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Stats watchdog Sir Michael Scholar said he didn't want to get involved in "political controversy" in the run-up to the election, but tonight he finds himself squarely in the middle of a campaign spat.

Two days ago, Chris Grayling, shadow home secretary and the man Sir Michael ticked off earlier this month for his use of crime stats, to suggest that the prime minister had used a provisional immigration statistic which "will, if unchecked, damage public trust in official statistics."

Mr Grayling wasn't the only person to point out the error. Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the lobby group Migration Watch UK, also "to make a formal complaint about the mis-use [sic] of immigration statistics".

Today, pointing out that he had not used "comparable data" when he talked about migration trends.

In , Mr Brown said this:

"Some people talk as if net inward migration is rising. In fact, it is falling - down from 237,000 in 2007, to 163,000 in 2008, to provisional figures of 147,000 last year."

The first two numbers are fine, but the third is problematic as it is not calculated in the same way as the first two. It does not include asylum-seekers or people who overstay their visa.

The prime minister made the same point in a speech today - but this time he did give all the proper caveats. He said:

"Net inward migration has also fallen. In the 12 months to December 2007, net inward migration as measured by the ONS long-term international migration series was 233,000. In the 12 months to December 2008, it was 163,000. We don't yet have the long-term migration figures for the 12 months to the end of 2009.
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"However, we do have provisional figures for the 12 months to June 2009, based on the international passenger survey, which constitutes the largest part of the long-term inward migration figures. On IPS figures, in the 12 months to June 2007, net inward migration was 170,000. In the 12 months to June 2008, it was 168,000. And in the 12 months to June 2009, it was 147,000."

It might be convoluted, even a bit dull. But it is statistically sound and :

I suspect Gordon Brown didn't mind spelling out the statistics in all their complexity. It was a sly dig at those who chose to alert the UKSA to his original slip by producing data that make a similar point.

As for Sir Michael, he may well have been content to send a warning shot across the prime ministerial bows, however muted in tone, to demonstrate he is neither partisan nor intimidated in his determination to ensure that this election campaign does not damage trust in numbers.

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It's election time. Two unsolicited matey e-mails have dropped into my inbox from opposing political advisers, both wanting to draw my attention to Home Office statistics.

A Labour insider helpfully sends this graph showing how crime is down and fear of crime is rising.

Nothing new in the data with which I am familiar. But the sub-text seems clear enough. "Don't believe all that Tory nonsense about crime going up. They are playing on people's fears".

Meanwhile "found" on the internet which suggests Home Office press releases are full of "statistical omissions".

The sub-text here is that "the Labour government has been playing fast and loose with crime figures and cannot be trusted".

I sense that we are all being "softened up" for the battles to come on crime during the campaign. But it is also a clue as to how important numbers are going to be in the election arguments about criminal justice.

The criticism by the UK Statistics Authority of officials in No 10 over knife crime figures and, more recently, shadow home secretary Chris Grayling on (both following revelations on this blog) has focused election strategists' minds on the power of data.

The Labour prompting around crime and the fear of crime is designed to imply that the government can claim credit for falling levels of victimhood (a controversial assertion) and that high and arguably irrational levels of fear is nothing to do with politicians (equally controversial).

That experience of crime has fallen significantly since 1995 is difficult to contest, but the cause may have little or nothing to do with a thousand government policy initiatives.

Technological and economic factors such as security systems and the fall in the price of consumer durables like DVDs may have had a far greater important impact on volume crimes than the dozens of criminal justice laws introduced.

Equally, it could be argued that much government activity around crime has had the unintended consequence of making people feel more anxious.

The Conservative nudging towards the work of the Home Office's Surveys, Design and Statistics Subcommittee that "nearly two-thirds of Government press releases contain misleading or unsubstantiated claims".

However, the document actually says that its findings do "not necessarily mean that the statistics were misleading or inaccurate". According to one of the statisticians who produced the "damning report", it is not damning in the least.

Professor Sheila Bird, who will be presenting the results at the Royal Statistical Society tomorrow, tells me that the findings are "not shocking at all but a statistical standard to aim for".

I sometimes feel that elections are the opposite of what they claim to be: far from offering an opportunity for Britain to make a reasoned judgement about the policies to guide our country over the next five years, we witness a crazy scramble for power where truth and perspective, as in a real war, are early victims.

In that context, perhaps, a debate about numbers is a step in the right direction.

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That to outlaw an chemical is evidence of a clash of philosophies on the role of the state in dealing with risk. It will also be cited as support for the view that the Misuse of Drugs Act is not fit for purpose.

The system of drug classification and penalties goes back almost 40 years and, it is argued, is too clunky to cope with a modern world in which a new and dangerous drug can move from a Far-Eastern lab to become the drug of choice in British nightclubs in a matter of a few months.

The current structure moves at a stately pace: from considered scientific assessment to ministerial judgement and through the legislative process of both Houses of Parliament. It also contains, as the home secretary discovered this morning, statutory traps which can frustrate ministers wishing to act promptly.

Under the act, Dr Polly Taylor's resignation means the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) is not constituted properly. The 1971 legislation states that the council must include someone with "wide and recent experience of... veterinary medicine" and, at the moment, she is the only vet they've got. Until such time as the committee finds a suitable replacement, the home secretary cannot act (though see update below).

For those who believe delay puts lives at risk, Dr Taylor's action must seem the height of irresponsibility. But for her, it is a matter of profound principle.

The resignation is further fall-out from the home secretary's decision to sack the former chairman of the ACMD, Professor David Nutt, last November. The professor was dismissed after giving an academic lecture in which he criticised the government policy on classifying cannabis and ecstasy, but his departure prompted five members of the Advisory Council to resign, furious at what they saw as an attack on the independence of scientific advisers.

In an attempt to cool matters, . The final version was released five days ago. But before the ink is barely dry, Dr Polly Taylor has resigned from the council, saying the code won't stop advice being "subjected to a desire to please ministers or the mood of the day's press".

Dr Taylor is particularly dismayed by a line in the code which says that "Government and its scientific advisers should not act to undermine mutual trust". In her resignation letter [207Kb PDF], she says this is "highly unsatisfactory and appeared to justify ministers appointing and dismissing independent scientific advisers according to 'trust' which is an arbitrary and subjective matter".

The affair is evidence of a philosophical divide between a political community which wants to respond swiftly to public anxiety and a scientific community which wants hard evidence before coming to any conclusion.

As a result, there are two distinct views on how government should respond to the arrival of new drugs which pose a potential harm to users.

The first, favoured by politicians, is the so-called precautionary principle: "we don't know how dangerous this substance is, so we will ban it until such time as it can be proved to be safe".

The second is supported by some scientists and academics: "we should not move hastily towards a ban without evidence of the physical harm from a drug because prohibition itself causes harms".

The , an independent academic think-tank, has urged "much caution" before rushing to outlaw mephedrone. "The result would be to potentially create criminal sanctions against users (and hence possible imprisonment) for a drug whose real harms have not even been assessed," says commission Chief Executive Roger Howard. "If the harms were later to be found less than anticipated, then it would be extremely unlikely that any government would 'un-classify' it or downgrade it," he tells me.

Prohibition, it is argued, tends to push price up and purity down, increasing the health risks and prompting more acquisitive crime. A ban also moves production and supply from an observable and potentially controllable legal environment to the underworld. But the counter-argument is that it is the very legality of mephedrone which has increased its popularity. There is evidence that it has now overtaken ecstasy among clubbers, some of whom may believe that because it is legal, it is safe.

Professor David Nutt and Dr Les King, who set up the following their departure from the ACMD, have also written to the home secretary [86Kb PDF] urging him to wait before taking action against mephedrone.

They write that: "it is imperative to avoid, particularly in the pre-election period, a knee-jerk reaction to press coverage of deaths that may or may not have been caused by mephedrone".

Their view is that ministers would do better to wait until the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) has completed its evaluation of 'legal highs', including mephedrone. A formal risk-assessment is expected to be submitted in early July.

It is self-evident that, with any new drug, it takes time to assemble the hard science on which to judge its relative harm. Despite all the press stories, there is actually no confirmed case in Britain of mephedrone having contributed to any death in any way. That's not to say that it isn't dangerous: today the ACMD is reported to have identified at least 18 deaths in England and a possible seven in Scotland where cathinones, of which mephedrone is one, have been implicated. In seven cases, there was evidence of mephedrone at post-mortem. But, as yet, no inquest has concluded that mephedrone killed someone.

For politicians, though, especially in the febrile atmosphere of an impending election campaign, this is not the time for considered debates about the role of independent scientific advice and risk assessment. As the prime minister told the country at Question Time last week, he is "determined to act to prevent this evil hurting the young people of this country".

Update 1254: Home Office lawyers have been poring over the Misuse of Drugs Act and believe that, even without the requisite vet, the Advisory Council can report and the government can legislate for a ban. A spokesperson has said:

"Based on its current formation, the ACMD is still able to fulfil its statutory role and provide advice on mephedrone today on which we can act. We have said we intend to act immediately on receipt of the ACMD's advice and this is still our intention."

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involving ; breaches which . At stake, according to , is the integrity of our democratic system, the reputation of our Parliament and public trust in our elected representatives.

So why, when I raised this with members involved, did I often get the sense that they thought I was making a mountain out of a mole-hill?

One MP responded sharply to my questions: "Surely you have more important things to do. I do."

So, does it really matter that some of our elected representatives fail to declare relevant hospitality from an overseas country? Many of the breaches we cite might be put down to forgetfulness or to oversight.

The MPs had, in most cases, registered their visits. The mistake, it might be argued, was simply a bureaucratic nicety; ticking the little box on the form when tabling a question or signing a motion which would place an "[R]" beside their name on the order paper, alerting people to the registered interest.

As one MP put it when admitting such breaches: "This is a technical error on my part."

Well, the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ is not claiming to have unearthed mass corruption at the heart of our legislature. But the rules are there for good reason.

Parliament knows what damage could be done if people outside are allowed to think that MPs are getting "trips for questions": nice holidays in lovely places in return for political favours. Or worse, that they are being glad-handed by a foreign power in return for influence within the Palace of Westminster.

The spells it out:

It also says that:

The point of the regulations is to ensure that a sceptical citizenry can be confident about the integrity of its elected representatives. Transparency is key.

However, my initial attempts at investigating this area were met by resistance from the Parliamentary authorities themselves.

When I first called asking for help in interpreting the rules, I was told that it would not assist me "because you have a particular case in mind".

I explained that I needed to understand the regulations in order to check whether elected members were behaving as they should. This, I argued, was exactly what an independent press was required to do in a democracy.

"I cannot help you," I was told.

"You provide guidance on the rules to MPs," I protested. "Surely you can provide the same guidance to me?" Not that day.

Although the commissioner's office did eventually assist us with the official interpretation of the rules, this initial contact suggests what many people outside Westminster suspect: the system of Parliamentary self-regulation is designed to protect, not just the reputation of the House of Commons, but its members.

Instead of providing transparency, the Rules Relating to the Conduct of Members are opaque, confusing and sometimes contradictory. Many members, it emerged during the course of our investigation, are ignorant of what is required of them.

Of the four hundred and more breaches we identified, the vast majority relate to a failure to declare a registered interest. A number of the MPs we contacted said they didn't think a declaration was necessary - and argued it was a matter for them to decide.

A few quoted this line from the rules:

They interpreted this to mean that if they didn't think it was relevant, it wasn't relevant. But the very next line in the regulations explains:

The whole system works only if members take this responsibility seriously. Declaration doesn't imply wrong-doing, but a failure to declare might be interpreted that way. The widespread abuse of the system uncovered by our investigation suggests some members of Parliament don't understand this.

The MP who heads the Commons Public Administration Select Committee, Tony Wright, says:

"Declarations should be the norm. It is quite proper for MPs to go on visits. Some of those visits will be financed by foreign governments. But it is crucial that we know who people are lobbying on behalf of. And if they're lobbying on behalf of governments who have paid for their visits, then clearly we need to know about it."

What really struck me as I conducted the investigation is that the system of scrutiny surrounding the rules clearly does not work.

The only time the Commissioner for Parliamentary Standards will look into a potential breach is if someone lodges a formal complaint. Since members from all the major parties are apparently breaking the rules on a regular basis, one can understand why MPs themselves might be reluctant to rock that boat.

Identifying members who have breached the rules on overseas visits was laborious, but not difficult. For the most part, it simply involved comparing against Hansard and the rules. Without much effort, we identified hundreds of breaches which the rules regard as "very serious". There will be many more we didn't identify.

For me, the exercise is less about exposing individual MPs' failings as it is about revealing the weaknesses of the scrutiny process.

Sir Alistair Graham, the former chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, puts it like this:

"If, day after day when people are standing up in Parliament, signing early day motions and asking questions of ministers, and they are not declaring an interest they should have declared, then they are undermining the integrity of the system. And if we undermine our democratic system in this country, we will do untold damage for the future."

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Whichever party wins control of the Commons at the election, we must expect that it will attempt to reinvigorate civil society, a concept that "for a century or more...has been pushed to the margins by commerce and the state", .

It is fairly common ground at Westminster that power-hungry government has invaded civic space and weakened the community bonds which are required for society to function well.

As the philosopher : "There was a period when social scientists assumed that modernization necessarily entailed the progressive replacement of informal coordination mechanisms with formal ones."

The notion that officialdom should, instead, step back and encourage people to shape their own lives and neighbourhoods has now become the consensus.

Back in 2002, Tony Blair outlined his vision for Britain. "Out goes the big state. In comes the enabling state," he said. David Cameron said something almost identical last year. "Our alternative to big government is the big society," he announced.

While Gordon Brown told the TUC last year how "civic society will have a crucial role to play", the Conservative leader was arguing that his party would empower "communities to take control of their lives".

This is more than positioning around the old left/right argument about the size of the state. It stems from a generally-recognised view that Whitehall is pretty ineffectual when it comes to making our neighbourhoods work successfully.

The document I referred to above, the rather grandly-named , suggests that reports of the death of community spirit may have been greatly exaggerated.

"By most measures, civil society in the UK and Ireland is thriving," it concluded, ensuring that the report received far less publicity than it rightfully deserved.

What the Commission was attempting was to help guide people on how to nurture and encourage civility and community. It identified four priorities:

• growing a more civil economy
• ensuring a rapid and just transition to a low carbon economy
• democratising media ownership and content
• helping to develop participatory and deliberative democracy

I won't rehearse the arguments here; . But the optimistic tone the Commission adopts may well understate the challenge.

In the first half of the 19th Century, the French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville observed that "when citizens are all almost equal, it becomes difficult for them to defend their independence against the aggressions of power".

For all the inequality embedded into the fabric of Britain, our developed democracy has far less tribalism than 20 years ago.

"We're all middle-class now", John Prescott joked in 1997 as he surveyed the "post-ideological" political scene. Without strong class or party identities, we are now preoccupied with our private lives and families.

"The vice of modern democracy is to promote excessive individualism," Fukuyama argues, "and an unwillingness to engage in public affairs".

Politicians may promote this by persuading citizens to see themselves as consumers of public services arguably - a passive condition which is at odds with active civic life.

When, last week, the should do more to deal with concerns about anti-social behaviour, there was criticism that he risked weakening rather than strengthening community life.

If the citizenry is encouraged to believe that creating a "good society" is the responsibility of the state, the argument goes, then we do indeed promote excessive individualism.

When the big freeze hit parts of the UK earlier this year, I remember watching a lawyer on the local news warning viewers against clearing ice from the pavement outside their homes. The message was that the street was the responsibility of the council and private individuals could face an action for damages if they interfered.

, here was evidence of how public space has moved from a category marked "ours" to a box labelled "theirs".

One could argue all day as to whether this is the fault of government looking to expand its sphere of control or a citizenry happy to pass the buck, but without an effective civil society there is less to protect individuals from the power of the state. It also risks infantilising people with the belief that the quality of their lives is the responsibility of someone else.

One more thing to think about - what we call "community action" often amounts to little more than special pleading: "interest groups trying to divert public resources to their favoured causes" as Fukuyama puts it.

The American economist Mancur Olson famously argued that Britain's long-term economic decline was due to the activities of entrenched interest groups.

Social capital - the scientific measure of community cohesion - has been divided into two types: one is about bonding within social groups and the other is about bridging between social groups. As the social scientist Robert Putnam told me a few years ago: "A society that has only bonding social capital and no bridging social capital looks like Beirut or Belfast or Bosnia."

When this week's report on civil society concludes that it is thriving in Britain, it also notes that "civil society associations are not a panacea and are not all necessarily 'good' as they also preach intolerance and violence as well as love and generosity".

There is the challenge. If our political masters are serious about empowering the citizenry, encouraging and trusting them to take responsibility, they must be able to spot the difference between "bonding" and "bridging" and also between individualism and communitarianism. Get it wrong and we risk damaging civil society even more.

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Letters just published show how the shadow home secretary, Chris Grayling, has been trying to rethink the Conservative election strategy on crime.

You may recall that he got into trouble with the statistics watchdog when he used dodgy data to suggest that violent crime had soared under Labour.

The UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) advised him to use the British Crime Survey (BCS) instead, a source which, irritatingly for Mr Grayling, suggests violent crime has fallen by more than 40% since 1997.

Now the UKSA has released .

We only get one half of the dialogue, but the replies are nevertheless revealing. The shadow home secretary has been having telephone conversations with the authority, trying to get agreement on what figures he can use without risking further rebuke.

In response, Sir Michael suggests that:

It is clear from this that Mr Grayling prefers to focus on police recorded statistics rather than the BCS. His difficulty has been that the method for collecting violent offences data changed radically in 2002, making direct comparisons of recorded crime before and after that time potentially misleading.

However, it appears he has not given up hope of finding a way around the problem and believes he has had some success with the Commons' advisors.

In response to another letter from Mr Grayling, Sir Michael writes:

However, the authority's response to Mr Grayling's question is not one that would be welcomed by any campaign team hoping for a simple slogan to suggest increased violence under the incumbent government.

A Conservative poster with the legend "MUGGINGS UP" would have to include a caveat along the lines of "...or quite probably down, depending on which figures you look at".

As if to make the political campaigner's life even more difficult, Sir Michael again stresses that the best measure for violent crime trends is the one that shows it falling.

He writes that:

Sir Michael ends by writing that the Authority won't criticise Mr Grayling's stats "unless we judge it clearly necessary... to prevent damage to trust in official statistics". The shadow home secretary may find this less than entirely reassuring, given the UKSA's warning that "selective quotation" might well be deemed "misleading".

It could be argued that political campaigns have always been about "selective quotation". Candidates see themselves not as judges summing up a case, but as barristers using the best available evidence to prove that the other lot are hapless and hopeless. The idea that political parties should try to portray "a more balanced commentary on national trends" will be hard for some to take. Sir Michael's words could have implications for the eager campaign teams of any party looking to use official statistics.

PS: that the Conservatives believe the House of Commons Library research demonstrates that violent crime has risen 44% under Labour, but the government continues to dispute the accuracy of the claim.

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The brutal killing of a child inspires a primal response in us. It is as though the fundamental goal of all humanity, to rear the next generation and maintain the survival of the species, is being attacked by dark, destructive forces. Some choose to describe it as good versus evil.

The faces of children who, by act of extreme violence, do not survive to adulthood are seared onto our collective conscience. They become emblematic of innocence betrayed.

Today, photographs of two such victims, James Bulger and Sarah Payne, stare out from the newspapers and television screens. The first died 17 years ago, the second a decade ago, but we are still moved by their terrible stories.

Our response, even after such a time, tends to be visceral. We demand retribution against those who callously snuffed out the sparkle in those young eyes. We have little interest in mitigation or explanation.

Politicians know the colossal power of this emotional response. They take refuge in the moral simplicity of these tragedies.

The killing of two-year-old James Bulger inspired what has been called an "arms race" of . It fundamentally changed the relationship between wider adult society and young people.

Sarah Payne's abduction and murder has contributed to . It fundamentally changed the relationship between young people and wider adult society.

That is the influence these innocent faces have upon us. Baby Peter, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, Victoria Climbie, Madeleine McCann: these tragic young people still affect the governance of our country. They have altered the way the generations relate to each other in ways that are both good and ill.

That "every child matters", in the jargon, must be a good thing. That a focus on anti-social behaviour and low-level offending has obliged the authorities to address community anxiety is a positive.

But there must be questions as to whether relatively rare incidents have inspired moral panics which result in poorly considered responses.

I have suggested here before that generational segregation in Britain might now be a greater risk to the fabric of our nation than segregation by race, religion or class. Last autumn the government which finds a "pronounced separation between age groups" and warns of intergenerational "prejudice and discrimination" which could become "more directly hostile".

The research, conducted for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), reveals the generation gap to be dangerously wide.

In the report, 69% of respondents regarded people under 30 and over 70 as having little or nothing in common. Only 10% thought young and old belonged to one common group.

Segregation is the growing medium for distrust, prejudice and fear. We have seen how ghettoes incubate resentment until it explodes in violence and disorder. The racially motivated riots that scarred some of England's northern towns in 2001 were blamed on ethnic communities living "parallel lives". And yet it appears we have allowed our neighbourhoods and our nation to become ghettoised by age. Fewer than one-third of people over 70 say they have any friends under 30, and fewer than one third of under 30-year-olds have friends over 70.

(I have expanded on this argument in an essay to be published next week in .)

As Britain reflects on how best to protect children like James Bulger and Sarah Payne, it is clearly important that we don't lose sight of the impact those decisions have on young and old - how we see our children and how our children see us.

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The lamps are going out all over Norfolk. We shall not see jammy dodgers inside Salford Civic Centre again at tea-time.

Two innovative measures emerging from into how .

But restricting council biscuits and street lighting are gestures in what looks certain to be a dark period of rationalisation and savings, or "cuts to jobs and services" as the unions prefer to describe it.

What emerges from the survey is certainty that central government funding - currently about three-fifths of council income - will be slashed when the current spending arrangement comes to an end next year.

But with no hard figures yet, there is inevitable uncertainty as to what it'll mean for front-line staff and services.

Councils say they expect cuts of between 10% and 30%. The survey reflects anxiety across the United Kingdom although results from England present the clearest picture.

Of those English councils who put a figure on expected job losses, the survey identifies 25,000 local authority posts to disappear in the next five years - 10% of the 250,000 people employed by those local authorities.

If that story is reflective of what is likely to happen across England, we might anticipate 180,000 redundancies.

The regions most vulnerable will be those which rely heavily on public sector jobs. In Northern Ireland and the North East of England a third of workers are employed by the state. In the town of Hastings, it is more than 40%.

While some might argue that a smaller public sector is desirable, the next five years are going to bring significant pain to economies and families across the UK.

As for services, around 60 English councils speculate where the axe might fall and, of those, half admit adult social services are vulnerable to cuts.

A third say children's services are at risk. 60% think environmental services (bin collections, for example) may see budgets cut. Around 80% say libraries and arts funding will be hit.

These figures reflect the expectations of only a minority of councils but illustrate a general fear that key services are threatened.

With a general election looming, central government is anxious to avoid blame for damage to local services and makes the point that budgets are already agreed until April 2011.

Indeed, none of the major political parties want to admit the horrible truth just yet, denying voters the opportunity to consider priorities ahead of polling day.

But councils know what is coming. Next year's funding settlement will be significantly lower than the current package and some will argue that it is only prudent to start cutting now.

However, the minister responsible for local government in England, John Denham, has made the startling claim that front-line services can be protected and, he argues, "improved, even in tighter times".

He believes that new thinking on how local services are funded and delivered across an area can save billions, by smashing the silo-culture that leads to duplication and waste.

It is a familiar message in straitened times and, while pilots suggest there are significant savings to be made, councils claim they are already the most efficient part of the public sector.

Today Mr Denham offers council leaders 10 top tips on how to save money.

They include reducing council buildings by locating services together and splitting senior management posts with other local authorities or primary care trusts. In Town Halls across the land, change is on the way. Even the Hobnobs are at risk.

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