NHS waiting times up 57%

All of the media and press attention aimed at Tony Blair appearing in front of the Iraq inquiry has meant that someone at the Department of Health thought it was a good day to bury bad news.

In a press release titled "STATISTICAL PRESS NOTICE - NHS INPATIENT AND OUTPATIENT WAITING TIMES FIGURES" the Department of Health quietly announced that the number of English patients waiting more than 13 weeks for an outpatient appointment has risen by 18,000 from December 2008 to December 2009 a rise of 45.3%

The release also said that those waiting over 8 weeks had increased by 26,900 from December 2008 to December 2009 an enormouse rise of 57%.

The government have put cutting waiting times at the heart of their NHS reforms and have even promised that there will be a legal protection of your right to see a specialist within a certain timescale. Revisiting my previous post that laws are not for aspirations, I wonder that if we had a law that told you you had a right as an outpatient to be seen within 13 weeks who would be in court, or imprisoned for not achieving that today?

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DNA Database solves only 0.6% of crime

Dizzy Thinks has unearthed some Home Office figures that seem to suggest that the enormous government DNA database is far from a “vital crime fighting tool”.

It turns out that crimes solved where DNA matching to the database was used represent just 0.6 - 0.7% of total recorded crime in the country. It should also be born in mind that these crimes were not solved purely on the basis of DNA, other detection methods were used. To my knowledge the Home Office has yet to release figures for the number of crimes where DNA matching alone has led to the identification of a suspect.

All of this raises the question of the return on investment of the database. The DNA database cost £2.52m to run in 2008-2009 and as I said was involved in solving only 0.6 - 0.7% of all crime reported. The Home office states that the annual cost of a police officer including pensions, NI, overtime allowances etc is £48,000 so the DNA database represents 52.5 police officers. Which would you rather have?

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DNA Database - innocent, but could be guilty later

Inspired by Dizzy Thinks’ piece on the DNA database I dug out something I wrote for the MyConservatives.com Return my DNA campaign:

To me the storage of an innocent person's DNA seems to go against the basic principles of innocent until proven guilty. In fact it introduces a new category of "could be guilty later". No doubt the police already have this category in their heads but by having a database full of such "could be guilty later" people they can quickly move from “could be guilty later” to "must be guilty now" regardless of the facts.

I think one of the biggest challenges for the return my DNA campaign is to overcome apathy from the general public, many of whom’s views are not that different to the police. "Ohh if they’ve been arrested they must be trouble". Or people who say well "If it helps then I don't mind" or the classic "If you've got nothing to hide..." argument.

Part of the issue is that the general public don't see this as something that affects them. In their mind people who are arrested are "bad people" who deserve what they get, they've never been arrested and never will be as far as they're concerned because they are good people. They forget that mistakes are made and that innocent people are often questioned and arrested, and that one day that innocent person could be them.

If we are not careful allowing DNA retention to continue and adding in legislation like detainment without charge, and the Interception Modernisation plan to name just two, we can quickly and easily walk into a world that is very different to the one we are in today.

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Inheritance tax, it's not about now but maybe later

Whilst talking on the Today programme this morning, Harriet Harman brought up Labour’s old favourite line that a Tory government plans to  “abolish inheritance tax”, something which the interviewer pointed out is not an active policy, which of course made her drop back to the old line that they are cutting inheritance tax just  for the wealthiest families in the country.

Inheritance tax is an ideological outcome of old Labour, inheritance tax was introduced to act as a wealth redistribution method to separate old money from their money. Labour seem determined that the idea of an inheritance tax cut is only a vote winner for the rich, however this is where ideology gets in the way of winning votes.

Inheritance tax is ultimately a tax on aspirations, even if an individual’s estate is not even close to the threshold at present, everyone, regardless of how little they have, wants to think that one day it might be or that their children’s estate will be. Our obsession with house prices continually climbing and our homes being our primary asset is one of the primary causes of this. Ultimately everyone wants to think that one day they’ll reach that threshold. What inheritance tax says is that if you work really hard to provide something for your children when you are gone then it’s a waste, it has the potential to put a cap on the economy by saying no individual should create a level of wealth past the inheritance tax threshold.

Bashing the Conservatives on inheritance tax only appeals to Labour’s ideological base, and actually puts of those individuals who are upwardly mobile and may have been Labour supporters in the past. The danger is that is lumps groups together, and just like we’re seeing in today’s report into inequalities in britain traditionally less well off groups are no longer homogenous.

I’ve just started watching the West Wing again and inheritance tax reminds me of an episode that covered inheritance tax and tax rises for the rich. The Black caucus and NAACP are in the White House to discuss tax rises with Toby and Josh. Their position surprises Josh who expects them to be for a tax rise for the richest. He can’t understand why this traditionally less well off group would be against that is until Toby points out that the first generation of Black millionaires are about to retire and there’s only going to be more of them to come.

This is a message Labour needs to remember when they bash inheritance tax cuts, inheritance tax isn’t about who it affects now, but who it might affect in the future.

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What's a 0.1% increase - £6.79 per person

So we've got economic growth of 0.1% this quarter which means that GDP is 0.1% up this quarter over the last so what does that mean in terms of real increase.

I can only find our GDP in dollars (thanks ONS) so lets take the per capita figure that is the GDP per person in the UK. Using the 2008 estimates this is $43,785 which in today's exchange rates is £27,169.53 that is an annual figure so lets change that to a quarterly figure by dividing by four

GDP per capita per quarter = £6,792.38

and we've seen a 0.1% increase in that figure which equates to a per capita increase of, wait for it £6.79

Now obviously these figures aren't particularly accurate as they're 08 figures and GDP has fallen significantly since then (by 3.2% in fact) but they give you a general idea about how slowly we're coming out of this recession.

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We're out of the recession - Kind of

The ONS have released their prelimary GDP figures showing that GDP in the last quarter was up by 0.1%, mainly according to them due to increased output in distribution, hotels, restaurants and other services. In total output of the service industries increased by 0.1% and production industries by 0.1%, implying GDP decreases in other areas.

In all GDP on the year decreased by 3.2% between 2008 Q4 and 2009Q4.

Update: Further reading of the ONS release says that there were small decreases in business services and finance whilst construction, transport, storage and communication were flat over the quarter. Government and other services increase by 0.2%, mainly due to health spending.

Perhaps most worrying for Gordon Brown is that this is only an estimate based on 40% of data. The last estimates were I seem to recall revised down from 0.2% contraction to a 0.4% contraction, if we saw the same kind of revision then we'd actually still be in a recession.

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End of the Recession?

All the media outlets are reporting that the ONS is expected to tell us that we are out of the recession this quarter. Of course they were expected to tell us that at the end of last quarter which left a lot of bloggers, commentors nad newspaper editors looking quite red faced when the real stat of a 0.2% contraction came through.

Will that happen today? With Christmas included in the figures I doubt it, but just like with unemployment figures, Christmas is a temporary blip, and with all the sales having happened in December and January and consumers tightening their belts in January (not to mention tax being due for the self employed) are we likely to double dip?

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