Latest news with #InCommon
The National
2 days ago
- Business
- The National
Gordon Brown had a good idea. But it won't fix the problem he created
Good evening! This week's edition of the In Common newsletter comes from Kaitlin Dryburgh, Common Weal's policy communications co-ordinator. GORDON Brown has given Rachel Reeves a sensible suggestion: increase taxes on the mighty gambling industry. Brown supports the proposal from the Institute for Public Policy Research, which would help to plug the two-child benefit cap and alleviate the appalling levels of child poverty we face. The former Labour leader thinks they should stand up to this industry, really show them who's boss, all in the name of doing some good for society. In a sense, he isn't wrong. The gambling industry isn't taxed enough. It also isn't fined as much as it should be – and it's woefully under-regulated. If we were being truly radical, we could follow the lead of some Scandinavian countries and nationalise all gambling, which would allow us to plough profits directly into doing good. That would also create benefits beyond monetary gain, such as a system capable of tracking and intervening in cases of gambling addiction. READ MORE: Is Gordon Brown right that Scottish child poverty 'worse every day'? However, such a move would require being unfazed by the gambling lobby – something Brown would know little about. While he comments on the meagre taxation the gambling industry faces and the good that revenue could achieve, Brown fails to mention the deregulation his government oversaw, the harm it caused, and the fact that in many cases it will have contributed to child poverty. He ignores the stark inequality between children growing up in deprivation and the gambling companies and executives who have grown their fortunes exponentially since he gave them a mighty boost. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, Brown presided over a shake-up of the gambling industry like never before. Tony Blair claimed there was 'no evidence' the changes would lead to gambling addiction (another example of Blair getting his evidence wrong) and even used Blackpool as an example of a place that could benefit from regeneration. Because nothing says 'revitalisation' quite like more gambling. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown pictured together during the New Labour yearsWhat followed was an explosion of betting shops and casinos across the country, alongside aggressive television advertising pumped directly into people's living rooms. But perhaps the most significant escalation came with the arrival of smartphones in our pockets: the online gambling boom. Since the liberalisation of gambling laws, the UK gambling market has become one of the largest in the world relative to its population. Thank you, Tony and Gordon. Almost half the UK population places at least one bet a month. Despite Blair's flippant assurance that this relaxation of gambling laws wouldn't cause addiction, he was dead wrong. I saw a betting advert the other month. I don't know if you're like me, but when it comes to this kind of thing on TV, I usually switch off, make a cup of tea, and ignore it. But my god, this one caught my attention, for all the wrong reasons. It showed people in different situations doing mundane tasks: one waiting for a bus, another building flat-pack furniture. The entire message was: in those moments, why not place a bet? Does that not feed directly into addiction? They were effectively saying: 'This isn't really about enjoyment – just do it out of boredom or habit.' READ MORE: Labour took more than £1m in donations and gifts from gambling firms Apparently that was fine, because our gambling regulations are not fit for purpose. One of the most recent large-scale studies estimates that 2.5% of the UK population has some form of gambling problem, and the NHS has seen a rise in those seeking help. Gambling ruins lives; people lose their homes, their jobs, their families, and in some cases their lives. Betting companies are sometimes called out on this. Either they get a slap on the wrist or endure a short bout of bad publicity – but they don't care. Paddy Power, a company worth tens of billions, was fined a mere £280,000 for failing to carry out sufficient checks on problem gamblers. They even actively encouraged one addicted customer to stay longer and spend more on their premises. A decision that cost the individual their jobs, access to their children, and their home. There are countless horror stories of gambling companies employing the most exploitative strategies imaginable to extract as much money as possible from vulnerable gamblers. This is the direct result of commercial lobbyists shaping government policy, rather than the other way around. They feebly present 'investment' as an excuse, when in reality industries like these extract wealth, they don't create it. That's why there are four entries on the top 100 UK Rich List linked to gambling, with a combined fortune of £23.1 billion. Brown certainly has a point when it comes to taxing gambling more heavily, but the monster that is the UK gambling industry is partly his creation. The harm it has caused for decades lies at the door of his former government, and the betting companies are still reaping the rewards of the legislation he helped to pass.
The National
07-08-2025
- Politics
- The National
Plans to deliver the SNP's 'Promise' are a muddle. They won't do
Good evening! This week's edition of the In Common newsletter comes from Nick Kempe of the Common Weal Care Reform Group, who was previously head of commissioning of social care at Glasgow City Council. ON June 17, the Scottish Government introduced the horribly named Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill to the Scottish Parliament. This was almost nine years after Nicola Sturgeon first promised to improve the lives of children and young people with experience of the care system. The Independent Care Review was then set up to consider how to do it. In 2020, it produced its report, The Promise, which was followed in 2021 by The Plan. The purpose of the bill is to implement recommendations arising from The Promise and The Plan – for example, reforming the Children's Hearing system, which the Scottish Government believe requires changes in the law. Among them is also the recommendation that profit should have no place in the children's care system. READ MORE: SNP must do more to keep my flagship 'promise', Nicola Sturgeon says The policy memorandum accompanying the bill starts well, with this statement: 'The Promise is clear that there is no place for profiting in how Scotland cares for its children and that Scotland must avoid the monetisation of the care of children and prevent the marketisation of care by 2030.' Unfortunately, the proposals which follow represent a complete policy muddle and will not deliver what was promised. Residential care and for-profit problems Take the proposals for children's residential care. They will do nothing to prevent private companies extracting large profits. For residential children's services, the bill only gives Ministers the power to limit profit, not abolish it and that only after a period of collecting data about profit levels – a recipe for delay. In proposing this, the Scottish Government has decided to follow England but not Wales, who are in the process of abolishing private provision completely. The Scottish Government's justification for this stance is they believe profits are lower in Scotland (£28k a year per child) than England and the UK average of £44k a year. This is based on data from the Competition and Markets Authority. For context, £28k a year is four times the amount per child the bill proposes to spend extending aftercare services to children who leave care before 16 over their lifetimes! Every pound extracted in profit is a pound less for helping a child who needs it. (Image: Vitolda Klein on Unsplash) The latest Looked After Children Statistics report that 1324 children and young people were in residential care settings in 2024, and suggest that of these a minimum of 365 were in placements provided by the private sector. That is more than £10 million in private profit. The explanation for this retreat from The Promise appears to lie in the Financial Memorandum to the bill. This states that the Scottish Government is concerned that profit-making providers would walk away from service provision (with their buildings) if the profit extraction stopped. The answer to that risk is for the Scottish Government to pledge to use emergency powers to take over such services and, if their current powers are not sufficient to do this, to add new emergency powers to the bill. The bill contains no proposals to stop profit-making by private companies which operate services for care-experienced children in local communities rather than residential or foster care settings. Such services also monetise the care system. A step forward for foster care The proposals in foster care do, however, represent a step forward. Independent Fostering Agencies (IFAs) are the only type of care service in Scotland that are currently required to operate on a non-for-profit basis – but this has never been enforced by the regulator responsible, the Care Inspectorate (CI). As a result, as Common Weal showed in our The Crisis in Foster Care in Scotland report, profits continue to be siphoned out of some IFAs by profit-making parent companies. We are pleased that the Scottish Government has explicitly mentioned our report and acknowledged what is happening in the policy memorandum to the bill. To address these problems the Scottish Government is proposing that all IFAs should be required to register as charities with the Scottish Charity Regulator. It also correctly argues that if any of the current IFAs decide to withdraw from the foster care market as a result, the foster carers contracted to work for them can be taken on by other IFAs or local authorities. It predicts this will release £6-10m a year which can then be reinvested in foster care – less than will be taken in profit for residential children's services. Public services for private profit? All this does represent a significant step forward in government thinking – but begs the question as to how the not-for-profit requirements will be enforced? More specifically, how will profit-making parent companies be prevented from continuing to extract money from IFAs through internal charges for legal and administrative services, or borrowing large sums of money interest-free, as they do at present? The Scottish Government is proposing that the CI should be responsible for delivering this and that after setting up new systems the costs of doing so will be minimal. If it's so simple, the CI could have done this years ago. First Minister John Swinney's Government had published the proposals (Image: Jane Barlow/PA Wire) We would like to see the bill go further and the Scottish Government use its legislative powers to break all links between IFAs and profit-making companies, the only sure way to ensure profit extraction stops. Common Weal's Care Reform Group will publish our full response to the Scottish Government's proposals in due course. The consultation and the bill itself, however, present an opportunity for the public and other stakeholders to challenge the hold that profit-making companies now have over swathes of what are supposed to be public services. We must ensure that they are once again run for public benefit – and only ever in the interests of the children who need them.
The National
10-07-2025
- Politics
- The National
Four ways Mairi McAllan can fix Scotland's housing crisis
Good evening! This week's edition of the In Common newsletter comes from Dr Craig Dalzell, head of policy and research at Common Weal. Màiri McAllan has returned to the Scottish Government after a well-deserved period of patient parental leave, though has left her former post as Cabinet Secretary for Energy and has been tasked with fixing Scotland's housing crisis. As a writer of policies on both topics I don't exactly envy the position but I can at least lay out some of the options I and my colleagues in Common Weal have published over the years on the topic. Housing is about more than homes – as anyone can attest if they have ever objected to a planning application for a new suburban sprawl on the basis that it would add extra pressure to services such as GPs, schools and other public services without adding to provision – but about building a sense of place, of community and about meeting a fundamental human need for shelter. The task is far larger than I can do justice in these few lines of text but I shall offer Màiri (below) four ideas to help fix housing in Scotland. Actual land reform You cannot build a home without having the land to build on it. This is a particularly acute problem in rural Scotland where despite having the space to build we often cannot access the land due to it being held by mega-estates and is simply not for sale or when it is, the price to buy is being speculated beyond control. We need a land tax and other mechanisms like Mercedes Villalba's proposal to cap maximum land ownership. One of the most powerful ideas though would be to allow councils to buy land at 'existing use value'. That is the value of land as it currently is, not an inflated value based on its 'potential' for housing or other uses. Build 'enough' social housing The central reason why Britain's housing 'market' is broken is because we run housing as a market. Thatcher broke the previous system by selling off social housing and making it impossible for councils to replace them. Social housing should never be the last option before homelessness but the first choice for housing for many. My paper Good Houses for All shows how the borrowing powers of councils and the Scottish National Investment Bank could build essentially unlimited homes for social rent (councils aren't limited in borrowing powers like Holyrood is, so long as the rents are sufficient to pay back the loan). They could be built to the highest possible energy standards to outbid the private sector in both price and quality. And they shouldn't be built to an arbitrary target of 'more houses than the previous government' but based on actual need. Councils should have a waiting list of people who want one of these homes and be resourced to deliver them by a certain date. If we do this, the private sector will be forced to cut rents and increase quality ... or their landlords will decide that they can no longer exploit people for a profit and will have to sell. (Image: Supplied) Fill vacant housing 'But what happens to the houses if the landlords sell?' Scotland already has more vacant homes than we have homeless households. Many of those homes are not being sold, but are still being clung on to as a speculative investment because prices are rising higher than costs. We also have even more vacant housing than appears in those statistics because many high street shops in Scotland have housing units above them that are vacant but are classified as 'commercial use' rather than residential. Look above the ground floor in many places in the centre of Glasgow and you'll start to see them. Policies like increasing council tax multipliers on empty homes and Màiri's announcement this week of extra vacant housing officers will go a long way towards fixing this. Councils should also be resourced to allow them to use their compulsory purchase powers more aggressively – particularly to support them to purchase vacant homes not at 'market rate' but at a fair rate that will include consideration of the costs to repair and retrofit the housing up to the standards expected of newbuilds – this will often be far cheaper than building new and therefore will contribute to the solution to the crisis in a much more resource efficient way. READ MORE: 'Trading people like cargo' UK-France one in, one out deal sparks fury Increase rental building standards For the housing that remains in private rental hands, we need to continue the work already being done around tenants' rights, rent controls and quality standards. As hinted above, many private rented houses in Scotland fall far short of energy efficiency and other environmental standards and urgently need retrofitted. France is rolling out a scheme whereby it will be illegal to rent properties that fall below a certain EPC rating and the minimum rating will keep rising every few years. Scotland should do the same. Before those retrofits happen, many of these properties also need to be repaired first (there's little point in installing solar panels on a leaking roof). The aggressive recapture of housing for social rent mentioned above could also be done with private rented homes that still have sitting tenants if the landlord wishes to sell or is deemed no longer adequately responsible in their management of housing, converting them to social rents and offering a rent-controlled lifetime tenancy to the tenant along with an improving their homes. Conclusion The housing emergency in Scotland is perhaps second only to the climate emergency that Màiri was familiar with in her previous brief. The two are, in fact, interrelated and can't be solved separately. What won't solve it is shovelling more money into the paws of private developers under the guise of 'affordable housing' that is barely either. It's not going to solved by a single tweak anywhere or even if we only do everything on this list but every step we take will lead to more people living more affordably and more securely in a country that can more than afford to provide that, but for too long hasn't by design.
The National
02-07-2025
- Politics
- The National
Universal Basic Income in Scotland can draw from our neighbours
Good evening! This week's edition of the In Common newsletter comes from Dr Craig Dalzell, head of policy and research at Common Weal. BACK in the early days of Common Weal, while we were still finding our feet and building our reputation, we had an informal rule when it came to policy-making. We had to be able to show the policy working somewhere else. This was because we felt that Scotland simply wasn't ready for some of the radical ideas that we wanted to implement so being able to show it already working was a good way of building confidence in a nation too often told 'we cannae dae it' (by which our opponents often mean 'we shouldnae dae it' which is a different thing entirely). We've since dispensed with that rule and we sometimes broke it even then (one of Common Weal's very first policy papers, 'In Place Of Anxiety', was an advocacy for Universal Basic Income (UBI) long before it became one of the 'cool' policies) but this isn't to say that we can't learn lessons from elsewhere. Just this week, I was asked by a researcher which of our neighbour nations I'd like Scotland to copy if I could. My answer was that we shouldn't copy any one but that I take a lot of inspiration from Germany on local democracy, from Denmark on energy strategy and from Norway for public ownership. Somewhere else we could do with taking inspiration from our neighbours is on social security. The scenes this week from the UK's attempts to hammer the poor and disabled and only backing down after shambolic chaos in the Parliament should be a lesson not just in humanity but in policy-making as well. Never fight a battle you haven't won in advance. Never assume a large on-paper majority means certain absolute power. With many of our neighbours basing their politics on proportional representation and coalition politics, this kind of legislation would have undergone a lot of negotiation and compromise long before arriving at the voting chamber. The way that many of our neighbours deal with the issue of social security is markedly different from the UK in several ways. The first is that the systems are a lot more generous in general. Norway, Denmark and Sweden rank in the top three OECD nations for spending on disability protections at above 3% of GDP while the UK is well below the OECD average at less than 2%. Many more social securities like unemployment protections follow a different model from the UK when they are calculated. In particular, instead of the flat rate paid under the UK's Universal Credit, many countries follow a model where the protection you receive is based on a percentage of your previous income. There are consequences to each of these models. A flat rate tends to be more redistributive if it is generous enough (which Universal Credit isn't) whereas a proportional rate tends to be less disruptive to an individual who is already going through the shock of losing their job while still having bills to pay. We've seen these impacts in the UK too. During the pandemic, the Covid furlough scheme was paid at a proportional rate to people who were employed but was often paid at a flat Universal Credit rate to self-employed people. This exposed a lot of people who were previously on the side of denigrating poor and vulnerable people as lazy slackers to just how meagre and cruel the UK 'benefits' system is. We had an opportunity then to get some serious change off the back of that and maybe we still see echoes of it in this week's chaos but largely the Powers That Be wanted to make us forget that moment of reflection as quickly as possible. On the other side and as tempting as it might be to copy a European-style unemployment insurance based on previous income, and as beneficial that would be to people in well-paid but otherwise insecure jobs, we have to remember that many people are not in well-paid jobs and that wage suppression has been rife in the UK for decades. Receiving 60% of your previous income when you were being paid poverty wages won't protect you from poverty in unemployment. So maybe rather than Scotland – particularly an independent Scotland – copying existing social security policies from our neighbours, we need to look to them for inspiration in another way and look back at that paper I mentioned at the start of this column. (Image: PA) Last year, the EU think tank the Coppieters Foundation published a paper called 'A European Universal Basic Income' which found that a UBI sufficient to eradicate poverty across the entire union could be entirely paid for by relatively modest changes to income tax and the savings found from the reduction of poverty itself. Its model called for a UBI of €6857 per year for adults and half that for children under 14. This is the equivalent of £113 per week for adults and £57 per week for children. The paper claimed that the increase in income taxes to pay for this level of UBI would themselves be relatively modest and the 'breakeven' point for people who'd pay more income tax than they'd receive in UBI would be at around the 80th percentile. In other words, eight out of 10 people would be directly better off with the UBI. And, to repeat, while this is still a relatively small sum per person if you have no other income, it would be enough to eradicate poverty across the entire EU and would be cheaper overall – after the health, crime and social inequality costs of poverty are factored in – than the current systems. When this paper came out I argued that this meant a UBI was now a moral imperative because it was cheaper than the cost of poverty, but there's clearly a financial imperative too. Whether we're discussing an independent Scotland seeking to create a better country for all of us or even just a cynical UK trying to save money in the face of a humiliating attempt to crush the poor, here is a solution we should all support. Eradicate poverty, save money, implement a Universal Basic Income.
The National
26-06-2025
- General
- The National
RTS switch-off in July will put vulnerable Scots at risk
Good evening! This week's edition of the In Common newsletter comes from Dr Ron Mould, net carbon manager at Bield Housing. AFTER 14 years of missed deadlines and shifting timetables, we've now entered the final month before the nationwide switch-off of the radio tele-switch (RTS) signal and the reality is looking increasingly grim. With tens of thousands of homes still awaiting smart meter installation, we are now in a desperate scramble to avoid a full-blown crisis. This is no small problem. An estimated 30% of the UK's remaining RTS meters are in Scotland, disproportionately affecting rural, elderly, and vulnerable households. The consequences of failure are significant and at this late stage, feel inevitable. As Net Carbon Manager at Bield, a housing provider supporting older people across Scotland, I've seen first-hand how badly this transition has been handled. Our tenants are among those directly affected, people who rely on electric storage heating and trusted the RTS system to manage their energy needs affordably and safely. Many are now facing anxiety, confusion and rising costs, with little to no support from the systems meant to protect them. Across the country, residents reliant on RTS for their heating are experiencing a barrage of issues, repeatedly aborted meter installations, often with no communication or learning applied to subsequent attempts. READ MORE: 'Deep concerns' over lack of urgency to replace soon to be switched off meters Some can't even get appointments, with suppliers routinely stating there are 'no engineers available in your area.' Even when installations do go ahead, the problems don't stop. New meters can trip electrics, prompting a game of finger-pointing between energy suppliers and electricians. More commonly, the issue lies in the specification of the new meters themselves. Despite supplier claims of a like-for-like swap, many smart meters provide a continuous 24-hour supply, in contrast to the timed circuits of RTS systems. Without integrated timers for heaters and hot water (previously controlled by the RTS signal) householders are left with systems that run around the clock, racking up unnecessary costs. Timers, if installed at all, often don't align with off-peak periods, which themselves have been allowed to erode, some tariffs now offer just a 1p difference between peak and off-peak. The BBC's longwave broadcasting equipment, which transmits the RTS signal, has genuinely reached the end of its life. But while the technology may be out of date, the strategy to replace it is even worse. Ofgem has not delivered a clearly communicated, nationally coordinated plan. Instead of a well-managed transition, we've had vague reassurances and rumours of a phased switch-off—starting with regions that have the fewest RTS meters remaining. READ MORE: 'Strength has emerged': Ex-Iran prisoner looks back on life in notorious jail Ofgem's own position is not especially reassuring: they admit they 'don't know what will happen.' Whether we experience a complete signal loss or a cascading failure across zones, one thing is certain- there will be no further UK-wide delays. Even a phased switch-off is expected to take place over just a few months, with no guarantee of any extension for Scotland. This is the sort of groundwork that should have been laid months ago, not weeks before the switch-off. Ad campaigns fronted by Lorraine Kelly have only recently hit the airwaves- despite repeated warnings that the RTS switch-off would create confusion and difficulty if not properly addressed early on. These last-minute efforts, while welcome, reflect a broader lack of long-term planning. At Bield, we're doing all we can to support our tenants — helping them navigate bookings, installations, and even explaining why their heating now works differently. But the scale of the issue is bigger than any one organisation can solve alone. We're seeing the real-world consequences for those left in limbo by unclear processes and mixed messaging. For those with electric heating, I urge you to contact your energy supplier immediately and request a smart meter. If you've already had a failed visit, rebook — and keep rebooking until the job is done. If you already have a smart meter, check that your hot water and heating systems have timers. Confirm they match your tariff's off-peak hours. If they don't, you'll need to adjust or retrofit them—otherwise, the promised cost savings will be lost. The RTS switch-off is no longer a future event — it's here. The headlines this July are, sadly, predictable. A lack of coordination, planning, and urgency from energy suppliers and regulators alike has led us to the brink of a national energy blunder. And as someone working closely with the people now facing the fallout, I can say this with confidence: Scotland deserves better.
