Iran the Green Revolution

February 9, 2010 – 7:21 pm

There seems to be growing external and internal support for the green revolution in Iran. This is the latest site I have found promoting the internal resistance.

http://www.li.com/

By Clive Soley | Posted in Lord Soley | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment

Schoolgirls

February 8, 2010 – 11:16 pm

I agree with Lord Soley, not only that there may be dangers in uninspected home education, but also that children miss out on many advantages if they do not spend their time in the company of other schoolchildren. Learning to mix, discipline, sport, drama, outings, various aspects of learning that are not available at home. I was reminded of this when I went to a good girls’ school a few days ago as part of the Lords’ outreach programme. This programme sends peers to all sorts of schools all over the country to speak to older pupils about the work of the House of Lords and give them the chance to think about politics and hear firsthand what we do. My presentation covered the history of the House, its composition, its expenditure, its future, the different types of work that it does, and drew attention to some peers of whom they would have heard, to illustrate my points about expertise and diversity.

The two most interesting questions they put to me afterwards were “Will a general election end the expenses scandal?” and “How can David Cameron be prevented from appointing 100 new peers to secure a Conservative majority in the Lords?” It will take more than a general election or even a change in the voting system to remove the taint. The second question was harder to answer. I had to explain the Royal Prerogative and how it would be almost impossible for the Queen to refuse a request by the Prime Minister to create large numbers of peers. Does anyone have a better answer?

By baronessdeech | Posted in Baroness Deech | Tagged | Comments (47)

Home education

February 8, 2010 – 10:04 pm

I have received a number of letters and emails expressing concern about Schedule 1 of Clause 26 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill which sets out the Government’s scheme for compulsory registration and monitoring of all home educated children in England. 

The Home Education Advisory Service believes that the proposed powers of local authorities to check on children being educated at home are excessive.

I am not convinced by their argument. Of course we want to allow parents to educate at home but there are risks attached to that and in one of the letters to me they hint at that difficulty. They say:  ”It is unacceptable for public servants to undertake routine intervention on this scale in the lives of private individuals when it is acknowledged that the majority of parents are providing satisfactory educational arrangements”. The five words that worry me here are ‘the vast majority of parents’ . Of course the majority are good but by implication they accept there maybe a problem with a minority. Many of our laws would be unnecessary if it wasn’t for a minority. Only a minority of parents abuse their children and only a minority of home educating parents won’t teach their children necessary basic skills but they are the problem.

Problems can arise in a number of ways. It maybe extreme battering or cruelty where the parents are anxious to keep the child out of site of any authority figure. Or it maybe parents who believe that a girl should not receive education because in their view the role of a girl is to be trained as a mother and housewife. Or it maybe because the parents are providing a level of education that fails to enable the child to learn basic skills like reading and writing. So if we are to protect the minority we will need some power of intervention. I’m not sure if the Bill has the right safeguards in it but that is why we have Parliamentary scrutiny. To claim it is excessive for the state to have a checking role here is I think wrong.

Imagine the headlines when a case first appears of a child grossly abused and hidden from authority by the home educating parents. I don’t think the Home Education Advisory Service knows what will hit it if that should happen. 

By Clive Soley | Posted in Lord Soley | Tagged , , | Comments (58)

Parliament in the Dark? Responses.

February 8, 2010 – 8:52 pm

I was delighted to see the number of comments on my last post, and on the debate I led in the Lords ten days ago.  In response:

1.  Scrutiny:  There seems to be a consensus both among commenters, and in the Lords debate (both the other day and on the Queen’s Speech) that we should do more to give legislation proper scrutiny before it reaches the formal parliamentary process, and that we should review how laws are working after they’ve been passed.

A major area of failure in Parliament is the scrutiny of public expenditure:  the Commons Public Accounts Committee produces excellent reports, but these are almost always retrospective looks at how Departments and Agencies have wasted money over the course of years.  Parliament needs better access to Departmental budgets and practices throughout the year, so it can keep a better eye on how public money is spent.  Money (or ‘supply’) has traditionally been the exclusive province of the Commons, so it may be that we should leave improvements in this area to them.

That gives the Lords an extra responsibility, though, to improve our scrutiny of other parts of public policy.  We could start by taking evidence from experts – as already happens in the Commons – on the contents of legislation before we go into line-by-line scrutiny of a Bill in the chamber.  I’ve long thought, too, that there should be a special Lords Committee to sift through all the international treaties and agreements the government signs in our name each year.

In terms of post-legislative scrutiny, we could – for example – establish a committee to keep track of how effective and necessary are the thousands of criminal offences created by Government each year.  Since Labour came to power, Ministers have just about invented one new offence for every day they’ve been in office!  It’s up to Parliament to look at the merits of each of these and expose Ministers where they indulge in pointless headline grabbing.

2.  The Salisbury-Addison Convention: This was always an agreement between two parties:  the Conservatives and Labour.  The Liberal Democrat position is that there is certainly no way to codify, or even have a common understanding, the idea that some bills constitute ‘manifesto legislation’.  It makes sense for the Lords to avoid voting down whole Bills at second or third reading, since doing so would turn us from careful revisers into blanket vetoers, but that’s about all the convention means in practice.  That’s why the Joint Committee on Conventions advocated renaming it “the Government Bill Convention”.  The name hasn’t yet stuck!

In 1945, the Labour manifesto was eight pages long; it was incredibly simple.  Today, manifestos are typically more 100 pages long, and it really is rather difficult to ascertain which policies are those which enjoy a popular mandate, and which were popped in at the last moment, read by no one and swung no votes at all.  Even Conservative Lord (Terrence) Higgins, who sat with me on the Joint Committee on Conventions, and originally didn’t accept this case, has come round to my point of view.

Ultimately, if people are concerned that a second chamber full of people you didn’t elect (and can’t get rid of) might stand in the way of a popular government attempting to get its programme through, it might be worth considering the merit of having a second chamber full of people you did choose and can boot out if you don’t like what they do.  There’s no point having a legislative chamber that is afraid to vote down laws it opposes, so you have to have it constituted in such a way that it’s accountable.  I think regular readers already know my views on that!

3. Parliament Acts:  These do act as a ‘long-stop’ irrespective of the vagaries of what is ‘manifesto legislation’– and even reformers like me, who want an elected chamber, do not suggest they should be altered.  The Acts ensure the Commons can get its way if it insists on doing so, but only after a period of one year – its keeps the Lords in place as a revising chamber, there to make the Government think again.  The Acts also enshrine the Commons’ right to have its own way over tax and public spending, without a delay.

4. The Lisbon Treaty:   following some probing, in which I was involved, we discovered this last week that Parliament – not least the House of Lords – has significantly more power over European decisions as a result of the Treaty.  More on that when our Procedure Committee’s report is available.

5.  Electoral Reform:  I am amused to note how the Westminster obsessives are all concentrating on the effect on parties and parliamentary politics of a fairer voting system.  What about the people?   Why should a small section of electorate have far more power to influence what happens than the majority?   Why should so many voters be completely powerless?   The First-Past-The-Post system simply does not work any more.   The Conservatives had a substantial majority of votes over Labour in England in 2005 but 92 fewer seats.  Is that fair?   What happens if that is the case for the whole UK this year?  Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat supporters have tended to get much less valuable votes than the supporters of the other two.  Why?   Not one single current MP enjoys the endorsement of more than half his or her constituents.   There is a direct correlation between those with the safest seats and those with the most questionable expenses claims, because they knew they only needed to be accountable to their parties rather than to the public at large.  Let’s stop looking at the need for reform through the eyes of politicians and examine it from the viewpoint of the people – that’s what democracy is all about, isn’t it?

By lordtyler | Posted in Lord Tyler | Comments (6)

The arrogance of aid?

February 7, 2010 – 6:44 pm

The State has core functions which overall allow citizens to flourish individually, socially and economically. These functions include ensuring the rule of law, managing public finance and assets, developing social policies, upholding human rights, maintaining administrative control and the legitimate use of violence. It is ONLY the State that can carry out these duties and therefore one could argue that any form of external aid, especially in times of conflict and/or disaster,  should – indeed MUST - support and enhance these functions. But does it?

The answer is generally – no. At a CPA conference last week I argued strongly that aid unfortunately tends to undermine the unity and power of the state. There are too many examples for this to be refuted. The World Bank’s own Evaluation Department as well as the US National Academy of Public Administration have provided corruscating reports on the absolute failure of billions of dollars  expended in Haiti  over three decades – much of it directed at the development of democratic governance – to achieve anything other than political dysfunction and impoverishment.  One of the reports concludes that aid: 

 ”made almost no impact on governance. Institutional development impact is negligible and the sustainability of the few benefits that have accrued, unlikely.”  Similarly a World Bank Operations Evaluation Dept report says that aid was ineffective ‘………..due to inappropriate conditionality, ineffective capacity building, faulty implementation and delusions about what constituted program success.’

In Afghanistan there was a golden opportunity once the Taliban had been routed in late 2001 to build a credible government, respected by both its citizens and the international community. Instead  donors and their programmes became instruments for division and chaos; each donor agency of which there were and are 100s, created alliances with different ministries, contributing to the fragmentation of Cabinet unity. Dozens of donors and agencies and 100s of NGOs each had their own budgets, priorities, rules and preferences. One minister reported that he spent perhaps 60% of his time simply trying to co-ordinate donors.

A week-end guest has just told me of an amputee centre in Sierra Leone in which immense piles of oversupplied prosthetic limbs are visible – and those agencies requiring even greater exposure fly a few victims to a Western country for highly sophisticated treatment which is then used as promotional material for yet more fundraising. Meanwhile, reports on the sexual abuse of war victims by international community staff in war torn regions of Africa are quashed. And has anyone calculated the cost of the  thousands and thousands  of the multilateral and private donor agency staff who sit in the capitals of the world ? Your tax money and mine?

You may think that I am being over critical – but in the late 1970s I and others set up an independent reseach institute to look precisely at the aid industry. We applied scientific method to evaluating the impact of aid and came to some very shocking conclusions which we published …….earning the undying hostility of much of the aid community. Not much has  changed, the wrong aid goes to the wrong people at the wrong time and it does damage. Perhaps the most injurious outcome is the destruction of the state’s ability to devise and implement indigenous policies and thereby begin the task of building effective states.

By baronessdsouza | Posted in Baroness D'Souza | Comments (6)