September 2011 Archives

The care workers' equal pay dispute in Sheffield looks to be over with the city council agreeing to recompense about 1,100 staff, a group that also includes cleaners and dinner ladies. 

Sheffield, armed with a team of lawyers, was threatening to take the case to the Supreme Court after the Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the employees but has now backed down, perhaps in the interests of the public purse as much as any moral propriety.

However, we may not have heard the last of this.

Although the Local Government Group does not expect a wave of similar settlements to follow - "we do not believe it will have a far-reaching effect", said a spokesperson - Unison, which represented the staff, may have other ideas.

General secretary Dave Prentis told The Guardian: "This decision has implications for around 400,000 other women's cases across the country."

Whether other local authorities will dig in where Sheffield left off we will have to wait and see.

Picture: Rex Features

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey has let Ed Miliband off the hook with his comment that he does not expect the Labour leader to join striking workers on the picket lines this autumn.

Phew, that must be a relief for Ed, who is unlikely to have had any plans of that nature, having spent the recent TUC conference dissing the expected action over public sector pension reforms.

It is a reflection of the times that a Labour leader distances himself not only from industrial action but any hint of placard-waving. But in a spasm of compassion he at least showed that he understood why public sector workers are angry. Well judged, Ed. 

Sadly, if something is wrong - and the pensions changes are very wrong indeed because state payments are unlikely to make up the shortfall without a huge injection of public spending - industrial action is the only mechanism left when there is no hint of a climbdown or a mutually acceptable compromise.

Miliband's poll ratings today make unhappy reading for a leader in his first year in opposition to a coalition government that was cobbled together on the strength of the respective party leaders' common chemistry - to wit, their parents' choice of school for their sons.

So one would think that his speech at the Labour Party conference this afternoon would be crucial in enhancing his reputation.

Sure, he is expected to include a comment about rewarding people who contribute to society, but even die-hard Tories would find it difficult to disagree with that principle.

Social housing is also on the agenda, with Miliband expected to state that people with jobs should gain preference on waiting lists. Where in the pecking order that leaves those who have lost their jobs due to the misdeeds of City speculators I do not know. More work needed on that one, methinks.

But what we do know is that this autumn could see the biggest workforce stoppage since the general strike in 1926.

And at some point, Ed Miliband, having today spoken about rewarding people who have contributed to life, will have to offer something more than sympathy. 

Picture: Rex Features

It is a truism to say that applying for NHS continuing healthcare funding usually involves patience, a highly developed skill in diplomacy, much biting of tongue and, ultimately, the inevitable declaration of war.

So often, it seems, the NHS can expertly manipulate the rules so that the bill for care home services can be passed on to the client, close relatives of the client or the local authority.

So it was with much surprise to read that a family from Surrey have just been awarded £100,000 compensation for wrongly paid care home fees.

The entire process took five years. I did say it was a battle.

The elderly service user was doubly incontinent, deaf, blind, unable to communicate and had Alzheimer's. 

Despite this multiplicity of conditions, the primary care trust decided that continuing healthcare funding was inappropriate.

The PCT has now admitted it had made an error - despite knowing about the client's deafness, blindness, Alzheimer's and so on - and has agreed to reimburse the family who had to pay £600-700 a week to keep their relative safe.

But it does raise the question of how many other cases are there, cases where families do not have the emotional, physical and even intellectual resolve to challenge the decision-makers in our health sector who are more inclined to hurriedly divest themselves of financial responsibility than look after the elderly and infirm.

Do I hear the word "dignity" somewhere? Perhaps I am dreaming.

Notting Hill Housing describes itself as "one of the most inventive housing associations in the UK" and prides itself on providing a roof to "people in need". That's how it introduces itself on its website, anyway.

So it is difficult to fathom how that declaration of social responsibility squares with its planning application, now approved, to build 41 homes in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, not one of them "affordable".

According to local MP Andy Slaughter, writing on HFConwatch, four of the properties are five-bedroomed houses facing photogenic St Peter's Square (below). 

They will sell for at least £2m each.

I have yet to meet anyone who can afford a £2m property but doubtless they exist in the form of City investment organisations or people whose relationship with the concept of social housing is zilch. After all, the monied seem little affected by the current restraint.

Notting Hill might argue that the sale of £2m properties will provide reinvestment into housing stock for the very people it purports to help.

But there is also a feeling on principle that the provider should not be dabbling in what can be a cut-throat market, whose ethos the trust was set up to counter.

Notting Hill was launched in the early 1960s as a response to the criminal activities of landlord Peter Rachman and his bully-boy cohorts who harassed, threatened and exploited tenants, often evicting them at short notice, as the law then allowed them to do.

Notting Hill has a proud history. But it will need a good dollop of oil on its PR machinery to convince some of us that its present-day activities live up to that past.

Formerly known as the Asbo queen, Tony Blair's former Respect tsar, Louise Casey (pictured), is being tipped for a new Whitehall role. 

It is expected that she will be appointed to help communities secretary Eric Pickles "deal with" (sounds ominous) the 120,000 "problem families" David Cameron was showing a fatherly concern for after last month's riots.

The Spectator reports that Pickles' department will take sole charge of the government's proposed family-intervention programme. The move would be seen as a blow to the ambitions of Iain Duncan Smith who was keen to take on the role but whose social conservatism may be anathema to the Liberal Democrats (unlike tuition fees).

Casey and Pickles both have a reputation for being blunt and outspoken so a quiet time is unlikely to be had by all, but why someone so closely associated with the Labour government should be so appealing to Cameron is, on the face of it, incongruous.

Until we remember that, in 2008, Casey called for harsher community sentences and for offenders to have their punishments locally advertised. She had also ruminated about making offenders on community service wear uniforms, a bit like Guantanamo Bay suspects (my comparison, not hers).

Perhaps the pair will have much in common, after all.

Three news stories stand out for me today.

Directors at the UK's biggest companies have amassed pension pots worth on average £3.9 million. 

Twenty economists have written to the Financial Times urging chancellor George Osborne to axe the 50% tax rate on earnings above £150,000 a year. 

And a survey from the Daycare Trust and Save the Children shows that parents on the lowest incomes are having to turn down jobs or leave them because of the rocketing cost of childcare, which has left many in debt and some facing poverty.

Good news for some, then. It is at times like this that I truly feel that we are all in it together. Thanks, Dave.

Picture: Rex Features

Can councils disregard the provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act purely on the grounds of economics?

A case involving Lancashire Council and two disabled women in their sixties and seventies suggests they can. 

Mr Justice Parker, sitting in the High Court (right), ruled that the council's budget cuts, which would have affected the two women, must be seen in the context of the government's spending review.

The women, backed by the National Autistic Society, Sense and Disability Equality North West, had sought a judicial review against Lancashire's adult care cuts.

But the judge's comments about the "economic reality" and the "imperative" needs to reduce expenditure are concerning.

Not only do they set down a marker for future cases, but they appear to ride roughshod over what the rest of us call the "reality" of disability.

Or have people with disabilities been reduced to an economic/uneconomic unit to be used/dispensed with according to whether the government of the day is managing the nation's finances efficiently?

A month after his deputy Nick Clegg's miserable performance on Radio Nottingham when excusing his dalliance with arson as a teenager, Dave was in similarly poor form on Radio 4 this morning avoiding questions about his own youthful indiscretions (allegedly) involving bread rolls and broken windows in restaurants (criminal damage to the rest of us).

You may have already heard the faltering performance by Nick Clegg, who once claimed that, as a callow youth, he had set fire to two greenhouses. 

The radio presenter raised this with the Lib Dem leader in a discussion about the riots. Clegg awkwardly dismissed the question by claiming that the presenter was attempting to create  "a link between unrelated events". You can listen at 4min 45sec.

This morning it was his boss's turn when Today's Evan Davis asked Cameron about his Bullingdon days at Oxford University (at about 15min 20sec).

 "We all do stupid things when we are young and we should learn from them," he said. Contrary to what most of us know about the Bullingdon Boys, he seemed unaware of any restaurants being damaged.

Sadly, Cameron wasn't pressed on this as much as I had hoped.

I was so curious about the severity of sentence Cameron would have deemed appropriate for the opportunistic criminality of these well-heeled, smart young people who would later run our country.

Much has been spoken and written this week about the gender pay gap at executive level and the unlikelihood of it closing for at least 100 years.

So it is with impeccable timing that a pay battle at the other end of the scale - involving care workers and dinner ladies employed by Sheffield Council - will arrive at the doors of the Supreme Court next month. 

It will be the first time the court has ruled on sex discrimination involving pay.

Trade union Unison says the ruling could affect up to 40,000 cases.

The care workers' case started in an employment tribunal and centres on productivity bonuses paid to gardeners and street cleaners, most of whom are male.

In the most recent hearing, at the Court of Appeal, the ruling went in favour of the dinner ladies and care workers, most of whom are female.

Sheffield feels the bonuses have nothing to do with gender but are paid to increase productivity.

The Supreme Court awaits...