Archive for: Political Services

When senior doctors started to reduce their working hours in significant numbers, in response to changes in tax paid on their pensions, what would otherwise be a niche and complicated pensions issue, suddenly became a general election focus with the Prime Minister wading in, promising to fix it. 
 
New lower thresholds (unadjusted for inflation since 2014) when public sector workers start to pay tax on their pension contributions have seen higher earners across the public sector receiving staggering tax bills. As a result of having crossed either their annual or lifetime allowances, doctors are reducing their hours, or simply retiring, impacting on the NHS’s readiness to respond to annual winter pressures, forcing the Government to intervene.  
 
While the Government has found a temporary sticking plaster on this issue with a view to finding a longer-term solution for clinicians, the same problem extends right across the public sector, not least to policing.  
 
With 21,000 fewer officers and 600 police stations closed since 2010, policing has been hammered in recent years. We’re already seeing record numbers voluntarily leaving policing. So if the Government is to have any hope of delivering its uplift in policing numbers without chronic growing pains, it needs to hold onto every last bit of experience and leadership it can. 
 
The Superintendent ranks and above are likely to breach the annual allowance if an officer has more than 20 years’ service, due to the structuring of police pensions in the last 10 years of an officers’ service, which is unique to Police pensions. Senior Superintendents and all ranks above, will breach the annual allowance by ordinary pension growth alone, without there even being any pay rises.  
 
Superintendent, Chief Superintendent, Assistant Chief Constable, Deputy Chief Constable and Chief Constable ranks have the potential to routinely breach the allowance, with some senior officers unbelievably receiving yearly tax bills that are greater than their annual salary. 
 
In a letter to the Chair of the Police Pensions Scheme Advisory Board sent just in the last few days, the Policing Minister argues that while he is open to reform of pensions in policing, their case ‘does not demonstrate evidence of recruitment and retention problems and a resulting impact on operational service delivery.’ 
 
Unlike doctors, police officers cannot reduce their hours or withdraw their service to mitigate the impact of such tax bills, so it is much harder to demonstrate the impact on the public, and I suspect the Minister fully understands that. 
 
Research undertaken by the National Police Chiefs Council shows that applications for Chief Officer jobs are reducing, as is the tenure served in those roles. My own force, West Yorkshire Police, had just one applicant apply on the previous two occasions they needed to fill the post of Chief Constable and Northumbria Police has recently had to open recruitment three times to recruit a Chief Constable. 
 
While there will be a variety of reasons for this, the Police Superintendents’ Association conducted a survey in 2018 that revealed that almost four in ten of their members said pension issues were increasing their intention to leave, with 56% of respondents attributing this specifically to the annual allowance. 
 
The Treasury is conducting a review in to this issue with a view to shaping the next Budget on 11 March, so I have asked the Policing Minister to look specially at how these perverse tax disincentives can be reformed, not least because it would seem Police Forces themselves are paying these tax bills for individuals, who are reimbursed by the Home Office, who are reimbursed by the Treasury, in order to square-off contributions to HMRC. 
 
In order to pay the money back in the long term, officers are realistically having to hand significant chucks of their pensions back upon retirement, in order to settle all the accumulated Annual Allowance taxes. There must be a better way of structuring police pensions to avoid this financial merry-go-round, by simply giving senior police officers parity with the solutions offered to NHS consultants.  
 
Police pensions need to be much clearer for both officers themselves and the public purse, but more importantly ensuring that we do not haemorrhage experience and leadership within policing at a time when we can least afford it. 
 
Holly Lynch is the Labour MP for Halifax.  
 
This blog post is part of a cross-party series on Vuelio’s political blog Point of Order which publishes insight and opinion to help public affairs, policy and comms professionals stay ahead of political change and connect with those who campaign on the issues they care about. To find out more or contribute, get in touch with Vuelio Politics. 

Bernie Sanders is surging, and not just in the opinion polls. Audience interest in the Vermont Senator has exploded in the last few weeks, amid controversies involving fellow candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren and former Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

An endorsement by internet personality Joe Rogan has further boosted Sanders according to a new index developed by Vuelio’s sister brand, audience intelligence company Pulsar.

As the Iowa Caucus approaches on 3 February, Sanders has been driving not only the largest volume of conversations on social media over the past few weeks (13 – 26 January, 2.6m posts mentioned Sanders; more than those of the next two candidates combined – Warren and Joe Biden, both at 1.2m) but the conversation relating to Sanders is also displaying the highest velocity (a measure of how much conversation each candidate is able to create within a given hour).

‘Our index shows Sanders riding a big wave of buzz, which is consistent with movements in the polls and prediction markets’, said Marc Geffen, VP of Research and US Strategy at Pulsar. ‘In the last two weeks, the endorsement from Joe Rogan and provocative comments from Hillary Clinton have clearly activated the Sanders audience, driving both high velocity and relatively low volatility compared to the other candidates. These factors signal that the buzz around Sanders can grow at an extremely fast clip and sustain’.

Hillary Clinton failed to confirm if she would endorse Sanders if he went on to win the Democratic nomination and added: ‘Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician’.

She has been criticised for reopening a divide within the Democratic party that arguably led to her being defeated as the party’s first female Presidential candidate, which paved the way for the election of President Trump.

Pulsar’s virality model – traditionally used by Pulsar to measure consumer trends, as well as film and gaming releases – takes into account five different factors, including: how much buzz has a candidate generated in the most recent period; how much momentum has this candidate recently acquired; how much buzz can this candidate drive in a given hour; whether the conversation about this candidate is stable and consistent, or highly variable; and to what extent is the buzz about this candidate maintaining high volumes over time.

In terms of total volumes, both Warren and Sanders saw a huge growth on the eve of the 14 January CNN Debate and the ensuing controversy about Sanders’ alleged remarks.

‘We observe an interesting pattern in that, over the full period we’ve been measuring, the buzz around Sanders and Warren seem to move in tandem. More than any other pair of candidates, these two seem tethered to one another in the public’s eye’, said Geffen.

Sanders however, has managed to sustain those volumes further during the second half of January both in terms of virality and interest in search data, thanks also in part to the ‘endorsement’ from Internet personality Joe Rogan, and his strong performance in polls that have put him ahead of former Vice President Joe Biden in Iowa.

While Elizabeth Warren has also had her fair share of attention, receiving endorsements from both the New York Times and the Des Moines Register (a leading Iowa daily), it has not translated into a comparable social buzz, with Biden overtaking her in terms of raw volumes over the last week.

Audience interest in other candidates has also shifted. Amy Klobuchar, boosted by a New York Times endorsement (jointly with Warren), has overtaken Buttigieg in terms of virality. However, interest in her appears less consistent or ‘streaky’, dependent on big buzz moments that do not necessarily sustain interest. ‘Steadier’ candidates such as Andrew Yang on the other hand, have been able to drive very consistent virality week on week, remaining in the top five by volume of social buzz.

Pulsar is the leading AI-powered audience intelligence platform. Combining conversational and behavioural signals from the world’s leading digital destinations, Pulsar helps brands understand their audiences better and create messages that matter to them. 

The role of Select Committees within Parliament is significant, given the important duties they undertake to oversee government departments and policy implementation.

They have regular inquiries leading to significant and newsworthy reports and are widely respected both across Parliament and outside it. They also conduct visits out to the regions and nations of the UK or overseas, depending on their remit, and frequently engage with businesses, charities, community groups or trade unions.

Crucially, although the Committee Chair’s party is decided by ‘the usual channels’ of party whips, behind closed doors and in proportion to the make-up of the House of Commons at the 2019 General Election, the Chairs themselves are nominated and elected by MPs of all parties.

All MPs can vote in the Select Committee Chair elections that take place on Wednesday, 29 January.

As the Parliament Guide to Select Committees says: ‘House of Commons Select Committees are largely concerned with examining the work of government departments. Committees in the House of Lords concentrate on six main areas: Europe, science, economics, communications, the UK constitution and international relations.’

The House of Commons Select Committees must contain 11 MPs as members, which again tend to broadly represent the make up of the House of Commons, thereby guaranteeing a majority of Conservative MPs on each Committee.

The result of the ‘usual channels’ discussions were announced in early January as the Parly political journalism project reported, with the large Government majority meaning that the Conservatives will chair three more committees than the previous 2017 to 2019 Parliament: ‘Big government majority means Tories get three more than in the last parliament. They have taken @CommonsSTC from Lib Dems, @CommonsTrans and @CommonsEAC from Labour. SNP retain their two.’

On 9 January, the Conservative, Labour and SNP leaders tabled a motion splitting the position of chair of each select committee between them, after advice from the Speaker. This motion was agreed to by MPs on 16 January. It splits the committees as follows:

• Defence: Conservative
• Digital, Culture, Media and Sport: Conservative
• Education: Conservative
• Environment, Food and Rural Affairs: Conservative
• Foreign Affairs: Conservative
• Health and Social Care: Conservative
• Justice: Conservative
• Northern Ireland Affairs: Conservative
• Science and Technology: Conservative
• Transport: Conservative
• Treasury: Conservative
• Welsh Affairs: Conservative
• Women and Equalities: Conservative
• Environmental Audit: Conservative
• Procedure: Conservative
• Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs: Conservative

• Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy: Labour
• Home Affairs: Labour
• Housing, Communities and Local Government: Labour
• International Development: Labour
• Work and Pensions: Labour
• Exiting the European Union: Labour
• Petitions: Labour
• Public Accounts: Labour
• Standards: Labour
• International Trade: Scottish National Party
• Scottish Affairs: Scottish National Party

The Backbench Business Committee must be chaired by a non-Government MP, while the chair of the Liaison Committee (which is made up of the chairs of other committees) is elected by its members.

Nominations for Select Committee Chairs close at 4pm on Monday 27 January and only contested positions will lead to a formal election between the different candidates. Candidates who are unopposed will be elected automatically.

A report by the Intelligence and Security Committee on alleged Russian interference in UK elections was heavily discussed during the recent general election, as the Government postponed the report’s publication. Whilst this Committee is not a formal Select Committee, it is elected differently as its members are drawn from both Houses of Parliament and its Chair is elected by its members.

The Committee has a ‘statutory responsibility for oversight of the UK Intelligence Community’ and it too will shortly have a new Chair, as previous Chair Dominic Grieve was not re-elected in the General Election, having left the Conservative Party and failing to be re-elected as an Independent.

To use a prominent example the previous Chair of the DCMS Select Committee and one of the candidates standing for re-election this week, Damian Collins regularly speaks our on relevant issues such as the future of the BBC, which he says needs to ‘needs to both deliver value for license fee payers and meet the challenge of the new platforms like Netflix’ and on keeping children safe online. He also attended the launch event for Vuelio’s ‘The Politics of Social Media’ report, where he warned that social media was ‘coarsening the public debate’ and potentially posed ‘a threat to our democracy—and we should not accept it’.

Vuelio has put together a briefing on the election of Select Committee Chairs which is available here.

As nominations for the Labour party leadership closed this week, five candidates made it through to the next round of nominations, and a further five candidates will contest the deputy leadership vacated by Tom Watson. The party has arranged a series of hustings starting in Liverpool on Saturday 18 January.

The next stage in the contest, with a deadline of 14 February, requires candidates for both leader and deputy, to secure the backing of 5% of local Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs) or at least three affiliates – two of which must be unions. This Twitter account is keeping track of CLP nominations and of the first nine, Keir Starmer has six nominations and Rebecca Long-Bailey has three.

So far the country’s largest union, Unison has backed Keir Starmer, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has backed Lisa Nandy and the Bakers Union has backed Rebecca Long-Bailey. Of the affiliated organisations, environmental organisation SERA (formerly the Socialist Environment and Resources Association) has endorsed Keir Starmer, with further announcements from other organisations expected over the coming weeks leading up to the mid-February deadline.

Shadow Treasury minister Clive Lewis withdrew from the contest shortly before nominations closed, though he had put forward a radical manifesto that included supporting a second Scottish Independence referendum ‘if the Scottish people want one’ and pledging to set up ‘democratic Assemblies for the English regions, with real powers and budgets’.

Sir Keir Starmer is the clear favourite in terms of nominations from the party’s MPs and MEPs with 89 out of 203 MPs nominating him.

Shadow BEIS Secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey has received the backing of the Momentum grassroots campaigning organisation and has been dubbed the ‘continuity Corbyn candidate’, though she received only 33 MP nominations. The Momentum online poll of members was overwhelmingly in favour of Rebecca Long-Bailey but oddly she was the only candidate offered with 70.42% voting in favour of endorsing her and 52% endorsing Angela Rayner for deputy leader. Just over 7,000 members of the organisation took part in the ballot with many presumably boycotting it due to only being offered one option. Ms Long-Bailey launches her campaign in Manchester this evening.

Wigan MP Lisa Nandy received 31 MP nominations with Jess Phillips and Emily Thornberry both receiving 23 nominations from their colleagues.

Emily Thornberry launches her campaign in Guildford today. Having first won her Islington South seat in 2005, she is the only candidate who was actually in the House of Commons when Labour was last in Government. She will say in her launch speech: ‘I’m standing to lead our party, because I want to be the woman, and I know I can be the woman, who stands up and leads the fightback against Boris Johnson.’

Whilst starting from a low base in terms of support in terms of early polling and MP nominations, Jess Phillips has built a big name recognition for herself through various interviews and TV appearances as well as her campaigning on education cuts and violence against women. She has said in a letter to party members: ‘The way to begin is to tell the truth. No more pussyfooting or pretending – we have to provide a version of the future that fills our hearts while being rooted in fact’. Her campaign slogan is ‘Speak Truth, win power’.

Keir Starmer launched his campaign in Manchester and has already generated a lot of attention with a video setting out his background as a lawyer taking on a wide range of pro bono work for trade unions, and environmental or human rights campaigns. He rose to national prominence as Director of Public Prosecutions and Head of the Crown Prosecution Service from 2008 to 2013.

Lisa Nandy has already made a foreign policy focused speech this week with a passionate defence of free movement and ‘the opportunities and benefits it brings’, but added that ‘this would have required recognising it has flaws, and not dismissing concerns as simply racist anti-immigrant sentiment.’

She also was critical of Donald Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement and has indicated that the UK should refuse to sign off on a US-UK trade deal until this is rectified, adding: ‘We must use trade to support climate action, not hamper it’. She is the first of the five candidates to face a grilling from Andrew Neil on his BBC show.

An article on HuffPost claims that Nandy’s team has a ‘preferential strategy’, taking into account the AV voting system used in the contest, to appeal for second preferences from Jess Phillips and Emily Thornberry supporters, which would bolster her tally if those candidates drop out at earlier stages.

As in the previous two contests won by Jeremy Corbyn in 2015 and 2016, non-Labour members have been able to sign up as registered supporters over a two-day period this week. In what could be a blow to the Rebecca Long-Bailey campaign seeking to build on the previous Corbyn surges in supporters of 180,000, only 14,700 paid the £25 to take part in this contest.

All eyes will turn now to the contest itself and whether the turnout of members, affiliated union members and registered supporters reaches the high turnouts of 76.3% in 2015 and 77.6% in 2016 when 422,871 and 506,438 respectively took part in the contests.

The Deputy leader candidates who all achieved the 22 MP nomination threshold are Angela Rayner on 88 nominations, Ian Murray on 34, Dawn Butler on 29, Rosena Allin-Khan on 23 and Richard Burgon on 22.

The results will be announced at a special conference on Saturday 4 April.

20 lucky backbench MPs won the parliamentary lottery today in the Private Members’ Bill ballot.

Their numbers were drawn by Parliament’s new principal Deputy Speaker, Dame Eleanor Laing, who is also known as the Chairman of Ways and Means.

The MPs will have the opportunity to introduce their chosen Bill initially on Wednesday 5 February and then will have priority in terms of parliamentary debating time on 13 sitting Fridays during this session of parliament.

Parliament’s Guide to Private Members’ Bills (PMBs) sets the context for how they operate:

‘As with other public bills their purpose is to change the law as it applies to the general population. A minority of Private Members’ Bills become law but, by creating publicity around an issue, they may affect legislation indirectly’.

The Hansard Society’s Guide to PMBs also explains that these new Bills must not increase Government spending or alter the tax system:

‘The primary purpose of a PMB cannot be to create a new tax or increase Government spending; these are permitted only as secondary effects. And a PMB cannot be used to duplicate a decision that has already been made by the House of Commons earlier in the session.’

In the previous session of parliament, nine of those MPs saw their Bills pass into law and become Acts of Parliament:

• Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018
• Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Act 2018
• Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018
• Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration etc) Act 2019
• Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Act 2019
• Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Act 2018
• Parking (Code of Practice) Act 2019
• Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Act 2018
• Stalking Protection Act 2019

For MPs drawn towards the end of the list, they should still get the opportunity to raise their issue in the House of Commons, and to further their campaigning objectives.

Labour MP Jim McMahon is an example of this with his ultimately unsuccessful campaign to reduce the voting age to 16 in the previous parliament.

The successful 20 MPs drawn in today’s ballot were:

1. 1. Mike Amesbury
2. 2. Darren Jones
3. 3. Anna McMorrin
4. 4. Laura Trott
5. 5. Chris Loder
6. 6. Paula Barker
7. 7. Philip Dunne
8. 8. Dame Cheryl Gillan
9. 9. Mark Francois
10. 10. Dr Ben Spencer
11. 11. Bim Afolami
12. 12. Dr Philippa Whitford
13. 13. Peter Grant
14. 14. Alex Cunningham
15. 15. Mary Kelly Foy
16. 16. Andrew Mitchell
17. 17. Bill Wiggin
18. 18. Kate Osamor
19. 19. Simon Fell
20. 20. Carol Monaghan

Leading charities and campaigning organisations will be busily contacting MPs on this list to ensure they are briefed on various burning issues, now that they have a unique opportunity to put them right.

The House of Commons Library advises: ‘With limited time available for the consideration of PMBs, generally only bills with Government and cross-party support are successful’.

The arcane parliamentary conventions around PMBs also mean that no formal speaking time limits apply, and this often sees Bill being ‘talked out’ or filibustered due to lack of sufficient parliamentary time on a sitting Friday.

Controversially, MPs who do not support a Bill for whatever reason merely need to shout ‘object’ at the appropriate time to halt its progress through parliament. This famously happened to a Bill in the previous session to ban ‘upskirting’ after a major campaign by activist Gina Martin, who was herself targeted in this way at a music festival.

After Conservative MP Sir Christopher Chope blocked the initial PMB, this issue was later taken up by the Government which brought forward its own Bill that came into force in April 2019.

Gina Martin and the Ministry of Justice received the 2019 Cause-Led Campaign award at our own Vuelio Online Influencer Awards for this ‘exceptional’ campaign. The award judges said that: ‘Gina proved her role as a trusted and authentic influencer who used her profile to make positive change happen on an issue that had been damaging to women across the UK.’

As 140 newly elected MPs return to Westminster this week, the Vuelio Political team has been getting to know the new intake for our clients and stakeholders. 

Aside from Brexit, which is clearly going to dominate this session of parliament as the UK formally leaves the EU by 31 January and begins trade negotiations, it is clear from the 19 December Queen’s Speech that domestic policy will also feature much more in the coming months. 

The NHS, and ensuring it is adequately funded going forward, was a major issue of the General Election and this also featured heavily in the Queen’s Speech.  

Vuelio has written profiles for the 17 MPs who have a background in health, including two Conservative MPs who served in the House of Commons previously but were defeated by Labour in 2017: Amanda Solloway and Jason McCartney.  

The NHS legislation set to be debated in this parliament, which was also listed in the Vuelio Queen’s Speech Summary, includes an NHS Funding Bill, the Medicines and Medical Devices Bill and the Health Service Safety Investigations Bill. The Conservative Party election manifesto and subsequent Queen’s Speech also included sections on mental health reforms and social care reform, after the latter issue dominated the previous 2017 general election and was a factor that deprived the then Prime Minister Theresa May of the party’s majority.  

Boris Johnson’s manifesto and Queen’s Speech sought to achieve ‘Cross party consensus on a long-term plan for social care reform’ and as well as promising an additional ‘£1 billion for adult and children’s social care in every year of this Parliament’, the only stipulation listed was that ‘Government will ensure that nobody needing care will be forced to sell their home to pay for it’. 

With such a high number of new MPs elected, the Vuelio Briefing will be useful for public affairs professionals, campaigners and politicos wishing to get up to speed on the new House of Commons, especially those with an interest or background in health. This includes the new Conservative MP for Crewe and Nantwich, Dr Kieran Mullan, who is an NHS A&E doctor and was involved in local campaigns to secure additional funding for Crewe’s Leighton Hospital. The new Labour MP for Enfield North, Feryal Clark, has a local government background in health, as the Cabinet member for health, social care, leisure and parks on Hackney Council. She was also a Deputy Mayor of Hackney and her brief included responsibility for adult social care, older people strategy, health devolution and integrated commissioning and mental health. 

The new Lib Dem MP for Twickenham, Munira Wilson, succeeded the party’s former leader Sir Vince Cable, and she now has the largest majority of the party’s 11 MPs. Her previous role was Corporate Affairs Director for a science and technology company, focused on Brexit and health policy issues, and she has also worked within health and children’s charities. The Briefing also includes newly elected SNP MP Dave Doogan, who held the Health and Social Care brief when he was leader of the opposition on Perth and Kinross Council. 

The Vuelio Briefing on MPs with a background in Education will be published later this week. 

Get in touch with the Vuelio Political Team if you have any question regarding these briefings or if we can help your organisation get to know the 2019 intake of MPs better. 

Vuelio’s Sam Webber highlights how candidates of all parties are facing high levels of abuse in this election campaign and how many are using social media to highlight what his happening on the ground in different constituencies and to call it out. One challenge for the next government through the Online Harms White Paper will be to improve the online environment for users and to ensure it is regulated more effectively.

As votes are cast in today’s General Election, parties and policies aside, one of the more damaging aspects of the campaign has been the abuse directed towards candidates and party activists. This is often intensified by or begins on digital platforms.

Social media has also offered candidates the opportunity to highlight what has been happening on the ground in different constituencies, which might not otherwise be picked up beyond local or regional press. While not exclusively, this abuse seems to be directed more heavily towards female candidates of all parties.

Labour candidate Natalie Fleet, defending the Labour seat of Ashfield, tweeted a photo of her Nottinghamshire campaign HQ with its windows smashed.

Tweeting out a photo of the damaged shop front, she said: ‘This is the reason those that love me didn’t want me to do it. It is hard, yet I can’t stand by & see #Ashfield left behind.’

She spoke to the Guardian about the attack: ‘It’s deliberate, it’s targeted and it’s not very nice; and, unfortunately, in this climate it’s also predictable.’

A Liberal Democrat candidate, Hannah Perkin, standing in Faversham and Mid Kent said last month: ‘I have the police coming to my house tomorrow following personal threats to the safety of myself, my friends and my family. I am standing up for what I believe in. When did we lose the ability to do that? Honestly heartbroken.’

Luke Pollard, the Labour candidate for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport also reported a case of homophobic graffiti on his campaign office to the police. He said: ‘There is no place for hate in our city and I will continue to call it out wherever and whenever I see it… There is no place for hate but with each attack more and more people stand up against it.’

Only this week, the Transport Minister Nusrat Ghani tweeted out a photo of racist hate mail she received and said: ‘Today’s post – so I’m the racist & being told to go back to where I come from?’

While the number of MPs standing down at the 2019 General Election at 74, is lower than the 1997 election where 117 MPs stood down and 2010 when 149 stood down, many have noted the number of MPs and primarily women who have stepped down citing the pressure of serving in the House of Commons since the EU Referendum and indeed citing social media abuse.

Among the 74 people are a significant number of female MPs who have served as cabinet ministers including Nicky Morgan who took the rare step as the serving Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Secretary to announce she would not be contesting the election as a Conservative candidate. Morgan said part of the reason for stepping down included the abuse she received for ‘doing the job of a modern MP’. She added: ‘I think the abuse, because of the platforms, because of how strongly people feel about the current political situation, that has changed enormously in the almost 10 years since I started’.

Justine Greening, Amber Rudd and Dame Caroline Spelman also stood down as well as prominent opposition MPs including Gloria De Piero, Heidi Allen, Labour deputy leader Tom Watson and former Conservative minister and brother of the Prime Minister, Jo Johnson.

As the campaign concludes this week, the National Police Chiefs’ Council told the Press Association 198 reports around candidate safety had been made between November 15 and December 4 and that around half were serious enough to be treated as crimes. The majority of these were allegations of malicious communications online, but there were also reports of criminal damage and harassment.

Vuelio’s recent White Paper, The Politics of Social Media, which was discussed in a fringe meeting at Conservative Conference attended by Nicky Morgan looked at the changing role of social media in British politics. The 2019 campaign has only highlighted the importance of online campaigning even more. The next stages of the Online Harms White Paper, which seeks to improve the online environment for users and tighten up regulation will be a major issue for the incoming Government whatever the result of today’s election.

Sam Webber is External Relations Manager at Vuelio. He is a prospective parliamentary candidate in the general election, standing for the Liberal Democrats in Erith and Thamesmead.

This blogpost is part of a cross-party series on Vuelio’s political blog Point of Order which publishes insight and opinion to help public affairs, policy makers and comms professionals stay ahead of political change and be connected to those who campaign on the issues they care about. The blog has recently published on voter turnout and opinion polling, the immigration system, the environment and tackling the climate emergency. To find out more or contribute, get in touch with Vuelio Politics.

Conservative candidate and most recent Justice Committee Chair Bob Neill says that the UK justice system is ‘as integral a part of our social services as anything else, employing, directly or indirectly, some immensely dedicated, talented and brave people’. He calls for greater investment in our prisons, more money for the legal aid system and a proper strategy for recruiting, retaining and making the best use of magistrates, who deal with around 95% of criminal cases.

For many, the justice system can seem a distant and complex web of solemn juries and impenetrable legalese. Taken together with the fact most of us rarely have any direct contact with it, it can be easy to see why the sector is frequently overlooked and often under-appreciated. However, we do so to the detriment of us all.

Indeed, the justice system underpins everything we do, managing how we deal with those who break the rules and offend; how we try constructively to prevent that, protecting the public from harm and supporting the victims of crime; and how, wherever possible, we attempt to rehabilitate those who have done wrong, giving them the tools they need to forge a second chance for themselves. At the same time, our courts system helps to protect our fundamental rights, provides us with a means of seeking redress when the law is broken, and resolves disputes between individuals and businesses. These are all measures of a civilised society.

It is for those reasons the justice system is as integral a part of our social services as anything else, employing, directly or indirectly, some immensely dedicated, talented and brave people. It needs to be properly resourced and the people working in it better supported.

Against that backdrop, the Justice Committee, which I had the privilege to Chair over the course of the last two Parliaments, has in recent years carried out an ambitious and broad programme of scrutiny on everything from bailiffs and the enforcement of debt to the probation system and the small claims limit.

So, what needs doing?

In short, from a criminal justice standpoint, we need greater investment in our prisons so we can recruit more staff and, importantly, retain experienced officers; reform the prison estate, to ensure it remains fit for purpose; and make education and training opportunities central, providing support to help offenders find employment and housing once released. The recent announcement, included in the Conservative Party Manifesto, to create a prisoner education service focused on work-based training and skills is a very welcome first step.

To those who doubt the need for reform, I would say this: with the cost of reoffending estimated to be £18 billion a year, and recidivism rates remaining stubbornly high, the stark reality is that none of us as taxpayers are receiving value for money. All but the most serious offenders will one day be released from prison. The current status quo, in which not enough support is available to ensure those same people don’t simply revert back to a life of crime once on the outside, is neither economical nor does it represent smart justice.

From a civil justice perspective, we have to make sure our courts are more efficiently run and properly maintained, also putting more money into our legal aid system to ensure access to justice isn’t hindered. One of our main concerns has been an increasingly depleted magistracy. Given these volunteers deal with around 95% of criminal cases and a substantial proportion of non-criminal work, including family law cases, it’s a challenge that needs to be urgently addressed via a proper strategy for recruiting, retaining and making best use of our magistrates, including through advertising campaigns and work-based support schemes to help those who serve.

Whichever party comes out on top on 12th December, these will be the tasks incoming ministers have to grapple with. A good start would be to move forward with a pragmatic, evidence-based approach that seeks consensus across the House of Commons on these vitally important issues.

This is a guest post from Bob Neill, who has been Chair of the Justice Committee since 2015. He is the Conservative candidate for Bromley and Chislehurst.

Former Conservative MEP and environmental campaigner Stanley Johnson writes that despite backing remain in the referendum, he now fully supports his son Boris as Prime Minister, who is seeking to ‘Get Brexit Done’ as long as the UK and EU can continue to work together on world-leading environmental policies.

During the seventies and eighties, I was personally involved, both as an MEP and as a senior official of the European Commission, in drafting environmental legislation on a wide range of issues such as air and water pollution, the disposal of waste, noise and nature protection; measures which have since been introduced and applied on a common basis among EU Member States.

In the run-up to the EU Referendum in June 2016, I co-founded (with Baroness Young of Old Scone) and co-chaired an all-party group called Environmentalists for Europe. We argued that the UK had contributed in important respects to the development of EU environmental policy and had derived much benefit from it.

So, I can’t pretend that the result of the Referendum, with its clear majority for Leave as opposed to Remain (17.4 million against 16.1 million votes), did not come as a shock. It was not what we were hoping for. Since then, however, my personal preference has been clear. The people having spoken with a clear voice, we have to deliver the goods and ‘Get Brexit Done’.

But that doesn’t mean that one-time Remainers like me have forgotten about the environment. Far from it. My concern now is that in leaving the EU, we should not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

As I write, opinion polls suggest that the Conservative Party is on course to achieve a working majority. In that context, the commitments made in the recently-released Conservative Manifesto are obviously relevant to any assessment of ‘the environmental future’.

The climate issue is a case in point. Last Monday, 25 November, the World Meteorological Office Secretary-General Petteri Taalas announced: ‘There is no sign of a slowdown, let alone a decline, in greenhouse gases concentration in the atmosphere despite all the commitments under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

‘We need to translate the commitments into action and increase the level of ambition for the sake of the future welfare of the mankind. It is worth recalling that the last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 was 3-5 million years ago. Back then, the temperature was 2-3°C warmer, sea level was 10-20 meters higher than now.’

The Conservative Manifesto states: ‘The climate emergency means that the challenges we face stretch far beyond our borders. We will lead the global fight against climate change by delivering on our world-leading target of Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.’

It goes on to say: ‘We have doubled International Climate Finance. And we will use our position hosting the UN Climate Change Summit in Glasgow in 2020 to ask our global partners to match our ambition.’

As we look ahead to next year’s key Climate Summit, COP26, in Glasgow (and in the light of the woeful situation highlighted this week by WMO), UK diplomats and negotiators will have to be ready to work overtime. Whereas the eyes of their political masters may be trained on potential trade deals with other key players (Japan, US, Australia, India, China, Canada etc), our diplomats will need to focus on how the UK can continue – once outside the EU – to play a leading role in dealing with the world’s key environmental challenges.

Ironically, rebuilding bridges with the EU (retrieving the baby from the bathwater?) as far as the environment is concerned at least, may well be one of the key priorities. After all, as the Prime Minister is keen to remind us: we are leaving the EU; we are not leaving Europe.