British National Party Public Services News Bulletin w/c April 9, 2007
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1. PCs RAP FOR HOPPING CHILDREN

Many law-abiding people are scared by violent thugs roaming the streets but it seems the Police are not interested in investigating real crimes and arrest real criminals.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007160256,00.html

Parents blasted police after officers swooped on kids as young as three — for chalking on pavements so they could play hopscotch. Lisa Badland, 30, said son Ryan, five, was “terrified” when the kids got a telling-off because a neighbour complained. Ryan and 10 pals aged three to 11 were playing outside their homes in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, after Lisa gave them special pavement chalks. Two cops then lined them up for a lecture on graffiti and road safety. Lisa said: “Ryan was petrified. He saw their handcuffs and thought they were going to take him away. It got totally blown out of proportion.” Dad Neil, 35, said: “I thought the police would have better things to do.” Cops said they had a duty to investigate the complaint, adding: “Anti-social behaviour is a priority. What one person sees as harmless fun, another sees as graffiti.”

2. CITY SPENDING ON TRANSLATION SERVICES DOUBLES TO £400,000

http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=545462007

Translation costs for public bodies in the Lothians have doubled in two years following an influx of immigrants. The growing number of migrant workers, particularly from eastern Europe, means the city council, police and NHS Lothian are spending more than £400,000 a year on interpretation fees. Calls are growing for the Scottish Executive to pay the bill amid concerns the strain being placed on the city council could lead to cuts in other services. Almost 18,000 migrant workers have arrived in Edinburgh in the past two years, and the council estimates there are now more than 8000 Poles living in the city. They have been hailed as a major boost to the economy, with many taking up positions employers would otherwise struggle to fill. But public bodies have been forced to pay more for interpreters, language assistants and information leaflets to cater for a growing variety of nationalities. Councillor Iain Whyte, the Tory group leader on the council, said: "We really need the Scottish Executive, or the national government, to step in. "They made efforts to get immigrants to come here, and they have to help us out with these costs.

"If there is no extra funding to cover [immigrants'] additional needs, the council could have to cut other services." Labour councillor Dougie Kerr, who is responsible for equalities, said: "When families have come here with young children, we have had to fund classroom assistants, for example. "A mechanism has to be in place for people who don't have English as their first language. "But the rise in spending is not exclusively because of people coming from [EU] ascension states. "At the same time, we had duties imposed on us by legislation, such as the Race Relations Act, which require us to offer services in various different languages." Lothian and Borders Police, which provided the most up-to-date figures, spent just £44,000 on translation services in 2004 - but this rose to above £100,000 in the financial year just ended. The force said it is essential that crime victims or suspects are given the opportunity to properly communicate with officers. NHS Lothian has also increased its use of translation and interpretation services, spending £174,000 in 2005/06, however its bill has traditionally been high due to the number of people with communication difficulties - such as deaf patients - who need access to health care. The city council spent around £180,000 in 2005/06 on translation and interpretation services, up from £93,000 two years previously. It is thought the figure for the most recent financial year will be even higher. A police spokeswoman said: "It's important to give all victims or suspects the opportunity to tell officers what happened.

"We have an obligation to ensure that what they need to communicate to the police is accurate." NHS Lothian said interpreting and translation services are required for residents who need to access health care, whether in an emergency or an elective situation. Karol Chojnowski, who came to Scotland from Poland in 1999, has set up the popular Szkocja.net website for Polish migrants coming to the country. He today said the expenditure on translation services was "fair". "The benefits to Edinburgh and Scotland from having so many foreign nationals are tremendous. "They are paying taxes, they go to shops and buy food, and they go to pubs and the cinemas," he said. Costs to all three public bodies include translation by sign language and other disability formats.

3. PLAN TO HELP BLACK BOYS ACHIEVE

It's clear that the Labour Government is not interested in putting the interests of native Britons first and this proposal is clearly unacceptable at a time when a huge number of white British students fail to get the help they desperately need to achieve better results.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6537951.stm

Schools, parents and pupils must do more to improve the attainment of black Caribbean boys, a union has said. A charter on the issue published by the National Union of Teachers stresses the responsibilities they all have. It says the boys themselves must develop their own learning and parents must support them and their schools. Schools must encourage them to have high expectations and have "a moral commitment" to raise and promote their achievements, the NUT added. The charter, published at the union's annual conference, in Harrogate, was compiled with the collaboration of groups of black boys in London, Birmingham and Manchester. Expectations One of them, 16-year-old Dillon Max-Grant, who is taking his AS-levels, said he got involved because he knew people who were not achieving as well as they should be.

He said the often quoted issue of family breakdown and absentee fathers in black communities was "not really the issue". "It's up to them to try to succeed," he said, but added that parental expectations were important. Sometimes, because of their social circumstances, their expectations did not match the abilities of the students and the capabilities of the schools that taught them. A co-author of the charter, education expert Gus John, said: "If there is a theme that runs through the report, the theme is let us all live up to our responsibilities." That applied to everyone - but youngsters themselves had to be responsible for their own learning along with "their mums and dads and their schools". "I think it's nothing short of a national scandal that, 60 years after the Empire Windrush brought some 300 people from the Caribbean to these shores, young black boys, Afro-Caribbean boys, are still underachieving at the rate at which they are," Mr John said.

'Mayhem'

That culture contributed to "the sort of mayhem in our communities that we have seen in the past weeks" - with black boys being stabbed to death. "In some parts of the country the life expectancy of young Afro-Caribbean males is 25," he said - such as in his home city of Manchester. There was a culture of low expectations on the part of the boys themselves and those who taught them, he said. "Many of the parents themselves who have children in schools now have been schooled in a culture of low expectations. "They need to organise themselves to demand much more of the school system." NUT general secretary Steve Sinnott said: "We won't get the changes that are required unless everybody does their part. "That includes the youngsters. They can't turn round and point the finger and blame everybody else."

'Unwitting racism'

Kay Hampton, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, said the NUT should not focus solely on underachievement among black boys. "The issue of underachievement is not restricted to African-Caribbean boys as such but to a wide range of people, including for example Gypsy traveller communities and other minority communities for example females within certain communities as well. "So the idea is a good one, but we would urge that the bigger picture of underachievement in education is taken into consideration as well." Recently the Department for Education and Skills published a report which said black pupils were routinely punished more harshly, praised less and told off more often in English schools than other pupils. It said staff in many schools were "unwittingly" racist. A spokesperson for the department said: "Black pupils demonstrated nationally the greatest progress in GCSE results of any ethnic group, improving more than twice as fast as the average, with promising results for 11 and 14-year-olds boding well for the future. "However, we fully recognise that there's more to do. "That's why we are working even harder to remove the barriers to their learning, engage with these children and give them an extra push they need - particularly in deprived areas where many ethnic minority children live."

4. TREASURY 'RIGGED' REPORTS INTO SUCCESS OF PRIVATE FINANCE PROJECTS

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2422666.ece

Gordon Brown has been accused of making false claims that his flagship scheme to secure private finance for public sector projects provides good value for money. A study by the University of Edinburgh of the Treasury's statements about the success of the private finance initiative (PFI) found that the evidence for the claims to be "either non-existent or false". The attack follows criticism by the Confederation of British Industry that the Treasury minister Ed Balls, a close Brown ally, misrepresented its stance on the Chancellor's 1997 decision to abolish the pension funds' right to reclaim the tax deducted from share dividends. After a few days on the defensive, Mr Brown will try to regain the initiative today by announcing a £20m grant to the United Nations Children's Fund to help maintain schooling in war zones and fragile states where education systems have broken down.

It is part of his campaign to secure free education for the 80 million children who cannot go to school. Speaking at a conference in Scotland, he will urge other G7 countries to meet the commitments they made to the developing world at the Gleneagles summit in 2005. Researchers at Edinburgh investigated the Treasury's claim that 88 per cent of PFI projects were delivered on time and within budget while most publicly funded projects (70 per cent) are delivered late and 73 per cent cost more than expected. Of the five studies cited by the Treasury, they found two were based on National Audit Office reports which concluded it was not possible to judge how the procurement method affected the results. A third contained no comparative data and a fourth was withheld by the Treasury on grounds of "commercial confidentiality". The fifth report "artificially inflated" the cost of traditional public projects, according to the Edinburgh study. Professor Allyson Pollock, who heads the university's Centre for International Public Health Policy, said: "Government ministers have repeatedly justified the controversial PFI policy in terms of its greater efficiency and value for money savings compared with traditional methods of public investment. It would appear that comparisons are rigged in favour of PFI and that Treasury policy is not evidence-based."

A Treasury spokesman said: "The independent National Audit Office, not the Treasury, reported on the effectiveness of PFI projects, and it is they who state that PFI gives 'greater certainty'. The Government remains committed to investing in our public services and infrastructure to overcome a historic legacy of underinvestment, and PFI will continue to be used to deliver a small but important part of this investment, where it is shown to be value for money for taxpayers to do so." A Treasury source added yesterday: "Anyone saying there is no evidence for using PFI obviously hasn't read the NAO's independent reports on the subject." * Lord Winston, the fertility expert and Labour peer, accused Mr Brown of being "two faced" about a cut in funding for scientific research, which he said was a "shocking blow" and "blot" on the Chancellor's record. Mr Brown announced a 25 per cent increase in spending on science to 2011 in last month's Budget, but this followed an earlier announcement that £68m was being cut from the budgets of science research councils.

5. SECRET PAPER REVEALS LABOUR'S LIES OVER ID CARDS

Bullying, deceit and spin are the real legacy of the Labour party and ID cards are a clear example of that. Government want to force people to carry them even if they are expensive and useless, something we strongly oppose.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.
html?in_article_id=447296&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source=

The Government faces damaging claims of misleading voters over ID cards after documents revealed it always planned to make the controversial scheme compulsory. Whitehall papers, which the Government has fought for two years to suppress, disclose that Labour intended to force the public to sign up to the programme. They appear to contradict commitments given by Labour in its 2005 Election manifesto, which pledged that the cards, and the national identity register containing people's names, addresses, fingerprints and other information, would be 'on a voluntary basis'. The briefing notes, released under the Freedom Of Information Act, show that civil servants had already been told ID cards would be compulsory for everyone by 2014. Opposition MPs said the papers proved the Government had 'purposely set out to mislead the public and politicians about their plans'.

The Department For Work And Pension's (DWP) 'ID Fraud Benefit Profile' was produced in October 2004 and was designed to show how the project would cut benefit fraud. In a table illustrating the predicted yearly savings expected by the department it states that from 2014 - Year 7 of the project - 'The identity card scheme is now compulsory'. But 18 months later, the then Home Secretary Charles Clarke insisted the scheme was voluntary. He told MPs: "In accordance with the Labour party's Election manifesto...we will introduce ID cards...initially on a voluntary basis." The papers also undermine claims by Ministers that the scheme would halve the £50million lost to benefit cheats. The internal briefing reveals that the much-quoted savings were purely guesswork by officials. It says: "NOTE: DWP perceive losses to identity fraud to be between £25-£50million per annum, due to the nature of our business processes and recording of monetary value of fraud and error the figures are unreliable therefore DWP can only sign up to a maximum saving in the area of £25million per annum." The first ID cards are due to be issued in 2009 to anybody who applies for a passport. Britons will be required to give fingerprints, biometric details such as a facial scan and a wealth of personal details - including second homes, driving licence and insurance numbers.

While the ID Cards Bill was going through Parliament, peers and Ministers agreed an 'opt-out' for people who needed a passport but did not want to join the ID cards scheme. But to get a passport, ID card objectors will now still have to hand over all personal details to the ID cards register. Former Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Mark Oaten, who successfully fought to get the internal documents published, said: "They show Ministers had no basis to claim the cards would combat benefit fraud, that from the very beginning the cards were going to be compulsory and that Ministers were consistently not telling the truth about their true intentions." The DWP said the details in the papers 'are no longer valid'. A Home Office spokesman said the documents were 'incredibly out of date'.

6. NURSES' LEADER: BLAIR'S SPIN RUINING NHS

Our solution to improve the NHS is simple: reduction of administrative staff, preventing asylum seekers and immigrants from getting free health care and cut in translation costs and use the saving to pay for improvement in front-line services

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/08/nhealth08.xml

The Prime Minister has allowed the NHS to plunge into crisis by becoming trapped in a "parallel universe of spin", according to the new head of the Royal College of Nursing. In a blistering attack on the Government's running of the health service, Dr Peter Carter, the RCN general secretary, said cuts in jobs, services and training were catastrophic for the country and a "personal tragedy" for the Prime Minister. Dr Carter, who will address his first RCN annual conference next week, said Tony Blair should admit Labour's administration of the NHS had gone "fundamentally wrong". He said Labour's track record on the health service was far worse than that of the Conservatives, even though Mr Blair had poured in record funds. Dr Carter, a former hospital trust chief executive, told The Sunday Telegraph: "I have never seen so much money go into the health service and I have never seen so much money wasted. "It is a tragedy. It must be a personal tragedy for Tony Blair. In the recesses of his mind, he must be saying: 'What the hell has gone wrong?' "In the 1980s and '90s finance was extremely tight but you did not get the crisis we have seen in the last two years. Nurses are saying to us 'we ain't going to vote Labour'. They aren't saying who they will vote for, but it will be interesting to see what happens in the Scottish, Welsh and local elections." He urged Mr Blair to "stop getting caught up in spin and a parallel universe, which only looks at the success stories, and acknowledge that this has gone fundamentally wrong".

A year ago, Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, was forced to abandon her speech to the RCN congress after heckling and slow hand-claps from nurses angered by her opening claim that the NHS was enjoying its "best year ever". Dr Carter said the college - which handed out placards to the nurses - was "not that smart" in the way it managed the event, although he insisted much of the anger was spontaneous. Describing Mrs Hewitt's comments as "very ill-advised", he said career politicians needed to be better briefed by senior civil servants, instead of relying on "here today, gone tomorrow policies". This year, the RCN has not invited politicians from any party to take the stage. Dr Carter said the organisation was not prepared to be "duped", either by attempts from the Government to justify itself, or by promises from the opposition. But he said he would welcome Gordon Brown, the Chancellor and probable successor to Mr Blair, if he increased the below-inflation pay deal for nurses now on offer. "I don't think I am going to get that call," he said. Dr Carter said the college was "demoralised and disgusted" by the 2.5 per cent offer, which is staged so nurses get 1.9 per cent over the year. The RCN is consulting its members over its response. However, he said job fears at the moment made it difficult for nurses to contemplate industrial action. Dr Carter said the waste under Labour began with the reorganisation of the NHS soon after the party gained power.

Millions were wasted on repeated changes to structures that had now almost reverted back to the position they were in 10 years ago, with money lavished on salaries, redundancies and creating offices. Worse still, the replacement of 100 health authorities with more than 300 primary care trusts created more jobs than there were talented managers, leading to poor decision-making and a "frittering away of much of the Government's investment". Government figures show 15,000 managers have been recruited since Labour came to power. Dr Carter, who ran an NHS mental health trust in London for 12 years, said he believed one manager in five was not up to the job, while about the same proportion of NHS organisations were not fit for purpose. The number of nurses emigrating to find work had doubled to 8,000 since Labour came to power in 1997, and the number will continue to grow, he said. The Government expects that Britain will be short of 14,000 nurses in three years' time, which will force the UK to poach replacements from some of the poorest parts of the world, Dr Carter said.