"Act for the Act"

A couple of days ago I was going either up or down some escalator in some central London tube station and noticed a series of new posters. They were not advertising shows in the West End (often ones that have closed as the TfL rarely bothers to keep the advertising up to date) or the nearest McDonald's or Garfunkel's or, even, the need to have various health checks. No, these were posters summoning us all to the battle to Act for the Act - to save the Human Rights Act. Each poster had some "poster child" of different genders, races and ages whose lives were made better by the HRA. The Act, we are told, was there for them; now the Act needs us.

This intrigued me. Naturally, I do not think there is anything wrong with political advertising and though I dislike the simplification practically ad absurdum of a complex issue as well as the clear lack of historical knowledge that is behind such a campaign, I do accept that this is going to happen.

One question we do need to ask, though: exactly who is funding this campaign. As ever, I asked Mr Google and this was the reply:

From the Equality and Diversity Forum I learned that Act for the Act is " a Crowdfunder project calling for donations to fund a nationwide poster blitz to save the Human Rights Act".

The campaign organisers want to create a poster campaign across the national transport network so that ordinary, real people, can tell their stories of how the Human Rights Act helped them to RIGHT a serious WRONG in their lives. For example, bereaved parents Matt and Martina Baines used the Act after their only child, 17 year old Kesia, died, to hold the authorities to account and win changes in the law; Jan Sutton was able to force her local authority to provide her with the care she needs. Rape victims failed by the police have used the Act to hold the police to account and protect others in future.

This campaign is supported by Equally Ours and is being organised by a group of people who have seen first-hand just how important the Human Rights Act can be. We have a Steering Group of 10 people working together.

One wonders what the alternative to "ordinary, real people is" - unusual or unreal people, perhaps, or Martians.

Before we go any further, let us have a look at Equally Ours. A Human Rights campaign, that is a campaign in favour of lots of human rights organizations, that is partnered by a number of quangos and are "hosted and led by the Equality and Diversity Forum, where we started.

The Equality and Diversity Forum (EDF) is a network of national organisations committed to equal opportunities, social justice, good community relations, respect for human rights and an end to discrimination based on age, disability, gender and gender identity, race, religion or belief, and sexual orientation.

A super quango that is a network of other quangos and whose aim is to generate as much work as possible through the human rights industry, as its Report and Financial Statement makes clear. The various grants are undoubtedly from the taxpayer through one or other layer of government and quango donors. It is no wonder that there is a little anxiety there that the HRA might be repealed or some new version of the old Bill of Rights substituted for it. Would that work as well as the HRA does for all these organizations?

Nevertheless, the poster campaign is supposed to be Crowdfunded or, in other words, it can happen only if people out there contribute various sums of money. That one cannot object to. If people are stupid enough to Crowdfund a political poster campaign, that is entirely their business; taxpayers' money wasted on a pretend information campaign would be quite different.

So here we are: ActForTheAct, a Community Crowdfunding Project.

The project, we were told, could not do anything unless £50,000 was pledged by June 12, 2015. It was, in fact, overfunded with £55,870 pledged by the date specified and by now they, presumably, honoured their pledges and the campaign has gone live, which is why the posters in question have appeared in Underground stations.

Curiously enough, an earlier version of the news about the funding had a link to a list of those who pledged money or, at least some of them and certainly not the one who pledged £10,000 or the four who pledged £5,000. As far as I can see, the link has disappeared.

The actual website tells us little more than the previous Crowdfunding ones did with the various cases quoted without any detail but, presumably, if anybody asked those would be provided. Wouldn't they? And I don't mean just the actual "poster child's" story. Why the HRA was needed to help someone who quite illegally was not looked after properly by her carers or to show the police that it was wrong to hold a child for 11 hours without any access by a qualified adult remains unclear but one can hardly argue against that. Nor can one argue against voluntary donations or time given free because people believe in something.

My own suspicion that it will not be long before the likes of Amnesty, an NGO as well as a quango, become donors and participants in the campaign. At the very least they will start using it for their own purposes. In fact, their campaign has started already though the Amnesty name is in small letters at the bottom of the page. We must all look for those small letter at the bottom of the page in various supposedly charitable but actually political campaigns whether they are to save the HRA or affirm the UK's membership of the European Union.

Couldn't have put it better myself

My friend, Jim Bennett, author of The Anglosphere Challenge and co-author of America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the 21st Century-Why America's Greatest Days Are Yet to Come, summed up very what the panacea of taxing the rich to distribute among the poor really means:

Actually, tax the non-connected slightly more prosperous, and give the money to bureaucrats and crony NGOs claiming to be working on behalf of the poor.

We call them quangos rather than NGOs and our political funding rules are different from American ones but those are details compared to the essential point.

Somehow I remain unconvinced

Lord Willoughby de Broke asked HMG

how many new non-departmental public bodies have been created since the last general election.

We usually refer to them as quangos and their bonfire has been promised for some time. Ever since the last election, as it happens, though it has been somewhat slow in coming. The subject was covered by this blog in various ways here, here, here, here, here and here. A shambolic state of affairs, with little understanding of why quangos exist and what they do.

HMG, of course, thinks otherwise, as this reply to Lord Willoughby demonstrates:

Since May 2010, so far 92 quangos have been directly abolished and another 103 merged together to leave 50. Our overall plans will get rid of a third of public bodies and will save the taxpayer £2.6 billion over the spending review period.

Since May 2010, the Government have established and classified nine new non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs) which were not previously in existence in another form. Six of these are independent monitoring boards which must, by law, be set up each time a new prison or probation trust is established. Departments must submit a full business case for any NDPB which clearly demonstrates the need for its independence. Further information on the size and spend of the NDPB sector will be published in the autumn. Overall numbers of NDPBs are substantially down since the general election and continue to fall.

As ever, a good deal of the reply deals with what will happen rather than what has happened and it is not clear that merging quangos with, possibly, some of the work going back to the civil service will save any money. We shall have to wait for that autumn information though it might have been useful if HMG could see its way to providing some interim figures now.

It is also unclear whether the six new quangos or NDPBs announced in the Queen's Speech have been included in the rather vague calculations provided in this response.

Another one we can close down

The Daily Wail Mail reports that Gisela Stuart, one of the few sensible MPs around apart from her incomprehensible desire for an IN/OUT referendum, has protested about the British Counmcil promoting "more Europe" using the money they receive for the promotion of Britain, British culture and the English language. Admittedly, £20,000 out of £200 million is not much but it might be worth somebody's while to have a good look at what the British Council's Brussels office is doing anyway. And then we can close the whole organization down.

Am I surprised?

It seems that, despite all the hoopla, the Food Standards Agency, as this blog predicted, will not be abolished. There will, apparently, be a few changes, none major and none that involves redundancies among the bloated pay roll:

Responsibility for nutritional policy in England will shift to the Department of Health and authority for country of origin labeling and other food labeling not related to food safety and food composition policies in England will go to the Department for Environmental, Food, and Rural Affairs.

Those changes will mean about 100 Food Standards Agency positions will shift to one of the other two ministerial departments, the government said.

Just one point that the Food Safety News seems unable to grasp: country of origin labelling is EU competence. Whoever allegedly has "the authority" for it in the various parts of this country will be implementing EU rules.

"But what good came of it at last?"

As every schoolchild ought to know but probably does not, that is a line from Robert Southey's The Battle of Blenheim. These are the closing lines of the poem:

"But what good came of it at last?"
Quoth little Peterkin.
"Why, that I cannot tell," said he,
"But 'twas a famous victory."

We are all supposed to be celebrating a great victory in the battle over the MPs' expenses and the Taxpayers' Alliance is, indeed, doing so. The establishment of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority and their participating in it (as listed a little way down here) is considered to be a great success in the fight against dishonesty and power-grabbing.

Indeed, they proudly announce that many of their suggestions have been adopted, which is why, one assumes that they are the only right-wing organization (or so they say) to have been asked to participate in the implementation panel of this latest of quangos.

So it is this really such a famous victory? I beg leave to doubt. The TPA has been conducting a robust campaign against quangos, unaccountable organizations, high salaries in the public sector. Well, what is the IPSA but an unaccountable organization that seems to have an open-ended view of how much it will cost.

In this list of Frequently Asked Questions on the official IPSA website, we read the following proud announcement:

How independent is the IPSA?

The IPSA is an independent body. The Chair, Members and Commissioner for Parliamentary Investigations of the IPSA are appointed through an independent, rigorous, fair and open competition.

Sounds wonderful until we realize what that means. It is independent from any accountable body - i.e. it is completely unaccountable.

How will those appointments be made?

The posts of Chair and Members of IPSA were openly advertised in September, and candidates are being considered through an independent and open competition, run by a panel chaired by the Commissioner for Public Appointments for Northern Ireland. MPs have had and will have no involvement in that part of the process.

All those considered to be appointable are put forward to the Speaker who then decides who to appoint. The Speaker’s preferred candidates for each post is then put forward to the Speaker’s Committee, and the Committee is asked to agree them. At the conclusion of this process, the House of Commons will be asked to approve IPSA’s membership, including the chair. They will not be able to cherry-pick from a list of candidates. This is the same process as has been followed for appointments to other roles where independence is paramount – for instance that of the membership of the Electoral Commission.

I call that only relatively open as the appointment is made somewhat opaquely. But the biggest problem here that this appointed and unaccountable body will be running various aspects of the House of Commons, the elected body. What we are seeing is the last vestiges of any power being taken away from that body and being given to a quango. From now on, MPs will not be able to run their own financial affairs any more than they can legislate on most matters. Is this really a famous victory? Why does the TPA think so? Why is it involved in this organization?

Then there is the question of payment, left open for the time being. From those FAQs:

How much will IPSA cost?

The IPSA is under a statutory duty to aim to do things efficiently and cost-effectively. Implementation of IPSA is still at an early stage, with various options being developed. It is too early to say how much IPSA will cost to run as this will depend on decisions which have not been taken. The main cost of IPSA will be the allowances scheme itself and the salaries of MPs.

Yes, well, they all talk about that statutory obligation and not running an expensive operation but somehow the costs mount up. Let us have a look how we are doing so far:

What will the Chair earn? And what will be the arrangements for his or her expenses?

Details of remuneration were made public in the advertisements for the post - £700 per day plus reasonable expenses incurred. It is expected the Chair will work 3 days a week initially, reducing to 1 day a week, and capped at £100,000 for the first year.

That's just the start. We go on to some other insignificant expenses:

When will the IPSA Chair and members be appointed?

The Speaker’s Committee for the IPSA has ratified the Speaker’s nomination of Professor Sir Ian Kennedy (PDF 11Kb) to be the Chair of IPSA. We expect that an announcement on the Members will follow shortly afterwards.

What is the role of the Interim Chief Executive?

The interim Chief Executive will take forward the IPSA implementation programme, working with the Chair and Members on appointment. The ICE will be the accounting officer for the IPSA implementation programme and for the IPSA until a permanent Chief Executive is appointed.

Who is the interim Chief Executive?

Andrew McDonald took up post on 14 September 2009. Andrew McDonald was previously the chief executive of Government Skills, the Sector Skills Council for central government and the Armed Forces. He has been a civil servant for the past twenty years and has undertaken a range of policy and operational roles including the delivery of a construction project, leading a new agency at its start-up and running the constitutional reform programme.

How much does the Interim Chief Executive earn?

The post of Interim Chief Executive is paid in the range £105,000 – £115,000 per annum. This was benchmarked against similar public sector roles and the salary compares favourably.

The post of permanent Chief Executive can only be appointed after the appointment of the IPSA, and will be subject to fair and open competition.

You will be glad to know that they will be publishing their expenses "on a rolling basis".

Somehow, it seems entirely appropriate that the new Chairman of this new quango should be a friend of Alistair Campbell's.