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Author Archives: Chris Perry

Cost of Living crisis

By Chris Perry | Fri 3rd April 2026 - 10:01 am

Never a day goes by, or so it seems, without mention of the cost of living crisis and programmes on the television helping people to make their money go further. And yet according to the new Forbes billionaire list Elon Musk added $373.5billion dollars (or £373.5billion) to his fortune in just one year. That is £3.5bn more than the £370bn it was estimated the entire COVID pandemic cost the UK. And according to the Equality Trust, this is the biggest ever increase in one year with Elon Musk’s total worth now the 22nd largest economy in the world, beating Belgium.

According to Oxfam global billionaire wealth increased by £1.5 trillion in 2024. In contrast according to the Office of National Statistics the median household income in the UK for the year ending 2023 was £34,500. This was a 2.5% decrease on the previous year

Widening income inequality and increasing poverty are the great social evils of our time and the root cause of so many of today’s problems. It will, therefore, be very difficult for the Government to achieve its objectives whilst operating within the present system and abiding by the rules when it is the system itself which needs changing.

Unless Government addresses pay differentials, bonuses and excessive profits within the larger corporations, utilities and banks, chasing inward investment in search of growth will make the rich richer and create low paid jobs for the masses as it has for at least 40 years. There needs to be a fairer distribution of income within organisations so that everyone gets a fair and proportionate return for their hard work. Extensive studies by the Equality Trust have found that people are becoming increasingly aware that the economy is a human-made system that can be changed,

In April 2024 there were 4.5m children being brought up in poverty, 70% of whom had a parent in work. Although the removal of the two child cap on child benefit will help it should never have been imposed in the first place as it is a child and not a parent benefit. And although the provision of free school meals is to be welcomed this will not reduce child poverty. The definition of poverty is an income of less than 60% of median household income. Free school meals are not an income which is available if the child is off school.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged income inequality and poverty | 24 Comments

Cutting waiting lists and the Budget

By Chris Perry | Sun 30th November 2025 - 11:38 am

In her Budget Statement the Chancellor of the Exchequer stated one of her aims was to cut waiting lists in the NHS.

According to a survey by the Times newspaper earlier this year it was estimated that there were on average 13,600 older people in hospital every day who did not need to be there awaiting social care, costing the NHS £2.9m per year. Therefore, one cannot resolve the problems of the NHS in isolation of social care.

The NHS and social care are in crisis and in need of radical reform, restructuring and cultural change to liberate the professionals from the constraining contract culture into an enabling leadership one. This requires the creation of whole task right sized multi-disciplinary teams aligned behind outcome able to plan, do and evaluate their own work which completes the learning cycle of constant improvement.

There is a wealth of empirical evidence into the social determinants of health which has demonstrated the correlation between income and demand upon the health services. One cannot go on throwing more money at the first aid camp at the bottom of the cliff without building a fence at the top. Treating the symptoms not the cause. A whole systems approach is required.

If the Chancellor really wanted to save money she would increase and not reduce the income of older people. Before the COVID19 pandemic killed 223,396 mainly older dependent people, 80% of the expenditure of health and social care was on older people. Britain has one of the lowest state pensions in the developed world with 2m older people living in poverty. To increase the state pension to lift all older people out of poverty would reduce demand upon the NHS and social care. It would also improve the quality of life of many and if older people did need long term care, applying the same financial assessment which has been in place since 1948 (when few people owned their own house) they would be able to pay more without having to take their house or capital into account which would also increase government revenue from inheritance tax.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged 2025 budget | 14 Comments

Taxing the poor to protect the rich?

By Chris Perry | Fri 28th November 2025 - 1:46 pm

The Chancellor’s budget speech was strong on rhetoric and good intentions. However, with the exception of the property tax, it was almost as though Rachel Reeves was unaware of the existence of the super-rich or the rising income inequality in our society which Morris Pearl, Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires and a former Managing Director at Black Rock believes “threatens everything we hold dear: our democracies, our planet and our broader society…..”. Much of her address appeared to exclude the top 10% of earners.

In the Spring of 2025 Oxfam published its report “Takers not Makers” which suggested that global billionaire wealth had increased by £1.5trillion in 2024, a significant jump compared with the previous year. In contrast, according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS) the median household disposable income in the UK for the financial year ending 2023 was £34,500. This was a 2.5% decrease on the financial year ending 2022 when median household income was £35,100.

According to figures released by the Equality Trust, the UK is the sixth most unequal country by income of the 38 OECD countries. (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). Many employees are paid the minimum wage to pay for this. The challenge is to address pay differentials within organisations so that everyone gets a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.

Unless Government tackles pay differentials, chasing inward investment in search of growth will make the rich richer and create low paid jobs for the masses as it has since the 1980s. The Equality Trust continues that “high income inequality weakens the social fabric and sense of cohesion between us. We are more likely to live, work and socialise in socially and economically segregated ways which can aid misunderstanding, resentment and undermine the sense of shared identity and purpose needed for a cohesive society”.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged 2025 budget | 20 Comments

Government should stop using “working people” and audit income inequality and poverty

By Chris Perry | Wed 9th July 2025 - 10:25 am

When will the Government drop the phrase “working people” which excludes “retired people”, “children”, “people with long term illnesses or disabilities” and people who have had to give up work to become full time carers and adopt something more inclusive. Until they do, they will continue to shoot themselves in the foot.

Congratulations on the Lib Dem stand against cuts to disability benefit. In my experience most people who are off work due to sickness or disability would give anything within reason to be able to work. However, if Government wrongly believes that a financial incentive is required then the answer must lie in increasing their potential earnings and not the threat of increased poverty.

Widening income inequality and increasing poverty are the great social evils of our time. And unless Government addresses pay differentials within companies, chasing inward investment in search of growth will make the rich richer and create low paid jobs for the masses. It will increase income inequality and poverty: not reduce it. As did stopping the winter fuel allowance and cutting disability benefit which added to the hardship of the most vulnerable people in our society and, given the wealth of empirical evidence into the social determinates of health which have demonstrated the correlation between income and health, added to the winter pressures on the NHS at the very time Government was committed to reducing waiting times.

In 2022 / 23 there were 4.3m children in the UK being brought up in poverty – 2/3rds of whom had a parent in work. In March 2023 there were 107,317 children in the care of the local authority in the UK – the highest number ever. In December 2023, 112,660 homeless households were living in temporary accommodation in England, including 145,800 children. A record-high for both categories. Despite low detection rates the courts could not keep pace with demand and prisons were bursting at the seams. There was concern about rising knife crime amongst young people.

Two million older retired people were living in poverty in the UK in 2024. The state pension had fallen further behind average earnings (23% in 2025 from 24.5% in 2020). This was because the “triple lock” was suspended in 2022 /23 and the state pension increased by 3.1% instead of 8% had it been applied. Stopping the “winter fuel allowance” in 2024 represented a further cut of 3% in the income associated with the universal state pension having been part of older retired people’s income since 1999. It was restored for some in 2025 not, it would seem, because of the hardship it caused or because of the increased winter pressures on the NHS, but because of the opinion poll ratings and loss of votes in the local elections. Retired people got no benefit from the two pre-election cuts in National Insurance but do have to pay more income tax due to the freezing of the tax-free personal allowance and lost their free TV licence in 2022. Therefore, after ten years of catching-up due to the “triple lock”, introduced by the Coalition Government in 2010 to reverse the year-on-year erosion since the earnings link was replaced by a prices link in the 1980’s, older people were again being left behind.

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Posted in News | Tagged inequality and poverty | 10 Comments

Pension Funds and Economic Growth

By Chris Perry | Thu 23rd January 2025 - 9:40 am

Rachel Reeves’ proposed merger of Local Government Pension Schemes and consolidation with defined contribution pension schemes to create a mega-fund to unlock investment and boost growth is high risk and needs safeguards and guarantees. This is not Government or taxpayers’ money but belongs to the members of each particular pension scheme and is in effect their retirement savings. When Gordon Brown altered the tax position of pension funds he sent many into deficit which brought about the demise of defined benefit final salary schemes – with even the Local Government Schemes moving from “final salary” to “average salary”. The index linking used to be to earnings, then RPI and more recently changed to CPI – even for pensions in payment.

These changes are not being made by the Chancellor to improve pensions but to use pension funds to boost investment in search of growth. Economic growth is the Government’s priority. But what are the risks and knock on effect of this proposal for pensioners? One cannot fix whole systems problems with component level solutions.

There is a wealth of empirical evidence into the social determinates of health which has demonstrated the correlation between income and demand upon the NHS. 3/5ths of the expenditure of the NHS is on older people. Therefore, to constantly reduce or risk the income of older people, who got no benefit from the two pre-election reductions in National Insurance but do pay more income tax due to the freezing of the tax free personal allowance, recently lost their free TV licence and now their winter fuel allowance will increase the pressures on the NHS at the very time Government is committed to reducing waiting times.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged pensions and rachel reeves | 19 Comments

The Winter Fuel Payment cut will harm older people and increase pressure on NHS

By Chris Perry | Tue 10th September 2024 - 7:30 am

The Office of Budget Responsibility estimates that the most recent 2% cut in National Insurance, in the run up to the General Election, will cost an average of £10.3billion per year over the next ten years. If one adds to that the previous 2% cut in National Insurance (a few months earlier) that would explain the £22billion short fall in public finances identified by the Government.

Presumably, the previous Government hoped to recover this “pre-election give away” by growth and, more particularly, the frozen tax free personal allowance which the Office of …

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged winter fuel payment | 31 Comments

Is the Criminal Justice system broken?

By Chris Perry | Fri 12th July 2024 - 7:22 pm

Concerns about knife crime amongst young people, unacceptable delays in the court system, prisons bursting at the seams and yet most reported crime goes unresolved.

The UK has areas of deprivation the likes of which have not been seen since the second world war. There are children and young people with little to do and very little hope or aspiration. How can we punish children for behaviour which is a direct result of the society into which they have been born?

There are now 3.9 million children being brought up in poverty – 2/3rds of whom have a parent in work. Children brought up in poverty are less likely to do well at school, more likely to have health problems, making a demand upon the NHS, and have a shorter life expectancy.

Many children who offend, commit their first offence whilst truanting from school. The educational system has failed them. Children should want to go to school and not have to be made to do so. Schools should encourage children to get involved in organised out of school activity.

Community Policing should be exactly that by re-instating neighbourhood police officers who can be around so that the children know him/her and (s)he knows most of the children by sight.

Many children go on offending sprees between apprehension for an offence and disposal through the courts which is why this period needs to be kept as short as possible and to a matter of days.

Group residential intervention, be it Young Offender Institutions or residential care (secure or otherwise) for young people has been shown to reinforce offending and establish a pattern of offending for life. “Creating Criminals”.

During my social work training my residential placement was in a Remand Home. When boys arrived the others would ask what they had done. Which would usually be greeted by “Oh, is that all”. The story would get progressively serious with each telling and most conversation be about crime. Even if children were rehabilitated the local community would expect them to behave as before and they would soon revert to past behaviour.

Stigma and labelling is responsible for a great deal of anti-social behaviour.

Policies of diversion and alternatives to custody need to be adequately resourced because of the risks involved and capable of fully occupying the child who has offended throughout their waking hours on activities which interest and motivate him/her, so (s)he grows out of his/her offending.

Community-based activities are very visible and, as such, can lead to criticism of rewarding bad behaviour. Society is quite happy to spend £130,000 per child per year on Young Offenders Institutions which is seen as punishment even though it does not work than a fraction of that cost on constructive intervention.

This is why it is important that some of the activity should involve face to face contact with people in need (such as the CSV Children in Care Programme of the 70s and 80s) to change the perception from delinquent to helper in both the young person’s own eyes and in those around them.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged criminal justice, young offenders and young people | 13 Comments

Wednesday’s budget – a more holistic approach is needed

By Chris Perry | Mon 4th March 2024 - 2:35 pm

Will the chancellor correct the imbalance of his November 2023 Autumn statement in Wednesday’s budget? Or will it be more of the same? By cutting National Insurance from 12% to 10% the chancellor helped the better off to the detriment of the lowest paid on income support and pensioners both of whom were hardest hit by the cost-of-living crisis and do not pay national insurance and therefore saw no benefit. This will have disastrous consequences for the economy.

Component level responses will not solve whole systems problems.

Widening income inequality and increasing poverty are the great social evils of our time. “Trickle Down” economics and the privatisation of public services has created dozens of millionaires and turned millionaires into billionaires whilst the majority are worse off than they were before the 2009 Banking Crisis. There are now 3.9 million children being brought up in poverty in the UK – 2/3rds of whom have a parent in work. These parents are no more able to increase their income than are older people who have no earning or borrowing power. Children brought up in poverty are less likely to do well at school, more likely to have health problems, making a demand upon the NHS, and have a shorter life expectancy. Perhaps, now is the time to follow the example of Japan where there is a positive and significant relationship between directors’ pay and employees’ average wage. Directors and Chief Executives could still have their million pound salaries provided that they paid those on whose hard work they depend proportionately.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged budget 2024 | 13 Comments

Is Britain being rebranded – is it time for an English Government?

By Chris Perry | Fri 29th September 2023 - 9:33 am

At the time that Boris Johnson was talking up post BREXIT Global Britain and assuring the Democratic Unionist Party that there would be no border in the Irish Sea (despite one being included in his “oven ready agreement” which Teresa May had said no British Prime Minister could sign) the Government was requesting that the stickers on cars travelling abroad be changed from GB to UK.

The move was only revealed by the United Nations which said it had received “a notification stating that the United Kingdom is changing the distinguishing sign that it had previously selected for display in international traffic on vehicles registered in the United Kingdom, from ‘GB’ to ‘UK'”.

The rules changed in September 2021 and yet it has not proved possible to find any reference to a debate in, or approval by, Parliament on such a potentially significant change in identity.

The Department for Transport said that it was part of a wider move across Government. One reason was GB – Great Britain – only formally included England, Wales and Scotland, whereas the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK) is inclusive of Northern Ireland as well as England, Scotland and Wales, it said.

It is true that Great Britain is the official collective name of England, Scotland and Wales and their associated islands and does not include Northern Ireland.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged great britain and united kingdom | 22 Comments

Widening income inequality and pay differentials

By Chris Perry | Thu 25th August 2022 - 7:50 pm

My post Take Back Control yesterday on the cost-of-living crises and energy prices was primarily about the obscene profits (gas and electricity £30bn plus) and high salaries paid to the Chief Executives in the utility industries, paid for by consumers, and ways of helping the least well off customers and small businesses in a none stigmatising way by charging for the first so many units of gas, electricity and water at a reduced tariff – or possibly making them free.

It prompted a very lively debate with much of it focussed on the salaries of the Chief Executives which ranged from £1m per year at EDF to £6.5m for the Chief Executive of the National Grid.

The article drew comparisons with the public sector and the Chief Executive of Birmingham City Council who is paid £186,000, for arguably a more complex and wider ranging job, and suggested a salary of £200,000 for just two Chief Executives, one for gas and one for electricity, in nationalised services. Several people questioned whether £200,000 would attract the right calibre of Chief Executive? It would be interesting to see the “person specifications” of the existing posts and the CVs of the incumbents. Capacity is the product of intellect x knowledge x experience.

Are the right people in the jobs now? Is the aim of the utilities to make a profit or to provide a cost-effective service? What do we expect of these Chief Executives? Is anyone worth 30 times more than the Chief Executive of Birmingham City Council – do such beings exist – and what impact must it have on the motivation of those on whose efforts the Chief Executives are dependent?

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged boardroom pay | 2 Comments

Take Back Control

By Chris Perry | Wed 24th August 2022 - 10:21 am

Until the 1980’s, when the utilities were privatised by Margaret Thatcher, they were in the Public Sector. And what a success privatisation has been. It has created dozens of millionaires paid for by the general public through higher gas, electricity and water bills!

The half-yearly profits of the utilities and their Chief Executive’s pay are obscene.

COMPANY	HALF YEAR PROFITS 2022	CHIEF EXECUTIVE’S PAY
EON	£3.4bn	£1m
National Grid	£3.4bn	£6.5m
RWE	£2.2bn	£3.6m
Orsted	£1.5bn	£1.7m
Centrica	£1.3bn	£4.5m
SSE	£1.2bn	£4.5m
Uniper	£1bn	£1.6m
Scottish Power	£925m	£1.15m
Drax	£225m	£2.7m
EDF	(£225m) loss	£1m

Lightsource did not attend the meeting with the Prime Minister and their figures are not available.

The total disclosed half yearly profits are £14.9bn: which will be in excess of £30bn in the full year.

Instead of considering a windfall tax on these excessive profits (as has also been considered in respect of petrol) to provide help to those least able to afford their gas and electricity bills, if the gas and electricity companies were taken back into in public ownership these profits and the cost of excessive salaries could be used to reduce the bills for everyone. Instead of many Chief Executives and senior managers earning between £1m and £6.5 million per year there would be just two Chief Executives, one for gas and one for electricity, paid on public sector rather than private sector pay scales earning around £200,000 each. (The highest paid local government Chief Executive gets £185,000 for, arguably, greater and certainly wider responsibility)

So just how bad is the situation?

According to a report in The Guardian 2/3rds of UK households will be trapped in fuel poverty by January meaning their fuel costs will be 10% or more of their income. 18m families, or approximately 45m people, will be struggling to make ends meet. 86.4% of retired people and 90.4% of single parent families with two or more children will fall into fuel poverty.

This comes at the end of a decade during which the rich have got richer whilst the majority, subject to austerity, have got poorer. According to a report by the Paris-based World Inequality Lab, 2020 saw the steepest increase in billionaires’ wealth on record. In contrast 100m additional people, worldwide, sank into extreme poverty.

A consequence of this widening inequality is that, prior to the recent cost of living crisis, there were 3.9 million children living in poverty in the UK. The Government had focused on making work pay, but two in three children who were in poverty had a parent who was in work. These parents were no more able to do anything to help their children than are older people who have no earning capacity or borrowing power, many of whom prior to the abolition of the “default retirement age” had been forced into retirement and condemned to spending the rest of their lives in poverty.

Children brought up in poverty are less likely to do well at school, more likely to have health problems, making a demand upon the NHS, and have a shorter life expectancy.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged cost of living crisis, energy, utlities and water | 51 Comments

A whole systems approach to solving the health and social care crisis

By Chris Perry | Mon 14th February 2022 - 9:23 am

The Health and Social Care Bill currently in the House of Lords is intended to:

sort out the under-funding of social care;
remove the need for people to sell their houses to pay for their care;
promote joined-up service delivery;
replace the competitive model with a collaborative one.

Sadly, as I wrote here, it appears to be a quick fix component level response to a whole systems problem which will simply “kick the problem on for a few more years”. There is little point putting more and more money into the first aid camp at the bottom of the cliff without building a fence at the top.

The cap on the amount which can be spent on care home fees will favour the rich in that people who do not have sufficient savings will still have to sell their house to pay for their care.

The “Integrated Care Systems” and “Integrated Care Partnerships” will be very costly and appear more concerned with preserving:

the current configuration of local authorities and NHS Trusts, and;
the purchaser / provider split and commissioning;

than they do the provision of integrated care.

Successive Governments have tried to get health, social services, police, education and housing to work together, but none has grasped the nettle of different geographical areas, different funding streams and different lines of accountability, which have been the main impediments.

Since the 1990 National Health Service and Community Care Act the “contract culture” has led to:

a “minding” rather than a “mending” service with social workers increasingly used to assess the eligibility to specific services rather than using relationship and therapeutic counselling to resolve problems;
further fragmentation with different components of a “package of care” bought from different providers, and;
“self-funders” (a dreadful term) being waived away denying them an “independent verification of their wishes” and their families the help and support they need.

There is a wealth of empirical evidence on the “social determinates of health” which have demonstrated the correlation between income and demand upon the NHS.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged health and social care | 13 Comments

A “mending” not a “minding” service

By Chris Perry | Thu 28th October 2021 - 9:59 am

With so much media and political attention on social care there is a danger that social work, which is a very undervalued resource, may be further marginalised. This article attempts to demonstrate that social work and social workers are vital to a “mending” rather than a “minding” service.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s social work was regarded as a valuable resource and social workers seen as “agents of change”. Since then, social workers have been increasingly regarded as “gate keepers” assessing the eligibility for practical help and rationing of services.

The Seebohm Report which led to the establishment of Social Service Departments in 1971 recognised the value of social work. It did not, however, create the “one door to knock on”, it promised, as a multi-disciplinary / inter-agency response is often required. This was subsequently recognised with the establishment of Area Child Protection Committees (post Maria Caldwell), Mental Health procedures, “Community Mental Handicap Teams”, and Youth Justice Teams etc.

The undoing of much of the public sector was down to the Thatcher years and more particularly, in respect of Health and Social Services, to Sir Roy Griffiths and his mistaken belief that people were motivated by and could be controlled by money. This led to the introduction of the contract culture with the purchaser / provider split which Sir Roy thought would create a level playing field to facilitate a mixed economy of care thereby forcing quality up and prices down. It has subsequently been proven to have had the opposite effect and led to over-prescription taking away the ability of carers to react in situ to changing need. It led to greater fragmentation with different components of a “package of care” bought from different providers.

Social Workers were deployed on the “purchasing side”, assessing the need for specific services (often responding to “presenting problems” rather than the “underlying problem”) which led to several social services departments providing “minding” rather than “mending” services with an ever-increasing workload of dependent people.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged social work and social workers | 4 Comments

HGV and social care crises – some alternative solutions

By Chris Perry | Mon 27th September 2021 - 8:49 am

As people queue for petrol the Government intends to reverse another of the consequences of Brexit by making it easier to recruit drivers from Europe. The promised trades deals have not materialised, and far from getting Brexit done, a solution has yet to be found for the Irish Border.

A radical reform of our governance, in which elections are won or lost on a few marginal seats and MPs speak to themselves in parliament, at great public cost, with Government seemingly taking little notice, is long overdue.

The system promotes quick fix component level solutions to whole system problems thereby creating problems for future administrations to deal with.

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Posted in Op-eds | 14 Comments

The Triple Lock: An 8% rise is justifiable

By Chris Perry | Fri 9th July 2021 - 10:32 am

The Government appears to have forgotten why, the predominantly Conservative, Coalition Government introduced the “triple lock” whereby the State Pension increases in line with earnings, prices or 2.5%, whichever is the greatest.

It was an attempt to reverse the 30 years of erosion since Margaret Thatcher replaced the “earnings link” with a “prices link”. And after only ten years there is a long way to go to restore the pre 1980 relative value.

Prices are about the cost of static living. Earnings are about the standard of living and quality of life. As the economy grows so too do the expectations and necessities of life. For example, very few people had fridges in 1950; it would be difficult to manage without one today.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged featured, pensions and triple lock | 35 Comments

A longer read: Women born between 1954 and 1960 lose up to £40,000 each

By Chris Perry | Fri 11th December 2020 - 9:41 am

Embed from Getty Images

From October 6^th anyone born after 5^th October 1954 will have a state pension age of 66 – for some women this is six years later than they were originally promised.

The 1995 Pensions Act intended raising the age of eligibility to the State Pension for women to 65 over a ten-year period between 2010 and 2020. The 2011 Pension Act accelerated this and raised the age to 66 for both men (previously 65) and women.

Women born in the 1950s might have spent half their working lives paying National Insurance in the knowledge they would get their State Pension at 60 years of age and may now get up to £40,000 less than they knew to be their entitlement. There is evidence of women retiring only to discover they will not get their State Pension. Even some people closely involved with older people and pensions were unaware of the precise timetable as so little publicity was given to it.

The “Back to 60” campaign lost its appeal in the High Court, in October, but “Women Against State Pension Inequality” continue their campaign. These women have a very real grievance and yet appear to be being brushed aside. Both LibDems and Labour had it in their manifestos to do something about it. And former Pensions Minister, Baroness Ros Altmann would appear to support some compensation on grounds of maladministration as these women were not written to personally in either 1995 or 2011.

More than 1million female workers have no savings or private pension provision, of which 43% have less than £100 saved. Two million people over 75 live alone, of which 1.5 million are women.

There are 1.9m older people living in poverty in Britain today many of whom were forced into retirement and condemned to spending the rest of their lives in poverty. Britain has one of the lowest State Pensions in the developed world at just 29% of average earnings with the official definition of poverty being anything less than 60% of median household income. Britain’s 29% compares with 100.6% in Holland, 94.9% in Portugal, 93.9% in Italy, 91.8% in Austria, and 81.8% in Spain.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged pensions | 12 Comments

Brexit: Heading for Disaster or Brinkmanship? Part Two

By Chris Perry | Wed 23rd September 2020 - 1:45 pm

The Irish Border was always going to be the stumbling block to BREXIT. Part of the problem is that the House of Commons is not representative as the 7 Sinn Fein MPs have not taken up their seats as it would mean them taking the oath of allegiance to the Queen. The people of Northern Ireland voted to “remain” whereas the 10 Democratic Unionist Party MPs favour BREXIT. A border down the Irish Sea would not be acceptable to the DUP any more than a border in Ireland would be acceptable to Sinn Fein.

All parties agree that a “no-deal BREXIT” would be disastrous for the economy in that 44% of our exports go to Europe (with only 18% of Europe’s exports coming to Britain) and a further 20% of Britain’s exports go via trade agreements with Europe. Most of our food comes from Europe, and Spain in particular, and the World Trade Organisation Tariffs could add up to 10% to prices. No amount of trade deals around the world could compensate for the loss of trade with our nearest neighbours. The recent deal with Japan replicates the deal the UK already had with Japan via the EU.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged brexit, Covid-19 and Irish border | 6 Comments

Brexit: Heading for Disaster or Brinkmanship? Part One

By Chris Perry | Wed 23rd September 2020 - 12:15 pm

The Coronavirus possibly poses a greater threat to the human-race than did the second world war and the unleashing of nuclear bombs. The UK should have locked down earlier, worn masks earlier, had test and trace earlier, stopped admissions to care homes earlier, admitted people in care homes with symptoms to a hospital where they could have benefitted from oxygen, ventilators and intensive care. However, we are where we are and quite rightly when announcing further measures to combat Coronavirus (on Tuesday 22nd September) the Prime Minister put saving lives first (and I am delighted that people working in restaurants both in the kitchens and serving are to wear masks). Still, he also said he was keen to strike a balance in protecting the economy and jobs. Given that the Coronavirus is likely to trigger a world recession why then is he persevering with the “UK Internal Market Bill” which risks alienating our closest trading partners, undermining trust in the UK worldwide and scoring an own goal by inflicting untold harm on the economy with a potential no-deal BREXIT in January, whilst undermining the peace process in Ireland?

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Posted in News and Op-eds | Tagged brexit, Covid-19 and Irish border | 13 Comments

A longer read for the lockdown: Reform of health and social care without further top-down re-organisation

By Chris Perry | Thu 28th May 2020 - 11:15 am

Embed from Getty Images
In the daily update on Friday 15th May, Matt Hancock said that the current crisis had demonstrated how closely health and social care need to work together and had acted as a catalyst to reform, referring to “integration”. Care homes are not, and were never intended to be, hospitals. The residents are just as entitled to hospital care, if that is what is needed, as are the rest of us. That so many have been left to die in Care Homes, rather than being admitted to hospital, and thereby denied the benefit of oxygen, ventilators and intensive care which might have saved their lives, is the real concern. The discharge of older people from hospital to care homes, without testing, in order to free up beds for coronavirus patients, may also have spread the virus.

However, that Baroness Ros Altmann also referred to “integration” on “Good Morning Britain”, and Matt Hancock reiterated it on the 21st May, would suggest the matter is under consideration.

Countless enquiries into “child abuse” and “adult abuse and neglect” have criticised agencies for not working together. And successive Governments have tried to get Health and Social Services, in particular, to work more closely together from “joint funding” in the 1970s to the “pooling of budgets”. But no Government has grasped the nettle of the lack of common geographical boundaries, different funding streams and different lines of accountability which have been the real impediments. This does not mean a merger of health and social services, as that would further marginalise Social Work and a different combination of agencies are required depending upon the problem and desired outcome. For example: Child Protection requires children’s services, health, education, the police and foster care to work together. Older People require Adult Services, Health, Housing, Leisure Services and Income Support to work together. – But not all of them all the time. It is quite a complex multi-dimensional organisational issue across countless scenarios.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged health and social care and healthcare | 14 Comments

Coronavirus: Britain overtakes China

By Chris Perry | Sat 4th April 2020 - 3:00 pm

Britain has now overtaken China in respect of the number of deaths from coronavirus and yet unlike China and South Korea we had three months to prepare.

China and South Korea went into immediate “lock down” with widespread public testing, tracing and isolating contacts and the wide use of Personal Protection Equipment and, in particular, masks. In consequence China has all but stopped the spread of the virus with 3,322 deaths or just 2 per million population. The death rate in South Korea has also slowed with just 174 deaths or 3 per million population. In Britain deaths are still rising with 3,605 so far or 53 per million population.

Despite the World Health Organisation’s warnings testing is still way behind as is the provision of PPE.

On 22nd March the Sunday Times published an article entitled “Ten days that shook Britain – and changed the nation for ever” which revealed that Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s senior aide, had become convinced that Britain would be better able to resist a lethal second wave of the disease next winter if Whitty’s prediction that 60% to 80% of the population became infected was right and the UK developed “herd immunity”. At a private engagement at the end of February, Cummings outlined the Government strategy. Those present say it was “herd immunity, protect the economy and if that means some pensioners die, too bad”.

However at the Sage meeting on March 12, a moment now dubbed the “Domoscene Conversion”, Cummings changed his mind in the “penny drop moment” when he realised he had helped set a course for catastrophe with between 250,000 and 500,000 deaths predicted. From then on Britain was playing catch up.

Listening to Matt Hancock on Thursday’s Question Time one could be forgiven for thinking the Government had still not ditched the concept of “herd immunity” altogether as he referred to “passports” and “certificates” to enable people to get back to work. He himself was back in circulation just short of seven days after testing positive when the World Health Organisation recommends a minimum of 14 days.

Yvette Cooper tried her best to draw Matt Hancock as to the Government’s future strategy and the concept of “herd immunity”, without going over old ground, and also expressed concern that carers were going from house to house without PPE (masks, goggles, gloves, gowns etc) and could be spreading the virus amongst the most vulnerable people in society who were dependent upon their care.

The Government appears to have paid too little attention during this pandemic to the wider population, to home food deliveries or the protection of people working in the Super Markets, food chain, gas, electricity, water and refuse collection on whom we all depend. And has so far failed to even adequately protect those in the NHS!

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged coronavirus | 28 Comments

Housing: A basic human right?

By Chris Perry | Wed 11th March 2020 - 3:30 pm

According to the charity Shelter, three million new social homes must be built in England over the next 20 years of which 1.2 million homes are needed for younger families who cannot afford to buy and “face a lifetime in expensive and insecure private renting”. The Government intends to build 250,000 homes by 2022, including homes for rent.

Travelling around the UK one gets the impression that there is more house building going on than ever before gobbling up agricultural land. This is at the time that we are leaving the EU, the “single market” and the “common agriculture policy”. About 30% of all our food is currently imported from EU Countries and for some products it is 100%. In 2016 more than £30.3bn of Britain’s food imports and £12.3bn of its food exports were with the EU, highlighting the scale of economic disruption if the current trade negotiations result in tariffs.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged housing | 13 Comments

Reducing income inequality

By Chris Perry | Tue 10th March 2020 - 8:30 am

Embed from Getty Images

This is the second of three articles on housing

Huge profits are being made out of housing when the Government estimates 4,266 people are sleeping rough. For example Barratts made pre-tax profits in 2019 of £909.8m – even after paying their Chief Executive £3.6m. Nationwide made £833m after paying its Chief Executive £2.37m and the Government collected £9.3m in Stamp Duty.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged housing | 22 Comments

Low incomes mean that the basic human right of housing is often beyond people’s reach

By Chris Perry | Mon 9th March 2020 - 6:44 pm

Embed from Getty Images
This is the first of three articles on housing

Food and shelter are essential to survival and yet according to the latest Government figures, collected in the autumn of 2019 and published in February 2020, 4,266 people are estimated to be sleeping rough each night in this the 5th largest economy in the world. The Charity Crisis believes it may be nearer to 8,000.

According to the charity Shelter three million new social homes must be built in England over the next 20 years of which 1.2 million homes are needed for younger families who cannot afford to buy and “face a lifetime in expensive and insecure private renting”. The Government responded that providing fair social housing was a priority and it planned to build 250,000 homes by 2022, including homes for social rent.

Housing is big business and it was the collapse of the property marked in America which led to the economic crisis in 2008 which saw the Government bail out the banks and led to ten years of austerity during which the rich, including those responsible for the crisis, got richer and the majority of us got poorer.

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Posted in Op-eds | 6 Comments

Brexit and the European elections

By Chris Perry | Tue 14th May 2019 - 8:55 am

With the European Elections looming they could be regarded as a test of public opinion, almost a second referendum.

However given that what UKIP and Boris Johnson et al promised in the run up to the 2016 referendum has been shown to be unattainable it is almost inconceivable that

Nigel Farage’s BREXIT Party should be riding so high in the ratings. One can only assume that this a matter of dictatorial principle “you will do as we tell you”, an anti- establishment stance from people who feel totally undervalued, powerless and ignored – determined to win at any cost and regardless of outcome. Nigel Farage now says it is about democracy.

It will therefore need the pro-European Parties, and hopefully Labour, to work together to get the facts across. This is not about democracy: it is about the future of our country for generations to come.

BREXIT could lead to the break-up of the UK, the loss of Gibraltar, and the outbreak of hostilities in Ireland, which could very quickly escalate out of control, and will certainly leave the UK worse off economically. It is doubtful that anyone voted to be worse off and yet this is what the most optimistic predictions, even those of the Government, suggest. Just recall how hard Britain fought to gain access to the“common market” and that 44% of our exports go to Europe (with only 18% ofEurope’s exports coming to Britain) and a further 20% of Britain’s exports go via trade agreements with Europe.

Therefore the NET contribution Britain makes to the EU pales into insignificance compared to the advantages of this free trade agreement. And those that argue that the UK would not have to pay the £39b, so called divorce settlement, were it to leave without a deal, should bear in mind that this is to honour our contractual obligations and what country would enter into an agreement with a country which failed to honour such commitments – not to mention the possibility of sanctions imposed by the EU on top of tariffs

The Irish Border, together with Gibraltar, was always going to present insurmountable problems. It was perhaps “freedom of movement”, more so than the “Good Friday Agreement”, which led to the end of hostilities in Ireland, with people crossing the invisible border daily. However one cannot “control one’s borders” without a border and the only way to retain an open border in Ireland, and avoid hostilities, is to remain in a Customs Union and Single Market (Free Trade Area).

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged brexit and european elections | 62 Comments

Setting the young against the old is a smokescreen to protect the mega rich

By Chris Perry | Tue 7th May 2019 - 10:43 am

Setting the young against the old is a smoke screen to protect the mega richThe House of Lords Committee report on “Intergenerational Fairness and Provision” recommends a redistribution of benefits from older people to younger people. Surely it is not an inter-generational issue; but one of confronting the widening income inequality and increasing poverty in our society?

At just 29% of national average earnings Britain has one of the lowest state pensions in the developed world, with much of Europe paying in excess of 90%, and there are 1.9m older people living in poverty many of whom were forced into retirement, pre 2011, and condemned to spending the rest of their lives in poverty.

According to Philip Alston, special rapporteur on extreme poverty to the UN, Government Ministers are in a “state of denial” about poverty. Quoting figures from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, he said that more than 1.5 million people were destitute at some point in 2017, meaning they lived on less than £70 a week or went without essentials such as housing, food, clothing or heating. A fifth of the population, amounting to 14 million people, are living in poverty, Prof Alston said.

In contrast the pay of Chief Executives at businesses on the FTSE 100 index surged 11% on a median basis during 2017 while average earnings failed to keep pace with inflation, rising just 1.7% with inflation at 2.8%. Many of these Chief Executives have multi-million pound incomes.

A consequence of this widening inequality is that there are now 3.9 million children living in poverty in the UK – an increase of 200,000 in just one year. The Government has focused on making work pay, but two in three children who are in poverty have a parent who is in work. Children brought up in poverty are less likely to do well at school, more likely to have health problems and have a shorter life expectancy.

In 1997 Gordon Brown abolished the tax relief pension funds earned on dividends from stock market investment which sent many pension funds from surplus to deficit within a decade and led to the demise of many final salary pensions. In 1971 the index linking of public sector pensions changed from earnings to RPI and then in 2011 from RPI to CPI and more recently from final to average salary. Over the last ten years pensions index linked to CPI have increased by 26.6% when had they still been increased by RPI they would have gone up by 32.4%. Average earnings have gone up by 41.7%.

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Posted in Op-eds | Tagged inter-generational fairness | 29 Comments

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