Integrated is a day conference, hosted by All Souls, Langham Place, dedicated to developing a Biblical vision for work.

This year’s programme features two plenary sessions examining ‘The Story of Work’ in the Biblical narrative, with Mark O’Donoghue looking at ‘Creation to Redemption’ and Dr Chris Wright looking at ‘The New Creation’.

In between the two main session, attendees are divided into different Workplace Networks, including ‘Business & Finance’, ‘Law & Order’, ‘Healthcare’ and ‘Education’, with a ‘General Workplace’ category as well. CARE is delighted to be co-ordinating the ‘Public Policy’ Network, featuring Baroness Berridge amongst others.

This is a fantastic opportunity for rediscovering the Christian foundations for work and for linking with others facing similar challenges. The first Integrated Conference was a great success with participants enthusiastic for further input and networking.

The conference is on Saturday 8th June, from 9:30am-4:45pm and costs £25 (inc. lunch).  However, the booking deadline is Sunday 26th May, so time is running out to register!

Click here for further details and to register online.

Why shouldn’t we legalise assisted suicide? – CARE comment piece ahead of the publication of the Bill

Scope responds to assisted suicide legal challenges – Scope

Disabled people should not be talked into suicide, says Scope Chief – ITV News

I want to be a burden on my family – The Guardian

Lord Falconer’s assisted dying bill is an insult to everyone – God & Politics Blog

Doctors must have nothing to do with suicide of patients (£) – Baroness Finlay, The Times

New bill condemned as ‘Orwellian spin’ which would not ‘pass public safety test’ – Daily Mail

“Lord Falconer is tabling a private members’ bill on assisted suicide. We believe current laws should not be changed: http://ow.ly/l2KRP”  – Tweet from Royal College of Surgeons

License for suicide by any other name – Daily Telegraph

Lord Chief Justice comments on landmark legal challenge to the ban on assisted suicide – Daily  Telegraph

Protected offline, but exposed online, says Baroness Howe

Today, Baroness Howe of Idlicote will introduce legislation intended to protect under-eighteens from adult content online. Welcomed by internet safety charities, her new Online Safety Bill has its First Reading in the House of Lords today.

Baroness Howe explained the hypocrisy of our current child protection laws and the importance of her Bill proposing web filtering on the basis of age-verification:

“If we really care about children then we must not shy away from using the law to protect them online, as we do very properly offline.”

“It makes no sense that children are prohibited by law from accessing adult content offline but that no parallel regulatory framework exists online. If we value children and recognise that it is not appropriate for children to access adult content offline then the same must apply online – and yet, all too often, it doesn’t.”

Critical of the Government’s current approach to internet safety, the Crossbencher life peer is proposing a statutory approach to protecting children from adult content online. She said:

“While I recognise that the Government has shown an interest in addressing this challenge, it is far from clear to me that their voluntary approach is working or is likely to.”

“It is interesting to note that, prior to 2005, children’s charities drew attention to an increased incidence of children gambling online. The industry agreed that this was a problem. Very little happened to address the problem until the online gambling providers were required to introduce online age verification by law, courtesy of the 2005 Gambling Act. The 2005 Act established a very important precedent that my Bill builds on in relation to other adult content.”

The Online Safety Bill has received an enthusiastic welcome from charities working to promote internet safety for children.

Dan Boucher, Director of Parliamentary Affairs from the charity CARE, said:

“We are facing the reality that children across the UK have easy access to sickeningly abusive images and content online, from violent pornography to websites promoting self-harm. The internet giants are not doing enough to stem this tide of harmful material so greater demands must be made of them by Parliament. Baroness Howe’s Bill provides a critical opportunity for Parliament to compel mobile phone operators and internet service providers to take responsibility for their inaction in what would be a major step towards greater internet safety for children.”

Miranda Suit, Co-Chairman of the charity Safermedia, responded to the Bill’s plans:

“Baroness Howe’s Bill contains effective and well-thought-out measures which will keep children much safer whenever and wherever they are online. The Bill’s opt-in ISP level filter would provide the best protection from increasingly violent and abusive pornography which should not be left to self-regulation.  After several years of raising the alarm, Safermedia is delighted to see vital legislation on this issue.”  

For further information please contact Ruth Bessant on tel: 07581 153693 or email: ruth.bessant@care.org.uk

Editors Notes:

1. Baroness Howe’s Online Safety Bill will have its First Reading in the House of Lords on 14 May 2013.
2. CARE (Christian Action Research and Education) is a well-established mainstream Christian charity providing resources and helping to bring Christian insight and experience to matters of public policy and practical caring initiatives.  CARE is represented in the UK Parliaments and Assemblies, at the EU in Brussels and the UN in Geneva and New York.  CARE is a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales at 53 Romney Street, London, SW1P 3RF, Company No: 3481417, Charity No: 1066963, Scottish Charity No: SC038911 Website: www.care.org.uk
3. Safermedia is a Charity seeking to reduce the harmful effects of the media on our children, families and society. http://www.safermedia.org.uk/

Assisting or encouraging suicide is currently illegal in the UK despite several attempts to change the law in recent years – in the House of Lords in 2006 and 2009 and in the Scottish Parliament in 2010.  Lord Falconer’s proposal is for mentally competent, terminally ill adults with six months or less to live to be able to ask a doctor to provide a lethal dose of drugs upon request.  The individual would then take the concoction provided.

The Bill may have a Second Reading as soon as the summer (i.e. late June) or not until the autumn and there will, of course, be opportunity for all the arguments to be expounded in the coming weeks and months.

However, for the time being it is interesting to briefly reflect on the fact that the closer individuals get to the issue of assisted suicide, the lower the level of support for a change in the law.

Six out of ten Members of Parliament – who debated the Director of Public Prosecutions’ (DPP) guidelines on assisted suicide as recently as March 2012 – oppose or strongly oppose legalising assisted suicide for mentally competent terminally ill people according to a ComRes poll published in September 2012.  This is despite recent high profile court cases given significant, largely sympathetic media coverage.

Additionally, the vast majority of clinicians are opposed to legalising assisted suicide.  The British Medical Association opposes assisted suicide and rejected motions to adopt a neutral stance on the issue in June 2012.  They are joined in their opposition by the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Physicians, the British Geriatric Society and the Association for Palliative Medicine.

The courts have consistently rejected attempts to change the law ‘through the back door’, asserting that any change in the law must come from democratic debate in Parliament.

Why should this be the case?  Are these three groups comprised of people so markedly different from the population that it is only natural that there should be such a divergence of opinion?  This seems unlikely.  How often do we see MPs reject policies favoured by an apparent majority of the population?  In addition, people cost the NHS more in the last 6 months of their lives – the period that Lord Falconer aims to cover – than throughout the rest of the lives, so money may be saved if assisted suicide was legalised.  What is the problem?

Having thought long and hard about the issue following debates in the Commons in January and March of 2012, MPs remain unconvinced that public safety concerns have been dealt with.  Even with the very best safeguards, the pressure on vulnerable people – imagined or real – will remain.  Ultimately, for MPs, the current law is clear and does not need to be meddled with.  Assisted suicide is illegal and punishable by up to 14 years’ imprisonment – a powerful deterrent – and the DPP’s guidelines provide for discretion and the tempering of justice with mercy in particularly hard cases.

Any clinician will readily admit that diagnosis and prognosis is not an exact science and would recognise that it is incredibly difficult to determine how long a person has left to live.  Additionally, whilst palliative medicine may not be a panacea able to alleviate all pain and suffering, it can effectively tackle many of the drivers for assisted suicide, namely fear of dying badly, worries about a loss of control and concerns about quality of life.

Our point of departure as Christians is that the intrinsic value of human life makes support for assisted suicide incompatible with our faith.  However, it is understandable – if not condonable – that, from a quick scan of the papers, the view of the public (some suggest even the Christian population) leans towards legalising assisted suicide.  Yet Christian love extends beyond mere compassion for individual circumstance as we recognise a Creator God who knit us together in His image and first loved us.

The Bill proposed by Lord Falconer is unnecessary and dangerous.  Particularly in a time of recession, with an aging population and a stretched health service, it should be given short shrift ensuring that the vulnerable remain protected as they currently are.

Simplicity

Many will tell you that for all the benefits of tax credits, they were extremely complex; both in terms of the bureaucratic behemoth required to administer the plethora of payments available, and in terms of claimants understanding what it was they were actually entitled to.

To this end, the Government and IDS argue that due to the Universal Credit combining many of the existing tax credits and benefits (such as Child Tax Credit, Working Tax Credit, Housing Benefit, Income Support, income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance and the income-related Employment and Support Allowance) into one uniform payment, simplicity will result. In turn, they argue that this will result in a less complex bureaucratic framework, meaning that fraud and error should be reduced and the demand on the public purse-strings eased.

As far as claimants of Universal Credit are concerned, one might also argue that increased simplicity will result in recipients being able to more easily establish how much (or little) they will be entitled to. This is of course on the proviso that claimants will be able to get online and fill out the forms that will tell them how much they’ll get in the first place (the form filling required for Universal Credit award will all be done online).

Whilst in my view this theoretical increased simplicity is to be applauded, we are yet to see how this will work out in practice. Given the recent news reports about apparent problems with the computer system behind Universal Credit, it may be best at this stage to reserve absolute judgement.

Simplicity matters, because (and this I think is often missed in policy and media debates on welfare) it affects what is known as the ‘take-up rate’ of a benefit or credit. In other words, a credit could be worth £1,000,000 to a certain individual or family, but if you need a PhD in order to fathom all the forms, then will the eligible family actually be able to claim the benefit and be any better off in reality?

Work incentives

Under the soon-to-be overhauled system of tax credits, it was, unbelievably enough, possible to be facing a Marginal Effective Tax Rate (METR) of some 96%, meaning that for every extra £1 earned through something like overtime, an earner would only see 4 pence come into the household!

In relation to this, IDS has said that under Universal Credit ‘work will always pay’ and he’ll argue this is backed up by the fact that no earner will face an METR higher than 76.2%; meaning that an earner subject to this METR will see 24 pence come into the household from every extra £1 earned.

However before we got too excited, where would this ‘reduced’ METR leave the UK in comparison to other developed countries? Not in a very flattering position. The latest data from the OECD shows, for instance, that an METR of 76.2% would leave a UK one-earner family on 75% of the OECD average wage at the top of the pile when compared to other families internationally, thus one-earner families facing this METR will still gain the least from any extra £1 earned in comparison to other OECD families.[1]  While it is welcome that the very highest METRs will be reduced under Universal Credit, it is still worrying that a quarter of all families will face an METR of 76%.

Generosity

Last, but most definitely not least, for all the design details and quirks of the Universal Credit, what most families and individuals will be most interested in is whether the Universal Credit will leave them in or out of pocket in comparison to Tax Credits.

As with most tax, benefits and welfare policy, the answer as to whether you will be a winner or a loser very much depends on who you are.

To take just two family types, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (whose conclusions have been confirmed by the Department of Work and Pensions) have said that:

Lone Parents with two children:

• Working less than 16 hours a week will be better off
• The difference will be very little for those working between 16 and 29 hours, and:
• Those working 30 or more hours per week will be slightly worse off.

For couples with two children:

• Single earner in-work couples will be better off
• Couples with savings of more than £16,000 will be worse off.

Taking a look at the bigger picture, the DWP published an Impact Assessment in December 2012.  This shows that 3.1 million households will have higher entitlement as a result of Universal Credit – gaining, on average, £168 per month. Around 1.9 million households will see an increase of more than £100 per month. 2.8 million Households will have lower entitlement – the average reduction will be £137 per month. The majority will have a reduction of less than £100 per month.

Conclusions

All in all, there appear to be some encouraging points to the Universal Credit, not least the fact that it will hopefully prove simpler to administer than tax credits and will reward those who work for any amount of hours (under tax credits, one has to work at least 16 hours per week before becoming eligible.)

However, there are still too many unknowns in the mix for us to judge whether the Universal Credit will be a success. Will the new computer system be able to cope? Will those without easy and convenient access to the internet end up losing out? How will the financial losers cope with the loss in income? With all these questions still to be answered, there’s still much to play for for all parties concerned when it comes to this wide ranging policy reform.

Mrs Fleming had argued that, as suicide is legal, she was discriminated against as a disabled person who is unable to avail herself of the choice freely available to others.  However, as others have pointed out, to legalise something does not result in an automatic right to it – in this case suicide (read more about this in an excellent summary from Care Not Killing’s Dr Peter Saunders).

Compassion for an individual and/or their circumstances – however tragic – does not require that we disregard our moral compass nor accept their desired outcome as a ‘right’.  Compassion does not always lead to an acceptance of another’s desires; in fact, the loving outcome may be profound disagreement with the course of action someone is set upon.  The intrinsic value of human life as made in the image of God is such that, whilst we might not like suffering, we accept that it is part of what it means to be human and do not take steps to end life prematurely.

Court cases

Two cases appealing earlier decisions will be heard by the Court of Appeal in London on 13 May.  Both cases are addressing the law on murder, rather than the Irish case which focused on amending the law concerning assisted suicide.  Paul Lamb, a man who was almost entirely paralysed following a road accident twenty years ago, will have his case heard at the same time as Jane Nicklinson, the wife of Tony who suffered from locked-in syndrome and died last year.

We hope that the Court will indicate – as it has done previously – that any change in the law regarding murder or suicide must be made by Parliament.

New Bill

Moreover, we also anticipate a fresh push to legalise assisted suicide within parliament in the House of Lords.  Lord Falconer, a keen supporter of changing the law who has attempted to do so previously and failed, intends to introduce a Bill in May or June 2013.  Again, we will keep supporters informed and equip you to take action against this dangerous proposal.

In December last year, the Government published a draft Bill with the intention of tightening up remote gambling by amending the Gambling Act 2005. We were very pleased with this development as we have been campaigning for greater regulation of internet gambling for a number of years.

The draft Bill will require overseas gambling operators to obtain a Gambling Commission licence if they want to offer gambling or advertise to British consumers. According to the report, currently around 80% of remote gambling is conducted with operators which are not licensed in the UK. Requiring gambling operators to obtain a licence means that firms must sign up to the Government’s conditions designed to protect consumers and children. This includes assisting people who are problem gamblers to self-exclude themselves from websites where they can gamble.

The Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s report makes a specific reference to CARE’s call for a ‘one-stop shop’ for self exclusion for problem gamblers; although disappointingly it stopped short of repeating a previous call it has made for the implementation of such a mechanism of self-exclusion.

The ‘one-stop shop’ initiative aims to support problem gamblers who are seeking to prevent themselves from accessing gambling websites by simplifying the exclusion process to just one request as opposed to contacting every gambling website individually. Ultimately, it aims to help problem gamblers control compulsive gambling in a far more effective and responsible way.

Giving evidence on behalf of CARE to the Committee in January, Lauri Moyle explained that this would be far easier to achieve if all companies providing remote gambling in the UK had to be licensed here. Moreover, once self-exclusion was made simpler then we believe more people with gambling problems would make use of it.

Lauri Moyle, CARE’S consultant on remote gambling, commented on the Committee’s findings:

“We are delighted that this latest report provides further support for the regulation of online gambling in the UK. However, if remote gambling becomes normalised in the UK then at the very least we need to ensure that those at risk of problem gambling are given help and support.”

“It is for this reason that we are disappointed the Committee did not repeat its recommendation for the development of a system of self-exclusion. We continue to call on the Government to adopt a ‘one-stop shop’ for self-exclusion to empower those who are actively seeking to control their gambling.”

Further reading:

Culture, Media and Sport Committee Report, Pre–legislative scrutiny of the draft Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Bill, Sixth Report of Session 2012–13, 01 May 2013

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmcumeds/905/905.pdf

Culture, Media and Sport Committee Report, The Gambling Act 2005: A bet worth taking?, First Report of Session 2012–13, 24 July 2012

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmcumeds/421/421.pdf

The Gambling (Licensing & Advertising) Bill – Commons Library Standard Note

http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN06523

MLA’s also rejected an amendment put down by the Alliance Party, which sought to introduce civil marriage for same-sex couples “provided that robust legislative measures permit faith groups to define, articulate and practise religious marriage as they determine.” This amendment was defeated by 51 votes to 46.

We want to thank supporters in Northern Ireland for writing to their MLA’s on this issue and all of those who prayed for the current definition of marriage to be maintained. We are glad that the Assembly has rejected calls to redefine marriage in the province and we will continue to work to uphold the traditional definition of marriage in the months and years to come.

We are very thankful to God for this positive outcome.

Click on the links below for further coverage of the debate:

Same-sex marriage rejected at Stormont – UTV

Same-sex marriage motion is defeated at NI Assembly – BBC

We lobbied for the adoption of four resolutions calling on the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers and the Member states to take action concerning:

- The fight against sexual exploitation of children

- The defence of religious liberty both in Europe and in dealing with ‘third countries’ – those countries which are outside Europe

- The exercise of proper ethical control over developments in science and technology

- Nanotechnology and associated benefits and risks

All four resolutions were adopted with overwhelming majorities.  I am particularly pleased to be able to report that the text of the child sexual exploitation resolution (which CARE helped to draft) was passed unanimously with no amendments.

The text on religious freedom – ‘Safeguarding human rights in relation to religion and belief and protecting religious communities from violence’ – was adopted by 148 votes to 3 with 7 abstentions.  Amongst other things, it reaffirms the right of conscience and of parents to have education for their children which reflects their personal religious and philosophical convictions.  It also calls on States to change their legal regulations whenever these go against the freedom of association for groups (including churches) defined by their religion or beliefs.

Both texts on science and ethics call for stronger safeguards and better regulation of developments in science and technology to ensure compliance with ethical standards.

You can read the full text of the four resolutions below:

Fighting “child sex tourism”

Safeguarding human rights in relation to religion and belief and protecting religious communities from violence

Ethics in science and technology

Nanotechnology: balancing benefits and risks to public health and the environment

David Fieldsend is Manager of CARE for Europe

It is possible to come at this from a number of angles. Of particular importance is the value – i.e. the status and respect commanded within society – placed on the work of stay-at-home parents in comparison to other professions. That is, many argue that the value of being a stay-at-home parent is significantly less than that of a ‘professional’ man or women. Many reasons for this have been proposed, but more importantly in the context of this article, would the value and standing of stay-at-home parents improve in the eyes of society if it were attached to a wage? More to the point still, would more families become one-earner households if doing so were tied to a financial incentive?

Whilst I am not saying that stay-at-home parents should consider becoming such for purely financial reasons, it is intriguing to note that, according to polling, many parents would consider the stay-at-home option if it were more financially viable. Indeed, when one considers research conducted both in the USA and UK, that suggests that when totting up all the tasks stay-at-home parents accomplish, it could add up to anything between approximately £30,000 and £75,000 per year.

Some will of course say that in this dire economic climate we simply cannot afford to pay stay-at-home parents from the public purse. Yet, as mentioned earlier, the Government has found some £1.4 billion for its latest childcare plans, and has found even more – £10.7 billion by 2016-17 – to raise the personal income tax threshold to £10,000, which will primarily benefit two-earner households in the upper half of the income distribution.

Hence, whilst it may be a little unrealistic to expect stay-at-home parents to be paid £75,000 per year by the Government, would it really be that unreasonable to give something to help households where one parent stays at home and has significant caring responsibilities? After all, as much research has highlighted, it is one-earner households who are especially likely to be in poverty (only households where there is no-one in work are likely to experience higher poverty rates, whilst lone parent families are also at high risk). In addition, as the Christian social policy charity CARE has pointed out, one-earner households currently lose out when it comes to the tax system and work incentives, seeing only 27 pence come into the household for every extra £1 earned in work (this is particularly true for poorer one-earner households on the minimum wage, 50% and 75% of the OECD average wage).

From a political and policy viewpoint (and let us not forget David Cameron’s pledge to make Britain the most ‘family friendly country in Europe’), any policy along these lines could be limited to families on incomes below a certain level, and could be limited to families with young children or with significant caring responsibilities for older children or adults. In any case, when considering the contribution stay-at-home parents make, the value of this role in society, the raw deal one-earner households are currently afforded and the policies the Government has introduced to help other household types, maybe offering remuneration to stay-at-home parents isn’t such a bizarre idea after all!

Agree or disagree with what I’m saying? Take part in the debate and comment below!