Government must not neglect young people with mental health illness

Responding to an official report published today revealing one in eight children and young people aged between 5 and 19 surveyed in England in 2017 had a mental disorder, former Liberal Democrat Health Minister Norman Lamb said:

“These troubling figures reveal the true extent of mental health problems among children. The Conservative Government has a stark choice: either invest in services and give our children the best possible chance in life, or be responsible for the neglect of an entire generation of young people.

“Mental illness can blight the lives and futures of children without the right interventions, but today’s report by the Children’s Commissioner is a brutal reminder of how vulnerable young people too often hit a brick wall when trying to access support.

“As a Minister in the Coalition Government, I secured funding for this prevalence survey so that we could understand the full scale of children’s mental health problems and make sure that the right support is in place. The Tories have a moral duty to make good on that commitment.

“Ministers needs to think about spending money not just on crisis response but preventing people from getting to this point in the first place, particularly by reversing cuts they have imposed for early years. New waiting time standards will also be crucial to incentivise investment in services.”

The Science and Technology Select Committee, Chaired by Norman Lamb, recently published a report on early-years intervention which can be accessed here.

The Children’s Commissioner report can be read here.

Reporting Back: Council Finances

Last week was the meeting of Bury Council’s Cabinet, and earlier this week the meeting of the Council’s Audit Committee. Both meetings considered the mid-year financial report for the Council which raise some very concerning issues. Councillor Tim Pickstone was at the Cabinet, Councillor Steve Wright was at the Audit Committee:

Both meetings heard that the Council is currently estimating a roughly £3.5 million overspend for the current financial year, which would take the Council’s usable reserves down to just £2.5 million.

At both meetings we raised concerns about the significantly more worry size of overspending that is behind this figure:

  • The Council is expecting to overspend by £7.8 million on ‘demand pressures’ – mostly additional children with special needs and older people’s increasing care needs, both of which obviously need to be covered.
  • The Council is overspending by £11.3 million on savings it has failed to achieve. These are savings that have previously agreed by Councillors, but not delivered. Mostly this is failures to achieve savings in the Council’s Communities and Wellbeing directorate (£9 million) on issues such as older people’s care, leisure services and the council’s civic suites. It also includes a failure to deliver £1.2 million of savings on waste collection which the report says could be achieved by charging residents for garden waste.
  • There is then a shortage of income for the Council of £2.9 million – anything from less than expected rental income or less than expected parking income.

In the short term these overspends are mostly being covered by ‘one off’ items:

  • Using one-off grants from Government
  • Using up some of the Council’s reservers
  • Other one-off savings

Our worry is that this is not sustainable into the future. The massive problems that the Council has this year (demand pressures, failure to deliver savings and income shortfall) are not going to magically disappear over the next few months, and in February Councillors will have to, by law, set a balanced budget   for 2019-20 in which even more savings will be required.

At the Audit Committee it was revealed that one of the three commercial properties the Council has purchased outside of Bury using taxpayers money – the Prezzo in Lytham St Annes, has now closed as a restaurant, so the the Council is getting no income for this investment.

This is the second year running that the Council’s Labour administration has produced very worrying financial reports at this stage in the year. This is now getting very worrying given the low level of Council reserves.

The full report is here.

 

Stop the Delay in the FOTB Gambling Cap

Liberal Democrats in Parliament are backing a cross-party amendment to the Finance Bill to ensure the maximum stake for fixed-odds betting terminals are introduced as planned within six months.

Currently the maximum stake for Fixed-Odds Betting Terminals is £100, but the Government’s own review has concluded that this should be reduced to just £2. However the proposal in the Budget is to delay this change for nearly a year until October 2019.

Liberal Democrat Leader Vince Cable said:
“A few months ago I was approached by a mother who was distraught after her son had committed suicide as a result of distress caused by debts that had accrued from compulsive gambling.”

“I and the Liberal Democrats will therefore work with others to stop these abusive practices and introduce a crackdown as promised. The Government is giving in to lobbying from the industry and must now back the cross-party amendment.”

“Further delays are causing more and more vulnerable people to face financial stress, mental health problems and worse.”

Reporting Back: Greater Manchester Scrutiny Committee

Last week was the regular meeting of the Greater Manchester Corporate Issues and Reform Scrutiny Committee. Prestwich Councillor Tim Pickstone represents Bury on the Committee:

This months meeting focussed on three issues:

Kerslake Report Implementation
Following the Manchester Arena attack, an Independent Review of the events and aftermath of the attack was conducted by five independent members and chaired by Lord Kerslake. This led to the publication of a report making 50 recommendations. The Committee is receiving updates on the implementation of this Report.

Some of the recommendations need to be addressed nationally, and contact has been made with Government to progress change here. Other issues are the responsibility of specific services, and we heard specifically from the Fire Service about changes they were making learning from the attack. The implementation of the recommendations is being led by the Greater Manchester Resilience Forum, which brings together all the agencies that need to be involved in a major incident or disaster like the Arena bombings, to ensure that all agencies are working together.

Greater Manchester Combined Authority Budget Update
The Greater Manchester Combined Authority now brings together a large amount of public spending. This includes everything to do with police, fire, transport as well as the new work and new spending which is being done directly by the Mayor or the Combined Authority at a Greater Manchester level. The functions of the former Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority are being brought into the CA this year.

In total the revenue budget of all these functions combined together is around £900 million this year. The capital budget (spending on one off projects) is around £500 million this year.

I asked about two issues: firstly, the underspend this year on money from Government for cycling projects (£10 million this year and then £50 million a year fort he next three years) and how we make sure this money is spent on cycling and walking. Secondly I asked about the money being spent on the Mayor’s promise to end homelessness in Greater Manchester and the costs of the ‘bed for all’ scheme this winter (and how this can be sustained going forwards).

Greater Manchester Waste Procurement Update
The Committee also received an update on the procurement process for private delivery of waste disposal services. This item was held in private because it is confidential commercial information about the different companies that are bidding to provide this service to Greater Manchester (which also means I cannot report on the detail).

Two years ago Greater Manchester spent a lot of money buying itself out of the previous contract with to deliver waste services and is now re-tendering.I asked questions about the sustainability of what we are tendering for – particularly with the changes in waste going forwards that we are  hearing about with plastic waste.

Any questions please ask. The papers for the meeting are here.

Budget 2018 – Missed Opportunities

Much of the media attention on this week’s budget from the Chancellor was on some of the tax cuts that have been made (or brought forwards one year). These mean that those people who pay income tax will be slightly better off from next April.

Whilst this is welcome, the Chancellor failed to grasp some of the real problems that face public services up and down the country:

  • There was nothing to help the Police, who are struggling to provide enough police to provide adequate community policing or investigate crimes.
  • Local Councils will still have to make £1.3 billion worth of cuts to services as no extra money was found for long term funding.
  • There was a tiny bit of extra funding for schools, but when many schools are having to lose staff at a time of rising costs this works out at less than the cost of a single teacher.
  • Taking action on tacking plastic waste was dodged by failing to provide a tax on single use items like takeaway plastic cups.

On social care funding, the Chancellor announced £650 million of extra money for local councils to help with the enormous costs of social care. While £650 million for social care sounds a lot, this includes £240 million already announced for reducing winter pressures. Adult and Children’s social care faces a funding gap of £2.6 billion in the next financial year, so the £410 million extra isn’t enough to fill this. For example, the increases in the Budget for the National Living Wage for care staff, while very much deserved, need to be paid for.

What would we have done differently?
A Liberal Democrat budget would:

  • Secure the future of our NHS, focusing on social care and mental health with an extra £6bn per year, funded through a penny in the pound on income tax.
  • Improve living standards for 9.6m parents and children, by reversing George Osborne’s cuts to the “work allowance” under Universal Credit, costing £3bn.
  • Invest an extra £2.8bn in to the schools budget, by reversing the Government’s proposed cuts to school funding.
  • Scrap business rates – replacing them with a tax on land values known as the Commercial Landowner Levy.  The reformed system would increase incentives to invest in new equipment and renovations, and cut taxes for businesses in nine out of ten English local authorities.
  • Reverse Conservative cuts to Corporations Tax – still leaving the UK with the lowest rate of corporation tax in the G7.
  • Work with the EU to crack down on tax avoidance by the tech titans, and working to secure agreement on taxing multi-nationals’ profits.
  • Reform wealth taxation – bringing capital gains and dividend taxes into line with income taxes, removing the most generous pension tax reliefs from the highest earners, and replacing the inheritance tax system with a fairer lifetime transfer tax.

 

 

Reporting Back: Answers to Questions

Just to report back on some of the questions that the Liberal Democrat team of Councillors on Bury Council asked at the last Full meeting. Please let us know if you have any comments or ideas for questions in the future.

Greater Manchester Spatial Framework
There had been significant concern in local councils across Greater Manchester that there had been a ‘downgrade’ in the status of the final decision on the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework when it happens (presumably next year). Originally the GMSF would have to be voted on and agreed by all 10 local councils, including Bury, but there had been fears that the downgrade of status in the decision meant that the 10 Leaders (and Mayor) could make the decision on their own.
Councillor Tim Pickstone asked: “Could the Leader reaffirm previous commitments, that members of this Council will vote on final proposals of the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework?

Answer: “It is our intention that Members will ultimately have to vote on the implications of the GMSF through the adoption of our Local Plan which sits under the GMSF and will act in accordance with it.”

Further clarification confirmed that Bury Council WILL get a vote on the final GMSF, which is very welcome.

Large Class Sizes
Councillor Steve Wright asked about the worrying number of secondary classes in Bury which are over 30. Last year, research from the Lib Dems found out that there had been a 265% increase in classes over 30 pupils in 2016/17 school year.
Question: “Could the Leader update members on the number of secondary school children in Bury who are taught in classes of more than 30 children, and how this compares to previous years?”

The answer was that in the 2017-18 school year, there was a further increase, to 65 classes across Bury, with more than 30 pupils in it. That was a total of 2104 pupils. The highest number was St Monicas (441 pupils) followed by Elton and Parrenthorn. (To be fair on these schools some of the classes were 31 pupils, including 10 classes at Monicas.)

Council Culture
Residents may remember the very serious issues 18 months ago around a child protection issue which led to the departure of the Council’s Chief Executive and Director of Children’s Services, and a major independent investigation. When receiving the report of the investigation, Councillors agreed on 20 July 2017 to undertake “an all-party piece of work, involving Officers and Members, with outside support as appropriate, to ensure that the Council has an appropriate culture of working at senior levels in the Authority, which reflects the highest standards for public office and public service.”
Councillor Tim Pickstone asked: “Could the Leader update members on this piece of work?
The answer: “The all-party piece of work on culture within the organisation of the Council has been scoped and a proposal obtained. The Chief Executive has reviewed the proposal and is of view that this work would be most valuable if deployed after a corporate review of the organisation planned for later this year. This will allow the work to be part of a wider improvement plan for the organisation as a whole.”
We will continue to pursue this issue…

Council Property outside of Bury
Finally Councillor Mary D’Albert asked for an update on the property which Bury Council has bought outside of Bury.
The properties which the Council has bought are:
Northern House, Fenay Bridge, Huddersfield – acquisition cost £2,300,000 (Capita offices)
43 to 45 Lever Street, Manchester – acquisition cost £2,560,000 (Bakerie restaurant)
18 to 20 St Anne’s Road West, Lytham St Anne’s – £1,010,000 (Prezzo resteranno)

 

Calls for more Multinational taxes on Tech Giants

Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader and Leader Jo Swinson MP and Vince Cable MP have written to the Chancellor of the Exchequer calling on him to throw his weight behind a new Europe-wide tax initiative on tech giants.

This urges Philip Hammond to use the Budget to set out how he will incorporate what is currently an EU’s initiative into any Treasury initiative to tax big internet firms.

Jo Swinson said:
“Tech giants are getting away with not paying their fair share of tax because we make it easy for them.

The time to act is now if we want to create a level playing field for businesses in the UK and give our struggling high streets a much needed boost.

Britain is always at its best when it brings countries together in a common cause. If we want to tax tech giants we must work together with our European allies and others around the globe.”

I urge the Chancellor to focus his energy on making this EU-wide tax happen. This is a golden opportunity that we cannot afford to miss.”

Reporting Back – Meeting the Mayor

Last week was the regular meeting between the Mayor of Greater Manchester (Andy Burnham) and representatives of Liberal Democrat Council Groups across Greater Manchester. Our group leader in Bury, Councillor Tim Pickstone, was at the meeting.

Greater Manchester Spatial Framework
Residents may have read in the local press that the major ‘Greater Manchester Spatial Framework’ is likely to be delayed again.

GMSF is the Greater Manchester plan for housing, infrastructure and other land use for the next 20 years. The second version of the proposals was due to be published in October 2018, for another stage of public consultation, but this is now having to be delayed.

The reason is new population figure estimates nationally which, on the face of it, show that Greater Manchester needs significantly less houses in the future than previously thought. (The original plan had 227,000 new houses required over the next 20 years, the new figures suggest more like 155,000. HOWEVER, Greater Manchester waiting for the Government to publish a ‘formula’ to interpret the figures, and it may be that this future is pushed back up again.

This seems like good news. Greater Manchester has enough ‘brownfield’ sites to build over 190,000 new homes without touching any of our precious green belt land. If this was to happen then Manchester and Salford was be taking slightly than their ‘fair share’ of new houses, but feels sensible for the more urban and central areas of the region.

The other big demand on land is for ’employment land’ to make sure that there are places for everyone to work. I the north of Greater Manchester, including Bury, there are calls for more employment land which may or may not be on current green belt land.

Prior to his election, Andy Burnham promised ‘no net loss of green belt’, if he was elected. It will be interesting to see if he can stick to that promise. In Bury it will be interesting to see what our Council does with its plans and whether it still pushes ahead with a loss of green belt for new houses and/or employment land.

Trains and Regional Development
We asked the Mayor about how we can tackle the ‘summer of chaos’ on our regions railways, but crucially about future investment in our rail infrastructure. Big decisions are imminent on the Manchester to Leeds rail electrification, which is a really important next step to giving the north of England the good rail connections we need. We also asked about progress on High Speed 2 to Manchester and again there are worrying indications from Government about wanting to reduce costs and whether it is willing to provide us with the the High Speed 2 infrastructure we need in Greater Manchester (which is what London is getting!)

Other Issues
We also spoke to the Mayor about some of the pressures on our local hospital services, all of which are experiencing to a greater or lesser extent problems with capacity and finances.

We also spoke about how we can make sure that the decision making bodies in Greater Manchester are politically representative of everyone in Greater Manchester, and in particular spoke about how decision making bodies for the fire and police are being brought together

Please let us know if there are issues you would like us to raise at future meetings.

 

Swinson secures govt commitment on parental pay transparency

Commenting on the Government announcement that it will consult on greater transparency on parental pay, Jo Swinson, Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats, said:

“I am delighted that the Government will be consulting on putting my parental pay transparency bill into law.

“This is a simple regulatory change with great benefits for employers, employees and job applicants.

“It is a national scandal that each year in the UK 54,000 women lose their jobs because of maternity and pregnancy discrimination. Conservatives must listen and deliver real change.

“The Government is right to consult on this but it must take swift action in the interest of all working parents.”

Jo Swinson is pursuing a Private Member’s Bill, tabled on 6 June 2018, to require organisations with more than 250 employees to publish details of their parental leave and pay policy.

This latest campaign victory comes after Swinson secured support for her Bill from ten major employers last week. These were Accenture, Addleshaw Goddard, Deloitte, Direct Line Group, EY, KPMG, Linklaters, RBS, Santander and PwC.

The Government announced its consultation on 1 October: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-legislation-to-ensure-tips-and-gratuities-go-to-employees

Decision made to reduce IVF provision for Bury patients

From October 2018, any new applications to seek funding for IVF (In Vitro Fertilisation) services will be capped to one funded cycle for Bury patients.

The decision to reduce provision in this area from the current offer of up to three funded cycles, to one, was made at the most recent meeting of the NHS Bury Clinical Commissioning Group’s (CCG) Governing Body, and follows a six week consultation period.

IVF is one of a number of areas where the CCG has explored potential savings to reduce the expected financial gap. Moving to one funded cycle of IVF will save the CCG up to £170,000 every year.

The consultation which ran from 6th August to 16th September aimed to capture views and feedback on plans to review Bury’s policy in relation to the provision of IVF services. More than 400 individuals shared their views through a survey. The opportunity to feed back views was promoted through the press and social media, online, in GP practices and through local networks, with requests to speak to any local groups welcomed.

The NHS say that having considered the responses received, no significant areas emerged that the CCG had not already considered. There was a strong theme to emerge around concerns the impact a reduction in provision could have on mental health and demand for mental health services.

This change in provision from October 2018 will relate to new referrals, and will not affect those couples that are already having an individual funding request referral considered, or have had funding agreed.