Have a Good NEWS

The cost of spin, parents struggling to pay for healthy meals; and building up a picture of where the cuts are happening

Society Guardian Top stories

Treasury sends back Lansley's radical blueprint for NHS

Budget cuts "could cause up to 38,000 extra deaths," says report

Parents on low incomes struggling to pay for healthy meals, says Ofsted

Ex-chief of the hospital wins £ 190000 pay

Union boss warns of "co-ordinated strike action" against cuts

Mosquito youth dispersal alarms face ban

Editorial: raising the state pension age

Rhydian von James on Disability Benefits

All today's Society Guardian stories

Other news

• Coalition ministers are considering an opportunity to rethink its policy of capping immigration levels after warnings from business that severe restrictions could adversely affect the economy , reports the Financial Times

• Care homes could be forced out of business after councils proposed an average fees increase of 0.5% reports the Daily Telegraph. Costs of providing care are expected to rise by 2.1%.

• Carrying out Criminal Records Bureau checks has cost the voluntary sector £220m in eight years, says a Manifesto Club study reported in Third Sector

• The Cabinet Office has pledged to scrap hundreds of "unneccesary and expensive" government websites

• The chair of Ofsted, Zenna Atkins, has resigned.

The cost of spin and scapegoating

The last government had a prediliction for making dramatic interventions in the careers of public servants. It had the appearance of making ministers seem bold and decisive, and appeasing a rabid tabloid press. But did they also play fast and loose with employment law and due process? And at what cost?

Nearly three years ago Rose Gibb, the ex-chief executive of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS trust negotiated a £250,000 severance deal with the trust in the wake of a critical report into appalling hygiene failures at the trust. But in the face of public outrage the then health secretary Alan Johnson declared that he would step in to halt the payment (although she subsequently received £75,000 notice pay).

Yesterday, after a lengthy appeal process Gibb was awarded £190,000 damages by a judge who ruled that she had done "nothing wrong" and been made "a public sacrifice". Lord Justice Sedley said:

"It seems that the making of a public sacrifice to deflect press and public obloquy, which is what happened to the appellant, remains an accepted expedient of public administration."

He added:

"On the scale of severance payments, not only in the private sector but in parts of the public sector, £240,000 was not on its face outlandish compensation for the arbitrary termination of a career which it was unlikely Ms Gibb would be able to resume or resurrect. The effect of unwarranted departmental interference has thus been to trap the Trust between a rock and a hard place and to expose it, in its attempt to escape, to heavy legal costs.
"Central government (which, it seems, will be picking up the bill) might have done better to recognise that the Trust, in reaching the agreement, had been making the best of a bad job; and perhaps better still to recognise that the bad job had been the decision, which the Department does not appear to have cavilled at, to sacrifice on the altar of public relations a senior official who had done nothing wrong."

The cost of the taxpayer in the lawsuit is estimated as "up to 1 million pounds" in the Daily Telegraph. Judge Sedley concluded:

"Perhaps those responsible will now reflect that, since such blame as the report allocated was subsequently accepted by the Trust's board - all of whom resigned following publication of the report - there had been no good reason to dismiss the CEO; and that all this money, both compensation and costs, could have been spent on improving hygiene and patient care in the Trust's hospitals."

It's hard not to agree with Jon Restell, chief executive of Managers in Partnership (a trade union which was backing Gibb) said:

"The court has found that ministers in the last government were more concerned with spin and public relations than open and mature accountability"

Gibbs' treatment at the hands of the state has some parallels with that of Sharon Shoesmith, the ex-Haringey children's services boss who was summarily sacked without compensation by the council at the behest of the then children's minister Ed Balls at the height of the Baby P furore. Shoesmith is considering appealing her failed judiucial review of her dismissal, and may yet proceed to emplyment tribunal. The Gibb ruling will surely have been read with interest - and trepidation - by Shoesmith's former employers.

I read ...

• Community Links' snapshot "micro" analysis of how the budget would impact on its home borough of Newham in east London. Among several sobering observations is this one:

\\ "36% of jobs in Newham in the public sector (in the top 10% of the country). Newham Council has already had to cut ?? 30 million (C.7%) from this year 's budget ... If we are to see a departmental reduction by 25% during this parliament and to freeze council tax, as many of these jobs will go in Newham? "

• On a similar theme, Will Perrin's account of how "hyper-local" websites covered this week's emergency budget ...

• Colin Talbot's account for Whitehall Watch of what 25% cuts might look like at the Home Office ...

• Observations on the "big society"Harris Blogger Kevin:

"What does BS mean for the local activist who is moved to confront social injustice, not just for the cakestall mafia? When street reps in Shipley talk to me about the tensions between being a 'good citizen' (reporting disorder, keeping an eye out for drug drops, liaising with agencies etc) and campaigning to become empowered and overcome inequalities (activism in the local political arena), it feels like Big Society is not ready to provide the frameworks for that activism, to accommodate awkwardness."

• University of Bristol research paper looking at the family search and coordination in decision- . Findings included included 'lack of realism "about the prospects of finding suitable families for some children:

"Children's social workers often strove to find a notional 'ideal' family for children, and were sometimes unwilling to alter the requirements (eg. insistence on an adoptive couple or placing a large sibling group together) even when no family could be found. Another obstacle was inadequate sharing of information about children's difficulties, so that some adoptive parents found that the children placed with them had more profound difficulties than anticipated."

• That the legendary Mass ObservationCommunity project stories going all Web 2.0. It 's to create an online space where community groups are encouraged to document their work and daily life . And from here I discovered the fabulous My Brighton and Hovesite ... (Thanks for the tip to the young team of social innovation fund )

• Social enterpreneur and blogger Craig Dearden-Phillips' account of a planning battle in the town where he livesIn which to his great surprise, he finds himself in alliance with Norman Tebbit ...

?€? And, although we have on this issue, that football player and a pioneer of environmentally Gary Neville 's invited to "Teletubby" house near Bolton (the so-called "flagship green home") failed to obtain a building permit ...

Guardian Cutswatch

Public services cuts are a national story - but also a local one. This week we've launched Cutswatch, a Guardian crowdsourcing project. We want to build up a picture of where the cuts are happening, and try to understand how they are beginning to change our schools, hospitals, universities, social services, charities, leisure centres, libraries, and housing and regeneration schemes.

We want to chart how the deepest public spending cuts for 30 years are impacting on individuals and neighbourhoods and how they will transform our communities. To do that, we need your help and your voices. Use our online form to tell us what's happening in your area or to the organisation you work for or receive services from. Tell us who it will affect and what the consequences are likely to be.

Send us as much hard information as you can: links to articles or official papers, documents or announcements. Tell us about budget reductions, grant cuts, changes in work routines, cancelled projects and job losses. We will use the information you send to CutswatchTo help inform the news and features coverage, blogs and comments on the Guardian and the Observer.

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