Vince Cable quite rightly dismisses Beecroft proposals to make it easier to fire workers

What a crass statement to make by Adrian Beecroft, the Conservative donor and venture capitalist who advised No 10 on changes to Britain’s employments law, when he said that Vince Cable is a “Socialist who found a home in the Lib Dems, so he’s one of the Left”. He also went on to say that he “appears to do very little to support business”. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18170333

You can tell when the Liberal Democrats are being effective in Government and acting as a sensible restraining force on some of the instinctive Tory excesses when they resort to personal attacks on our ministers.

Beecroft’s proposals are about making it easier for firms to sack under-performing staff, ending the mandatory 90-day consultation period for considering redundancy programmes in order to avoid so-called red-tape and to be able to lay off people who were no longer needed.

He is also suggesting a cap on loss-of-earnings compensation for employees who make successful discriminatory dismissal claims, and a reform of the rights that workers are allowed to “carry” to new employers when their companies are the subject of a takeover.  An additional alarming proposal argues for scrapping the provisions in the Equality Act which make employers liable for claims from employees for “third-party harassment”, such as customers making “sexist” comments to staff in a restaurant.  This provision was designed to only kick in when employers have categorically failed to put into place necessary measures to offer staff sufficient protection against such verbal and physical abuse. He also suggests that responsibility for checking foreign workers’ eligibility to work in the UK should shift from employers to the Border Agency or the Home Office.

Beecroft’s remarks were driven by Vince Cable’s condemnation earlier in the week in which he stated that such recommendations were nonsense.  The Secretary of State told the BBC “Britain has already got a very flexible, cooperative labour force. We don’t need to scare the wits out of workers with threats to dismiss them. It’s completely the wrong approach.”

This was backed up by Nick Clegg’s remarks that “The notion that you create jobs by spreading industrial scale insecurity and fear in the jobs market is one which, so far, is not supported by any evidence whatsoever.”

The fact of the matter is that these rights and industrial policies for workforce management have been developed over many years of hard work and negotiation between campaigning bodies,trade unions, professional associations and supported by European legislation.

We cannot afford to engage in knee jerk reactions to the current economic situation by creating an environment of fear within a UK workforce which is already learning to survive under some very difficult and insecure circumstances.

The notion that you can make a workforce more positive, productive and competitive through instilling fear and insecurity is frankly absurd!

This could be misinterpreted as an open ended way of getting rid of anybody who falls out with management.  God forbid if you happen to develop a long term illness.  What next? Would it become possible for firms to sack people and re-employ them on lower wages and worse conditions?  Performance and higher productivity comes from investment, good business management and leadership, by valuing staff and creating a strong, secure and fulfilling social contract and not by treating them as disposable items.

Vince does it again! More transparency over fat-cat pay

Business Secretary Vince Cable has called for companies to end the secrecy surrounding remuneration consultants

After the commitment in the Queens Speech to end the link between casino and high street banking, and the after the biggest shareholder revolt against excessive executive pay deals in living memory instigated by the Business Secretary’s consultation programme, Vince Cable is now demanding more transparency from companies over the use of secretive remuneration consultants who are blamed for encouraging fat-cat pay.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-2143458/Cable-seeks-end-secrecy-sets-executive-pay.html

Vince Cable has questioned the role of remuneration consultants who advise companies on setting boardroom remuneration and is pushing for greater scrutiny. There is currently a great deal of secrecy surrounding remuneration consultants.

‘We will be asking companies to disclose more information about their use of remuneration consultants, including who they are, how they are recruited, what they are paid and how the relationship is managed,’ said the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

It is a little known fact that the Remuneration consultants who regularly advise boards on how to set pay are not subject to appointment by a shareholder vote, nor are companies obliged to reveal their fees.

Vince Cable’s dogged programme of progressive reform of the banking sector and fat cat pay is relentless despite the resistance of right wing tories, right wing media and big business interests. It’s no wonder that he didn’t fall for the seductive siren calls from News International whilst both the Labour and Conservative leadership simply caved in.

 EVENT : Dinner with Vince Cable in Nottingham

Nottingham City Liberal Democrats are proud to be welcoming to the region the Rt. Hon. Vince Cable, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and MP for Twickenham

We are holding a dinner event at The Atrium, Hucknall Road, Nottingham, NG5 1QZ on Thursday 31st May 2012 at 6.30 pm

Please join us in a three-course dinner with our well respected colleague at this excellent community venue.  To book please click on the link below.

The price for members of the Liberal Democrats and their guests is £30 each (plus booking fee)

If you wish to pay be cheque please click the “show other payment options” on the events website.

http://nottmcitylibdemevents.eventbrite.com

Please book early to avoid disappointment as there are a specific amount of seats available

I look forward to seeing you there.

Issan Ghazni

Chair, Nottingham City Liberal Democrats

Stop racialising the Rochdale child grooming crimes

Continuing to focus on race and ethnicity is fanning the flames of far right recruitment and hatred while the real underlying issues are about class, weakness, vulnerability and a desperate void in community leadership.

Media reporting of the Rochdale “sex grooming trial” and the brutal exploitation of vulnerable young teenage girls raises many troubling questions, and has so far concentrated largely on the fact that the men were of Pakistani background while all 47 victims, were from white and working class backgrounds.

However, ‘Racialising’ the crime over claims about Muslim men grooming white girls tends to hide legitimate worries about a system that fails victims of abuse.  It is important that an entire community should not be tarred with the same brush; in 2009, eight white men were found guilty in Scotland of a range of criminal charges relating to child abuse.  The whole community was never stereotyped or blamed for the crimes of the few.

Focusing on the race element of this situation ensured that the extreme right had a field day, nearly causing the case to collapse when BNP leader Nick Griffin tweeted the news regarding the conviction of the defendants before the actual reporting in court.  In response, some of the defendants are now accusing the judge and jury of racial prejudice. This is a false argument on both sides.

We must not forget that this is part of a wider picture of abuse which is not unique to one community.  Co-chair of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, Marai Larasi has argued: “An excessive focus on some cases of sexual exploitation with a primary focus on ethnicity rather than the exploitation itself is misleading and fuels racist attitudes which ultimately won’t help women and girls.

Larasi goes on to state that there may well be “issues of ethnicity” but only with regard to recognising and dealing with some aspects of predatory behaviour. Evidence exists within some communities of people, places and institutions across all ethnicities, where strong male bonds can ultimately lead to a culture of silence – we can take the priesthood as another example and not just focus our anger at a criminal minority within UK based Pakistani society.

True, there most certainly is a higher incidence of on-street grooming convictions among some “Asian” men acting in groups. However, there is also strong evidence to suggest that most sexual offences are carried out by white men acting alone, according to the CPS

Agencies that work with victims of sexual violence including the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) – believe that we really ought to challenging stereotypes and increase awareness about such abuse. As such, our focus for a remedial response should be based on the fact that vulnerable young people from poor and chaotic backgrounds are being targeted. These are the sort of children who are easy to identify, target and exploit for the sexual gratification of criminal groups of men.

The person responsible for bringing the perpetrators to trial is newly appointed Chief Crown Prosecutor Nazir Afzal, who himself is of Pakistani origin, openly agreed that Asian men are disproportionately responsible for on-street grooming. But he also argues that in most cases of sexual assault, including ‘Rochdale’, men prey on girls because “they were perceived to be unwanted, unloved, they were on the streets late and nobody seemed to care”.

His argument compounds the fact that, as with the majority of rape or sexual assault cases, it is the powerful preying on the weak rather than for the colour of their skin

At the same time we must not shy away from being severely critical of the abject failure of community leadership within many Pakistani communities in the UK. I agree wholeheartedly with Mohammed Shafiq, Chief Executive of the Rochdale-based Ramadhan Foundation, when reported in the Times, how religious elders and councillors in his own community have shrugged their shoulders at child-sex grooming by young men, fully aware that it is illegal.  That they at times are inclined to keep silent rather than challenge and expose criminal behaviour, and sometimes inclined to blame wider British society for the over-sexualisation of the young.  They have shamefully failed to take responsibility for challenging the sexual exploitation of young girls happening in their midst.  A grass roots strategy for education and prevention urgently needs to be undertaken in such communities.

These victims have not been preyed upon because they are white, but because they are perceived as unprotected, impoverished, weak and vulnerable – the same characteristics exhibited as most victims of predatory sexual violence. They were targeted because they were in that situation and they were there. It wasn’t their race which defined the perpetrators of this barbaric act of criminality, it was their treatment of women – we should be clear that under certain conditions, there is no community where women and girls are not vulnerable to sexual attack and exploitation.

We must aim to stop the spread of child sex grooming wherever it occurs in a firm and objective manner. Community and civil society groups, youth centres, religious institutions along with relevant statutory agencies, including the police, children’s services and the third sector must come together to tackle this holistically.

We cannot allow politicians and the media to continue to vilify whole communities; to continue to hand over ammunition to far right groups like the BNP and the EDL, who in their simple language of hate, blame Muslims for almost every bad thing that happens in Britain.

Nottingham says ‘no’ to directly-elected mayor

Voters in Nottingham are beginning to wake up to the realisation that they have just managed to avoid removing powers from democratically elected local councillors in order to put them somewhat precariously into the hands of a single person in the form of an American style elected mayor. They have, thank goodness, decided in favour of the sensible option.

Results from the referendum held on May 3rd showed 57.5% were against having an elected mayor, while 42.5% supported the idea. The result means that the city will stick with the existing system of having a leader voted for by fellow councillors who themselves are directly elected by local people.

We fought a hard and principled campaign not led by our worries over losing control, as did Labour, but based on truths and a desire to preserve democratic accountability, maintain scrutiny and ensure transparency…all of which were the key inverse arguments being used by the Yes campaign against the current Labour run Council. Of course there are problems with Labour run Nottingham City Council, but these problems have arisen because Labour has too much control and the opposition is weak. Having an elected mayor under the proposed model would certainly not have fixed that.

Labour for their part, fought a rolling negative campaign across the city, dubbing a directly elected mayor a “£1 million extra mayor”. That’s how much they claimed it would have cost over four years, taking into account two elections, extra council staff and a mayor’s salary. We are on record in the Nottingham Evening Post as having challenged this assertion as a red-herring – Labour should have been campaigning on matters of democracy and principle rather than on the fears of local people.

Labour was also criticised by members of the Asian community in the city for distributing leaflets that claimed the “racist” BNP or English Defence League could win a mayoral election in Nottingham.

We say that just because the BNP and English Defence League support the Yes campaign – does not make it any more likely that you will end up with a racist mayor. The BNP have never done well in Nottingham, and the second preference vote would mean that it is highly unlikely that an extreme party is elected. Again, Labour played on the fears of ordinary people and not to their higher sense of a desire for democracy and accountability.

What the Yes campaign has exposed, however, is that 43% of the people who voted on Thursday were dissatisfied with the way in which the Labour Party runs the Council. That means that there is a deep well of disaffection in the City – there are clearly many people out there who are not happy with the current system or the Labour leadership. There is definitely a lot of anger out there.

Unless the Labour run Council accepts that it’s autocratic and arrogant style of managing the City, with its inability to shake off public perceptions and associations with the future jobs fund debacle and the housing mis-allocation claims, is indeed the cause of this dissatisfaction, then we may see this matter revisited by the Yes campaign again in the not too distant future.

Baroness Shirley Williams pays a visit to the East Midlands

Baroness Williams of Crosby very kindly paid a visit to Nottingham to speak to activists and guest from the East Midlands region.  This part is our Chairs, Issan Ghazni, introduction at the event.

 

This part is the Baroness’ speech about a range of issues of the day.

 

We were grateful for Baroness Williams taking time out of her busy schedule to visit us in Nottingham.

A selection of pictures from the event can be found at the following link.

Shirley Williams lecture pictures.

 

 

 

Elected Mayor Referendum Debate in Nottingham 1st May 2012

The Nottingham Post organised a debate about the Mayoral referendum at the Nottingham Playhouse on the 1st May 2012.

The panel consisted of representatives from the Yes and No campaigns within the city.

I was invited along to put our case for the No campaign.

About 200 members of the public attended the event with vigorous debate from both sides and a question and answer session was also incorporated.

Nottingham Post article on the debate can be found at this link.

The result of the referendum for an elected mayor in Nottingham was announced at approximately 1.20am on the 4th May.

Turnout was low at 23.9%

The result of the referendum was as follows;

To keep the current system with a Leader     – 28,320 (57.5%)

To change to a directly elected mayor     – 20,943 (42.5%)