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The new chairman of the Press Complaints Commission has unveiled a blueprint for a “totally new” newspaper watchdog which he hopes will eradicate “bad journalism” and practices that have brought “shame” on the industry.

Lord Hunt told the Leveson inquiry on Tuesday that he was, however, flatly opposed to statutory regulation of newspapers, arguing that it would “open a Pandora’s box” which would give the opportunity to unscrupulous politicians to try to curb the freedom of the press.

The new regulatory body proposed by Hunt would have real powers to investigate allegations such as phone hacking, illegal computer hacking or general press intrusion by reporters or paparazzi.

It would also have the power to impose fines and award compensation to victims of the press, he said, with newspapers signing binding contracts to adhere to its rulings for five years at a time.

The new body would be far more robust than the PCC and be independent of influence by present editors, according to Hunt, with a three-pronged structure involving units providing a swift complaints resolution service, a standards arm and an arbitration operation which would assess damages.

“We do urgently need a totally new body with substantial increased powers to audit, enforce compliance with the code [of practice], to require access to documents, to summon witnesses when necessary and also to impose fines, all backed by commercial contract,” Hunt told Lord Justice Leveson.

He said he had widespread support within the industry for the new watchdog and that Richard Desmond’s Northern Shell group, which walked out of the PCC last year, had told him it would consider signing up “if the formula was right”.

A spokesman for Northern Shell, owner of the Daily Express and Daily Star, later said: “We are in touch with Lord Hunt. Things are looking encouraging.”

Leveson challenged Hunt on the workings of the arbitration mechanism and questioned whether his proposed body would have the legal powers to compel the wealthy to “go down the arbitration route” when they could afford to use the courts with expensive libel or privacy claims.

Lord Grade, who was also giving evidence to Leveson, said he too was opposed to statutory regulation of the press. The former chairman of the BBC Trust was made a commissioner at the PCC last May and said the “public want swift redress” which would not be available through the kind of statutory regulation in place for UK broadcasting.

He was in favour of fines that were a “visible, tangible, painful means of a sanction” against errant newspapers, but said this “stick” should be accompanied by a “carrot” such as reduced risk of damages for libel.

Earlier in the day Sir Christopher Meyer, chairman of the PCC when phone hacking and other controversial newspaper practices being scrutinised by the Leveson inquiry were taking place, gave a defiant and combative performance during a tough grilling that lasted nearly four hours.

A former UK ambassador to the US, Meyer defended his record and denied the PCC had acted as a newspaper industry “poodle” during his reign between 2003 and 2009, or that he had been beholden to “overweening editors” such as the Daily Mail’s Paul Dacre.

He flatly rejected virtually every suggestion that the PCC had failed to use its powers to investigate dubious and in some cases illegal newspaper practices, such as the defamatory coverage and invasion of privacy suffered by the parents of Madeleine McCann or phone hacking at the News of the World.

Several times Meyer remonstrated with counsel for the inquiry, Robert Jay QC, accusing him of putting words into his mouth and taking pot shots at him like a “coconut” in a shy.

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/31/pcc-chairman-watchdog-leveson-inquiry

10.00am: Welcome to day 11 of the welfare reform bill live blog.

We are back again for the bill’s third reading of the bill in the House of Lords, where peers have the opportunity to “clarify and make further undiscussed amendments” before it is sent back to the House of Commons. The third reading in the chamber is the final chance for the Lords to change the wording of the bill.

As you’ll recall, the government has been defeated six times over amendments to the bill, a record thought to be unprecedented in modern times. Peers will discuss those amendments again this afternoon, though the government is adamant it will overturn all the amendments in the Commons.

The amendments are:

• Amendment 12: Protecting housing benefit for social tenants deemed to have un-needed spare rooms

• Amendment 36a: Protecting young disabled people’s eligibility for contributory Employment Support Allowance (ESA)

• Amendment 38: Raising two 24 months the proposed 12-month limit on claiming contributory ESA.

• Amendment 38a: Exempting cancer patients from the contributory ESA limits

• Amendment 59: Excluding child benefit from the £26,000 household benefit cap.

• Amendment 62c: Dropping the proposal to charge single parents for using the Child Support Agency.

It is believed crossbenchers and Labour will also try to force a vote on a further amendment seeking to reduce the amount of money paid to children currently on the lower rates of disability living allowance. A separate amendment to reverse this was defeated by just two votes in the Lords in December.

We’ll be examining those amendments again today, and tracking attempts to persuade ministers to accommodate changes before the bill returns to the Commons tomorrow.

11.26am: The new amendment most likely to spark drama in the Lords this afternoon seeks to reintroduce a vote on protecting benefit payments to children on lower rates of disability living allowance (DLA).

The amendment (number 1 on the official list) was, in an earlier form, defeated in the Lords in December by just two votes.

It is submitted again by the crossbenchers Baroness Meacher and Baroness Grey-Thompson, and is supported by the Labour peer Baroness Wilkins.

The disability researcher Jenny Morris has this excellent analysis of the government’s proposal on her blog.

Jenny (who tweets at @jennifermor) explains:

At the moment, children in receipt of Disability Living Allowance, whose parents earn a low income or are out of work, receive a “disability addition” worth £53.62 p.w. Children in receipt of higher rate DLA receive an additional £21 p.w. on top of this. Under the new Universal Credit system, the government proposes that children in receipt of the higher-rate DLA will receive a total disability addition of £77 while children in receipt of medium and lower rates of DLA will only receive £26.75.

As Jenny points out, the government has admitted that approximately 100,000 children will be affected by the change.

Ministers say benefit payments to children have outpaced those to adults in recent years, and need to be realigned. More contentiously, as Jenny points out, they have argued that the higher child rates fail to prepare disabled youngsters for the “difficult” drop in income when they reach adulthood.

Jenny argues:

In other words, disabled children should get used to living in poverty in childhood as that is what awaits them as they move into adulthood.

The shift to a more targeted approach, focusing benefits only on the most disabled, is a constant theme of government welfare reform, Jenny points out.

Another of the government’s justifications for changes to the ‘disability addition’ for disabled children is that it is targeting help to those who are most ‘severely disabled’. This is part and parcel of the residualisation of the welfare state – the process by which it is becoming something that only those in the greatest need can look to receive help from. This is not a social security system on which we can all rely at times of misfortune and need, something in which therefore we all have stake. Instead it is a benefit system which – like social housing has become – is only available to the most marginalised of social groups.

The amendment itself proposes:

Clause 10, Page 4, line 36, after “disabled” insert “such additional amount to be paid at either a higher rate, or a lower rate, which shall be no less than two-thirds of the higher rate as may be prescribed”.

In other words, it proposes that the disability addition for children on lower rate of DLA should be no less than two-thirds of the £77 proposed for disabled children on higher rate DLA under Universal Credit.

Essentially, the amendment seeks to ameliorate, as far as is possible, the impact of the changes on disabled children’s benefits.

12.47pm: There’s been some excellent blogging and tweeting around the welfare reform bill in recent days.

I was struck by this piece by Lisa Egan (@lisybabe) on why she joined the Occupy protests against the bill in London at the weekend. (It’s also a very useful guide to some of the the various bits of this wide-ranging bill.) Lisa writes:

The government is selling these reforms as being about weeding out fraud. As you can see from the four cuts I’ve listed, that’s not the case. The cuts are about removing support from people who really need it: and I will be one of them.

Lisa, who has a condition called osteoegenesis imperfecta, goes on to explain how the disability living allowance cuts wil affect her. It’s powerful stuff. Read on.

Penny, who writes the Penny’s Points blog, makes some powerful points about the psychological effects of being labelled by the media and politicians as a benefits “scrounger”. Here’s an extract:

So what happens to us when we are bombarded every day for months and months with these issues surrounding benefits and sickness and disability?

When you are called a scrounger even though you know you’re not?

When you hear of more and more disabled being abused in the street?

When you are told again and again that surely you are capable of doing ‘some’ work.

When you have to prove again and again that you really are sick/disabled.

When you become conditioned to expect the dreaded brown envelope?

When no one appears to be listening to you?

Do you find yourself acting differently?

Maybe just that little bit more disabled when you go out or even when you are indoors?

Is your hard-fought-for independence now a noose around your neck in case her next door thinks just because you can walk to the car today you are faking it?

Are you scared to do things that you were actually proud of yourself for still being able to do before all this?

Do you look at yourself and question if you are entitled to the support you get?

Thanks to my colleague Clare Horton, who runs the Society daily blog and the Guardian’s social care network for spotting that one.

Clare also spotted this tweet, in a similar vein, by Naomi Jacobs (@naomi_jacobs):

Just had a v nasty lecture about ‘scroungers’ from someone because they saw my walking frame. Nice society we live in. Well done, DWP.

The formidable Declan Gaffney brilliantly takes us back to basics on the benefit cap proposals, and explains why, when it comes down to it, support for the cap in principle (which all parties assert as a matter of routine) rests on a fundamental, widespread and shabby political dishonesty:

Whether they are government ministers spouting inanities about ‘fairness’, Lib Dem critical friends seeking exemptions of some benefits from the cap or members of the opposition saying they support the cap in principle and want to ensure its success, their positions all derive from backroom discussion about the ignorance of the public and how best to exploit it or adapt to it.

The only truly honest proponents of the benefit cap are those who are too uninformed or too far out of the loop to be party to the backroom consensus: the only truly honest critics are those who refuse to say they support it in principle.

Follow Declan on Twitter at @djmgaffneyw4

Last but not least, here’s a useful guide to today’s amendments by the Labour Representation Committee on the Ekklesia website.

Please send me links and tweets with your recommendations.

3.08pm: The Lords is filling up now: we are now onto the third reading of the welfare reform bill.

The first amendment to be discussed will be one everyone is waiting for: the crossbench amendment which protects, to some extent, the additional payments currently made to children on lower rates of disability living allowance (DLA).

As I reported earlier the amendment seeks to ameliorate the effects of the government’s proposals on 100,000 disabled children.

3.17pm: Baroness Meacher introduces the amendment. It’s a less radical version of the one introduced at report stage, which was defeated by two votes.

She says the government’s proposal will create a “cliff edge” between children on higher rate and children on the lower rate. The gap amounts to £1,300 a year, she claims. She says:

Four in every day disabled children are living in poverty so loss of income really does matter.

Shrinking the gap between higher rate and lower rate payments will help parents with essential services and care for children, from clothing to swimming lessons. She says she understands the pressure ministers are under from the Treasury. But she calls the government’s proposals:

Short term fixes.

She says the amendment is seeking to ameliorate the unnaceptable impact of the proposed cuts. She asks:

Would there not be merit in leaving the higher rate at £77 so we can keep the basic level at two thirds, something like £50?

3.29pm: Baroness Wilkins, a Labour peer, points out that the £1,400 a year lost by children on lower rates amounts to a year’s heating bills for a household.

If every there was robbing poor Peter to pay poor Paul surely the Treasury is able to …find this money from the shoulders of those who would not notice the loss of £1,400 at all.

She adds:

Does the prime minister really wish to leave this as his legacy for disabled children?

Baroness Browning says the raises the notion of “disability lite”. She’s making the point that making artificial divisions between severely disabled and less severely disabled is often difficult.

3.40pm: Lord Wigley says as someone who lost two severely handicapped boys he knows know the cost of disability to the family.

He says the Children’s Society estimates that 40% of children already live in poverty. The cuts would save the public purse millions but it would be unfair to take it from the worst off.

What will be effect of taking £200m off those who are already near to poverty? Surely, my lords that is not acceptable?

Lord Newton, a Tory peer promises an “ambivalent speech”. He’s rebelled before on the bill.

He supports the concerns behing the amendments.

I do think the government need to listen to and take heed and come forward with proposals that address these concerns.

But he says setting benefit rates in primary legisation is not a sensible thing to do. He would prefer ministers to decide the rates in regulations. He wants a “positive response from the minister” before he decides which way to vote.

3.49pm: Lord Peston says the question the amendment speaks to is an ethical one, that should not be treated in economic and financial terms alone.

He says ethical philosophers would be appalled by the burdens of the cuts should fall on the most vulnerable groups on society. He adds:

The government should simply not be going down this path. The minister should be ashamed of himself for trying to defend this unethical behaviour.

Baroness Howe, a crossbencher, asks the minister to give serious consideration to a compromise though she would prefer the amendment to be passed in full. She says there is “widespread support” for the amendment across all the benches.

Baroness Finlay points out that according to the Family Fund charity, 64% of families who it gave financial support to had a child on lower rate DLA.

3.54pm: Baroness Howarth says the government needs to “take the long view”. She warns the minister:

If you take the short term view many of these families will fall into more disarray than they are already in.

She argues that if we are a civilised society, “appropriate funding” for disabled children is “absolutely crucial”. The finance is crucial to underpin the care, love and continuity that disabled children desperately need.

4.04pm: Lord German, a Lib Dem peer, says there are concerns about levels of payments to disabled children. But like Lord Newton, he believes that the best way to work out the best levels of benefit in regulations.

Baroness Hollis rejects the notion that the amendment should be dealt with in regulations.

It is not about fixing a sum “in concrete or aspic” but establishing “a principle of proportionality” by which lower rate DLA recipients would get 2/3 of whatever sum higher rate recipients receive.

4.10pm: Lord McKenzie, the shadow welfare minister, says if the house passes the amendment it will put down a clear marker about proportionality, and prevent one group of disabled children being “played off” against another.

Lower rate recipients would see a cut of £27 a week or £1,300 a year under these proposals, he says.

He quotes the UK’s children’s commissioners who have warned that many more disabled children will be pushed into poverty.

4.33pm: Lord Freud responds to peers who have politely suggested that as a minister he has to be seen to agree with many of the terrible policies he has to propose but must surely, as a decent man, privately oppose.

He makes it clear he really does believe in everything he says. Cue Lordly laughter.

Freud suggests he has no worries that the proposed cuts will plunge more disabled children into poverty. He says that the impact on disabled children of the benefit reforms will be

Negligible

He says that under universal credit families with a disabled child would receive £8,000 a year in benefits on average. Baroness Hollins points out that those families currently receive £9,500.

Lord Freud responds that it is not a heavy cut. It would incentivise parents to go out to work.

A peer interjects:

How can a single mother with a severely disabled child go out to work?

Lord Freud says he will “commit to having a very close look” at peers concerns over whether the government is getting the dividing line right between higher and lower payments.

I will review this dividing line and look at this very closely and when we come to the regulations on this I will report back on exactly what we are finding.

But he is adamant that financial constraints mean that they have to push through the proposals.

He suggests that the extra costs of the six amendments passed by the Lords is £5bn. This amendment alone would be £200m – though he doesn’t say whether this is in one year or over four years.

Freud says he is grateful for the house for consistently supporting universal credit and he asks the house to support him again.

4.41pm: Crossbencher Baroness Meacher says there are hundreds of thousand of families desperate about cuts to disabled children’s benefits. The pressure of this is difficult to ignore.

She says while she respects Lord Freud’s work, the job of the house is to ameliorate the worst effects of legislation.

She accepts that Freud has offered to revisit the amendment. But she has concerns that the Treasury will not understand the enormity of the issue unless the Lords sends a clear signal. So she goes to a vote.

I owe it to the families out there to test the opinion of the house

So, more drama in the Lords. Will it be defeat number seven for the government?

4.54pm: Defeat for the government! Content 246 Not content 230

That’s yet another humiliation for the government. That’s now seven defeats on the welfare reform bill in the Lords. This sends a very clear message to ministers when the bill returns to the Commons tomorrow.

But will they listen?

More reaction and analysis soon.

5.51pm: The Lords have now returned to welfare reform bill business, but the chamber is a lot emptier now, which suggests many peers have felt they have done their bit for today, although I’m hearing there may be another vote later.

Here’s some reaction:

humphreycushion tweets

Dear government, the Lords and your country are trying to tell you something

Meanwhile, Hephaestus7 strikes a note of caution:

In spite of the gov’t suffering 7 defeats on #WRB, I’m worried that the rule of ‘privilege’ could be used tomorrow 2 overturn the amendments

I spoke to a Labour Lords insider who said:

Seven defeats [for the government] is unprecented. You could say that if you consider the Lib Dem, Tory and Crossbench rebellions, the government has lost the House of Lords on this.

That’s plausible. But will the government listen?

6.03pm: There is speculation that the Lords may go to another vote later this evening, on amendment 14, a Labour amendment which notes that the bill currently has no requirement for the government to publish a child poverty strategy.

This amendment would force them to do it. It states

Page 109, line 4, at end insert—

“( ) Nothing in subsections (1) to (5) have the effect of changing the requirement in the Child Poverty Act 2010 for the Secretary of State to publish and lay before Parliament a UK Child Poverty Strategy and to describe the progress that he considers necessary—

(a) to meet each of the targets in sections 3 to 6 of that Act in order to reach these targets by the end of the target year; and

(b) the progress he intends to make in the period covered by the Strategy to ensure that so far as possible children do not experience socio-economic disadvantage.”

It suspect that is a long shot.

6.12pm: The voting on amendment one (the government’s seventh defeat) has now been published. Here’s the official breakdown of the 246 peers who voted for it:

Bishops 2
Conservative 2
Crossbench 61
Labour 168
Lib Dem 7
Other 6

The two Tories who rebelled were Lord Swinfen, and Lord Campbell of Alloway.

The Lib Dems who voted against the government were:

Lord Avebury
Lord Carlile
Baroness Doocey
Baroness Linklater
Lord Smith of Clifton
Baroness Tonge

The breakdown suggests a medium-sized Lib Dem rebellion, by the standards of this bill.

It also shows the Labour whipping operation was again successful, although strangely, a Labour peer voted with the government: Lord Leitch.

6.23pm: Lord McKenzie is now moving amendment 14. He wonders if the the government will publish updates to the Child Poverty strategy.

Baroness Lister rises to argue that the child poverty targets are important in enabling us to know what progress the government is making on this target and what progress it intends to make.

Lord Freud says the secretary of state will still have a duty to set out a strategy every three years, with details of how it will it will be met, and the govenrment will do it

He says:

The government remains commited to eradicating child poverty

He says he cannot accept the amendment. He calls it “unneccessary and unhelpful.”

6.29pm: Lord McKenzie says that on amendment 14 he is “minded not to press the matter this evening”. He acccepts Lord Freud’s assurance that the government is not trying to change the nature of the Child Poverty act.

That means no more votes tonight.

6.33pm: The Children’s Society has put out a statement on the government’s defeat tonight:

Enver Solomon, Policy Director at The Children’s Society, said:

“The Lords have shown their support for disabled children and sent a strong message to the government not to remove this vital lifeline.

“The Lords have voted to prevent cuts of up to £1,400 for as many as 100,000 disabled children each year. This could have a massive impact on day-to-day living for families with disabled children, including buying essentials like food and clothes.

“Our analysis shows that 40 per cent of disabled children live in poverty, a far higher proportion than other children. Poverty from an early age could have a devastating effect on the lives of so many disabled children.

“Their well-being is of vital importance and the Lords have shown their commitment to that by defeating the government.”

You can read the report on which it bases its claim that 40% of disabled children live in poverty here.

6.55pm: More response to that seventh defeat for the government in the Lords.

Labour’s Lord Bassam (@SteveTheQuip) tweets:

Worst run of Govt defeats for Govt in Lords since General election.Given they have political majority of 70 that is quite an achievement.

He adds:

Minister could not assure the House he would protect disabled children from cuts. That’s why Govt lost.

A wry tweet from Declan Gaffney, (@djmgaffneyw4) reflecting on the media’s tendency to focus its reporting of the bill on the benefit cap.

I make it 4 defeats on disability, 1 on HB, 1 CSA 1 cap. Will we see that pattern reflected in coverage of #wrb? #enoughaboutthecapalready

6.58pm: The Department for Work and Pensions has confirmed that, yes, it will seek to overturn this evening’s defeat in the Commons:

A DWP spokesperson said:

“The present system of disability support is a tangled mess of premiums and add-ons which is highly prone to error and baffling for people to understand.

“Under our reforms, support will be focused on the most severely disabled people. It will create a simpler and fairer system and transitional protection will ensure that people will not receive less as a result of their move to Universal Credit – where circumstances remain the same.”

7.33pm: That’s it for Day 11 of the welfare reform live blog, in which we saw the government suffer its seventh defeat in the Lords, this time over proposals to cut benefit payments for disabled children on lower rate disability living allowance.

You can see the Hansard account of this afternoon’s debates here.

The bill returns to the Commons on Wednesday, where the government has threatened to overturn all the defeats.

That may result in “ping pong” as the bill goes back and forth between the Commons and the Lords. Lord Freud, the welfare minister, intimated as much tonight when he said:

I don’t think we have seen the last of this Bill.

Thanks for all your comments and tweets today.

We’ll be back in the morning with full coverage of the day’s events.

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/blog/2012/jan/31/welfare-poverty

No sooner are Judith Palmer, the Poetry Society director, and Fiona Sampson, the Poetry Review editor, out of the news than another poetry punch-up enters the ring. This time it’s two grandees of the literary world. Geoffrey Hill, the Oxford professor of poetry, in the blue corner, throws a slug at Carol Ann Duffy, the poet laureate, in the red corner: at a lecture in Oxford, Hill likened Duffy to a Mills Boon writer.

Hill demeans himself. After 350 years of male dominance. Duffy is the first female poet laureate. Hill’s comparison of the language of Duffy to Mills Boon is like a man in the 1950s comparing the first female managing director to a jumped-up office angel.

2012 is a big year for poetry. Simon Armitage’s Poetry Parnassus at London’s Southbank Centre will bring one poet from each Olympic country. William Sieghart’s Winning Words sees poems etched into structures throughout the Olympic site and the country. The aim of Parnassus is that poets meet and read together. The aim of Winning Words is that we see and encourage poetry in public spaces. Emphasis on “together”. Emphasis on “public spaces”. So why can’t our poets be together in public spaces for the greater good of team poetry? Why do poets find it difficult to be part of a team?

Poets are fighters. In the 1940s Muriel Spark wrote Loitering with Intent, in which she reflected on her time at The Poetry Society, presenting it as a dysfunctional organisation full of petty squabbling and self-interest. Peter Barry’s Poetry Wars documents the six-year stint during which the Poetry Review journal was taken over by radical poets. In 2010 The Poetry Society went into meltdown, with resignations, legal threats, illnesses, emergency committees and management take overs. Every 30 years it kicks off.

Poets like to slug it out bout for bout. Derek Walcott, Ruth Padel, Alice Oswald, Benjamin Zephaniah and Adrian Mitchell have all been involved in public spats. One thing binds all these great artists. Their singularity. They may have chosen the ode less travelled, but they’ll mow you down in a beat.

A poet is by nature not a team player. There’s no “I” in team but then there’s no “U” either. Was it a poet who said “Let’s not talk about me, let’s talk about you”, only to then pause and ask: “What do you really think about me?”

I, for one, don’t want poets to be part of a team. I want them as natural as they can be. Poets are at the heart of revolution because revolution is the heart of the poet. Poets see things because they won’t look anywhere else. They are single-minded in their pursuit of the poem.

Would we really want our poets to agree by some form of poetry committee? The radical poets always challenge the classicists, and vice versa. And the new poets must always challenge the radicals. It’s like an un-merry go round. As the world turns to democracy, revolutionary movements quote poets to celebrate their causes. But poets are a democracy in a nation of one. Their nation is the page.

Duffy comes from a great tradition that has laid the ground for the generation of the moment. With a whole new crop of young writers like Caroline Bird, Inua Ellams, Kate Tempest, Ben Mellor and Luke Wright in the making, this year could be the best for poetry since the mid-60s, when Ginsberg played the Albert Hall.

Meanwhile, in response to Hill Duffy might post him her collection, The World’s Wife. Better still, could she text him the ISBN link so he could one-click-order it from Amazon via Kindle and download it onto his iPad. Then he can upload his review via a Facebook status update, which should be synched to his tweets, and hopefully it’ll trend. Can poets be part of a team? When I look at Geoffrey Hill in one corner of the ring and Carol Ann Duffy in the other, I sincerely hope not.

• Follow Comment is free on Twitter @commentisfree

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/31/carol-ann-duffy-geoffrey-hill-punch-up

Senior Liberal Democrats have lined up to praise David Cameron after the prime minister bowed to pressure from Nick Clegg and abandoned attempts to block eurozone leaders from enforcing a new fiscal compact through EU institutions.

Amid some anger on the Tory right over Clegg’s tactics on the EU, the former Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell praised the prime minister for re-engaging with Britain’s European partners.

The easing of tensions between the coalition partners over Europe came as Ed Miliband mocked the prime minister for backtracking on his veto at December’s EU summit.

Cameron prevented EU leaders from embedding a new fiscal compact for the eurozone in EU treaties after failing to win safeguards to protect the City of London. Leaders of 25 EU countries, bar Britain and the Czech Republic, this week agreed a treaty outside the architecture of the EU after the prime minister agreed to the use of EU institutions to police the new measures. But Britain will take legal action if the eurozone, or a eurozone country such as France, attempts to use EU institutions to re-write the rules of the single market as part of the enforcement of the fiscal compact.

The Labour leader said: “With this prime minister, a veto is not for life, it’s just for Christmas. He said it was a real veto on the use of EU institutions and his backbenchers believed him, even his cabinet believed him.”

Miliband then echoed his bother, David, who accused the prime minister in December of wielding a “phantom veto against a phantom threat”. The Labour leader said: “On the European court, on the commission, on the buildings, the phantom veto of December is now exposed.”

Miliband also dismissed the prime minister’s claims that he had ensured there would be no EU Brussels treaty incorporating the fiscal compact. “It talks like a European treaty, it walks like a European treaty, it is a European treaty,” he said.

“And for Britain he has secured absolutely no protections at all.”

The deputy prime minister, who missed Cameron’s statement to MPs after the December summit, took his place next to the prime minister for Tuesday’s statement. Clegg insisted in the days after the summit that the prime minister should drop his threat to block the use of EU institutions in enforcing the fiscal compact.

Campbell showed that the party believed it had scored an important victory within the coalition as he praised the prime minister. He said: “May I begin by praising the pragmatism of the prime minister, although I confess to being somewhat surprised that my support for that pragmatism isn’t shared throughout the government benches. What is especially welcome is that over the weekend he pursued a policy of re-engagement with our European partners which is essential to his long term objectives of the promotion of growth and the extension of the single market.”

Simon Hughes, the Lib Dem deputy leader, asked the prime minister: “Can he agree that his constituents, like mine, want the government to concentrate, as Europe is united in doing, to concentrate on jobs and growth and training and skills and not obsessing and constitutional and treaty niceties?”

Cameron replied: “[You are] entirely right. The refreshing thing about this council is how much time was spent on the nitty gritty of the single market, on digital, on services, on energy markets.”

Tory Eurosceptics were muted in their criticisms. Bill Cash, the veteran Eurosceptic Tory, asked the prime minister to give an assurance that he would reject the proposal in the fiscal compact to fold the measure into EU treaties. Clegg has said this should happen as long as Britain wins assurances that its place within the single market will be protected.

Cash asked: “Will he accept that the problem we have in European policy making is that it is on a slippery slope towards a more coercive, more federal and less democratic Europe? Will he give us his assurance that never, while he is prime minister, will we fold this non-EU treaty into the treaties as a whole?”

Cameron replied: “Obviously this treaty cannot be folded back into the EU without the agreement of every EU member state. We did not sign this treaty, because we did not get the safeguards that we wanted, and that position absolutely remains.”

The relatively light pressure from his own benches prompted the prime minister to turn his fire on Miliband for criticising him for vetoing the fiscal compact while saying that the measure would impose overly austere measures on the eurozone. Cameron said: “He has had 53 days to make up his mind whether he wants to sign this treaty or not. As usual, he cannot make up his mind whether he is muddled or weak. The fact is he is both.”

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jan/31/lib-dems-david-cameron-eu

Former RBS boss Fred Goodwin stripped of knighthood

Forfeiture committee advises Queen to strip former bank chief executive of honour awarded by Labour government in 2004

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/cartoon/2012/jan/31/fred-goodwin-loses-knighthood

Two small faces pull the curtain back in a side room and peer round to see who is at the door. After they run back inside, their mother, Mrs Rashid, unlocks the front door. Five weeks ago, she came home one evening to find the door ajar. The downstairs floor of her house was relatively untouched but upstairs the bedrooms had been ransacked – drawers opened, wardrobes emptied, clothes and belongings scattered everywhere. “It was such a huge shock,” she says, sitting on the sofa, her voice breaking slightly. Her husband, Mr Rashid (neither want to give their full names), a big man sitting across the room, shakes his head. “They took it all,” he says.

The thieves who broke into this semi-detached house in Earley, near Reading, stole around £70,000-worth of gold jewellery. To those who are not from a south Asian family, it might seem remarkable to own so much valuable jewellery, but families such as the Rashids (Mr Rashid runs a small business) live in ordinary houses and are not particularly wealthy. Their gold collection – elaborate necklaces, rings, earrings and bangles – is treasure that has been handed down from generations of their families in Pakistan or bought as wedding gifts. It’s our savings, our security, says Mrs Rashid, visibly upset. If, in future, the family needed money, they would have sold some pieces. “It’s like paying a mortgage for 20 years and then having a house worth thousands of pounds afterwards – it’s the same thing with gold,” she says. “Our parents gave it to us, we would have given it to our children, they would have given it to their children,” says her husband. They tried to put their gold in the bank, but “there were no lockers available. Everyone is looking for one.”

With other investments looking distinctly shaky in the economic crisis, last year gold prices reached record levels. In the autumn, an ounce reached a peak price of £1,194; today it is worth around £1,100 and analysts predict it could reach a new peak later this year or early next, as people seek safer investments, and demand for gold jewellery rises with the growing middle-classes in India. Asian gold (sometimes called Indian gold) is a broad term that covers jewellery bought and held by south Asian families, and often passed down through the generations. It tends to be the highest quality – often 24 carats, the purest gold – and it has vastly increased in value, sometimes to the point where a family can’t afford to insure it. Thieves know that some south Asian families may have a large collection of gold at home, and it is these houses they target.

There are no figures for the number of gold thefts, let alone the theft of Asian gold, but everyone I speak to believes the number of robberies is increasing. Last year, several police forces in areas where there is a large Asian community, such as Leicester and Slough, ran awareness campaigns after a spate of opportunistic robberies – there have been several reports of women who have had their gold jewellery snatched in the street – and burglaries. For a while, an attempted gold theft was a line of inquiry in the murders of Carole and Avtar Kolar in Birmingham in January, though the police later ruled this out.

Mr Rashid shows me the window in the downstairs bathroom that was broken, and where the thieves must have got in. He thinks the house was being watched, because he noticed a silver car outside the front some days before. “My family is so frightened,” he says. “My kids won’t go upstairs on their own, it’s a completely different life since it happened.” They feel the police have not been very supportive, and they have little hope the perpetrators will be caught. “I was already upset, and a policeman said: ‘Your gold must have been melted down by now,’” says Mrs Rashid. “I was even more upset when he said that.”

The Rashids know of several other families in the area who have been burgled. “A few watches and a BlackBerry were taken, but they were looking for gold,” says Vikas Tandon, whose house in the area was broken into in September. “They seemed to know where to look – I am confident they used metal detectors. There were bowls of jewellery in one of the rooms, with real gold and artificial jewellery mixed in together. They only took the gold, so they knew what they were looking for.” Tandon has now installed CCTV cameras “to give the family more confidence. The loss of the gold itself is bad, but the psychological after-effects of being burgled are worse. Everyone is scared.”

A local councillor, Tahir Maher, says: “A lot of residents have been very badly affected. It started in the summer. It is very much Asian families who are being targeted.” In one day, he says, five homes in the area were burgled and gold stolen. He went door-to-door warning families to keep their gold in safes, or put it in the bank, “although banks have started to stop giving people safe deposit boxes, so people are keeping their gold at home”.

It isn’t just homes that are targeted. This month, in Bradford, two men wearing balaclavas stole bagfuls of gold worth up to £100,000 – a third man had driven a 4×4 into the back of a jewellers as it was closing up. The terrified staff fled. In areas of Birmingham where there are a large number of Asian jewellers, several shops have been robbed. In the Handsworth area, where many south Asian people come to buy jewellery, there are numerous jewellers. Wedding sets – an elaborate necklace and earrings in 22-carat gold – can cost upwards of £5,000 for a fairly basic design, though the sets I see on display in many of the shops are much cheaper, lesser quality versions. Most of the jewellers have CCTV cameras and metal shutters. One of the jewellers I go into is protected by cameras, a metal grille, bulletproof glass and two time-lock doors. Another jewellers across the road was robbed last year during the day by three armed men.

“There were customers in the shop,” says the owner, who does not want to be named and is reluctant to go into details. He says there is an increased level of fear among jewellers specialising in Asian gold. “There is a fear daily. This is what we are living with now.”

Nigel Blackburn is chairman of Lois Jewellery, one of the biggest gold buyers in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter. The staff behind the counters are busy dealing with a steady stream of customers bringing everything from random old bits of broken chains and odd earrings, to cases full of gold jewellery. It is weighed, the quality gauged, and cash is handed over. I watch some people leave with bundles of notes – one man, who has brought in several kilos of gold, walks out on to the street with nearly £75,000 in £50 notes stuffed into a plastic carrier bag. Blackburn’s company buys £4-5m worth of gold every week, and about £500,000 of that is Asian gold. Much of it comes from jewellers wanting to get rid of stock, from owners selling pieces and from smaller dealers selling it on. He shows me a tub of bangles ready for smelting (once molten, they are poured into a mould and come out as gold bars).

The prices have rocketed. Six years ago, a kilo of Asian gold jewellery would have fetched £6,000; now it is worth £30,000. How much of it is stolen? Hopefully none of it, he says. His staff do what they can – sellers fill out a form before their gold can be bought – but he says: “ID means nothing these days – criminals can forge anything.” Mainly his staff rely on judgment. “If someone brings in a gold chain that has been snapped, it could have been pulled off someone’s neck,” he says. “If someone is out there” – he points to the timelock door where people can be seen before they are admitted – “and they look nervous or they just don’t look ‘right’, that will raise alarm bells. We will not buy from anybody we’re not sure of. There are unscrupulous [dealers] round here. They buy it, they melt it and then you can’t prove anything.” Many of the dealers have smelting equipment, and it can be done in a matter of minutes.

Inevitably, sometimes stolen gold “slips through the net. But we’ve got the CCTV to give the police. We have cameras trained on the scales, so we film everything we buy, and the people who sell it.” He works closely with the police and they are called any time he is suspicious of somebody; he was responsible for 14 arrests one week. If there’s a robbery, especially in the Midlands, he will be alerted, “so we know what to look out for”.

Another jeweller in the area who buys gold says she knows of dealers who don’t care if they buy stolen gold. She thinks she has been offered stolen Asian gold in the past, “but I refused to buy it. I don’t want to make my money in a dishonest way.” But there are numerous ways to easily sell gold with few questions asked. “There are places in shopping centres that will buy gold and pay good prices. Even Tesco now buys it,” says one jeweller. There is also a wealth of online scrap gold dealers who will pay upwards of £800 an ounce for the finest quality (usually Asian) gold – simply send the jewellery off in an envelope and wait for money to be sent back.

“One of the issues is that gold jewellery is often not traceable,” says Paul Uppal, MP for Wolverhampton South West, who has taken an interest in the issue of gold theft. “Constituents had spoken about it, and also coming from an Asian family it was word-of-mouth as well. At the moment, it’s easy to smelt the gold down and sell it off.”

Gold sales aren’t covered under the Scrap Metal Dealers Act, which requires dealers to keep detailed records of metal received; many think the act is inadequate. It could be updated later this year if a current six-month pilot scheme is a success, but it isn’t clear if precious metals will be included. “Anyone can walk into a jewellers and the gold can be smelted down within 20 minutes,” says Uppal. “There needs to be some sort of audit trail. I’ve mentioned it to ministers whenever I can but the problem is, it seems to be viewed in the grand scheme of metal theft. This is quite nuanced, and very specific to the Asian community as well.”

In Earley, councillor Maher has helped set up a neighbourhood watch-style group aimed at the Asian community worried about gold burglaries. It is still a new scheme, but he says it is growing. “People are looking out for each other,” he says. He is working with the police closely because he says his big fear is that “people may take matters into their own hands in a bad way”. The way he talks makes it sound like a community under attack – Maher knows of families who have lost tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of gold, including elderly people, a single mother and another woman who miscarried after discovering her house had been broken into. “People are living in fear. Mothers were scared to be at home with their children in the day, and older people were frightened of being attacked in the street or followed home,” he says. “There is a lot of mistrust. This has cost the community a lot.”

Back to basics: what else do thieves target today?

▲ Sheep Rustling is on the rise. More than 60,000 were stolen in 2011 – sparking a 250% rise in insurance claims from bereft farmers. Last September, rustlers stole 1,400 sheep from a farm in Lincolnshire – the largest livestock theft for a quarter of a century. The National Farmers’ Union puts the spike down to an increase in the price of lamb. Between July 2008 and July 2011, a kilo of lamb chops rose from £10.39 to £14.24.

▲ Copper Theft of the metal reached an all-time high in 2011, after its price doubled to £5,000 per tonne. Much of it is stolen from railway lines in well-rehearsed operations, according to Network Rail’s Robin Gisby. “It goes in a container to Hull docks and ends up in China. We [inadvertently] buy it back and then it’s back on the railway again.” The damage to railway lines is said to have delayed British trains by more than 16,000 hours over the past three years.

▲ Petrol Astronomical fuel prices have sparked a hike in its theft. More than 1,500 incidents were reported in 2011 – a year-on-year increase of around 17%. The perpetrators will often siphon thousands of litres from petrol stations (one Hull garage has even reported a 4,000-litre hit) but individual cars have also been targeted. Breakdown recovery firms have reported an increase in call-outs to cars with broken fuel leads.

▼ CDs and DVDs, once a bread-and-butter quarry for burglars, are now stolen only during 7% of burglaries – down from 20% in 2004. The fall is linked to the £3 drop in album prices over the past decade, and the rise in online media consumption. Patrick Kingsley

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jan/31/gold-theft-asian-families

The army is to speed up its redundancy programme by axing 20,000 posts by 2018, two years earlier than expected, it has emerged.

The admission from General Sir Peter Wall, chief of the general staff, raises the prospect that more troops will face compulsory redundancy because the army will have less time to rely on “natural wastage”.

In a speech in which he set out the challenges faced by the army, Wall conceded he could not guarantee the job cuts had come to an end, though he made clear the changes already demanded of the military were “challenging enough”.

He admitted recent conflicts had raised “awkward legal, ethical, human rights issues and equipment issues” and that these had encouraged “an expectation … that the sort of zero-risk culture that is understandably sought in other walks of society ought to be achievable in the battlefield”.

But he added: “It will be interesting to see how this plays out in a fast-moving crisis.”

Wall is overseeing the fundamental restructuring of the army as it shrinks to a full-time force of 82,000 and gradually winds down its involvement in Afghanistan to re-equip itself for contingency operations.

The army is accelerating the redundancy programme because it does not want to prolong the pain of downsizing, but Wall said it was up to ministers to decide whether more cuts were necessary.

“We are marching to the orders we have been given,” he told an audience at the International Institute for Strategic Studies thinktank.

“We are not just designing an army that will come down to 82,000 regulars and 30,000 reservists, we are designing to a cost. I cannot predict the situation. The government may or may not ask us to make more manpower savings.

“But frankly what we have to do between now and 2018 is challenging enough for us and it is going to take us some time to get there. As far as I can tell that is where the government wants us to be.”

Wall said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had put the armed forces under great scrutiny and that recent public inquiries and “the high human and financial cost has reset the appetite for and handling of risk in military operations”.

“I sense that this is unlikely be reversed,” he said.

In Afghanistan, the army had reduced the risks posed by roadside bombs, he said, but in future conflicts commanders on the ground might have different challenges that were more difficult to solve.

The army had to train its leaders to come to terms with this new risk-averse climate because “they will bear the brunt of this challenge”, he said.

“Contingency deployments will therefore feel very different both here in Whitehall and down on the ground where the attitude to, and handling of, risk needs to be very different.”

Wall said some of the army’s other goals were to provide its staff with “a better work-life balance”, and to recruit more people from ethnic minorities.

“We do not have a brilliant track record in the army of recruiting from certain ethnic communities across the UK,” he said.

“If we want to sustain a fully manned regular and reserve manpower complement then we are going to have to be better at doing that.

“In order to do that, we have got to find a way of engaging with communities which perhaps are not naturally inclined to join the soldiering profession.”

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jan/31/army-cut-jobs-earlier-expected

Victims of domestic violence at risk of further abuse are being advised to sleep in Occupy camps, in police stations and accident and emergency departments because of sweeping cuts across the sector, according to domestic violence charities.

On an average day last year 230 women were turned away by Women’s Aid, around 9% of those seeking refuge, because of a lack of space, the organisation has revealed.

And as further cuts begin to bite more women are likely to be put in danger, said Nicola Harwin, chief executive of Women’s Aid, the largest national organisation for domestic and sexual violence services.

Freedom of information requests released in a major new report revealed that 31% of funding to the sector was cut by local authorities between 2010/11 and 2011/12, a reduction from £7.8m to £5.4m.

Harwin, who has worked in refuge provision since the 70s, said there was a real risk that four decades of progress in the sector could be lost. “We were one of the first countries in the world to create refuges, we built up those blocks gradually and they are being taken down,” she said. “There is enormous determination, resilience and passion in this sector but the pressure on services to meet these women’s very complex needs is huge.”

Heather Harvey, research and development manager at Eaves, a London-based domestic violence charity, said it was becoming increasingly difficult to find a bed for vulnerable women. “We used to have a situation where we couldn’t quickly place someone in emergency accommodation perhaps once a month. Now it’s happening two to three times a week,” she said.

Support workers were forced to suggest places for women to sleep outside, such as the Occupy camps, accident and emergency departments or night buses, she added. “All you can say to some of them if you sleep on the street, here are some ways of staying safe – but of course there have been reports of rape at an Occupy camp, . And you are only displacing the burden, someone has to pick up the human and economic cost further down the line.”

The situation was reaching crisis point, she said. “Women are literally having to find a way of staying safe on the streets, or staying in violent relationships where they could end up dead. And the ultimate costs of that are huge – to the police, the NHS, the courts – it’s a total false economy.”

The effect on local services is both “dramatic and uneven across localities”, according to the report commissioned by Trust for London and the Northern Rock Foundation. Specialist services are being particularly hardest hit, with organisations with local authority funding of less than £20,000 suffering an average cut of 70%, compared with 29% for those receiving more than £100,000. Imkaan, who run refuges for minority women, were forced to close two of their six refuges, losing local authority funding for two more.

Hannana Siddiqui, of Southall Black Sisters, which provides support for black and ethnic minority (BME) victims of domestic violence and is in danger of losing up to half its staff next year, said specialist services were too small to compete in new commissioning models that demand budget services.

As a result minority organisations were having to close or be absorbed by a larger group, she said: “But we have built up the expertise to meet the needs of hard-to-reach BME women. And if you reduce the quality and quantity of provision that has serious implications. More women are turned away, there are more suicides, more homicides, more forced marriages.”

A perfect storm of statutory cuts to police, welfare, housing and legal aid was also putting pressure on the sector, with little being done to measure the impact on women’s services, said Harwin.

Changes in commissioning meant local authorities were increasingly choosing low-budget services from non-specialist providers, she said. “Every area is being hit, and if all routes to safety are being cut back I believe we will see more tragedies, more homicides and lots more women and children living in violent situations,” she said.

Cuts to Supporting People, a government programme for vulnerable people with housing needs, and legal aid were expected to disproportionately impact women, while other specialised expertise including domestic abuse officers, a unit on female genital mutilation and domestic violence courts had also been lost, according to the report.

In other examples, Refuge, a charity which provides emergency accommodation for women and children, reported cuts to 50% of their contracts, Respect, a charity with works with perpetrators of domestic violence, reported 44% of services had lost specific projects, while research from the Women’s Resource Centre found that one in five women’s organisations have closed (pdf), and 25% of those questioned believed funding cuts would lead to the closure of their organisation.

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said the combination of pressures around commissioning, and cuts to funding and statutory organisations motivated her to launch a commission on women’s safety, spearheaded by the former solicitor general, Vera Baird.

“These figures that show such a steep cut in such a short period of time are shocking,” she said. “I am deeply concerned about this – it is putting women and children in danger and we risk turning back the clock on the important work that has been done to prevent women being put in life-threatening situations.”

She called on the government to urgently assess the impact of cuts, and ensure every area had sufficient services for vulnerable women.

Lynne Featherstone, the Home Office minister for equality, who will speak at the Women’s Aid AGM on Wednesday, said the coalition had demonstrated that ending violence against women and girls was an “absolute priority”, publishing an action plan to end violence against women and girls, ring-fencing £28m for domestic violence services, and allocating £10.5m for rape crisis services, and £900,000 for domestic violence helplines.

Featherstone called on local authorities not to make disproportionate cuts or look at the women’s sector as a “soft target” for cuts.

“These are tough times and everyone is dealing with cuts, but this coalition government has sent out a very clear message about the importance and value it places on this sector. I would rebut very firmly that the sector is in crisis, this government is putting it’s best foot forward and is committed to ending violence against women and girls,” she said.

Case study

Eaves recently struggled to help 29-year-old Linda and her 11-month-old baby. She fled to her mother’s house after being physically abused by her partner, but when she refused to return to him she was thrown out and left homeless.

The homeless people’s unit (HPU) of her local authority decided she was not a “priority” case and only provided last-minute BB accomodation for two consecutive nights. Linda and her baby lingered in fast food restaurants and internet cafes to keep warm. With her bags clearly visible in the pushchair she felt vulnerable, and described the experience as “really frightening”.

“This was nothing short of the most horrible and terrible time of my life,” she said. “When I was at my most vulnerable, I was pushed away in the coldest manner by the HPU who told me that they had “bigger priorities”.

Only when threatened with a judicial review did the council agreed to provide temporary accommodation – in a hostel – “while they conducted an investigation”.

Support worker Lorena Fuentes said: “Obviously she was a priority – a young mother with a baby under a year old and fleeing a violent situation – so we were stunned when the local HPU turned her away.

“Quite frankly, I don’t think this would have happened a year ago. All this trying to dodge responsibility, quite apart from being hugely stressful to the mother and baby, is a pointless waste of everybody’s time and money.”

Linda said without the help of the Scarlet Centre, a drop-in centre for women who have experienced domestic violence, she would have been completely lost.

“It makes me feel uncomfortable talking about it even now, and I have a sick feeling in my stomach that won’t go away. The feeling of the stress and uncertainty of what was going to happen to me and my baby made me feel beyond desperate. I would hate to think where we would be without them.”

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jan/31/domestic-violence-victims-risk-cuts

Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, has been stripped of his knighthood by the Queen on the advice of the forfeiture committee.

It was awarded by the previous Labour government in 2004 for services to banking .

The London Gazette announced that he had brought the honours system into disrepute.

Goodwin has no right of appeal, and in accordance with custom was given no right to make representations to the forfeiture committee, a group of four permanent secretaries. The authority to rescind an honour rests with the Queen alone.

David Cameron said: “I welcome the forfeiture committee’s decision on Fred Goodwin’s knighthood. The FSA [Financial Services Authority] report into what went wrong at RBS made clear where the failures lay and who was responsible. The proper process has been followed and I think we’ve ended up with the right decision.”

The chancellor, George Osborne, told Sky News: “I think we’ve got a special case here of the Royal Bank of Scotland symbolising everything that went wrong in the British economy over the last decade.

“Fred Goodwin was in charge and I think it’s appropriate that he loses his knighthood.”

Announcing the decision, the Cabinet Office said in a statement: “This decision not normally published in advance was taken on the advice of the forfeiture committee, which advised that Fred Goodwin had brought the honours system in to disrepute.”

The timing of the announcement was intriguing. It came the day after Cameron struggled to explain why he had not demanded that the current chief executive of RBS, Stephen Hester, refuse to take his full bonus.

Both Cameron and Ed Miliband had called for Goodwin to lose his knighthood.

Thehe forfeiture committee said: “The scale and the severity of the impact of his actions as chief executive officer of RBS made this an exceptional case.

“In 2008 the government had to provide £20bn of new equity to recapitalise RBS and ensure its survival and prevent the collapse of confidence in the British banking system. Subsequent increases in government capital have brought the total necessary injection of taxpayers’ money in RBS to £45.5bn.

“Both the Financial Services Authority and the Treasury select committee have investigated the reasons for this failure and its consequences.

“They are clear that the failure of RBS played an important role in the financial crisis of 2008-09, which together with macroeconomic factors triggered the worst recession in the UK since the second world war and imposed significant direct costs on British taxpayers and businesses. Fred Goodwin was the dominant decision maker at RBS at the time.

“In reaching this decision it was recognised that widespread concerns about Fred Goodwin’s decision meant that the retention of a knighthood for services to banking could not be sustained.”

The CBI said: “The business community will understand the Queen’s decision to take away the knighthood awarded to Fred Goodwin for services to banking in 2004. Such an annulment is exceptional but unsurprising, given all of the circumstances.”

Normally an honour is withdrawn if someone is guilty of a criminal offence, and it will be asked whether other knighted bankers should also see their honours withdrawn.

The forfeiture committee is chaired by Sir Bob Kerslake, the head of the civil service. The other members are Dame Helen Ghosh, the permanent secretary at the Home Office, Paul Jenkins, the Treasury solicitor, Sir Peter Housden, the permanent secretary of the Scottish government, and Sir Jeremy Heywood, the cabinet secretary.

Ed Miliband told Sky News he welcomed the move. But he added: “I think it’s only the start of the change we need in our boardrooms. We need to change the bonus culture and we need real responsibility right across the board. I think that is what the public want, I think that is what government working with the private sector needs to deliver.”

David Fleming, Unite’s national officer, said: “It is a token gesture to strip Fred Goodwin of his knighthood, but one which will be well received by the thousands of workers who lost their jobs during his rule.

“Nonetheless this will do nothing to bring job security to the staff across the banking sector who continue to work under a culture of excess and greed at the top. Action from the government is needed in banking reform, not simply empty rhetoric on knighthoods or shareholder activism.”

The former director general of the CBI and one-time Labour trade minister Lord Digby Jones said: “I think there is the faint whiff of the lynch mob on the village green about this, but that isn’t to say that the end result isn’t what is right.”

The Conservative MP David Ruffley, a member of the Treasury select committee, told Sky News: “This was a reckless man. He was playing with other people’s money … he wasn’t very good at it. He proved a huge disservice to the banking industry and I think what people wanted to hear was that this man was held to account.

“Bizarrely there’s been no criminal charges against the man, so he’s not going to be in front of a jury and there was a sense that this guy had got away scot-free and the only thing left really to show the public opprobrium was for the knighthood to be stripped.”

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/31/fred-goodwin-stripped-of-knighthood

Scottish universities have seen a dip in the number of applicants from England and Northern Ireland, but a rise in applicants from other EU countries, who, like their Scottish counterparts, will not be charged tuition fees.

Figures from Ucas show the total number of university applications from Scotland is down by 1.5%, the lowest figure of any part of the UK. The number of Scottish students hoping to study in Scotland is down by just 1.1%. Ministers and student leaders say the statistics are an endorsement of the Scottish government’s stance on student funding.

English applications to Scottish universities are down by 5.6%, and applications from Northern Ireland are down by 15.1% on the previous year. Students from both face fees of up to £9,000 if they choose to study in Scotland.

Applications from Wales, where the Welsh Assembly subsidises fees for its students wherever they study in the UK, are up by 1.6%. The number of EU applicants to Scottish institutions has risen by 6% and applications from other international students are up by almost a quarter.

Universities Scotland said the fall in the number of English applicants should not be overstated.

“What’s really interesting from today’s figures is that whilst the overall number of English applicants is down, Scotland’s share of those applicants has actually held steady and is the same as last year,” said the director of Universities Scotland, Alastair Sim. “Universities in England have seen a sharper drop in English applicants than Scottish universities. We’re pleased that students across the UK and overseas continue to recognise the high quality of education on offer in Scotland.”

Robin Parker, the president of NUS Scotland, said the drop in the number of students from England and Northern Ireland indicated that some universities in Scotland had “made a huge mistake in overpricing themselves, missing out on the opportunity to attract talented students to Scotland”.

But Parker said the overall figures were a ringing endorsement of the Scottish government’s decision to keep Scotland free of tuition fees.

“Scottish applications have held up well, particularly when compared to the rest of the UK. With applications in England showing a drop of almost 10%, it’s clear £9,000 fees are putting huge numbers of students off, and cutting off opportunities for people to study, reskill and get the education that gets them a job.”

St Andrews University had one of the biggest increases in applicants, up 17% on the previous year, and thought to be attributable, in part, to an increased international profile that was boosted by the royal wedding in April 2011.

Applications to St Andrews from the EU are up 35%, and from other international students up 22%. Applications from Walesrose 10%, but from England were down 3% and the number of applicants from Northern Ireland dropped by 15%.

Overall, almost 14,000 prospective students applied to the university for a place in 2012, the equivalent of 10 applications for every available place. It is the largest number of applications ever received by St Andrews.

Stephen Magee, the university’s vice-principal for external relations, said: “We are pleased that applications to St Andrews have again grown, particularly when the sector as a whole has seen a drop in applications and the funding of higher education is more challenged than ever, for students as well as institutions.”

He added: “What will be far more important than application figures, however, are the numbers of young people who actually decide to take up the offer of a place at university, given the considerable pressures facing families at present.”

Marco Biagi, the SNP member of the Scottish parliament’s education and culture committee, said the figures for Scottish institutions were a clear vindication of the SNP’s determination to ensure university education remained free for Scottish students.

“This is obviously very good news for our university sector, which is being protected from falling student numbers in contrast to their English and Welsh counterparts. More importantly, young people in Scotland can still apply to study at a Scottish university in the confidence that it is only their ability to learn and not their ability to pay that matters.”

The Scottish Conservatives, however, said they had warned that charging high fees to students fromelsewhere in the UK to study in Scotland while Scottish and EU students paid nothing would lead to a fall in numbers.

“These figures lay bare the true extent of the inherent inequalities of the SNP’s policy on fees,” said Liz Smith, the Scottish Conservative education spokeswoman. “A huge increase in students from the European Union has seen a coinciding fall in the number of students applying from the rest of the UK. At a time when budgets are tight, the Scottish government is duty bound to explain to taxpayers why they are being asked to foot the bill for the tuition fees of foreign nationals.”

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/jan/31/applications-scottish-universities-tuition-fee