Francis Maude presses ahead with plan for co-operatives

Today's Guardian reports that Francis Maude has encouraged public sector workers to transform many services into "John Lewis-style" co-operatives.

Although this does not represent denationalisation in itself, it is likely to spark concerns over the extent to which public services would remain state-owned.

As I reported in an earlier post on this blog, The Preston Labour Party have already expressed concerns about the clandestine demutualisation of public co-operatives under the Coalition.

Lancashire County Council jobs under threat

The LEP reports that up to 6,000 jobs at Lancashire County Council could be lost as central government cuts local government funding. £180 million needs to be saved within three years.

Message from Ed Miliband, and more on LEPs

Ed Miliband has issued a message to the Preston Labour Party.

Among his concerns is the scrapping of the North West Regional Development Agency (NWDA).  See my below post for more background on this.

A BBC blog post from Martyn Oates from 29/10/10 suggests that one major difference between the RDAs and the new Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) is that the latter will receive no government funding.

Other BBC articles here and here shed further light on the convoluted process by which LEPs are being created. It seems they will be more numerous than the RDAs, but their exact constitution is still the subject of much debate.

The Preston Cuts

Journalism students from the University of Central Lancashire joined forces this week to provide multi-platform coverage of the Comprehensive Spending Review.

The Preston Cuts, an eight-page print special, was joined by broadcast and online coverage in real-time, courtesy of Blog Preston.  The results of their work can be seen here.  I'm going to see about getting the PDFs of The Preston Cuts up as well.  As part of the project, the students interviewed local experts, workers in a range of public and private sector positions, a political analyst and a Preston family.  The impressive part is that the whole package was completed by 6pm on Wednesday - just four and a half hours after George Osborne finished speaking.

As part of the print coverage, I wrote a parliamentary sketch for the day, which you can read below.

Teetering dangerously on a single elbow, David Cameron spun his way through a Prime Minister’s Questions that had the distinct air of a warm-up performance.

Ed Miliband showed little of the aplomb with which he had accepted the Labour leadership.  Shaken, perhaps, by news that the health budget would not be cut even as Margaret Thatcher was wheeled into hospital, Miliband struggled with basic information such as George Osborne’s title (referring to him as the 'shadow chancellor'). One key word during the warm-up was ‘inherited’, which is what the coalition did regarding the deficit. No surprises here. Everyone knows the Conservatives’ attitude towards inheritance tax.

George Osborne was today’s headline act, although the pages of the Spending Review itself probably had more vitality than the Chancellor’s performance. Eschewing the casual approach of the Prime Minister, Osborne spent much of his speech grasping the plinth firmly with both hands as though he were about to throw up.

Danny Alexander’s faux pas, it turned out, had disclosed the only real figure in the CSR relating to job losses. This was a report focused on sums of money, not people. Reform, fairness and growth: these were the terms in which we were encouraged to think. Less clear were the mixed semi-anatomical metaphors of ‘cutting’ and ‘squeezing’, although it was obvious that the surgery was going to be performed as cheaply as possible.

Big news, though, came in the form of the universal credit system, which would contribute toward welfare savings of £7bn. Child benefit would remain, for now, up to the age of 18 (at the mention of this, Vince Cable nodded so vociferously that he looked as though he had been kicked).

There would be investment in apprenticeships but state pensions would be withheld until the age of 66, in a step towards the cradle-to-grave employment for which Thatcher had yearned.

Much was made of the commitment to pensioners, who were to receive cold weather payments “for life, not just for general elections”. Sighs of relief: it was going to be chilly with all the freezes that were going on.

As Osborne took his seat, he was mobbed by an affection-starved Nick Clegg, who had been grinning at David Cameron throughout the ordeal on grounds that were evidently so suspect the Prime Minister would not return his gaze.

As this wasn’t a formal budget, it was Alan Johnson, the Shadow Chancellor, rather than the leader of the Opposition who was allowed to respond. Just as well – Johnson seemed to be the only one there who had any presence or delivery, although he relied heavily upon his speech ahead of the CSR, reiterating that the ConDems were packaging politics as economics and that the cuts (or squeezes) were ideologically driven, not essential.

Osborne, in response, ripped into Labour’s lack of an alternative to the CSR, echoing David Cameron’s earlier admonishment that ‘if you don’t have a plan, you can’t attack a plan’. Perhaps Johnson should have moved into sketch writing instead: he brought the House down when he suggested that the Tory Chief Whip was so terrible he could do his job without moving.

North West Regional Development Agency

The North West Regional Development Agency (NWDA) is in the news following the resignation of its chairman. Steven Broomhead announced on Wednesday that he is to step down, even though the agency itself will not be axed until April 2012.

User comments on the LEP news story were largely disparaging toward the outgoing chairman. In September, it emerged that the NWDA had spent £20,000 on travel and entertainment in a year, revelations that did not sit particularly well beside complaints that the agency was not doing very much to justify its existence. LEP readers suggested that the Brockholes Brow nature reserve was not a terribly compelling portfolio, although the NWDA also takes credit for much of the development of MediaCityUK, and points to its work with BAE systems in Preston.

The government announced in June that RDAs are to be replaced by Local Enterprise Partnerships by April 2012. So far, it is unclear what role these will take, or how they will be set up.

Despite criticisms of the NWDA, there are fears that its abolition will leave Preston in the lurch, with a NWDA-backed project to regenerate the flag market already having been hit by funding cuts. Martin Wainwright, in The Guardian, agrees, although it remains difficult to assess the impact of the agencies' removal until more is known about the Local Enterprise Partnerships.

Co-operatives under threat

The Preston Labour Party website reports that 'Preston Labour members met recently to discuss the [...] Labour Conference,' and outlines a couple of their views and concerns. Chief amongst the latter is a worry about co-operatives.

A fringe meeting, hosted by the Cooperative group, examined some of the possible responses to the cut backs being planned by the Tories and Liberal Democrats.  Concern was raised by some members about the tactics of the Tories, who had begun to de-mutualise public co-operatives in some areas, turning them into private shareholdings.

Jack Davenport, who chairs the Preston Labour Local Forum, also wrote into The Guardian, saying:

At the recent Labour conference, I attended a fringe meeting about co-ops and the opportunities to protect services in the face of the cuts. One member from a Tory heartland piped up about the local Tories' enthusiastic adoption of co-op principles in her area for local council and community services, only to see them exploit loopholes and demutualise them into private shareholdings.

Does anyone have examples of cooperatives that are under threat? I'm going to try and find out more about these 'loopholes', but a quick search doesn't reveal anything obvious on the Co-operative Group website.