Following the catastrophic BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a major battle is now looming over fresh plans by oil companies to try and explore for and access so-called ‘extreme oil’.

With global reserves of ‘conventional oil’ running out, major oil firms are increasingly looking to do more deep sea drilling, including off the West of Shetland and in the Arctic, as well as exploit oil from tar sands in Alberta, Canada and other environmentally sensitive areas of the world.

The Guardian splashed on this today with its front page lead saying that BP have pulled out of a plan to join in with attempts to explore for oil reserves in so-called ‘Iceberg Alley’ near Greenland in the Arctic. The United States Geological Survey estimates that 90 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil lies in offshore reservoirs in the Arctic.

The explanation of BP’s pull out is most likely to be that the government of Greenland wanted to avoid fuelling the PR disaster. They have already faced media attention after granting licenses for deep sea drilling in the area to Exxon Mobil, Chevron and the UK-based company, Cairn Energy.

A Gulf-style ‘blow out’ in the Arctic would almost certainly be more devastating than the BP spill. The short summer window when conditions allow for drilling mean there simply isn’t time for a relief well to be completed – meaning a blow out in the area could see oil gushing for two years, with oil becoming trapped under thick ice.

With freezing weather, seas so much colder, and conditions much more challenging than in the Gulf of Mexico, the risks attached to any dangerous deep sea drilling are also higher. The risk of collision between oil rigs and icebergs means that companies already have to literally tow away some icebergs, water-cannon away others, and in some cases, move the rig quickly enough to get out of the path of the biggest icebergs.

The US Minerals Management Service estimates that there is a one in-five chance of a major spill occurring over the lifetime of activity in just one of the blocks of leases in the Arctic Ocean. The risk of an even more terrible accident than the BP spill, and the likelihood of any emergency response being hampered by the severe nature of the area and its remote location, explains why ‘extreme oil’ like this is turning into a major frontline for environmental campaigners.

Green groups are concerned that warnings from scientists of the need to leave much of the world’s remaining fossil fuel reserves underground are simply being ignored, but they’re also particularly concerned that Baffin Bay, near Greenland, where Cairn is already doing exploratory drilling. It is a particularly fragile habitat, home to 80 to 90 per cent of the world’s narwhals. The region also boasts blue whales, polar bears, seals, sharks, cormorants, kittiwakes and numerous other rare and migratory birds.

On Sunday, it was revealed that UK taxpayers are financially assisting Cairn Energy’s risky drilling projects through a £100m loan from the Royal Bank of Scotland. Among the 66 companies backed by RBS are well-known names like BP, Shell, ConocoPhilips, Tullow Oil, Trafigura and Cairn Energy.

Despite this, Cairn has refused to release their plans outlining how they’d respond in the event of a spill. Their CEO, the former Scottish Rugby player Sir Bill Gammell is on the record having said: “I learned a lot about the oil business from George W Bush” – somebody he worked with earlier in his career, after attending school with one Tony Blair.

Greenpeace have already begun a world wide campaign to go beyond oil, and the environmental group – who I should say I work for – has also already sent a ship to the Arctic to confront Cairn Energy, the first company to begin drilling there. Closer to home, pressure is mounting for the UK government to follow President Obama’s lead and introduce a moratorium on deep sea drilling in UK waters, something recently recommended by EU Energy Commissioner, Günther Oettinger.

Indy hack John Rentoul has today called Left Foot Forward “whining” Ed Miliband supporters in his latest hatchet job on the Labour leadership contender. This is not the first time Rentoul has accused Left Foot Forward of partiality in the race. At the very beginning of the campaign, on May 17, he wrote a blog asking whether we were “downplaying David Miliband” – and writing as fact that Will Straw “is a supporter of Ed Miliband”.

His evidence for this claim? That Will told the Evening Standard in January that “Ed Miliband, if he stands, could prove a popular leader”.

Rentoul, seeing his error, wrote: “I apologise to Will – I should have tried to contact him before posting.”

As regular readers of Left Foot Forward will know, on May 15 we made it clear that we would be “sitting on the fence” throughout the race.

This was not the first time that Rentoul had erroneously attributed a false position to Left Foot Forward. Shortly before, on May 13, Rentoul blogged:

“Will Straw, of Left Foot Forward, has just popped up on the BBC News Channel to tell us (after saying that his father was quite right not to contest the Labour leadership) that Labour had some truly marvellous results in England, but that there is a “doughnut” of seats round London where the party did not do so well.”

The word “marvellous” had not passed Will’s lips and Rentoul was again happy to issue a clarification including the line, “as Homer Simpson will tell you, a decent doughnut has a small hole and plenty of dough.”

D’oh!

President Obama’s timetabling of the forthcoming withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan has been described as playing into the hands of the Taliban. Retiring US Marine General James Conway yesterday acknowledged that the July 2011 timeframe had given fighters a ‘morale boost’ – that the deadline was “giving our enemy sustenance”.

In making these comments he aired the opinion widely held in military circles that the withdrawal deadline has handed the Taliban an immediate propaganda victory, with the possibility of political, and therefore military victory, too.

As has been mentioned before, in a battle of endurance you do not tell your opponent when you are going to give up.

In Kabul, US Lieutenant General William Caldwell, responsible for the recruitment and training of Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), questioned the viability of the withdrawal date when he said the ANSF would only be able to take the lead in ‘isolated pockets’ before October 2011.

In a paper for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, it has been considered that:

“Afghan forces needed to bring about security and stability is a far more difficult problem than many realize, and poses major challenges that will endure long after 2011.”

Chronic desertion, resignations and a casualty rate of 23 per cent amongst the Afghan National Army are hampering General Caldwell’s efforts at creating security forces of over 300,000. This is believed to be the figure required for President Hamid Karzai to make good his pledge of Afghan control of their own security by 2014.

General David Petraeus, overall commander of NATO force in Afghanistan, entered the debate earlier this week; saying that he was “determined to provide the most forthright advice” on the impacts of the proposed withdrawal to his Commander in Chief.

General Petraeus also talked up recent NATO success, saying that Taliban momentum has been reversed in the hostile Helmand and Kandahar provinces. This is part of the Petraeus’ strategy: he has already taken a tougher line against the Taliban than his sacked predecessor, General Stanley McChrystal.

Another element of his strategy will become apparent when NATO and ANSF surge into the Kandahar and Paktia provinces, aiming to dislodge the Taliban and wrest control back to the Afghan government. These operations, added to others, will then be used to highlight to the Taliban that they cannot win in Afghanistan, even if they cannot be beaten.

Such a show of force, it is hoped, will allow NATO to negotiate from a position of strength, rather than that of increasingly perceived weakness.

The fact that three high ranking US officers have publicly questioned the wisdom of their political masters within three days of each other clearly points to tension over the future course of the war in Afghanistan. It also highlights the military’s belief that they must establish a position of relative strength before negotiations with the Taliban can begin.

With one week to go before Labour Party members and affiliates receive their ballot papers, all is still to play for before the new leader is announced on September 25.

David Miliband

In what was dubbed to be his keynote speech, David Miliband last night addressed activists and a large clutter of members of the media, hot on the heels of his endoresment by influential Labour left-winger Jon Cruddas.

Symbolically ‘Blair’ (not least the stage management), the hosting venue was the King Solomon Academy near Edgware Road. The school was an investment of the last government and the head teacher was trained on the Teach First programme.

While praising the men he hopes to succees, he also pointed out some of their mistakes:

“Tony and Gordon did great things. Really great things. But I know that in Tony’s time he did not focus on income inequalities, stopped devolution at Scotland and Wales when we should have carried it on, and too often defined himself against the party not against the Tories; and Gordon was wrong about the 10p rate, and wrongfooted in debates about the role of the state and the importance of crime and security as Labour issues.”

Tackling what may be thought of as traditionally ‘leftist’ areas of redistribution of power, wealth creation and building a new labour movement – his arguments still seemed more Third Way than new way. ’Moral economy’ was the new idea of the night – we were given little clarification or definition, other than: “A… much wider access to capital and wealth, across classes and the country”.

He added:

“Our values can be the foundation for us to win again. With me there will be no false choice between values and power. By putting our values into action in the right way, Labour can be the change Britain needs.

“Let’s write a new chapter that shows we are a party that doesn’t give in, doesn’t look inwards, doesn’t give up, doesn’t look backwards.

“Change our party with our eyes firmly fixed on change for our country.  Change to put power, wealth and opportunity into the hands of the many not the few.

“That is the change Britain needs.  That is the Britain we have to build.  And that is the Britain we must build together.”

David delivered his speech like a leader, but his political appeal needs to be strengthened to unite the broad-church of the Labour Party to be effective in opposition.

Ed Miliband

In his article for Pink News, Ed outlines his commitment to LGBT issues including: marriage equality, better legal protection against discrimination and discretion for those seeking asylum on grounds of sexuality-related persecution.

“I want to see heterosexual and same-sex partnerships put on an equal basis and a Labour Party that I lead will campaign to make gay marriage happen.

“I also believe we needed to show greater leadership on the question of those seeking asylum because they face persecution in their home country because of their sexuality. The fact that many forced to return to their home country were advised to be “discreet” is tantamount to an admission that the system recognised the dangers of their forced return but did too little about them.”

Andy Burnham

Andy Burnham recently told Yoosk that the Labour Party should be willing to work with the Liberal Democrats if a hung parliament situation is here to stay.

“(Labour) should treat the Lib Dems on an issue-by-issue basis. If they get things right then we should applaud them, if they don’t then we should be unstinting in our criticism.”

On tackling the issue of the postcode lottery and where a child is born determining their life chances, Andy refers to his manifesto, Aspirational Socialism.

“I think we need a country where we help people from all backgrounds to fulfill their potential abilities.”

Ed Balls

At the beginning of the week, Ed published a ‘10-point contract‘ with the party members, outlining changes and reforms needed within the Party.

Left Foot Forward caught up with Ed yesterday. In a wide-ranging interview he spoke about his campaign, his time in the Cabinet and why he’s fighting to win.

“What we actually need to do here is put together a programme that is credible on the economy and on interest rates but at the same time will deliver the decent public services and the fairness that the majority of lower and middle income families want.

“The idea that we should either only focus on unskilled working people on the one hand or only focus on middle England on the other, I think both those things are pretty out of date.”

Diane Abbott

In a low-key campaign, Diane has become somewhat infamous throughout the campaign for her outspokenness on her fellow contestants – once referring to them as “geeks in suits“. In an Independent article yesterday, she writes of the Miliband brothers and Ed Balls’ ‘pandering to Middle England’, singling out David Miliband:

“I suspect David Miliband is not suggesting a leftward shift on these issues. It does not seem to occur to him that if voters (including middle-class voters) are disillusioned with politicians, it might have something to do with the notion that we do not believe in anything anymore…

“There are many examples of the failure of the Labour Party to reflect the concerns of the working class in its policy making. The obvious one is the way that Gordon Brown (supported by Ed Balls) scrapped the 10p tax rate soley to fund a cut in the basic rate for Middle England.”

On David Miliband, she adds:

“It does not seem to occur to him that if voters (including middle-class voters) are disillusioned with politicians, it might have something to do with with the notion that we do not believe in anything anymore”

Our guest writer is Matt Cavanagh, special adviser to the Labour Government between 2003 and 2010, in the Home Office, Ministry of Defence, Treasury and Downing Street

Labour’s drug policy has few defenders, the Right thinking it not tough enough, and the Left thinking it too tough, along with the public health community – and all three agreeing that “we are losing the war on drugs”. But while the Left and the public health community debate the merits of decriminalisation or legalisation, there is a real risk that the Right’s agenda – cutting the money spent on managing drug addicts’ habits, in favour of “abstinence-based” treatment – will go unchallenged.

Few of those working on either drug enforcement or treatment would pretend that we are “winning” the war on drugs. The appalling human and financial toll both of the organised drug trade and of the chaotic lives of individual addicts is all too clear.

But any evidence-based approach should also acknowledge, despite this undeniably bleak landscape, that some trends are at least not going in the wrong direction: overall rates of drug abuse are stable or falling, and numbers in drug treatment have risen. (See page 7; within that overall trend, heroin and crack cocaine use seem to have been falling for some time; powder cocaine use seems to have started to fall; heavy cannabis use, by contrast, seems to be rising.)

That should give anyone pause before taking an axe to the drug treatment budget. Given the fiscal situation, the coalition is right to look for savings from this billion-pound drug budget – indeed many inside the Labour Government felt that, while we had been right to expand this budget a decade ago, we should have found more savings in this area ourselves during our last year.

The coalition is also right to try to accelerate the move away from input targets (numbers in treatment) and towards outcome targets (the number and proportion of users going on to drug free lives) – here too Labour should accept that we were too slow in pushing the National Treatment Agency in this direction over recent years.

But again, any new approach should acknowledge that, while painfully slow, this move towards a focus on outcomes has already begun – and not only are overall rates of drug abuse falling, and more addicts in treatment,  but the proportion completing treatment is rising, and so too is the proportion going on to drug-free lives. (See page 8.)

So there are two reasons for caution before rushing into bold policy adjustments. In fact, for those of us who believe that radical solutions – including decriminalisation, or a pharmaceutical or medical breakthrough – are too risky or too underdeveloped, this is the way drug policy is likely to remain for the foreseeable future – slow, evolutionary rather than revolutionary, the stuff of clunky workshops on ‘joined-up working’ rather than headline-grabbing initiatives.

Of course we need to try to increase the number of addicts moving on to drug free lives – but we need to do this carefully, and we need to see it as a complement, not an alternative, to reducing the harm that addicts cause – and that will include “managing” those addicts who are unlikely to kick their habit any time soon.

Critics of “managing” addiction point to the suspicious increase in methadone prescription in prison, with some justification; but before that gives the whole approach a bad name, we should remember one of the quiet success stories of the last couple of years, which was an experiment to increase prescription of heroin for hard cases who had tried and failed other kinds of treatment – an experiment which significantly reduced crime, without reducing the numbers going on to drug free lives.

Above all the different agencies involved in drug treatment need to work together to combine a focus on addicts’ needs as patients, with a focus on reducing the harm they cause to others – and that means genuinely combining these aims, rather than the two respective bureaucratic empires squabbling about who “owns” the addicts and the budgets that come with them.

Family intervention projects have shown on a smaller scale how agencies can truly work together to tackle drug addiction, alongside many other problems. Michael Gove may have included FIPs (Key workers providing intensive support to families) on his list of banned words, but if he’d looked at the cost-benefit analysis, he would have realised that the real challenge he should be setting his officials is not to think of a better name, but to think about how to make them scaleable, and how to apply the lessons in other areas of social policy.

As it stands, the coalition’s apparent hostility to spending on “managing” addicts’ habits looks like a dangerous mixture of cost-cutting (with the Treasury realising that few will want to defend spending on drug addicts) and moralising (with Iain Duncan Smith and his Social Justice Policy Group leading an increasingly influential strand in Tory thinking that state spending on drugs for addicts is not merely wasteful or low-priority, but morally wrong).

Both are simplistic – to reiterate, other than the leap of faith of decriminalisation, or some new pharmaceutical or medical breakthrough, there are no easy answers in drug policy, and responsible politicians should not pretend otherwise.

Ed Balls has told the two Miliband brothers that their row over the future direction of the party is “rerunning the debates of the past”. In a wide-ranging interview with Left Foot Forward he spoke about the mistakes made by his campaign, his role in the financial crash, but vowed “I always fight to win”.

Speaking to Left Foot Forward yesterday – as he gained the support of Ken Livingstone - Mr Balls stressed it was important to “make sure we don’t take the wrong conclusions from the election.” He said:

“From candidates who said they wanted to move beyond the new Labour / old Labour debates of the past, there is a danger of walking into caricatures. What we actually need to do here is put together a programme that is credible on the economy and on interest rates but at the same time will deliver the decent public services and the fairness that the majority of lower and middle income families want. The idea that we should either only focus on unskilled working people on the one hand or only focus on middle England on the other, I think both those things are pretty out of date. I worry that they’re rerunning the debates of the past.”

Asked whether he still thought he could win the leadership race, the Shadow Education Minister insisted that “you wait to see how the votes fall.” He suggested that although there was a “media sense that only two candidates can win,” he could “come through the middle as the head and heart candidate: the person everyone knows can both be a credible opposition and a credible prime minister.” In an apparent side-swipe to his leadership challengers, he said he was “willing to make a Labour case and not to bow, and pander, bite my lip, and fudge my message.” But Mr Balls conceded that:

“I never had the early organisation to compete with David or Ed on CLP selections. To be honest our energy in June and July went far more into the campaigning work we were doing in Parliament rather than the big effort on ringing around CLPs and maybe that was my mistake. Maybe I should have spent less time focused on Michael Gove and more time ringing up officers and CLPs around the country because I do know that it does make a difference. The important thing in politics is you’ve got to have no regrets. The right thing for me to do was to stand. I always fight to win.”

Mr Balls refused to say whether he would declare his second preference but hinted that he would not do so before ballot papers had arrived on September 1st. “Like everybody I’m going to look hard and think hard,” he added.

Turning to the economy, Mr Balls conceded that, “anybody in any position of responsibility in government or in financial regulation anywhere in the world has to share some responsibility … I take my share of responsibility”. But he refused to “take any lessons from George Osborne or David Cameron” because the Conservative party opposed and voted against the Financial Services and Markets Bill and attacked him as City Minister for being too tough on regulation and “going too far”. He wished in retrospect that he’d “been tougher”. He blamed the financial crisis on global imbalances and “irresponsible lending around the world by banks and financial institutions.” He rejected both George Osborne’s focus on excessive public borrowing or Vince Cable’s preoccupation after the 2005 general election on the excessive borrowing of UK consumers. He said there was no evidence for either explanation.

Mr Balls reiterated his opposition to Alistair Darling’s plan to reduce the deficit in four years. He said the ex-Chancellor’s approach was “more ambitious than was credible or sensible or likely to be fair”. He added that he was “very wary of this idea that we should be specifiying now what proportion of tax rises and spending cuts we should be [using to cut the deficit]” and insisted that growth had to be an important part of the mix. But Mr Balls suggested that he would do more to raise taxes than the Coalition including a “more decisive” levy on the banks, a 50p rate on those earning above £100,000, a “housing mansion wealth tax if it can be made to work”, and an internationally agreed tax on financial transactions.

On the thorny issue of electoral reform, Mr Balls – who came out in favour of the Alternative Vote in 2005 – said he would lead a campaign for a ‘Yes’ vote “in principle” but that he would have to “wait and see” whether he would do so in practice. The former Cabinet minister said, “at the moment it looks unlikely that I would be campaigning for Nick Clegg’s referendum” which he criticised for the “anti-democratic, anti-progressive, anti-liberal” reforms that were tacked on to the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. He said he didn’t think the referendum should be given “legitimacy” and suggested that there would have to be a discussion in the Shadow Cabinet and wider party before putting his weight behind a ‘Yes’ campaign.

Turning to the other topics in Left Foot Forward’s crowd-sourced list of questions, the leadership candidate described David Cameron’s Big Society as “hacking public spending, removing the state, and then allowing the voluntary sector to come in and fill the gap. To me that’s a return to the liberalism of the 19th century and the welfare of the workhouse.” On the environment, Mr Balls described the challenge of decarbonising the economy as a “long term task”, he insisted that politicians had to make the “long-term case that actually this can be good for growth and jobs and for the quality of people’s lives”. He said it was “inevitably harder during a period where the economy’s suffering and fuel prices have been higher to say to people they should pay more”.

Turning to party reform, Mr Balls, who published a 10-point contract with party members this week, said “I think there’s a bit of a contradiction between leadership candidates who say we must listen to the party more but then start off the whole leadership contest by announcing they have all the answers.” He added that he would rather see the policy making process start with questions and then “hear what our local communities are telling us.” He lamented the decline in working class representation in Parliament which he attributed to the cost of seeking selection.

Our guest writer is Jonathan Cox, of the College of Community Organising, part of David Miliband’s Movement for Change

Many senior figures in the Labour Party have responded to the election defeat by calling for reforms to our structure, for more local campaigning, and to make the Party a living, breathing movement, to complement the electoral machine. No-one doubts that Labour can learn from the success of the model of community organising that has been pioneered by London Citizens and CITIZENS UK.

But so far, only one candidate has understood that the most enduring legacy of community organising is not the winning of the campaign, but the development of people as local community leaders.

That is why David Miliband, through his Movement for Change, has not imposed an issue from above and then sent activists a campaign letter and press release with identikit instructions for action.

Instead, David has identified people who are passionate to change their communities and then paid to train them in community organising so that the 1,000 people enrolled in the Movement for Change’s Future Leaders programme are equipped to take action with their local Party on the most pressing issue in their area.

Having undergone the training himself, David understands one of the central tenets of community organising: that to build a movement you have to put the development of people before policies. So the answer to the rejuvenation of the Labour Party’s grassroots is not to adopt other organisations’ campaigns and turn them into Labour campaigns, but to invest in the development of our members and harness their desire to tackle local issues.

The Movement for Change is training people on a housing development on Tyneside to work with the local Labour Party to get the developer to tarmac their road after three years of delay and obfuscation.

We have trained young leaders in Manchester to work with a local councillor and residents and on their estate to identify worthwhile and winnable issues. And, we have developed leaders in Norwich to organise a campaign against the harsh Conservative Council cuts to street lighting. The Movement for Change is working with people right across the country to organise and win campaigns on local issues – people who will gain skills and experiences that will far outlast the length of the campaign.

And, if you are really to put people before policies in the Labour Party, then we must do more to move towards a less bureaucratic and more relational culture.

Over the past few months I have asked almost everyone I have trained why it is they joined the Labour Party. Not a single person has told me that they joined to pass resolutions at GC or approve the minutes of the last meeting. I have heard some amazing stories that really help to understand people’s motivation to be Labour and provided a basis for collective action – but precious little time is devoted to such relational activity in our Party meetings.

If we are to be a Movement for Change we have to be able to understand and relate to fellow members in our constituency. It is very difficult to do this unless we invest time in getting to know them – and the best way to do this is through the 1-2-1 meeting, which we train all our Future Leaders to do. Our Future Leaders are already seeing that taking the time to meet other individual members and understand their concerns can transform the ability of a local party to act effectively as well as ensuring that it meets the needs and desires of its members.

Putting people before policies is both radical and counter-cultural. It requires a party leadership that respects and trusts its membership to take autonomous action to address local injustices and make the Labour Party relevant to local communities, whether we are in government or opposition, either nationally or locally.

We rightly treasure our traditions and institutions, and a relational culture cannot spring up overnight, but unless we change to our focus from policies to people the Labour Party will not become the movement for change we know it needs to be.

Nick Clegg weighed in to the debate on the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) report into the Budget this afternoon, taking to the airwaves to criticise the report for being “by definition partial” – yet in April, in the final TV leaders’ debate, he cited the IFS for their praising of his party’s general election manifesto.

The Liberal Democrat leader had said:

“I was really delighted at the Institute of Fiscal Studies when they compared the three parties’ manifestos this week said very, very clearly, and very directly, that our proposal to lift the income tax threshold to £10,000 is the best incentive to work.”

The deputy prime minister is now, however, challenging the IFS’ finding that the Budget, very, very clearly, and very directly, is “clearly regressive“. Mr Clegg told Channel 4 News:

“Much of the IFS analysis was about benefits, but we want to get people off benefits and into work.

“That is a plan for real fairness, that is progressive and I think that is a richer understanding of what fairness is about than a single snapshot, that doesn’t – that simpy doesn’t – provide the full picture of what we’re trying to do over the coming months and years.”

Mr Clegg is in good company today criticising the IFS’ work. Mark Wallace, formerly of the TaxPayers’ Alliance and now a political consultant has today claimed that the IFS “swing to the left”. While Phillip Blond in a Sky interview claimed that the research was unreliable since it excluded the impact of “capital gains tax increases on the rich”.

James Browne, senior research economist at the IFS, told Left Foot Forward:

“The capital gains tax measures that were excluded only came to about £800m compared to £4.1 billion in welfare measures excluded by the Treasury in their assessment.”

But while Clegg continues to defend the fairness of his Budget despite the evidence, a number of Conservatives are seeking to move the goal posts.

Last week, George Osborne claimed that the Budget was fair when examined on an “intergenerational” basis – a claim refuted at the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Roundtable; Treasury minister Mark Hoban today invoked the Thatcherite idea of trickle down economics as a basis for the fairness of the Budget; and as Sunder Katwala outlines Spectator editor Fraser Nelson has called for the requirement to measure the impact of the Budget and other Government decisions on minority groups to be scrapped.

Our guest writer is Sunder Katwala, General Secretary of the Fabian Society

The Conservative right is becoming increasingly exercised about what they are calling the “landmine” of the government’s equality legislation.

Theresa May wrote to George Osborne and other collegues ahead of the Emergency Budget to remind ministers of their legal responsibility to show that the impact of decisions on disadvantaged groups have been considered. (This is also, of course, one of the core political commitments of this government, given its commitment to “progressive austerity”).

The Fawcett Society has begun legal action which will find out whether the government did undertake an assessment of its budget’s impact on women. House of Commons library analysis has suggested women were disproportionately affected by the Budget.

Fraser Nelson, editor of The Spectator, has blogged comparing Treasury minister Mark Hoban’s serial refusal to answer the question this morning to the famous Paxman-Howard Newsnight interview. Nelson says that the hapless minister’s ordeal “was more than car crash radio”:

When Labour retreated, it sewed several landmines in the political territory it was about to cede. One of them was Harman’s Equalities Act, which mandates government “to consider how decisions might help to reduce inequalities associated with socio-economic disadvantage”…

Their calculation was that if they did this quietly enough, and in technicalities, the Cameroons would not wise up to it because of their aversion to detail. Cameron should have repealed the Equalities Act instantly.

The “equality landmines” language had earlier been coined by Nelson’s Spectator colleague Peter Hoskin, noting that: “in highlighting this, May was only doing her job”.

But there is a major political problem for those on the right who would challenge the Equality Act. It is indeed part of the Labour government’s legacy – but it is also (in theory at least) part of the new “progressive” centre-ground of British politics. If Nelson’s analysis does represent the Tory view of the Equality legislation, it is an argument which can not speak its name.

The final reading of the Bill in the Commons was passed by 332 votes to 8, with only six Conservative MPs opposing it. Phillip Davies, Mark Pritchard, Ann Widdecombe and Nicholas Winterton were the only Tory refuseniks, with Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone acting as tellers. They were joined in the no lobby by Dai Davies (Labour) and the DUP trio of Jeffrey Donaldson, Nigel Dodds and Sammy Wilson.

The Conservatives did vote against the Bill on second reading but Theresa May stressed on final reading that this did not signify opposition to it, but was rather on a “reasoned amendment”, which had in fact emphasised several areas where the Bill should have done more to reduce inequality.

Nelson puts the failure to spot this “landmine” down to a lack of attention to detail among the Cameroons, yet he is in fact challenging a central and deliberate part of the Tory leader’s “brand decontamination” strategy.

As for the Liberal Democrats, their only substantive criticism was that the Equality Bill did not go much further. Lynne Featherstone, now Equality Minister, could hardly now accept a u-turn on what she told the Commons last year:

“My party welcomes the Bill and the way that it brings all sorts of legislation together. We oppose the Government on almost nothing in it, but believe that it should have gone further. I have great concerns that the things that were not included in the Bill, or in respect of which the Bill does not go far enough, will not see the light of day if there is a change of Government.”

The Coalition government has two options. It could accept and uphold the legal obligrations on the government now has, as Theresa May advises her colleagues they must do. As well as fulfilling their legal duties, this would politically make them “heirs to Harriet Harman” – and so part of a new centre-ground consensus that reducing inequality is a core responsibility of government.

If the Coalition rejects these legal obligations as inappropriate, then it must surely take Fraser Nelson’s advice – “Cameron should have repealed the Equalities Act instantly” – and declare its intention to repeal the legislation. The Conservatives could then return to the Thatcherite argument that “equality is a mirage”, or at least make the case that inequality will trickle-down to the poor in the end, bringing much rejoicing in the Coffee House as repentant centrists see the true blue light.

Were the Act simply a “scorched earth” piece of politically correct nonsense from an out-of-touch outgoing administration, couldn’t a new administration simply accept the grateful cheers of the nation for a restoration of common sense by striking it from the statue books. But they surely can not be for the Equality Act and against it at the same time. Politically, that is simply howling at the moon.

The idea that budgets will be made in the courts and not by elected politicians is rather mythologised. The government will need to show that it had a process which ensured the equality impact was studied seriously. The downside is political embarrassment if it comes to light that policy decisions were made when others would have been fairer.

The Coalition don’t have the votes, since the Tory right is not about to march the Liberal Democrats through the lobbies to repeal the Equality Act. But this is not just about the facts of Coalition life. It is very difficult to see that the Tory right would prevail on this with a Tory majority government. The Tory frontbench does not agree with them or, at least, to the extent that it does, it can not say so publicly.

Lynne Featherstone had also, on Second Reading, specifically argued that the public duty measures in the Bill were“very weak” and should have been stronger – particularly to ensure that a future government could not simply pay lip service to the idea of inequality:

“These are uncertain political times, and it causes me concern that future Ministers might be anti-equality. Powers left to a Minister in future will be powers for a Minister to undo what has been done today, if they should, by any chance, not share an equal conviction in the equality legislation …  It would be easy to knock the proposed measures, as we heard to some degree from the Conservatives.

“However, legislation in the equalities field has been the advance guard of change … [We have to change the culture] … The Bill is an important foot solider in that regard. It sends out a clear and determined message about how the world will have to change. However, legislation must will the means, not just the ends, and we have to ensure that what we put down in law is matched by the will and resources to ensure its delivery.”

Now that Featherstone has responsibility for this policy area, it is inconceivable that she would accept the government arguing that these legal responsibilities are too onerous.

Millions of people around the world are suffering the effects of extreme weather events – matching up to predictions long made by climate scientists of more frequent and more intense weather events due to global warming.

Whilst a single weather event cannot be attributed to climate change, a number of scientists are highlighting that current experiences fit with the climate trends they have been predicting. This is not evident in most mainstream media reporting – so here I examine what has been reported and how this matches what scientists expected.

In Greenland, an iceberg three times the size of Manhattan has broken off the Petermann Glacier. Professor Jason Box of The Ohio State University wrote on his blog:

“This is the largest single area loss observed for Greenland. Petermann is one of a few remaining floating glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere and among the largest…

While it is unreasonable to pin an individual cracking event of a glacier on global warming, even if enormous, the retreat of Petermann glacier is most certainly part of a pattern of global warming.”

The same story was reported by the Associated Press:

“In the Arctic Ocean itself, the summer melt of the vast ice cap has reached unprecedented proportions. Satellite data show the ocean area covered by ice last month was the second-lowest ever recorded for July.”

The floods that hit Pakistan have affected around a fifth of the country’s land mass. Pakistan’s Prime Minister says 20 million people have been made homeless and Maurizio Giuliano, UN humanitarian operations spokesman told the Guardian that at least 36,000 people are believed to have potentially fatal acute watery diarrhoea (AWD) were being treated for cholera.

Roads, irrigation canals and electricity generating stations have been destroyed. The impact on the country’s agriculture is expected to cause food shortages and price spikes. The UN has said the final toll could exceed the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake combined.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported in 2007 that rains have grown heavier for 40 years over north Pakistan and predicted greater flooding this century in south Asia’s monsoon region.

The report also predicted a doubling of disastrous droughts in Russia this century and cited studies foreseeing catastrophic fires during dry years. It also said Russia would suffer large crop losses. Russia is experiencing its gravest heat wave for over a millennium, according to Russia’s Met Office. Wired Magazine recently reported that:

“The Russian heat wave has persisted since late June, with daytime temperatures at least 12 Fahrenheit degrees above normal — and often much more — for over a month. In Moscow alone, an estimated 300 people a day have died. The temperatures in Russia threaten wheat harvests and have sent global prices rising in a manner reminiscent of the lead-up to 2008’s global food riots.”

Wildfires covering some 672 sq miles prompting Putin to introduce an export ban on grain. This in turn has triggered a spike in food prices. The knock-on effect of this is already evident in Indonesia, where the cost of flour has already risen by 10%.

Reacting to the floods in Pakistan, and to the heat in Russia, Omar Baddour, chief of climate data management applications at World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), told Reuters:

“We will always have climate extremes. But it looks like climate change is exacerbating the intensity of the extremes”.

The Jakarta Globe reports that Indonesia is experiencing its most extreme weather events in recorded history with high waves, high winds and excessive rainfall. Indonesian coral reefs have also experienced severe damage – so-called “bleaching” – with reports of around 80% of species there dying and this has been linked to climate change. A spokesman for the country’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) said: “The combination of global warming and the La Nina phenomenon makes everything exceed normalcy.”

The United States too are experiencing tornadoes, floods, heat waves and other out of the ordinary extreme weather events. In May of this year, Tennessee experienced its worst rain deluge for more than 1000 years. Our sister site in the US, ThinkProgress, has also mapped some of the other weather events around America this summer and how they match up to the predictions of the 2009 U.S. Global Change Research Program report.

In China, scores of people have been left dead by mudslides triggered by heavy rainfalls. The IPCC’s report predicted more frequent flooding in this century, and said that rains have increased in northwest China by up to 33 percent since 1961.

In the southern hemisphere, Australia has experienced its hottest decade on record with a recent ‘Big Dry’ of droughts, fires and dust storms.  The Independent spoke of Australia’s ‘global warming ground zero’:

“In the Riverland, one of the nation’s major horticulture areas, dying vines and parched lemon trees attest to critical water shortages. Farmers have had their water allocations slashed during the recent crippling drought; 200 sold up, and many of those who hung on are struggling.”

Elsewhere, Oxfam says that Niger is currently being hit by a “double disaster” of heavy rains and flooding – compounding food shortages caused by a prolonged drought. The Niger River has reached its highest level for more than 80 years and left nearly 70,000 people homeless.

There are a number of instances when scientists have predicted extreme weather events; sometimes when events have taken place and yet received little or no mainstream media attention.

This article is jointly written by Will Straw and David Taylor

I almost fell off my chair last week when I received a call from International Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell, congratulating Left Foot Forward on our story about a leaked internal DfID document and inviting us for a conversation about the Coalition’s development policies.

David Taylor and I went to his spacious office near Buckingham Palace on Monday. “Are you the Labour apparatchik?” he jokingly asked David who heads up the Labour Campaign for International Development as well as writing for LFF. After taking our seats, the shoeless Mitchell was quick to claim that the perception created by the leak was “total and utter bollocks” and that any new Government had the right to a “bottom up” review of existing practice. Mitchell insists that his new approach – focusing on results rather than budget lines – is the only way to win public support for development in a tightened spending environment.

Mitchell was keen to stress that we should wait until the conclusion of his review of DfID’s operations before passing judgement on his programme. This is a reasonable point of view but we’d be advised to avoid holding our breath. According to a Written Parliamentary answer, the review of Bilateral and Multilateral aid will not conclude until early 2011. With what’s being dropped in the public domain, it is hardly surprising that NGO reaction has been one of concern.

Labour’s record

Mitchell was quick to claim that the Labour party’s response to his “output-based approach” had been tribal when the “real enemies to aid were not in Government but sceptics out there” (a reference to right-wing press).

We put it to the Development Secretary that the Tories were being tribal themselves by misrepresenting Labour’s approach as entirely “input-based” when a number of output-based commitments such as “Support 8 million children in school in Africa by 2010″ from a 2009 White Paper were in the list of commitments that Mitchell wants to replace. Mitchell told us that “I never rubbish the last Government’s record on international development”. He has certainly used Green Papers and Select Committee hearings to praise Labour’s record but the day before we met, a Sunday Times interview with him reported:

“the Conservatives are determined there will not be a repeat of the kind of abuses that slipped through the net under Labour, such as the time the President of Malawi bought himself a luxury jet with British taxpayers’ money.”

The truth in this instance was that DfID clawed back that money by withdrawing aid to the Government and channelling it through NGOs until a time the Malawian government gave reassurances it would not happen again.

Meanwhile, DfID has been praised for its record on aid effectiveness. Mitchell’s claim that, “We want to do for quality what Labour did for quantity” is a nice sound bite, but inaccurate. Indeed, the proud record may be in jeopardy. As we were meeting, a new report by leading global affairs think tank Chatham House warned against Mitchell’s ‘cash-on-delivery’ approach. It argues that in places like Tanzania – where UK aid has helped four million more children in school by financing the construction of 4,000 primary schools – the emphasis must be on the development of national systems and capacity rather than rewarding outputs.

We put it to Andrew Mitchell that instead of being on the defensive about UK aid he should be bolder in defending Britain’s proud record. If he believes UK aid is not a partisan issue then why not rebut sceptics by being more assertive? As we have reported, the last Government left DfID a world leading aid ministry that was regarded by NGOs and the OECD alike as being a leader in aid effectiveness and spending money well.

Watching the commitments

We pressed Mitchell that any dropped spending commitments (for example, £8.5 billion on education and £6 billion on health) would need to be replaced by equivalent commitments that brought the same results in terms of kids in school or hospitals built. If that can be achieved without a clear commitment on funding, then Mitchell will deserve praise, but the jury is out until we know the full picture.

The Secretary of State confirmed that money would be prioritised on countries suffering from conflict, particularly Afghanistan, and those in the Horn of Africa – a region which he said would “run through this administration like a river”. The focus is no bad thing, but we pressed Mitchell on whether this would mean money being diverted from existing commitments. Would it, for example, mean less children in school in Tanzania or midwives in Malawi? Mitchell assured us that the increases in DfID’s budget, in line with the 0.7 per cent commitment, would mean this wouldn’t be the case.

A subsequent leak, reported in the Observer, suggested that DfID would drop its commitment to help partner governments “abolish user fees”. Mitchell stated that basic services would be “free at the point of need”, while maintaining he would take a “non-ideological” approach to whether basic services were provided by the public or private sector. Free at the point of need is different than ‘free at the point of use’ and many in the development sector are deeply critical of the plans in the Tories’ pre-election Green Paper for ‘vouchers’ for private schools and private health care provision. Oxfam have concluded that:

“The vast majority of evidence shows that public services deliver best for poor people in most countries.”

On climate change, Mitchell obfuscated on whether aid for climate change adaptation would be additional to existing development spending. He said only that it would be decided after the spending review in October. Mitchell had previously stated he would wait until after the Copenhagen talks before making a decision on climate aid.

***

Andrew Mitchell, fresh from a trip to Pakistan, deserves praise for reaching out to his critics and clearly explaining the rationale behind his plans. But questions remain over what will replace the list of cherished commitments, whether it will genuinely deliver results, and what impact it will have on other countries – like Japan and Italy – who barely need an excuse to cut aid. We’ll be watching all the way.

On the Today programme this morning, Treasury minister Mark Hoban failed to answer Justin Webb’s question about the fairness of the Budget six times.

Hoban was interviewed in the wake of the independent IFS analysis that the June Budget was regressive and would hit the poorest household the most, repeating the line that the Government “went through a very detailed distributional analysis at the time of the Budget”.

Listen to it:

The originial IFS report published shortly after the Budget detailed how the Treasury’s own distributional assessment examined only the impact of Budget measures to 2012-13 and included measures announced by Labour in the March Budget. The IFS’ June study concluded that the Budget was regressive if considered in isolation and over the course of the entire Parliament.

The new report, released today, assesses the full impact of the Coalition’s Budget over the entirety of the parliament, and outlines that, including housing benefit, disability allowance and tax credit changes, the Budget is “clearly regressive”.

Here is a transcript of the Hoban and Webb exchange on the fairness of the Budget:

Justin Webb: Can I just ask you this quick question: have you conducted an assessment which you are required to do by law by the equalities act of 2010 to find out what affect this budget has on ethnic minorities, disabled, other vulnerable groups?

Mark Hoban: Look Justin we went through a very detailed distributional analysis at the time of the Budget, it was the most extensive piece of work that anyone has done…

JW: But have you conducted this assessment?

MH: And it looked across a wide range of households in a way that other governments haven’t done, and I think the choice that we faced…

JW: So hold on, can I just get straight from you, have you conducted this legal assessment or not?

MH: Justin, we have gone through the most detailed and rigourous assessment of the distributional impact of this Budget than any government…

JW: So you’ve not, you’ve not actually done the assessment that you’re required to do under the 2010 act?

MH: We’ve gone through the most rigourous assessment of the impact of this Budget on families…

JW: But Not this formal assessment?

MH: We’ve gone through, Justin this is the best and most detailed piece of work any government has done on the impact of their Budget on families and households…

JW: Can I just get it clear from you, you’ve not done the formal assessment that some people think you are required to do under the equalities act 2010?

MH: Justin I think you know you are looking at detail rather than actually at recognising the fact we had to take some difficult decisions in the Budget to tackle the deficit we inherited from Labour, the choice we faced was either to take action now or to do nothing…

JW: But people are going to conclude that you’ve not conducted that, I mean you call it a detail, people are going to conclude now that you haven’t conducted it and that’s a fair conclusion.

Poorer families will be hit harder than rich families by the Coalition’s June Budget, new analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies has revealed. The IFS says that “once all of the benefit cuts are considered, the tax and benefit changes announced in the emergency Budget are clearly regressive” as “they hit the poorest households more than those in the upper-middle of the income distribution in cash, let alone percentage, terms”.

Labour leadership candidate Ed Balls called the analysis, “the final nail in the coffin for George Osborne’s claims to have delivered anything but the most regressive Budget in a generation.” The Chancellor had claimed that his Budget was a ‘progressive Budget’ that would hit the richest more than the poorest, yet the analysis clearly states that:

“IFS researchers have previously cast doubt on this claim, noting that the main measures which will lead to losses amongst better-off households were announced by the previous government, and that the reforms to be in place by 2014–15 are generally regressive“.

The IFS analysis goes on:

“The distributional analysis in the Budget documents also excluded the effects of some cuts to housing benefit, Disability Living Allowance and tax credits that will tend to hit the bottom half of the income distribution more than the top half…

“Low-income households of working age lose the most as a proportion of income from the tax and benefit reforms announced in the emergency Budget. Those who lose the least are households of working age without children in the upper half of the income distribution.”

Today’s IFS analysis confirms Left Foot Forward’s coverage of the Budget:

• On June 22nd, Tim Horton and Howard Reed were the first analysts to outline the regressive nature of the tax and benefit changes in the Budget;

• On June 26th, Will Straw and Tom Phillips published data showing that deprived areas would be hit hardest by cuts;

• On June 27th Horton and Reed published a briefing paper for the TUC which concluded that the impact of the Coalition’s spending cuts was “deeply regressive … All households are hit considerably, but the poorest households are hit the hardest”.

Another day, another outraged Daily Mail ‘benefit scroungers’ story – one which, once again, is sensationalist, tells only half the story and features the obligatory quote from Tory work and pensions minister “Calamity” Chris Grayling. The headline screamed “More than £1BILLION lost to disability benefit fraud and error – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg” – that’s £1 billion over six years, the vast majority of it down to error, not fraud; not that you’d know it from the headline.

Independent fact-checking website FullFact.org today took the Mail to task and unearthed the real figures. Patrick Casey reports:

When we contacted the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to find the relevant figures, we were directed to statistics, given nearly a month ago, in a written parliamentary answer to Labour MP, Phil Wilson. Given that concerns have previously been raised about the lumping of fraud and error together in news reports, it is worth checking how the two add up for the DLA.

Looking at the figures for the last year, which can also be found in Table 2.1 of the DWP statistics on benefit fraud and error (published 27 May), it can be seen that while £220 million was lost in fraud and error, only £60 million of this was actually fraud…

Underpayments through error for 2008/9 are estimated at £290 million – £70 million more than the amount overpaid through error and fraud. Looking back at previous years, a trend emerges, as the table below shows:

Year	Overpayments	Underpayments	Net
2006/7	£170 million	£230 million	+ £60 million
2007/8	£190 million	£250 million	+ £60 million
2008/9	£200 million	£260 million	+ £60 million
2009/10	£220 million	£290 million	+ £70 million

Such figures do not in any way make fraudulent claims any more permissible, they simply highlight a bigger picture, ignored by the report in the Daily Mail. The estimated amount lost to fraud for 2009/10 was £60 million, less than a quarter of the amount not paid to people through errors leading to underpayments.

Looking at the balance of payments caused by error, it can be seen that errors caused £160 million in overpayments, but amounted to £290 million in underpayments.

FullFact conclude that:

While there is nothing inaccurate about the statistics quoted in the Daily Mail report, the article completely ignores the other statistics that should go hand in hand with any record of overpayments. The large sums for both overpayments and underpayments, suggest room for improvement in efficiency when the Work and Pensions Secretary unveils his reforms to the system in the coming months.

But these figures show that if Iain Duncan Smith managed to create a system with all DLA claimants receiving the correct amount, the Government could actually stand to lose several million. Perhaps this is what the headline meant when it announced the figures represented, “the tip of the iceberg.”

Last week, Left Foot Forward exposed the secret briefings on workless households from the DWP, which led to several stories in the right-wing press about 250,000 households in the UK ‘where no one has ever had a job’, again accompanied by quotes from Mr Grayling; and the week before City AM reported that the DWP had claimed that the proportion of households in London where no-one has ever had a job was 23 per cent – the true figure is seven per cent.

For a full list of Grayling’s calamities this year see here.

The Paralympic Games start in just over two years’ time. However, many London Tube stations are still not accessible to wheelchair users. As any disabled person who has ever tried to get a lift installed anywhere knows, lifts cost money. A lot of money. So it is a shame, but not a surprise, to disabled people that six step free access schemes were deferred last year, saving £50 million.

London Underground says there are 61 step free, accessible stations in London but, as last night’s BBC News investigation showed, the lifts are too small for more than one person – especially since most wheelchair users would always need a carer with them on public transport.

As Steve Smith, the son of a long-term wheelchair user, told the BBC:

“The underground stations with ‘accessible lifts’ as you could see in the report are too small and not easily accessible for a disabled person and their luggage and any carers. God knows how they would feel if they suffered from claustrophobia!

“If they put proper lifts of a decent size in, they would be accessible to everyone who needs help accessing the underground – not just some of the disabled.”

A spokesperson for Transport for London told Left Foot Forward:

“We would like all stations to be step-free, but it costs a lot of money – a lot more than people think. There are 8,500 step-free buses, all black taxi drivers have ramps and drivers are trained to assist disabled people. All of the Docklands Light Railway stations have lifts.

“Disability is not only about people in wheelchairs – we now have announcements and hearing loops for those who are deaf and blind.”

Unfortunately for the Coalition Government, they are currently making massive spending cuts wherever possible – just when spending extra money on sport and access would have allowed the rest of the world to see London for the wonderful place it is.

Unfortunately for Paralympic athletes and their disabled fans, disabled people already feel that their services are at the top of the list of things to make cuts to. So while it is to be hoped that Tube stations will become more accessible in the next two years, disabled Tube users cannot be blamed for having their doubts.

It is to be hoped, however, that the Government will consider the fact that if and when Paralympic athletes and disabled fans are able to get around the city, they will spend just as much money as anyone else during London 2012 and will, in this way, contribute to our economy, just as Olympic athletes and their non disabled fans will.

Ed Miliband again side-stepped the question of why he hadn’t been more vocal in his opposition to unpopular Labour policies in an interview with Yoosk.com.

When asked “why did you a not make your opposition vocal, and join a cabinet which was pushing so many polices that you disagreed with?”, he replied only that he was “very proud of what we did as a government”.

Watch it:

The shadow energy and climate change secretary, writing in this morning’s Guardian, has pledged a “once in a generation realignment of politics”, vowing to offer a home to disgruntled Liberal Democrat voters – to which the Lib Dem press office replied:

“Dear Ed. Looked again. Labour’s still the warmongering, authoritarian, spendaholic party we thought. That was you in the cabinet, right?”

One of the questions put to David Miliband, meanwhile, was on his community organiser proposals, to which he answered:

“If you have three or four years until the next election, you can make sure that in every community in the country there is a community leader trained to be part of that movement for change that needs to exist, whether or not Labour is in government.”

Yoosk interviewed all five Labour leadership candidates, adding the five highest-voted questions for each candidate to the five most popular questions for the whole panel in conducting their crowdsourced interviews, as explained during the question-gathering process on Left Foot Forward last month.

• The other candidates’ answers will be released on Yoosk’s YouTube channel throughout the week, concluding with the questions that were put to the whole panel.

UPDATE 12.10

The Ed Miliband campaign have been in touch to point out that in The Guardian’s recent interview with their candidate, Decca Aikenhead wrote:

“On the Iraq war, some of his rivals have disputed his claim to have been opposed from the outset, but a friend of his confirms to me categorically that this was his position in 2003.”

Ed Miliband’s position on Iraq has been criticised by other candidates during the leadership contest. In a Radio 5 Live debate, Ed Balls questioned Miliband’s claims to have opposed the Iraq war at the time.

George Osborne’s declaration that his first Budget was “fair” because it attempted to prevent debt being carried over from one generation to the next has been called into question by a group of leading economists brought together by the Bank of England.

Facing criticism about the distributional impact of the June Budget, George Osborne sought last week to include “intergenerational fairness” into his definition of “progressiveness and fairness”. In a speech to the City, the Chancellor said:

“And fairness extends across the generations, for what is fair about forcing the next generation to pay for the debts of our generation?”

But the summary of the Bank of England’s recent Monetary Policy Roundtable included a line which stated that:

“risk should be shared out across generations: a single generation should not be expected to bear all the costs of having the bad luck to experience a war or a financial crisis directly.”

Most of the increase in Government spending in recent years has been caused by financial interventions or automatic stabilisers such as increased unemployment benefits. Total spending was around 41 per cent until the financial crash. It stood at 47.5 per cent in 2009-10. (see Chart C5 of the June Budget)

The minutes of the meeting are reported in today’s Financial Times and cast doubt over the Bank of England’s stance on spending cuts. The paper reports that:

“Economists present at the event said there was less room for the Bank to offset public spending cuts with lower interest rates, because the accelerator pedal of monetary policy had already been pushed to the floor. Meanwhile, they said, leading economies worldwide were planning to take an axe to public spending simultaneously, potentially amplifying the pain…

“The average forecast for growth next year is 2 per cent among independent economists, but the Bank believes growth will be 2.8 per cent.”

This article is jointly written by Shamik Das and Will Straw

With the Labour leadership race entering the home straight, the result of the Edinburgh East primary was cast in doubt this evening when it became clear that only 300 people had voted in a contest which used the wrong rules.

The Edinburgh East primary was held using first-past-the-post in contravention of the Labour party’s rulebook. A spokesman for the Labour party confirmed to Left Foot Forward that CLP supporting nominations must be held using the transferable vote system – also known as Alternative Vote – the same as used in the election itself. Around 1,000 ballot papers were distributed in recent weeks with a reported turnout of 27 per cent. The turnout was significantly lower than the 5,000 people who voted in the Bassetlaw primary.

The YouGov poll of Labour Party members last month indicated that Ed Miliband won 61 per cent of second preferences from supporters of Diane Abbott, Ed Balls, and Andy Burnham. If this held true in the Edinburgh it would have been enough to give Ed Miliband the narrowest of victories, possibly a margin of just one vote.

Local MP, Sheila Gilmore, nominated Diane Abbott but had pledged to give her vote – which is equivalent to the ballots of 1,000 members in the CLP section of the electoral college – to the winner of the primary. She will now come under pressure to organise a re-run.

While the David Miliband campaign claimed victory, a spokesman for Ed Miliband told Left Foot Forward:

“This result shows that the leadership election is absolutely all to play for. Ed intends to use the next few weeks to continue speaking to as many labour members and trade union members as possible. His message that Labour must change to win again is being well received.”

UPDATE 18.17

The David Miliband campaign have been in touch asking us to clarify that the Edinburgh East CLP’s supporting nomination went to Ed Miliband earlier this summer. The primary vote which concluded today was an indicative poll to influence Sheila Gilmore’s vote in the electoral college. It is, of course, up to the MP as to whether to cast her vote on this basis, particularly in light of the question marks over the rules used in the ballot.

UPDATE 10.15 24/8

Jon Rentoul has a blog this morning questioning the methodology used in our analysis above. I wanted to post the following comment but the Indy’s bizarre comments system won’t let me using Open ID. It’s here instead:

“A fair point and glad you liked the picture. But the reason for our post was not to conclusively suggest that Ed Miliband had won. How could we know? Indeed, the sample of 329 ABB supporters is sufficiently small that the margin of victory would have been well inside the margin of error as your post also shows.

“The point of the post was to show that the election had been conducted using an electoral system (first-past-the-post) which the party never uses and which both Milibands are committed to opposing. Given that the outcome is being used to determine how Sheila Gilmore votes, it should either be re-run or she should adopt the Burkean position of almost all her PLP colleagues and vote for the Miliband (or other candidate) that she wants to see as leader.”

The latest quarterly survey of business confidence from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) shows business confidence down for the first time since the first quarter of 2009 – the middle of the recession. The confidence figures indicate the economic recovery will slow down in the second half of 2010, with the chief executive of the ICAEW saying there was “a degree of uncertainty among business leaders on what the future holds”.

The group most worried by the downturn are small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), amongst whom confidence has fallen seven points to +18 in the ICAEW/Grant Thornton Business Confidence Monitor  Q3 2010 Confidence Index. Last month, Left Foot Forward reported business secretary Vince Cable’s lack of action on getting banks to lend more to SMEs; an estimated 4.8million SMEs account for more than 50 per cent of private sector employment and turnover – these businesses are the driving force of the economy.

Amongst listed companies, confidence is down six points to +23, amongst FTSE 100 and mid 250 companies confidence is down three points to +24, and amongst all private companies confidence is down five points to +19. Confidence amongst large private companies, however, has increased slightly, up one point to +21.

By region, confidence is down sharply in the South East and in Northern England, by 20 points to +10 and by 22 points to +6 respectively, with business confidence in London, East England, East Midlands, West Midlands, York & Humber and Wales also down. Only the South West, North West and Scotland saw modest increases.

And by industry, confidence in the manufacturing & engineering and transport, storage & communications sectors is up, remains stable in the property sector and is down in the banking, insurance & finance, business services and retail & wholesale sectors.

Michael Izza, chief exec of ICAEW, said:

“What the economic impact of the cuts in public spending will be is still unclear. Government needs to ensure that the action it takes doesn’t undermine the recovery. More importantly, it needs to deliver on its commitment to ensure that the UK is truly open for business and investment. It must do all it can to promote economic growth as a means of delivering long-term economic stability.”

While Douglas McWilliams, chief exec of the Centre for Economics and Business Research (cebr), said:

“Business confidence has weakened significantly as businesses acknowledge the path to recovery contains further challenges, with a fast return to strong growth by no means guaranteed.

“Currently the UK economy is running at more than 4% below pre-recession levels. The public sector cuts outlined by the new Government and consequent reduction in public sector demand will have a signifi cant downward effect on growth, constraining take up of spare capacity as the private sector recovers.”

Our guest writer is Pete Challis, former vice chair of the LGA Housing Committee

Money to fund government grants for the Coalition’s New Home Bonus scheme will be shifted away from councils in the North and London and given to those in the South, according to research. It was recently reported by Left Foot Forward that the Government would not be giving any new money to fund the scheme – it will in fact be funded by money that goes towards paying for local council services. For each new home built, a bonus of six years worth of council tax should be paid to the relevant council.

However, by using CLG data on housing completions for the period 2004 to 2009 makes it possible to see which regions will come off worst by changing the way this money is distributed. The Government estimates that by year six, £1.5bn will be distributed to councils through the Home Bonus scheme.

The Communities and Local Government website saying that almost £29bn was distributed to councils in formula grants in 2010/11. Assuming that £1.5bn is redistributed and formula grants stay the same, it has been found that London and the North West  would lose £125m and £65m respectively, whilst the South East would gain £108m and the Eastern region £71m.

Using housing completions to distribute formula grant shifts resources for day to day council services from the North, West Midlands and London and gives to the South East and Eastern regions.

Housing minister, Grant Shapps, said:

“We will not tell communities how or where to build, or how they should grow. But the New Homes Bonus will ensure that those communities that go for growth reap the benefits of development, not just the costs.”

Research used by the Financial Times claims that: “more than 42,000 new homes have been delayed or dropped since the election” – leaving the government open to criticism for not doing enough for the 1.8 million households on housing waiting lists. Funding to build new social and affordable housing has been subjected to review and spending cuts. Redistributing money given to councils to pay for services such as refuse collection and social care to pay for housing development is an ill-thought blow to local government budgets.