Civitas Blog

As Silvio Berlusconi prepares for strike three as Italy’s Prime Minister, the country’s recently defeated centre-left government has published details of all Italians’ taxable income on the internet, writes Claire Daley. People visiting the Italian tax authority website could snoop through their neighbours’ financial affairs for up-to 24-hours until a formal complaint was lodged.

Another May, another Mayor mercifully less prone than some to praising preachers of hate, and now, to add further icing to the cake of all who long for this country to return to the days when it was a tolerant, peaceful and civilised place in which to live, another moderate Muslim organisation to join the recently launched Quilliam Foundation in tackling the pockets of extremism and intolerance that remain among Britain’s Muslim community.

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Launching the buck on biofuel targets across the Atlantic, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson’s article in the Guardian last week stated “European biofuel production is having only a minimal effect on global prices”. (Roughly translated as: “It wasn’t me sir!”) But he warned “large-scale biofuel production, especially in the US, may be one of the factors pushing up global food prices as it diverts resources from food production.” (Roughly translated as: “It was him!”)

IPPR’s latest report, ‘Those Who Can’, accurately highlights many of the new pressures that are now impacting on teachers, including a greater demand for skilled school leavers in the economy, changes in family structure and even artificial pressures generated by political agendas. The funny thing is their solution for dealing with these pressures is not the common sense approach: to set teachers free from these bureaucratic and political demands so that they can deal with the genuine needs of children. Quite the opposite!

In a head-to-head debate in the British Medical Journal, we argue that instead of backing away from the reality that supplementing of NHS care with private treatment is already widespread – and will become even more so as the finite budget of the NHS becomes less able to cover the medical care that people want or require – the government should instead work towards creating an equitable framework for top-up fees. This would allow access to new drugs and treatments to all, rather than just the wealthy as is the case currently.

Wednesday 14th of May will see the inaugural London Boxing Academy Gala Dinner. The aim of the evening will be to raise awareness about and money for the invaluable work that the Academy is doing.

Who can fail but to be deeply moved, if not humbled, by the magnanimous words of compassion spoken by the mother of sixteen year old Jimmy Mizen, London’s latest teenage murder victim?

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Is summer now the season for publications pushing increased government intrusion into private conduct? The warm air has been accompanied by the somewhat chillier sensation of the release of two reports with some joyously Orwellian titles: The Politics of Public Behaviour from Demos and Creatures of Habit? The Art of Behavioural Change from the Social Market Foundation. From the mechanisms discussed in both these titles, it seems that the aspiration to get the state more involved in people’s lives remains as strong as ever among many policymakers, but combined (perhaps dangerously) with fresh research into behavioural economics.

Yesterday, the world renowned health economist and ‘father’ of managed competition, Professor Alain C. Enthoven of Stanford University, gave a lunchtime seminar at Civitas, in which he advocated the development of genuine patient-centred health care, based on integrated delivery systems and individual (cost conscious) choice in the NHS.

Those calling for integrated systems of finance, delivery, primary and secondary care are getting louder across the UK, but, according to Professor Enthoven, they must be competing: 'Kaiser Permanente leaders recognise their money and livelihood comes from the money of satisfied members/patients who have a choice. Service improvements are driven by a recognition they could go elsewhere. Kaiser recognises they are a competitor and they welcome competition'. Listen again or view his slides here.

Last week I posted a blog here suggesting many of the ills currently bedevilling our society, including most notably the current knife-crime epidemic in the capital, were attributable to the Bible and its teachings having ceased to be the focus of religious education in many state schools.

That suggestion elicited several sceptical comments. These variously claimed that it was too late to put the clock back, and, in any case, the Bible wasn’t a particularly good source of moral instruction. It was open to infinite interpretation, contained some pretty dubious moral teachings, and was capable of informing the moral outlook of some very violent societies, the United States being cited as one.

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A new report from Civitas, Second Thoughts on the Family, finds marriage to be more popular than ever – but a luxury beyond the reach of the poor

Overwhelming majority of Britons want to marry

Defying the idea that marriage is dead, a new Civitas/Ipsos Mori survey of 1,560 young people reveals that the overwhelming majority want to get married:

Marriage: fit for purpose in 21st century Britain

• A nationally representative sample of 20-35 year-olds shows that seven in ten want to marry
• Cohabitation has NOT replaced marriage: nearly eight in ten (79 per cent) of those cohabiting want to marry
• The number one reason why young people want to marry is to make a commitment (47 per cent)
• Just two per cent want to marry for tax reasons
• Less than one per cent think that marriage jeopardises equality between men and women

‘The potential for social enterprise and not-for-profit organisations to contribute to health and well-being remains almost completely unrealised’, surmised Harry Cayton, at a debate hosted by Civitas in the House of Commons last week.

The question is why? Social enterprise – as shown in personal examples such as SELDOC and Stahcom, led by Mo Girach, and Knowledge into Action, the brainchild of Sir Muir Gray – has much to offer.

The tragic discovery last week in her Handsworth home of the emaciated corpse of seven year old Khyra Ishaq raises several disturbing questions.

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After Brown’s £2.7 billion bailout over the 10p tax debacle, the multiple taxes on motorists are now coming under greater scrutiny. In the early years, the majority of attacks directed against the Labour Government were the introduction of stealth taxes. That criticism no longer applies. A doubling in vehicle excise duty on ordinary family cars fails to achieve what any ‘decent’ stealth tax would do: creep into the family budget, bite a little chunk out of it and sneak it back to the Treasury, preferably without the public noticing. The ruse will probably be discovered months later but by then is relegated to a mere bullet point in a Tax Payers Alliance briefing. They are not meant to generate newspaper campaigns against them. So the Government’s tax strategy appears to have de-cloaked and, although it has taken on a green mantle, it does not appear any less ugly for it.

Perhaps one of the biggest misnomers in the NHS at present is payment by results, quite simply because it isn’t payment by results at all. It’s payment by caseload.

For an operation from the same health resource group, whether you bungle it and leave the patient ridden with MRSA and disabled for life or whether you’ve done a world-class job that Lord Darzi himself would be proud of, you’ll get paid the same.

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), New Labour’s most relied-on think tank, has proposed that the 'long' summer holidays (shorter than in most of Europe) be abolished in a bid to curb what has been referred to as the ‘summer learning loss’ amongst pupils from deprived backgrounds. The report, ‘Thursday’s Child’, co-authored by Sonya Sodha and Julia Margo, argues that a new system of - essentially - school holiday dispersed through the year, needs to be introduced. Their proposal entails shortening the summer holidays to just four weeks.