Civitas Blog

How good is the NHS? How does it compare with other systems? Here is a survey of the evidence that we'll update as new material emerges. Read on (PDF file).

Muslims not aware that the Blair administration is forever giving with one hand and taking away with the other should take note. For two pieces of legislation currently being rushed through Parliament – a law supposedly preventing Incitement to Religious Hatred and the Prevention of Terrorism Bill – both have the potential to foment Islamophobia.

The Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill, due to receive its Second Reading in the House of Commons on 7 March, contains proposals to ban hatred on religious grounds that will promote intolerance while seeming to encourage tolerance. Among other things, this sloppy piece of legislation would slur the difference between religion (a choice one may object to) and race (an ascribed status one may not); create unwarranted chaos over subjective terms like ‘hatred’ and ‘insulting’ (none are usefully defined in the Bill); make legal the notion that a perception of a fact is a fact (plaintiffs would be under no obligation to prove that a statement actually is capable of incitement); confuse the courts; and bring about caution in the media amounting to self-censorship.

Under this Bill, Salman Rushdie would have been punished not protected and cult satirical classics such as Not The Nine O’Clock News taken off the air. Criticism of Islamic shari’a law would be proscribed, and ‘defamation in the character of the Prophet Muhammed (PBUH)’, according to Iqbal Sacranie of the Muslim Council of Britain, would be ‘a direct insult and abuse on the Muslim community’ and illegal. Just as it is in Iran, Somalia and Syria, countries where apostates may be executed. This law is an affront to George Orwell’s dictum that ‘if liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear’.

Yet if this Bill is a cynical attempt to win over the Muslim support that Labour squandered through the war in Iraq, it would nevertheless not unambiguously favour Muslims. In Australia, where a similar law was passed, religious communities have started monitoring each other in order to bring cases: it rewards the least tolerant – those most anxious to take offence – rather than the most tolerant – those willing to turn the other cheek. Quite apart from how the BNP would exploit things, Muslims could find themselves in trouble for making even innocuous statements about Sikhs, Atheists, Scientologists, Satanists…

“We have to be more serious about meeting individual children’s needs,” announced Education Secretary, Ruth Kelly this morning. In the wake of a disciplinary ‘crisis’ in our schools as well as (unsurprising against this backdrop) allegations that the DfES has overstated the rise in education standards, Kelly is now proposing to redirect power to the parent and pupil.

Today’s Guardian contains an article by the Mayor of London accusing successive Israeli governments of ‘ethnic cleansing, discrimination and terror’ and Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, of ‘war crimes’.

In its concluding sentence, the Mayor explains why he felt constrained to write the article, not in a personal capacity, but in his official capacity as Mayor. He writes:

‘For a mayor of London not to speak out against such injustice would not only be wrong – but would also ignore the threat it poses to the security of all Londoners.’

How stupid it was of me to think it is Islamist terrorists who pose the only real current threat to the security of Londoners!

The BBC is often accused of bias towards the Left. James Naughtie gave the game away last Wednesday (2 March) when he was interviewing Labour candidate Ed Balls. He said: "If we win the election...", and then hastily corrected himself to "If you win the election." The Observer blog has produced a short MP3 recording of Naughtie's Freudian slip.

Rod Liddle has yet another brilliant piece in the Sunday Times, on this occasion dealing with the Court of Appeal decision that Denbigh High School was at fault in not permitting a young Muslim girl to wear the jilbab.

It's another example of how the Human Rights Act now means that no one can be sure what the law requires of us. We have travelled a long way from John Locke's 'a standing rule to live by'.

It is reported in today's Times that ‘pupils in England and Wales are to be banned from using sexist insults at school because teachers fear that derogatory words can reinforce behaviour that leads to domestic violence. The Government and the National Union of Teachers are campaigning to expunge words such as “slag” from teenage banter.’

All very commendable, doubtless. But this bold new initiative of the government's to discourage future domestic violence does give rise to several intriguing questions:

Were pupils allowed to use these and other swear-words in school before the diktat and why?

Which swear-words do pupils remain permitted to use at school and why?

Until such time as the Secretatry of State for Education enlightens the public on these vital issues, my reaction to this new edict of the government's is *** (expletive deleted)!

The Blithering Bunny blog by Scott Campbell is always good value.

Since it’s not what’s said, but who says it that counts, certain people get away with statements that others would be censured for making in even the most tentative terms. On Monday, Trevor Phillips, head of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), spoke out about schooling black boys separately. Through the prism of the media, the story took on a spectrum of colours and shades, and the CRE immediately started to complain that he had been misreported. What he said was not that black boys should be schooled separately but that, following the success of a pilot project in the States, we should consider schooling them separately.

It seems ironic that the CRE, an organisation that has deformed the debate about racial and cultural differences, should be so sensitive about being misrepresented, especially given that as media mangling goes this was mild. Imagine, on the contrary, what would have happened if a white politician, Michael Howard, say, drawing on the same evidence, had made those comments. He would have been dubbed a white supremacist. There would have been calls for his resignation. When David Bell, chief inspector for schools, recently said that the growth of Islamic faith schools poses a potential threat to the ‘coherence’ of British society, Muslim groups reacted with outrage. Are members of religious, racial and ethnic groups the only ones permitted to discuss them?

On the face of it, so long as we discount the historical context, Trevor Phillips’s suggestion is persuasive. The fact is that of every sector of the population, black boys are doing worst, and, so the syllogism goes, they therefore need special help. The statistics, assuming they’re correct, say that just 43.3 per cent of black African pupils achieve five good GCSE passes, nine per cent fewer than white children, and only 35.7 per cent of black Caribbean pupils get their five A-Cs. Black boys are twice as likely as their white peers to be expelled. By A-level the gap yawns even wider. All boys do badly – 43.8 per cent – but black boys do worst with 27.3 per cent.

During Wednesday’s Budget debate we can expect a good deal of self-congratulation about the healthy state of the economy, but in the Sunday Times David Smith points out some of the figures that might not feature prominently in the Chancellor’s speech:

Britain’s productivity (output per worker) is 11% below the Group of Seven average. The gap is even greater in output per hour.

The latest trade deficit in goods was £57.9 billion, nearly five times the £12.3 billion figure for 1997. The deficit in goods and services was £39.7 billion. In 1997 there was a small surplus of £1 billion.

The Engineering Employers’ Federation has been counting the number of manufacturing jobs lost since Labour took office. It is expected to be about the million mark this week.

Just over a week ago in The Business, Andrew Neil described the real significance of the proposed EU constitution for our ability to make our own laws.

While our Government is playing down the significance of the Constitution, the German minister for Europe, Hans Martin Bury, was declaring it to be ‘the birth certificate of the United States of Europe.’ Andrew Neil explains how Lord Justice Laws' ruling in the ‘metric martyr’s’ case puts in doubt the constitutional supremacy of EU law over our common law. Here is the full ruling from the Metric Martyr’s website.

A newly defined threat to standards is the misguided notion that education exists to raise children’s self-esteem - via measures of inclusion and personalised learning. Education’s purpose has long-enjoyed heated debate: do we send our children to school to set them up to be the workforce of tomorrow, or does education strive towards intellectual expansion? There is however wider consensus that the primary purpose of education is not to raise children’s self-esteem. This is not to say that the rewards of learning and ensuing achievement won’t heighten a child’s self-worth. Rather, that boosting pupils’ morale must be reinstated as a by-product of teaching and learning, rather than as a primary goal.

Today’s newspapers carry forecasts by city economists that the pre-election spending-spree announced by Gordon Brown in his budget-speech yesterday will lead to a £10-12 billion shortfall in public finances. To meet it would require a 3% rise in the basic rate of income tax.

Soon after the election, assuming the bribe works and New Labour are returned, the public will be made to pay.

You can be sure those made to pay will not come from the ranks of the vast army of low-paid public sector workers whom New Labour has created while in office and who, being entirely dependent on public-sector pay, pensions and income support, form the core of that party’s ever expanding band of natural supporters.

The day after the election, assuming the bribe successful, my bet is that whoever becomes Chancellor will claw back the needed revenue to cover the current spending spree by announcing that gains on the sale of primary residences will become liable to CGT.

Just like Gordon Brown’s raid on private pension funds in 1997, the prudent will be punished to reward the profligate. Ever more numbers of people will be made to depend on the state rather than able to fend for themselves by having their hard earned capital-assets expropriated by the state.

However, it is not the national tragedy of yesterday’s budget about which I wish to write here, but, rather, an altogether more personal and minor tragicomedy played out in the small hours of Budget Day.

It was then I was awakened from my slumbers by the sound of my wife calling my name, followed by a resounding crash.

The tragedy in The Human Stain, Philip Roth’s great chronicle of America during the Clinton impeachment, is detonated by an innocuous question: ‘Do they exist or are they spooks?’ Coleman Silk, an eminent professor at New England's small Athena College, asks it about two absent students. The students turn out to be black, and lodge a bogus charge of racism exploited by his enemies. Silk is disgraced. His life begins to unravel. Like all good novels it frictionlessly combines fiction and reality to make important points about the state we’re in.

The dispute over gypsies and their ‘human right’ to be exempt from planning laws is just the latest episode calling into question one of the fundamental precepts of English liberty. We used to take it for granted that everyone was equal under the law. Not so. Since the Human Rights Act, if you can hire a clever lawyer and find an activist judge, you may be above the law.

The Human Rights Act of 1998, which came into effect in 2000, has turned out to have a very wide reach. A web site which monitors the Act lists over 700 cases so far. Since the Human Rights Act became law there has been a tendency for more and more people dissatisfied about something or other to seek a legal opinion on whether the Act can be moulded to their purpose, encouraging by lawyers who see the Act as an opportunity for money making. Potential or actual cases include the BBC licence fee, the housing conditions of Lithuanian asylum seekers, a violent child who objected to being taught in a separate class, murderers who want access to hard-core porn in prison, opponents of the MMR vaccine, the police strike ban, the London congestion charge, pension rates for British citizens living overseas and the closure of care homes.

Yesterday the standard of political debate reached a new low when Labour MP, Kevin McNamara, said that the Tory plans to apply housing and planning laws equally to gypsies had "the whiff of the gas chamber about them". Margaret Beckett, the Environment Secretary, did not go quite so far, but remarked that Mr Howard combined "opportunism and nastiness in equal measure". Unusually, Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, did not exploit the issue to exaggerate racism as he has so often done. Instead, he commented in the Guardian: "This will only be a race issue if people want to make it one ... it really should be about space and housing, not ethnicity." Full credit to Mr Phillips.

On one level this is a simple question about equality before the law. The law applies equally to all or it does not. As Locke taught, the law should be the same for the favourite at court or the countryman at plough. But this is not an isolated case. Increasingly claiming ‘victim status’ has become a useful political ploy for gaining preferential treatment at the expense of other people. Politically designated victim status can provide opportunities for circumventing laws that apply to everyone else and for making private gains at the expense of other people. Victim status has become the equivalent of the ‘favourite at court’ in the seventeenth century.

On the face of it, the government set itself a target and achieved it: the reduction of waiting times and lists may be one of the more significant achievements in the NHS since its inception almost sixty years ago. By the end of this year, according to Niall Dickson in a recent article for the Sunday Times, nobody should wait more than six months for anything. Mr Dickson, chief executive of the King’s Fund, an independent charitable foundation, did point out, however, that these figures disguise ‘hidden waits, because the NHS does not measure the gap between a first outpatient appointment and being put on the inpatient list for treatment.’ The fact is that the NHS has a distinguished history of fiddling waiting list figures, and investigations such as those by the National Audit Office, the Audit Commission and the King’s Fund, testify that confidence in current waiting list figures may well be misplaced. Nevertheless, everyone, and not least Mr Dickson, who’s foundation has just produced a highly positive Audit of the NHS, seems to believe NHS waiting has remarkably improved.

What if, just for the sake of argument, we consider the possible negative consequences of reducing waiting lists in such a target obsessed way? A&E departments have reached a stage, hospitals say, where 96% of patients are dealt with in four hours. But at what cost?

In January 2002 Tony Blair said that his government may stand or fall on the reform of the NHS: ‘things are starting to get better, and they will be dramatically improved. I am so confident of that, let me say this: if the NHS is not basically fixed by the next election, then I am quite happy to suffer the consequences. I am quite willing to be held to account by the voters if we fail’. Here is our update of progress so far. (It's a PDF file and may take a minute to download.)

The gap between perception and reality makes for a hoary old debate but for a long time English law has been fairly clear on the distinction.

These days, however, largely as a result of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry and the ensuing Macpherson Inquiry, the boundary has become rather confused. The Macpherson report stated that a ‘racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person’, and as Robert Skidelsky writes in the Civitas booklet Institutional Racism and the Police, the ‘notion that the perception of a fact makes it a fact’ is a ‘legal and philosophical monstrosity’. As Michael Ignatieff comments in the same publication: ‘What is most dismaying… is that it [the Macpherson Inquiry] became a story about just one thing – race. But the central issue was not race, it was justice.’

Race has become such a sensitive issue that anything can be converted into a racial crisis or crime by anyone that chooses to manipulate the evidence, and anyone who opposes such a manoeuvre can expect to be accused of being racist.