I think there may be a General Election coming up soon.
This has got me thinking even more than usual about
political parties’ manifestos and the policies that they all feel sure will
make the country a better place.
The trouble is, that all these policies are based on
ideologies that do not reflect the reality of life in this country, and take no
account of the long term consequences of those policies.
To be blunt, governments and political parties continually
fail to grasp the basics of joined up planning for managing Society as a whole.
You’d have thought that setting a fixed five year term of
office would have obviated the political need for short term policy, and
facilitated longer term rational planning. But not being a politician, I suppose
I’m hopelessly naïve to think this.
One thing all the major parties seem to have in common is
the belief that it is necessary to make cutbacks in public spending. But none
of them stand back and take a long, hard look at what would actually happen if and
when these cutbacks are implemented.
Because Big Society is like a fat lady in a corset: you
can try squeezing in one place, but all that will happen is that there will be
a bulge in another place. The whole remains the same. In fact, squeezing too
much might simply end up in asphyxiating the body you’re trying to manage.
I’m not going to make an ideological argument based on
airy fairy social work concepts of social equity and fairness. I’m simply going
to try and show that cutting certain services, or throwing money at the
political ideology of the day, may not actually result in an overall reduction
in the costs of all services in general, and can even result in greater
expenditure for less social benefit.
Let’s take housing policy as an example. The Government
appears to regard home ownership as an innately good and desirable thing. To
this end, the current Conservative Party Manifesto says that it will extend the
“right to buy” to people living in housing association homes.
Here’s another way of looking at this policy.
·
The Government gives money, either directly or
via local authorities, to housing associations in order to build houses for
people who do not have the income or ability to buy their own houses.
·
The Government then sells these houses at a
large discount to people who are probably able to afford to buy a home of their
own in any case.
·
The Government makes an immediate loss on its
investment.
·
The people who buy these houses may then quite
possibly decide to sell them in order to realise a considerable profit, only
some of which will return to the Government in Stamp Duty.
·
The people who buy these houses then let them
privately at larger rents than the housing associations were charging when they
owned them.
·
Because this social housing has been sold off
without the necessary investment to replace them, there is then a shortage of
rented housing, which pushes up the rents of these now privately owned
properties.
·
People renting these properties, whether “hard
working families” on low incomes or those unable to work because of age or
disability, then claim housing benefit to cover these increases.
·
The Government’s costs for housing benefit then
increase.
·
So the policy costs the Government not once but
twice – and it still hasn’t solved the underlying problem of the national
shortage of housing which continues to drive up the value of houses and makes
it even harder for “hard working people” to afford to buy in the first place.
Then there’s that policy of allowing people to withdraw and spend their pension funds.
·
The Government makes an initial killing by
taxing the money that is withdrawn.
·
A significant number of those pensioners use
that money to buy property in order to let it out.
·
The increased demand in property inflates house
prices.
·
This makes housing even less affordable, driving
demand in renting.
·
Increased demand for private rented property
inflates rents.
·
This leads to an increase in people’s claims for
housing benefit.
·
This costs the Government more money.
·
And let’s not forget that years in the future,
those people who drew their money out of their pension funds then spent it,
will be making claims on the welfare benefits system in the form of housing
benefit and pension tax credit.
·
And this costs the Government even more money.
And as for that policy known, to the annoyance of the Coalition Government, as the “bedroom tax”?
·
Well, it will continue to cost housing
associations money in lost revenue because people are not able to afford the
higher rent.
·
They fall into arrears and the housing
associations then incur further expense taking them to court to evict them.
·
Housing associations are generally funded
through central or local government grants.
·
Vulnerable homeless people have to be
accommodated by the local authorities.
·
These people may then end up in those privately
rented houses, which had previously belonged to the housing associations until
sold off, with inflated rents, and have to claim higher rates of housing
benefit than they would have been claiming before the “bedroom tax” was
introduced.
And one final example close to my heart – cuts in funding for mental health services:
·
Despite Coalition claims that funding to the NHS
has increased, the reality is that, according to Andy McNicoll’s excellent
report in Community Care on 20.03.15., there has been a cut in real terms of
over 8% to funding for mental health trusts.
·
Community mental health teams have been cut by
5% despite an increase in referrals of 20%.
·
At the same time as there have been cuts to these
community services, psychiatric beds have been reduced by 2,100 since 2011.
·
This is during a period of recession when one of
the inevitable consequences of high unemployment and low wages was an increase
in mental ill health.
·
Trusts attempted to save money by closing
hospital beds, but understaffing of community services meant that people could
be less efficiently managed in the community, leading to an increase in demand
for the available beds, and an increase in requests for assessments under the
Mental Health Act.
·
This led to an increase in the use of leave
beds, beds nominally occupied by a patient who was on leave as part of
discharge care planning, and by the wards being under increased pressure to
discharge too early.
·
The consequence of all this was that people were
more likely to relapse, and need an acute bed.
·
This inexorable pressure on beds led to increased
use of beds out of trust areas, trusts frequently having to use private
hospitals.
·
These beds are far more expensive than “in
house” beds.
·
There are also increased costs in transporting
these patients long distances, often having to use a private ambulance service,
because local ambulance trusts would refuse to provide transport.
·
Holes in service provision for crisis
intervention also leads to increased use of police emergency powers under Sec.136,
and then associated delays in completing the Sec.136 assessment because of
delays in finding a bed. This puts increased pressure on police time and
resources.
·
And of course there have been huge cuts in
funding for local authorities, who among other things are responsible for
providing police services, so policing levels have been cut at the same time.
·
Another consequence of cuts to local authorities
is that funding for services that have the effect of providing alternatives to
hospital admission, such as respite care, or reducing demand on mental health
services, such as support services and personal budgets for vulnerable service
users, have also been cut, adding even more pressure on NHS mental health
services.
As I said at the beginning, you can squeeze as much as you
like in one place, it will simply increase pressure on the system in another
place.
Regardless of doctrine or ideology, sometimes you have to
spend money in order to save money.
A fantastic piece of common sense shame the real parties just do not get it
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