EDITORIAL : THE GUARDIAN, ENGLAND

           

 

Public finances: Fixing the holes

On the issue of public-sector pensions, the budget watchdog actually served not only to take some heat out of the debate – but to show up government ministers

Big numbers, big worries? There were certainly plenty of the former in the report from the Office for Budget Responsibility. Public sector pensions liabilities now over £1tn. The total amount of government debt on course to rise to more than the entire national income by the middle of this century. The value of PFI contracts pegged at around £40bn, rather than the £5bn usually reported.

Such sums are almost incomprehensibly large, which makes them especially worrying. Yet in presenting this first long-term outlook for public finances, the OBR's head Robert Chote made it clear there was no need to panic. Indeed, on the particular issue of public-sector pensions, the government's budget watchdog actually served not only to take some heat out of the debate – but to show up government ministers. Coalition frontbenchers may bang on about pensions for public-sector workers being unaffordable, but table 3.4 of the fiscal sustainability report shows they are no such thing. Public-sector pensions will cost 2% of national income in 2015, it projects – before falling steadily to 1.4% in 2060. In other words, the unions are right on this one, and ministers wrong: our public-sector pensions bill is not going to balloon. If David Cameron, George Osborne and Francis Maude wish to cut government contributions to public sector pensions they will need to make another, and more honest argument.

Indeed, the need for honest debate is the recurrent theme of the OBR's survey. Pick through the book's tables and graphs, and the message is a simple one: as Britons live longer they will cost more, in health and long-term care. And the burden this will put on the public purse, without more money coming in through tax revenues, is "unsustainable".

This will undoubtedly lead to calls from the right to slash public spending, but that is not the only conclusion that might be drawn from the OBR report. As Mr Chote pointed out, the UK could choose instead to become a "high tax, high spending" economy. And there are plenty of options in between: health care might be rationed; or ministers try (again) to boost productivity in the NHS. Strip out the numbers and set aside the scare-mongering, and discussions of public finances are really debates about what kind of society we want to be: how we want to look after our old and sick and how we plan to pay for that.

Without a proper debate about these issues, Westminster might well end up following the US path of having shrill debates about budgets and debt ceilings, complete with nonsense being talked about defaults. The OBR report gives MPs no excuses to mimic the Tea Partiers.

News International scandal: The sky falls in

At the start of the month, no senior politician dared defy Rupert Murdoch. Now, all of them have

It is a measure of how much has been achieved in this revolutionary week that by the time David Cameron set out details of the inquiry into media and police standards on Wednesday lunchtime, and News Corporation announced it was dropping its bid for BSkyB soon after, both things seemed natural and unavoidable. A wave of public and political contempt is reshaping the landscape. At the start of the month no senior politician dared defy Rupert Murdoch. Now, all of them have. Party leaders united around the terms of the inquiry and the Labour-sponsored Commons debate – itself presaged by the collapse of the deal it had been arranged to condemn.

YesterdayWednesday brought a drama in four acts. At prime minister's questions Mr Cameron sought unsuccessfully to rid himself of the taint of proximity to the News International executives who oversaw phone hacking, of which more in a moment. In his Commons statement, the prime minister set out the terms of an inquiry into media standards of extraordinary scope and potential. By mid-afternoon, News Corporation pulled the plug on the BSkyB deal: a victory for plurality over the power of a rootless corporation. In particular it was a success for Ed Miliband, whose decision to break with News International has become the definitive act of his leadership so far. Finally, Gordon Brown delivered a powerful speech whose justified moral outrage was only equalled by its divisive consequences in the chamber.

Mr Brown presented himself in retrospect as a white knight who stood up to the Murdoch empire, only to be let down by the timidity of others. Not everything at the time was like that. The Brown government was far from pure in its dealings with the press. But the former prime minister was on firmer ground when he questioned Mr Cameron's record. The prime minister's response raised further significant questions about his slapdash approach to phone hacking and the appointment of Andy Coulson as his media adviser.

In February 2010, this paper ran a story which should have given Mr Cameron pause for thought. For legal reasons it contained only limited details of the News of the World's decision, while Mr Coulson was editor, to employ a private investigator who had served a seven-year sentence for perverting the course of justice and who had been charged with conspiracy to murder. Believing that Mr Cameron should be made aware in private of the full details, the Guardian passed them to his senior adviser, Steve Hilton.

In the Commons, however, Mr Cameron told MPs that the Guardian passed no significant private information about Mr Coulson to his staff. That is incorrect. Second, he suggested that the Guardian had been able to put all the significant facts of the story in the public domain at the time. That is incorrect, too. Third, he claimed that the fact that the editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, did not mention the story to him at two later meetings implied it was not important. That is an evasion: the first meeting followed the private warning and the second took place after Mr Coulson had resigned. Mr Cameron could have been in full possession of the facts, and acted on them, had he chosen to be. Instead he gave Mr Coulson a job in Downing Street.

This matters because at the core of the whole affair lies the shoddy and secret way in which some powerful media groups have dealt with political leaders from both main parties. In this, Mr Cameron may not even be the greatest sinner. But he happens to be the prime minister who must address all what has gone on. He cannot do so properly while he continues to evade the truth of his own past dealings.

The world is changing. Mr Murdoch's spell has been broken. The BSkyB deal is off. The inquiry can lead to a cleaner, more plural, future. Mr Cameron is trapped by his past.

In praise of… butterflies

Increasingly, we realise we need the butterfly as much as we need a soul

For a few weeks in July, it seems, they are everywhere: gatekeepers bobbing along hedgerows, peacocks supping from buddleias and holly blues darting around treetops. "You ask what is the use of butterflies?" said John Ray, a 17th-century lepidopterist. "I reply to adorn the world and delight the eyes of men; to brighten the countryside like so many golden jewels". Butterflies – and their lovers – struggle to justify their place in our world. In medieval times they were seen as mischievous fairies. Victorians collected them – sometimes to extinction. Now they are brutalised by industrial farming and changing woodland management. Today, as most of Britain's 59 species continue to decline, butterflies are defended as vital indicator species showing the impact of climate change, pollinators of plants and providers of caterpillars for birds. But their presence in our skies cannot be so simply measured. Increasingly, we realise we need the butterfly, psyche in ancient Greek, as much as we need a soul. Fashions change but children always appreciate the intricate marvel of creatures like the large blue, which lives for 10 months in ants' nests, or the purple emperor, the most lordly of butterflies with a depraved taste for dog poo. The charity Butterfly Conservation, whose membership is 48% up in five years, wants everyone to count them this summer. This is not an exercise in logging decline. It is a thrilling way to connect with a natural world we feel increasingly estranged from and rediscover our own capacity for childlike wonder.