Cameron: "Cuts will change our way of life"

[lifetime fan]

I won't even try to justify it. It's entirely possible that reducing the number of inspections will lead to a reduction in standards. It's entirely possible that this is a cut which should not have been made. Not everything the government does is going to be a good thing. Not everything any government does is going to be good. Singling one cut out of many for criticism doesn't mean that the general philosophy behind balancing the budget is a bad one though.

 

So what about the 'ten a penny grunts' working in social care on often little more than minimum wage that are prepared to strike and lose that pay because these cuts are hurting the weakest most?

 

Any fit provider?

 

After watching that footage you want more Swiss private equity owned companies moving into the NHS?

[lifetime fan]

I won't even try to justify it. It's entirely possible that reducing the number of inspections will lead to a reduction in standards. It's entirely possible that this is a cut which should not have been made. Not everything the government does is going to be a good thing. Not everything any government does is going to be good. Singling one cut out of many for criticism doesn't mean that the general philosophy behind balancing the budget is a bad one though.

 

It is not 'entirely possible', it is inevitable.

 

I made this point to you re: the cqc inspection regime changing from 12 months to once every 3 years years if you fill in a form well enough before the programme was shown.

 

Yes I knew what was going to be shown but my original point still remains.

 

Would a shit care provider fill out a self assessment form and put, 'don't give a shit about patient care, maximise profit, allow abuse and torture and turn a blind eye to it'.

 

Or are they going to lie through their fucking teeth?

 

Irrespective of that programme a fucking dunce could see what would happen.

[lifetime fan]

Nice quote for your ten thousandth post NV!

 

I'm melting I'm blushing sooo much. :$

[Strontium]

So what about the 'ten a penny grunts' working in social care on often little more than minimum wage that are prepared to strike and lose that pay because these cuts are hurting the weakest most?

 

Any fit provider?

 

After watching that footage you want more Swiss private equity owned companies moving into the NHS?

 

 

I don't know enough about social care to be able to comment on the wider issues surrounding it, but I don't think it would be appropriate to condemn the entirety of privately-provided social care on the admittedly harrowing events in one care home. There are plenty of horror stories from the NHS too but, again, you don't rubbish the whole thing because of isolated cases.

[lifetime fan]

I don't know enough about social care to be able to comment on the wider issues surrounding it, but I don't think it would be appropriate to condemn the entirety of privately-provided social care on the admittedly harrowing events in one care home. There are plenty of horror stories from the NHS too but, again, you don't rubbish the whole thing because of isolated cases.

 

Stronts, this was a company wide philosphy the 'castlebeck way' as they refered to it.

 

I have the emails from senior management dismissing my complaints as 'making a fuss', 'not knowing the job' and 'being a trouble maker'. Trouble is I'm an arrogant cunt and I do know my job and I know I'm fucking ace at it.

 

Yes NHS services have a lot to improve on, however I have never, ever heard of an NHS service torture a patient. Have you?

 

It would be wrong to label all private firms in this way I agree, some are slightly better than others.

 

I would ask if any of them actually give a shit about anything else other than their bottom line though!

[Stu Monty]

Disgust about what? Disgust because I don't share the hyperbolic view that the country is being dismantled?

 

I don't think it's irrelevant at all, people need to calm the fuck down. The sky is not falling in. The NHS is not being privatised. The poor are not being ground up for fertiliser.

 

I reject the idea that my party is doing those things or allowing those things to happen. I believe time will bear that out.

 

Don't get furious with me, get furious with the people who bankrupted the country in the first place. That would be my advice. Those are the people I'm angry at. All that money pissed away with nothing to show for it.

 

You're hopeless. Just telling people to calm the fuck down isn't going to work. They are angry for good reason and you telling them that they don't know what they are talking about is going to get them more angry. You deserve what you get for constantly treating people like idiots. People know where the money is Dog, they know the problems, there's plenty of money in this country it's just in the hands of very few people. Your response to Section typifies your disregard for the realities, Scottish power made £1.5b, their price hikes are noting to do with supply and demand and everything to do with their search for profit.

 

I await a response on my post about what actually can be done and your acceptance that the government is the tail to the wealthy's dog.

[dennis tooth]

Idiots-dont feed.

 

Its a whole world of john hurt

[dennis tooth]

Stronts, this was a company wide philosphy the 'castlebeck way' as they refered to it.

 

I have the emails from senior management dismissing my complaints as 'making a fuss', 'not knowing the job' and 'being a trouble maker'. Trouble is I'm an arrogant cunt and I do know my job and I know I'm fucking ace at it.

 

Yes NHS services have a lot to improve on, however I have never, ever heard of an NHS service torture a patient. Have you?

 

It would be wrong to label all private firms in this way I agree, some are slightly better than others.

 

I would ask if any of them actually give a shit about anything else other than their bottom line though!

 

Yep, thats what Cameron is doing trying to make the NHS worry about making profit rather than care and this 'revision' is not going to change this, it's mostly pr and cutting some edges off. THEY'VE REBADGED IT YOU FOOL!

 

Mostly though the difference is accountability and the difference between private and public accountability is massive but as I said SD's an idiot who doesn't give consideration to such things cos his head can't handle it. Then refers to methods to reduce the deficit but privatisation only INCREASES public spending in the long and short term AND INCREASES the prices while reducing the quality or at best only maintianing the same level of quality but he doesnt know these things and lives in denial. The NHS is being privatised and his party supports it but they call it by another name, pretend to be listening when the people kick up a fuss and it don't matter cos some SD-like actually people beleive this shit.

 

It's nothing to do with 'reducing the defict' is to make use of the defecit to create new markets for 'growth' and for private entities who have been salivating at the prospect of a chance to privatise services like the NHS for years and years and have positioned themselves accordingly while trying to buy power with up and coming politicians for times like these.

Of course SD just assumes noble intentions of people in power and takes everything they say at face value doesn't like to scrutinise such people seriously. Unless they are Muslims/Labour of course and evil intention is assumed.

 

Blind to his own bias and none of us can help save him or make him see as he has loaded his whole life view of false premises and isn't interested in revising them, he just wants to beat people over the head with false ideas and claims.

 

He is a deluded tyrant like Gaddafi.

[Strontium]

Stronts, this was a company wide philosphy the 'castlebeck way' as they refered to it.

 

I have the emails from senior management dismissing my complaints as 'making a fuss', 'not knowing the job' and 'being a trouble maker'. Trouble is I'm an arrogant cunt and I do know my job and I know I'm fucking ace at it.

 

 

If this is something endemic in this company, then there is obviously a strong case there for barring them from running any care homes in future. If that's not an incentive for the other private providers to buck up their ideas, I don't know what is.

 

Yes NHS services have a lot to improve on, however I have never, ever heard of an NHS service torture a patient. Have you?

 

 

Not that I can recall, but it doesn't mean that similar things definitively don't happen in NHS run facilities.

 

It would be wrong to label all private firms in this way I agree, some are slightly better than others.

 

I would ask if any of them actually give a shit about anything else other than their bottom line though!

 

 

Isn't the point that the private sector's obsession with the bottom line means that they will try to keep their customers sweet? Castlebeck is going to take a big financial hit for the way it screwed up, and rightly so. Their failure to provide a good service will hit them where it hurts.

[dennis tooth]

 

Isn't the point that the private sector's obsession with the bottom line means that they will try to keep their customers sweet? Castlebeck is going to take a big financial hit for the way it screwed up, and rightly so. Their failure to provide a good service will hit them where it hurts.

 

No it's not because they own a lot of homes and have a contract to provide services. Your arguments are oversimplified, it is easier and more cost effective to get better at hiding the abuse and spotting any future would be panoramas by monitoring whilsteblowers better and flagging them up earlier than it would be to actually give a proper service involving human rights and that kebab. People like you call for efficiency and thats what we get, whats more efficient do you think?

 

Thats what capitalism dictates, you love it so follow it's logic but sorry, carry on, you were saying.................

[Whelan]

It is interesting listening to how other countries approach social care, and interesting when you explain our approach to it.

Speaking to some visiting Chinese, they were astounded that care for the elderly is even being offered to private companies as, the definition, or rather moral obligation in providing care, be it elderly, disabled, or community focussed is on providing a level of care that provides a particularly level in living conditions.

 

How can you provide this, and also provide profits for your investors, and in the particular case of Southern Cross whose decision making was solely made to profit a Hedge fund, not the people who it was supposed to be caring for!

 

Sorry but the two are ideologically oppossed to each other! You cannot have private companies in charge of social care, and by that I mean the NHS as they are ultimately driven by profit.

[dennis tooth]

It is interesting listening to how other countries approach social care, and interesting when you explain our approach to it.

Speaking to some visiting Chinese, they were astounded that care for the elderly is even being offered to private companies as, the definition, or rather moral obligation in providing care, be it elderly, disabled, or community focussed is on providing a level of care that provides a particularly level in living conditions.

 

How can you provide this, and also provide profits for your investors, and in the particular case of Southern Cross whose decision making was solely made to profit a Hedge fund, not the people who it was supposed to be caring for!

 

Sorry but the two are ideologically oppossed to each other! You cannot have private companies in charge of social care, and by that I mean the NHS as they are ultimately driven by profit.

 

genius post amidst much stupidity on the part of any mong who tries to justify it on any level.

[Section_31]

It is interesting listening to how other countries approach social care, and interesting when you explain our approach to it.

Speaking to some visiting Chinese, they were astounded that care for the elderly is even being offered to private companies as, the definition, or rather moral obligation in providing care, be it elderly, disabled, or community focussed is on providing a level of care that provides a particularly level in living conditions.

 

How can you provide this, and also provide profits for your investors, and in the particular case of Southern Cross whose decision making was solely made to profit a Hedge fund, not the people who it was supposed to be caring for!

 

Sorry but the two are ideologically oppossed to each other! You cannot have private companies in charge of social care, and by that I mean the NHS as they are ultimately driven by profit.

 

Agree with your sentiment but not sure about using China as an example. I think their tradition is for the families to look after their own, it's pretty much expected that your parents will come and live with you when they're at a certain age. I think state care is virtually non-existant though, as is the idea that someone will help you if they're not related to you. Being disabled of having any kind of special needs in China would be decidedly unenjoyable.

[Whelan]

Agree with your sentiment but not sure about using China as an example. I think their tradition is for the families to look after their own, it's pretty much expected that your parents will come and live with you when they're at a certain age. I think state care is virtually non-existant though, as is the idea that someone will help you if they're not related to you. Being disabled of having any kind of special needs in China would be decidedly unenjoyable.

 

They have a broad 'Community Care' approach to this, whereby each city, is seperated into particular communities and they deliver care on that basis, health is nationalised (it is communist), and University and Education, in a sense the state does provide but it provides work! It is quite surprising that if you can pay someone buttons, suddenly there are enough jobs to go around! And there state housing is either free or ridiculously cheap, however you do have to give up your house when you die!

 

My point was, that to them social care, albeit via the family/Bamboo stuctures, or community structures is essentially for the benefit of the individual.

 

There is a myth surrounding China, it is seen as a cash cow by the west but the majority of Chinese people are not wealthy, they live very basic lives, and their societies are structed in a way that someone who is 18 can have the same hobbies as someone who is 80, so you don't really get the lonlieness that we seem to get, and people are very rarely left to fend for themselves.

 

The irony though Section is that, their approach would be dismissed by some (idiots or Americans) as old fashioned, but I think it is far more progressive than anything in this country! It genuinely saddens me that people in this country are programmed to look at their paycheck first, before they look at the society around them.

[lifetime fan]

If this is something endemic in this company, then there is obviously a strong case there for barring them from running any care homes in future. If that's not an incentive for the other private providers to buck up their ideas, I don't know what is.

 

Isn't the point that the private sector's obsession with the bottom line means that they will try to keep their customers sweet? Castlebeck is going to take a big financial hit for the way it screwed up, and rightly so. Their failure to provide a good service will hit them where it hurts.

 

Inquest told restrained man died at private hospital

Mr Lovegrove was sectioned under the Mental Health Act A 38-year-old man with learning disabilities died after being restrained at a private hospital in Nottinghamshire, an inquest has heard.

 

Derek Lovegrove died at Cedar Vale, an 18-bed hospital in East Bridgford, in July 2006.

 

Care worker Abrahal Kariam broke down in tears at the inquest in Nottingham as he described how the patient died in his room.

 

The jury inquest continues at the Nottingham Council House.

 

Mr Kariam said Mr Lovegrove, who was blind and partially deaf, could be unpredictable.

 

Pulled to floor

 

He said Mr Lovegrove grabbed a person in the corridor without warning on the day of his death.

 

The care worker said that after the incident he took Mr Lovegrove to his room where he thought the patient was about to hug him - but instead he was pulled to the floor.

 

He called a colleague and the two of them restrained Mr Lovegrove holding him by the arms.

 

They called a nurse and tried to resuscitate Mr Lovegrove but he died at the scene.

 

The care worker told the inquest jury that it was five years ago and he could not remember all the details.

 

M Lovegrove's mother Linda Daley said her son, who spent several years at Rampton high security hospital in Nottinghamshire, was not happy at Cedar Vale.

 

She said her son, who was sectioned under the mental health act and was detained at the hospital, could have had better care at Rampton.

 

"I never wanted him to go there," she said, adding that not all of the staff were able to handle him.

 

BBC News - Inquest told restrained man died at private hospital

 

What the article doesn't tell you was that due to too few staff on shift a man was restrained by 2 staff instead of the required 4. Those 2 staff sat on a man as he died.

 

Look who runs Cedar Vale!

 

Castlebeck's Cedar Vale

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

I saw this and thought people might like to give it a read as it claims only a third of companies pay tax in the UK. I've not read it all, and can't verify any of the data, but it does link to it. I'd have copied it in, but it's scatty.

[dennis tooth]

Thank you for doing a first-class job.

 

With your help, we have won major concessions on the Postal Services Bill. Thanks to your support for the CWU's campaign, we have today forced the Government to:

Keep Royal Mail as our post provider for at least the next ten years

Halt the programme of post office closures

Sustain the universal postal service for at least the lifetime of this Parliament

Keep our 11,500 post offices open until at least until 2015

These are key safeguards for our postal service, and we should be rightly proud. It is clear that we have helped make it extremely difficult for the Government to sell off Royal Mail.

 

However, we cannot ignore the fact that the Bill has now gone through, and so the campaign against privatisation must continue.

 

Yesterday I spoke on Sky News about exactly what this Bill means for our postal service:

 

 

 

 

It was your help that kept the post out of private hands, and it'll be your help that keeps it that way.

 

We will be in touch shortly with details of the next phase of the campaign. But for now, I just wanted to thank you.

 

- Billy

 

Laying it down, slaying these clownz.

[dennis tooth]

If fucking Cuba can have the best healthcare system and doctors/staff in the world, I think it's safe to say we don't need to privatise shit for no fucking deficit cunt. Just when you think it was over Dennis Tooth came back to put the thread in a cobra.

Now, what says SD says he wants to be free in a society where torture and neglect, is helping elite fund investment portfolio portachio's people get rich off the back of it they charge for that shit and bill the government for it and we paying our taxes out the back passages working overtime to pay our taxes double time so we don't have a deficit with no pension you can never quit..

[L19red]

I saw this and thought people might like to give it a read as it claims only a third of companies pay tax in the UK. I've not read it all, and can't verify any of the data, but it does link to it. I'd have copied it in, but it's scatty.

 

its an interesting report but conatins errors, typos or misleading elements at best.

e.g.

 

it is wrong to say a company can be setup with only one officer, you need to have a director and a secretary

 

989% of companies cannot possibly file their accounts on time

 

it refers to companies being struck off without filing accounts and not therefore paying any corporation tax due, but ignores the fact that the crown seizes all assets of the company not just the tax due when a company is wound up.

 

they may just be minor details compared to the meat of the report, but if they cant get basics right then how credible is everything else?

 

For the record my company was one of the late payers in that period.

:whistle:

We won't be late in 2011 I can tell you. HMRC might not press hard for the payment of penalties but Companies House do.

[dennis tooth]

BBC News - NHS watchdog's 'colourful' past under spotlight

 

BBC News - Cancer patients at risk of losing benefits, charity says

 

Putting the N in cuts. Pick on the weak and kick em good while they are down, steal their money, give it to the bankers and leave them to die.

[Section_31]

Paddy Ashdown (bellend) was on yesterday saying Cameron backing down on selements of the NHS reforms was proof he was an 'excellent statesman'. Bollocks to that. An excellent statesman would not constantly run away at the mouth the way he does and blert out ill-conceived shite. That's like saying I'm a nice man because I planned to rape someone but then changed my mind. Ashdown's a douche, and so are his party.

[dennis tooth]

They are having amassive pr excercise to convince the NHS staff/public to support the NHS privatisation with a few amendments. Someone needs to be travelling back from the future to Miles Dyson Andy Lansbury until he don't think he can hold onto this thing much longer. The Tory 1000 series cunt helicopter hopper Cameron telling Brown to Get Out and then coming across the NHS and saying 'Say, thats a nice Health Service'.

I'm just woolfy barking in the back but they're coming.

[dennis tooth]

Outsourcing and Democracy: The Liverpool Direct scandal

 

The Liverpool Echo remains one of the best read, and therefore best resourced, regional daily papers (along with its sister paper the Liverpool Daily Post).

 

It’s shown its worth in the last couple of days by doing what a proper regional newspaper should be doing – exposing appalling incompetence and even worse governance processes at the heart of Lib Dem-run Councils.

 

The Echo has put on-line (part 1 and part 2) an internal Council investigation, marked ‘Strictly Private and Confidential’, into the council’s Joint Venture vehicle Liverpool Direct and its contractual relationship with BT for the delivery of a wide range of what might broadly be described as ‘communication services’.

 

The findings of the investigative report, which follows on earlier concerns express by IDeA in 2008, are shocking.

 

They include:

 

* ‘t is conservatively estimated that the current level of overcharging [by BT]…is in the region of £10m per annum’ (p 6).

* ‘An assessment of the historical overcharging [by BT] amounts to a figure of approximately £19m as of 31/03/10 based upon an extrapolation back to contract start’ (page 8).

* ‘It is the Council’s position (including that of the City Treasurer) that the amounts of investment to be made by BT are the absolute minimum amounts as detailed in both the original contract and the contract extension (£56m, subsequently revised for £59m and £41m respectively)…This however is in contrast to the position taken by BT that they have no obligation to invest’ (page 10).

* ‘BT/LDL have clearly failed to engage the Council fully in their investment making decisions by virtue of the evident lack of council input in the Service Improvement planning process, Operational Plan development and the absence of potential BT investment as a consideration as part of the annual corporate planning process’ (page 11).

 

And on goes the report, for another 14 pages, setting out in dry but revealing terms a shocking story of what appears to be the negligent use of public funds by the Council and Liverpool Direct, and rapacious abuse of the a weak contract process by BT.

 

Coincidentally, Peter Cosgrove, one of the researchers for this now leaked report, was suspended in June under the new Acting Chief Executive, who is a former Chief Executive of Liverpool Direct. His suspension is said to be in relation to discrepancies in council tax revenue collection, although his union says he has not worked in this section for four years.

 

So what are we to make of this growing scandal?

 

First, of course, it exposes the Lib Dems, who ran the Council until May 2010 for what they are: a bunch of incompetent charlatans that the City is well rid of.

 

Second, it makes you wonder what on earth Lancashire County Council are up to with their massive but secretive ’IT-related’ outsourcing project, which is being closely modelled on the Liverpool Direct Joint Venture, and which has as its preferred partner…yes, you’ve guessed it, BT.

 

As I’ve noted, IDeA raised significant concerns about Liverpool Direct as long ago as 2008, but that doesn’t seem to have registered with the outsourcing obsessed Tories at Lancashire’s County Hall, nor, apparently with my own Borough Council, who are happily readying themselves to join the contract, quite content at what their Tory colleagues are up to, and apparently quite oblivious to the risks they may be running with taxpayer cash.

 

Third, and perhaps most relevant in the long run, is the position in which the new Labour administration in Liverpool now finds itself.

 

From being vehemently opposed to the Liverpool Direct contract in opposition, they have now gone very quiet about it all (while, inevitably, the Lib Dems who put them in this position in the first place are happy to express outrage at this). The leader, Joe Anderson, has simply declined to comment on the latest developments.

 

This suggests that the new administration is in a very difficult position contractually and legally.

 

I don’t know what the details are, but the fact that BT were very happy to threaten legal action when Essex County Council terminated their contract in 2009 on account of BT’s service performance there, suggests that Joe has lawyers at his back, urging him to keep quiet until the matter can be resolved.

 

In any event, the first opportunity to get rid of BT would appear to be in 2012, and even then only at a significant pay-off cost; while logic may suggest this pay-off may be more than made up for the savings that will be made by bringing the services back in-house, such a move is not without its own complexities, and possible upfront investments, and Joe and his team may be struggling with whether it can actually be managed in the face of the huge cuts faced.

 

Whatever the exact difficulties now faced, the general difficulties now facing the new Labour administration reflect the central problem: that local democracy is effectively undermined by outsourcing of this type.

 

Read the local blogs and forums and you’ll see the guns are already turning on Labour for not dealing with this mess, even though it is not a mess of their own making, and may be something that is legally impossible to resolve without costing the taxpayer even more. Essentially, the Lib Dems are not just getting off scot-free with their short-sighted, incompetent tendering, but may well even benefit from it politically.

 

And it’s not just in Liverpool that this is happening.

 

My own local Tories signed a 15 year contract in 2005 for the running of West Lancashire sports facilities, with an inflation-linked subsidy of 1m per year.

 

That might have seemed hunky dory at the time, but the poor contracting process and inadequate governance by the specially established Leisure Trust, has led to abuse by Serco, for example through the use of mathematically invalid calculations of their price increases which hide the real impact on customers.

 

Meanwhile, the Leisure Trust, set up five years ago so it could enjoy the tax advantages applicable to registered charities, and thereby save taxpayer money, has failed to become a registered charity, because the Charities Commission has seen through their little game.

 

The upshot of this, though, is that as and when the Labour group takes over the administration, it is we that will be faced with a contract which takes up significant percentage of overall council expenditure, but over which we have absolutely no democratic control. At a time when all other services are facing massive cuts, that is absurd, but it is Labour not the Tories who will get it in the electoral neck.

 

Local government outsourcing is not just bad for employees and services. It’s bad for local democracy.

[Sugar Ape]

What a horrible slimy cunt Cameron is.

 

BBC News - MPs defy ministers and back ban on wild circus animals

 

MPs have defied the government and backed a ban on wild animals being used in circuses in England after a heated debate in Parliament.

 

Tory MP Mark Pritchard's motion was approved without a formal vote.

 

Earlier, he said he was "threatened" by No 10 and told the prime minister would look upon it "dimly" if he pressed ahead with the debate in the Commons.

 

Ministers said they would listen to MPs' views but that a ban was not "an immediate possibility".

 

The motion is not binding on the government but will increase pressure on ministers to act over the issue.

 

Downing Street said the government would "recognise the will of the House".

 

At the start of the debate, Mr Pritchard used the first few minutes of his speech to draw attention to what he said had been the government's "mysterious" behaviour over the issue.

 

He said he had initially been offered a "pretty trivial job" if he agreed either to drop the Commons motion calling for a ban, to amend it or not to press for a vote.

 

Then, on the eve of the debate, he said he had been contacted by No 10 directly.

 

"I was offered incentive and reward on Monday and then it was ratcheted up until last night when I was threatened," he said.

 

"I had a call from the prime minister's office directly. I was told unless I withdraw this motion that the prime minister himself would look upon it very dimly indeed."

 

Mr Pritchard said he had not "picked a fight" with the government over the issue but "had a message" for Mr Cameron and Conservative whips - who enforce party discipline in the Commons.

 

"I may just be a little council house lad from a very poor background but that background gives me a backbone, it gives me a thick skin," he said.

 

"And I am not going to be kowtowed by the whips or even the prime minister of my country on an issue that I feel passionately about, that I have conviction about."

 

The public wanted their MPs to show "a bit of spine" and he would "not be bullied", he added.

 

Only a handful of circuses in England keep wild animals which includes any non-domestic species, such as tigers, zebras and camels.

 

The RSPCA estimates 46 such animals are currently used in circus performance in the UK.

 

Mr Pritchard said this was cruel and outdated - comparing it to outlawed practices such as dog-fighting and badger-baiting - and insisted that the UK should "lead not lag the world" in animal welfare.

 

He argued there was overwhelming public support for a ban and more than 200 MPs supported the move.

 

The RSPCA says seven tigers are among wild animals currently used in travelling circuses The government's preferred option is to introduce a licensing scheme and a tougher inspection regime for circus animals under the existing Animal Welfare Act.

 

Such an approach is currently the subject of consultation and has been welcomed by the circus industry which says cases of mistreatment are very rare.

 

But Lib Dem Bob Russell said circuses featuring wild animals were "barbaric and had no place in civilised society in the 21st Century".

 

The Conservatives had initially intended to "whip" their MPs to vote against Mr Pritchard's motion but ultimately allowed them a "free vote" on the issue.

 

Tory MP Zac Goldsmith welcomed the change of heart, saying a whipped vote would have "made a mockery of the relationship between Parliament and government".

 

Comedian Ricky Gervais and actor Brian Blessed are among celebrities who wrote an open letter recently to Mr Cameron calling on the government to bring in a ban.

 

The government has argued that it would be unworkable to do this until the outcome of a legal challenge to a similar ban in Austria was known.

 

'Legal issues'

 

Environment Minister Jim Paice said the government was "determined to stamp out" cruelty in circuses but there was a "serious risk" of a legal challenge to any UK ban an the "quickest way to reduce and hopefully eliminate cruelty to wild animals would be a robust licensing system".

 

Shadow environment secretary Mary Creagh said the government's handling of the issue had been "confused".

 

"It is extraordinary that David Cameron used such bully-boy tactics to threaten his own MPs and tried to impose a three-line whip on the vote," she said. "We look forward to a ban being implemented in the next 12 months."

 

A spokeswoman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said: "The government will listen to the view of the House and is sympathetic to the motion for a ban.

 

"We will continue to look carefully at how this could be introduced, but there are unavoidable legal difficulties that we cannot ignore."

 

The RSPCA said the vote was a "massive step forward" for animal welfare and it "looked forward" to the ban becoming a reality.

 

"We hope that this vote is the start of a new era for the tigers, lions and other magnificent animals forced to endure circus life, whose welfare needs have been ignored for far too long," the charity's Dr Ros Clubb said.

 

Jan Creamer, chief executive of Animal Defenders International, said: "The public demands a ban, animal welfare groups demand a ban and now politicians have made it abundantly clear that they demand a ban."

 

Speaking on BBC One's Question Time, Transport Minister Norman Baker said: "It's not simply the performing humiliation of the animals, it's also the fact you can't keep animals of that nature sensibly when you're a travelling circus.

 

"I'm delighted it's got all-party support and hope we can go forward as soon as possible with legislation."

[Section_31]

I get the distinct impression Cameron is drowning. The fundamental problem he has - is that he's not very bright.