Liverpool Daily Post - Rob Merrick

The figures are grim, and the Government's response is limp

2008-11-28T22:49:55Z

GRIM figures later this week will lay bare the full scale of the home repossessions crisis - and expose the full poverty of the Government's limp response.

No-one thinks the latest three- monthly statistics - revealing seizure orders against families unable to pay their mortgage bills - will show anything other than a very sharp rise.

The last figures revealed that around 4,500 repossession orders were made across Merseyside and Cheshire in the first half of this year. County courts where there were big leaps on 2007 included Liverpool (27%), Southport (31%), St Helens (24%) and, worst of all, Warrington (41%).

Across the country, a total of 45,000 families are predicted to suffer the misery of home repossession this year - up from 26,200 in 2007.

Even that figure does not include those losing their homes when lenders impose little-known "charging orders" against debts on credit cards, store cards and personal loans - a hidden scandal, say some campaigners.

Gordon Brown's response was a "mortgage rescue scheme", under which a housing association will clear the debt, with the homeowner switching to become a tenant at an affordable rent.

But, with a puny £200m set aside, as few as 200 families across Merseyside and Cheshire will be bailed out - a drop in the ocean of the likely 10,000-plus repossession orders this year.

We were told there was a lack of cash for anything more ambitious - only for £50bn to be found behind the sofa a few weeks later to rescue the ailing high street banks.

Worse, it is the nationalised banks - in particular, Northern Rock - leading the repossessions charge. I'm one of the taxpayers propping it up, yet I don't remember being asked my view on such a harsh policy.

If I had been asked, I would have stressed the great bank bail- out was supposed to help ordinary people - not allow bungling bankers to accelerate the housing crisis.

With big stakes bought in Lloyds TSB, HBOS and the Royal Bank of Scotland, the Government should be ordering that families in trouble can switch to renting from their local council. Why not impose a 90-day moratorium on all repossessions - which, funnily enough, is what Barack Obama says he will do come January?

It is outrageous to bail out bankers - then kick out struggling homeowners.

You'll read it here first

2008-11-22T22:49:55Z

IN RECENT weeks, the Government has followed this column's advice by saving post offices, allowing councils to run bus services, exploring high-speed rail to the North and scrapping 42- day terror detention.

Coincidence? Well, maybe. But, hey, I'm on a roll! Come on Gordon, scrap Trident and ID cards now!

Nonsense with numbers

2008-11-15T22:49:55Z

THE government will fail to meet its pledge to build 25 light rail systems within 10 years, as those bemoaning the fate of Merseytram know all too well.

But what's this statement from transport minister Paul Clark? "The Ten Year Plan set out indicative figures. This was neither a target, nor a commitment," he claimed. Of course it wasn't.

All talk, but no action

2008-11-12T22:49:55Z

THIS week, MPs are debating the transparency of international aid, modernising the Commons, how to scrutinise European legislation and their own pension fund.

Before that, it was welfare-to-work, the Olympic legacy and the Congo crisis. Okay, the last, in particular, is undoubtedly important, but fine oratory at Westminster is unlikely to make a difference.

No, the truth is that MPs have precious little to do and still three weeks in which to do it - because the Queen's Speech is not until December 3.

Every day brings another debate because almost all the Government's legislation is through, controversy having died with the cave-in on 42-day detention for terror suspects.

Now, you might think this timetable gap is an excellent opportunity for MPs to consider law changes with which - unlike words condemning bloodshed in the Congo - they can truly make a difference?

Indeed, a group of MPs tried to move a vote on whether parents should be allowed to smack their children - a long-standing cause for many. The Government quickly blocked it.

A week later it was deja vu, as ministers used a sneaky manoeuvre to prevent any votes on making abortions "easier and earlier". There just wasn't time, sadly.

On the same day, one Labour backbencher tried to move an amendment to force local health trusts to give infertile couples the IVF treatment they are entitled to. Sorry, can't squeeze it in, ministers told her.

Absolute nonsense on every occasion, of course. There was time aplenty, but the Government wants the Commons to be a talking shop, rather than a chamber that actually decides anything.

Consider the contrast between the way the US Congress has torn strips off the financial "masters of the universe" responsible for the economic crisis and the half-hearted inquiry at Westminster. In Washington, the boss of bankrupt Lehman Brothers was hauled in to explain himself - and the committee extracted a confession from Alan Greenspan, the ex-Federal Reserve head, who ripped up all the regulations.

Here, the Treasury select committee has yet to quiz the bankers behind our own crisis, from whom there has been not a hint of an apology. Public inquiry? No chance.

It is a mystery why MPs put up with it - until you remember that most of them want to be ministers themselves.

Labour poised to score another Post Office own goal

2008-11-02T13:50:55Z

FEW decisions have damaged the Government as much as its wilful destruction of the Post Office network, with 38 branches axed across Merseyside and Cheshire.

Yet, incredibly, this terrible own-goal will be repeated if a decision currently on the desk of James Purnell, the Work and Pensions Secretary, goes the wrong way.

Within weeks, Mr Purnell must decide whether the post office card account (POCA) - used by 5m people without a bank account - should remain in public hands, or be privatised.

One estimate is that the average sub-postmaster will lose £249 each month - 10% of net pay - if the contract is handed to PayPoint, or another private-sector rival.

The National Federation of Sub-Postmasters has warned that a further 3,000 post offices could be lost - even more than the 2,500 disappearing under the current closure programme.

Two years ago, the Government insisted that EU competition rules forced it to put the contract out to tender, but the world has surely changed since then.

In this new world, it would be a scandal to stick to discredited free-market dogma. Post offices have become more, not less, important as trusted hubs of community cohesion.

A staggering 258 MPs have signed a Parliamentary motion insisting that "retaining the successor of the POCA as a Post Office product is essential to the viability of the network".

Among them are George Howarth (Knowsley North and Sefton East), Edward O'Hara (Knowsley South), Bob Wareing (West Derby), John Pugh (Southport), Peter Kilfoyle (Walton), Frank Field (Birkenhead), Claire Curtis-Thomas (Crosby), Helen Southworth (Warrington South), Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston), Louise Ellman (Riverside) and Joe Benton (Bootle). Some Labour MPs argue for a "People's Bank", based on the Post Office and its surviving 14,500 neighbourhood branches, to pro- vide the vital public service of encouraging small savings and a habit of thrift.

The last time I quizzed Gordon Brown on post office closures he insisted, misleadingly, that it was "a decision that is being made by the Post Office itself".

The Prime Minister will have no alibi if the POCA goes.

A little bit more on Peter Mandelson

2008-11-01T13:52:12Z

EX-WIRRAL West MP David Hunt landed a plum job as Peter Mandelson's opponent in the Lords. Now it turns out the pair were a team 30 years ago, running the British Youth Council.

The Hunt mantelpiece still holds a gift from his erstwhile partner. But why is the Toby jug decorated with the face of Neville Chamberlain, the great appeaser?

Supporting Liverpool FC can be bad for your career

2008-10-15T12:54:37Z

DID a Government minister's passion for Liverpool Football Club cost him his £30,000 job?

There was much head- scratching when fire minister Parmjit Dhanda was axed - until it emerged he had been seen in deep and frequent conversation with our own George Howarth.

The pair were discussing Liverpool's recent good results, but the Knowsley North MP was, until last week - the Prime Minister's fiercest foe.

Poor Parmjit was apparently suspected of plotting . . .

The NWDA faces death by a thousand cuts if the Tories win power

2008-10-15T12:53:30Z

THEY will not be axed, but will suffer the sort of slow, painful, lingering, death-by-a- thousand-cuts that would make any sane person pine for a speedy demise.

That appears to be the Conservative plan for regional development agencies (RDAs), should David Cameron find himself in Downing Street in 2010.

Officially, the Tory policy is still under review, but business spokesman Alan Duncan confirmed the RDAs' future is not a happy one in a weekend interview. (Possibly, Mr Duncan felt the need to clarify matters after his colleague, Eric Pickles, threatened RDAs with the same fate as Anne Boleyn - who definitely did get the axe!).

Regardless, the plan appears to be to gut the RDAs of many of their powers - in particular, over housing and planning - and simply make them responsible for helping businesses set up and expand.

Even more ominously, Mr Duncan clearly expects many of the watered-down RDAs to commit suicide by restricting co-operation to "economic areas", such as Merseyside.

He said this: "RDAs will remain, but with a business-led enterprise purpose. And what we're going to let them do is propose what shape they want to take.

"If they want to stay as a big regional RDA, they can come to my department and say. If they want to be smaller, so they work more closely with county councils for specific regions, they can do that."

Now, much of this undoubtedly chimes with the complaints of business leaders who, in evidence to MPs last week, attacked the "mission creep" that has seen RDAs take on more and more peripheral powers.

But it is hard to see how a glorified business advice service - the Duncan vision, apparently - can be a Regional Development Agency in anything but name.

After all, with all planning powers back in town halls, these new-look agencies will have limited say over development - and, in many cases, they won't even be regional.

Significantly, whatever their complaints, the British Chambers of Commerce, the Confederation of British Industry, the Engineering Employers Federation and others were united in one belief.

That was that, if RDAs didn't ex- ist, someone would have to invent them - which makes it strange the Tories want to disembowel them.

Why the PM-PM love-in can't last!

2008-10-12T22:20:27Z

A CLEAR sign that Merseyside MPs do not expect the PM-PM love-in to last came when one revealed his reaction on seeing the newspaper billboard reading "Mandy rushed to hospital!".

"My first thought was 'Blimey, Gordon's punched him already!'", the MP told me.

The Mandy show is back in town

2008-10-09T22:17:57Z

ON THE day after his shock return to the Cabinet, it was reported that a fellow minister had begged the Prime Minister not to be so stupid and to leave him in his Brussels exile.

The next day, attention switched to a mysterious Greek taverna, where he was alleged to have "dripped pure poison" about the PM into the eager ear of a prominent Conservative.

The following day, he was rushed to hospital at 3am where tests revealed he had kidney stones. Surgery took place a few hours later.

Yes, the Peter Mandelson show is back in town - and tickets are selling like hot cakes.

Political journalists adore the so-called "Prince of Darkness" because he is truly different, a one-off, exotic even - delivering more great stories than the rest of the Cabinet combined.

Look back over a decade of Machiavellian skullduggery - one dodgy home loan, one dodgy passport (adding up to two resignations), that "outing" by a TV presenter, that moment Prescott compared him to a crab.

Then compare that to the sleep-inducing career of, say, new transport secretary Geoff Hoon (who, you ask?) and you will understand the buzz about the place.

Predictions are perilous when it comes to Mr Mandelson, but this attempt to recreate the magic of a decade long gone - in the style of an ageing pop band reformed for a money-spinning tour - is surely doomed?

Just consider the similarities with the Spice Girls, that other key phenomenon of the "Cool Britannia" years, who also couldn't stand the sight of each other and went their separate ways.

Like Geri Halliwell, the Prime Minister loves to wrap himself in the Union flag - "British jobs for British workers".

When the Spice Girls reformed, their comeback concert was at London's O2 arena - formerly the Millennium Dome, the brainchild of Mr Mandelson. Yes, this theory is def- initely coming together.

Ticket sales were brisk for the return of the feisty five, but enth- usiasm quickly waned as everyone realised time had simply moved on.

Politics also demands new tunes - especially when capitalism is collapsing. For how long can the totemic pro-business uber-Blairite perform on the same stage as a PM who now says he wants to "clean up the City"?

I fear that, a decade on, Messrs Brown and Mandelson will struggle to make 2 Become 1.

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2008-09-25T08:42:48Z

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Gordon Brown: The new mood won't last

2008-09-24T17:27:06Z

IT'S an ill wind that blows nobody any good and the hurricane that swept through the financial markets has proved a godsend for our beleaguered Prime Minister.

Suddenly, Gordon Brown is no longer drowning but has clambered aboard the liferaft of attacking City of London greed and excess - that same greed and excess he indulged for a decade.

Just as important, the Labour faithful have a new cause - taking on the "spivs and speculators" that have brought the banks to their knees - and a new line of attack against the Tories.

It means Mr Brown will walk away from this Manchester conference unscathed and optimistic that no attempt will be made to force him out of No.10 while the economy is in crisis.

Sure enough, yesterday's speech saw the Prime Minister attacking eye-watering City bonuses, and pledging tougher City regulation, in a way that would have been unthinkable just weeks ago.

But the new mood cannot last. Mr Brown's position was quickly turned on its head after last year's conference, which he left as an election winner-in-waiting, and this year's conference atmosphere will prove just as false.

First, a crisis is not, on its own, enough to save him.

After all, Margaret Thatcher was forced out while British troops were massing in the desert preparing to invade Iraq.

Second, a rousing standing ovation from one's party - Mr Brown was rousingly acclaimed yesterday - is no guide to future survival prospects.

Look at Iain Duncan Smith, in 2003.

Third, the Prime Minister has dangerously inflated expectations that he will move against the City.

In reality, there is only a review of excessive bonuses and no sign of a US-style rescue to revive the ailing markets.

It will be impossible to maintain the air of decisive action while reviews grind on and politics moves on - perhaps to a Tory "bounce" after their confer- ence next week and a likely by- election defeat in early November.

It is apt that "short-selling" - that dangerous practice of borrowing shares to drive down their value - was merely suspended for three months, rather than banned outright.

Similarly, short-selling of Brown shares is merely on hold. And perhaps not for as long as three months.

Will the real David Miliband please stand up?

2008-09-22T17:25:44Z

IF DAVID MILIBAND is secretly plotting to bring down Gordon Brown, then the strategy must be to lick the Prime Minister to death.

That can be the only conclusion from the Foreign Secretary's showpiece conference speech yesterday when the leader- in-waiting was gushing in his praise - perhaps just a little too gushing.

After all, two words are absent from almost every speech made in Manchester this week. They are 'Brown' and 'Gordon' - reflecting the widespread view that the unpopular PM is dragging down his party.

I went to a Sunday night rally when no fewer than four ministers spoke about Labour's future for a total of 35 minutes. The Prime Minister's name was not mentioned once.

So what are we supposed to think when Mr Miliband - the man who, in July, refused five times to back Mr Brown to survive - suddenly gets all lovey-dovey in front of the cameras?

Within minutes of getting to his feet, the Foreign Secretary was heaping adulation on his leader for banning cluster bombs, adding: "That's the sort of difference he makes in the world!" But that was just a warm-up for the moment he turned to face the PM to hail his "committed leadership" in boosting third world aid, proclaiming: "We can take inspiration from you!" Way over the top? It was like a penalty kick hitting the top of the Kop.

However, the speech was skilfully delivered, with a good Boris Johnson joke targeting his Beijing appearance: "The decimation of the British fashion industry in one photo opportunity..."

And there was plenty to please a Labour rank-and-file suspicious of his Blairite history, including a pledge to "close the gap between rich and poor" and a defence of working rights.

At the end, the PM was quickly to his feet to join in the standing ovation and to share a laugh and a joke for the cameras with Mr Miliband, as he warmly shook his hand.

Two David Milibands stalk the Manchester conference hall. One insists he desperately wants Mr Brown to stay in No.10, while the other is allegedly putting together his first Cabinet.

Yesterday, the first version turned up - the one determined not to give any ammunition to Mr Brown's allies by overtly undermining their hero.

If I was the PM prime minister, I would not bet against the other one showing up back in Westminster next month, if Labour is still 20 points behind in the polls.

Is Nick Clegg a Tory hiding behind sandals?

2008-09-17T06:51:09Z

JUST a few weeks ago, the Liberal Democrats unveiled a "Hit The North" campaign to pour staff and money into dozens of vulnerable Labour seats from the Mersey to the Tyne.

Liverpool Wavertree and Warrington South were just two constituencies set to turn orange, party leader Nick Clegg vowed, as he exploited Gordon Brown's woes to the max.

Now the same Mr Clegg has persuaded the Lib Dem conference in Bournemouth to adopt a radical tax-cutting agenda blatantly designed to outflank the Tories and shore up votes in the South.
.

Suddenly, the leader is forced to deny he is a Tory in sandals - scarcely a criticism to win over disillusioned Labour voters in the likes of Liverpool.

Mr Clegg can't square that circle, can he? Oh yes he can - and here's how.

It seems to me that the Lib Dems have come up with a cunning package that allows them to convincingly pose as lefties in Liverpool and tax-cutters in Taunton.

As voters feel the economic squeeze, who can blame Mr Clegg for wanting to ditch the decade- long Lib Dem policy of "everything Labour is spending, plus a bit more".

Hence, his party is now committed to finding £20bn of savings, a large chunk of which will be set aside to cut the tax bills of low and middle-income earners.

But this does not make Mr Clegg "Cameron-lite", as his critics allege.

How can it, when the only people set to gain from Conservative tax plans are millionnaires?

More important, the Lib Dem commitment to redistributing from rich to poor clearly lives on.
In fact, the new tax-and-spend package will raise far more from the most wealthy than a 50p income tax rate - the old policy.

In the party's sights, are those City fatcats exploiting loopholes that Gordon Brown is far too timid to close as he fails, scandalously, to tax the rich properly.

So, hedge fund managers would no longer be allowed to disguise income as capital thereby paying less tax than their cleaners - and the super-rich would lose £7bn of ill-deserved pension relief.

With real passion, Lib Dem treasury spokesman Vince Cable attacked those who "dodge taxes through tax havens or avoidance scams" - words that will not be uttered from Labour lips in Manchester next week

Introducing the Knowsley knife...

2008-09-16T16:59:24Z

BACK in the summer, when all other Labour MPs stayed silent, Knowsley North MP George Howarth was brave enough to tell Gordon Brown: "You are the problem."

Now, after Mr Howarth became one of the first to wound the PM with his demand for a leadership contest, it can't be long before someone dubs him "The Knowsley Knife".

Oooops, I just did.