So, the excitement of the day has been about the Tories’ publication of their policy commission report on what they call “breakdown Britain”. And their policy prescription to end poverty in the UK? Well…

Reinstatement and full public use of the term ‘marital status’ and associated terms ‘husband’, ‘wife’, ‘spouse’ and ‘marriage’, sending a clear and unambiguous signal about marriage.

Okay, so that was a cheap shot, but it says so much about the report that frankly embarassing nonsense culled from the letters page of the Daily Telegraph (”SIR: the other day, I was filling in a form for the Government, and did you know, my wife has become my PARTNER! It’s political correctness gone mad! I remain…”) has made it into the final version of policies that the party is recommended to adopt.

I will admit to feeling torn about this: much as when the Tories began to be reasonable rather than red in tooth and claw about women’s issues and lesbian and gay rights, the campaigner in me is pleased that they are seriously engaging with the issues (and don’t be mistaken: this is a serious engagement with the issues, and the Tories giving up on bashing poor people, if this is what this is, is to be welcomed). But at the same time, as a Labour member, I know that their prescriptions are going to be wrong - how could they not be, starting from such as dismal view of the world? - but may be enough to fool people who care about poverty in the UK into thinking that they’re reasonable, and electable… and that way lies ruin.

All day the mood music has been about marriage. You know I’m not one to worry about the nanny state, so I don’t believe that the way to argue against promoting marriage is to worry about what the state should or should not get involved in. I think we’re better off talking about how incredibly cheeky it is to pretend that you’re interested in ending poverty, whilst preparing the way for a cash bung to people who don’t need it - Chris D puts it better than I can. It’ll take £4bn or thereabouts to halve child poverty in the UK by 2010 - Labour’s target, which the Tories have signed up to, by the way. But these proposals for tax breaks and increased WTC for married couples will cost about £6bn, and given the depth and breadth of poverty in lone parent families, giving it all to married couples is literally taking desperately needed food out of the mouths of babes. Some of it may go where it’s needed; most of it won’t, and not only will the young people that need it not benefit from it, what will the Tories cut in order to pay for populist vote-grabbing marriage promotion?

And what a shame that the genuinely good stuff in the report (increased carers allowances, increased benefits for severely disabled people, stopping payment of HB in arrears, more help to pay for childcare for disabled children, suggestions for practical support for struggling families) and the stuff that we need to have a debate about (whether we should pay parents to stay at home with their children, whether childcare tax credits should pay family members to provide care, how to ensure that getting people into work doesn’t mean getting them into the first minimum wage job and leaving them there) is obscured by numpty nonsense about marriage, plus a daft dogmatic proposal about stopping state nurseries competing with private ones, when we’ve barely got enough nuresry places as it is. Oh well, what did we expect?

One of the things I love about this blog is that it is my personal space to talk about the issues that matter to me, so you’ll understand that none of these points reflect the views of either the Oxford city Labour group, nor of my longsuffering employer. I’m glad that’s clear.

Well, it’s been whispered about for months, and now it’s finally hit the papers that Peers School are thinking about bidding for academy status. Peers certainly needs something to change - I reported last month about some encouraging progress in GCSE results, but that still means just over one in four of their pupils getting 5 good GCSEs.

As you might expect, I have pretty mixed feelings. I can see how young people’s self-esteem and pride in their school would be boosted by a relaunch, in new buildings, with a new uniform and ethos. After all, most of Peers’ intake come from the Rose Hill, Blackbird Leys and Greater Leys estates, and I’m not convinced that attending a secondary school with a desperately bad reputation and buildings in disrepair has shown those young people that their education is thought to be of importance by the powers that be. And it’s not as if nothing has been tried to turn it around: Peers was in an Education Action Zone until few years ago and has been in special measures for the last year.

But I’m infuriated by the whole concept of academies - handing over that degree of control to a private sponsor in return for a paltry amount of cash, while the government stumps up the rest, over and above what would have been available to a school opting to remain a community comprehensive. I just don’t see why leveraging that government cash has to be tied to private money, and the loss of accountability that goes with it.

Hvaing said that, whilst I don’t support the concept of academies, I think I could have been reconciled to this one, though, if one of the big employers in our city - perhaps BMW, with its pretty well-paid unionised workers, or Unipart, with its commitment to employee learning and health - were the sponsor. But no. Who’s the proposed “business” partner for Peers School? The Church of England. Pah.

Yesterday, Luke issued a challenge to Labour bloggers:

I’ve set out below my instinct that Labour currently lacks a policy big idea to deliver in this term in government, let alone the big idea(s) for the next manifesto that will win us the 4th term.

So here’s a challenge. Post your ideas here. Conditions - whatever its merits, changing the leader does not constitute a “big idea” (we’re assuming that will happen anyway and we’re talking policy not personnel here); the big ideas have to be ones that would unite the Labour Party not divide it; and they have to be ones either Blair or Brown might reasonably be expected to implement (so leaving NATO and joining a defence pact with Iran and North Korea is also a no-no). And in net terms they need to be designed to increase the Labour vote not reduce it. Also, none of these ideas can have already featured in the 1983 Manifesto as that would prove they failed the test just mentioned.

Scale - “big” - e.g. minimum wage, NHS, not cones hotline or citizens’ charter.

So, here’s my pitch. Let’s do it. Let’s end child poverty once and for all.

Why is it the big idea?
It’s distinctively Labour - neither of the other parties have signed up to our pledge to abolish child poverty. The end unites our party, even if all the means may not. Ending child poverty is the unifying theme that brings together policies across education, health, housing, local environment, social services, local government and devolution, work, industry, crime and youth offending.

How do we do it?
By increasing family incomes:
- Raise child benefit and pay an equal rate to all children
- Extend child benefit to pregnant women
- Link the combined value of child tax credit and child benefit to average incomes or prices, whichever is rising more quickly
- Sort out tax credits and benefits – ensure they get the right amount to the right people at the right time
- Reduce the disproportionate burden of taxation on poorer families
- Ensure the national minimum wage provides a living wage
- Get more people into jobs and more people into good jobs

Improve public services for children
- Give greater weighting to poor children in education funding
- Introduce school uniform grants and school activity funds to make sure all children can take a full part in school life
- ‘Poverty proof’ all policies across all government departments
- Introduce free, good quality, universal childcare

Extra help for the poorest children
- Reform the social fund to give grants not loans for essential items and benefits at times of key transition
- Ensure that all children, regardless of immigration status, qualify for benefits and inclusion in mainstream services
- Put in extra support for poorer families, organised through children’s centres

(Shamelessly stolen from CPAG and End Child Poverty’s 2005 general election manifestos)

How much will it cost?
It won’t come cheap. The JRF reckons:

The Government could meet its target of halving child poverty between 1998 and 2010 by spending an estimated £4 billion a year (0.3 per cent of GDP) more than currently planned on benefits and tax credits.
Getting the second half of children out of poverty between 2010 and 2020 will be far harder. If the Government relied primarily on tax credits and benefits to achieve this, it would have to add about a further £28 billion (1.6 per cent of GDP) to planned annual spending, an unlikely scenario.
To make further inroads into child poverty, the Government will need to extend its policy of increasing redistribution to low-income families, but that this will not be enough on its own to meet the targets. In addition, this will require parents to fare better in the workplace, with improved pay and opportunities. Long-term policies working in this direction include better education and training for disadvantaged groups, improved childcare and the promotion of equal pay for women.

Whaddaya think? Better than “choice”? Worthy of a fourth term?

I may just not buy the newspapers or listen to the radio. If you know a young person who’s worked hard for their results, I’d advise you not to either. Here’s what I wrote on this subject last year.

Just come across this, an analysis of child poverty by region and local authority wards in the UK. Joseph Rowntree use having one or more parent on workless benefits as a proxy for poverty, and by that measure there are eleven wards in Oxford with above-average child poverty:

Northfield Brook 36.7%
Churchill 36.3%
Carfax 35.7%
Blackbird Leys 35.4%
Barton and Sandhills 35.2%
Cowley Marsh 29.0%
Rose Hill and Iffley 28.7%
Littlemore 25.9%
St Mary’s 25.7%
Lye Valley 24.3%
Iffley Fields 22.2%

I’m sure that we all know that ward-level data can mask pockets of deprivation (which is the case in both Churchill and Rose Hill and Iffley) and provide anomalies (Carfax has very few children and lots of older people and students, but those families that do live there are disproportionately in temporary accommodation and social housing). These figures are not on the scale of those for some of the London boroughs, like Hackney, where in some wards more than half the children live in poverty, but they should still remind us that fighting child and family poverty in Oxford ought to be the priority of the city and county councils.

Off to run workshops on campaigning and getting your point of view across at a residential with young people. Will be a nice break - and everyone says a change is as good as a rest. Enjoy your weekend, everyone.

It’s been a week of getting the little things done. According to colleagues who are old hands at this councilloring lark, August is the quiet time, and I should prepare for the deluge in September as everyone comes back from holiday, drives over the pothole at the end of their road and decides that this time they’ll actually get around to writing to their councillor about it.

I had a bit of a success this week. As regular readers know, one of the big frustrations about representing Rose Hill is that youth services are run by the county council - the one I’m not a member of - and by my reckoning, are inadequate to say the least. Our youth workers on the estate do a great job with lots of young people, but they can’t reach all of them, and in particular, what’s sorely lacking is an indoor supervised social space for young people, where they can just hang out and see friends. Representing an estate where anti-social behaviour and the lack of things for the kids to do were the major issues (by a factor of ten or fifteen) on the doorstep, I reckon I’ve a mandate to be bolshy.

So, step by step, the campaign continues. And I had a bit of a success this week: I got Connexions to agree to start delivering regular one-to-one support to some of our most difficult kids from the youth centre on Rose Hill. I should explain that Connexions are the government’s agency for getting young people to make positive decisions about work and education. For the most part and for most young people, it means they are careers advisors; for the toughest kids, the ones classed as NEET (not in education, training or employment), they’re supposed to offer intensive support to get them back into education, training or employment. Oxfordshire has about 750 NEET kids, just over half of whom (unsurprisingly) are in the city; a fair chunk of those live on Rose Hill. So, the breakthrough is to get Connexions to come to Rose Hill to work with our kids, rather than get the kids to go to them. Small things, but I hope for a few young people who probably don’t have much in the way of family support, it will make a big difference, having a regular adult around every week whose sole aim is to help them find a job, college course or apprenticeship that would suit them, get onto it, and make a go of it. Some days I really like being a councillor.

Of course you wouldn’t. Why? Because she’s a fictional character! Unfortunately, she’s been adopted as a catch-all bash-the-kids symbol for the social problem of the day. This time, it’s our friends in the Professional Association of Teachers (PAT) who are having a go. Before we launch into them, I suppose I should acknowledge that it’s no surprise really, reactionary ideas coming from a bunch of numpties who’ve managed to join a trade union pledged never to strike.

From the Oxford Mail:

…there was a warning that nursery staff who discuss their nights out drinking in front of toddlers risk creating a generation of “Vicky Pollards”.
Chairman of the association Deborah Lawson said too many students starting childcare training courses write using only the shorthand language of text messages.
And growing numbers of young staff in nurseries dress inappropriately, with long nails and “chunky” shoes, and discuss their social lives in front of children, she said.
The situation risks creating a generation of toddlers who will resemble the infamous character whose “Yeah-but, no-but” catchphrase helped make TV comedy Little Britain such a hit.

Young women today can’t win. They do the responsible thing, go out and get a job, and still they are criticised. I have no doubt that there are some childcare workers who come into work with a hangover, speak inappropriately and aren’t great at their job. But I have every confidence that if we started to value childcare as a career more highly, encourage continuing professional development and - crucially - raise the pay, then we’d end up with a better motivated, plain better workforce.

So, as of just under five hours ago, the Rose Hill dispersal order came into force. It’s the first one in Oxford city, and it gives police the power to ask groups of more than two people in certain areas where there have been problems with anti-social behaviour in the past to leave and not reassemble for at least 24 hours.

The Rose Hill order will cover The Oval, Lenthall Road, Nowell Road, Desborough Crescent, Radford Close, Patterson Place and parts of Rivermead Road and Mortimer Road, as well as the Iffley Lock area, from noon until 6 am.

I’m really pleased that we’re getting something done about the problems that have blighted our area, but I’m really clear that the order is only half of the solution - the stick, you might say. I’m off to meet our area youth workers and Oxfordshire Connexions tomorrow as part of the quest for more things for kids to do on the estate - the carrot.

My heart sinks when I hear this phrase at the start of a speech, usually spoken by a concerned worthy, often as a prelude for excuses for not doing something or ignoring the views young people have expressed. Unfortunately, it was a phrase I heard rather too much at the conference in Budapest. Not only does it undervalue young people now, seeing them only in terms of their future role as adults, workers, parents and consumers and not in terms of their current abilities, it is also shortsighted, as although the particular young person in front of you will grow up, young people are a constant - there will always be young people.

If there was ever a hard-to-reach group that should be ripe for engagement through e-democracy and for whom lack of skills or intimidation by the method should not be a problem, it is young people. And e-democracy advocates seem to take the engagement of young people for granted just because they are using e rather than traditional means.

The lineup for the session on Engaging Young People was as follows:
Chairman: Peter Lauritzen, Head of Youth Department, Council of Europe
Kate Parish, Founder of UK Youth Parliament
Shane McCracken, Gallomanor, UK
Laura McVeigh, UK Youth
Tom Gaskin, Youth Worker for Norfolk Blurb Website Project

Notice the omission - no young people on the panel, and some dreadful worthy chairing. There were about ten young people in the front row, but at no point were they more than participants. We heard from four enthusiastic and engaged adults about how to engage young people, as the experts - already engaged young people - looked on. Most of the young people present are MYPs (members of the youth parliament) and those of you who are regular readers will know that I’ve in the past expressed concern about the inclusiveness of the UKYP concept. After meeting the young people - all of whom were without exception interested, articulate and great fun to be around, don’t mistake me on that point - I still have a concern about how representative the organisation is in terms of class and background. In the words of Shane McCracken, who gave by far the best presentation on the Gallomanor projects “I’m a councillor, get me out of here” and “lifeswap“, the young people in the room were “shinys” - already engaged young people.

Where were the groups of young people up at the front, presenting to the audience through drama, dance and art? Where were the carefully-prepared hard-to-reach young people, supported by their youth workers to bring their points of view to the table? I’ve taken teenage mums to meet ministers and speak at party conference, supported by the excellent work of YWCA’s youth workers - it’s hard, but it’s not that hard, and it’s not like cash was a problem at this conference. Don’t get me wrong - I enjoyed this session a lot, and it was one of the ones circled in my agenda to attend from the start. It was just a shame that the presenters talked about the importance of young people taking control of the agenda and having thechance to meaningfully participate in the design, delivery and evaluation of projects aimed at engaging them, but there was precious little of it going on.

UPDATE: judge the session for yourself - audio of the main speakers is available here.