So there’s not much money to spend and further cuts still to make if the deficit is to be dealt with. And anyway the electorate aren’t all that keen on the government spending as much as they do. You can add to that the nagging fear of many that Labour will spend too much and a general cynicism about the role of government. At the same time, of course, the finances of many families are under huge pressure. So Labour’s Queen’s Speech has to reassure first and inspire second.
The first bill in any speech must therefore be to enshrine fiscal responsibility for this and future governments. Running irresponsible deficits is not progressive: you simply offer something to the poorest that the country cannot afford and then inevitably have to take it away again. So, the government must establish in law that its primary financial responsibility is to deliver a balanced budget over a given period of time. And that government expenditure does not exceed (say) 45 per cent of GDP. The role of the Office for Budget Responsibility must be beefed up so that it can monitor and publicly report on the implementation of these new legal responsibilities.
Families are the very best welfare state that there is for children. Not just more cost-effective but more effective generally. And a good, loving and secure childhood is essential for the development of emotionally stable adults. So a family support bill should aim to ease the financial pressure on families by establishing lower rates of income tax for those with children. Parents should be able to further reduce their income tax by offsetting the amount that they spend on childcare up to an agreed maximum.
Vulnerable adults are sadly all too often abused by those that are charged with caring for them. We should no longer excuse such abuse as being caused by pressure of work or the like. And we should no longer let much of the abuse in homes, care homes and hospitals go unpunished. A safety in care bill should establish the same legal protection for vulnerable adults as the child protection system provides for our children. Abuse of older people in all its forms – emotional, neglectful and physical – should all be criminalised.
Too many people feel let down by the criminal justice system. A crime bill should further strengthen the rights of victims to seek compensation from criminals and to have their voices heard in court. The police should be compelled to go further in making crime prevalence figures available to the public. And local councils should be able to summon the local police to explain what they are doing about local crime hotspots and to establish partnerships to deal with antisocial behaviour.
And finally there should be a clear and unambiguous acknowledgement of the limits of the role of the state. For too many years successive governments have seen how much legislation they can pass as a test of their ardour, what they can ban and what they can approve. Often the results are favourable but often they are not. The result is an ever burgeoning statute book that appears to see no limit on the role of the state. A statute reduction bill should establish that the government must also work to reduce its size. That it must justify the need for and impact of every piece of legislation through a strengthened pre-legislative scrutiny by committees of the House. And that it must remove a set number of pieces of legislation from the statute book every year.
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Peter Watt is a former general secretary of the Labour party
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Alternative Queen’s Speeches on Progress
Progress editorial: The first Queen’s speech in two years is imminent. Labour should seize on the event to set out its own stall
We asked Labour people to devise what would be in Labour’s Alternative Queen’s Speech to show how Britain would be better under Labour
It should be fiscal responsibility first in Labour’s Alternative Queen’s Speech argues Jacqui Smith
The UK needs a radical tax overhaul. Fabian general secretary Andrew Harrop sets out what this would involve
Strengthening sure start comes first writes David Talbot
Richard Darlington, Tony Dolphin and Graeme Cooke from IPPR present their Alternative Queen’s Speech for jobs and growth
We need an Alternative Queen’s Speech for community empowerment argues Florence Nosegbe
Patrick Diamond wants Labour to create an efficient, muscular state through a ‘too big to fail’ bill and a ‘mutual home-ownership bill’
Jeremy Miles would introduce a ‘transparency in equal pay bill’ and introduce compulsory so that all politicians have to listen to all sections of society
LabourList editor Mark Ferguson would put an end to Crown dependency tax havens, and finally introduce a National Care Service
We must overhaul our taxation system and introduce regional transport authorities argues Gus Baker
Anthony Parker presents his poetic contribution to the series
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Photo: UK Parliament
I am disgusted by this. The deficit was caused by bailing out the banks – the top wealthiest few percent of society. The poor are being impoverished, having their jobs taken from them, or wage freezes, and pension cuts.
Privatisation of the NHS which will lead to charging, and privatised health insurance will cuse further impoverishment.
Give something to the poor? Who are you kidding? Are there any real Labour politicians left out there?
You all need to wake up and start learning the reality of the sick economy that we are really in.
Start by listening to Professor Michael Hudson, or Professor Steve Keen. Stop living in your neoliberal fantasy world which has become a dream for the bankers and a nightmare for the 99%.
Watch this for a start http://therealnews.com/t2/component/hwdvideoshare/?task=viewvideo&video_id=73457
Read James Robertsons “Future Money, break down or breakthrough.”
I like my neoliberal fantasy…
What would the penalty be for a Chancellor/Gvmt who fails to balance the books?
We will have to wait and see, Osbourne has just increased the deficit, as Ed Balls predicted (easy to predict), that austerity will just make things worse, of course, as people have less money and are paying less taxes. Taking money away from the poor sure does work.
I think Peter Watt is right here. You can agree with Steve Keen et al, and still believe that Labour/Brown became slack with the fiscal deficit pre-crisis.
The deficit wasn’t only caused by bailing out the banks. Labour was running a deficit in 2004, 2005, 2006, despite the best economic growth for years. That was a failure to make the case to raise enough taxes to meet spending. Not sensible.
I am still in disagreement.
I am glad that you mentioned the case for not raising eNough in taxation. This was a failure to deal with tax avoidance/evasion and tax havens (see Richard Murphy and Nicolas Shaxon via tax justice UK). Also the neoliberal philosophy of keeping taxes low for the rich until the crisis hit.
However, Peter Watt does not mention approching the deficit by increasing tax receipts, he merely states this:
“you simply offer something to the poorest that the country cannot afford and then inevitably have to take it away again.” This is neoliberal philosophy, or TINA.
There are many alternatives such as you mentioned – collecting more tax from the rentier classes and monetary reform plus a debt jubilee.
Of course, if you are working for the top one percent, or you have been deluded with neoliberalism, then you may believe that there is no alternative. But the truth is, that there are many alternatives, but they do not work for the rich.
Look, I agree on much of what you say on the economy.
It’s true that Thatcher’s government benefited from oil taxes. It’s true that there has not been an attempt to stop tax avoidance. It’s true Conservative and Labour governments have just let house prices grow and taken the tax revenues without challenging whether it’s best for the economy/society. It’s true that in a banking crisis (i.e. post 2007) it was right to let the Government deficit grow.
(As an aside, the bit about 97% of the money supply being created by private banks is not a problem, that’s just how banking / money supply works, and always has. That’s a red herring, the issue is controlling bank regulation and credit).
But we need also to recognise, to admit that after a few years, Brown and his team at the Treasury never really tried to make the case for raising taxes to meet spending. Instead, they let deficits grow in 2003-2006. They didn’t think government borrowing was a problem, they thought the taxes from the City would make up for it. They didn’t understand what was going on, and didn’t take a cautious attitude to deficits.
Peter Watt is right in as far as Labour need to admit to the country what is affordable, what isn’t. If spending on the NHS, education, skills, welfare is right, make the case for paying for it. It you can’t make the case for paying for it, don’t try to pay for it by long-term borrowing.
Labour needs to get back a reputation for long-term fiscal responsibility, make the case that in a boom, borrowing is a bad idea. Even if in a crisis, it’s a good idea.
Would you please, please watch the following before you ever say that having 97% of our money being created as bank loans is only a red herring. It is the reason and foundation of bank crises, albeit exacerbated by lack of regulation. It is the reason for the housing bubble. It is the reason for the enormous transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.
Please look at the “positive money” website supported by Michael Meacher, Professor Richard Werner, Mervyn King amongst others.
I will provide links:
http://www.positivemoney.org.uk/
Watch also
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc3sKwwAaCU
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/money-as-debt-promises-unleashed/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU0XiklHPMc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swkq2E8mswI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7qOuY9ZJ8w
The move on to Professor Michael Hudson (lectures online), and Professor Dteve Keen.
The economic growth of the noughties was built on sand – a house price bubble. 97% the money supply is created by private banks as debt. The mortgage bubble was a big part of this.
Also, Thatchers Chancellors ran deficits for much longer than Gordon Brown inspite of the REAL wealth of north sea oil.
The great growth in legislation has not come from statutes, but from regulations. In 1948, as David Rowntree pointed out in The Guardian earlier this month, 24 statutes were passed. In 2011, it was 25. The number of regulations however (e.g. Wine Regulations 2011, it does exist), has gone up from 44 to 3,133. There’s your problem right there. Most of these are passed without proper scrutiny from Parliament. That’s the area to target, not coming up with a silly and arbitrary target to reduce the number of statutes every year.
The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority already compensates victims of violent crimes. Getting compensation from the perpetrators is both unecessary and harmful to a central principle of the justice system, which is that in criminal cases it is the Crown, not the victim, on whose behalf a case is prosecuted.
The rest is fairly uninspired, other than the Safety in Care Homes Bill, which is an excellent idea.