know that Al Qaeda is recruiting ‘atypical’ recruits, specifically to get around profiled counter-terrorism measures.

If we are to use section 44 stop and search at all, we cannot defend a policy of target selection which relies on an officer’s discretion, or hunch, because the result is the unwise and unfair bias we have seen to date.

We might make a case for a genuinely random approach – stopping one in every ten people passing through Victoria – but only if we really think the disruptive effect on terrorists outweighs the disruptive effect on commuters, and the invasion of privacy that comes with it.

As for profiling at airports, sure, stop the guy who’s bought a one-way ticket with cash and has no luggage – cue Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Christmas Day 2009 – but, please, let’s not stop him because he has a beard…

Our guest writer is Andy Hull, Senior Research Fellow at the ippr

Bright Blue, a new Conservative party pressure group described as “the Compass of the right”, held their first public meeting last night in Westminster. Shadow secretary of state for work and pensions, Theresa May MP, and Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee discussed the topic of “Does inequality matter?” with the Tory frontbencher unwilling to defend her party’s record on inequality during the Thatcher/Major era.

Toynbee outlined the British public believed that society was too unequal. She criticised both Tony Blair and David Cameron for believing that efforts could be focused on the bottom but not the top of the income scale.

May dismissed a narrow approach to inequality focused on “income and financial targets” and said that a Conservative government would examine the “causes of inequality” including access to good schools and worklessness. When asked by Left Foot Forward to compare the 1979-97 period with the Blair/Brown era on measures of inequality, good schools, and labour market participation, May was unwilling to defend the Thatcher/Major period. Instead, she pointed out that

“the gini coefficient is now higher than it’s ever been.”

As this blog has frequently pointed out, inequality rose dramatically during the last Conservative government. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Gini coefficient measure rose from 0.25 in 1979 to 0.33 to 1997. Under Labour, the gini coefficient first rose, then fell, and is now rising again. As May pointed out it currently stands at its highest ever level of 0.36 but many expect the recession to cause it to fall. Other measures show that inequality peaked in the early-1990s. Earlier Toynbee said,

“Inequality has continued to increase … [but] Labour has made progress. The 1980s was a cataclysmic time. If a bit of society broke off, that was when it broke off and we’ve never recovered from that.”

For May’s benefit, since 1997, the number of children achieving the expected level in English at age 11 has risen by 18 percentage points, and by 16 percentage points in maths while the proportion of young people achieving five or more good GCSEs is up by nearly 20 percentage points. There are over 2.5 million more people in work today than in 1997. Although the impact of the recession has been damaging, unemployment may peak at 2.5 million below the 3 million predicted by many economists.