Feed-in tariff review confirms expectations of renewables industry as funding to large-scale installations is restricted Subsidies for large-scale solar power installations are to be cut drastically, the government confirmed on Thursday morning , in its long-awaited review of feed-in tariffs (Fit) for renewable energy . The reform will favour domestic and other small-scale installations of solar power, of up to 50kw – typically enough to cover several houses but not enough for some of the community-scale installations some developers had planned, which would cover fields. Greg Barker, minister of state for energy and climate change, said: “I want to drive an ambitious roll out of new green energy technologies in homes, communities and small businesses and the Fit scheme has a vital part to play in building a more decentralised energy economy. ” He said the government had undertaken a wide-ranging review and consultation on the feed-in tariffs, through which installations of solar technology and anaerobic digestion – a process that creates energy from waste, often used on farms – receive a set sum per unit of energy generated. As of the beginning of August, installations of solar power that are between 50 kilowatts and 150 kilowatts of capacity will receive 19p per kilowatt-hour produced, down from 32.9p. Larger installations of up to 250kw will receive a reduced tariff of 15p per kwh and field-size installations of between 250kw and 5 megwatts of capacity will get half that, at 8.5p per kwh. Both larger sizes were previously paid 30.7p per kwh. The rates of support for anaerobic digestion go up slightly, and will be 14p per kwh for installations under 250kw of capacity, falling to 13p for installations up to 500kw. The cost of the feed-in tariffs is met not from government funds but by energy companies adding small amounts to bills for all customers. However, Barker said the amounts devoted to feed-in tariffs should be changed because if larger scale installations received the same level of support as domestic scale installations, the system would be “overwhelmed”. He said: “We have carefully considered the evidence that has been presented as part of the consultation and this has reinforced my conviction of the need to make changes as a matter of urgency. Without action the scheme would be overwhelmed. The new tariffs will ensure a sustained growth path for the solar industry while protecting the money for householders, small businesses and communities and will also further encourage the uptake of green electricity from anaerobic digestion.” The changes announced on Thursday confirmed expectations in the renewable power industry, as ministers had indicated in February their desire to restrict funding to large scale installations. The feed-in tariff system – brought in because it has been highly successful in encouraging the uptake of renewable energy in countries such as Germany – began in April 2010 . The new tariffs generated enormous interest among the solar industry – in the first year of the scheme’s operation, more than 30,000 solar panel systems were installed , compared to a few hundred in previous years. The Department of Energy and Cimate Change said on Thursday that the tariffs were cut because of the potential cost to energy bill-payers. According to government calculations, a field-size system of 5 MW would reap subsidies of £1.3m per year. Twenty such schemes would receive subsidies equivalent to that of about 25,000 households. But solar industry experts have said the changes will result in less solar power being installed, because large scale schemes – many of which were planned for areas in the southwest – are more efficient than domestic-size systems. They also criticised ministers for jeopardising investment by bringing in drastic changes to the scheme so soon after it was brought in. Gaynor Hartnell, chief executive of the Renewable Energy Association, said: “The handling of this whole affair has been poor. Larger-scale PV has been demonised, when it is the most cost-effective approach. Midway through this decade we’re expecting its cost to be on a par with offshore wind.” A further consultation on feed-in tariffs will be launched this summer, with more changes to the scheme to take effect from next April. Howard Johns, chairman of the UK’s Solar Trade Association, said the move would cripple the UK’s fledgling solar panel industry. “Crushing solar makes zero economic sense for UK plc because it will lose us major manufacturing opportunities, jobs and global competitiveness,” he said. “It also risks locking us in to more expensive energy options in future. It is inexplicable that the Treasury can be allowed to damage energy and industrial policy by taking decisions without taking into account the bigger picture. The prime minister urgently needs to intervene to prevent this calamity.” Solar power Energy Renewable energy Feed-in tariffs Energy bills Fiona Harvey guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Feed-in tariff review confirms expectations of renewables industry as funding to large-scale installations is restricted Subsidies for large-scale solar power installations are to be cut drastically, the government confirmed on Thursday morning , in its long-awaited review of feed-in tariffs (Fit) for renewable energy . The reform will favour domestic and other small-scale installations of solar power, of up to 50kw – typically enough to cover several houses but not enough for some of the community-scale installations some developers had planned, which would cover fields. Greg Barker, minister of state for energy and climate change, said: “I want to drive an ambitious roll out of new green energy technologies in homes, communities and small businesses and the Fit scheme has a vital part to play in building a more decentralised energy economy. ” He said the government had undertaken a wide-ranging review and consultation on the feed-in tariffs, through which installations of solar technology and anaerobic digestion – a process that creates energy from waste, often used on farms – receive a set sum per unit of energy generated. As of the beginning of August, installations of solar power that are between 50 kilowatts and 150 kilowatts of capacity will receive 19p per kilowatt-hour produced, down from 32.9p. Larger installations of up to 250kw will receive a reduced tariff of 15p per kwh and field-size installations of between 250kw and 5 megwatts of capacity will get half that, at 8.5p per kwh. Both larger sizes were previously paid 30.7p per kwh. The rates of support for anaerobic digestion go up slightly, and will be 14p per kwh for installations under 250kw of capacity, falling to 13p for installations up to 500kw. The cost of the feed-in tariffs is met not from government funds but by energy companies adding small amounts to bills for all customers. However, Barker said the amounts devoted to feed-in tariffs should be changed because if larger scale installations received the same level of support as domestic scale installations, the system would be “overwhelmed”. He said: “We have carefully considered the evidence that has been presented as part of the consultation and this has reinforced my conviction of the need to make changes as a matter of urgency. Without action the scheme would be overwhelmed. The new tariffs will ensure a sustained growth path for the solar industry while protecting the money for householders, small businesses and communities and will also further encourage the uptake of green electricity from anaerobic digestion.” The changes announced on Thursday confirmed expectations in the renewable power industry, as ministers had indicated in February their desire to restrict funding to large scale installations. The feed-in tariff system – brought in because it has been highly successful in encouraging the uptake of renewable energy in countries such as Germany – began in April 2010 . The new tariffs generated enormous interest among the solar industry – in the first year of the scheme’s operation, more than 30,000 solar panel systems were installed , compared to a few hundred in previous years. The Department of Energy and Cimate Change said on Thursday that the tariffs were cut because of the potential cost to energy bill-payers. According to government calculations, a field-size system of 5 MW would reap subsidies of £1.3m per year. Twenty such schemes would receive subsidies equivalent to that of about 25,000 households. But solar industry experts have said the changes will result in less solar power being installed, because large scale schemes – many of which were planned for areas in the southwest – are more efficient than domestic-size systems. They also criticised ministers for jeopardising investment by bringing in drastic changes to the scheme so soon after it was brought in. Gaynor Hartnell, chief executive of the Renewable Energy Association, said: “The handling of this whole affair has been poor. Larger-scale PV has been demonised, when it is the most cost-effective approach. Midway through this decade we’re expecting its cost to be on a par with offshore wind.” A further consultation on feed-in tariffs will be launched this summer, with more changes to the scheme to take effect from next April. Howard Johns, chairman of the UK’s Solar Trade Association, said the move would cripple the UK’s fledgling solar panel industry. “Crushing solar makes zero economic sense for UK plc because it will lose us major manufacturing opportunities, jobs and global competitiveness,” he said. “It also risks locking us in to more expensive energy options in future. It is inexplicable that the Treasury can be allowed to damage energy and industrial policy by taking decisions without taking into account the bigger picture. The prime minister urgently needs to intervene to prevent this calamity.” Solar power Energy Renewable energy Feed-in tariffs Energy bills Fiona Harvey guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Rolling coverage of all the day’s political developments as they happen 12.16pm: For the record, here is what the Hutton inquiry said about the death of David Kelly. I am satisfied that Dr Kelly took his own life and that the principal cause of death was bleeding from incised wounds to his left wrist which Dr Kelly had inflicted on himself with the knife found beside his body. It is probable that the ingestion of an excess amount of Coproxamol tablets coupled with apparently clinically silent coronary artery disease would have played a part in bringing about death more certainly and more rapidly than it would have otherwise been the case. I am further satisfied that no other person was involved in the death of Dr Kelly and that Dr Kelly was not suffering from any significant mental illness at the time he took his own life. 11.58am: Dominic Grieve, the attorney general, will soon by making a statement in the Commons shortly about the call for a full inquest into the death of David Kelly. We don’t know exactly what he’s going to say, but given that David Cameron told PMQs recently that he thought an inquest was unnecessary – the result of the Hutton inquiry was “fairly clear”, Cameron said – it would be very surprising if Grieve were to call for a full inquest. There has not been an inquest into the death of Kelly, the government scientist who killed himself after being identified as the source of the BBC report claiming that Tony Blair’s government “sexed up” the dossier about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, because the Hutton inquiry took over the role of considering the cause of his death. But some doctors, the doctors, led by Stephen Frost, have complained that Hutton only spent half a day considering the cause of Kelly’s death. They claim that the Hutton’s conclusion that Kelly committed suicide was “unsafe”. In a letter to Cameron, they said refusing an inquest would amount to a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Lord Hutton’s finding of suicide is clearly unsafe and may, especially given the extraordinary context of Dr Kelly’s death, represent one of the gravest miscarriages of justice to occur in this country. If an inquest is denied, despite all the evidence carefully provided to the attorney general, there is a real and grave risk that your government will be seen as continuing, and being complicit in, an enormous conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Further, any ‘no’ decision will be vigorously contested in the courts via judicial review by the doctors’ lawyers. 11.20am: You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here. And all the politics stories filed yesterday, including some in today’s paper, are here. As for the rest of the papers, I’ve already mentioned the Times interview with Tony Blair (see 8.37am) and the Rowan Williams’ editorial in the New Statesman (see 9.35am). Here are some other articles and stories that are particularly interesting. • Douglas Carswell and Daniel Hannan, the Tory authors of the devolution manifesto, The Plan, say in an article in the Daily Telegraph that the government’s plans to transfer power away from Whitehall are being “frustrated by the mandarinate”. Councils are being told by Whitehall how often they must empty bins. Universities are told whom to admit. Local authorities are told how much council tax they can raise. National plans to protect designated wildlife sites are being formulated. Decisions over sea defences continue to be made with almost no regard to the communities who live along the coast. Food hygiene quangos centrally determine the price they might extract from farmers for laboriously inspecting them. There is to be a massive house-building programme on public sector land. The much heralded White Paper on public service reform, which we were promised would “signal the decisive end of the old-fashioned, top-down, take-what-you’re-given model of public services” seems to have been abandoned. Far from revolutionising choice over who provides state-funded services, we learn that the process of public procurement within the public sector is actually being centralised around the Cabinet Office. • Steve Richards in the Independent says David Cameron’s speech on the NHS this week “signals the end of a particular dream envisaged by the political romantics in his entourage”. Cameron is surrounded by a surprisingly large number of Tory romantics. They include his senior advisers, Steve Hilton and Rohan Silva, and influential ministers such as Oliver Letwin. I do not describe them as romantic to be disparaging. On the contrary politics desperately need more like them on the left and the right, original thinkers driven by ideas, vision and with the courageous guile to follow through with policy implementation. Several senior Labour figures tell me they lack the equivalent now. In the case of this trio, and a few others, they transformed traditional Tory values and placed them in a modern setting. They did so much more effectively than New Labour on the centre left, where some values went missing in its modernisation project … There is still enough to excite the romantics in the coalition’s agenda, or so some of them tell me. I am pleased. Politics is managerial enough already without them all leaving in a state of wretched disillusionment. They still hope to implement parts of their programme with more political skill and media preparation in the future. But their day in the sun has passed. • The Sun has splashed on a picture of Kenneth Clarke dressed as a Telly Tubby. Angry Tories last night urged the PM to sack tubby Ken Clarke over his soft sentencing fiasco. MP Philip Davies led calls for the Justice Secretary’s head, saying: “Ken’s been living in Laa-Laa Land.” 11.17am: I missed the fact that there’s a byelection going on in West Belfast today. Henry McDonald has more details. Sinn Fein’s Paul Maskey is expected to win comfortably, replacing Gerry Adams. 10.36am: Here’s a round-up to some of the reaction to the archbishop of Canterbury’s article. (See 9.35am.) I’ve taken the quotes from the Press Association and PoliticsHome. From Vince Cable , the Lib Dem business secretary The two parties of the coalition got substantially more than half the total vote at the last election and the public knew that we were going to have to embark on very difficult changes, connected with sorting out the massive budget deficit problem … The point which he seemed to be making was that there wasn’t enough debate around health reform, for example, which I don’t understand because there’s a very big debate. My party has triggered it, we’re having a pause, rethinking the reforms. So he’s obviously had his views and it’s welcome that he pitches into political debate but I think he’s actually wrong on the specifics. From Downing Street This government was elected to tackle the UK’s deep-rooted problems. Its clear policies on education, welfare, health and the economy are necessary to ensure we’re on the right track. From the Conservative MP Roger Gale For him, as an unelected member of the upper house and as an appointed and unelected primate, to criticise the coalition government as undemocratic and not elected to carry through its programme is unacceptable. Dr Williams clearly does not understand the democratic process. If he did, he would appreciate that elected members of the House of Commons are not mandated. We are sent to Westminster by our constituents to face and address the situation as we find it, to use our brains and to endeavour to act and to legislate in the best interests of those that we represent. From the Conservative MP Matthew Hancock This is one member of the Anglican church. When I go to my church in Suffolk there are people of all political persuasions, so I think we’re talking about the views of one man, rather than representing the Anglican church. From the Conservative MP Gary Streeter I think the people are with us on this and the archbishop, sadly and unusually for him, has ill-judged his attack. I would just guess that most people would be slightly baffled by the archbishop’s comments. From Lord Tebbit , the former Conservative chairman No one would dispute the right of the archbishop to make comments of a political kind in this area – it is part of his job, I think, to do so – and he is quite right that there are policies of the coalition for which nobody seemed to vote and policies for which people voted which are not being carried forward by the coalition, but that is the problem of coalition. 10.31am: For the record, here are the latest YouGov GB polling figures. Labour: 42% (up 12 points since the general election) Conservatives: 37% (no change) Lib Dems: 9% (down 15) Labour lead: 5 points Government approval: -21 9.35am: Listening to the news this morning, you could be forgiven for thinking that Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, is auditing for the job of leader of the opposition. He has criticised the government in an editorial in the New Statesman, which has described his intervention as “the most significant by a church figure since Faith In The City, an excoriating critique of the Thatcher government”. The Daily Telegraph has called it ” the most outspoken political intervention by an archbishop of Canterbury for a generation”. Several Tory MPs have already taken to the airwaves to denounce him. The editorial isn’t available online, but I’ve now had the chance to read it the old-fashioned way. It’s interesting, and certainly very newsworthy. But it doesn’t bear comparision with Faith in the City, a report that is still being talked about almost 30 years after it was written. (No one will remember this in 30 years’ time; people have already forgotten that Williams launched a reasonably strong attack on the government’s welfare policies only last year.) It is also written in Williams’s characteristic woolly, discursive manner, which makes it hard to rate it as a masterpiece of polemic. But it is thoughtful. Here are the main complaints Williams is making about the coalition. • Williams accuses the government of pursing policies that do not have public support. “With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted,” he says. He cites education reform as an example of this. • He says the government does not appreciate how much “fear” its policies are generating. The anxiety and anger [that people feel] have to do with the feeling that not enough has been exposed to proper public argument … Government badly needs to hear just how much plain fear there is around … To acknowledge the reality of fear is not necessarily to collude with it. But not to recognise how pervasive it is risks making it worse. Williams also says that it is not enough just for the government to blame everything on the last Labour government. • He says he is concerned about “a quiet resurgence of the seductive language of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor”. • He says the localism agenda is confused. He says he does not think that localism is just an excuse for Whitehall cost-cutting. But he goes on: “There is a confusion about the means that have to be willed in order to achieve the end.” But there are two other important points to be made about the article. Firstly, Williams praises the government for not cutting the aid budget. Secondly – and more importantly – Williams is also quite critical of Labour. This has not been reflected in any of the coverage so far – the full text of the editorial wasn’t available last night – but Williams is not just having a go at David Cameron. He is also complaining that Ed Miliband has not set out an alternative. In his first paragraph, he says that he wants to encourage a debate – “and perhaps even to discover what the left’s big idea currently is”. He goes on to say that the debate in the UK has become “pretty stuck”. We are still waiting for a full and robust account of what the left would do differently and what a left-inspired version of localism might look like … The task of opposition is not to collude in it [the fear felt about government policies], either, but to define some achievable alternatives. And, for that to happen, we need sharp-edged statements of where the disagreements lie. 8.37am: The Times has published a wide-ranging interview with Tony Blair this morning (paywall), and the former prime minister has also been on BBC News and the Today programme. Here’s a full summary of his key points. I’ve taken some of the quotes from PoliticsHome. • Blair says the EU should have a directly-elected president. He was an unofficial candidate when the EU chose its first president, but the job went to the low-profile Belgian, Herman Van Rompuy. Van Rompuy was chosen by EU leaders, who had an interest in ensuring that they did not choose someone who was going to overshadow national presidents and prime ministers. Blair says a directly-elected president would give Europe the clout to compete with powers like China. If you want to have a debate about the direction of Europe it seems to me very hard to have that on a European-wide basis unless you have some means by which people elect something that is Europe-wide in nature … For Europe, the crucial thing is to understand that the only way that you will get support for Europe today is not on the basis of a sort of postwar view that the EU is necessary for peace. For my children’s generation, that is just a bizarre argument. They don’t see that as a real threat, that European nations will go to war with each other. But what they can understand completely is that in a world in particular in which China is going to become the dominant power of the 21st century, it is sensible for Europe to combine together, to use its collective weight in order to achieve influence. And the rationale for Europe today therefore is about power, not peace. But Blair also concedes that his proposal for a directly-elected president “has no chance of being accepted at the present time”. He also identifies five areas where the EU should forger links to “make us more powerful as a unit”. They are tax policy and reform of the social model; completion of the single market; a common energy policy; a common defence policy; and a common policy on immigration and organised crime. • Blair says he supports Ed Miliband. “Let me say by the way, just for the avoidance of any doubt, I will give him 100 per cent support, and I will always do that for the leader of the Labour party,” he says. • But Blair also criticises the “Blue Labour” philosophy that appeals to Miliband. I’d be worried about indulging a nostalgia which suggests a great emotional empathy with someone when you don’t have a policy to deal with it, and so you end up in a small ‘c’ conservative position. The attraction of a concept like Blue Labour is it allows you to say that there’s a group of voters out there we can’t reach at the moment, so what we should do is really empathise with their plight. But I think you should always offer a way forward for the future. The way the Labour Party wins, is if it’s at the cutting edge of the future, is if it’s modernising. It won’t win by a Labour equivalent of warm beer and old maids bicycling. • Blair reaffirms his opposition to the decision to raise the top rate of tax to 50p. “I wouldn’t have done it,” he says. Miliband has said that scrapping the 50p rate will not be a priority for Labour. • Blair says he supports elements of what the coalition is doing. There are elements of the reform programme that we were doing in government that the present Conservative government are continuing, in other areas they’re not. So it would be bizarre if I were to say, you know I don’t agree with them doing the academy programme — why would I want to say that? • But he also suggests that the coalition is, in the long term, unsustainable. “The only coalitions that work in the end are ones where there’s a genuine coalescence of ideas,” he says. The problem is that the Lib Dems are essentially a leftwing party, he suggests. It’s very hard to fight three elections to the left of Labour and then end up in a Tory government. You can slice and dice that any way you want, but you have a bit of a problem with it, and I don’t really have an answer to it. • He welcomes AC Grayling’s decision to set up a private university charging £18,000 a year. Asked if he is in favour of the initiative, he replies: Yes! Let a thousand flowers bloom. I haven’t studied it in detail, but should it be right that people come forward with new ideas and new concepts? Of course. • Blair says that the west must support evolutionary change in countries in North Africa and the Middle East. What we should be doing is, where countries are prepared to make steady evolutionary change we should back that because the problem with revolution is not how they begin but how they end .and we know enough about chaos and instability in that region to realise where that can lead to … We’ve got to realise, one – we are involved, like it or not. Two – our plan for involvement has got to be one that it’s about, not just about changing the politics of those countries, but changing the economic and social reform programmes of those countries also. • He says there should be a Mashall Plan-style aid package for Egypt. I would focus on Egypt very clearly at the moment and say we really do need a type of Marshall Plan, a huge plan of economic and social reconstruction to help that country get to where its people really want it to get to. • He rejects the suggestion that there is any need for a new inquest into the death of David Kelly. (Dominic Grieve, the attorney general, will make an announcement about this later.) There was an inquiry which went for six months headed by a senior Law Lord … I think what he will focus on is whether there really is anything left from the inquiry that went over six months and was one of the most detailed inquiries that has taken place. • Blair says that he does not know if his phone was hacked. 8.26am: Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, has taken a swipe at the coalition today in an editorial in the New Statesman . And we’ve also had an intervention from one of Britain’s other great godly figures, Tony Blair. In a new foreword to the paperback edition of his autobiography, he has said the west needs a wider plan to respond to the Arab spring . Blair has also given a wide-ranging interview to the Times, and he has been giving interviews this morning to BBC News and Today. I’ll provide a full summary shortly. Otherwise, it’s a fairly routine day. David Cameron is visiting Northern Ireland, where he will address the Northern Ireland assembly . There’s a written ministerial statement on royal air travel, which could be interesting. And here are the items in the diary. 10am: William Hague , the foreign secretary, hosts a UK/South Africa bilateral forum. 10.30am: Damian Green , the immigration minister, publishes a “work routes to settlement” consultation. Around 12pm: Dominic Grieve , the attorney general, announces his decision about whether or not to hold a full inquest into the death of David Kelly. Today as usual, I’ll be covering all the breaking political news, as well as looking at the papers and bringing you the best politics from the web. I’ll post a lunchtime summary at around 1pm, and another one in the afternoon. Andrew Sparrow guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Rolling coverage of all the day’s political developments as they happen 12.16pm: For the record, here is what the Hutton inquiry said about the death of David Kelly. I am satisfied that Dr Kelly took his own life and that the principal cause of death was bleeding from incised wounds to his left wrist which Dr Kelly had inflicted on himself with the knife found beside his body. It is probable that the ingestion of an excess amount of Coproxamol tablets coupled with apparently clinically silent coronary artery disease would have played a part in bringing about death more certainly and more rapidly than it would have otherwise been the case. I am further satisfied that no other person was involved in the death of Dr Kelly and that Dr Kelly was not suffering from any significant mental illness at the time he took his own life. 11.58am: Dominic Grieve, the attorney general, will soon by making a statement in the Commons shortly about the call for a full inquest into the death of David Kelly. We don’t know exactly what he’s going to say, but given that David Cameron told PMQs recently that he thought an inquest was unnecessary – the result of the Hutton inquiry was “fairly clear”, Cameron said – it would be very surprising if Grieve were to call for a full inquest. There has not been an inquest into the death of Kelly, the government scientist who killed himself after being identified as the source of the BBC report claiming that Tony Blair’s government “sexed up” the dossier about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, because the Hutton inquiry took over the role of considering the cause of his death. But some doctors, the doctors, led by Stephen Frost, have complained that Hutton only spent half a day considering the cause of Kelly’s death. They claim that the Hutton’s conclusion that Kelly committed suicide was “unsafe”. In a letter to Cameron, they said refusing an inquest would amount to a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Lord Hutton’s finding of suicide is clearly unsafe and may, especially given the extraordinary context of Dr Kelly’s death, represent one of the gravest miscarriages of justice to occur in this country. If an inquest is denied, despite all the evidence carefully provided to the attorney general, there is a real and grave risk that your government will be seen as continuing, and being complicit in, an enormous conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Further, any ‘no’ decision will be vigorously contested in the courts via judicial review by the doctors’ lawyers. 11.20am: You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here. And all the politics stories filed yesterday, including some in today’s paper, are here. As for the rest of the papers, I’ve already mentioned the Times interview with Tony Blair (see 8.37am) and the Rowan Williams’ editorial in the New Statesman (see 9.35am). Here are some other articles and stories that are particularly interesting. • Douglas Carswell and Daniel Hannan, the Tory authors of the devolution manifesto, The Plan, say in an article in the Daily Telegraph that the government’s plans to transfer power away from Whitehall are being “frustrated by the mandarinate”. Councils are being told by Whitehall how often they must empty bins. Universities are told whom to admit. Local authorities are told how much council tax they can raise. National plans to protect designated wildlife sites are being formulated. Decisions over sea defences continue to be made with almost no regard to the communities who live along the coast. Food hygiene quangos centrally determine the price they might extract from farmers for laboriously inspecting them. There is to be a massive house-building programme on public sector land. The much heralded White Paper on public service reform, which we were promised would “signal the decisive end of the old-fashioned, top-down, take-what-you’re-given model of public services” seems to have been abandoned. Far from revolutionising choice over who provides state-funded services, we learn that the process of public procurement within the public sector is actually being centralised around the Cabinet Office. • Steve Richards in the Independent says David Cameron’s speech on the NHS this week “signals the end of a particular dream envisaged by the political romantics in his entourage”. Cameron is surrounded by a surprisingly large number of Tory romantics. They include his senior advisers, Steve Hilton and Rohan Silva, and influential ministers such as Oliver Letwin. I do not describe them as romantic to be disparaging. On the contrary politics desperately need more like them on the left and the right, original thinkers driven by ideas, vision and with the courageous guile to follow through with policy implementation. Several senior Labour figures tell me they lack the equivalent now. In the case of this trio, and a few others, they transformed traditional Tory values and placed them in a modern setting. They did so much more effectively than New Labour on the centre left, where some values went missing in its modernisation project … There is still enough to excite the romantics in the coalition’s agenda, or so some of them tell me. I am pleased. Politics is managerial enough already without them all leaving in a state of wretched disillusionment. They still hope to implement parts of their programme with more political skill and media preparation in the future. But their day in the sun has passed. • The Sun has splashed on a picture of Kenneth Clarke dressed as a Telly Tubby. Angry Tories last night urged the PM to sack tubby Ken Clarke over his soft sentencing fiasco. MP Philip Davies led calls for the Justice Secretary’s head, saying: “Ken’s been living in Laa-Laa Land.” 11.17am: I missed the fact that there’s a byelection going on in West Belfast today. Henry McDonald has more details. Sinn Fein’s Paul Maskey is expected to win comfortably, replacing Gerry Adams. 10.36am: Here’s a round-up to some of the reaction to the archbishop of Canterbury’s article. (See 9.35am.) I’ve taken the quotes from the Press Association and PoliticsHome. From Vince Cable , the Lib Dem business secretary The two parties of the coalition got substantially more than half the total vote at the last election and the public knew that we were going to have to embark on very difficult changes, connected with sorting out the massive budget deficit problem … The point which he seemed to be making was that there wasn’t enough debate around health reform, for example, which I don’t understand because there’s a very big debate. My party has triggered it, we’re having a pause, rethinking the reforms. So he’s obviously had his views and it’s welcome that he pitches into political debate but I think he’s actually wrong on the specifics. From Downing Street This government was elected to tackle the UK’s deep-rooted problems. Its clear policies on education, welfare, health and the economy are necessary to ensure we’re on the right track. From the Conservative MP Roger Gale For him, as an unelected member of the upper house and as an appointed and unelected primate, to criticise the coalition government as undemocratic and not elected to carry through its programme is unacceptable. Dr Williams clearly does not understand the democratic process. If he did, he would appreciate that elected members of the House of Commons are not mandated. We are sent to Westminster by our constituents to face and address the situation as we find it, to use our brains and to endeavour to act and to legislate in the best interests of those that we represent. From the Conservative MP Matthew Hancock This is one member of the Anglican church. When I go to my church in Suffolk there are people of all political persuasions, so I think we’re talking about the views of one man, rather than representing the Anglican church. From the Conservative MP Gary Streeter I think the people are with us on this and the archbishop, sadly and unusually for him, has ill-judged his attack. I would just guess that most people would be slightly baffled by the archbishop’s comments. From Lord Tebbit , the former Conservative chairman No one would dispute the right of the archbishop to make comments of a political kind in this area – it is part of his job, I think, to do so – and he is quite right that there are policies of the coalition for which nobody seemed to vote and policies for which people voted which are not being carried forward by the coalition, but that is the problem of coalition. 10.31am: For the record, here are the latest YouGov GB polling figures. Labour: 42% (up 12 points since the general election) Conservatives: 37% (no change) Lib Dems: 9% (down 15) Labour lead: 5 points Government approval: -21 9.35am: Listening to the news this morning, you could be forgiven for thinking that Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, is auditing for the job of leader of the opposition. He has criticised the government in an editorial in the New Statesman, which has described his intervention as “the most significant by a church figure since Faith In The City, an excoriating critique of the Thatcher government”. The Daily Telegraph has called it ” the most outspoken political intervention by an archbishop of Canterbury for a generation”. Several Tory MPs have already taken to the airwaves to denounce him. The editorial isn’t available online, but I’ve now had the chance to read it the old-fashioned way. It’s interesting, and certainly very newsworthy. But it doesn’t bear comparision with Faith in the City, a report that is still being talked about almost 30 years after it was written. (No one will remember this in 30 years’ time; people have already forgotten that Williams launched a reasonably strong attack on the government’s welfare policies only last year.) It is also written in Williams’s characteristic woolly, discursive manner, which makes it hard to rate it as a masterpiece of polemic. But it is thoughtful. Here are the main complaints Williams is making about the coalition. • Williams accuses the government of pursing policies that do not have public support. “With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted,” he says. He cites education reform as an example of this. • He says the government does not appreciate how much “fear” its policies are generating. The anxiety and anger [that people feel] have to do with the feeling that not enough has been exposed to proper public argument … Government badly needs to hear just how much plain fear there is around … To acknowledge the reality of fear is not necessarily to collude with it. But not to recognise how pervasive it is risks making it worse. Williams also says that it is not enough just for the government to blame everything on the last Labour government. • He says he is concerned about “a quiet resurgence of the seductive language of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor”. • He says the localism agenda is confused. He says he does not think that localism is just an excuse for Whitehall cost-cutting. But he goes on: “There is a confusion about the means that have to be willed in order to achieve the end.” But there are two other important points to be made about the article. Firstly, Williams praises the government for not cutting the aid budget. Secondly – and more importantly – Williams is also quite critical of Labour. This has not been reflected in any of the coverage so far – the full text of the editorial wasn’t available last night – but Williams is not just having a go at David Cameron. He is also complaining that Ed Miliband has not set out an alternative. In his first paragraph, he says that he wants to encourage a debate – “and perhaps even to discover what the left’s big idea currently is”. He goes on to say that the debate in the UK has become “pretty stuck”. We are still waiting for a full and robust account of what the left would do differently and what a left-inspired version of localism might look like … The task of opposition is not to collude in it [the fear felt about government policies], either, but to define some achievable alternatives. And, for that to happen, we need sharp-edged statements of where the disagreements lie. 8.37am: The Times has published a wide-ranging interview with Tony Blair this morning (paywall), and the former prime minister has also been on BBC News and the Today programme. Here’s a full summary of his key points. I’ve taken some of the quotes from PoliticsHome. • Blair says the EU should have a directly-elected president. He was an unofficial candidate when the EU chose its first president, but the job went to the low-profile Belgian, Herman Van Rompuy. Van Rompuy was chosen by EU leaders, who had an interest in ensuring that they did not choose someone who was going to overshadow national presidents and prime ministers. Blair says a directly-elected president would give Europe the clout to compete with powers like China. If you want to have a debate about the direction of Europe it seems to me very hard to have that on a European-wide basis unless you have some means by which people elect something that is Europe-wide in nature … For Europe, the crucial thing is to understand that the only way that you will get support for Europe today is not on the basis of a sort of postwar view that the EU is necessary for peace. For my children’s generation, that is just a bizarre argument. They don’t see that as a real threat, that European nations will go to war with each other. But what they can understand completely is that in a world in particular in which China is going to become the dominant power of the 21st century, it is sensible for Europe to combine together, to use its collective weight in order to achieve influence. And the rationale for Europe today therefore is about power, not peace. But Blair also concedes that his proposal for a directly-elected president “has no chance of being accepted at the present time”. He also identifies five areas where the EU should forger links to “make us more powerful as a unit”. They are tax policy and reform of the social model; completion of the single market; a common energy policy; a common defence policy; and a common policy on immigration and organised crime. • Blair says he supports Ed Miliband. “Let me say by the way, just for the avoidance of any doubt, I will give him 100 per cent support, and I will always do that for the leader of the Labour party,” he says. • But Blair also criticises the “Blue Labour” philosophy that appeals to Miliband. I’d be worried about indulging a nostalgia which suggests a great emotional empathy with someone when you don’t have a policy to deal with it, and so you end up in a small ‘c’ conservative position. The attraction of a concept like Blue Labour is it allows you to say that there’s a group of voters out there we can’t reach at the moment, so what we should do is really empathise with their plight. But I think you should always offer a way forward for the future. The way the Labour Party wins, is if it’s at the cutting edge of the future, is if it’s modernising. It won’t win by a Labour equivalent of warm beer and old maids bicycling. • Blair reaffirms his opposition to the decision to raise the top rate of tax to 50p. “I wouldn’t have done it,” he says. Miliband has said that scrapping the 50p rate will not be a priority for Labour. • Blair says he supports elements of what the coalition is doing. There are elements of the reform programme that we were doing in government that the present Conservative government are continuing, in other areas they’re not. So it would be bizarre if I were to say, you know I don’t agree with them doing the academy programme — why would I want to say that? • But he also suggests that the coalition is, in the long term, unsustainable. “The only coalitions that work in the end are ones where there’s a genuine coalescence of ideas,” he says. The problem is that the Lib Dems are essentially a leftwing party, he suggests. It’s very hard to fight three elections to the left of Labour and then end up in a Tory government. You can slice and dice that any way you want, but you have a bit of a problem with it, and I don’t really have an answer to it. • He welcomes AC Grayling’s decision to set up a private university charging £18,000 a year. Asked if he is in favour of the initiative, he replies: Yes! Let a thousand flowers bloom. I haven’t studied it in detail, but should it be right that people come forward with new ideas and new concepts? Of course. • Blair says that the west must support evolutionary change in countries in North Africa and the Middle East. What we should be doing is, where countries are prepared to make steady evolutionary change we should back that because the problem with revolution is not how they begin but how they end .and we know enough about chaos and instability in that region to realise where that can lead to … We’ve got to realise, one – we are involved, like it or not. Two – our plan for involvement has got to be one that it’s about, not just about changing the politics of those countries, but changing the economic and social reform programmes of those countries also. • He says there should be a Mashall Plan-style aid package for Egypt. I would focus on Egypt very clearly at the moment and say we really do need a type of Marshall Plan, a huge plan of economic and social reconstruction to help that country get to where its people really want it to get to. • He rejects the suggestion that there is any need for a new inquest into the death of David Kelly. (Dominic Grieve, the attorney general, will make an announcement about this later.) There was an inquiry which went for six months headed by a senior Law Lord … I think what he will focus on is whether there really is anything left from the inquiry that went over six months and was one of the most detailed inquiries that has taken place. • Blair says that he does not know if his phone was hacked. 8.26am: Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, has taken a swipe at the coalition today in an editorial in the New Statesman . And we’ve also had an intervention from one of Britain’s other great godly figures, Tony Blair. In a new foreword to the paperback edition of his autobiography, he has said the west needs a wider plan to respond to the Arab spring . Blair has also given a wide-ranging interview to the Times, and he has been giving interviews this morning to BBC News and Today. I’ll provide a full summary shortly. Otherwise, it’s a fairly routine day. David Cameron is visiting Northern Ireland, where he will address the Northern Ireland assembly . There’s a written ministerial statement on royal air travel, which could be interesting. And here are the items in the diary. 10am: William Hague , the foreign secretary, hosts a UK/South Africa bilateral forum. 10.30am: Damian Green , the immigration minister, publishes a “work routes to settlement” consultation. Around 12pm: Dominic Grieve , the attorney general, announces his decision about whether or not to hold a full inquest into the death of David Kelly. Today as usual, I’ll be covering all the breaking political news, as well as looking at the papers and bringing you the best politics from the web. I’ll post a lunchtime summary at around 1pm, and another one in the afternoon. Andrew Sparrow guardian.co.uk
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Sun newspaper’s latest bid to overturn injunction involving former bank boss Sir Fred Goodwin overturned by judge A high court judge today refused to lift an order banning journalists naming a woman with whom former bank boss Sir Fred Goodwin had an “extra-marital affair”. Mr Justice Tugendhat rejected an attempt by the Sun’s publisher News Group Newspapers to have the woman named. She also worked at the Royal Bank of Scotland at the time when Goodwin was chief executive. A privacy injunction had previously prevented the naming of both Goodwin and the woman – who allegedly had a sexual relationship – but last month the order was varied to allow Goodwin to be named. That came after Lord Stoneham, a Liberal Democrat peer, used parliamentary privilege to refer to the existence of the injunction. He also argued that it was in the public interest for it to be dropped. Lord Stoneham told peers: “Every taxpayer has a direct public interest in the events leading up to the collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland, so how can it be right for a superinjunction to hide the alleged relationship between Sir Fred Goodwin and a senior colleague. “If true, it would be a serious breach of corporate governance and not even the Financial Services Authority would be allowed to know about it.” More details soon…. Injunctions Superinjunctions The Sun Newspapers & magazines News International National newspapers Newspapers Sir Fred Goodwin Banking Royal Bank of Scotland Media law Privacy & the media Dan Sabbagh guardian.co.uk
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Former PM’s call for clearer strategic approach comes with warning to dictators that they must ‘change or be changed’ Tony Blair has warned the west that it urgently needs a wider plan to respond to the Arab spring, including a warning to autocratic leaders across the Middle East “to change or be changed”. His call for a clearer strategic approach comes in a new foreword to the paperback edition of his bestselling autobiography, A Journey. The former prime minister also praises Europe, and by implication David Cameron, for showing leadership in Libya, saying it would have been inconceivable to leave Muammar Gaddafi in power. He said that if America and Europe had done nothing, “Gaddafi would have retaken the country and suppressed the revolt with extraordinary vehemence. Many would have died.” If he had been left in power while the west was willing to see Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, deposed, “the damage to the west’s reputation, credibility and stature would have been not just massive but potentially irreparable. That’s what I mean by saying inaction is also a decision.” Blair does not call for immediate military intervention across the region, saying instead that “where there is the possibility of evolutionary change, we should encourage and support it. This is the case in the Gulf states.” He hails the way in which “Europe and America came together over Libya and, though it is difficult and though the way things will turn out is uncertain, it showed leadership; and amongst the criticism, there was also – in the region – relief that leadership was shown”. The former premier did a round of interviews on Thursday morning in which he made clear his support for military action in Libya, which he said seemed to be “succeeding”. He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “My view is that it is preferable to act, because the implications of things going wrong in this region are so strong.” He added: “I think that the construct of what the west and allies – including Arab countries – are doing is right. We have got to judge that according to the circumstances, but I think at the moment it looks like it is succeeding.” The fate of Egypt would be crucial to the outcome of the Arab spring,” he said. He said it would not be easy but “on balance” he was optimistic. He insisted he had been right to make overtures to the Gaddafi regime when prime minister. “I think we were right to welcome what he did then and we’re right to condemn and go after him for what he’s doing now,” he told the BBC. “I think when he gave up his nuclear and his chemical weapons programmes, this was a huge thing for us. He stopped sponsoring terrorism, he started actually co-operating. It was a big change and frankly, had the internal policies been the same, had he gone through the same process of change that his for policy went through it would have been beneficial for him.” On Syria, Blair said the west had to consider the consequences for the region of bringing down a regime such as that of Bashar al-Assad. “It’s not always easy to make absolutely logical distinctions. I mean, why are we treating Syria differently than Libya? The answer is because there isn’t the same consent to deal with the Assad regime in Syria. “There is some hope still, I think diminishing, that he could offer a reform programme of change in Syria and most of all, and this is what’s difficult when you’re sitting in a position of leadership – if you remove that regime what follows? What do you get? Do you get an orderly transition to democracy or do you get chaos, instability, with massive ramifications, in this case, for Israel, Palestine, for the peace process there.” While praising European and US efforts in Libya in his new foreword, Blair also calls for an elected European president who would have a mandate for far-reaching reforms including collaborating on taxes. In an interview in the Times he says such an office would give Europe “strong, collective leadership and direction”. But he accepts that the idea has “no chance of being accepted at the present time”. In his book, Blair acknowledges that the west cannot intervene across the Middle East and claims some leaders are “already embarking on a path of steady change. We should help them keep to it and support it. None of this means we do not criticise strongly the use of violence against unarmed civilians. Or that if that violence continues, we do not reserve the right then to move to outright opposition to the status quo, as has happened in Libya. “But it is more sensible to do so in circumstances where the regime has excluded a path to evolutionary change. Then it is clear: the people have no choice. But if there is a process that can lead to change with stability, we should back that policy.” He adds: “My point is simple: we need to have an active policy, be players and not spectators sitting in the stands, applauding or condemning as we watch.” He says that the lesson for autocratic regimes the world over is to change – or be changed. Largely in line with the policy laid out at the G8 summit of most industrialised nations in Deauville last month, he says: “We should stand ready to help with aid, debt relief and the muscle of the international financial institutions, but we should also be quietly insistent that such help won’t succeed unless proper rules and order are put in place.” Blair, still the special envoy of the quartet in the Middle East, admits the Arab spring is going to make it harder to secure a Palestinian peace deal since Israel is less certain about the nature of the threat it faces. The stability and predictability of Israel’s neighbours, he says, has been replaced by instability and unpredictability. “For similar reasons, but with an opposite conclusion, the Palestinian leadership find it hard to go into negotiation with an Israeli partner they don’t trust, to make difficult compromises which will be tough to sell, in circumstances where they don’t know the regional context into which such compromises will be played.” Blair also warns more broadly that the world has not yet adjusted to the emergence of China as a global economic giant, saying “engagement with geopolitics of the 21st-century will be unlike anything the modern world has seen. Our children in the west will be a generation growing up in a situation where virtually every fixed point of reference that my and my parents’ generation knew has changed or is changing”. He claims energy security will become as serious an issue for the nation states as defence. Blair says: “Currently China consumes around 10% of worldwide demand for oil. If its GDP per head carries on rising – and follows the path of similar increases in living standards in South Korea and Taiwan, say – the world output will need to double, and China’s share of demand will rise from 10% to 50%.” He also questions the way in which the EU leaders have led the debate about its future, saying “there has been an obsession about institutional integration in itself rather than a debate about what we want to do as Europe, where the institutions should be at the service of the policy, rather than the policy at the service of institutions”. Tony Blair Middle East Arab and Middle East unrest Patrick Wintour Hélène Mulholland guardian.co.uk
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Arizona’s Wallow fire destroys huge area of US national forest, forcing thousands of people to evacuate A wildfire blazed unchecked for an 11th day in Arizona on Wednesday, engulfing a deserted town, forcing thousands of people in nearby towns to flee and leaving 600 square miles (1,550 square km) of pine forest blackened. The blaze, which is believed to have been started by campers, ranks as Arizona’s second-largest forest fire on record. It cut through the popular mountain retreat of Greer, which had been evacuated days before, authorities told reporters in the nearby town of Springerville. Captain Jim Wilkins, a US Forest Service fire official, said it was too soon to know how many of several hundred homes in the town were lost. Earlier on Wednesday, authorities ordered the complete evacuation of Springerville and a third mountain community, Eager. The two towns, both situated near the New Mexico border, are home to 8,000 people combined. As many as 2,000 people had fled the Springerville-Eager area over the past two days, but officials had allowed most residents to stay pending possible further evacuations. As many as 11,000 residents in all have been displaced in the White Mountains region, since the fire erupted on 29 May. While the blaze remained at ‘zero containment’ no injuries have been reported and known property losses were limited to 11 structures, including at least four cabins, fire officials said. Around 2,000 firefighters were battling the blaze. New Mexico state officials were also readying for the blaze, which they said was about a mile from the border on Wednesday, to cross into their state. Winds fanning the fire through tinder-dry ponderosa pines were expected to intensify again on Wednesday. “This fire is very large and very intense, and we’re still just trying to get a handle on it,” said fire information officer Brenyn Lohmoelder. One of the biggest challenges facing fire crews was the danger of additional spot fires ignited by burning embers carried aloft by high winds, said Jim Whittington, a fire official. Fire officials said the so-called Wallow fire had charred up to 157,000 hectares (389,000 acres) in and around the Apache-Sitgreaves national forest. Smoke from the conflagration, which fire officials suspect may have started from an unattended campfire, has drifted as far east as Iowa. Nearly 1,000 firefighters worked on Wednesday to gain greater control over a separate large wildfire burning in the south-eastern part of the state. Officials said the Horseshoe 2 fire had consumed nearly 43,000 hectares and prompted the evacuation of two small communities. Seven structures were reported lost in that fire, which was listed as 50% contained. Wildfires Arizona New Mexico United States Forests guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Arizona’s Wallow fire destroys huge area of US national forest, forcing thousands of people to evacuate A wildfire blazed unchecked for an 11th day in Arizona on Wednesday, engulfing a deserted town, forcing thousands of people in nearby towns to flee and leaving 600 square miles (1,550 square km) of pine forest blackened. The blaze, which is believed to have been started by campers, ranks as Arizona’s second-largest forest fire on record. It cut through the popular mountain retreat of Greer, which had been evacuated days before, authorities told reporters in the nearby town of Springerville. Captain Jim Wilkins, a US Forest Service fire official, said it was too soon to know how many of several hundred homes in the town were lost. Earlier on Wednesday, authorities ordered the complete evacuation of Springerville and a third mountain community, Eager. The two towns, both situated near the New Mexico border, are home to 8,000 people combined. As many as 2,000 people had fled the Springerville-Eager area over the past two days, but officials had allowed most residents to stay pending possible further evacuations. As many as 11,000 residents in all have been displaced in the White Mountains region, since the fire erupted on 29 May. While the blaze remained at ‘zero containment’ no injuries have been reported and known property losses were limited to 11 structures, including at least four cabins, fire officials said. Around 2,000 firefighters were battling the blaze. New Mexico state officials were also readying for the blaze, which they said was about a mile from the border on Wednesday, to cross into their state. Winds fanning the fire through tinder-dry ponderosa pines were expected to intensify again on Wednesday. “This fire is very large and very intense, and we’re still just trying to get a handle on it,” said fire information officer Brenyn Lohmoelder. One of the biggest challenges facing fire crews was the danger of additional spot fires ignited by burning embers carried aloft by high winds, said Jim Whittington, a fire official. Fire officials said the so-called Wallow fire had charred up to 157,000 hectares (389,000 acres) in and around the Apache-Sitgreaves national forest. Smoke from the conflagration, which fire officials suspect may have started from an unattended campfire, has drifted as far east as Iowa. Nearly 1,000 firefighters worked on Wednesday to gain greater control over a separate large wildfire burning in the south-eastern part of the state. Officials said the Horseshoe 2 fire had consumed nearly 43,000 hectares and prompted the evacuation of two small communities. Seven structures were reported lost in that fire, which was listed as 50% contained. Wildfires Arizona New Mexico United States Forests guardian.co.uk
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No 10 rejects claim by Rowan Williams that the government is forcing through ‘radical policies for which no one voted’ Downing Street has hit back at claims made by the head of the Church of England that the coalition government is forcing through “radical policies for which no one voted”. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, issued a broadside in which he also challenged the “big society” project and criticised the government for continuing to blame the country’s difficulties entirely on the deficit it inherited from Labour. Downing Street reacted swiftly to Williams’ comments, made in an editorial written as guest editor of this week’s New Statesman magazine. The government was taking the action needed to deal with the problems facing the country, a Downing Street spokesman said. “This government was elected to tackle the UK’s deep-rooted problems. Its clear policies on education, welfare, health and the economy are necessary to ensure we’re on the right track.” Williams wrote that the coalition is facing “bafflement and indignation” over its plans to reform the health service and education. “With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted,” he wrote. “At the very least, there is an understandable anxiety about what democracy means in such a context.” Vince Cable said he was “baffled” by the criticism, particularly on health reforms. Cable told Sky News: “I was a little bit baffled by criticism, as he was talking about the lack of debate around health reform, but actually, there is intense debate around health reform. My party in particular has raised the whole issue about whether we should be proceeding in this present form. There’s vigorous debate in the press and parliament and in the public. Clearly he’s entitled to speak up but it’s a very odd criticism.” Williams’ comments appear unusually critical of the government for a head of the Church of England. But former prime minister Tony Blair said senior clergy attacking government policy was nothing new. “I seem to remember, going back to when I started in parliament in 1983, that bishops attacking government is a pretty recurrent headline,” he told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme. “He is entitled to speak his mind. I remember people used to criticise our policies, not just on foreign policy and Iraq but on domestic policy and reform as well. It is just part of the way things work. I should imagine the government will say they are relaxed about it, and just get on with the things they want to do.” Williams accepted that the government’s big society agenda was not a “cynical walking-away from the problem”. But he warned there was confusion about how voluntary organisations will “pick up the responsibilities shed by government”, and said that the big society was seen with “widespread suspicion”. “The uncomfortable truth is that, while grass-roots initiatives and local mutualism are to be found flourishing in a great many places, they have been weakened by several decades of cultural fragmentation,” Williams wrote. He also criticised the chancellor, George Osborne, saying: “It isn’t enough to respond with what sounds like a mixture of, ‘this is the last government’s legacy’ and, ‘we’d like to do more, but just wait until the economy recovers a bit.’” The archbishop challenged the government’s approach to welfare reform, complaining of a “quiet resurgence of the seductive language of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor”. In comments directed at the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, Williams criticised “the steady pressure” to increase “punitive responses to alleged abuses of the system”. Westminster politics “feels pretty stuck” he warned, adding that his aim is to stimulate “a livelier debate” and to challenge the left to develop its own “big idea” as an alternative to the Conservative-Liberal Democrat alliance. He complained that education secretary Michael Gove’s free-school reforms passed through parliament last summer with little debate, using a timetable previously reserved for emergency anti-terrorism laws. Separate reforms to universities will see tuition fees treble and funding for humanities courses cut. Williams says education “might well be regarded as a proper matter for open probing”. But “the feeling that not enough has been exposed to proper public argument” has created “anxiety and anger” in the country. Britain needs a long-term education policy “that will deliver the critical tools for democratic involvement, not simply skills that serve the economy”, he said. Lord Tebbit, former Conservative chairman and cabinet minister, said it was part of the archbishop of Canterbury’s job to “make comments of a political kind in this area”. Tebbit, a critic of the coalition, told Today that Williams was highlighting a “problem of coalition”. “He is quite right that there are policies of the coalition for which nobody seemed to vote, and policies for which people voted which are not being carried through by the coalition,” he said. “But that is the problem of coalition.” In a separate guest column for the magazine, the chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, argues that religion already does the big society’s job – and does it better. Sacks wrote: “A powerful store of social capital still exists. It is called religion: the churches, synagogues and other places of worship that still bring people together in shared belonging and mutual responsibility. The evidence shows that religious people – defined by regular attendance at a place of worship – actually do make better neighbours”. The reason for this is simple, Sacks argues: “Religion creates community, community creates altruism and altruism turns us away from self and towards the common good.” Liberal-Conservative coalition Rowan Williams Religion Patrick Wintour Hélène Mulholland guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …No 10 rejects claim by Rowan Williams that the government is forcing through ‘radical policies for which no one voted’ Downing Street has hit back at claims made by the head of the Church of England that the coalition government is forcing through “radical policies for which no one voted”. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, issued a broadside in which he also challenged the “big society” project and criticised the government for continuing to blame the country’s difficulties entirely on the deficit it inherited from Labour. Downing Street reacted swiftly to Williams’ comments, made in an editorial written as guest editor of this week’s New Statesman magazine. The government was taking the action needed to deal with the problems facing the country, a Downing Street spokesman said. “This government was elected to tackle the UK’s deep-rooted problems. Its clear policies on education, welfare, health and the economy are necessary to ensure we’re on the right track.” Williams wrote that the coalition is facing “bafflement and indignation” over its plans to reform the health service and education. “With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted,” he wrote. “At the very least, there is an understandable anxiety about what democracy means in such a context.” Vince Cable said he was “baffled” by the criticism, particularly on health reforms. Cable told Sky News: “I was a little bit baffled by criticism, as he was talking about the lack of debate around health reform, but actually, there is intense debate around health reform. My party in particular has raised the whole issue about whether we should be proceeding in this present form. There’s vigorous debate in the press and parliament and in the public. Clearly he’s entitled to speak up but it’s a very odd criticism.” Williams’ comments appear unusually critical of the government for a head of the Church of England. But former prime minister Tony Blair said senior clergy attacking government policy was nothing new. “I seem to remember, going back to when I started in parliament in 1983, that bishops attacking government is a pretty recurrent headline,” he told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme. “He is entitled to speak his mind. I remember people used to criticise our policies, not just on foreign policy and Iraq but on domestic policy and reform as well. It is just part of the way things work. I should imagine the government will say they are relaxed about it, and just get on with the things they want to do.” Williams accepted that the government’s big society agenda was not a “cynical walking-away from the problem”. But he warned there was confusion about how voluntary organisations will “pick up the responsibilities shed by government”, and said that the big society was seen with “widespread suspicion”. “The uncomfortable truth is that, while grass-roots initiatives and local mutualism are to be found flourishing in a great many places, they have been weakened by several decades of cultural fragmentation,” Williams wrote. He also criticised the chancellor, George Osborne, saying: “It isn’t enough to respond with what sounds like a mixture of, ‘this is the last government’s legacy’ and, ‘we’d like to do more, but just wait until the economy recovers a bit.’” The archbishop challenged the government’s approach to welfare reform, complaining of a “quiet resurgence of the seductive language of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor”. In comments directed at the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, Williams criticised “the steady pressure” to increase “punitive responses to alleged abuses of the system”. Westminster politics “feels pretty stuck” he warned, adding that his aim is to stimulate “a livelier debate” and to challenge the left to develop its own “big idea” as an alternative to the Conservative-Liberal Democrat alliance. He complained that education secretary Michael Gove’s free-school reforms passed through parliament last summer with little debate, using a timetable previously reserved for emergency anti-terrorism laws. Separate reforms to universities will see tuition fees treble and funding for humanities courses cut. Williams says education “might well be regarded as a proper matter for open probing”. But “the feeling that not enough has been exposed to proper public argument” has created “anxiety and anger” in the country. Britain needs a long-term education policy “that will deliver the critical tools for democratic involvement, not simply skills that serve the economy”, he said. Lord Tebbit, former Conservative chairman and cabinet minister, said it was part of the archbishop of Canterbury’s job to “make comments of a political kind in this area”. Tebbit, a critic of the coalition, told Today that Williams was highlighting a “problem of coalition”. “He is quite right that there are policies of the coalition for which nobody seemed to vote, and policies for which people voted which are not being carried through by the coalition,” he said. “But that is the problem of coalition.” In a separate guest column for the magazine, the chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, argues that religion already does the big society’s job – and does it better. Sacks wrote: “A powerful store of social capital still exists. It is called religion: the churches, synagogues and other places of worship that still bring people together in shared belonging and mutual responsibility. The evidence shows that religious people – defined by regular attendance at a place of worship – actually do make better neighbours”. The reason for this is simple, Sacks argues: “Religion creates community, community creates altruism and altruism turns us away from self and towards the common good.” Liberal-Conservative coalition Rowan Williams Religion Patrick Wintour Hélène Mulholland guardian.co.uk
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