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Should health workers work with counter terrorism agencies?

Original article by Peoples Health Dispatch republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

(Action against Prevent by members of Medact’s Securitization of Health group outside the UK Home Office on February 15, 2023. (Photo: Medact/Twitter)

NHS staff pulled into counter-terrorism programs, raising alarms over patient care and professional ethics

Mental health workers in the United Kingdom are being drawn into joint ventures with police and intelligence institutions as part of the national counter-terrorism agenda.

A new report by Medact, an association of health workers advocating for peace and social justice, highlights how the Counter Terrorism Clinical Consultancy Service (CT CCS) integrates National Health Service (NHS) staff with counter-terrorism agents. This service effectively turns health workers into interpreters for the police, who use the information provided to decide on tactics for individuals identified as potential terrorist threats.

Read more: Prevent: Health workers resist UK’s ‘counter terrorism’ strategy that weaponizes public services

In 2024, approximately £17 million was awarded to NHS Trusts to collaborate with security services involved in counter-terrorism. At the report’s launch in London, author Charlotte Heath-Kelly explained that these funds support interdisciplinary teams tasked with analyzing information about selected subjects.

The teams comprise mental health professionals, including nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists, and police officers. Health workers receive basic information on individuals identified as threats, which they then process and explain to their police counterparts. If the decision is made to continue monitoring a person, health workers interpret new information collected and may reach out to the person’s GP practice to encourage them to report on their patients in case they, for example, discontinue therapy or experience a stressful situation.

“This creates an indirect surveillance relationship between health workers and patients and may compromise a patient’s right to discontinue medical treatment since police-led interventions may follow non-compliance,” Heath-Kelly writes.

Unseen patients

CT CCS health professionals contextualize and explain how potential mental health issues could affect an individual’s behavior. This process, referred to as “formulating,” is commonly used in mental health care to better understand a person’s mental health status in the context of their everyday life and offering them support. However, unlike in healthcare settings where formulating is done collaboratively with the patient, CT CCS professionals have no direct contact with the people they are assessing, nor do they have their consent for the process to take place. This puts the teams at odds with professional ethics.

The involvement of health workers means that counter-terrorism teams do not only profile individuals but are guided in using available medical information contextually. Despite these “improvements,” it is likely that those most affected by this new line of intelligence will be racialized. Previous analyses by Medact have shown that Muslims were about 23 times more likely to be referred to a mental health hub for ‘Islamism’ than white British people were for ‘Far Right extremism.’

CT CCS work: legal but controversial

Alarmingly, there is no public accountability or oversight over the implementation of this program. If allowed to continue unchecked, it will persist as a “bubble of trust” between select health professionals and police officers, as described by a high-ranking officer interviewed by Heath-Kelly. This could easily erode the relationship between health workers and their patients and undermine the overall role of the NHS.

The work of CT CCS teams, while controversial, is entirely legal. They operate within regulations such as the GDPR, relying on provisions that allow information sharing when a person is flagged as a risk to themselves or others. However, they apply these rules even at very low levels of perceived risk, including many cases involving young people and children. This potential for misuse in the field of health information and data, which is particularly sensitive, suggests that similar practices could occur in other areas.

There must be a better way to utilize the millions of pounds allocated to the intersection of health and policing services, Heath-Kelly appealed at the launch. Considering the soaring needs in mental health services and the shortage of health workers in the field, the new government might want to divert the budget to address these critical areas instead.

Original article by Peoples Health Dispatch republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

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George Monbiot: Labour can end austerity at a stroke – by taxing the rich and taxing them hard

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/14/labour-end-austerity-tax-rich-uk-economic-growth

 Illustration: Kingsley Nebechi/The Guardian

The focus on growth to ease the UK’s economic ills will not be nearly enough, but there is a way to raise the sums needed

Never let your opponents define the terms of a debate. All too often, Labour has allowed the Conservatives and the billionaire press to demonise the notion of “tax and spend”. It went to great lengths before the election to assure voters it had no such intention. Now it drives home the message: instead, our needs will be met by “growth, growth, growth”. But tax and spend is the foundation of a civilised society.

Few of the changes this country requires can be achieved while adhering to the “tough spending rules” the new government has imposed on itself. We urgently need massive public investment in the NHS, social care, schools, environmental protection, social housing, local authorities, water, railways, the justice system and virtually all functions of government. We need a genuine levelling up, across regions and across classes. The austerity inflicted on us by the Conservatives was unnecessary and self-defeating and Labour has no good reason to sustain it.

The new government insists it is ending austerity. It isn’t. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) pointed out in June, Labour’s plans mean that public services are “likely to be seriously squeezed, facing real-terms cuts”. Similarly, the Resolution Foundation has warned that, with current spending projections, the government will need to make £19bn of annual cuts by 2028-29. However you dress it up, this is austerity.

We are constantly told: “There’s no money.” But there is plenty of money. It’s just not in the hands of the government. The wealth of billionaires in the UK has risen by 1,000% since 1990. The richest 1% possess more wealth than the poorest 70%. Why do they have so much? Because the state does not; they have not been sufficiently taxed.

…

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/14/labour-end-austerity-tax-rich-uk-economic-growth

Continue ReadingGeorge Monbiot: Labour can end austerity at a stroke – by taxing the rich and taxing them hard

With the UK creeping out of recession, here’s an economist’s brief guide to improving productivity

Keep on digging. kstuart/Shutterstock

Nigel Driffield, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick

At the end of last year, the UK was officially in recession. The economy shrank by 0.3% between October and December 2023, after a previous contraction between July and September.

New figures for January 2024 show a slight improvement. But there is nothing to indicate that the UK has made meaningful progress when it comes to productivity growth – and how the UK needs to produce more goods and services if living standards and wages are to improve.

Productivity growth in the UK has been virtually non-existent since the financial crisis of 2008. It lags significantly behind countries like Germany and France, and even further behind the US.

Growing productivity is not easy. Having researched this area of the economy extensively, I’m acutely aware of the the challenges facing firms which are trying to be more productive. They include everything from investment levels and access to research and development to regional inequality and a shortage of skills.

But there are some things that could be done to improve the situation. And two of the most important ones are greater investment, and a more localised approach to the national economy.

For example, one major problem in the UK is that its labour market prioritises what economists call “flexibility” – allowing firms to hire and fire employees fairly easily (compared say with France, where it is more difficult) – and getting people into entry-level jobs. It is much less focused on training and development.

Major investment in training at all levels, from basic skills through to high-level technical and managerial skills, would make workers more productive. It would allow greater job mobility, which in turn leads to a better match between demand and supply.

The UK also needs to invest in what’s known as “capital equipment” – the stuff that businesses use to produce things. For a building company this might mean buying a JCB digger instead of shovels, or for a dressmaker it could be buying a sewing machine. Put simply, if UK industries had more kit, productivity would improve.

A recent change to capital allowances which allows firms to offset investment against tax is welcome. But companies need to know that this will stay, and not be subject to political changes and inconsistent economic policy.

Freedom to grow

So money needs to be spent, and investments need to be made. But another crucial element is that the money needs to be invested locally, in the places where people actually live and work.

To be truly beneficial, this needs close collaboration between local authorities, education providers and the private sector. Local knowledge about where certain sectors are being held back, what skills are required and where they are needed, is fundamental.

Local authorities should be able to address these issues, rather than having to constantly defer to London. This means doing two more things (neither of which have ever had national government support).

The first is simplifying the workings of local government, which is notoriously complex and a constant drag on regional productivity.

And the second is helping those local governments financially, not just in terms of the current funding crisis, but also by allowing then to plan investments in skills and infrastructure over the long term, rather than having to bid piecemeal for short term funding.

Labelled cogs in a machine.
Everything connects. EtiAmmos/Shutterstock

It is clear to me from the work I have done in the West Midlands area of England that the UK economy is far too centralised. Everything from access to finance and venture capital, to investment in skills and infrastructure is heavily skewed towards the south east.

Away from that region, the UK has a low level of what economists call “aglomeration economies”, where a particular industry is concentrated within a geographical area, and supported by decent infrastructure and a good supply of skilled workers.

Compared to Germany or France, public transport in the UK is expensive and patchy, meaning people in towns often can’t access employment opportunities in cities which are relatively close by. This means that we see high levels of inequality over short distances, where poverty exists close by to great wealth.

This kind of imbalance could be addressed by combining increased investment (both public and private) with a much greater willingness to understand the various British regions which make up a currently disunited kingdom. These two steps would make the whole economic system more resilient, and in the long term, more productive.

Nigel Driffield, Professor of International Business, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Continue ReadingWith the UK creeping out of recession, here’s an economist’s brief guide to improving productivity

Tens of thousands demand end to child poverty and Israel’s massacre at Durham Miners’ Gala

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/tens-of-thousands-demand-end-to-child-poverty-and-israel-massacre-at-durham-miners-gala

Marchers at the Durham Miners’ Gala, July 13, 2024 Photo: Neil Terry / neilterryphotography.co.uk

DEMANDS for action by the Labour government to end child poverty, end arms sales to Israel and abolish all Tory anti-trade union laws were cheered at the 138th Durham Miners’ Gala.

The gala crowd of tens of thousands roared on Saturday as speakers called on Labour to use its record 172-seat majority in the Commons to transform society for working people in Britain.

Speakers called on the government to end arms sales to Israel and Britain’s complicity in the continuing slaughter in Gaza.

The 138th Durham Miners’ Gala began with the traditional marching of dozens of proudly raised trade union and campaign banners and brass bands through the streets of the city to the gala field for Durham Miners’ Association’s (DMA) Big Meeting.

…

The gala celebrated the 40th anniversary of the miners’ strike against pit closures, and Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), praised the courage of the miners for the strike which he said “has been vindicated ever since.”

He said the strike had also seen the power of the state unleashed.
“They used the press to lie, the police to batter, the courts to lock people up for defending their jobs and communities,” he said.

He warned: “That was the message from the boss class in 1984-5.

…

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/tens-of-thousands-demand-end-to-child-poverty-and-israel-massacre-at-durham-miners-gala

Continue ReadingTens of thousands demand end to child poverty and Israel’s massacre at Durham Miners’ Gala

London calls on incoming Labour government to end Israel’s genocide in Gaza

Original article republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

July 6 was the 16th national march which took place in London since the genocide in Gaza began on October 7.

On July 6th, more than 100,000 people marched in London, UK, in solidarity with the people of Palestine. Organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the Stop the War coalition, the event also saw participation from five recently elected independent MPs, who focused their campaign on the struggle for Palestinian liberation. The demonstrators called on the newly elected Labour government, led by Keir Starmer, to take action to end the genocide. Here is our report from the ground.

Original article republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingLondon calls on incoming Labour government to end Israel’s genocide in Gaza