public services
Councils Could be Paying £530 Million a Year to House Vulnerable Children in Unsafe Homes
Local authorities could be paying more than £530 million a year to place vulnerable children in unsafe homes, including those that have failed to stop child sexual exploitation.
A Byline Times investigation found that a quarter of the UK’s worst children’s homes run by companies are now owned by private equity or serial investors, including the Qatari Government. They include homes found with “blood and faeces” smeared on the walls and those that have illegally used restraints.
Former Children's Commissioner Anne Longfield branded the figure "extraordinary" and told Byline Times that the system in place to care for the UK's most vulnerable children is “completely dysfunctional" and "broken".
Councils have allowed problematic homes to continue operating by handing over taxpayers’ money.
Secure homes for vulnerable children have historically been run by local councils, but an increase in demand – as well as funding cuts – means that local authorities increasingly rely on private companies.
The number of privately-owned homes has increased by 21% since 2021.
According to Ofsted, 85% of facilities are now run by profit-making companies. Almost half are run by chains, each with 10 or more separate children’s homes, and many are owned by private equity firms – including eight of the UK’s 10 biggest.
Ofsted told Byline Times that, under current legislation, it has "no powers in relation to large providers" and can only report on "individual homes, rather than larger children's home groups or owners".
Analysis by Byline Times of more than 3,000 individual Ofsted reports reveals that 588, or 19.6%, were branded as “inadequate” or “requires improvement” at their last full inspection.
Of these, 109 were run by private equity firms or serial investors.
A media report on children's homes last July suggested that providers are paid at least £200,000 a year for each youngster. Based on the national total of 13,528 children’s home places, this newspaper calculated that the average taxpayer cost for funding 2,651 failing homes is around £530 million a year – or £1.4 million daily. More than £1.1 million of that estimated daily cost would be paid to private providers.
While noting that the figures were alarming, Longfield told Byline Times that they are likely to be even higher because the £200,000 per child figure has increased, and could be “driving councils to bankruptcy, or adding to a lot of financial pressures they’re under”.
Another concern, Longfield added, was that private equity-owned chains are not often local so children are “sent far away from their support networks”.
“Some children have said to us in the past 'we actually don't know where we are on a map'," Longfield said. "And 'we're so used to being moved, we don't even unpack our bags'.
“We’re letting these investment companies get away with providing really poor quality responses to really vulnerable children while they make an eye-watering amount of money. “It’s just a completely dysfunctional, broken approach to providing specialist care for our most vulnerable children.”
The Ofsted reports on failing homes paint a disturbing picture, and tracing the ownership of the homes is complex, with huge chains of shell companies existing between the companies running them and their owners, with some subsidiaries based in tax havens such as Jersey and others mentioned in the Paradise Papers.
One of the chains analysed – the Senad Group – was owned by the Qatar Investment Authority, the global investment arm of the Gulf autocracy’s Government.
Hundreds of children’s homes have been shuttered in the past five years – many after facing enforcement action or receiving scathing Ofsted inspections.
At one private-equity owned home, inspectors found “blood and faeces smeared in the bedroom and the en-suite bathroom”, broken toilets and one room that “smelled strongly of urine”, while a lack of proper safeguarding from staff led to an increase in children “going missing, allegations of inappropriate sexualised behaviours and heightened behaviours which necessitate restraint”. Despite the findings, most of the homes remained open.
Children were “physically assaulted and threatened” by other children without staff support and were repeatedly denied food and “left hungry” by staff, another report noted.
At another home, Ofsted identified that staff , including duty managers, had subjected children to “the inappropriate use of physical restraint and single separation” – the term for isolating and locking children in rooms – when the “legal criteria” for doing so had not been met.
Inspectors at an ‘inadequate’ home in Warrington previously found that its residents were being sexually exploited by men in the local community but nothing was done by staff to support them.
A Department for Education spokesperson told Byline Times that “we recognise some of the concerns associated with profiteering, particularly with regard to large providers with complex, and sometimes opaque, ownership structures”.
The spokesperson added the department is “working with Ofsted and the sector” to establish a new oversight regime that would increase transparency on “ownership, debt structures and profit making across both independent fostering agencies and residential children’s homes”.
"Our focus remains on ensuring our most vulnerable children are receiving the excellent care and education that they deserve,” they added.
Broken Promises on Fixing Social Care Laid Bare
Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak's promises to fix the social care crisis have fallen short – with billions of pounds diverted elsewhere, according to a new parliamentary report.
The House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee has found that chronic understaffing, long waiting lists, and a patchwork of funding to hard-pressed local councils have all contributed to the failure to honour the pledge Johnson made to tackle the crisis in social care.
In 2021, the Department of Health and Social Care allocated £5.4 billion on top of its annual spending for three years to improve social care.
But last April, the Government slashed the funding to £729 million for the years 2023 and 2024, with no agreed provision for 2025. The cuts included halving the £500 million budget for workforce training, and the scrapping of £300 million in investment to link housing to healthcare strategy.
Labour MP Dame Meg Hillier, the committee's chair, said: “Years of fragmented funding and the absence of a clear roadmap has brought the adult social care sector to its knees. Waiting lists are rising, the sector is short tens of thousands of essential staff, and local authority finances are being placed under an unsustainable amount of pressure.
“The decision to dedicate a single chapter in the adult social care reform white paper to the social care workforce does not do justice to the level of work that will be required and feels to us like a bit of a cop-out.
"While an NHS-style workforce strategy for social care may not be feasible, the Department of Health and Social Care must set out how it will how it provide leadership across the sector to identify and address workforce challenges."
The report states that workforce vacancies in the sector, which employs around 1.6 million people, exceeded 152,000 in March 2023 – a vacancy rate of almost 10%.
The committee fears that the workforce plan set out to address the shortfall is "woefully insufficient to the scale of the task".
"The Department of Health and Social Care's future reliance on overseas staff raises significant questions of the impact of proposed visa restrictions and risks of exploitation," it states. "The demand for adult social care services in rural areas is of particular concern to the PAC, as it is set to rise against a backdrop of chronic understaffing in these communities.”
The Government has recently allocated another £500 million to bail-out council spending on adult and children’s social care, but MPs feel that this short-term funding to patch up services is no substitute for sustainable, longer-term investment.
In 2022-23, local authorities supported more than one million people with care needs, at a cost of £23.7 billion. As at Autumn 2023, there were almost half a million people waiting for their case to be looked at. In 2022, £2.7 billion in additional funding was allocated in response to emerging pressures.
In evidence to the committee, one local authority, Rochdale demonstrated the significant pressures councils are under to provide adult social care at grassroots level.
Rochdale reported large increases in demand since 2021. Examples included a 23% increase in the number of calls to its adult social care team (up from 36,643 – 45,249 per year); a 77% increase in requests for support from new clients signposted to other services (up from 2,099 to 3,271 per year.); a 107% increase in number of major adaptations to homes; and a 22% increase in people accessing long-term support for more than 12 months.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We are committed to reforming adult social care and have invested up to an additional £8.6 billion over two years to meet the pressures facing the sector, grow the workforce and improve hospital discharge.
“The report rightly acknowledges progress to boost care workers’ career progression and training to improve retention, including through a new accredited qualification.
“To drive forward our vision for reform, we are also investing up to £700 million on a major transformation of the adult social care system, which includes investing in technology and adapting people’s homes to allow them to live independently.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We are committed to reforming adult social care and have invested up to an additional £8.6 billion over two years to meet the pressures facing the sector, grow the workforce and improve hospital discharge.
“The report rightly acknowledges progress to boost care workers’ career progression and training to improve retention, including through a new accredited qualification.
“To drive forward our vision for reform, we are also investing up to £700 million on a major transformation of the adult social care system, which includes investing in technology and adapting people’s homes to allow them to live independently.”
Jeremy Hunt’s Tax Cuts are Paid for by Slashing Public Services – So Why is Labour So Silent About It?
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt attempted to salt the earth for Labour in his Spring Budget – stealing the party’s policy on scrapping the so-called non-dom tax status and launching tax cuts the party will struggle to oppose.
The 2p cut to National Insurance contributions, however, is funded by big cuts to departmental spending under the next government, and mysterious “productivity gains” from the public sector.
Today’s Office for Budget responsibility forecast states that the Budget is based on there being “no real growth in departmental spending per person over the next five years”, with a real cut in many departments’ budgets of 2.3% a year from 2025 to 2026. In other words: most likely when this Government is out of office.
Cutting public services alongside tax cuts is “a political con trick – giving with one hand while taking with another”, the head of the Trades Union Congress argued.
It’s early days, but Labour has been studiously quiet so far on the plans for future spending cuts.
TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak said in a statement: “This is a deeply cynical Budget. The Chancellor knows he won’t have to live with the consequences of the savage spending cuts he’s already imposed across large parts of our public services.”
I asked a Labour spokesman what the party thought of the cut to National Insurance contributions. "We supported the NIC cut last year and we will be supporting the NIC cut today," he said.
Labour’s response when reporters asked if it would oppose anything in the Budget was this: “We’re not going to oppose for opposition’s sake. And given that many of the policies seem to come from our own side, we'll obviously be supporting those. But at the moment, there's not a specific measure we would say we oppose."
Now, the language around the budget was of course negative – with Labour branding the non-dom policy shift a “humiliating U-turn”. But it was a U-turn that Labour clearly supported. The party's reaction looks thin, at best, when the facts from the OBR are considered.
According to the OBR's March 2024 Budget analysis, the Government plans “no real growth in departmental spending per person over the next five years. Within this envelope the Government has committed to, among other things, an NHS workforce plan that implies real [spending] growth of 3.6% each year and holding defence spending constant at 2% of GDP, with ambitions to raise it to 2.5% of GDP. Meeting these and other commitments on schools, childcare, and overseas aid spending would imply a real cut in all other departments’ budgets of 2.3% a year from 2025 to 2026.”
To illustrate the scale of the trap, in a normal year under the current Government, departmental expenditure was topped up “by an average of [more than] £32 billion a year” the OBR states. Now the Government is planning cuts of tens of billions per year, mañana.
Labour chose not to echo the Scottish National Party in its rhetoric – despite it being Labour that’s likely to face the fall-out from the Chancellor’s pledges. The SNP’s economy spokesperson, Drew Hendry MP, said the Government is "cutting public services to the bone" – noting that Jeremy Hunt had “ushered in another decade of austerity cuts at the UK budget”.
The progressive IPPR think tank dubbed it a “slash and crash” Budget, with today’s tax cuts implying “unfeasible and undesirable public spending cuts in the future”.
Harry Quilter-Pinner, its director of policy and politics, said “no one believes” that future cuts to day-to-day spending are possible, or that squeezing public investment further is sensible.
“The Government chose to slash taxes today at the expense of crashing public services tomorrow," he added. "With the NHS, pensions, childcare and defence spending likely to be protected, future spending plans imply big cuts across other key public services."
That means areas like education, local councils and the environment are facing further catastrophic cuts.
Health figures themselves – despite NHS budgets being protected – recognise the risks. As the Health Foundation has noted, while some extra cash for the NHS is welcome, “other public services are still likely to take a substantial hit, with the OBR stating that unprotected departments will receive a 2.3% a year real-terms cut in funding from 2025/2026”.
That, in turn, will “leave the wider public services that support good health, including local government, under significant pressure”.
Dr George Dibb, associate director for economic policy at IPPR, added that almost 50p of every £1 of the Budget will go to the richest fifth of households, with just 3% going to the poorest fifth.
Of course, it was unsurprising that Labour welcomed reforming the non-dom tax system and higher tax on holiday rentals. A further levy on first-class air travel is also unlikely to be reversed by Keir Starmer's party.
But what of the Chancellor’s cuts to capital gains tax on property wealth or the never-ending freeze on fuel duty?
Gideon Salutin, senior researcher at the Social Market Foundation think tank, said the continued freeze – which will cost around £5 billion – will “fuel more inequality”. The richest tenth of households in the UK will save an extra £60 a year from the freeze, while the poorest receive only £22.
It has calculated that the Government has lost £130 billion on cuts and freezes to fuel duty over the past 13 years – while only decreasing the average household’s motoring costs by £13 a month.
“Achieving a more meaningful reduction in transport expenses requires the Government to invest in cheaper, greener alternatives like public transport and electric vehicles, but today’s Budget did little to enhance those options for low income households,” Salutin said.
The Conservatives have, perhaps ironically, left the door open for Labour to scrap the fuel duty freeze. Why? Because much of the Budget’s ‘success’ in meeting Hunt’s fiscal rules stems from the sly accounting wheeze of claiming that fuel duty will rise in future years... a stark contrast to the decade-plus of constant freezes.
But for all the traps, the Government is unlikely to reap many electoral rewards from the Budget. Even the bosses’ club, the Institute of Directors, noted that it was obvious Hunt’s plans were “aimed at rallying political support rather than addressing the UK’s longer-term economic issues”.
“It fell short of delivering a comprehensive plan for sustainable growth and investment," a spokesperson added.
It’s there for everyone to see, from boss to worker. Average GDP growth has been just 1.5% since 2010 – the worst for any government since the Great Depression. This year, real-terms pay for workers is still below the level it was in 2008.
Councils are literally collapsing, while having to hike regressive council tax to the highest levels ever. The latest Local Government Information Unit research found that half of councils believe they could face bankruptcy within the next Parliament.
Again, Hunt has effectively placed that in Labour’s camp to worry about. Or, if by some sorcery the Conservatives are re-elected (the polls are consistently not projecting this as a likely outcome), they will attempt to blame it on ‘profligate’ local authorities.
When public services continue to be on their knees, it's likely most people would choose having a functioning society over a 2% tax cut.
Polling last month for the The Fairness Foundation by Opinium showed that two in three Brits oppose tax cuts if they result in cuts to spending on public services. And nearly two-thirds (64%) support maintaining or increasing taxes. By contrast, only 16% support cutting taxes if it means cutting public services.
Is Labour now in that minority – that 16% – supporting tax cuts funded by spending cuts?
Starmer's party is ruling out tax rises and pinning its hopes on growth, growth, growth. Should that not be forthcoming, the sunlit uplands may start to look a lot shadier.
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‘Please Close My Hospital’
The fundamental problem surrounding the current political debate about the future of the NHS is that it is ignoring the fundamental issue: the current pattern of provision.
On the one hand, the Government is proposing building more hospitals and a 15-year plan for more staff – without any suggestion of how it will cough up the money to pay for it all or enact the immigration policies that would welcome new and needed foreign health workers.
On the other, Labour promises new targets for ambulances and diagnoses times, cutting deaths from heart disease and suicide – targets that presumably can be used to manage NHS managers, who too often carry the can for political failure. While it has gone quiet on “salaried GPs”, more helpfully the Opposition proposes repayment of health professionals university debts and bans on junk food.
However, the missing narrative remains the need for radical change to the NHS’ patterns of care. Neither party’s proposals have the courage to address that.
There is handwringing on both sides about the comparatively low provision of hospital beds. Yes, Germany and France both have more beds per 1,000 population than the UK, assuming they count beds in the same way as we do. But as a percentage of healthcare spend, according to the Office for National Statistics, the proportion of UK expenditure on hospital care (41.8%) exceeds Germany (28.9%), France (38.3%), and even European countries with similar numbers of hospital beds per 1,000 population, like the Netherlands (33.7%) and Sweden (38%).
Simply put, we over-hospitalise, partly because we don’t invest in more appropriate – and cheaper – types of care and partly because the one-stop-hospital-shop is pretty convenient for some of our most powerful clinical workers.
What the health of the nation needs most is a radical reconfiguration of services to less acute, more appropriate, and less expensive care.
The current provision of services does not match current patterns of need, especially among the elderly chronically ill. The political debates give lip service to the need for 'integrated care’ but ignore the elephant in the room – the all-consuming ever-dominant hospital. This lack of acknowledgement undermines the possibility of service transformation by continuing to entrench both money and power in big acute hospitals.
Of course we need hospitals, but not nearly as many as we have currently. I say that as someone who spent two nights in my own local NHS hospital following hip replacement surgery recently. That could not have been done in my home nor (easily) in a community health centre. Some conditions, some services, do need acute hospital facilities.
However, health policy experts estimate that as much as 60% of the NHS’ clinical budget is being spent on the chronic conditions of elderly people and ageing baby boomers which can be cared for in facilities other than hospitals – smart homes, care homes, hostels.
In my own case, my local hospital is located less than a mile from my home, which is great. Within two further miles, however, are two other large acute teaching hospitals that could have provided the same care.
Now, I know friends in rural Scotland, for example, will point out that they have to travel tens of miles to their local hospital. But in our urban areas, we have plenty of hospitals, many of them sited and built before the motor car. Indeed, a former director of healthcare in the London region opined that we could close at least a half dozen acute facilities in the metropolis without any significant impact on the population’s health.
Currently, we do not have enough low-level chronic facilities or home care professionals – neither in cities nor in the shires – because the current configuration of the NHS is so dominated by acute hospitals and by the medical professionals who work in them.
Many of the relatively new Integrated Care Boards are trying to come to grips with this, exercising analytically informed commissioning decisions (of considerable volume and money) in a manner that seeks to change patterns of care. But they are being undermined in their efforts, often being forced by their regional supervisors to first meet the expenditures – frequently in excess of prescribed budgets – of local hospitals, led by hospital managers and clinicians who know that whatever they spend will be covered before any shift of funds to non-acute care. It’s that perverse.
Only large-scale commissioning decisions to close hospitals as part of a programme that simultaneously opens and staffs home care, urgent care centres, smart homes and chronic care facilities is capable of providing the fundamental change we – as potential patients – and the NHS require. Of course, standing in the way are not only the acute elephants but also the political dinosaurs who wish to retain a hospital within site of every ballot box.
The current political talk of reform – on all sides of the political spectrum – only protects the status quo. That’s not good enough.
Greg Parston is a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, Institute of Global Health Innovation
Revealed: Five Politically-Connected Healthcare Giants Rake in NHS Contracts Worth Billions
five politically-connected healthcare giants have profited from a share of public contracts worth at least £70 billion – despite a murky history of scandals and regulatory violations, a new report reveals.
Corporate Watch, a corporate-critical grassroots research organisation, spent several months delving into government procurement data on Bridgepoint, Bupa, Centene, Spire, UnitedHealth Group (UHG) and their myriad of subsidiaries.
In partnership with Good Jobs First, researchers targeted these companies because all five are members of the Independent Healthcare Providers Network – a lobbying group with close links to Rishi Sunak’s post-pandemic Elective Recovery Taskforce, which has effectively ‘turbo-charged’ private healthcare capacity.
During the past 10 years, these firms won a share of public health and social care contracts with a combined value of £70.59 billion, with serious questions also emerging about the opacity of reported contracts, as well as the integrity and reliability of the data made publicly available.
Between 2013 and mid-2023, £61.87 billion of this overall total was awarded without a breakdown of how much money each of the winning bidders were paid. More than one-fifth of contract award notifications did not even report a total value, meaning that the true figures could be far higher.
Other significant obstacles to reporting included missing details related to the extension of existing contracts, inconsistent figures across datasets, and a lack of uniformity in the way data was presented.
Even so, the length of awarded contracts appears to have been increasing over time, as the Conservative administration has sought to ‘lock in’ privatisation, with some tenders set to run for up to 15 years.
Corporate Watch and Good Jobs First uncovered a plethora of financial scandals and violations of patient and worker safety.
In particular, corporate giants Centene and UHG have faced hefty penalties for defrauding patients and public healthcare systems in the United States, where both are based, including to settle allegations of overcharging for Medicare, a US Government health insurance programme, through duplicated or inflated claims.
Perhaps the most egregious scandal to have engulfed any of the UK-based companies targeted in the report was the case of Ian Paterson – a former breast surgeon currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for performing unnecessary or unapproved procedures on more than 1,000 cancer patients at Bupa and Spire hospitals in the West Midlands, with a further 1,500 victims discovered on an old IT database in February 2023.
After his conviction in April 2017, Spire released a statement saying that “what Mr Paterson did in our hospitals... absolutely should not have happened” and expressing “how truly sorry we are” – only to then sue the NHS four months later for allegedly failing to warn it of his conduct. That action came just weeks after the firm was sued by hundreds of Paterson’s patients, who claimed Spire had allowed the surgeon to continue work well after his 2012 suspension by the General Medical Council.
Meanwhile, Bridgepoint subsidiary Care UK has been repeatedly slammed for cost-cutting at the expense of both staff and patient welfare. In 2022, it was fined more than £1.5 million after a resident choked to death.
Similar criticism has been levelled at Bupa, with its UK care facilities variously described over the years as “disgraceful”, riddled with “systemic failings”, and sources of “serious concern”.
In Australia, the 2019 death of an elderly cancer patient, admitted to hospital with maggots crawling in an open and fungated ear wound, saw the firm's CEO forced to “unreservedly” apologise for “totally unacceptable” shortcomings in its aged care network.
The list of top executives and shareholders at each of these firms are politically-connected figures.
When the Government announced the launch of its Elective Recovery Taskforce in December 2022, it was little surprise that David Hare and Jim Easton had seats at the table. As chief executive of the Independent Healthcare Providers Network, it is Hare’s job to represent the interests of firms including Bupa, Centene, Bridgepoint and UHG at Westminster; while Easton previously held several senior NHS positions before becoming CEO of Practice Plus (a Bridgepoint subsidiary) in 2012.
Care UK co-founder John Nash, and UHG’s former head Simon Stevens, who was chief executive of NHS England between 2014 and 2021, join the ranks of at least 16 members of the House of Lords who have at various times declared interests in the companies featured in the recent report.
The wife of Conservative Health Minister Neil O’Brien also currently acts as GP engagement lead for Centene subsidiary Circle Health, while former Tory MP Mark Simmonds has previously worked as a strategic advisor at the firm.
COVID-19 appeared to provide the context for the Government to accelerate a policy of privatisation stretching back over decades. As demand for private treatments slumped, private healthcare providers were given publicly-funded bail-outs – which available evidence suggests actually did little to benefit the NHS or its patients. Significant financial commitments have now been made, either through the issuance of new awards or the inflation and extension of existing arrangements.
The paucity of publicly-available data on these commitments, alongside the list of scandals and regulatory violations, compiled by Corporate Watch and catalogued on Violation Tracker UK and Violation Tracker, raises serious questions about the Government’s decision to entrust the provision of public healthcare to these five companies – themselves just a small handful among hundreds of other firms being awarded contracts, with little competition.
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Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth – review
In the face of soaring wealth inequality, Ingrid Robeyns‘ Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth calls for restrictions on individual fortunes. Robeyns puts forward a strong moral case for imposing wealth caps, though how to navigate the political and practical hurdles involved remains unclear, writes Stewart Lansley.
Watch a YouTube recording of an LSE event where Ingrid Robeyns spoke about the book.
Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth. Ingrid Robeyns. Allen Lane. 2023.
Ingrid Robeyns’ Limitarianism is the latest in a long line of critiques – such as Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Branko Milanovic’s Visions of Inequality – of the soaring wealth and income gaps of recent decades. Limitarianism focuses on personal wealth, which is much more unequally distributed than incomes, and is arguably the most urgent of these trends. It draws most closely on the United States, where, according to Forbes, nine of the world’s top 15 billionaires are citizens.
Robeyns argues that given the wider damage from the enrichment of the few, with its negative impact on economic strength and on wider life chances and social resilience, we must now impose a limit on individual wealth holdings. Thinkers have been making the case for this “limitarianism” and the capping of business rewards for centuries. The Classical Greek Philosopher, Plato, argued that political stability required the richest to own no more than four times that of the poorest. The Gilded Age financier, J. P. Morgan – one of the most powerful of American plutocrats of the nineteenth century – maintained that executives should earn no more than twenty times the pay of the lowest paid worker. In 1942, President Roosevelt proposed a 100 percent top tax rate, stating that “[n]o American citizen ought to have a net income, after he has paid his taxes, of more than $25,000 a year (about $1m in today’s terms).” “The most forthright and effective way of enhancing equality within the firm would be to specify the maximum range between average and maximum compensation”, wrote the influential American economist J. K. Galbraith in 1973.
The Gilded Age financier, J. P. Morgan […] maintained that executives should earn no more than twenty times the pay of the lowest paid worker.
One of the effects of the 2008 financial crisis was to trigger a debate about the role played by excessive compensation packages in banking. Others have argued that the introduction of guaranteed minimum wages – which limits employer freedom over employees – should come with a maximum too. As wealth inequality has deepened in recent decades, there have been growing calls for measures to reduce this concentration, not least among some members of the global super-rich club. Yet there has been perilously little political action. Each year the world’s mega-rich, facing few constraints, carry on appropriating a larger share of national and global wealth pools.
Robeyns sets out a powerful moral case against today’s wealth divide and asks the all-important question: “how much is too much?”. She calls for setting limits to the size of individual fortunes that would vary across countries. In the case of the Netherlands, where she lives, “we should aim to create a society in which no one has more than €10m. There shouldn’t be any decamillionaires.” This, she argues should be politically imposed. She also adds a second aspirational goal, an appeal to a new voluntary moral code applied by individuals themselves: “I contend that … the ethical limit [on wealth] will be around 1 million pounds, dollars or euros per person.”
Although there are many critics who dismiss the philosophical concept as either unfeasible or undesirable, history suggests the idea is far from utopian. Limits operated pretty effectively among nations – including the UK and the US – in the post-war decades and became an important instrument in the move towards greater equality.
War has long proved a powerful equalising force, and the post-1945 decades brought peak egalitarianism.
War has long proved a powerful equalising force, and the post-1945 decades brought peak egalitarianism. States shifted from their pre-war pro-inequality role to become agents of equality. This brought (albeit temporary) upward pressure on the lowest incomes and downward pressure on the highest. These limits operated in two ways: through regulation and taxation, and changes in cultural norms. Nations imposed highly progressive tax systems, with especially high tax rates at the top – that were sustained in the UK until the 1980s – the expansion of protective welfare states, and a shift in bargaining power from the boardroom to the workforce.
These policies were also enabled by a significant pro-equality cultural shift. This brought a tighter check on top business rewards and the size of fortunes. Until the early 1980s, business behaviour became more restrained, and wealth gaps narrowed. The kind of business appropriation that has become so widespread today would, for the most part, have been unacceptable to public and political opinion then. Gone were the public displays of extravagance and the high living of the inter-war years. Up to the 1970s, and the return of what Edward Heath called the “unacceptable face of capitalism”, executive salaries in the UK were moderated by a kind of hidden “shame gene”, an unwritten social code – similar in some ways to Robeyns’ call for voluntary limits – which acted as a check on greed. It was a code that was largely adhered to, partly because of fear of public outrage towards excessive wealth.
Up to the 1970s, and the return of what Edward Heath called the ‘unacceptable face of capitalism’, executive salaries in the UK were moderated by a kind of hidden ‘shame gene’
Robeyns is making a conceptual case. She doesn’t give much detail of how limitarianism might work in practice, and doesn’t draw lessons from the post-war experience (though this was the product of the particular circumstances of the time). She recognises the hurdles needed to make the politics of limitarianism a reality. There are plenty of questions of detail that would need to be settled. How, as a society, would we determine the appropriate “rich lines” above which is too much? Would the “undeserving rich” whose wealth is achieved by extraction that hurts wider society, be treated differently from the ‘deserving’ who through exceptional skill, effort and risk-taking, create new wealth in ways that benefit others as well as themselves?
The expectation that the tremors of the 2008 meltdown would trigger a shift towards a more progressive governing philosophy that embraced a more equal sharing of wealth has failed to materialise.
The greatest hurdle is political. The expectation that the tremors of the 2008 meltdown would trigger a shift towards a more progressive governing philosophy that embraced a more equal sharing of wealth has failed to materialise. The pro-market, anti-state politics of recent decades are now largely discredited. International Monetary Fund staff, for example, have called neoliberal politics “oversold”. There are widespread calls for the reset of capitalism, with as Robeyns puts it, “a more considerate, values-based economic system”. Although such a system may yet emerge, there are few signs of the kind of value-shift and new cultural norms that would be a pre-condition for a politics of restraint and limitarianism.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image Credit: dvlcom on Shutterstock.
A Just Energy Transition: Getting Decarbonisation Right in a Time of Crisis – review
In A Just Energy Transition: Getting Decarbonisation Right in a Time of Crisis, Ed Atkins argues for prioritising social over technical considerations in decarbonisation policies and sets out six principles for a just and sustainable transition. Focusing on the UK, the book makes a strong case for decarbonisation initiatives that centre community participation, worker inclusion and global equity, writes Sibo Chen.
A Just Energy Transition: Getting Decarbonisation Right in a Time of Crisis. Ed Atkins. Bristol University Press. 2023.
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As momentum for decarbonisation grows worldwide, how can the transition to renewable energy be made in a just and equitable manner? In response to this vital question of environmental politics, A Just Energy Transition by Ed Atkins is a timely contribution that delineates the multiple facets of the concept of a “just energy transition”. The book criticises the dominance of technical considerations over social and political ones in current policy discussions regarding decarbonisation. It urges greater scholarly and public attention to the elements that render decarbonisation unfair and undemocratic. Accordingly, its analytical focus is on “what a just energy transition should be” rather than “why such a transition is necessary.”
[A Just Transition] criticises the dominance of technical considerations over social and political ones in current policy discussions regarding decarbonisation
The book’s arguments are laid out in nine chapters. In Chapter One, Atkins contextualises the injustice inherent in the ongoing energy transition in the UK through a detailed account of how mounting energy expenses pose an urgent challenge to many households. With energy affordability having been largely overlooked in the development of renewable energy infrastructure thus far, many vulnerable and marginalised communities feel left “stranded” when renewable energy infrastructure is developed in their surroundings. Thus, Atkins argues that in order to achieve a just energy transition, protecting potentially “excluded” communities worldwide and offering them new possibilities for prosperity (like means to reduce living costs) is as important as phasing out fossil fuels.
Atkins contextualises the injustice inherent in the ongoing energy transition in the UK through a detailed account of how mounting energy expenses pose an urgent challenge to many households.
Chapter Two delves deeper into the operationalisation of a policy framework for just energy transition through an examination of the interrelationships between just transition, energy justice, and energy democracy. Recognising how current decarbonisation planning has been dominated by elite stakeholders, the chapter advocates for a government-led yet community-centred approach to the roll-out of renewable energy infrastructure. According to Atkins, this approach needs to prioritise the original “just transition” concept’s call for coalition building between climate activists and workers, marginalised communities’ call for participation in the decision-making process of energy projects and for the investments in renewable energy to engender structural and transformative reforms. To accomplish these objectives, energy transition initiatives should incorporate principles including distributive justice, procedural justice and recognition justice.
In subsequent chapters, Atkins details how different forms of energy injustice overlap and coincide with one another, drawing upon cases in the UK context. This analysis underscores the need for moving beyond thinking of opposition to renewable energy projects as “Not-In-My-Neighbourhood” (NIMBY)-ism. Instead, the opposition to and support for new landscapes resulting from decarbonisation by communities and residents reflects broader issues and narratives. Atkins outlines six rules that bring together the reduction of emissions, the support for vulnerable households, and the empowerment of communities.
First, he advocates for community-scale energy projects. While the imperative of decarbonisation necessitates the large-scale development of renewable energy projects, the placement of these projects in rural areas frequently gives rise to “green sacrifice zones” that inflict harm upon rural communities. To mitigate such distributive injustice, a just energy transition can include small renewable energy facilities directly benefiting their adjacent communities. These community-centred projects, supported by community investment as well as financial and technical aid from the state, enable the production of electricity that is owned by the local community and mitigate the negative effects of landscape disruption.
[Public] consultations tend to fail short in empowering people and communities in the decision-making process.
Second, he suggests that participation and voices of communities be amplified when developing new energy projects. Renewable energy projects commonly seek to obtain the support and approval of their host communities by means of public consultations. Yet, as evidenced by the local opposition to several wind turbine projects in the UK, such consultations tend to fail short in empowering people and communities in the decision-making process. Procedural injustice manifests itself when local residents are merely seen as passive recipients of reimbursement and compensation and bystanders of electricity generation, with little thought given to concerns such as energy access and landscape disruptions. Accordingly, community-level ownership ought to be considered in a just transition, as it not only fosters local support and buy-in but cultivates positive relationships among community members.
A notable advantage of community and public-owned renewable energy projects is their capacity to strengthen local economies. Stigmatisation affects communities grappling with energy poverty, as their lack of capacity to engage in energy transition initiatives (often attributable to substantial upfront infrastructure expenses) is misrecognised. Recognition justice entails respecting the variations among local stakeholders in terms of their motivations, priorities, experiences, and actions. Atkins thus calls for the foregrounding of community-centred energy schemes in local economies. Community Municipal Investments, which connect low-emission or renewable energy infrastructure to residents who require assistance, are a crucial tactic for advancing recognition justice.
Amid the escalating costs of energy, many households are unable to finance retrofitting projects designed to improve energy efficiency
A fourth priority is to provide for those most vulnerable to energy poverty. Amid the escalating costs of energy, many households are unable to finance retrofitting projects designed to improve energy efficiency. Recognising the vulnerability of these households while prioritising their needs fulfils the call for restorative justice. Given their substantial influence on the fundamental rights of households to heat and light, decarbonisation initiatives must prioritise energy availability, accessibility, and sustainability.
Atkins’ fifth call is to Ensure the participation and inclusion of workers. Providing better livelihoods and working conditions for workers is a key goal of the early advocates for just transition. In the UK, however, past, and current renewable energy projects have not fully realised this promise. As of now, the employment opportunities generated through decarbonisation are predominantly precarious, characterised by hazardous work environments and inadequate salaries in comparison to identical positions in the oil and gas sector. A long-term approach to green skills and employment that is attentive to worker-led action and voices is vital.
Ongoing decarbonisation initiatives in developed countries risk shifting the negative impacts of energy transitions to the Global South.
Lastly, the author stresses that a just energy transition in the UK must be achieved in a way that advances energy justice everywhere. Cosmopolitan (energy) justice, defined in the book as “linking low-carbon transitions to a broader understanding of global injustice(s)” (30), underscores that ongoing decarbonisation initiatives in developed countries risk shifting the negative impacts of energy transitions to the Global South. As evidenced by the escalation of illegal mining (eg, cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo and gold in Peru and Colombia) and waste disposal (eg, electronic waste dumped to countries such as India and Pakistan), the expanding demand for raw materials driven by renewable energy infrastructure poses a particular threat to the living conditions of communities situated on the periphery of global climate politics. To achieve an energy transition that incorporates the principle of cosmopolitan justice, decarbonisation needs to be reframed from a global perspective, reckoning with both the historical responsibility of developed countries for emissions as well as the entrenched injustices associated with colonialism.
Atkins’ advocacy for examining decarbonisation through the lenses of the urban-rural divide and global injustice offers valuable insights for future research development.
In sum, A Just Energy Transition elucidates the major theoretical discussions pertaining to the relationship between decarbonisation and social justice. Grounded in environmental justice theories, it proposes six principles crucial to accomplishing a just energy transition. The book’s discussion of the root factors of NIMBYism and the wide-ranging repercussions of energy poverty are comprehensive and convincing. Atkins’ advocacy for examining decarbonisation through the lenses of the urban-rural divide and global injustice offers valuable insights for future research development. Although the book’s exclusive focus on the UK restricts the generality of some of its arguments, it remains an informative resource for scholars and students intrigued by the political and social implications of decarbonisation.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE Review of Books.
Image Credit: I Wei Huang on Shutterstock.
Postal workers’ union slams leaked plan to cut deliveries to alternate days
Cut to ‘universal service obligation’ exposed in leaked Ofcom report – plan made with no input from postal workers
Image: S Walker
Slamming a leaked Ofcom report on the future of Royal Mail’s ‘Universal Service Obligation’ (USO), compiled without any input from postal workers, to deliver letters on weekdays to all UK addresses, a Communication Workers Union (CWU) spokesperson said:
The early leaking of the details of the OFCOM report on the future of the Universal Service Obligation (USO) to the media sums up the lack of professionalism, integrity and credibility they have as a regulator.
This report, like their previous investigation on quality of service, has been produced without the input of a single postal worker or the CWU.
OFCOM have abandoned their responsibilities on quality of service and are now attempting to do the same on the USO.
Debating the future of the postal service in the absence of those who work for it and deliver it every day is completely inappropriate and should tell everybody what OFCOM’s real priorities and motives are.
It is therefore no surprise to see OFCOM potentially recommending letter deliveries every other day which is a serious down-dialling of the USO to a level which would threaten tens of thousands of jobs.
This is the regulator openly pursuing the failed agenda of the former Royal Mail Group senior leadership – all of whom have now left the company.
The CWU and our members are not blind to the need for change. But we want change based on the needs of customers, the security of our members’ jobs and driven by an ambitious growth strategy that sees the infrastructure, fleet and presence in every community as Royal Mail’s key assets.
The CWU will work with economists to produce an alternative and independent view on the future of postal services in the UK and embark on a major engagement exercise with our members, businesses and the public.This is a huge test of the new leadership of Royal Mail.
There has been some positive recent signs but they must now decide whether to back a completely failed vision which will destroy the company or change direction and join the CWU in expanding the role of postal workers and in turn expanding services, job security and profit.”
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The Porn Baron Football Boss, his Glamour Model Fiancée and a War With Ofsted Over their ‘Failing’ Children’s Home
Byline Times has received heavy legal threats for investigating a damning Ofsted report into a children’s home financed by the Chairman of West Ham United football club, David Sullivan, and run by his reality TV glamour model fiancée.
Liverpool-based legal firm Brabners, acting for AP Care Homes Ltd – which is owned wholly by glamour model Ampika Pickston – issued legal warnings to this newspaper after staff were contacted in early January seeking further information about the children's home having its registration suspended.
The lawyer claimed on 16 January that the report by independent regulator Ofsted – charged with inspecting schools, colleges, child-minders, nurseries and children’s homes in England – was “flawed” and that reporting on it would be “defamatory”.
A notice suspending the registration of AP Care Homes Ltd was issued immediately following the damning Ofsted inspection in November 2023. It found that a sexual assault allegation made by a juvenile resident who had gone missing from the home was not referred to the watchdog.
Among other serious criticisms, there were “significant and serious shortfalls” in the care provided to the child residents. The home is now being closely monitored by Ofsted, which would not comment further on the length and status of the suspension.
Following a tribunal challenging the report’s findings, which took place on 9 January this year, Ofsted temporarily removed the report from its website. But three hours after Byline Times contacted Ofsted on the morning of 17 January, informing it that AP Care Homes Ltd had claimed to this newspaper that the report had been “revoked” because it was “defamatory” and contained erroneous allegations, the watchdog re-published it with “no significant changes”.
A spokesperson for Ofsted said: “We took the report down temporarily to make some minor edits to wording following a proof-read. No significant changes were made and the report is back on the website.”
A spokesperson for AP Care Homes Ltd said the company adhered to the highest standards and attacked Ofsted’s work as “discredited” and littered with “failings”.
They told this newspaper: “In December 2023, the company was forced to challenge a recent Ofsted report concerning the home… and consequent actions taken by Ofsted. As a result of its failings, Ofsted abandoned those actions and withdrew the report from circulation.
“The company has been made aware that Ofsted has now taken the extraordinary step of publishing an amended report on 17 January. Having reviewed that amended report, the company has written to Ofsted to make clear that the amended report is as flawed as the earlier (withdrawn) report and the now abandoned steps taken by Ofsted. That is a matter that the company will pursue vigorously with Ofsted, as it did with Ofsted’s earlier discredited actions.”
‘Does Not Keep Children Safe’
AP Care Homes Ltd was incorporated in July 2022 before receiving an unspecified cash injection in December that year from Rickleford Ltd – a company controlled by Pickston’s fiancé, the billionaire West Ham United Chairman David Sullivan – according to company accounts.
It opened its first home – a “luxury” four-bedroom property, according to its website – in the summer of 2023 in Styal, Cheshire, with Pickston saying: “My goal is that every child in our care and every care leaver is able to reach their full potential. They have the right to be healthy, happy, safe and secure, and to feel loved, valued and respected.”
It has had responsibility for three children since it was established.
But Ofsted inspectors in November 2023 found that safeguarding at the children’s home was “poor” and “does not keep children safe”, while “an absence of effective leadership and management seriously compromises the welfare and safety of children”.
According to the report, “professional boundaries” were “blurred” when Pickston allegedly took one child back to her own £3 million home, near the upmarket suburb of Altrincham, leading to an investigation by a boss at the children’s home who has since left the company, as reported by The Sun newspaper earlier this month.
Ofsted found that Pickston allegedly invited children to her home again three weeks later. “Although the children did not visit, this action does not demonstrate that high standards of safeguarding practice will always be adhered to,” the report stated.
Another incident allegedly involved one child claiming to have been sexually assaulted while ‘missing from care’ from the home – an allegation Ofsted found the home’s management had not reported to the regulator, in line with official guidance. Cheshire Police told Byline Times it has no record of any complaint of this nature made by the home.
Offering no further detail of the alleged assault, the report stated: “There have been incidents when children have been missing from the home. Following one missing from care incident, a child alleged that they had been sexually assaulted.”
Other incidents logged by Ofsted included children “meeting strangers via video messages”, while bullying was described as “poorly managed”. It also found no manager in place, with the facility overseen by Pickston herself – who the regulator found lacked “the skills and experience” to operate a home in line with official regulations. One member of staff fell asleep twice while in charge of children, while another youngster was allowed to vape, the inspectors reported.
The report found there were “positive relationships between children and staff” and that “staff support children to maintain relationships with family members”, meaning they “can see people who are important to them”.
But the report also found that staff “do not always listen to children when they make complaints or raise serious concerns” and that “failing to listen to the children does not promote the development of positive and trusting relationships”.
A legal source told Byline Times that threats to sue this newspaper for investigating and reporting on Ofsted’s findings were, in their view, “unjustified”.
“The matters at the heart of this investigation were raised by two professional Ofsted inspectors,” they said. “It is quite right that journalists can investigate without undue threats being made.”
Ampika Pickston found fame on reality TV show The Real Housewives of Cheshire from 2015 to 2017, returning to the show last year. She has previously sold content of an adult nature on OnlyFans, and regularly posts semi-naked images of herself on social media.
There is no suggestion that David Sullivan – whose estimated £1.2 billion fortune was made in the adult industry and who owns a 38.8% majority stake in West Ham – has involvement in AP Care Homes Ltd, beyond the provision of financing.
Ofsted told Byline Times that it does not comment on individual cases.
Do you have any information on this story or others?
Get in touch confidentially by emailing: news@bylinetimes.com
Homelessness among racialized persons
Chapter 7 of my open access textbook has just been released. This chapter focuses on homelessness experienced by racialized persons.
A ‘top 10’ summary of the chapter can be found here (in English):
https://nickfalvo.ca/homelessness-among-racialized-persons/
A ‘top 10’ summary of the chapter in French can be found here:
https://nickfalvo.ca/litinerance-chez-les-personnes-racialisees/
The full chapter can be found here (English only):
https://nickfalvo.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Falvo-Chapter-7-Racializ...
All material related to the book is available here: https://nickfalvo.ca/book/