Given the Government’s appalling record of data loss, leaks and IT incompetence, it is understandable that large numbers of people are suspicious of the NHS database. The latest news on the project is hardly reassuring, either. It turns out we won’t have to rely on incompetence or human error to open the database to fraudsters, thieves and nosey parkers; the Government are planning to allow thousands of researchers access to our private medical records over and above the hundreds of thousands of existing NHS staff.

Not only does it open the door to even more scope for fraud – after all, the database will be a honeypot for anyone wanting to commit identity theft -  but it constitutes a serious breach of privacy and a threat to the public’s confidence in patient confidentiality even if the system is only used properly.

Can you imagine going to the doctor (should you be able to get an appointment) with an embarassing condition, or an illness you wanted for whatever reason to keep private and secret even from your family, only to get a letter out of the blue from a total stranger who is acquainted with your medical records and wants you to take part in a trial? If you had a disease or accident earlier in your life and don’t want your current partner or your kids to find out, or don’t want the memories raked up again, this could be devastating.

There are huge problems getting people who are genuinely ill, particularly from sexually transmitted infections and conditions like testicular cancer, to go to doctors already. If they are then allowed to share that information without your permission, that is likely to put people off even more.

This is a lose-lose for patients and taxpayers. The scheme is already way over budget and behind time, with questions being asked about whether it will ever work, and even if it is delivered people will be faced with the prospect of fraud or prying researchers reading your files without your permission. How much would you pay for the privilege of having someone read your medical records behind your back? The current answer is £12.4 billion – and rising.

Here’s the monthly campaign update from Peter Webb, the organiser of the Surrey TaxPayers’ Alliance group:

October 2008

The attempt to meet all borough leaders having failed (excepting Waverley BC see September diary) the invitation was withdrawn for the time being (it would in any case be impractical to get close and personal without time and resources for detailed application 11 times over).

1st:  Letter in Daily Telegraph welcoming George Osborne’s intention at the Conservative Party Conference to freeze council tax but questioning the  method in view of this tax being locked into redistributive grant funding, and implied interference in local spending decisions.

13th:  Message to Surrey CC asked for council intentions in light of the financial crisis and £20m deposit with Icelandic banks at risk. Answer received indicated that in February attempt was made to get repayment but term arrangements prevented. On looking ahead it was too early to assess affect of global banking crisis, debt unwinding and coming probably deep recession.

15th:  Letter to borough leaders halting initiative to meet (see above) and similarly asking about intentions into 2009 and “what comfort are you offering taxpaying pensioners?” and “why shouldn’t public employees share in pension fund back-funding?”

24th: Asked questions of County Council on Auditor’s qualification with Annual Accounts of County Council regarding lack of arrangements for internal control

28th: Bob Neill MP tells me (eventually) that a shadow green paper on local government reform – including issues of finance – will be forthcoming, will be sent to me and will be open for consultation. MP Anne Milton seems to have helped produce this much delayed result for me.

Peter Webb
Romilly Cottage, 139 Binscombe Lane, Godalming Surrey GU7 3QL; 01483 425 386

Finally the local papers have picked up the news reported earlier this week that Thurrock chief executive Angie Ridgwell was leaving the council.  Her statement, however, proves our point that the bureaucracy in local government – and even the wider public sector perhaps – is out of control and growing at an unsustainable rate:

“This will allow me to take my career in a different direction so I can explore other prospects in the wider public sector that will provide opportunities for me to play to my strengths and build on the experience that I have gained in Thurrock”

I’ve highlighted the key phrase that emphasises the musical-chairs character of the bureaucracy.  They hop from one public sector job to another, certain of employment and all the benefits of office.  Never mind that council tax has doubled and services cut back, the record of failure is ignored and rewarded with open arms, no doubt, at other councils. 

If it’s the case that the chief executive was shoved out due to underachieving – remember she ordered an increase in the size of the bureaucracy despite council voting to shrink it – then it’s a boon to Thurrock council.  But what Thurrock’s leadership must maintain is that there be no golden goodbye, no pay offs and that the new chief executive be paid at the current rate.  There will be no mercy from this side if we see another episode like that in Suffolk where the new chief executive was awarded an indefensible £70,000 pay increase upon arrival.

Den Dover MEP has been thrown out of the Tory Party after having been forced to pay back £500,000 of EU parliamentary expenses.  An EU parliamentary investigation found he had claimed this money for ‘unaccountable expenditure’ and the case has been referred to Europe’s anti-fraud office.

Since 1999 Mr Dover channelled £760,000 of your money to his firm to pay his wife and daughter for secretarial and research duties.  This is despite his daughter having another job 4 days of the week.  Arrogantly, Dover declared no financial interest in this firm, blithely siphoning taxpayers’ money to his family for seemingly little to no work. 

The tragedy here is that Dover is only under orders to pay back two thirds of the money falsely appropriated from public funds.  Surely – you would agree – he should be forced to pay back every single penny so to act as a warning to any other sleazebags out there that when they’re caught, the taxpayer will get back the lot.

You can ask Mr Dover to pay back the whole sum at: [email protected]

Iain Dale has got it bang on over on his blog regarding the newly proposed Regional Select Committees. The idea, which is to have a Select Committee to oversee each Regional Development Agency, would certainly mean the quangos were slightly more accountable, but frankly the most democratic option would be to ditch the RDAs altogether.

Every time the regionalisation agenda has been put to the public they have rejected it overwhelmingly, most notably in the North East Assembly referendum in 2004. Instead of doing what people want and ditching the concept of artificial, top-down regional government, though, the Government have at every stage tried to weasel round public objections to the project.

2004: Directly elected assemblies sunk in North East referendum. Victory for anti-regionalisation campaigners!
…Government brazenly interprets the result as a vote of support for unelected regional government and vowed to press on with RDAs and unelected assemblies.

2007: After of bad press the Government announced that the unelected Regional Assemblies were to be scrapped. Victory for anti-regionalisation campaigners!
…Assembly powers are to be transferred to totally unaccountable Regional Development Agencies.

Now the Government is proposing both Regional Select Committees and Grand Committees of a region’s MPs to whom the RDAs will have to report. Particularly given our research that shows the RDAs have had little or no benefit despite the billions of pounds they spend every year, surely it would be better to scrap them altogether. In common with so many other quangos, no-one wants them, they cost billions and they achieve hardly anything.

Creating this new set of committees would simply be an expensive and complex way of Parliament trying to compensate for a deeply undemocratic state of affairs. Why should Parliament have to bend to the unaccountable structures of the State to keep up a pretence of proper democratic control? It would be far better instead to change the structure of Government to create genuine democracy and accountability.

Defence Secretary John Hutton took part in an interview on the Today Programme this morning that I personally found pretty outrageous, particularly given that like many members of my generation I have a decent number of friends either in, recently in or about to go to Afghanistan or Iraq.

When asked about the frankly appalling standard of kit and vehicles that British soldiers had been given, he said that he could assure the families of soldiers serving in Afghanistan that their equipment was now good enough, and that having good equipment was "the thing we worry about the most".

All that is rather at odds with the fact that British soldiers are still in many cases having to use the "deathtrap" Snatch Land Rover, which is extremely vulnerable to Improvised Explosive Devices. Even his comment that Ministers worry about good equipment most of all is rather at odds with the recent comments of Defence Minister Quentin Davies MP who, when asked about the resignation statement of an SAS Major who had resigned his commission because of the appalling kit problems, refused to accept the officer’s concerns and tried to blame commanders in the field for soldiers’ deaths.

I can’t help but think that if Gordon Brown, John Hutton and Quentin Davies are so confident that our troops are safe in the lightly armoured Snatch Land Rovers, then surely they would be happy to use them as their official transport from now on? Or is it different when you’re protecting an MP rather than a soldier on less than the minimum wage?

Yesterday we were contacted by Mike Casey of Your Thurrock – a superb grassroots new media current affairs website – with the surprise that yet another chief executive has left Thurrock council.  What repercussions will this have for Thurrock’s taxpayers? It doesn’t look good considering the soaring salaries chief executives get jumping from one council to another, the culmination being the astonishing £220,000 given to the new chief executive of Suffolk County Council earlier in the year.

Being a Thurrock resident, I was invited last night to discuss the matter, talk a bit about the TPA and the areas in local government we’re watching out for:

If anything, the priority for Thurrock council should be that they keep the chief executive’s salary under control – we simply do not have the economy to pay for ever-increasing public sector salaries.  They must ensure the search to find a new chief executive is cost efficient – Three Rivers council feared searching for a new chief executive would cost so much they decided to give into his demands and let him work a four-day-week on full pay. 

Finally a bit of advice for Thurrock council: don’t go with another chief executive from another council.  Across the country we’ve seen our taxes double and service cutbacks.  The current crop of chief execs, switching posts like they were in a game of musical chairs, just aren’t delivering value for money and quality services.  Perhaps it’s worth appointing a businessman or someone with a record of efficiency and cost cutting, who doesn’t need a six figure salary and who can return some cash back to Thurrock taxpayers’ pockets?  Thurrock council can potentially take the radical step and look outside the box of current officers and work that bit harder to lower council tax next year. We intend to keep a close eye on them to see whether they will opt for innovative change or stick with the wasteful status quo.

After last week’s Food Policy Officer non-job of the week, here’s another food related story that’ll do more harm to your health than a fry-up.  Council health chiefs in Guildford have forced through a policy compelling burger vans and cafés to provide ‘healthy alternatives’.  Yes, that’s right, because everyone goes to a burger van to buy a salad.  Jumping on the nanny state health-fanatic bandwagon, Guildford Council has taken it upon them to dictate food policy to cafes and burger vans in their borough.  They’ve even recommended what food to the vans should provide because, well, they know best.

Throughout the year the enviro-health Stasi will patrol the borough to inspect menus and see whether there are healthy alternatives on offer.  Any traders who refuse to comply will have their trading license revoked when it next comes up for renewal.  Ironically, just as the government try to incentivise businesses to stave off the worst effects of recession, traders in Guildford are threatened with closure. 

In opposing this policy I’m not suggesting anyone solely eat from burger vans nor have fried breakfast’s three times a day.  What I am opposing is the meddling in the marketplace and interfering with personal choice.  Firstly, the market will decide if people want to eat healthy or not.  If the cause moved by Jamie Oliver sweeps the nation, your fast food joints will become a rarity.  The market will decide because it’s driven by the cogs of personal choice. 

Similarly, if you choose to eat unhealthily, so be it, there’s a good chance you won’t live as long as if you had your 5 fruit and veg a day (so the doctor’s tell me, I’m about as unqualified at giving dietary advice as Guildford Council is).  But why should our money be used to attempt to enforce a lifestyle on the British people?  Think of where the money could rather go if your money wasn’t squandered on bureaucrats sent forth from Town Halls to look at menus all day. 

I’m pleased to report the TPA had an excellent action day on Saturday in Tynemouth, North Tyneside. Thanks to an eager band of supporters who gave up a couple of hours of their time, we blitzed Tynemouth Market to great effect. Until we were thrown out by an overzealous (and dare I say biased?) official who seemed to disapprove of the low council tax petition we were gathering signatures for.

That minor obstacle notwithstanding, we continued to gather signatures around Tynemouth village and got an excellent response, signing up 350 supporters in a relatively short time. Encouragingly, people are not only aware of the TPA, but they are well informed about the waste that goes on in their council and are understandably annoyed by it.

I had the opportunity to present the petition to Cllr Linda Arkley (below), the Leader of the local Conservatives, and we’ll send the petition to the Labour Mayor and the Leader of the North Tyneside Lib Dems, too. We’ll have to wait to find out their views on council tax, but from the reaction we got the feelings of people in North Tyneside couldn’t be clearer – cut our council tax!

Last Friday I was invited to a Question Time panel at Nottingham University, much similar to the recent event held at the University of East Anglia two weeks ago.  This time we were joined by Roger Helmer MEP, a strong supporter of lower taxes and small government.  Again it was a large audience for a Friday night, with questions on tax, the Glenrothes by election, interest rates, airport expansion, blogging and political participation. 

One point of note was the audience reaction to the amount of waste that goes on in government.  There is clearly scope for tax cuts, I said, when we root out the waste in government.  Giving a cheap plug of the non-job of the week and Bumper Book of Government Waste, I read out parrot fashion some of the most shocking examples of waste that we’ve found – then made the point that it’s up to the whole TPA movement, from supporters upwards, to keep an eye on their council to find the waste that goes on.  Rest assured I left with new supporters in tow who will keep a very close eye on Nottingham City Council.

In the 21st century police, the best way to deal with having too much management claptrap is to boldly sweep it away and replace it with even more management claptrap, dressed up as accountability.

Roger Baker, the Chief Constable of Essex Police, this week won plaudits from some quarters for his straight talking. He said that the police had lost their focus on the citizen and

"In some areas…we have probably introduced too much management claptrap."

He’s right, of course – the police have become totally swamped in directives, Whitehall initiatives, paperwork, PC policing and hoops through which to jump – but unfortunately he made these comments at a press conference convened to launch the very latest form of police management claptrap, the ‘Police Pledge’.

What can be more claptrappish than a document in which the police recite "pledges" about response times and behaviour which all seem remarkably obvious (see here for a Home Office sample), rather than going out and doing the job? As we said at the time, people don’t want the police occupied in press conferences and pledge drafting meetings, they want them out and about catching criminals, investigating crimes and protecting the public.

Unfortunately, because the police aren’t very accountable to the public – even the police authorities who oversee them are arms length from the people – we are left with charade accountability like this pledge. I don’t blame the police themselves, because they are under orders direct from the Home Office. The frustrations this brings about for ordinary officers are evident in the record numbers of early retirements among the police.

It’s long overdue to set the police, and the public, free from the meddling and mismanagement of the Home Office, cut out the middle man and get some genuine democratic accountability going. Then we’d see the end of claptrap.

Last Friday the TPA was out in St Albans collecting signatures for a petition to lower council tax.

Thankfully some good weather made it a great day for all, with people queuing at times to sign our petition.

We had a marvellous response and will continue these petitions until councils up and down the country take our advice and cut our council tax.  Whatever the weather and whatever the forces against us in Town Halls, central government and the EU, we have to keep fighting.  You and I know our taxes are far too high, but it falls to us to explain it to the people that there is an alternative to ever-increasing high taxes.  Our petitions are just one way.  You can recommend us to people in your community concerned with high taxes by inviting them to join for free here.  You can invite them to email me so I can send them some information about the TPA.  You can write to your local paper to get taxes on the political agenda.  Whatever we do, we must be sure the politicians know we are growing by the day and are not going away. 

As a final note for the day, on our way back we couldn’t resist having our picture taken outside the bank we all partly own…Northern Rock.