Ö÷²¥´óÐã

"A man is related to all nature."
ÌýÌý--Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are animals.

Humankind likes to kid itself that it is superior to other creatures (language, music, sense of humour) - but Shakespeare, Elgar and Coco the Clown won't stop us contracting swine flu.

It all comes as a bit of a shock. We have long attempted to tame the natural world, to treat it like a wilful child. As someone once said, "a lawn is nature under totalitarian rule".

But our failure to control a brainless bug - one that still has the audacity to imagine that we're down there with the pigs and the chickens - preoccupies our politicians and press.

No, nature will not be tamed. And there is a good reason for that: we are part of nature too. This was brought home to me the other day when studying the maps and archives of Britain's oldest nature reserve, .

When the National Trust bought the first two-acre strip exactly 110 years ago this week, it was assumed that one man - the "Keeper of the Fen" - could keep a watchful eye on the landscape, and that nature would pretty much do the rest.

But the NT had made a fatal miscalculation: fatal, at least, for the swallowtail butterfly and the fen orchid.

The fen was the product of complex interaction between plants, birds and animals. And fundamental to its existence were the apparently destructive activities of one animal in particular: man.

Here is an irony. The government, anxious to protect another fragile habitat, the peat bog, wants 90% of composts and soil improvers to be peat-free by next year. But the end of peat digging at Wicken Fen has contributed to the local extinction of the delicate and beautiful fen orchid (see image, right, by ).

The orchid was last seen at Wicken on Poor's Fen, an area of land given over to the local parish for the church poor to come and cut peat for their own use. These activities helped this fragile flower by reducing competition from more vigorous plants. Once the poor no longer needed peat and could get coal, the peat diggings stopped and the fen orchid was overwhelmed.

Victorian entomologists and naturalists, including Charles Darwin himself, knew the richness of the habitat. Some bought up tracts of fenland to create the reserve - but, , if they returned today, "they would surely ask whether the National Trust were the worthy guardians of their beloved Fen".

The rural culture - which had cut the sedge for roofing and animal bedding - disappeared and the along with it. Its seeds may still survive in the peaty soil and occasionally a rare plant will push through the surface if the land has been disturbed, but the violet has not been seen at Wicken for more than a decade.

Without human intervention, the fens quickly became covered in scrub and vital habitat was lost. That iconic species of early entomologists, , has gone despite attempts to re-introduce it.

Swallowtail butterfly, from the

The extract below from the data now on the site reveals how, in 1851, RA Julian "saw great quantities of swallow-tail butterflies".

The insect was re-introduced in the 1990s; Tim Bennett reports the project has now failed. The swallowtail has left Cambridgeshire.

Montagu's Harrier bred at Wicken until 1947. But the Wicken committee decided that its preferred site should not be cut for sedge in case the birds were disturbed. The land went to scrub and the harrier flew elsewhere.

These days, conservationists ape the principles of the ancient harvesters to protect what is left of the fen. Sedge cutting (see , right) takes place every three years in mid-summer and "brinking" and "slubbing" (two excellent Scrabble words) help manage the water courses.

Such intensive conservation management has its critics, though. Some believe that we should move to an "extensive" or "naturalistic" management programme. Instead of trying to counteract nature, man should work with it.

So, for instance, grazing animals would be free to eat where they please, :

"Several seasons of dry weather will concentrate the herbivores in the areas where water can be found and grazing is lush. This concentration will reduce the growth of vegetation in these areas whilst at the same time significantly reducing grazing pressure in the dryer areas. Most aquatic or marginal plants will be suppressed in the wet areas with reed beds giving way to wet grassland. In the dryer areas where grazing is reduced, taller vegetation will ensue, eventually leading to woodland. As the weather follows its cyclical path and seasons become wetter, the reverse will happen."

This is a much less predictable approach to conservation but, it seems to me, it is a philosophy more in tune with an acceptance that man is not god. We are part of nature too.

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The idea that workers should be forced to clear their desks and disappear, carriage clock under arm, on reaching the age of 65 is one that has its roots in a measure designed to reduce poverty and exploitation of older people. But now a committee of MPs fears that it may be achieving exactly the opposite, denying individuals the chance to top up inadequate retirement savings and unable to add to a meagre state pension.

The Work and Pensions select committee report published today demands that compulsory retirement be scrapped:

"We recommend that the Government removes regulation 30, which permits employers to continue to compulsorily retire employees at the age of 65. This regulation contradicts the Government's wider social policy and labour market objectives to raise the average retirement age and allow people to continue to work and save for their retirement."

There was some disappointment that this week's Equality Bill did not propose an end to mandatory retirement on the grounds that it self-evidently discriminates against workers purely on the grounds of age.

But there are more practical arguments put forward for its abolition.

This graph, which the Office for National Statistics produced last week, represents a stark challenge for our country. The gap between the two lines should terrify us. If we want to maintain standards of care for older people in the coming decades, something significant needs to change.

We could import young people to work and pay tax to support the elderly, but few are advocating substantial increases in immigration right now.

We could encourage young people to breed more, but that is unlikely to work.

We could significantly increase taxes, but that won't go down well with voters.

Or we could encourage older people to continue working and contributing to the national wealth if they wish to. It is not a complete answer, but it might help.

No-one is suggesting forcing those entitled to their state pension to keep working, but for those who wish or need to keep earning, why not?

Some argue that firms will be less able to rejuvenate themselves, to bring in fresh blood. There is concern that career progression will be blocked by more experienced staff refusing to move on. It could be that some older people will feel pressurised to stay working.

Charities campaigning for older people will have none of it. Michelle Mitchell, charity director for Age Concern and Help the Aged, says that today's report from the MPs "should be seen by ministers as the final nail in the coffin for the national default retirement age."

"This outmoded practice flies in the face of public opinion, established Government policy and the needs of the economy," she argues. "Government should act fast to get rid of it once and for all."

It is important to remember that the employer most enthusiastically implementing compulsory retirement is, of course, the government. The Department for Business told me:

"A number of employers are removing retirement ages and allowing more flexible working. We are confident that this will continue to increase. We are monitoring the default retirement age and are committed to reviewing it in 2011. If the evidence shows it is no longer necessary then we will remove it."

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What sort of country sends a dozen uniformed officers to haul innocent sleeping children out of their beds; gives them just a few minutes to pack what belongings they can grab; pushes them into stinking caged vans; drives them for hours while refusing them the chance to go to the lavatory so that they wet themselves and locks them up sometimes for weeks or months without the prospect of release and without adequate health services?

My country, apparently.

Reading the report () from England's Children's Commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley-Green, into at the Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre near Bedford will leave many feeling ashamed.

Of course, there are no easy answers as to how Britain ensures that foreigners don't abuse our benevolence by claiming asylum without good reason. But can this conundrum ever necessitate our treating children with such cruelty?

Sir Al went into Yarl's Wood almost a year ago and spoke to staff, families and children. The centre is where many failed asylum-seekers are held before deportation. Each year, around 2,000 children are locked up there.

The from the who find themselves unwittingly ensnared at the sharp end of the immigration system tells a story more resonant of a totalitarian state than of contemporary Bedfordshire.

The arrest

According to the children's accounts, some were still asleep when the arrest teams arrived - large numbers of uniformed officers who on occasion hammered on the door or even smashed it down and ran into their homes shouting.

One boy of 11 told the children's commissioner:

"There was this woman, just shouting, shouting at my sister to get up. She was in bed asleep and she's only five so she was crying and the woman just kept shouting at her. She didn't have to do that. The search was bad. Why did they have to search my sister? She is only five, what is she going to have? They touch you all over and they're rough. It's rude."

The report explains how some children described officers as taking pleasure in the family's distress, including telling them that they were "going back to their own country" and laughing and making fun of them when they showed signs of distress or anxiety.

One child said that an officer had called his mother "stupid" and laughed at her crying and distress, while others were told that it was "tough" if they didn't like the officer's attitude.

The children and young people revealed that some immigration officers had used force to control and restrain them - a finding that the children's commissioner describes as "a significant cause for concern".

Imagine what it must be like if you are a young child who has lived in the UK for many years, perhaps all your life, to be woken one morning and told you have just a few minutes to pack your stuff and get out.

That, apparently, was a common complaint of the children and families in Yarl's Wood, a procedure that the report describes as "one of the most de-humanising aspects of the arrest process".

Children were forced to leave behind their most treasured possessions such as shoes, school books, toys and music. Many would never be reunited with their belongings.

A single woman told Sir Al that she had been handcuffed in front of her children, aged one and three, after "panicking" when she was told that she had only three minutes to pack.

Another family with two children suffering from sickle-cell anaemia was prevented from collecting antibiotics and folic acid needed by the children.

The , which is responsible for the system, "accepts the need to do more work around the topic of belongings that are left behind" and is reviewing the use of force and guidance on medication.

The journey

According to Lin Ö÷²¥´óÐãr, head of the UK Border Agency speaking on Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio 4 Woman's Hour last September: "we do not use caged vans, we use people carriers". The "Enforcement Instructions and Guidance" states:

"Families should not be transported in caged vans unless the risk assessment dictates otherwise."

But that is not what the children said. And when challenged, the agency admitted to the commissioner that "contractors do sometimes use caged vans during the 'second stage' transport of families from the reporting centre to Yarl's Wood".

This is often the longer part of the journey, with children imprisoned in vehicles "stinking of urine" and "stained" with vomit. No wonder some said that the journey made them feel like criminals or animals.

What's more, many of the children complained about the lack of "comfort breaks" on the long journeys to detention. This had led to "accidents" in some cases. A chance to go to the lavatory was apparently denied "even when the vans stopped for petrol and, on at least two or three occasions, access to a toilet was denied throughout the whole journey despite urgent requests to stop."

If a parent treated their children like this, they might well be charged with neglect.

Treatment at Yarl's Wood

Unsurprisingly, children locked up in Yarl's Wood described it as being "like a prison". Their emotional state was often fragile, their having been ripped from the life they had known with no idea what had happened to their belongings or the pets they have been forced to leave behind and without the chance to say goodbye to their friends.

"One child asked us what the time was. When we replied with the time and the day he appeared sad and told us, "Oh, I thought it was a Saturday. If it was a Saturday I would be swimming with my friends now."

This picture, drawn by one young child , says that it is 0900, "it's a Sunday and I want to play football and I support Liverpool".

The healthcare of the children at Yarl's Wood was also found to be poor, in particular the need to ensure that youngsters are protected from disease when they are returned to their country of origin.

"Preventative healthcare arrangements prior to removal, for example immunisations and the provision of malaria prophylaxis, were found to be so inadequate as to endanger children's health."

Since the visit, the private contractor which runs Yarl's Wood, Serco, has appointed a head of clinical governance and a paediatric nurse.

Sir Al's findings relate to a visit almost a year ago, a year in which the government has agreed to adopt fully (see previous post, UK to give up child rights opt-outs).

Article 37 of the convention states that the detention of a child "shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time".

The children's commissioner believes that this means that the government must put an end to the detention of children "for administrative purposes". He wants "an urgent review" of the system but accepts that nothing can happen immediately. ()

The government, on the other hand, signed up to the convention confident that it would not prevent them arresting and detaining children of immigrants who were due for deportation.

While today's report welcomes recent improvements and ongoing reviews into the way children are treated by the UK Border Agency, it is not easy to see how the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Office is going to square its obligations under the convention with its determination to be "tough" on failed asylum seekers with children. In the end, I suspect, lawyers will argue it out and a judge will decide.

UPDATE, 17:07: Following this post, the Border and Immigration Minister Phil Woolas has commented:

"If people refuse to go home then detention becomes a necessity. We don't want to split up families, so we hold children with their parents, and while they are in our care we treat them with sensitivity and compassion.

"This inspection took place over a year ago and since then we have made even further progress, with Yarl's Wood Removal Centre praised on numerous occasions for its children's facilities - in fact Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons praised us for the 'significant progress' we have made. We now have full-time independent social workers, and a range of trained experts to monitor welfare 24 hours a day."

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Theft from the person ?! What is going on?

There are three possibilities, I suggest:

Ìý (1) The recession is making some people more light-fingered
Ìý (2) We are more likely to notice (or imagine) that someone's pinched stuff
Ìý (3) It is a statistical quirk

First, let's define our terms.

"Theft from the person" covers theft (including attempts) of a purse, wallet, cash etc directly from the person of the victim, but without physical force or the threat of it. We are talking pick-pockets and opportunists here - thieves who spot an unattended handbag or jacket and help themselves.

Second, let us remind ourselves how the figures are calculated.

This data in the latest quarterly crime stats come from the British Crime Survey () which interviewed 44,580 adults in England and Wales in December asking them of their experiences of crime in the previous 12 months.

It is a big and pretty robust poll and, when the replies are applied to the whole population, the latest numbers suggest there was an increase from about 573,000 "thefts from the person" in 2007 to 716,000 last year - an increase of 143,000 such crimes. It is a rise of 25% and statistically significant.

Third, let's look at the context of people's experience of crime elsewhere in the BCS figures.

Overall the BCS survey suggests that crime is stable. There's been no real change in people's experience of violence, domestic burglary, vandalism or vehicle-related thefts compared with the previous year. The risk of being a victim of crime remains historically low.

This rise in theft from the person is not reflected in other categories of BCS personal acquisitive crime (see table below) or in the comparable category of police recorded crime. "Other thefts" recorded by police actually fell 4% year on year.

Source: Ö÷²¥´óÐã Office

If the reason for the rise is (1), the recession, then it would appear that the only group so far which has felt the economic need to cross the line into criminality is that of sneak thieves.

This may not be as crazy as it sounds. Belt-tightening plus temptation might well lead some to pinch that £20 note left on a colleague's desk.

The second possibility, (2), is that greater anxiety about money makes us more aware when something apparently goes missing. Perhaps a year ago people assumed they had spent that fiver on something and forgotten. Or they never missed it in the first place. Now, they think it must have been stolen - particularly if they like to believe they are being more careful with their cash.

Remember, the survey asks people about their "experience" of crime - it cannot determine whether people's recollections are accurate or consistent.

Lastly, it could be (3) - a statistical quirk. The fact that something is "statistically significant" does not mean that it indicates a changing trend. Even with a big survey, sometimes you get a "significant" result completely out of line with previous and later polls.

I reckon it might be a bit of all three - relatively risk-free small crimes are the ones most likely to rise when money is tight; people are more conscious of their cash and belongings and therefore quicker to notice something missing and assume theft; the 44,580 adults in England and Wales asked about their experiences just happened to include a surprising number of people who'd had their wallets and purses nicked.

Overall, I think the figures reassure us that recession-driven anarchy is still a long way off.

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Should England rehabilitate the children's home? In the mid-1970s, 40% of youngsters taken into care were placed in such institutions. But after a series of appalling abuse scandals were uncovered, care homes fell out of favour and the proportion placed in residential care has fallen to just 14% now.

Today's report () from the , however, believes that:

"the potential of the residential sector to offer high quality, stable placements for a minority of young people is too often dismissed."

The MPs want a "reconsideration of the theoretical basis for residential care", arguing that, with enforcement of higher standards and a greater investment in skills, "it could make a significant contribution".

Residential care is expensive. The average weekly cost of looking after a child in a care home is £2,428 compared with just £489 for foster care. But how, some might ask, do you put a price on failing these young people? Today's report is clear: "There should be no 'cheap options' in the care system".

The committee goes further:

"From time to time in the evidence we took there surfaced a suspicion that decisions taken by local authorities are motivated in some circumstances by costs, and that children do not get all they are entitled to because of pressure on councils' resources. We do not share this suspicion of local authorities' motives, but we are concerned that it can exist."

Of course it exists. Local authorities must live within their income and, much as the committee might wish it were different, the welfare of problem children is not high on voters' concerns.

The committee travelled to Copenhagen to see how the Danes manage to achieve much better outcomes from their care system. Whereas six out of ten children in care go on to higher education in Denmark, in England it is six in a hundred.

"Comparisons are not straightforward", the committee admits, but notes that in the Danish system, "over half of looked-after children are in residential care":

"In contrast to the typically low status of residential work in England, in Denmark residential care is seen as the "plum job".

The MPs also say:

"The considerably more challenging nature of the residential care population in England and the use of homes as a last resort lead us to expect poorer outcomes and a more difficult experience for these young people."

But they were convinced that it was "the characteristics of staff rather than the characteristics of the residents that in fact account for the greatest differences".

Don't blame the kids. Blame the system.

"Staff in Denmark speak in terms of emotional support", the report points out, "where staff in England will talk about procedures".

This line strikes me as perhaps the most illuminating of the whole report. A risk-averse, process-driven system is at odds with the needs of damaged children. Nurturing the most troubled youngsters through to adulthood requires total commitment and, dare I say it, love.

In England, children's homes were allowed to become joyless, even cruel institutions, warehousing the most problematic kids until they were old enough to be dumped out on the street - and with no interest in what happened next.

Unsurprisingly, the outcomes were pretty miserable. And despite improvements, they remain poor, say the MPs.

"Far from compensating for their often extremely difficult pre-care experiences, certain features of the care system itself in fact make it harder for young people to succeed: they are moved frequently and often suddenly, miss too much schooling, and are left to fend for themselves at too early an age."

"One aspect of practice which particularly struck us during our visit to Copenhagen was the universal expectation of frequent contact between children in residential care and their birth families".

This was something that impressed me when I visited a children's home in Denmark a couple of months ago. As I was being shown around, I noticed a large, shaven-headed, heavily-tattooed man cradling a little girl of about five in his arms. It became clear this was her dad on a visit.

Whatever problems had caused the little girl to be taken into the care of the state, it was obvious that the relationship between parent and social worker remained positive. What a contrast with the attitude of a mother I met recently in Essex. A former heroin addict, the woman had had four of her five children taken into foster care and told me that, for years, she had regarded social workers as "the enemy".

Parents who desperately need support and help view the arrival of social services as a threat. Even if a family realises that it is incapable of providing the care the children require, the social worker is viewed like the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

"It is imperative that constructive relationships between children's services and the family are established at the outset, maintained while the child is in care, and continued when they return home", today's report concludes.

Demanding a "radical overhaul" of the system, the committee seems to be calling for a philosophical sea-change as much as a structural one. Care should be seen for some children as "the best available option rather than a last resort". For that to happen, social workers must be valued.

"An effective care system can only be achieved by recruiting enough of the right people, giving them access to the right training, paying them enough, backing them up with practical support, and placing them in structures that allow them to build relationships with children and influence things on the child's behalf."

Before we can rehabilitate the children's home, we need to rehabilitate social workers.

Update 1103: You can listen below to my report from , which also featured and .

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Does Gordon Brown know what his special advisors are up to? The results of a Freedom of Information request the Ö÷²¥´óÐã lodged some weeks ago reveals this morning that the prime minister was apparently totally unaware of the dubious activities of another of his so-called in Number Ten. Not this time, but Matt Cavanagh.

Mr Cavanagh, you may recall, was the Number Ten official involved in the e-mail exchange in which Downing Street insisted that the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Office publish figures on knife attacks, even though they had been warned by official statisticians not to use the data because they were "potentially inaccurate and may possibly give the wrong impression".

At what point, I asked, did the prime minister first become aware that release of some information was contrary to the advice of statisticians?

Today, David Deaton, the head of the in the Cabinet Office replied to me saying that neither Gordon Brown, nor any minister in his department or the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Office was aware of "outstanding concerns" before the publication of the "fact sheet", as he still likes to describe it.

(The full response to our FoI request can be found here [44Kb PDF].)

"Who did know?" I asked.

"The Cabinet Office", he confirmed, "holds some information of this nature."

"However", he continues, "I believe disclosure would contravene the first data protection principle, which provides that personal data must be processed fairly and lawfully. This is an absolute exemption and the Cabinet Office is not obliged to consider whether the public interest favours disclosing the information."

Disappointing, but not surprising.

What is really troubling, however, is what today's response implies about the powers of special advisors. If no minister knew anything about the decision to override the pleas of statisticians, why not?

Remember this e-mail exchange from the day before publication?

NHS statistician: "our view is that these provisional data are NOT released" because "they are potentially inaccurate and may possibly give the wrong impression".
Department of Health: "Number 10 are adamant about the need to publish the statistic".
NHS Chief Statistician: "this will look to observers as if the govt has cherry picked the good news and forced out publication for political ends - is this really what they want?"

Put yourself into the shoes of Mr Cavanagh inside Number Ten. Or indeed into those of the special advisors and officials inside the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Office and Department of Health who must have been aware of this exchange.

You are being warned by one of the most senior statisticians in the land that putting out these "provisional data" would go against "fundamental principles". It would also break a promise the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Office made that the figures were only for internal use. You are told that the matter will be taken to the National Statistician Karen Dunnell and that it is contrary to the arrangements being introduced by . What do you do?

According to Mr Deaton today, not one of those officials or special advisors thought it might be a good idea to mention this problem to any minister. As for which civil servants were told, we are not allowed to know.

If this behaviour is par for the course, the power of these unelected special advisors is extraordinary. Ministerial responsibility is non-existent - we are merely told that they knew nothing.

And just in case anyone has forgotten, the figures on stab wounds - which an official at Number Ten was "adamant" should be published - proved to be both highly inaccurate and thoroughly misleading.

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"Never apologise. Never explain."

The during World War I, Jackie Fisher, was actually extolling the quality of boldness - but his quotation has become shorthand for a strong, ruthless mindset, contrasting with the weakness of those who are "sorry" for themselves.

It is a macho philosophy which chimed well with the dispassionate values of the 1980s boom years. It was Margaret Thatcher who said that "to wear your heart on your sleeve isn't a very good plan; you should wear it inside, where it functions best".

Such emotional toughness gave way to a new "touchy-feely" style a decade later - what some called a feminisation of political rhetoric.

Echoing the public remorse served up on confessional TV talk shows such as Oprah Winfrey's, politicians (notably Blair and Clinton) began queuing up to apologise publicly for everything from the slave trade to personal infidelity.

And so the utterance of has become part of the narrative of the crisis or the scandal - a climax of contrition in the final chapter.

With , it was the apparent lack of a fulsome and public apology that initially fuelled the press campaign against the head of children's services Sharon Shoesmith.

With , a handwritten expression of regret from the prime minister was not enough. The story could not be closed without repentance.

Saying "sorry" is powerful because it incorporates a degree of humiliation, of personal weakness and, most importantly, it infers acceptance of blame. It is dangerous.

Like the advice sometimes given to motorists involved in an accident, best to say nothing lest the lawyers use an apology to suggest fault.

But even Number Ten knows that there comes a point when only "sorry" will do.

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In some parts of Britain, one in every five or six young people is now claiming Jobseekers' Allowance (JSA) - a far higher jobless rate than for any other age group.

The shocking statistic has emerged from analysis I have done of the latest unemployment data for 18-24 year-olds.

Source: Office for National Statistics (Nomis)

Mapping the figures reveals a wide variation in levels of unemployment among young people, but the situation is worst in parts of south Wales, north-east England, the Firth of Clyde, a strip of northern England stretching in from the Humber estuary and a few places in East Anglia.

The five places with the highest proportions of their young people claiming JSA are listed in the table below. I have also calculated how the situation has changed since a year before:

By contrast, here are figures for five areas with some of the lowest levels of JSA claimants among their 18-24 year-olds:

If you want to see the situation in your local area, the full table can be accessed here [120Kb MS Excel spreadsheet].

The recession is hitting the young. This table, kindly prepared for me by the ONS, tells the story:

The unemployment rate among under 25-year-olds is more than double that of any group over 30. The problem is most severe in deprived areas already suffering from high levels of joblessness. This is not a middle-class recession - it appears to be hitting the poor much harder than the rich.

This map uses the same data as the previous one, but illustrates the story more clearly in regional terms by putting an equal number of authorities in each category:

Source: Office for National Statistics (Nomis)

Central-southern England and rural areas of north-west England and north-east Scotland have the lowest levels of unemployment among under-25s. The Ö÷²¥´óÐã Counties are not seeing anything like the youth unemployment problems of the traditional industrial heartlands. Look at the dark belts across northern England and central Scotland.

What must it be like to be a school-leaver in Tredegar or Ebbw Vale this summer?

Update 2230: You can see my report for tonight's Ten O'Clock News below:

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Some will question the timing of today's government announcement on .

Firstly, as a ministerial aide admitted to me this afternoon, the plan is not new - it was just "not noticed" when included in the Welfare Reform Bill earlier this year. "We kept it quiet", he explained, "so we could make a formal announcement later".

Here is the reference in the bill:

So what exactly is today's hot news? I put that question to the press office at the Department of Work and Pensions. They said this in an email response:

"what's new today is that we are saying for the first time that we will explicitly explore the alcohol route and look to mirror the system we are introducing for drug addicts
Ìý
"does this make sense?"

Well, I don't know if it does "make sense". Exploring the alcohol route is hardly a significant policy shift - after all included a table of the different kinds of "work-related activity" that ministers might insist jobless claimants undertake or face sanctions.

There in the second box is "alcohol rehabilitation" - clearly, the exploration had already begun.

And the Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell expressed his enthusiasm for the idea of targeting alcoholics :

"We are prepared to look at including alcoholics (in the legislation), but it is harder to identify people who have alcohol problems. If [Ian Davidson] has any suggestions on how to do that, we would be happy to look at them. We offer specific help to people who self-identify, but if there are better ways of doing that, we will be happy to look into them."

Here is the nub of the problem - the government would like to prove itself tough on irresponsible alcoholics claiming benefits, but has not worked out how to do this.

With drugs, it is simpler: test positive for an illegal substance and the government can insist that you go into treatment. But having alcohol in your bloodstream is not an offence; nor is evidence that one has a drink problem.

So, today's press release reveals that "the government will commission new research, along with an internal review" in the hope that it will come up with a better solution than the current one: that is, simply to ask the claimant if he or she is an alcoholic.

Knowing that answering "yes" would force you to give up beer or deprive you of your beer money, even the most feckless drinker is likely to postpone any such announcement. (Rather like the government on welfare reform.)

There will inevitably be some who suspect that the choice of today to re-announce relatively flimsy plans for jobless alcoholics is designed to distract the media from .

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Oxfam, Save the Children, the Child Poverty Action Group - they are all at it: charities are busy lobbying the Chancellor Alistair Darling on what should be in his Budget later this month.

Today's report from Oxfam is explicit in how the charity believes [pdf link]: make the tax system more progressive, put welfare reform on hold, increase out-of-work benefits and tax credits...

Amid warnings that youngsters in Britain may suffer malnutrition, Save the Children called last weekend for the government to "".

Now, it is obvious that however much one might agree with the aims of these organisations, these are political demands. There are some who feel such activities over-step the line for a registered charity.

Jill Kirby, from the right-leaning think tank , has accused Save the Children of .

As she put it in on this morning's Today programme on Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio 4: "The most important added value that a charity can provide, which a politician cannot provide, is to be out there actually saving lives, saving children, being there for those who need them. It is not actually being in Parliament, becoming a lobby group, and there is a real worry this is the direction charities have moved in."

She was responding to the news that £750,000 of tax-payers' money is to be given to around 30 charitable organisations specifically for "political campaigning".

The Cabinet Office minister Liam Byrne said it was about "giving a little bit of money to pioneer some innovative campaigning techniques on behalf of people who often don't have their voices heard in the public arena".

According to the Charity Commission, which has recently refreshed but not changed : "An organisation will not be charitable if its purposes are political. A charity must be established for a charitable purpose...

BUT

...as a general principle, charities may undertake campaigning and political activity as a positive way of furthering or supporting their purposes."

In other words, it is a perfectly legitimate part of a charity's work so long as it is not the continuing and sole activity of the charity. Indeed the Charity Commission goes further stressing that "campaigning and political activity can be legitimate and valuable activities for charities to undertake".

Oxfam has said it "believes passionately that campaigning to achieve policy change in favour of poor people is an essential part of its response to overcoming poverty".

In an e-mail this morning, the charity reminds me of a quote from the Brazilian Archbishop Dom Helder Camara: "When I gave food to the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked why the poor were hungry, they called me a communist."

The land occupied by both political and charitable lobbyists is difficult territory, as the Ö÷²¥´óÐã discovered over the question of whether the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal for Gaza should be broadcast. But what strikes me is that the politicking we are seeing at the moment is more than the usual arm-twisting of a chancellor ahead of a Budget.

"The recession could be an opportunity to change thinking about poverty - in government and beyond," says Oxfam in its report.

It is a thought echoed by the Child Poverty Action Group which recently said that "". [pdf link]

What were once political and economic certainties are now being revisited and charities believe there is an opportunity to reshape the debate about the role of the state in focusing on inequality and poverty for the long-term.

As , there is "a sense that the greedy rich have cheated decent working people of their rightful share of the pie".

In this context, the argument goes, it would be "unfair" if the very poor were to suffer the consequences of the sins of the very rich.

And that idea of "fairness" has real political resonance right now. Oxfam writes of the need "to build the foundations for future recovery on a fairer, more sustainable basis".

'We privatised profit in the good times but were left to socialise debt when things went bad' is how the Child Poverty Action Group characterises the bail-out of the banks. "Such a one-sided deal has bred massive and deeply corrosive social inequality in our society. This is no longer acceptable."

I suspect the most important thing to understand about this moment in history is that no-one knows where we are heading. It is far from clear what the political, economic and social consequences of the global recession will be. In the terrifying uncertainty the charities believe it is their role to ensure the voice of the poor is heard within the clamour.

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Heroin and cocaine cost Britain billions.

From Cabinet Office, Strategy Unit Drugs Report Phase One: Understanding The Issues,
12 May 2003 []

Five years ago, a Cabinet Office report estimated a figure of £24bn a year - £16bn of that from the costs of acquisitive crime by users funding their habit.

But what if those drugs were legal and regulated? What if heroin and cocaine were available on prescription or at affordable prices? (See my previous post on this debate Legalise Drugs! From maverick to mainstream.)

Today's report [] by the campaigning Transform Drugs Policy Foundation (TDPF) argues that government must look at the current drugs policy with the cold eye of a cost-benefit analyst. If they did, it is suggested, ministers might save the taxpayer close to £11bn a year. (The figures in the table below relate to England and Wales.)

TDPF admits that the sums are back-of-an-envelope calculations because much of the information is simply not available. The conclusions involve, they concede, some "heroic assumptions".

But at the centre of the analysis is the claim that prohibition itself is the root cause of almost all drug-related acquisitive crime. If government took control from the pushers, dealers and gangsters, they suggest, levels of such crime would be "negligible". Even in the "highly unlikely" event that drug use doubled, suggests Transform, a regulated market for cocaine and heroin would see almost £7bn of savings in the cost of crime.

A relatively small amount of property crime is directly related to people's demand for cigarettes or alcohol, it is argued. Take other drugs away from the criminals, and the greatest driver of property crime in the UK largely disappears.

But what about demand? Wouldn't legalisation, as the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Office suggests , "risk a huge increase in consumption with an associated cost to public health"?

Drugs are controlled because they are harmful. The law provides an important deterrent to drug use and legalisation would risk a huge increase in consumption with an associated cost to public health.
The legalisation of drugs would not eliminate the crime committed by organised career criminals; such criminals would simply seek new sources of illicit revenue through crime. Neither would a regulated market eliminate illicit supplies, as alcohol and tobacco smuggling demonstrate.

Transform accepts that "whilst some pressures towards increased use may occur under a regulatory model, these would be moderated by effective controls on availability, price, and marketing".

The bottom line, though, is that we don't know. We don't know because government has never done a cost-benefit analysis of its drugs strategy, or conducted an "impact assessment" to ensure that policies are cost-effective.

This, argues Transform, is contrary to which state that

...no policy, programme or project is adopted without first having the answer to these questions:
(1) Are there better ways to achieve this objective?
(2) Are there better uses for these resources?

In its statement above, the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Office explains that the law "provides an important deterrent to drug use". But does the law achieve this end?

In 2002, Tony Blair was told [] by drug policy analysts in Number Ten that "attempts to intervene have not resulted in sustainable disruption to the (drug supply) market at any level".

Last year, a report [] from the independent concluded that "law enforcement efforts have had little adverse effect on the availability of illicit drugs in the UK".

Today's Ö÷²¥´óÐã Office statement offers another reason for not considering the legalisation/regulation model.

The legalisation of drugs would not eliminate the crime committed by organised career criminals; such criminals would simply seek new sources of illicit revenue through crime.

This strikes me as an odd argument, as it implies that it is pointless trying to eliminate any area of criminality because the bad guys would simply go and find something else bad to do.

What this is really about, surely, is a moral and political argument being challenged by a methodical and technical one. For generations, we have been told that recreational drugs are "wicked" (although alcohol is omitted from the axis of evil), and few in Westminster want to appear "soft" on sin.

It is interesting, however, that the Liberal Democrat Shadow Justice spokesman David Howarth :

For far too long, drugs policy has been dictated by what sounds tough rather than what works.
We continue to pursue the same policies, despite the fact that the availability and use of drugs are up, prices are falling and drug-driven crime remains rife.
If the government are sceptical about these figures, then they should come up with their own cost-benefit analysis immediately. It would be a welcome nod towards evidence-based policy.

Perhaps we are witness to further signs that the debate over prohibition is hotting up.

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New figures I have obtained under freedom of information paint a troubling picture of the mental well-being of people in part of Wales and northern England.

It may be the recession, but I suspect the statistics showing very high levels of anti-depressant use in those regions have more complex origins.

The new numbers also show yet another increase in prescribing pills like Prozac, despite national guidance advocating alternative treatments - up 3.15% in Wales and 3.64% in England during 2008.

The previously unpublished data, given to me by the Prescription Pricing Authority in England and the Prescribing Services Unit in Wales, focus on January this year. If one looks at the number of prescriptions for anti-depressants issued in that month per thousand patients, a startling story emerges.

The top seven are all Welsh Local Health Boards (LHBs) in a small area in the south of the country. Of the top thirty prescribers, 12 are in Wales and 10 are Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) in the north-east of England.

We even see a local health authority prescribing at a rate greater than one prescription for 10 patients. In Torfaen, the area around Pontypool in south Wales, GPs handed out 104 prescriptions per 1,000 patients during January. This appears to be an astonishing level of anti-depressant use. GPs we have contacted blame a shortage of counselling for the high prescribing levels.

Both south Wales and the north-east of England are areas with high levels of people not in work, but deprivation cannot explain what one sees as the other end of the table. Of the 30 PCTs which have the lowest levels of anti-depressant prescribing, all but two are in Greater London. And these areas include some of the most deprived in England.

The figures also show how January 2009 compares with January 2008, and I wondered whether this might reveal the effects of the recession. The map shows a less obvious regional picture.

The biggest year-on-year increases in prescribing are both in south Wales: Torfaen has seen a rise of over eight prescriptions per 1,000 patients in twelve months, consolidating its position at the top of the table.

Blaenau Gwent, Bridgend and Neath/Port Talbot have also seen very large rises. Six of the top 20 places ranked by the increase in prescribing anti-depressants are in Wales. Have free prescriptions made a difference? If so, why do figures for the Vale of Glamorgan and Wrexham show falls in anti-depressant use?

In England, Swindon and Sunderland, which have both recently seen big job losses and lay-offs as a result of the economic downturn, have seen anti-depressant prescriptions rise by more than five prescriptions per 1,000 patients.

Tameside and Glossop sees the largest increase in the past 12 months in England with at least one local doctor saying that the recession is having a serious effect on the area's mental health.

Dr Kailash Chand, a GP in the area :

Job insecurity, redundancy, debt and financial problems are all proven to contribute to mental distress. For the last few months I've seen at least one or two more patients per week who are unable to cope with financial difficulties.

I have no doubt that the threat and impact of recession is having a psychological effect upon many people in the UK - but anti-depressant prescribing has been rising for years and, in fact, the rate of increase is falling. Comparing Jan 2007 with Jan 2008, the increase in England was 8.3%, and it was 9% in Wales.

Do let me know what conclusions you draw from the data.

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One of my first jobs as a Ö÷²¥´óÐã TV reporter was covering the - the deregulation of the City of London which precipitated a dramatic expansion of Britain's financial services industry.

Yesterday's , with its raft of proposals increasing financial regulation and oversight, is designed to change the culture of the Square Mile and beyond once again.

As the Guardian's economics editor Larry Elliott :

Canary Wharf, the symbol of how unbalanced the economy has become over the past decade, loomed over yesterday's summit talks in more ways than one.

Courtesy: Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the Way We Live by Daniel Dorling, Mark Newman & Anna Barford, published by Thames & Hudson

Along with the UK, Luxembourg and Switzerland dominate the picture.

Our reliance on income from financial services has seen commentators speculate on the impact of a new global regulatory environment for the City of London. Damian Reece in the Daily Telegraph :

Bad, ineffective regulation flowing from the G20 will be bad for the world economy and bad for financial services, the main industry Britain has used to build its return to the front of the world stage - a return that was encouraged by Brown but which could be in jeopardy if his lust for rules and regulations backfires.

The phrase "lust for rules and regulations" is brave at a time when few are publicly questioning the need for much tighter regulatory systems to protect the global economy.

But it does characterise the fears of some in the City - that in our rush to redesign the , red tape will suffocate the goose that laid the golden eggs.

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Which of the G20 leaders represents best value for money? Since such a close eye is being trained upon the remuneration of British politicians more generally, I thought it might be instructive to find out which of the presidents and prime ministers in London this afternoon gets the fattest pay cheque compared to the size of their countries and their economies.

So, the sum I have attempted is their salary divided by GDP per head of the country they lead.

Now, this is not an easy calculation. Not all countries are open about how much they pay their top politicians. I have no idea how much the king of Saudi Arabia gets for being prime minister. Nor, oddly, can I find any reference to the remuneration package that Silvio Berlusconi enjoys in Italy.

Information on Argentinean, Turkish and Indian political remuneration appears unavailable.

Many of the sources I have plundered are less than ideal but I hope you will forgive me for bashing on with this.

My results suggest that the Chinese President Hu Jintao is the "best" VFM (value for money) world leader with a salary equivalent to roughly four people's GDP contribution. His annual remuneration of just $10,500 was calculated from a reference on Chinese internet sites to a monthly salary of 6000 CNY.

Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper looks cheap at the price - his salary of $212,700 (265,166 Canadian dollars) is equivalent to just over five average Canadians contribution to the national wealth.

We then have three leaders with salaries equivalent to about six people's GDP contribution in their respective countries: our own Gordon Brown, President Medvedev of Russia and Australian Premier Kevin Rudd.

This would seem to suggest that the British get quite a reasonable deal when it comes to leadership pay but, of course, none of these figures include allowances or other perks.

Poorer and populous countries tend to have leaders with salaries many times the average contribution to GDP. It would take 53 Indonesians' contribution to their country's wealth to pay for the annual salary of Susilo Banbang Yudhoyono.

Do we think that a leader's pay should reflect the scale and responsibility of the office in terms of population and economy? Some analysts suggest nations would get poorer quality politicians if they sought office motivated by the pay cheque.

Perhaps it should be performance-related - salary dependent upon improvements in wealth or well-being. Let me know what you think.

GDP data source:

Salary data sources:
China - Ö÷²¥´óÐã China Service via Baidu
Canada -
United Kingdom - [pdf link]
Russia -
Japan -
France - Financial Times, October 2007
Australia - [pdf link]
USA -
Brazil - Correio Do Brasil
Germany - Financial Times, Oct 2007
South Korea -
South Africa -
Mexico -
Indonesia - AFP

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