Lawslot

A very good post on Martin Bright’s New Statesman’s blog which looks beyond what he calls the Michael Martin affair, and suggests that

“the real question for younger Labour MPs is how they define themselves against the other parties without reverting to the old politics of class identity. Oddly, this may mean a return to certain core Labour values: an abhorrence of poverty, social injustice and inequality. Some Labour MPs are worried that young people joining the party are more interested in civil liberties and global warming than in the millions of people still living in poverty in Britain today. Yet it is for those who still believe that Labour has a duty to the poorest in society to offer a persuasive argument that the party can and should make a difference, rather than simply manage the status quo better than the Tories.

If Labour backbenchers are looking for a cause more worthy than the Speaker of the House of Commons, they could do worse than commit themselves to honouring pledges to end poverty in Britain. Blair and Brown proved they could do what was once unimaginable: run a successful economy and increase investment in public services while winning over swaths of middle-class voters. What the Conservative Party has yet to prove, despite the rhetoric, is that its frontbenchers, most of whom do not have a single member of their extended families who has known a day of economic hardship, really care about those who have.”

I never cease to wonder at the uncritical belief this government seems to have in the digital age. Leaving aside the reports of lost or missing data, failed or failing projects and costs out of control, the success or failure of one of this government’s flagship projects, Personal Accounts, will it seems depend on whether the IT will stand the strain: on day one, 5 million people are likely to be enrolled. It may be a little over four years away, but that is a very short time period to ensure that everything will be in place and ready to go (the fiasco with patient records points up the risks). And the real problem is that no one knows at the moment what the detail will be, what will be needed and what the effect will be. This last is critical for another reason. The legislation is currently on its way through Parliament, and the necessary Act will be made before the end of the year. But it is only now that the Government has commissioned a report on how Personal Accounts will affect people. Will they be appropriate for all employees? And if not, how does this square with compulsion?

According to the UK Pension Regulator, last year saw 3,000 occupational pension schemes beginning the closure process; and the registration of only 300 new occupational pension schemes, all defined contribution.

If I didn’t know better, I would guess that Nick Robinson quite deliberately chose the highly unattractive MP he interviewed last night on BBC News. On he (the MP) went, bleating about how unfair it was that he had to answer all those questions about where the money went, and that it was time to stop this nonsense now. Not his finest moment. I suppose we should not be surprised that MPs are so up in arms about it all. After all, when you have your snout deeply into the Westminster trough, you will probably do anything to keep it there. For more, you cannot beat Nick Robinson’s blog and the comments posted on it. I particularly liked the comment from Patrick Stevens, about politicians and journalist being the least respected of occupations (makes a change from it being lawyers). 

The ongoing correspondence in the FT on the two new aircraft carriers reflects the ongoing debate about Britain’s role in the world. If Richard Bassett (letters yesterday) is to be believed,

 ”A Royal Navy without these carriers, limited to its present few capital ships and a submarine nuclear deterrent entirely dependent on US satellite navigation, would resemble little more than a provincial coastguard.”

Contrast this to Sir John Graham today,

“It is no good beggaring the other military forces and indeed the navy itself, in order to provide a capability of debatable value. Unless we as taxpayers are prepared to spend more on defence, as I believe we must, there is surely a need for further debate about priorities, whatever our present government may have said in the past.”

Although my money remains on the carriers going ahead, to keep jobs in Labour constituencies, perhaps the argument will be won. The problem, however, is highlighted by Phillip Stephens in his article in the FT yesterday: “the government’s reluctance to acknowledge choices”.

My favourite New Yorker cartoon is of two large, plump cats, either side of a mouse-hole. One is saying to the other, “If we were lawyers, this would be chargeable time.” It says it all. My partners have had to put up with my constant refrain, when we discuss billing strategies, that we should not be in the business of selling time, but instead should be persuading our clients to pay for value. The problem is that time cost as a measurement seems so simple, clients may not like it but are used to it, and everyone else does it, so why should we change. Well, things are changing. Front page of the FT on Monday was the report Lawyers in UK reform hourly charges. This began,

Leading London-based law firms are reforming their system of hourly charges as they come under fire from clients who feel they are paying too much at a time of soaring legal industry profits.

Leading firms told the Financial Times that they were offering alternatives to hourly rates and making more use of cost-cutting business practices, such as putting services offshore. The shift highlights growing external pressures on the legal profession to change, after a period of dramatic earnings growth achieved through expanding internationally and exploiting the corporate takeover boom.

British firms have for the most part been slower than their US counterparts to examine alternatives to hourly billing. In the US, firms have for several years been under significant pressure to reform.

All I will add is about time to. It is not enough to argue that because it is easy, it must be the right way to do it. And if this is happening in the City, how long before it reaches the rest of us?

Although James Forsyth in Coffee House had a point on Friday when he  asked What on earth were the Tories thinking?, the comments on Michael White’s post Not Smart in the Guardian’s Politics Blog are instructive (those on Forsyth’s post somewhat more predictable). For example, and from Not Smart:

“On some levels, he has a point. How are these children going to be selected? Is it just going to be the top students who go, or will it be a lottery. I think it should be open to all ages (and classes) and not just sixth-formers. And what about genocide happening today in Darfur? Wouldn’t the money be better spent on providing aid to victims suffering now?”

or

He’s right though. Teach children properly about what happened rather than sending a couple on a tourist trip. But effective teaching doesn’t get so many headlines.

And 48 hours on, there are new headlines and new stories.

The convention may be that MPs do not openly criticise Mr Speaker, but time is surely running out for Michael Martin? Although he would like us to think that the criticism he is presently enjoying is simply the result of good old fashioned snobbery, the truth is not quite so clear. Nick Robinson has an excellent post, Theories on the Speaker, which looks at why Martin has suddenly got so many friends at Westminster: and why some want him to go. Certainly he has done himself no favours, but having the Gordon Brown encomium,

When asked about Mr Martin’s predicament, Mr Brown said: “It’s a matter for the House of Commons. Mr Martin has been a very, very good Speaker”

is probably the kiss of death.

I remember laughing at an early Delia Smith programme, that looked at how best to boil an egg. This was something I learnt to do at an early age. Scrambled eggs were much the same: watching my ma scramble eggs, and later doing it myself; and then learning how to make breakfast even better, by adding smoked salmon and cream to the eggs. It is not, however, a dish that everyone can make. I had always thought that our eldest child made the worst scrambled eggs in the world until last week, when the eggs produced at a lawyers’ Breakfast Club in Plymouth showed that were depths she had still to plumb! Don’t whatever you do ask for scrambled eggs at Future Inns in Plymouth. The rest of the breakfast was already out when the eggs appeared; crumbling, scarcely yellow with what seemed to be brown gritty sand, and looking, smelling and tasting quite disgusting. Not a dish I recall with any pleasure, and definitely one I will not be ordering there again. It was a pleasure to read Christopher Hirst’s Can’t be beaten in the Weekend Telegraph magazine. An article (sadly not on the Telegraph website) I will be sending to the eldest; although I won’t bother doing the same with the Plymouth hotel. Instead, I will just stick to the sausages.

A timely article on the government’s commitment to two new aircraft carriers in the FT. Michael Quinlan writes:

” The defence budget is in deeper trouble than at any time since Labour came to power. But so are the general public finances, so the Treasury will not come to the rescue. In such situations, squeeze-and-postpone never suffices. Nettles have to be grasped – the sooner, the better.”

This follows an article in the latest edition of The Economist on Rusty Lusty, HMS Illustrious, and the “hollowing out of the navy as defence spending becomes tighter”. The stark facts are

“Such ambitions come at a cost. The new carriers have enlarged an already big hole in the defence budget. Despite plans to increase real expenditure by 1.5% a year, defence sources say there is an “eye-watering” shortfall of £500m next year, rising to about £2 billion in 2011-12. On February 20th service chiefs and civil servants will try to agree on a savings plan for approval by Des Browne, the double-hatted secretary for defence and for Scotland. Budgeting involves grim inter-service fighting at the best of times, but the current round is the toughest in decades. About £2 billion must be taken out of the £12 billion annual equipment budget over the next two years in order to balance the books while paying for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and improving soldiers’ pay and conditions.

Britain is still fighting two wars on peacetime budgets. It needs to decide whether to increase defence spending to match its global ambitions or accept the permanent loss of some military capabilities. Instead, to put off the reckoning, ministers will probably delay the new carriers by a year or more, chop a few more ships and submarines, push back new transport aircraft, downgrade future armoured vehicles and skimp on maintenance.

All this distorts the military posture. It creates an even bigger hole in the budget from 2010, sucks out funds to keep old kit going, increases the unit costs of delayed and reduced future equipment, and penalises those at the end of the procurement pipeline. On current plans, for example, the air force is taking full delivery of 232 Typhoon jets, but it is doubtful that Britain will buy the 150 JSFs it would like.”

I have just finished Nemesis, Max Hastings’ account of the final year of the war against Japan. By the start of that final year the great carrier engagements were history, but Nimitz’s fleet carrier task forces played a key role in interdicting Japan’s seaborne trade and supporting US forces on the ground. What is clear, however, is that the flat-tops required enormous logistic support and each task force was exactly that: a fleet carrier and a retinue of destroyer radar pickets, anti-submarine frigates and more and more. 60 years on, what has changed, other than the fact that the chances of our being engaged in global war is remote; instead we fight asymmetric wars where carriers are most unlikely to play a decisive role.

The last word should perhaps be from Michael Quinlan:

“Defence planning has to make choices that limit what we can do. But with direct military threat a remote possibility, almost everything we take on far from home is ultimately optional. Do big carriers give us choices that other forces do not and that are wide, important and likely to warrant the costs? Carriers are an expensive way of providing a modest amount.

Carriers are an expensive way of providing a modest amount of air power. Like all forces, they have limitations. They are more vulnerable than airfields and harder to repair after damage, even if not sunk. Against serious opposition much of their effort goes into defending themselves, and they need a protective entourage. Even then, a single carrier is at severe risk within range of enemy air power (or missiles, or submarines). It cannot give much if any support if the operational theatre is deep inland. Two carriers cannot guarantee, as a basis for political commitment, the timely availability of one in the right place. A distinguished admiral has said that there is a case for three or none, but not two.”