Household income and inequality

As a new Oxfam report has highlighted, the richest 1% of Britain’s population owns almost more than 20 times the total wealth of the poorest 20%. Or put another way, 634,000 of the wealthiest people are worth 20 times as much as the poorest 13 million. This makes Britain one of the most unequal countries in the developed world.

This 'us and them' society is illustrated by a story in today's Guardian. The disgraced former owner of BHS, Dominic Chappell, owes more than £500,000 to the taxman on the profits he made. HMRC has started legal proceedings to recover the money. However, Chappell has put the business that owes the tax, Swiss Rock Limited, into liquidation, meaning he could walk away without paying the bill. Truly, only the 'little people' pay taxes.

We also have some more detailed data on disposable income, helpfully analysed by SPICe in their latest briefing. Disposable income per person in Scotland is currently £17,905. This is just below the UK figure of £17,965. Scotland has the 5th highest GDHI per person of all UK regions. Between 2013 and 2014 Scottish GDHI per person grew by 0.2% in cash terms. This is lower than the increase across the whole of the UK (0.5%).

Taking a longer time frame is interesting. Between 1997 and 2014 Scottish GDHI per person increased by 28% (£3,740) in real terms with the UK seeing a 27% (£3,830) increase over the same period. The gap between Scottish and UK GDHI per person has decreased from a peak of 8.6% in 2000 to 5.1% in 2014. This is one statistic that we can't put down to the oil price crash.

Unsurprisingly, London has the highest disparity between the highest and lowest GDHI per person in the UK. Scotland in comparison is a more equal society, at least in terms of disposable income. However, there are significant inequalities within Scotland. Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire has the highest level in disposable household income at £20,547, followed closely by Edinburgh. Glasgow City is the lowest at £14,757. East and North Ayrshire saw the largest increase in GDHI per person last year while East and West Dunbartonshire saw the largest decrease.

The GDHI figure is broken down into primary income ( wages, assets etc) and secondary (benefits, pensions and gifts). Scotland has the sixth highest level of primary income of the U.K. regions and accounts for 7.8% of all primary income in the UK, but 8.3% of total UK population. Only London, south-east and east of England outperform their population share. Scotland has the highest proportion of income from wages of total income and the second lowest proportion of rental income and self-employment. Since 2008 all types of primary income have decreased in real terms in Scotland, but financial assets have declined the fastest, probably due to low interest rates.

Scotland accounted for 8.4% of the total income from benefits which is almost exactly the same as Scotland’s population share of the UK (8.3%) and are fourth from bottom in this 'dependency' league table. Interestingly it is areas like, Lochaber, Skye and South Ayrshire that have the highest secondary incomes. This is probably due to pension income and reminds us where the bulk of the welfare budget is actually spent.

So, this data shows that income inequality in the UK remains a huge issue for concern. Scotland is a more equal country, but still has big geographical differences. The question for policy makers is how should these disparities be tackled. Unequal countries do worse on almost every count, so we should focus on progressive taxation and stronger public services to bridge the gap.

Health and Wealth

The importance of social capital and involving people in decisions making have been highlighted as key issues in explaining why people living in cities like Liverpool and Manchester have much better health than those living in Glasgow. These cities, like Glasgow, have been through deindustrialisation and experience similar levels of poverty and inequality yet Glasgow has 30% excess for premature mortality and 15% excess for deaths of all ages.

The latest report from Glasgow Centre for Population Health: History, Politics and Vulnerability in Scotland and Glasgow is an important piece of work and anyone one looking at public sector reform in Scotland should be studying it in detail in order to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

Key features of Scotland’s health problems
Excess mortality compared with the rest of the UK
• is seen all over Scotland but it is greatest in the West of Scotland and in particular Glasgow
• It is increasing
• It exists across all social classes
• It exists for a broad range of causes of death but key issues for premature mortality are death from alcohol, drugs and suicide and for excess death at all ages from cancer, heart disease and stroke.

The figures are startling: In 2011-12 the “excess death for alcohol related disease was 2.3 times higher for Glasgow than for Liverpool and Manchester and 70% higher for suicide.

It has been clear for some time that poverty and inequality impact on health outcomes but the problems in Scotland and Glasgow in particular are more complex. The differences in poverty and deprivation no longer explain the mortality gap between Scotland and the rest of Britain. In other cities like Liverpool and Manchester where the population has and is experiencing poverty, inequality and deindustrialisation (and are at the wrong end of England’s health outcomes tables) people do not have health outcomes similar to Glasgow and Scotland.

The report’s finding indicate that Scotland’s population and Glasgow’s in particular have been “made more vulnerable” to the impact of poverty, inequality and deindustrialisation.

Key issues
• Lagged effect of historical levels of deprivation: Glasgow has had notably higher levels of overcrowding from at least the middle of the twentieth century
• Impact of the New Town programme: these programmes relocated younger skilled workers and their families and encouraged growth of “modern lighter industries” away from Glasgow. The policy focus was therefore not on investing in Glasgow but in getting people out of it.
• Glasgow undertook substantially large slum clearances and building demolitions with a greater emphasis on creating within city peripheral social housing estates, more high rise development and much lower per capita investment in housing repairs
• Moving on to the 1980s: Glasgow prioritised inner city gentrification and commercial development whereas Manchester and Liverpool reacted to cuts differently. In particular the city level response in Liverpool was one of building participatory models of development leading to a focus on building new council houses and public amenities.
• The report found high levels of social capital (strong community ties) in Liverpool
• The team speculate that Manchester’s greater levels of ethnic diversity may also have been helped them withstand the effect of poverty and deprivation.


Implications for policy

The key point the report emphasises is that economic policies “matter for population health” and that if we are to improve Scotland’s health then we need to address three issues simultaneously
People need to be protected from poverty and deprivation
Work needs to be done to address the existing problems and mitigate against future vulnerabilities caused by the cuts to public services particularly though not exclusively social security.
Importantly Scotland while mitigating the impact is important reduce the inequalities in income and wealth are essential to narrowing health inequalities within Scotland.

Recommendations are grouped under four headings and detailed examples are included in the report.

Scottish Economic and social policy
The report urges all opportunities are taken to redistribute income and wealth across Scotland: including measures relating to ownership of capital, income and corporate taxation, wealth and asset taxation, and fair work.

Housing and physical environment
Examples include expanding the social house building programme and extending the Scottish Housing Quality Standard
Targeting cold and damp housing

Local government actions
Local government is encouraged to recognise impact of local decision making on population health. The report emphasises the role of local government plays in redistributing resources towards areas of greater need and so questions are raised about whether to review boundaries and/or the funding allocation for local government. A poverty proofing approach to local government policy making is also recommended

Understanding deprivation
As ever they call for further research on the nature and experience of deprivation in Scotland

This is an extensive and important piece of work which should inform the process of public sector reform in Scotland. The finding indicates the value of community involvement in developing their own solutions. This means also challenging the role of “experts” making plans on what they think is best. This of course can be a challenge to and for policy makers, politicians and of course professional advisers on policy.

Public services in Scotland are reorganising and refocusing in response to both budget cuts and changing demands. We can’t afford to keep getting it wrong, as this report shows lives are at stake.

Extending the Scottish Living Wage through procurement - vital in social care

A new UNISON Scotland Briefing has been published explaining how public bodies can use procurement to extend the Scottish Living Wage to all those working in public services.

Nearly all public sector workers in Scotland are now paid the Living Wage, (uprated this month to £8.25 per hour) but thousands who deliver public services in the community and private sectors don't yet receive it, particularly in social care.

New Statutory Guidance from the Scottish Government sets out how the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 enables all public bodies to spread the benefits. Previous legal objections no longer apply.

Infrastructure Secretary Keith Brown said that employers "must now recognise that they cannot adopt exploitative practices in relation to their workers and expect... lucrative public contracts."

The Guidance on Addressing Fair Work Practices sets out how public bodies can legally include payment of the Living Wage in contracts, along with other employment matters, such as trade union recognition and representation and no "inappropriate" use of zero hours contracts.

(The Living Wage is a voluntary level for over 18s, higher than the current statutory National Minimum Wage (NMW) of £6.70 per hour for over 21s. It is an independent calculation of what is required to cover the basic cost of living.

While the increased legal minimum announced by Chancellor George Osborne as a new National Living Wage (NLW) of £7.20 per hour for over 25s in his July 2015 Budget is welcome, it is in effect a higher NMW, not a real living wage. It is nothing like enough to compensate for cuts to tax credits. IPPR Scotland said for low and middle income Scottish families the impact is "vastly outweighed" by the cuts.)

It is vital to progress the Living Wage in social care, which is facing a growing staffing crisis. The Scottish Government, COSLA and care providers are currently involved in discussions about how best to drive up pay in the care at home/housing support sector, recognising the links between pay, quality of care, retention and recruitment etc.

An interim funding deal is likely, with work continuing on a more robust proposal for 2016/17, alongside analysis of the full financial impact of the NLW 2016 to 2020 announcement and the overall cost of residential and non-residential social care.

UNISON wants to see the Living Wage included in all social care contracts and will also press our Ethical Care Charter. However, we accept that this has to be fully funded.  We welcome the Scottish Labour party's proposal to pay the Living Wage to all those working in social care.

UNISON branches should study the guidance in detail and ensure that public bodies: revise their procurement strategy to include the Scottish Living Wage; specify compliance with the S52 guidance in procurement documents and the consequences for the LW; revise their tender evaluation procedures to take account of the LW and other employment and 'fair work' standards. These can include no zero or nominal-hours contracts, trade union recognition and the Ethical Care Charter.

Under the Act, public bodies are required to set out their general policy on the Living Wage in their procurement strategy. Bids can be evaluated against that policy and payment of the Living Wage can become an enforceable performance clause. For contracts with a strong workforce element, such as social care, there can be a significant weighting in the evaluation for workforce matters.

With a civil society coalition behind '10 Asks' on the legislation, we had called for the Living Wage to be mandatory for all those working on public contracts. The guidance does not go that far but is an improvement.

UNISON still believes that EU law would allow it to be set as a contract condition. Advocate General Mengozzi's opinion, given on 9 September 2015 in RegioPost GmbH v Stadt Landau (C-115/14), was that EU law did not prevent contracting authorities setting conditions relating to the payment of minimum wages.

Further Statutory Guidance later in 2015 will cover areas including the Sustainable Procurement Duty, fair trade and tax dodging. There is separate guidance on blacklisting.

Inequality: What Can Be Done?

Anthony Atkinson’s book on inequality was high up on this year’s summer reading list for policy geeks with very good reason. It shows us what can be done. Often books by academics are great on detail and analysis with lots of graphs and tables. This is too technical to gain widespread readership and often leaves the reader in despair feeling that nothing can change. This book is very different: understandable for the non-economist but still full of detail and information and with a clear programme for change
The book is full of references to the importance of trade unions and highlights our crucial historical role in redressing the imbalance of power. Atkinson’s programme calls for changes to trade union laws to ensure unions can continue to do this. Maybe that’s why the government is so keen to reduce our effectiveness with the opposite: even more restrictive anti-trade union laws. The book also looks at the wider role of trade unions in bringing expertise to the development and implementation of public policy in particular through a role on his proposed Social and Economic Council. Among his ideas for reducing inequality through the tax system is a progressive property tax: something that UNISON has been campaigning for to replace the council tax for some time.

The book is in three sections:
Diagnosis
Proposals for action
Can it be done?

The 15 Proposals– What can be done?

Proposal 1: The direction of technological change should be an explicit concern of policy-makers, encouraging innovation in a form that increases the employability of workers and emphasises the human dimension of service provision.
Proposal 2: Public policy should aim at a proper balance of power among stakeholders, and to this end should
(a) introduce an explicitly distributional dimension into competition policy;
(b) ensure a legal framework that allows trade unions to represent workers on level terms; and
(c) establish, where it does not already exist, a Social and Economic Council involving the social partners and other nongovernmental bodies.
Proposal 3: The government should adopt an explicit target for preventing and reducing unemployment and underpin this ambition by offering guaranteed public employment at the minimum wage to those who seek it.
Proposal 4: There should be a national pay policy, consisting of two elements: a statutory minimum wage set at a living wage, and a code of practice for pay above the minimum, agreed as part of a “national conversation” involving the Social and Economic Council.
Proposal 5: The government should offer via national savings bonds a guaranteed positive real rate of interest on savings, with a maximum holding per person.
Proposal 6: There should be a capital endowment (minimum inheritance) paid to all at adulthood.
Proposal 7: A public Investment Authority should be created, operating a sovereign wealth fund with the aim of building up the net worth of the state by holding investments in companies and in property.
Proposal 8: We should return to a more progressive rate structure for the personal income tax, with marginal rates of tax increasing by ranges of taxable income, up to a top rate of 65 per cent, accompanied by a broadening of the tax base.
Proposal 9: The government should introduce into the personal income tax an Earned Income Discount, limited to the first band of earnings.
Proposal 10: Receipts of inheritance and gifts inter vivos should be taxed under a progressive lifetime capital receipts tax.
Proposal 11: There should be a proportional, or progressive, property tax based on up-to-date property assessments.
Proposal 12: Child Benefit should be paid for all children at a substantial rate and should be taxed as income.
Proposal 13: A participation income should be introduced at a national level, complementing existing social protection, with the prospect of an EU-wide child basic income.
Proposal 14 (alternative to 13): There should be a renewal of social insurance, raising the level of benefits and extending their coverage.
Proposal 15: Rich countries should raise their target for Official Development Assistance to 1 per cent of Gross National Income.

It really great to see a detailed programme to reduce inequality particularly one that recognises the both the previous successes of unions and that we are central to delivering more change. All we need to now is ORGANISE....

Health Inequalities - We need an end to austerity

Austerity and what is wrong with it has been leading the news thanks to the Syriza victory in the Greek elections.

This blog regularly highlights our opposition to austerity and the damage being done to families and particularly young people and the most vulnerable members of our society.

One of the cruel scandals of the wide and unfair health impacts is that too often people in poverty struggling with ill-health are attacked for unhealthy lifestyles by the wealthy and the powerful suggesting these problems are simply self-inflicted.

But in New Scientist magazine Scotland’s former chief medical officer Dr Harry Burns has reiterated that job loss and social breakdown, NOT smoking and bad diet, is at the root of the country’s infamously high rate of premature death.

He points out that from 1950-1970 Scotland had one of the lowest rates of death from alcoholic liver disease, but by 2005 it had the highest.

Dr Burns said: “It may be that what we are seeing in Scotland is the consequence of austerity in the 1970s and 80s, when social change and joblessness led to a breakdown in family life and a cycle of alienation...What we have seen in Glasgow may become evident in southern Europe over the next two decades.”

Inequality in Scotland: much needed detail and analysis

A new paper Inequality in Scotland: New Perspectives from David Bell, David Eiser and Michael McGoldrick, adds some much needed detail and policy analysis to an often simplistic debate around poverty and inequality in Scotland (and elsewhere). The paper contains a great deal of data from large scale surveys over the last thirty years attempting to identify the economic and social trends in Scotland.

There is also an analysis of the effect of policies on the distribution of income between rich and poor both those where that is the intended aim (tax and welfare) and others (housing or energy policy) which have other objectives.

Their analysis finds that the extent of distribution hasn’t changed much since the 1980s. The UK tax and benefits system still redistributes income at about the OECD average. As expected the minimum wage has been effective in raising wages at the bottom. This makes life better for lots of people. Sadly, if high earners continue to see massive increases in their wages and don’t pay a reasonable amount of tax on those earnings, income inequality will (and does) remain high. There is a detailed section on the Living Wage. Their research indicates that low pay is widespread across Scottish households with many combining a mix of high, medium and low earners. While the living wage will address individual wage inequality, household income inequality may not reduce. The picture is therefore complex. Within households the presence of a medium (or high earner) does not mean all those in the household have access to that income. Inequality exists within as well as between households. This analysis is therefore important but not really an argument against expanding the living wage to more workers.

There is a lot of debate about income tax and welfare spending in Scotland, much less discussed recently is the role of indirect taxes, which across the world are increasingly favoured by governments as an alternative to direct taxation. These increases inequalities as poorer households contribute more of their income on, for example VAT, than the rich. The same is true of energy policy as although better of people have higher bills the costs of energy takes up a much larger proportion of poorer households’ incomes.

What the report doesn’t look at all is the impact of public services on inequality and their role in reducing inequality through redistributing the cash value of services that would have to be paid for directly if not provided free at the point of use, like sending children to school, getting your refuse collected or visiting the doctor. This would have been a useful addition to the debate. The tax debate isn’t just about levels but about how we use the money that’s raised.

Tackling poverty in Scotland

Higher employment will help reduce poverty in Scotland, but won’t eliminate it unless we address pay and employment standards.

In recent weeks there have been a flurry of reports addressing poverty in Scotland and the UK. In this post we highlight some of the key findings.

A briefing written by the New Policy Institute (NPI) and published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) looks at the challenge that Scotland would face to tackle poverty, even with a much higher employment rate. Scotland’s employment rate has remained at or above the UK’s employment rate for the last eight years. It currently stands at 73.5% and could reach 80% by 2025. At current population levels, this would mean an extra 300,000 jobs in the economy.

The report authors analysed the impact of this growth, looking at what would happen to poverty levels under two scenarios, depending on whether the extra jobs were full or part-time. They found:

• If the 80% benchmark was reached by the creation of only part-time jobs, poverty among working age adults and children could fall from 800,000 (19.4%) to 670,000 (16.2%).
• But if most of those extra jobs were full-time, the number in poverty would fall further, to 600,000 (14.6%). 65% of them would be in working families.

This highlights the importance of a higher ‘work intensity’ – where families are able to access jobs with more hours. But this brings problems of its own: policy makers will need to ensure there are sufficient high quality, flexible and affordable public services such as transport, childcare, adult social care and health services, to make it possible for a family to work longer hours.

Housing is also highlighted as a key issue by the JRF. They say that the focus of debate on housing has been dominated by the bedroom tax,  and while this is important we must not lose sight of the bigger picture: more families facing higher housing costs and rising levels of poverty among those living in private rented homes. A point UNISON has made strongly in our submission on the Housing Bill.

The Scottish Government’s Expert Working Group on Welfare has published its second report looking at the principles, which could underpin the welfare system in an independent Scotland. 

This report and its 40 recommendations also recognises that paid employment is the best route out of poverty for anyone who can realistically be expected to work. However, it also identifies the importance of an effective social security system, not just as a safety net, but as a springboard to a better life.

While Scotland has many advantages, we still have a more unequal society than many other OECD countries and it is that inequality that is a drag on economic performance. Employment rates amongst older workers, particularly women, who also suffer from underemployment and need additional support in balancing care with paid work.

While the proposals are modest, rather than radical,  it is encouraging that the report welcomes the importance of the quality rather than just the availability of work. Particularly important is the call for an increase in the Minimum Wage to a Living Wage level.

Work carried out by the Improvement Service (IS) revealed there are strong relationships between positive and negative outcomes in Scotland, with areas experiencing one form of deprivation tending to be disadvantaged in several other sectors too. This was a feature of the Christie Commission report published three years ago this month. 

IS has analysed three groups comprising the 330 most deprived neighbourhoods, 330 central neighbourhoods and 330 least deprived neighbourhoods in Scotland over 10 years. They found that the disparities in multiple life outcomes are generally persistent and in some cases continuing to grow. The significance of this study is that it looks at neighbourhoods rather than individuals. People born into a deprived neighbourhood in Scotland have a higher chance of being income deprived, of needing emergency hospitalisation, being a victim of crime, and achieving poorly in education. In this respect, the neighbourhood in which you live can have a substantial impact on your future experiences and outcomes.

Another JRF funded report, notes that one in five Scottish children live in poverty and there is a strong and enduring association between low household income and low educational attainment. Social inequality in educational attainment at school level in Scotland appears to be around the OECD average. However, there are many countries that have narrower gaps include Norway, Japan, Canada, the Netherlands and Australia; and the attainment gap is also slightly lower in England. The JRF review concludes that narrowing this gap has not been a social policy priority in Scotland. It notes that the agenda around poverty and educational achievement in Scottish education is, “virtually invisible in the key documents that provide advice for schools and on-the-ground examples of policy and curriculum development.”

Taking a wider UK view, two reports published this week should act as a wake-up call to the government and society at large, as welfare reforms drive millions of the most vulnerable in the UK into destitution. Oxfam’s “Below the Breadline”, compiled in conjunction with Church Action on Poverty and the Trussell Trust, revealed a 54% rise in the number of food parcels distributed in Britain over the past 12 months. Oxfam has also pointed to the Bedroom Tax and limits on Local Housing Allowance driving over 80,000 Scottish households deeper into poverty.

The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission has also reported that 3.5m children would be in poverty by 2020 without strong measures aimed at low-income households. It forecast that the UK government will fail in its legal duty to reduce child poverty by 2020. Together these reports tell an all-too-familiar tale about the impact of UK government policy on the poorest in society. It is one in which the poorest and the most vulnerable are penalised for their poverty.

There is a lot of analysis in these publications that paints a pretty bleak picture in Scotland and the rest of the UK. Possibly more important, also some recommendations for action. However, they all require policy makers to understand that inequality is holding everyone back.

Just pay your taxes

It seems that Mike Russell is exploring ways of encouraging philanthropists to take on a role is Scottish schools. The cabinet secretary was speaking this week at a conference organised by the David Hume institute. Lindsay Paterson presented his report: Outstanding Students and Philanthropic Contributions in Scottish School Education” at the event. Here Professor Paterson lays out ways in which “the imagination of the philanthropic entrepreneur can be brought to bear on providing opportunities for outstanding students to flourish”.

It’s great that people want to give money to support Scottish education but there are also risks. Lindsay Paterson is right to say that we have to retain democratic accountability in policy making. The Herald also rightly raises concerns about whether such a scheme will widen the existing gap between top and bottom. Too many children fail to achieve their potential.

What happens to pupils with outstanding talents isn’t really the issue in Scottish education. The outstanding students in Scotland already match the outcomes of the highest achievers in international comparisons. Last week at another conference on inequality in education I learned that in maths the highest achieving children match those in Hong Kong but at the other end of the scale we rank alongside Turkey. The issues are why the outcomes are so poor for those from deprived backgrounds and how to raise their attainment. As Mike Russell said “promotion of greater social justice and greater equity in educational outcomes for all our children and young people” should be the priority for government initiatives. Fresh ideas and energy are always welcome but schools need adequate secure funding, (not tied to the whims of big money donors) and education professionals, trained to high standards in order to achieve these goals.

Another way forward would be if those who have lots of money who want to support our schools just pay their taxes at a decent rate. That’s how we maintain democratic control over spending. They wouldn’t get a flashy building or fund with their name on it but they would be able to help a lot more children reach their potential.

Measuring Performance

The biggest area of agreement at yesterday’s Educational Attainment and Inequality seminar was that it is difficult to get enough of the right data to really understand what is going on in Scottish education. More importantly, harder to decide what action is needed to tackle the fact that children’s parent’s income still has such a big impact on their educational attainment. We all know that academics always agree that’s what’s needed is more research but what here they were calling for better access to that data that already exists.

The public sector in Scotland is a great collector of information, what it’s not so good at is sharing the data to enable external organisations to use it for research or scrutiny. While obviously the rights to privacy of citizens need to be protected, better use of all these records would help improve public services and scrutiny of government strategies. Speakers remarked yesterday that 2011 census data for Scotland has been very slow to emerge in comparison with the rest of the UK. This holds back planning in the public sector as well as academic research.

Scotland Performs was launched with much fanfare in 2008. The Scottish Government promised

“Visitors to the Scotland Performs website will be presented with highly visual and easy to understand pages. They will have quick access to information about the quality of life in Scotland, and where thing are getting better and where things are getting worse.

The finance secretary John Swinney said:
"Scotland Performs is about responsibility and accountability.”

"By making this information easy to access, and by showing exactly whether we as a country are doing well or need to do more, everyone in Scotland will have the ability to judge for themselves how Scotland is performing."

Scotland Performs has not lived up to this promise. The site is does not have easy to understand pages, does not provide “quick access to information” nor is there evidence of it being a strategic planning tool. Scotland Performs has surface similarities to Virginia Performs. The Virginia site offers both easy to read graphics and explanations/discussions of issues and extensive data for those seeking wider information or wishing to do their own analysis. Sites like Virginia Performs and Baltimore’s website (https://data.baltimorecity.gov/) give access to data that require freedom of information requests in Scotland, including the amounts of individual procurement contracts.

Better access to the data that the public sector holds rather than expensive consultants would really help us work out where we need to go to ensure a fairer Scotland.

Tackling Inequality on a Shrinking Budget

Local government budgets have been slashed but demands for their services are growing. Across the UK they are responding to in a range of ways: cutting jobs, privatisation, shutting down services and salami slicing. Camden Council is attempting to develop an approach which places tackling inequality at the centre of its decision making. The council set up an equality task force which included amongst others councillors (Labour, Liberal Democrats and Conservative), academics and child poverty campaigners. Sadly they council did not invite anyone from the recognised trade unions to take part. Having people who actually deliver services would have provided valuable insight for their report. The remit was to explore the reasons for inequality in Camden, consider the role of the council and its partners in tackling inequality, recommend solutions and make a “strong contribution” to national debates on the role of local public services and tackling inequality.


The task force reported on:
• What the council will do
• What it wants local partners to contribute
• What council should call on the government to do

Their key recommendations are that the council should focus on:

• Housing, including the concept of a living rent to go along side the living wage
• Increased participation in work, education and training for those aged 14-19: highlighting need for pre-apprenticeship and pre traineeship support
• Increased job opportunities for mothers to work: this means tackling the lack of quality, part-time, flexible jobs and exceptionally high childcare costs: Government restrictions on use of Direct schools puts their grant integrated children’s centres (with employment services, universal 25 hours childcare for three and four year olds), commissioning of borough wide play provision and drop in services at risk.
• Council’s role as an employer and using procurement to improve employment for non council staff
• Looking at the property portfolio to release funds for reinvestment in housing and housing repairs and make up for funding cuts
• plan Economic Growth Fund; the council spends over £900million on goods and should make better use of this spend to reduce inequality
• Explore options for residents to deliver public services

No wrong door borough: they suggest that all points of contact with citizens have staff who are equipped to handle the issues people bring even if out of daily remit.

The report is now working its way through the council’s decision making processes.

Until it is clearer how the strategy will be implemented and how it will impact on services and members it is difficult to comment fully on its merits. It is a shame though that there were no staff representatives on the task force. Unions are well placed to collate views of those who work in the services and understand how they operate on a days to day basis and therefore what improvements are necessary.

UNISON is a supporter of placing reducing inequality at the heart of public service delivery. Using the councils spending power and terms and conditions for staff is a really important way to tackle inequality particularly through ending low pay in the public and private sectors. It will interesting to see how the commitment develops and whether we can learn anything from it for our campaigns for a fairer scotland