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Factory figures buoy markets’ recovery hopes
Fresh data signalling a recovery in the embattled manufacturing sector has this morning bolstered hopes the UK is emerging from recession more robustly than first thought.
Activity in the manufacturing sector picked up faster than economists expected in February helped by strong orders from overseas and as factories were able raise their prices, according to the CIPS/Markit manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI).
The headline activity reading on the PMI came in at 56.6 last month, unchanged from January’s 15-year high. Economists polled by Reuters had on average expected growth to slow, predicting a reading of 56.1.
The PMI’s output index was the highest since September 1996 and export orders were the highest since January 1996, when comparable records began. As raw material costs rose at the fastest pace for more than a year, so too did the prices that factories charged for their goods – the highest reading since October 2008.
After the recession ravaged employment in the manufacturing sector there were further signs of an improving jobs market as the survey showed employment rising for the second month in a row.
The relatively upbeat survey follows official data on Friday showing that Britain’s emergence from recession at the end of 2009 was stronger than first thought. The Office for National Statistics revised up its fourth quarter growth estimate to 0.3% from 0.1%.
Commenting on his group’s survey today, Rob Dobson, senior economist at Markit Economics says:
“The PMI survey suggests that the good news provided by the surge in output reported by the Office for National Statistics in December will have continued in early-2010.”
“Even more encouraging are the growing signs that business-to-business and investment spending are recovering, which points to a more sustainable and broad-based recovery.”
Against that backdrop the FTSE 100 is currently up 39 points, or 0.7%, at 5393, with almost all the top 10 slots taken by miners as metals prices rose. Copper is at a five-week high as the earthquake in Chile sparks supply fears.
Looking further ahead the manufacturing data has quelled fears that the UK economy could dip back into contraction in the first quarter. But James Knightley at ING Financial Markets issues a note of caution:
“The output level is at its highest since 1996, while export orders are at all time highs. This bodes well for a good first quarter of 2010 GDP figure, but we need to remember that manufacturing is still a small part of the UK economy (less than 15%) while consumer spending (around two-thirds of the economy) remains soft.”
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Factory figures buoy markets’ recovery hopes
Fresh data signalling a recovery in the embattled manufacturing sector has this morning bolstered hopes the UK is emerging from recession more robustly than first thought.
Activity in the manufacturing sector picked up faster than economists expected in February helped by strong orders from overseas and as factories were able raise their prices, according to the CIPS/Markit manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI).
The headline activity reading on the PMI came in at 56.6 last month, unchanged from January’s 15-year high. Economists polled by Reuters had on average expected growth to slow, predicting a reading of 56.1.
The PMI’s output index was the highest since September 1996 and export orders were the highest since January 1996, when comparable records began. As raw material costs rose at the fastest pace for more than a year, so too did the prices that factories charged for their goods – the highest reading since October 2008.
After the recession ravaged employment in the manufacturing sector there were further signs of an improving jobs market as the survey showed employment rising for the second month in a row.
The relatively upbeat survey follows official data on Friday showing that Britain’s emergence from recession at the end of 2009 was stronger than first thought. The Office for National Statistics revised up its fourth quarter growth estimate to 0.3% from 0.1%.
Commenting on his group’s survey today, Rob Dobson, senior economist at Markit Economics says:
“The PMI survey suggests that the good news provided by the surge in output reported by the Office for National Statistics in December will have continued in early-2010.”
“Even more encouraging are the growing signs that business-to-business and investment spending are recovering, which points to a more sustainable and broad-based recovery.”
Against that backdrop the FTSE 100 is currently up 39 points, or 0.7%, at 5393, with almost all the top 10 slots taken by miners as metals prices rose. Copper is at a five-week high as the earthquake in Chile sparks supply fears.
Looking further ahead the manufacturing data has quelled fears that the UK economy could dip back into contraction in the first quarter. But James Knightley at ING Financial Markets issues a note of caution:
“The output level is at its highest since 1996, while export orders are at all time highs. This bodes well for a good first quarter of 2010 GDP figure, but we need to remember that manufacturing is still a small part of the UK economy (less than 15%) while consumer spending (around two-thirds of the economy) remains soft.”
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Pressure on Tories to name mystery MP who sabotaged anti-poverty bill
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Campaigners demand David Cameron names member who killed bill protecting developing world from vulture fund bankers
Pressure is growing on David Cameron to identify the mystery Tory MP who deliberately scuppered a landmark anti-poverty bill that could have stopped “vulture” bankers profiteering from the developing world’s debt burdens.
Debt campaigners have reacted in fury and disbelief to the killing of the bill and Labour MP Sally Keeble, one of the bill’s backers, has accused the Conservatives of “duplicity” by pretending to back the legislation and then sabotaging it at the last minute.
Campaigners are now calling on the leader of the opposition to clarify his view of the bill and asking whether the MP concerned will be identified. The international development secretary, Douglas Alexander, has sent a letter to Cameron demanding an explanation.
The frustration has been compounded by the secrecy surrounding the events in the House of Commons last night. During the reading, three Tory MPs were seen to huddle together on the benches before one shouted the word “object!”, which under parliamentary procedure effectively stopped the bill passing.
Three Conservatives were in the chamber – Christopher Chope, Andrew Robathan and Simon Burns – but none have admitted intervening. The Tory treasury spokesman David Gauke, who was on the committee which debated the bill, insisted the Conservatives had wanted to see the bill go through and that the MPs, two of whom are Tory whips, did not have the support of the frontbench. He said he did not know which one had made the objection. “We have our suspicions,” he said. “It is a pity. Our view was let’s go with the bill but that was not to be. Everyone recognises that this was a rushed process.”
But Keeble said that there had been plenty of time to debate the bill, both for two hours in the chamber and at committee stage. “All concerns that had been raised had been dealt with and the bill had been watered down already as a compromise to the Conservatives,” she said.
“It’s blatantly obvious that this was duplicitous behaviour by the Conservatives whose commitment to international development is deeply suspect. The three men went into a huddle and then no one can see who actually objects. It’s disgraceful behaviour.”
Nick Dearden, director of Jubilee Debt Campaign, said: “It is an outrage that one MP has taken it upon himself to effectively kill a bill which has the support of the vast majority of the House. His move will mean many of the poorest countries in the world will continue suffering at the hands of reckless and unethical investors.
“This action has destroyed the hopes of many people across the developing world that we might put an end to the appalling practice of vulture funds.”
Vulture funds buy up the debts of poor countries, often at a fraction of their face value, and pursue them through the international courts, in many instances despite agreements by other creditors to give the country debt relief.
Campaigners wanted the legislation to apply retrospectively, because it could help countries such as Liberia, which lost a £13m case in London against two vulture funds late last year. Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has urged parliament to pass the new law. The scuppering came a day after former Tanzanian President Benjamin William Mkapa backed the bill, saying: “I hope the international community joins hands to put an end to these deplorable activities of the vulture funds.” The bill also has the support of Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Andrew Gwynne MP, who proposed the bill, said: “It is staggering the Conservatives are still unwilling to support even the most basic legislation to help reduce third world debt.”
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The wisdom of recycling trade surpluses | George Irvin
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Look to Keynes for a way to rebalance the world economy – force surplus countries to spend money in deficit countries
How is the global economy to be rebalanced? Is there a distinction worth making between Chinese and German mercantilism? One can argue that China’s astonishing growth has sucked in other countries’ imports while lifting millions out of poverty. But growth continues to be export-led, and the Central Bank of China has accumulated the world’s largest stash of dollar-denominated assets. Germany runs an even larger current account surplus, but much of it is recycled into buying companies in the US and elsewhere.
Is exchange rate adjustment the answer? While the US Congress seems to believe so, a large revaluation would in practice serve nobody’s interests. Chinese export-driven growth rate would slow, and Americans would find themselves poorer in real terms having to buy dearer goods at Wal-Mart.
In the EU, things are slightly different because the euro has appreciated strongly against the dollar. But appreciation has had only had a marginal effect on Germany’s surplus; Germans have accepted slower wage growth as a price worth paying for the prize of being the world’s leading exporter. By any measure, exchange rate adjustment – even allowing for lags – seems to have done little to rebalance the world economy.
The financial crisis has complicated matters, with fiscal deficits growing alarmingly. The German response to resulting downward pressure on the euro has been to insist that all countries should balance the books like Germany. But as Martin Wolf correctly observes: “Germany is in a trap of its own devising. It wants its neighbours to be as like itself as possible. They cannot be, because its deficient domestic demand cannot be universalised”.
In macroeconomics, the basic savings identity says that the sum of the private sector surplus (of savings over spending) and of government’s fiscal deficit must equal the current account (or external) balance. Thus, if a country is in approximate external balance, but an external shock like the credit crisis leads to a sudden increase in the private sector surplus, this must be mirrored by a similar increase in the fiscal deficit. In plain English, as the private sector pays off its debts by spending less, this is reflected by an increase in public sector spending.
There are only two ways out: the first is getting the private sector to start spending again and the second is for net exports to expand rapidly. The problem with the first solution is that, by definition, private consumption falls in a credit crunch; in consequence, business confidence falls dragging down private investment.
The problem with the second solution is slightly more complex and involves what philosophers call the “fallacy of composition“. While one country may be able to boost its exports, all countries taken together cannot. Because my exports are your imports, everyone trying to boost their exports simultaneously by means of, say, currency devaluation leads to a 1930s style “beggar my neighbour” result. This is broadly the logical flaw of those who argue that Britain was fortunate in not joining the euro and retaining its own currency.
What of the weaker members of a currency union, eg Greece and the “Club Med” countries? The German solution, currently dressed up as a debate about the merits of a European Monetary Fund (EMF), is for all countries to adhere to strict fiscal discipline and slash the public deficit. The EMF in its present guise is simply another version of the EU stability and growth pact. This “solution” only works through cutting the real wage and driving down national income to such a degree that the private sector surplus falls and imports contract drastically – ie though expenditure cutting rather than expenditure switching. The rub is of course that were a number of eurozone countries forced to adjust in this way, Germany’s current account surplus would contract.
Is there another answer? John Maynard Keynes proposed a perfectly sensible solution at Bretton Woods in 1944, namely, forcing surplus countries to spend their extra money in deficit countries, thus both their private spending and export capacity. The “Keynes solution” as is has been dubbed by the US economist Paul Davidson, was unfortunately vetoed by the Americans. In fairness, one must add that America rechannelled part of its surplus at the time into the Marshall Plan, thus enabling Europe to grow and to overcome its deficit.
Under such a scheme applied to the eurozone, the EMF would use the German euro surplus to create new sources of income and jobs in the Club Med countries, thus raising their ability to buy future German exports. In the absence of an EMF, a new eurozone economic structure which provided it with a Federal Treasury could capture such surpluses and direct them towards an ‘extended’ solidarity fund.
Too idealistic? Not at all. Just as Keynes and Marshall recognised that the failure to reflate Europe after the war might be catastrophic for the west as a whole, so Germany should draw the same lesson today – just as China now seems to be recognising that the new mercantilism leads nowhere. Recycling trade surpluses is a win-win game. Alternatively, insisting on budgetary balance will almost certainly lead to prolonged recession with high social costs.
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Climate change adverts draw mild rebuke from advertising watchdog
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Leaked adjudication largely clears government over campaign that some thought ’scary, inaccurate and too political’
Read the full text of the ASA adjudication
The advertising watchdog has mildly rebuked the government over the phrasing of a claim in two advertisements on the danger of climate change, while dismissing the rest of the complaints against the controversial television and newspaper campaign.
The campaign, run by the Department of Environment and Climate Change last winter, brought in 939 complaints. Various groups said the adverts were political, too scary, and factually misleading.
The vast majority of these complaints have now been dismissed by the authority.
The Advertising Standards Authority’s only criticism was that a claim that “flooding, heat waves and storms will become more frequent and intense” should have be phrased more tentatively.
The environment secretary, Ed Miliband, said the authority had “comprehensively vindicated” the accuracy of the department’s TV advert and had rebuffed those who attempted to use the advertising standards process to question the reality of man-made climate change.
“Science tells us it is more than 90% likely there will be more extreme weather events if we don’t act.
“In any future campaign, as requested by the ASA, we will make clear the nature of this prediction.”
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Public sector job cuts hit women first
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With four in 10 working women in public sector jobs, redundancies will make a work-life balance even harder to attain
The key election debate will be about the speed, scale and scope of spending cuts. This is a bit strange. It is the recovery of growth that will make the biggest contribution to reducing the deficit by getting tax revenues flowing again. Polls report just as much support for tax rises as spending cuts. But the test of economic virility has become the size of your spending cuts.
And virility is the right word here as spending cuts will hit women harder than men. So far men have been bigger losers in the recession job-loss stakes. This is not because women’s jobs are inherently more secure – indeed the chances of losing your job are about the same for men and women in hard-hit sectors such as retail, manufacturing or finance. But because those sectors that have suffered the most redundancies employ more men than women, the net result has been more male job losses.
But the public sector is different. Big spending cuts and job losses here will hit women, as they are twice as likely as men to work in the public sector. Indeed four in 10 women work in public-sector occupations. This has been particularly important in areas hit hard by private-sector unemployment such as the North East, Yorkshire and Humber and the West Midlands. In these regions male unemployment is more than 10%, and many families will now depend on a public-sector woman’s wage. If public-sector jobs are axed, many families could find themselves without anyone in work.
Women often work in the public sector because it offers relatively secure work, flexible working patterns and a chance to build up a decent income in retirement. The gender pay gap is smaller and the public sector offers more opportunities to combine a proper career with caring responsibilities. Spending cuts would inevitably threaten this – and thus set back the cause of gender equality.
Women’s pensions would be hit particularly hard. Those public-sector pensions of tabloid fury go largely to women. Two thirds of current public-sector pensions are being built up by women.
Cuts would also make the public sector a less woman-friendly place to work. While it is right to look to increase public-sector efficiency, unplanned job cuts will mean fewer workers doing the same amount of work, leading to stress and pressure to work even longer hours.
Politicians will battle hard for women’s votes during the election. Child tax credits already look set to be a battleground and both parties are keen to show their flexible working credentials. But it will be a policy that perhaps few would immediately associate with gender that will make the biggest difference to working women. The size and shape of the parties’ cuts packages does matter.
• An different article by was mistakenly published yesterday under the author’s name and subsequently removed. Comments on the original piece have been lost – apologies to those concerned
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Teacher racism is rare | John Dunford
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Disciplinary procedures are already in place to deal with staff with discriminatory views – there’s no need for a BNP ban
It goes without saying that schools should be places that promote tolerance and understanding, and that there is no room for racist views in such organisations. However, the decision of the government not to ban teachers who are members of the British National party (BNP) or other groups that may promote racism is a welcome glimmer of common sense in an otherwise increasingly frustrating political landscape.
School are havens of fairness and inclusivity and only a handful of cases have come to light of teachers with BNP membership or extremist views. It goes without saying that young people should not be subject to racist views in the classroom, but a blanket ban surely falls into the category of sledgehammer to crack a nut.
The vast majority of teachers and staff have no hidden agenda, put the interests of their students first, and concentrate on teaching and providing a role model for widely accepted standards of behaviour.
Schools already do an excellent job of making sure that those who hold discriminatory views are not welcome. Each school has a set of values and a strong ethos. In many cases these are explicitly set out in a policy or document which includes reference to all staff having a commitment to treat all members of the school community with tolerance and respect and to promote community cohesion more widely. As part of recruitment processes, a school will use this policy to check that prospective employees agree with its ethos and to screen out those who are not able to support it.
Likewise, the general injunction that schools and teachers should not promote particular positions – political, religious, or discriminatory – continues to work well, as do the powers schools have to enforce it.
Disciplinary procedures are in place to deal with teachers or other staff who are overtly or covertly racist, and schools can dismiss staff for this when appropriate. In the case of teachers, dismissal is followed by referral to the General Teaching Council and can lead to the person being barred from teaching. There is no reason to change processes that work well and can be used to deal with the rare cases where trust is betrayed.
Of course it is right that teachers and others should be forbidden in schools to promote any contentious position. However, open discussion of difficult topics must be possible.
The aim should be genuinely to challenge young people to think for themselves and to form their own opinions, rather than to promote a particular ideology. Students should not be made to feel that their identity is under threat or that they are being attacked or belittled. With those provisos teachers should feel that they can tackle difficult issues without being accused of misbehaviour.
As in all areas of society, there is some racism in schools but very rarely on the part of school employees, who in almost every case take pains to project and live by values based on respect, tolerance and the intrinsic value of every human being.
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Bulger killers should never have gone on trial, says youth advocate
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Children’s commissioner Maggie Atkinson intervenes over Jon Venables, arguing that 10 is too young to be branded a criminal
The killers of James Bulger should not have been prosecuted for his murder, the children’s commissioner for England has said in a call to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12.
Maggie Atkinson, who was appointed to the post last autumn, said children under 12 should not be prosecuted for any crime because they were too young to understand the full consequences of their actions.
A civilised society should recognise that children who commit offences should be treated differently from adult criminals, Atkinson told the Times.
Her comments come after James Bulger’s mother, Denise Fergus, met the justice secretary, Jack Straw, this week to discuss the return to prison of one of her son’s killers, Jon Venables.
Earlier this month it emerged that Venables – who was given a new identity and released on licence in 2001 – had been recalled to prison following “extremely serious allegations”.
Media reports have suggested that Venables, now 27, had his probation revoked over child pornography allegations, but Straw refused to confirm the details of why he was returned to prison.
Atkinson said politicians should put the needs of children first and not allow themselves to be so influenced by the views of victims’ relatives.
“The ‘we are too worried about the parents’ issue is something that runs like a thread through a number of cases. My constant song is ‘listen to the children and young people’,” she said.
Calling for the age of criminal responsibility to be increased, the commissioner said even the most “hardened” of children who had committed serious crimes were “not beyond being frightened”.
“The age of criminal responsibility in this country is 10 – that’s too low, it should certainly be moved up to 12; in some European countries it is 14,” she said.
“In terms of knowing what the full consequences of your actions are, you are into older childhood or adolescence.”
“In most western European nations they have a completely different way of intervening with youngsters who have committed crime. Most of their approaches are much more therapeutic, much more family and community based, much more about reparation than simply locking somebody up.”
Atkinson said the James Bulger killing was a “dreadful thing” and Venables and Robert Thompson, who were 10 in 1993 when they were charged with the two-year-old’s murder, needed to be in a contained environment like a youth justice facility and given programmes to help them turn their lives around.
Venables’s breach of the “life licence” under which he was released should help to force a debate on the effectiveness of the current system, she told the Times.
“Youngsters are usually tried in a youth court, [Thompson and Venables] were tried in an adult court. What they did was exceptionally unpleasant and the fact that a little boy ended up dead is not something the nation can easily forget. But they shouldn’t have been tried in an adult court because they were still children.”
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Official: it’s fine for racists to teach | Joseph Harker
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By refusing to bar BNP members from the classroom, the government is allowing these vile people to spread their hatred
The BNP’s march into the mainstream moves forward. Fresh from their top-table seat on the BBC’s Question Time (which marked International Women’s Day with an all-female audience; it marked last year’s Black History Month with an invite to Nick Griffin), party members have now been told that it’s OK for them to teach our children.
In a review which will shock many members of the teaching profession, not to mention ethnic-minority parents, Maurice Smith, former chief inspector of schools, concludes: “I do not believe that barring teachers or other members of the wider school workforce from membership of legitimate [sic] organisations which may promote racism is necessary.”
He reaches his decision because, in the last seven years, only four teachers, and two governors, have been found to be BNP members, and only nine incidents of teachers making racist remarks or holding racist materials have been uncovered. Banning BNP members would, he says, therefore be a “taking a very large sledgehammer to crack a minuscule nut”.
Two things here are breathtaking: one is that a man who held such a senior position in the running of Britain’s schools has such a one-dimensional and uninformed view of the issue of racism in our education system. Is he not aware of the underachievement statistics for many of Britain’s racial minorities, widely believed to be party fuelled by low teacher expectations? Is he not aware of the massive rates of exclusions and disciplinary procedures against black boys?
Does he really believe that racism is all about making offensive remarks, rather than promoting, openly or covertly, a system of inequality and injustice? If that’s the case, then, with people like him in charge, no wonder so little has been achieved in improving these statistics over the years.
He lists a number of bureaucratic “safeguards” to prevent racism in schools, but this is utterly unconvincing. Schools equal-opportunity policies are notoriously ineffective in making real differences, merely satisfying the box-ticking mentality which pervades the education system. And the “duty to promote social cohesion” is equality easy to subvert, the term often being used as a cover for anti-Muslim propaganda.
The second shocking development here is that his recommendations were immediately accepted in full by the schools secretary, Ed Balls.
Actually, given that all three parties are crawling over each other to win the votes of the “white working class” – whom they now subconsciously equate with racism and bigotry – it shouldn’t be a surprise.
Let’s be clear: the BNP is a racist party. It is anti-migrant and defines those of non-white racial origin as permanent second-class citizens, regardless of whether they were born here. It has been forced against its will to admit ethnic-minority members, but that doesn’t mean it’s suddenly become a party of race equality. In fact, the handful of minority members the party may attract will be fellow Muslim-hating extremists.
So when Ed Balls, in his reply to Smith, begins, “There is no place for racism in schools”, he shows himself to be a complete hypocrite by then going on to agree with BNP teachers.
If he’s OK with the party in the classroom, then he should be honest at least and say: “Yes, there is a place for racism in schools.” And, to black and Asian families in particular: “Yes, parents, when you leave your five-year-old at the school gates, we don’t care if you’re handing them over to someone who despises your race, despises your faith, and who wants to terrorise you and run you out of the country. As long as they don’t say it so anyone can hear.”
The complacency, as the BNP gains council seats and could possibly even gain its first MP this year, is staggering.
It is often said that for evil to flourish, all it takes is for good people to do nothing. As the BNP’s message of hate moves onwards, it is time for good people to take a stand.
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The Catholic bishops get political | Austen Ivereigh
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Terry Sanderson paints the Catholic bishops’ pre-election statement as a cliche-ridden ‘damp squib’. Judge for yourself
The question: Should religious leaders tell us how to vote?
The National Secular Society’s Terry Sanderson thought the Catholic bishops’ pre-election document a “damp squib … an extended and more than usually platitudinous Thought for the Day”. Why,”even we wicked non-believers could sign up for it”, he declared.
Now I’ve told Terry before – it was on TV; I was in Jerusalem; Terry was objecting to Christmas – that Christians like me don’t think he is especially wicked; not, at least, more wicked than most of us. But we do think what he says is silly.
He thinks that because the bishops did not threaten to excommunicate politicians or order cowering flocks to vote this way or that, they must have been saying nothing at all. This, essentially, is the secularist case against religion in politics. Either it is pernicious, and should be banned; or it is trite and irrelevant, in which case it need not be taken seriously.
What Terry cannot do is tell you what the bishops actually said. Choosing the Common Good, he informs us, “didn’t really have a political message at all”.
You judge. Here goes my summary – which, if you compare with the document itself, you’ll find straightforward and accurate. As you read, ask yourself two questions. First, is it fair of Snderson to say that this is not political? Second, is the case the bishops are making one that Sanderson and other secularists would be happy to sign up to, as he declares?
1. The current economic and political crisis is essentially a crisis of institutions, a consequence of the loss of trust in and within them. In civil society, on the other hand, there are large reserves of goodwill and compassion and trust. The challenge of the current political moment, therefore, is how to renew our institutions by unleashing those reserves.
2. The key to doing this is to recover the proper role for civil society. The state and the market have grown too big. Relationships of contract – bureaucratic and financial – have come to dominate, eroding the relationships of gratuity and reciprocity which are the engine of civil society. The fruits of this erosion are to be seen in the decline of solidarity and the rise of an erroneous view of human beings as commodities whose relationships are limited to self-interest.
3. What holds communities together is “social capital” – namely, relationships of trust and reciprocity. Social capital is built up in churches, mosques, associations, trade union branches, schools and other such places. A society’s health may be judged by the strength of this social capital, which needs to be fostered and encouraged.
4. Trust will be rebuilt by encouraging the cultivation of virtue, beginning with an ethical reform of our institutions. Virtue in public life means a government which works for the common good, meaning the good of society as a whole. This starts with reducing and eliminating abortion, euthanasia, child poverty, infant mortality and all that erodes the value of life; it means putting in place proper care of the elderly and working to overcome entrenched poverty and inequality. It means opposing unjust discrimination , and ensuring that the cost of economic recovery is not borne by those who have least. It means ensuring that the asylum and immigration system does not sacrifice human dignity and the inalienable rights of migrants. It means politicians not playing one community off against another for electoral gain. It means working to reduce environmental damage and discouraging reckless consumerism.
5. The strength of civil society is built first of all in the family. Government policies should support marriage and stable relationships through access to affordable housing and employment which recognizes family commitments.
6. One of the bedrocks of civil society is faith. Religious institutions and charities contribute to the common good in countless ways. It is not just freedom of worship which needs to be respected but freedom of religion. Communities of faith have a right to operate in the public forum through, for example, partnerships with the state, and to witness to the convictions which nourish them. The state threatens them when it fails to protect their freedom to operate, placing obstacles in their way, or restricting their right to contribute to political debate.
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Royal Mail may face fines over rigged test deliveries
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Postal watchdog says some managers may have received bonuses based on phoney mail delivery times
The postal watchdog is considering taking action against Royal Mail after allegations that service quality tests were rigged by workers.
Postcomm received an insider tip-off last year that the names and addresses of recipients of test deliveries were circulated among staff, including senior managers, “for a number of years”. Workers could therefore ensure that post for those people – which were meant to be subject to independent testing – were delivered on time.
The abuse is thought to have being going on for “several years” and involved countless staff across the country from delivery workers to senior managers.
Senior staff, including Adam Crozier, Royal Mail’s chief executive, have been paid tens of thousands of pounds in bonuses based on the company’s “service quality” figures, which include data on delivery times.
Although there is no evidence that senior executives were aware of what was going on, Postcomm said some managers “may have received bonus payments to which they were not entitled”, since they were “based on recorded levels of quality of service which were incorrectly monitored and recorded”.
The watchdog said it was “minded” to find that Royal Mail had breached licence conditions relating to quality of service. In a preliminary report from 17 February, published in the Daily Telegraph, it found that Royal Mail had failed since July 2006 to meet those conditions.
If found guilty the company could face a six-figure fine.
As part of its licence conditions the Royal Mail was obliged to use the market research firm Research International to monitor the standard of its service.
Part of this clause also meant Royal Mail should make sure that the 22,000 volunteer panellists used to send test mail to each other remained anonymous.
Postcomm said postal workers were identifying the test mail by feeling envelopes for a microchip they contained. However, the rigging did not make a “material difference” to the firm’s published quality of service figures, Postcomm said.
During Royal Mail’s own investigation into the allegations a number of staff were suspended.
Postcomm is expected to make a final decision on whether to take action against Royal Mail in May.
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Entente cordiale: Sarkozy speaks warmly of Brown at Downing St
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French president says Britain needed ‘bang in heart of Europe’ and tells Cameron he doesn’t understand Tory euroscepticism
Coming from opposing ends of the ideological spectrum, Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown aren’t supposed to be political brothers in arms.
However, at a Downing Street press conference yesterday the French president chose to lavish praise on the prime minister, coming close to siding with him on the issue of Europe and saying Britain was needed “bang in the heart of Europe”, while expressing regret at David Cameron’s decision to quit the European People’s Party.
“If you ask me whether I would prefer the Tories to remain within the EPP, the answer is yes. The EPP is a good bunch of people. Opening up to others is a very good thing,” Sarkozy said.
He went on to meet the Tory leader later at the French ambassador’s residence in London, but the Conservatives said he only pressed the point of their decision to quit the EPP in passing. The meeting between the two sides had been very warm, the Conservatives said.
Brown and Sarkozy said they had made progress on bridging their differences on the future regulation of off-shore hedge funds, and they hoped a compromise agreement on a directivecould be reached in time for an EU finance ministers meeting next Tuesday.
The Americans are opposing adirective that means US hedge funds – or funds operating from London, but registered for tax outside Europe – would need authorisation from each of the EU countries. Sarkozy spoke warmly of the prime minister, saying: “I have found in Gordon Brown a convincing and convinced reformer, and hand in glove we have tried to find the right answers when the economic and financial crisis almost swept us all away.”
He added: “I know we have differences: he is British and I am French. He is a socialist and I am not. That is not as serious as the first point. We have always worked in a spirit of partnership and trust.”
The French have been building contacts with the shadow cabinet in a series of meetings, but remain perplexed by Tory scepticism, saying they cannot find the intellectual basis for this criticism.
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