Niger is worst country to be a mother, says report

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Created on Friday, 11 May 2012 00:00

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08 May 2012

Niger is worst country to be a mother, says report

Niger's current food crisis and high levels of maternal mortality place African nation bottom of Save the Children's list.

Peter Walker

Niger is the worst country on earth in which to be a mother, according to a report by Save the Children. The charity's annual Mothers' Index uses statistics covering female and child health and nutrition, as well as prospects for women's education, economic prosperity and political participation in its assessment of 165 countries.

{sidebar id=11 align=right}Niger's current food crisis bears much of the blame for its placing at the bottom of the list, just above Afghanistan, Yemen, Guinea-Bissau and Mali. The report also found high levels of maternal mortality, lack of access to contraception and poor levels of income relative to men's.

Afghanistan, which came last the previous two years, was credited for providing skilled assistance at more births and a reduction in female mortality rates, among other factors.

Hunger and deprivation are the chief factors keeping other developing nations, such as Eritrea, Chad, Sudan and South Sudan, near the bottom of the list. Of 73 developing nations on the table, which account for 95% of child deaths, the Save the Children report rates only four as "very good" for child nutrition. Of the bottom 10 nations, four have seen an increase in stunted growth in children caused by poor nutrition over the past 20 years.

The authors stress that income is not the only thing that matters: Vietnam's per capita income is 25% less than that of India, yet it has half the rates of stunting.

Norway is rated as the world's best place to be a mother, followed by Iceland, Sweden, New Zealand and Denmark. The UK is joint 10th with the Netherlands, three places up from 2011. The US is rated 25th, with the report pointing to maternal death rates 15 times higher than those in Greece and infant mortality four times greater than in Iceland. The US also scores the worst among developed nations for encouraging breastfeeding.

The report "shows clearly that this crisis of chronic malnutrition has devastating effects on both mothers and their children", said Brendan Cox, Save the Children's director of policy. He said: "We urgently need global leadership on malnutrition that results in key nutrition projects being rolled out for mothers and babies to ensure their health and survival." Save the Children has highlighted the vast differences between women's experience in Niger and the UK, with those in the former expecting only four years of formal tuition and having a one in 16 chance of dying from a pregnancy-related cause, against almost one in 5,000 in the UK.

Childhood malnutrition is a vicious circle, the report notes, with women stunted from early deprivation going on to produce underweight babies who have not been adequately nourished in the womb, an effect magnified all the more if the mother remains poorly fed or overworked. The charity wants countries to break this pattern by focusing efforts on a child's first 1,000 days, starting from the beginning of pregnancy.

Save the Children argues that even supporting mothers to breastfeed could save a million children's lives a year.

Source: The Guardian

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Queen's speech will hold little hope for squeezed Britain

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Category: The World

Created on Wednesday, 09 May 2012 00:00

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08 May 2012

Queen's speech will hold little hope for squeezed Britain

Government under pressure to explain how it is going to create growth in the economy during a double-dip recession.

Juliette Jowit, Alan Travis and Rupert Jones

With the UK having entered a double-dip recession, there is now enormous pressure on the government to use the Queen's speech to explain how it is going to create growth in the economy and jobs.

{sidebar id=11 align=right}But there are signs that the key bills aimed at helping the economy – a wide-ranging enterprise bill including some deregulation, and a Treasury bill to reform the banking sector – would not add up to the strong growth agenda many MPs and business groups want to see.

The greatest problem for successive governments is that the economy is an area where legislation is either not needed or looks "marginal", warns Gavin Kelly, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation thinktank and a former senior Labour government advisor.

"They will be looking for ways of showing how measures in the Queen's speech will help ease the squeeze on living standards – but anything they can come up with is likely to be small beer compared with the scale of the challenge," said Kelly.

There is also the problem of tensions in the coalition, and trade-offs required. So while the enterprise bill is expected to weaken employee rights in the hope of making it easier for businesses to take the risk on hiring new workers, more "family-friendly'' legislation could in fact add to complication and costs for businesses.

"If anything, most of the bills expected will add to the regulatory burden," said John Cridland, director general of the Confederation of British Industry, the UK's largest employer organisation.

The lack of clear narrative for the legislative programme is also a reflection of the two sides of the coalition struggling to shore up opposition on the far sides of their parties, said Tim Montgomerie, editor of the unofficial Conservative Home website, which has published an "alternative Queen's speech" by up to 20 unhappy Tory MPs.

Signs of such a standoff are also seen in a number of bills which are not in the Queen's speech.

Among these, legislation to enshrine into law the commitment to spend 0.7% of GDP on aid and a bill to set the route for new high speed trains are both seen as too provocative for rightwing Tories, and a shakeup of higher education as too hard for Lib Dems already reeling from the electoral impact of higher tuition fees.

A promised social care bill is also thought to have been shelved because the changes recommended by experts would have cost too much.

"The coalition agreement was like a three-three draw: [Tories] got welfare reform, immediate cuts and schools reform; [Lib Dems] got the pupil premium, the alternative vote referendum and taking low paid people out of income tax," said Montgomerie. "Now we seem to have got to a nil-nil draw where no one's willing to do anything bold."

Key areas of legislation: Growth and jobs

The Liberal Democrat Vince Cable's Department of Business will lead a wide-ranging enterprise bill that officials insist is "pro-growth and pro-business", including competition reform, easing the enforcement of regulations and changes to employment law – including more arbitration of employment disputes and potentially ending the right of employees to claim unfair dismissal, at least for those working for the smallest companies.

Counterbalancing such deregulation are plans from Michael Gove's education and families department for a bill including more rights to ask for flexible working arrangements, and possibly also transferrable maternity leave between parents.

Another change employers hope to see is the right to have "protected conversations" with employees about retirement plans without the risk of being taken to an employment tribunal – something they want to replace the abolition of statutory retirement ages.

City

The Treasury will take the lead on a bill to introduce reforms recommended by the Vickers review of banking, in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent series of bank bailouts by taxpayers. Among changes set to be adopted are the recommendation that banks must ringfence their high street operations from the "casino" style investment businesses.

Cable's enterprise bill will also be the vehicle for enacting any reforms in the wake of the row over excessive executive pay. Details are not expected until responses to the consultation on the government's ideas have been fully considered, but among the likely changes are to give shareholders powers for a binding vote to block directors' pay plans.

Crime

A new internet surveillance bill to help police and security agencies investigate terrorism and serious crime will be the main part of a wider law and order package. The law would build on an existing 2009 EU directive that requires internet service providers to keep customers' mobile phone and internet use data for 12 months.

It would not give the police the power to retain the content of any emails, tweets, or other social media use, and the most "sensitive'' data would be restricted to police, emergency services and intelligence agencies.

After fierce opposition from MPs of all parties, it is expected the legislation will promise to publish a privacy impact statement of the new powers, and the access regime will be overseen by the interception of communications commissioner.

Pensions

Plans for a flat-rate state pension initially worth about £140 a week are expected as part of a drive to make it easier for people to plan for retirement.

The government says the change, which will see the basic state pension (currently worth up to £107.45 a week) and state second pension replaced by a single scheme, will cost no more than the existing system. However, it would mean lower retirement income for some people.

Ministers hope people will add to this with further savings.

Britain's biggest pensioner organisation, the National Pensioners Convention (NPC), has pointed out someone retiring today with a 30-year contribution record would already get a combined pension of around £150 a week.

The government says for people planning to retire in the next few years, "accrued rights will be honoured" – even over £140 a week.

Details are expected in a white paper due in the next few weeks and the changes are due to come in around 2016.

Politics

Among the most controversial elements of the Queen's speech are plans to introduce elected peers to the House of Lords.

Supporters want the upper chamber of more than 800 peers and bishops replaced by a "senate" about half the current size, made up of members elected for 15 years by proportional representation.

Compromises that might be considered to persuade MPs and peers to vote for it include slowly phasing out the current life peers when they die or retire.

The bill would be among the most divisive for the two coalition parties as it is seen by the Tory right as an entirely Lib Dem project.

Among other details, both supporters and opponents will be watching carefully to see what the wording and presentation of the bill suggests about the government's determination to push the bill through – or not.

The rest

Among other bills expected is the promise by Michael Gove – himself adopted as a child – to speed up adoption and set up a national database to link up families and children all over the country.

Cable's enterprise bill is also thought to include legislation to set up the Green Investment Bank. It is not expected to have powers to borrow until at least 2015, and then only depending on how much the government's debt has been reduced. Investors and environmental groups will also want to know how ambitious its remit will be for supporting new technologies including renewable energy and energy saving schemes.

Another bill from Cable's department will establish a supermarket ombudsman with powers to name and shame, and ultimately to fine, large supermarkets which abuse their power over small suppliers including farmers.

The government has played down hopes of a consumer rights bill, consolidating the existing range of laws.

Source: The Guardian UK

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George Osborne's secret meeting with Murdoch clan at country estate

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Created on Thursday, 10 May 2012 00:00

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George Osborne's secret meeting with Murdoch clan at country estate

Chancellor entertained Rebekah Brooks at official residence in Buckinghamshire as BSkyB bid was planned

Toby Helm, political editor

George Osborne was dragged deeper into the furore over the Murdoch empire's links to government as it emerged that he entertained Rebekah Brooks for a weekend at his country residence as Rupert Murdoch was planning to take over BSkyB.

{sidebar id=11 align=right}Also present for the weekend at Dorneywood, the chancellor's grace and favour residence in Buckinghamshire, was Brooks's friend, Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor, who at the time was working as David Cameron's director of communications inside No 10.

Labour said that the gathering, at a time when the government was evaluating how to react to News Corp's £8bn bid for the whole of BSkyB – the biggest in UK media history – raised fundamental questions about Osborne's judgment.

News of the weekend gathering will also increase pressure for Osborne to appear in person at the Leveson inquiry, in addition to David Cameron, culture secretary Jeremy Hunt, education secretary Michael Gove and other senior political figures, to answer questions about their links with the Murdoch team.

So far Osborne has been asked only to give written evidence, although his aides said he would now be happy to appear if asked.

Details of the Dorneywood sojourn are contained in a lengthy written statement to the Leveson inquiry submitted by Coulson, who appeared before it on Thursday. Listing his meetings with Brooks during his time working for Cameron, Coulson said: "My family and I also spent a weekend at Dorneywood in 2010 as a guest of George Osborne and his wife. Rebekah and her husband were also guests."

Osborne has made public four meetings with Brooks during 2010, three of them definitely after the May general election. A spokesman for Osborne said he believed the Dorneywood meeting was one declared by Osborne as having taken place with Brooks in September 2010. The location was not specified, and it was listed by the chancellor as having been a merely "social" event.

News of the Murdoch plan to take full control of BSkyB first broke in June 2010, with News Corp informing the European commission in early November of its intention to buy the shares it did not already own.

Giving evidence to the inquiry on Friday, Brooks said that, after briefly discussing the BSkyB bid with Cameron at a dinner in December 2010, she had a more substantial conversation with Osborne at a restaurant that month.

The next day she emailed News Corp lobbyist Frédéric Michel saying that Osborne had expressed "total bafflement" at Ofcom's latest response to the bid. But she was not asked, when in the witness box, about the weekend at Dorneywood or what was discussed there.

Harriet Harman, Labour's deputy leader, said the revelation raised serious questions. "When senior members of a government are looking at a bid such as the BSkyB one they have not only to make sure they act impartially but that they are seen to be acting impartially.

"Spending a weekend together with a senior executive of the company seeking approval for a bid such as this is not acting in a way that will be seen to be impartial." Osborne's aides said no discussions of the BSkyB bid took place.

But Labour MP Chris Bryant, a prominent critic of News International over phone hacking, said: "After all these revelations it feels like there were two halves of a single clan: in the political wing were Osborne, Cameron, Michael Gove and Jeremy Hunt, and in the media wing were Rebekah Brooks, James Murdoch and Andy Coulson. They seem to have been completely blind to the ethical considerations and to have forgotten that in government they are there for the whole country and not just for the clan."

Labour also plans to raise questions about whether the home secretary, Theresa May, sent a message to commiserate with Brooks after she resigned. In a speech to the Blairite pressure group Progress, Labour leader Ed Miliband renewed calls for the culture secretary to resign over suggestions he operated a secret back channel to News Corp.

Miliband said: "One of the reasons so many people hate politics so much right now is that they think politicians stand up for the wrong people, not the right people. This is a clear example of that – Jeremy Hunt was standing up for Rupert Murdoch, not for the public interest."

Source: The Guardian UK

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Coalition to unveil family-friendly agenda in Queen's speech

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Created on Wednesday, 09 May 2012 00:00

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Coalition to unveil family-friendly agenda in Queen's speech

Laws on flexible leave and help for parents of pupils with special educational needs to be included in legislative programme.

Juliette Jowit and Patrick Wintour

A package of measures to help families and children will be unveiled in the Queen's speech as the coalition attempts to offer a full legislative programme while maintaining its focus on rebuilding the economy.

{sidebar id=11 align=right}New laws to give parents more flexible leave and strong commitments to family-friendly working hours will be among the headline measures. Other announcements expected include reform of the system for diagnosing and helping children with special educational needs to give parents more choice in how they are schooled; reforms to the family justice system to speed up care proceedings so no cases take more than six months; and promised changes to the adoption system to make sure parents and children are matched more quickly.

The government will also say it is getting legal advice on how to strengthen the law so that if couples split up, their children can have a strong relationship with both parents.

A No 10 source said: "Dealing with the deficit and getting the economy growing remains the coalition's number one priority. But we're also grappling with some long-term issues around adoption, the care system, and children with disabilities, to make life better for some of the most vulnerable children in society."

{sidebar id=10 align=right}The speech will contain plans to give shareholders a binding right on future executive pay and liberalising of unfair dismissal laws. But the two coalition parties almost see the Queen's speech as a sideshow to the chief political task of rebuilding an economy over the next year that they say was more damaged than they realised when they took office.

Many of the changes will affect only a minority of families. However, ministers will hope that they will deflect concerns that the legislative programme does not go far enough to boost economic growth or job creation, and controversy over some specific measures such as reform of the House of Lords. It could also be used to dilute criticism that by dropping the promised social care bill the government is not doing enough to help the most needy in society.

Liberal Democrats denied they had succumbed to Tory protests over Lords reform and insist the Queen's speech will contain a reference to a bill on the second chamber's composition, but Tory sources were suggesting the legislation could only go ahead with cross-party support, and almost certainly a referendum, something party leader Nick Clegg opposes.

On Tuesday, David Cameron and Clegg admitted the effort to eradicate the deficit might take as long as seven years, and conceded parts of the country did not yet feel the coalition was governing for them.

On the second anniversary of their optimistic opening coalition press conference in the rose garden at Downing Street, Cameron and Clegg chose the stark symbolism of a tractor factory floor in Basildon to rededicate the coalition to its central painstaking work of rebalancing the economy and tackling the deficit.

Cameron listed welfare reform, looser employment laws, banks lending to small businesses, investment in apprentices and completion of the single market in Europe as the keys to growth.

Setting out a timetable to clear the deficit and boost recovery beyond the next election, Clegg said: "We have a moral duty to the next generation to wipe the slate clean for them of debt. We have set out a plan – it lasts about six or seven years – to wipe the slate clean to rid people of the deadweight of debt that has been built up over time."

He also admitted the local election defeats last week had revealed a divided country: "It is not lost on me that where our two parties got a particular beating last week was in Wales, Scotland and in the large cities of northern England. I take one message from that. We must redouble our efforts to govern for the whole country. There is a particular dilemma in these parts of the country where for the last 10 to 15 years they have been reliant on subsidy from Whitehall, and those subsidies were funded by explosive growth in the City of London. That economic model has hit the buffers."

Cameron and Clegg appeared nervous of being portrayed as advocates of austerity budgets of the kind that have been rejected by many voters on mainland Europe. Cameron said he preferred the word efficiency to austerity, and denied he was obsessing about dry numbers for the sake of it. Clegg said reducing debt was a necessary – but not in itself sufficient – step to achieving growth.

However Jonathan Portes of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research thinktank said Clegg was wrong to suggest that the slate would be wiped clean in six or seven years. He said: "According to the official forecasts from the Office of Budget Responsibility, the government's plan means that the debt in 2016-17 the national debt will be about £1,300bn, that is about £300bn more than now."

Cameron and Clegg also argued that the new French president, François Hollande, was not in reality taking a different path to Britain. Clegg said he could not disagree with someone who said they wanted to grow their economy.

"He knows you cannot create growth on the shifting sands of debt. You have got to have a stable foundation."

Cameron agreed, saying: "If you actually look at what President Hollande is suggesting in France, his programme for getting rid of his budget deficit is pretty much on a pathway with ours. I think it is a bit of a myth to believe that somehow there are some people in Europe who are going to spend a lot more money and those of us who realise we have to deal with our debt and our deficit."

Both men's aides insisted the show of unity around economic policy was designed to tell the country and their own querulous backbenchers that they would not change course.

Cameron defended the plan to include an elected second chamber in the Queen's speech despite the cacophony of calls from his own backbenchers to drop the bill: "I wouldn't for a moment say that this is the most important thing the government is doing. Of course it isn't. But parliament is capable of doing more than one thing at a time. Do I think that it would be a good idea if parliament delivered a House of Lords that had people who were elected by you – the members of the public – to pass the laws that we all have to live by? Sure I do … it is a perfectly sensible reform for parliament to consider."

Ultimately Cameron is not willing to face down a major backbench rebellion over the issue, even if this leads to a further row with Clegg and more horse trading over other constitutional issues such as constituency boundary reform. Clegg defended the plan, saying: "Although it is wildly controversial in Westminster and people get terribly hot under the collar, actually most people think that the principle that the people who make the laws of the land should be elected by the people who have to obey the laws of the land is not as controversial outside Westminster as it appears to be in Westminster.

"A smidgen of democracy I don't think will go amiss, since we've been talking about it for about 100 years."

Source: The Guardian UK

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