Savings on a rainy day

I read with interest this article on the BBC website about David Cameron's plans to make savings by cutting back on MPs privileges. He has various proposals, including decentralisation, cutting quangos, increased transparency, reducing the number of MPs and cutting back on what it costs to run Westminster. This is all laudable stuff, and it should be done. I hope that the special interests who would oppose many of these can be defeated.

I would like to make clear at the beginning that I wouldn't mind at all (and apparently, neither would some of his own candidates) if David Cameron wanted to reduce the number of MPs by 59 and remove the unnecessary Westminster tier from Scotland altogether.

Anyway, what caught my eye in Cameron's speech is this:

There are currently 169 government ministerial posts and 3 opposition party posts that receive additional taxpayer funded salaries, on top of the standard MP salary.

These ministerial salaries range from £26,624 to £132,923.

It's only right, at a time when the country has to share in financial pain, that they make their sacrifice.

So we will cut all Ministerial salaries - that's the money they get on top of their MPs' salary - by an immediate five percent.

This means a pay cut of £6,500 for the Prime Minister and a £4 ,000 pay cut for Cabinet Ministers.

169 government ministerial posts is an eye watering number. What do they all do? Do we need them? Who are these people, because this clearly isn't all of them. Why not as well as cutting their top up, reduce the number of ministerial posts? If scrutiny is to be applied to the worth of all quangos, why not to ministers?

Forgive my if my calculations are off (percentages were never my thing), but I think that 169 out of 646 is an incredible 26% of the UK Parliament who have posts. Compare this to the Scottish Parliament, which has 16 Governmental posts, (18, if you include the Lord Advocate and Solicitor General). This is only 12% of the Scottish Parliamentarians.

Cameron also wants to cut the number of MPs - given the scale of the constituencies, I'm not convinced this is a great idea; he also wants to cut back on staff, which would make covering these huge areas properly far more challenging.


On another matter entirely, there's also a slightly odd comparison in his speech with the Electoral Commission and India's Election Commission which I'm not entirely convinced is fair. Cameron points out that India has "twice as many people to oversee sixteen times as many voters". For a start, the difference in salaries and the cost of doing business is somewhat lower in India. While I don't doubt the numbers quoted in the speech, I'm sure national officials will be working with many thousands of local officials in India to make sure the biggest democracy on earth can pull off fair and free elections.

Cameron also seems to conflate decreasing turnout with the work done by the Electoral Commission, rather than disillusionment with politicians... The Electoral Commission isn't perfect, but the work they do in trying to encourage voter turnout against rising apathy can be innovative and is definitely important.

While I find all this interesting from a theoretical viewpoint, I don't believe that the Westminster system has much to offer Scotland. Our devolved Parliament already has a better set up, and is surely evolving yet further. A real Parliament in Scotland with real powers to improve the lives of our people is a far better prospect for the future.


Update: I have found a better list of Ministers! http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page19564

Reconviction rates

I use Google Reader to manage news and blog feeds, and noticed today a lot of news on re-offending figures from the 2005-2007 cohort of offenders. Kenny MacAskill is quite clear that short term sentences are ineffective, and I would tend to agree.

The figures show that of those who have served a sentence of six months or less, 70% are likely to be re-convicted of another crime within two years. Somewhat shockingly, this cycle applies disproportionately young people.

Labour and the Tories are very keen on locking people up, but it seems to me that six months will achieve very little by way of rehabilitation. I have heard that many schemes in prison to help give offenders a better chance in life are oversubscribed, and by the time comes for release, the offender will not have had a chance to access them. It's expensive to keep people locked up for six months, and gives little meaningful benefit to the community.

Locking people up for six months gives communities a bit of respite, but as my constituents have told me, when someone comes back after serving a short 3-6 month sentence it's like a slap in the face. They will come back to the same place and often start to wreak havoc all over again. If there is no change in behaviour or attitude, what has been achieved?

Judges must have the right to decide on appropriate sentences, but they should really take the community impact into account as well. The police tell me that they often recommend longer sentences for offenders, because they know the impact short sentences have on communities.

Interestingly, For those sentenced to a Community Service Order, the reconviction rate fell from 47 per cent for the 1996-97 cohort to 42 per cent for the 2005-06 cohort. I don't believe that this is appropriate for every offender, but at least this means that there can be some benefit, and a sense of 'working off' the sentence. This should be balanced of course with public safety concerns and be closely supervised. If it allows for a better route back into employment or training, picking up some practical skills on the way and getting into a routine, than this surely must be more effective.

It's clear that prison has become a revolving door for many offenders, and that does society no justice at all.