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Brian Paddick needs to be tough on both crime AND drugs

Apr 23

Posted by Guest Blog in Crime, Governance, Health, Holyrood | 17 Comments

A guest post from Ewan Hoyle the founder of Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform and author of their new drug policy (debated here: bit.ly/LibDrugs) who is also their council candidate for Glasgow’s Anderston/City ward. There’s a Glasgow Skeptics meeting on this topic on the 14th of May

The people of London would undoubtedly be better served by their police force if cannabis users were not being arrested and charged. And for the vast majority of cannabis users a criminal record would be far more damaging to their prospects than using cannabis will ever be.There is nothing factually wrong with Brian Paddick’s “Police are wasted on cannabis” campaign.

So de facto, turning-a-blind-eye, decriminalisation is a step in the right direction. But as a policy end-point it is starkly illogical. If a drug is illegal, but no one is ever prosecuted for using it, then there can be no justification for its continued illegality. A trade that could be regulated and taxed and contribute greatly to the national economy should not be allowed to be dominated by organised crime. We might be able to save money in not prosecuting users, but we would still be spending money and time pursuing and prosecuting the producers and dealers. This endeavour has not had any success in restricting cannabis supply to any meaningful extent in the past, and is highly unlikely to do so in the future. If the act of using is no longer immoral to the extent that society deems it should be illegal, then the act of supplying can not be deemed immoral if the responsibility lies in the hands of a supplier who has only the best interests of the customer in heart. A policy of strictly controlled legal supply can create such a supplier and is the one that government should be investigating with great urgency.

The motion passed by Liberal Democrat conference last September was determinedly “tough on drugs” in its intent. Past policies that implied tolerance of drug use were swept aside in favour of policies targeted at the restriction of the ability of drugs to do harm. Paddick’s proposals sadly take us back to our old ways, and may even increase the potential for harm caused by the drug itself. If we exclude the obvious harms of a criminal record, arrest at least focuses the mind of the user and their family on their drug use and might cause them to re-evaluate their behaviour. By removing the chances of that happening, any problems users experience are more likely to develop further and have serious implications for their health and happiness.

So, on the scale of “tough” to “soft” on the ability of cannabis to do harm, de facto decriminalisation as proposed by Paddick is probably a step towards softness. If we want to get tough on the ability of cannabis to cause harm, then we have to deploy policies which are more likely to prevent problems emerging and which are more likely to facilitate early intervention in order to halt the progression of any problems which do occur.

The model of decriminalisation adopted in Portugal – where possession is still illegal but an administrative and not a criminal offence – takes us back in the direction of toughness. Rather than turning a blind eye to cannabis use, the police refer users to panels tasked with determining whether treatment is appropriate and delivering education on harms and available services. In a situation where contact with the police can only be positive for a drug user’s prospects, concerned family and friends need have no qualms about seeking help for a loved one. In Portugal, prospects for cannabis users are better, but again their de jure decriminalisation policy is starkly illogical for the same reasons as the de facto decriminalisation proposed by Paddick.

It is only with strict government control and regulation of a legal market that we can optimise our restriction of the ability of cannabis to cause harm. Rather than have information on the harms of cannabis delivered only after an unpredictable encounter with the police, this information can instead be provided in the environment of a pharmacy, by someone trained for the purpose, prior to the first time a customer uses the legally supplied drug. The ability to advise customers on the potency of strains and encourage safer modes of administration, means the customer is far less likely to come to harm. The undermining of the illegal market combined with age restrictions should hopefully reduce availability of cannabis for children, while reducing further the necessity to expend police resources against the black market suppliers. If it is decided to educate first-time users on the early warning signs of psychosis, then the increased number of people in society equipped to identify these signs means those developing psychosis are more likely to be helped regardless of their drug use history.

So Brian. It is time to move beyond liberalising our drug laws. De facto decriminalisation is not the best answer for the people of London or anywhere in Britain. The policy that is the toughest on drugs and crime is a plea to government for the strict government control and regulation of a legal cannabis market.

I have strong suspicions that if it is communicated properly, it will garner you far more support that your soft-on-drugs, baby-step, 4/20 announcement.

A Matter of Agency

Dec 9

Posted by Kirsty in Economy, Governance | 4 Comments

According to reports in The Independent this week, SNP strategists are considering the option of Scotland joining the circle of Scandinavian countries as part of the Prospectus for Independence. But many workers in the Scottish Government will be deeply unimpressed with one Swedish model apparently being imposed upon them.

In 2010/11, Scottish Government spent over £6.8 million on temporary agency staff. With the ongoing recruitment freeze, the work of civil servants departing from permanent posts is increasingly covered by agency workers, with the majority of administrative and support staff roles in the Scottish Government supplied by the recruitment agency Pertemps.

Since 1 October, under the new Agency Workers’ Directive, after twelve weeks’ work temps should gain the rights to the same basic employment and working conditions as if they had been recruited directly by the company where they are based – mostly the right to the same pay, holidays and working hours.

You would think matching civil service pay, holidays and terms and conditions for agency staff would be an achievement the SNP government would be proud to implement, given their commitment to improving workers’ conditions through policies like the living wage. However, the Scottish Government, no doubt beholden to some decision made in Whitehall, appears happy to let private companies legally bypass protections for vulnerable agency staff working in our corridors of power.

Pertemps is one of many private firms understood to be using the Swedish derogation model as a loophole to get out of the Agency Worker Regulations. Also known as “pay between assignments”, the model is derived from an opt-out clause Sweden negotiated when the Agency Workers’ Directive was agreed at EU level.

Basically, if an agency worker is made into a permanent employee of the recruitment agency, they do not gain the same basic rights of employees of the organisation where they are placed after 12 weeks’ work. Therefore the hundreds of agency staff the Scottish Government is paying over £6m on each year are probably working to implement and deliver government policy without the right to equivalent pay, holidays and working hours as the civil servants doing the same job, all because they are permanent employees of a recruitment agency, and just happen to be placed in a Scottish Government office.

It can be argued that the Swedish derogation is better than nothing. As an employee of the recruitment agency, the temp gains protection against unfair dismissal after one year and the right to basic redundancy pay after two years. They also have to be paid for at least four weeks between postings, and receive at least 50% of their last pay packet or the minimum wage, whichever is greater. However, if the temp’s contract says they can be placed on varying working hours anywhere across the country, with very little advance warning, they could be placed on a low-hour contract somewhere miles away instead of receiving pay between postings, and threatened with dismissal for gross misconduct if they don’t turn up.

Pertemps proudly displays its various good employer credentials on its website – including Investors in People and the Sunday Times Top 100 Companies to Work For. If they are implementing the Swedish derogation, and making all the temps they place in Scottish Government and other organisations permanent Pertemps employees, it will be interesting to see how long they can hold on to such accolades. And it will be even more interesting to see if the Scottish Government is happy to have a second-class workforce within its employ.

Occupy the European bailout

Oct 26

Posted by James in Economy, Europe, Governance | 8 Comments

IndignadosToday sees yet another round of hand-wringing across the Eurozone, driven by another round of hand-rubbing by the markets. When will it end?

We’re told that all it takes is a decisive move, that sufficient taxpayers’ money can be thrown at bank balance sheets to stop all this instability. It’s clearly nonsense. As Matt Taibbi pointed out yesterday in gorgeous detail, these bailouts are an endless series of ways to break the rules in favour of the rich elite, and it’s no wonder the peasants are revolting. Europe’s bureaucratic bailout merry-go-round is basically the same scam, just in more languages.

If the moral hazard is withdrawn and the value of your investment is never allowed to go down, and the traders and hedgies get offered a bet to nothing backed up by public money, they’ll just stop asking for more and threatening whoever’s next in line? Really? If the banks get offered a voluntary “haircut” only on their government debts, but the hedge funds can buy those debts and extract the full value, they won’t get together and make that deal? Really?

We know that austerity isn’t the solution to government debt. Greece’s economy fell 7.3% over the year – it’s not a technical recession, it’s a collapse. The previous link to the BBC shows what the vulture funds and multinationals are making from it too: woohoo! Cheap property in Kolonaki! Can I buy the lottery? Even the New York Times knows better than our current UK administration: “Mr. Cameron’s austerity program is the Tea Party’s dream come true“, and “unlike Greece, which has been forced into induced recession by misguided European Union creditors, Britain has inflicted this harmful quack cure on itself.”

Can political union save the economic union? Those of us who never believed a single currency could work across an economically diverse continent doubt that too. It’s just an even grander elite project to replace a failed elite project. The larger a state, the harder it is to change things. This is one of the reasons I favour independence: we need a radically reformed system of governance, and that seems almost impossible even at a UK level. Assuming political union could be delivered, the democratic deficit would feel even stronger to European citizens across the continent. The wrangle and tension that would come from making all taxation and spending decisions centrally, never mind all the social policy differences, make this pure fantasy.

Personally I agree with Frances Coppola on Liberal Conspiracy yesterday – the Euro is finished. Why any responsible First Minister would tell us so confidently that joining it is part of Scotland’s manifest destiny I have no idea. But before that there’s a choice of bailouts in front of the Eurozone leaders. The first option is to bail out the banks again, become the lender of last resort, and to prop up and vindicate all the traders who thought there’s money to be made here without risk. The second option is to go beyond the current guarantees and underwrite every deposit made by every individual and business in those banks, and tell the banks they’re on their own. A big society bailout, if you like, a bailout for the people who’ve suffered through these economic hard times, not yet another one for the people who made the mess in the first place. It’s not enough, but it would be a start.

If they go the right way, they will have redeemed themselves as Götterdämmerung for the dream of a United States of Europe approaches. If not, it’ll be time for the indignados and occupiers to take it to the next level, to turf a whole generation of corrupt politicians who put banks before people out and start again.

Not great, not rubbish, just good enough

Oct 18

Posted by The Burd in Governance | 32 Comments

Toe-curling, infuriating, shaming.  These are only some of the emotions I experienced while watching BBC Scotland’s documentary on the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Sub-titled The Bank that Ran out of Money, the programme laid bare the extent of the folly of RBS’s global ambitions.  As one commentator put it, they thought they were spinning gold out of straw.

Worst moments?  Watching Tom McKillop, a fine chemist and industrialist, clearly out of his depth – but I’ll cry few tears at his fate, given that he’s still managing to accumulate baubles on the boardroom circuit.  Realising that either Goodwin didn’t have a scooby what he was doing, or if he did, he told barefaced lies to shareholders and the rest of us, year after year.  But absolutely the worst was realising that an awful lot of RBS employees got unco rich on the back of selling poor Americans an unfeasible dream.  Here was financial piracy and imperialism on an incredible scale, and it was cloaked in the Saltire.

At the same time, RBS was branding itself glitzily across big sporting events and sponsorship opportunities.  Swashbuckling its way into everyone’s consciousness.  And most of us were proud of seeing a wee Scottish company mix it with the big boys and willing to share a little of the lustre of its reputation:  few of us paused to question the desirability or necessity of big being better.

Now, we have come full circle.  RBS has eschewed splashing the cash in favour of grassroots community sponsorship and grantmaking in an attempt to rehabilitate itself.  Yet, even this is blatant blaggarding.  To vote in its Community Force competition that pits charities against each other in a bilious game of sell your need, you must register with its website and attempt to avoid the bank’s marketing clutches in the process.  A sneaky way to try and drum up new customers methinks.

Such swinging extremes seem part and parcel of the Scottish psyche, epitomised by the stance of political parties over our constitutional future.  We’re either too wee to be half way decent on our own, or capable of dazzling the family of nations with our greatness.  The SNP, in particular, is guilty of braggadocio, albeit with the best of intentions and understandable rationale.

If your opponents constantly do down your country’s prospects, the obvious temptation is to counter that by trying to show how much better – wealthier and healthier – Scotland could be with independence.  Filling Scots with hope, aspiration and big ambition is a vital tenet of Salmond’s strategy towards independence.  It’s why under an SNP Government, building a sense of national pride through showcase sporting events like the Commonwealth Games and the Ryder Cup are key components of the masterplan.  It’s also why the First Minister is much taken by Scotland being a world leader in renewable energy technology.  Self belief is everything in the race to win hearts and minds.

But this extreme is matched by the perverse pride many Unionists take in promoting the idea that Scotland on its own would be an economic basketcase, a stance that has encouraged them to forge political careers out of keeping the Scots cringe firmly at the forefront of our approach to life.  There is something far wrong with a political creed that revels in doing down a people’s ability to survive and thrive.  And it has succeeded in maintaining generations under the yoke of under-achievement, making us sniffy about real success, happy to wallow in our mediocrity.  How else to explain our swagger under the weight of poverty, ill-health, violence and aim always to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in everything from sporting endeavour to personal attainment?

There is a dishonesty inherent in both extremes and a little more honesty in our political discourse would go a long way.  Like Goldilocks, I’d be happy with just right.  Not every country can be great;  this nation does not need to be rubbish;  a half way house that does things decently would do for me.

I’d settle for living in a country which prioritises tackling inequality and injustice, where fairness is at the heart of the agenda.   That resolves to end the scandal of children growing up in poverty;  which ensures that the most vulnerable citizens do not go without or have to fight to get what they need;  where people pay what they can afford for the benefit of all.  I’d settle for a Scotland that feels confident enough to remove the chip on it shoulder, but does not feel the need to wear a fur coat with nae knickers either.  I’d be happy with a Scotland that is neither great nor rubbish, but just content with being good enough.

 

 

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100 Days have come and gone

Aug 26

Posted by The Burd in Governance, Holyrood | 30 Comments

Belated congratulations are in order as the SNP marked another significant milestone in reaching 100 days, not of its first term in office, but its second running the government of Scotland.  Self-congratulation appears to be off the agenda though – nothing on the SNP website, nowt from the Scottish Government either.

Right on cue, though, a trio of disparaging and dispiriting articles in the Scotsman – a political one, an almost identical analysis, and in case we hadn’t got the message, a down in the mouth leader that ponders these last 100 days and concludes, clunkily, that the SNP Government hadn’t hit the ground running but jogging.

No we haven’t witnessed 100 days of dynamic action, as we did in 2007.  But then there are fewer quick fixes to be found.  And this time, where’s the hurry?  The SNP has a whole extra year to work with – pace is going to be everything this time round.

Moreover, with three opposition parties in disarray, floundering and leaderless, there has been no one snapping at their heels;  indeed, some of the Scottish Government’s poor headlines have been of their own making (or rather the media’s, seeing it as their collective national and noble duty to offer some kind of scrutiny).  This administration will last the course – the previous minority one did not know when its number might be called – and indeed, unless Labour gets its act together might even enjoy a third term.  Who needs a hundred days when there are thousands in which to make your mark?

In any event, many of the SNP’s manifesto commitments either involve no change at all – continued council tax freeze, free personal care, free tuition fees etc – or ambitious, sweeping change – new capital investment programmes, innovative legislation, a living wage, a real shift to localism.  Such measures are hard to fashion into immediate actions and ready soundbites.

These kind of reforms take time.  As the First Minister found out, in a rare lesson in humility, with the harried anti-sectarianism bill, sometimes the old proverbs really are the best:  less haste, more speed.  Our patience is likely to be rewarded with a number of “big bills” to be announced when the Scottish Parliament returns the week after next.

The only show in town, as far as the SNP is concerned, has been the opportunity presented by the Scotland bill to maximise devolution.  Its parliamentary timetable at Westminster demanded that the Scottish Government focused its attention on securing as many additional powers as possible;  indeed, one of the most vibrant and busy committees of the next 100 days is likely to be that set up to explore, scrutinise and make the case for all the powers the First Minister has put on his shopping list.  The prospect of items being crossed off that list is highly unlikely given the dominance of the SNP on the committee and in the chamber.

But it was not just the Government which eased itself gently into this session;  the Parliament too did not exactly spring into action.  Weeks went by with minimal parliamentary activity;  committees took an age to appoint convenors;  in the seven weeks before shutting up shop for the summer, the Parliament did not even open officially.  But with a very different shape and size to parliamentary groups, as well as a whole host of new parliamentarians, the logistics of getting the show on the road this time round were harder to achieve.  And crucially, everyone seemed exhausted from the efforts expended in the election – no one had much appetite for bounding Tigger-like into this session.

Now they’ve all had the summer to recover and recuperate, to rejoin and renew, there can be no excuses.  Yet, while the press appears to have rolled its eyes and declared the summer to have been “boring”, it has largely ignored the fact that the Scottish Government has been very busy indeed.  In fact, most of the Cabinet Secretaries and Ministers have had little more than a week off.  Not only has the Scottish Cabinet been on tour around Scotland, visiting far flung places like Stranraer, Fort William and even Kirkcaldy,  its members have been on other tours and trips, immersing themselves in their portfolios in different parts of the country.  Inbetween times, some of them have even managed to find time for some constituency work and pop home for tea with the family.  There are no five holiday Cameronians in this bunch.

And yes, it might make for few headlines.  It might seem – to some – to amount to aimless wandering, but it actually purports to serve a much needed purpose.  To make clear that Holyrood is not Edinburgh’s Parliament but Scotland’s, that this SNP Government belongs to and governs for all of the country, reminding everyone that it takes its new-found responsibility as the National Party of Scotland seriously.

Taken together, it might not amount to an action-packed, thrill a minute hundred days of glory.  But if it ensures thousands more days in government, and thousands more yes votes in the independence referendum, the SNP will consider it time well spent indeed.

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