Civitas Blog

As Brown’s rejection of calls for a referendum (and in the process Labour’s manifesto pledge) remind us – we should not be so naïve as to trust the words of our elected representatives. That said, it is no use complaining unless you take the effort to learn a little about the issues on which you whinge.

‘Blackburn, in common with many northern towns, is experiencing a huge upsurge in pimping, and it is an unpalatable truth … that many of the newest wave of pimps come from within the Asian community.’

So claimed a truly stomach-churning report in last week’s Sunday Times. The report exposed the large scale of organised sex trafficking of white under-age girls lured into prostitution and drug addiction in northern towns by unscrupulous gangs of men of largely Pakistani origin.

continued on the Centre for Social Cohesion blog.

Civitas has marked the start of Children's Book Week (www.booktrusted.co.uk/cbw/) by making available for the first time in a commercial edition a phonics-based reading course that has achieved sensational results with children from all backgrounds, including the most deprived.

Irina Tyk wrote The Butterfly Book in 1993 to make available to other teachers and parents her method of teaching reading using phonics - a system that teaches children to read by recognising the 44 sounds that make up the English language.

One of Lord Darzi’s key recommendations in his interim report released today is the creation of a Health Innovation Unit – with a budget of £100m ‘to help the NHS develop and deploy hi-tech health care such as medical devices and diagnostics’.

But it is wholly unclear that a new central body is what is required to drive innovation in the NHS. The NHS already has such a body – the National Institute for Innovation and Improvement – and its lack of impact has been noticeable.

A report released today by Civitas argues that a Health Innovation Unit will only help if the NHS follows its reform agenda to the full and embraces diversity and competition; PCTs must be empowered as strong commissioners, providers must be autonomous and patients must have real choice. Central direction needs to end.

Full press release
Full report

The frustrations of being a teacher in the state sector are neatly encapsulated in the pages of today’s Times Education Supplement (TES). There is the usual medley of difficulties faced daily in schools: the weekly discussion about issues with testing and exam arrangements, the independence of schools jeopardised by central control and of course the still-raging school dinners debate. But it is two pieces in particular which illustrate the contradictions in teaching today. The first piece is an editorial by the chief executive of the General Teaching Council (GTC) arguing that teachers need to earn their professionalism; the second piece tells us of the government’s aspiration to emulate the supermarket chain Tesco in schools.

Iran’s President Ahmadinejad proved to be the toast of progressive students at Columbia University on his recent visit to the USA.

According to encouraging accounts in today’s newspapers of student riots in Iran against him, many progressive university students in that country would also like to toast their president too, despite their religious convictions precluding them from ever touching a drop of alcohol.

Certainly a student-led protest movement there would be a preferable and far less bloody way to effect much needed regime-change in Iran than military action. Sadly, however, it may well yet have to come to the latter option if all else fails to secure such change in the near future.

There has been speculation in the press that the National Offender Management Service, brought into being only three years ago, is going to be scrapped in an attempt to insulate the newly formed Ministry of Justice from the incompetence of the past. NOMS is a fairly typical example of government failure: costing billions of pounds and barely making a dent in Britain’s obese re-offending figures while antagonising public service unions for no good reason.

This blog has written many times of the damaging effects that targets and excessive top-down instruction has had on patient care by distorting clinical priorities and removing patient focus. It is also something the Healthcare Commission has reported many times, and yet again today.

The highly problematic outcomes of testing in schools is definitely coming to a halt.
Across the media today are the early conclusions of an enquiry into education. The Cambridge University-led Primary Review today published its interim report with depressing findings. Based on interviews with parents, teachers, children and members of the community, the Review team headed by Professor Robin Alexander reported ‘deep anxiety’ amongst children. Whilst a wide range of issues was found to be troubling children, from pollution to terrorism, ‘scary’ testing was something which was highlighted as worrisome.

Europe’s leaders are to meet in Lisbon on Thursday and Friday to thrash out the final version of the EU Reform Treaty with Gordon Brown at the head table of Europe for the first time. It will be interesting to see how the other EU leaders take to Mr Brown considering his past dealings in the Economic Council of Ministers (Ecofin). Such meetings have been characterised by lecturing and sulking on the part of the PM with the ‘clunking fist’ in full flow!

A story appeared in yesterdays's Daily Mail on which I have been pondering hard since reading it.

It concerned a visit a fortnight ago by two police officers to a 71 year old priest of an East London Catholic church. They had called on the priest unannounced to interrogate him for nearly two hours over whether, in posting a comment on his web-based parish bulletin a year or so ago about the Shabina Begum case, he had been intending to incite religious hatred against her or her coreligionists.

continued on the Centre for Social Cohesion blog.

The Healthcare Commission today released its second annual health check of NHS organisations. The overall picture is a familiar one; things have got a bit better, but not by as much as one would have hoped. “Could do better” is the general feeling – not least in offering patients a choice.

The government is using the words ‘carping’ and ‘doom-mongers’ again. This can mean only one thing: that exam results are out.

Sure enough this year’s GCSE results have been released, showing a 2.3 percentage point increase on last year’s results. Schools Minister Jim Knight hoped to pip critics to the post by arguing that there was no room for carping as the government had reached its target of 60% ‘good’ (A*-C) grades, ‘a year early’. The results are unlikely to silence critics however, particularly once maths and English are brought in.

Now that the EU Reform Treaty has been agreed by the member states, speculation has turned to who will be appointed the first permanent “President of Europe”, writes Cem Suleyman. The Reform Treaty proposes that the President of the European Council replaces the existing six month rotating presidency. The President of the European Council will be elected for a fixed two and a half year term, renewable once. He or she will chair the Council meetings, help set the EU agenda and be a figurehead for the EU on the international stage. While key decisions will continue to be taken by the national heads of government, many fear the post is the forerunner to a directly elected President of Europe.

In quest of Muslim votes, David Cameron has turned for policy advice to a group of Muslim party members known as the Conservative Muslim Forum (CMF).

Last week, that group gave David Cameron the benefit of its collective wisdom on what policies his party should adopt to make itself of greater appeal to Muslim voters.

continued on the Centre for Social Chesion blog.

Professor Julian Le Grand has a radical strategy for tackling the supposed problems of ill health in the UK: smoking permits (which might require a doctor’s note), an ‘exercise hour’ for company employees, a ban on additional salt in foods, more free fruit in general and more stern notes sent to the homes of children that have been found to be obese. Le Grand calls this broad sweep of measures ‘libertarian paternalism’, claiming, perversely that none of these actually restrict individual freedom. Wouldn’t ‘libertarian paternalism’ be more normally understood as a friendly word of advice without the backing of force?

This Monday, Robert Naylor, Chief Executive of UCLH NHS Foundation Trust, gave a seminar at Civitas, in which he put a powerful case for the continuation and deepening of the Foundation Trust ‘experiment’. He argued persuasively that not only has Foundation Trust status – with its associated financial and structural freedoms – provided for both greater efficiency in use of resources, but also higher quality and more responsive care for patients. In short, it is the way forward for the secondary care sector. His presentation can be viewed here.

I had my own Dads’ Army experience this weekend - strangely not when accompanying a Veterans’ Association on its battlefield tour of France, but outside the Palace of Westminster...

Should Saudi Royals be treated as moral outcasts?

Definitely not argues Amir Taheri in an op-ed in today’s Times. Entitled ‘They’re like camels – uncongenial, but trustworthy’, his piece bears the subtitle: ‘It’s absurd to treat the Saudi royals as moral outcasts’.

continued on the Centre for Social Cohesion blog.

More powers, new targets, less tolerance for failure, a boost to several central government run schemes (Teach First and Teach Next), are the only discernible content of Brown’s latest speech on education. The tone of the speech makes it sound as if the government, having annexed and occupied the education system decades ago, still finds itself combating a never-ending insurgency of ‘failure’. These forces of failure cannot be tolerated and must be eradicated.