Alan Johnson should have stuck to his guns

Alan Johnson was right to have his doubts about a graduate tax, in today's Times (£), and wrong to have changed his minds. While he is also right to argue against the removal of teaching grants and the moves towards a £9000 ceiling, he should not have allowed himself to be dissuaded from arguing for a fairer version of the Browne proposals, drawing on his own work as higher education minister.

By contrast, there is a great piece in today's Guardian by Peter Wilby, who has long recognised the egalitarian case for fees and rightly argues that the focus of Labour's opposition should be the abolition of EMAs rather than changes to fees:

Once they look coolly at the economics, 18-year-olds make better judgments than their hysterical, ill-informed elders. To describe students as facing a lifelong "burden" of "crippling" debt is simply bizarre, particularly for a Labour leader who wants to replace the debt with a graduate tax that the rich would avoid as smartly as they avoid all other taxes.....Most bizarre of all is the argument that, because graduates of earlier generations benefited from free university education, they should not deny it to others. Should those who went to grammar school never argue for comprehensives, and those who inherited wealth never support higher estate duties? Should those who benefited from slavery not have supported abolition?.....Miliband should focus on the proposal to cut education maintenance grants, which rightly exercises young protesters more than fees. Introduced by Labour and targeted at poorer families, the grants played a vital role in getting more disadvantaged young people to university. It was at 16, not 18, that working-class dropping out from education always occurred. University fees do not deter, but a funding gap during A-level study does.

A good start in the shadow cabinet

Ed Miliband has chosen wisely in making Alan Johnson (left) his Shadow Chancellor, rather than Ed Balls or even Yvette Cooper, whatever her undoubted talents. She is an interesting choice as shadow foreign secretary, and her big success in the PLP vote deserved such a reward. Johnson has a sounder understanding of how to take on George Osborne and the coalition, and his humour should do wonders to prick Osborne's pompous sense of his own self-importance. Ed Balls has the chance to provide the Tories with the opposition they deserve on crime and justice policy, provided he is ready to reflect the views of ordinary Labour voters, and overcomes his own instinctive opposition to the sort of measures that have helped reduce antisocial behaviour and crime while Labour was in government. With Ed Miliband's loyal lieutenant Sadiq Khan shadowing Ken Clarke at Justice, this may be more difficult.

Andy Burnham's Blairite instincts should return some sanity to the party's schools policy, and he needs quickly to reclaim academies as a Labour success story, while ensuring that he develops a distinctive but constructive critique of the Tories' version. At health, John Healey needs to regain the initiative in challenging the destructive reorganisation of the NHS and reminding voters at every turn how the Tories ditched A&E and waiting time targets, as the consequences of Andrew Lansley's madness come home to roost. Jim Murphy is a good pick at defence, and Caroline Flint needs to find the right riposte to Eric Pickles at communities. By picking John Denham to shadow Vince Cable, Ed Miliband is ensuring that his mistaken graduate tax plans are advanced. Douglas Alexander is a good pick on work and pensions, and should be able to provide the constructive positioning needed on the issue. Interesting that he also wisely ignored the PLP, by giving Shaun Woodward Northern Ireland and Peter Hain Wales, pushing his shadow cabinet up to a hefty 27 places. Liam Byrne is a bit wasted shadowing the cabinet office unless he is explicitly taking on Nick Clegg (which Harriet Harman will do as deputy leader).

But there are big promotions - and a real test - for Mary Creagh shadowing DEFRA and Meg Hillier taking on Chris Huhne at environment. With Harriet Harman also shadowing International Development, Patricia Scotland as shadow Attorney General, Rosie Winterton as chief whip, Angela Eagle as shadow chief secretary, sister Maria at Transport, Ann McKechin covering Scotland and Tessa Jowell keeping her cherished Olympics role, Ed Miliband now has a record 12 women in his shadow cabinet, a vindication for Harman's efforts to achieve greater equality. The new shadow cabinet has many new faces. Now their challenge is to get the response to the Spending Review right. With AJ, there is a better chance that they will do so.

Making Britain educationally uncompetitive?

There is always a tension between the desire to restrict immigration and the economic imperative to recruit more international students to study in the UK. Yesterday's announcement by Alan Johnson of his plans to introduce further restrictions on overseas students, with shrieks of 'not enough' from his Conservative shadow, is in severe danger of reducing our competitiveness in a market where Britain is already fighting to retain market share.

To be fair, much of what Johnson proposed is sensible enough. A clampdown on those with poor English or those bringing dependents in for short courses seems unarguable. But, the severe tightening in student working hours is already being misreported in the Indian press (it applies apparently only to sub-degree courses though this was not made clear yesterday) and will cause confusion in the international education market.

A British Council report last year showed that with over half a million overseas students, the UK rivals the US as a top international student destination. Their numbers, which have grown as a result of major recruitment drives, include 55,000 Chinese students and 35,000 Indian students. Those students who are not from within the EU must pay full fees, and the proportion of postgraduates from overseas at 36% is much higher than the 13% of undergraduates who are from abroad. Both groups make a huge contribution to the UK economy and our innovation and science bases and are worth at least £5.5 billion to our economy.

Now, as students will find that they are allowed to work up to 20 hours a week in the USA and Australia, those countries could gain an additional competitive edge, particularly on sub-degree courses that lead directly on to degree courses. This decision could cost our economy dear at a time when universities and colleges are already facing cutbacks. Ministers need to think again about the messages they are sending - and their impact on a growing export market.

Alan Johnson was right to sack Prof Nutt

It is a long time since I have seen Alan Johnson so angry as he was with Adam Boulton on Sky News this morning, defending his decision to sack Professor David Nutt from his position as chief drugs adviser. But he was absolutely right to do so. Professor Nutt seems surprised that the Home Secretary should take exception to his adviser publicly slagging off the government, and breezily declaring ecstasy to be less problematic than horseriding. Such spurious comparisons may have some statistical merit - for example, in preparing a new edition of Freakonomics - but they do little to advertise the seriousness of someone charged with providing advice on a subject of huge concern to millions of families across Britain.

Johnson, as the elected politician, is charged with making decisions, drawing on scientific advice but also on society's expectations. It is a calculation that seems wholly to have eluded Prof Nutt. Look by contrast at the excellent chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson, to see someone who has an understanding of the real world as well as huge skills in his specialist field. That Prof Nutt seemed so unfamiliar with that world in which a Home Secretary or Prime Minister has to operate may qualify him for a place in the ivory towers of academia. But it made him ill-suited to being a government adviser.

MONDAY 1.30pm UPDATE: Those who are defending Prof Nutt seem to suffer from two delusions. The first is that the Professor was prevented from giving advice based on his view of the evidence in public. He was not. He was sacked for actively campaigning against government policy. The second is that his view of the dangers of cannabis and ecstasy is a scientific truth, accepted by the entire scientific community. In that light, the work of Prof Robin Murray, which has shown the harmful impact of continued cannabis use on people's mental health is particularly illuminating. Indeed, if Prof Murray who also gave a fascinating and worrying interview on the World at One today is right, it would seem that some of the advice given on this subject by this 'expert' committee was not only wrong, but dangerously so.

This post has been picked up by John Rentoul and Hopi Sen.

A sustainable reshuffle?

The big challenge of the reshuffle is its sustainability. It is certainly better for keeping Alastair Darling at the Treasury and promoting Alan Johnson to the Home Office. I am sceptical of the Sir Alan Sugar promotion, and fear it may be as lasting as that of Digby Jones, though it brings star quality to the line-up.

But it is weakened by keeping Ed Balls at schools - where the Department has drifted under his leadership with its attempts to cover the gamut of children's policy at the expense of schools - and by the hugely important loss of some excellent ministers including James Purnell, John Hutton and Beverley Hughes (the children's minister).

The fact that several of those identified as Blairites retain positions of power helps, with Andy Burnham promoted to health. But I do wonder whether Barry Sheerman was not right in offering Gordon Brown a way settling the leadership question once and for all. Without a vote of confidence from his MPs, the doubts may simply remain.

A reshuffle is not enough of itself. The Government now needs to show vision, strategy and a sense of purpose over the next ten months. This is important not just on the economy and democratic reform, but across the public services. If Ed Balls is staying at schools, he needs to stop allowing the Tories to wrap themselves in the mantle of Labour academies. Andy Burnham has some genuine dividing lines with the Tories on health, and it is vital that Yvette Cooper doesn't allow the excellent work of James Purnell at work and pensions to drift. There must also be renewed vigour from Alan Johnson at the Home Office on crime and policing. There must also be some candour on public expenditure.

Most ministers have decided to stick with Gordon Brown, and it is highly unlikely that there will be any change at the top between now and the general election. Every minister has a clear duty to show why it matters that Labour is in power - and what the tough decisions are that need to be made. That is their challenge for the months ahead. The future of the Labour Party is in their hands.

A version of this appears on the Progress website.

Johnson is right on PR

Alan Johnson's article in today's Times rightly makes the case for the sort of fundamental political reform casually dismissed with typical selflessness by David Cameron as an 'irrelevance'. The AV-plus system recommended by the Jenkins commission would give voters a much greater connection with their MPs - as they must amass 50 per cent of the constituency votes after transfers - and the chance to register a protest vote whilst also backing a potential governing party.

It is an elegant solution to the crisis facing our democracy and one which deserves the support of Gordon Brown. That Alan Johnson, whose tenure at health has been an unsung success, may see this as part of his post-election bid for the leadership makes it no less worthy. Labour has been playing second fiddle to Cameron's breathtakingly self-interested use of the expenses crisis for weeks now. This is the sort of measure that could both restore the party's reformist credentials - and put it back on the front foot in the political debate.

A good time to bury Tory U-turns

With the news dominated by moats and house-flipping, not to mention David Cameron's selfless spin on the subject, the Tories have been quietly performing a big policy U-turn. Regular readers of this blog will know my views about BMA spokesman Andrew Lansley, who has an occasional sideline as Cameron's health secretary in waiting. While Labour - with Alan Johnson - has been pursuing a resolutely patient-focused health agenda, Lansley has shown as much disdain for patients as the haughtiest consultant.

So, it is a pleasant surprise to see the Tories finally admitting that they got it wrong over polyclinics, Labour's plans to improve patient services by locating a range of GPs and specialists under one roof. Needless to say it has been left to an underling, Mark Simmonds, to admit that when Lansley and his protector Cameron claimed a year ago that one in five surgeries would close as a result of the new centres opening, they were talking utter rubbish.

Perhaps the perceptive Mr Simmonds could turn his attention to his bosses' belief that patients' interests would be well served by scrapping maximum waiting times and bringing back eighties-style waiting lists?

This post has been picked up by John Rentoul and Liberal Conspiracy.

Alan Johnson hits the right target

While Harriet Harman appears to have been engaged in bizarre manoeuvres over the leadership of the Labour Party - I have little to add to Luke Akehurst's take on the subject - Alan Johnson has been showing what the chair and deputy leader of the Party should be doing.

Johnson is an effective health secretary - when was the last NHS 'crisis'? - presiding over a credible reform programme that puts patients first, unlike the the Tories' BMA-dictated approach. And today, he offers just the sort of critique of Cameron on the public services that the party chairman should be providing, were she not so distracted.

In today's Guardian, Johnson writes rightly that Cameron has thought little about the delivery of his reforms:

It has been interesting to watch David Cameron try to hug us close on public services. I've been impressed with his ability not to sound Tory.....On schools and hospitals, he seems to understand what the public want to hear....But while his language is nearly pitch-perfect, his party's policies still strike an entirely different note.....

In my own area, health, shadow minister Andrew Lansley has backed him away from Labour's key reforms. So despite the conciliatory rhetoric, Cameron has now said he would dismantle minimum standards such as the two-week maximum wait to see a cancer specialist or a wait of no more than four hours in A&E. That makes no sense to me nor, I suspect, the patients who will suffer......

So while I applaud a great deal of the sentiment in what Cameron says, it is clear he has spent far more time thinking about careful delivery of speeches than fair delivery of public services. I've pushed through some difficult reforms myself, for example on higher education - a policy Cameron once opposed but now supports - and learned that real policy change requires a lot more than just a few vague sentiments.

Spot on. Let's hope there's more where that came from.

The real reformers

Irwin Stelzer, the American commentator who is close to Rupert Murdoch, has a fascinating piece in this morning's Daily Telegraph. Stelzer has always been fairly matey with Gordon Brown, but has blown hot and cold of late, and retains his scepticism in this piece about his tax policy. However, his judgment that the welfare and health reforms being introduced by James Purnell and Alan Johnson are radical will send shivers down Conservative spines, not least because they stand in such marked contrast to David Cameron's approach of closing down serious discussion on both issues.

Stelzer also notes that Ed Balls has raised the rhetoric against 'excuses' in education, though it is actually through continuing with academies and forcing change on schools that gain below-par GCSEs that the children's secretary is making a real difference. Unlike Johnson and Purnell, Balls has in Michael Gove a rare Tory opponent, whose understanding of his brief and reforming instincts (even if one doesn't always agree with his solutions) stand in marked contrast to the vacuous Theresa May at welfare and the BMA lobbyist Andrew Lansley at health.

With the recession, it would be tempting for Gordon Brown to ignore the importance of reform in these areas. But if the recovery is to be successful, we need to improve access to health and patients' choices, we need to get long term unemployed people back to work and we need better school results. After some initial suggestions that he was backtracking on the agenda initiated by Tony Blair, there are many encouraging signs that the Prime Minister is keen to pursue a reform agenda. He must continue to find the time to devote to it in these difficult economic times.

The Sunday Papers

"Well I got nothing against the press. They wouldn't print it if it wasn't true"

Joe Jackson's classic song Sunday Papers parodied the influence of the Sunday tabloids on British lives. At least in 1979, the Sunday papers provided a reasonable mix of investigative journalism, must-read reflection, arts and travel. But with vastly improved Saturday papers, much of this mix is better provided there. Now the Sunday papers may be larger, but they seem to have become a sorry melee of self-parody and cliche, as predictable in their output as a Eurovision song contest vote. Apart from a handful of commentators (Matthew D'Ancona and John Rentoul stand out) they rarely provide much that could be called 'must read' material in their news pages. Instead, if the story doesn't stand up, it must be made up.

And so we had "Miliband is ready to save New Labour" in the Sunday Times, a story based not on evidence but on wishful thinking; and the equally implausible "Labour chiefs tell Brown: appoint a leader in waiting" in the Observer. My involvement with the media for many years put me off looking forward to the Sunday papers big time: I quickly learnt how to distinguish between stories that had a modicum of truth and those that were simply put together to pad out the headline. None of this is to deny that Labour is in deep trouble. But the sane and sensible performance of Alan Johnson on the Marr programme this morning is both a better guide to cabinet opinion and of what the party needs to do over the next two years than the acres of newsprint that could have been written to formula last Monday.

Johnson 1, BMA 0

The BMA have capitulated in the row about GPs spending a bit more time with their patients. A clear victory for Alan Johnson.

Johnson is right to take on the BMA

A good example of where the government is on the right tack is Alan Johnson's decision to bypass the country's most self-interested trade union, the British Medical Association, in order to persuade GPs' surgeries to open a little longer. The BMA has changed little from the arrogance that opposed the creation of the NHS. Johnson's plan is long overdue; if it didn't need a government push, the BMA should explain why it isn't already happening - after all GPs got a huge pay increase in return for providing better patient services - rather than telling absurd lies about the purpose of polyclinics or improved minor injuries facilities.
UPDATE: Sam Coates has a reminder of just how arrogant the BMA can sound.

AJ fightback is good for democracy

Good to see Alan Johnson robustly rebutting the absurdly overblown allegations which the BBC thinks are the most important news story of the day. Most politicians are not crooks or deliberately deceptive. But the idea that every donation is dodgy, every donor devious and every politician bent is destroying our democracy. Registering donations late on one register while you have already done so on another is a transgression, not a hanging offence, since there is hardly a deliberate attempt to deceive; not knowing that somebody asked their brother (who is both on the electoral register and a party member) to donate a few thousand pounds on your behalf is not illegal at all. It is about time we got a sense of proportion about all this. Unless we do, as I have argued here before, every party - and our democratic system - will be the losers.

Fruits for labour

Alan Johnson's plan to give pregnant women cash to buy fruit and vegetables makes sense from a nutritional point of view. And I can see why it is right not to load it down with bureaucracy by creating, for example, more tax credits. But couldn't they provide £100 worth of fruit and veg vouchers - or a debit card - that would be accepted at any supermarket or fruit and veg store instead? And couldn't it then be rather better targeted?