We are told that there will be a revamped National Cyber Security Strategy published in the next few months.  This will explain what the £650 million of new money allocated for cyber security in the spending review will actually be used to deliver (I understand that Whitehall Departments are still bickering over who will get their hands on this money - the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office both believe it should come to them rather than the Cabinet Office).

However, I wonder whether it will also propose legislation.  In the United States a number of members of Congress are putting forward what they are calling the “Homeland Security Cyber and Physical Infrastructure Protection Act of 2010”.  This will give a statutory basis to the Office of Cybersecurity & Communications based in the Department of Homeland Security and would, in particular, create a new Cybersecurity Compliance Division to oversee the establishment of performance-based standards responsive to the particular risks to the .gov domain and critical infrastructure networks.

This is an interesting model.  In the UK, the Government bodies that are responsible for protecting the critical national infrastructure do not have a statutory basis and do not have any formal powers.  In my view, this hampered the effectiveness of the old National Infrastructure Security Coordination Centre, which is now incorporated into the Centre for the Protection of the National Infrastructure and falls under the ambit of the Security Service.

I have long advocated that underpinning the “voluntarist” and consensual framework Government needs to have a statutory frmaework that – in extremis – can be used to require Government agencies and those private companies that supply much of the national infrastructure to meet certain minimum standards and can direct action effectively in the event of some major problem arising.

The Financial Services Authority has decided that all investment bankers and traders in the UK should have calls made on company mobile phones taped in a bid to crack down on insider trading.  According to the BBC:

“Office land lines, e-mails and communications through messaging systems are already recorded.  …  The FSA estimates extending the taping rule – to come into force in November 2011 – will cover about 16,000 mobile phones and cost about £11m to set up. Annual running costs will be a further £18m it predicts.”

Strangely, however, personal mobile phones are not being included in the move.  So the rogue banker – if readers can get their heads round such a concept – who wants to do a bit of insider trading on the side, only has to use their personal phone or, if they want to be really careful, an unregistered pay-as-you-go mobile.

So either bankers are really stupid or the FSA are ……..

It is a sign that a politician has achieved a certain status when folk songs are written about them.

George Osborne’s cup must thererefore be running over about this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BejSPeP3lFE&feature=related

The Guardian reports this morning that the Department of Health have put fast food companies McDonalds and KFC and processed food and drink manufacturers such as PepsiCo, Kelloggs, Unilever, Mars and Diageo at the heart of writing government policy on obesity, alcohol and diet-related disease.
So who has Andrew Lansley put in charge of the asylum?

Avid readers of this blog (and there must presumably be one of you out there) will recall that I have been pestering the Department for Business Innovation and Skills with Parliamentary Questions designed to find out how serious the Conservative Coalition is about promoting enterprise and entrepreneurship.  The first answer I got back essentially said they didn’t know.  I have now had three more answers which essentially say they still don’t know:

Business: Entrepreneurship

Questions

Asked by Lord Harris of Haringey

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what proportion of the budget of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills was spent on promoting enterprise and entrepreneurship in the United Kingdom in each of the past five years.[HL2879]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Baroness Wilcox): We are not able to provide the information requested. Owing to previous structural changes arising from decisions about the machinery of government, we cannot accurately allocate spend to these specific areas. Promotion of enterprise and entrepreneurship covers a wide range of activities and financial information is split between a number of areas of spend and individual databases within the department.

Asked by Lord Harris of Haringey

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to increase or decrease the proportion of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills annual expenditure allocated to promoting and developing enterprise and entrepreneurship. [HL2880]

Baroness Wilcox: The budgets have not yet been allocated following the spending review (SR) settlement of 20 October 2010.

In the SR, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills was allocated £14.7 billion in 2014-15 a reduction to its resource budget of 25 per cent and to capital spending of 44 per cent.

Asked by Lord Harris of Haringey

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to develop the Work for Yourself Programme, as set out in the Coalition Agreement; and how much funding the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills plans to allocate to develop the Work for Yourself Programme in each of the next five years. [HL2881]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud): Your question has been passed to the Department for Work and Pensions as this department has responsibility for the new enterprise allowance formerly known as work for yourself. Following the spending review, funding for the NEA has been secured as part of the department’s budget for the years 2011-12 and 2012-13. The design and delivery of the allowance is currently being finalised and therefore no decision has been taken on the allocation of funding.

At the beginning of last week, I tabled some questions for written answer to try and find out how serious the Conservative Coalition is about enterprise and entrepreneurship.

I’ve now had the answer to the first of these.

My question was:

“To ask her Majesty’s Government what entrepreneurship and enterprise projects they have (a) fully and (b) partially funded; and what plans they have to fund such projects in each of the next five years.”

The answer that came back today was:

“A wide range of enterprise projects have been supported through a number of programmes run by various departments, but a comprehensive list of these is not available.”

So BIS doesn’t know, can’t be bothered to find out and ignored the last part of the question entirely.

I am not impressed.

I have now tabled the following:

“To ask Her Majesty’s Government:

1.  
   1. In the light of the answer given by Baroness Wilcox on 28^th October 2010, does the Department for Business Innovation and Skills keep a record of the external projects they fund and, if so, which of these external projects relate to entrepreneurship and enterprise?
   2. In the light of the answer given by Baroness Wilcox on 28^th October 2010, what plans do the Department for Business Innovation and Skills have for funding external projects relating to entrepreneurship and enterprise over the next five years?
   3. In the light of the answer given by Baroness Wilcox on 28^th October 2010, what arrangements do the Department for Business Innovation and Skills have in place for coordinating the activities of other Government Departments in relation to entrepreneurship and enterprise?”

The House of Lords has spent much of today debating a motion

“To call attention to the economic and cultural impacts of immigration in the United Kingdom; and to move for papers”.

This led to a serious discussion on the impact of the Government’s “cap” on immigration on the business community and on scientific research.

There was also a wonderful and surreal contribution from Lord James of Blackheath.  It was definitely one of those House of Lords “stream of consciousness” moments.

This is what he said:

“My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, for procuring this debate. I have to say that those who follow me might wish to add a rider to their own congratulations, deploring the fact that she did not stop me speaking, because we had a conversation in advance in which I told her that I had absolutely nothing to contribute to this debate, given that I have no experience of immigration or multiculturalism. To demonstrate that, I told her an anecdote that she thought was good enough to be repeated today, and that is what noble Lords are about to get. You must blame it on her afterwards.

My story starts in the trenches of the Somme in 1916 with a Major Alexander Crombie, who came out alive but deeply scarred from the experience and decided that he wanted to make a contribution to world peace. He took what little fortune he had and created a small academic academy with the express purpose of bringing in boys from European nations whom he could then groom for the common entrance examination and place somewhere in the public school system in Britain. This establishment prospered through even the Second World War and had arrived in 1947 at a point at which it had some 25 boys—all bright and intelligent fellows.

In parallel with that, I had been having my own educational crisis which had resulted in my being classified as mentally defective by the London education authority and sent to a school for mental defectives. My father was unamused at this and decided that I had to be removed immediately from that school and that he had to find somewhere to send me. Someone suggested that he talk to Major Crombie, who was then quite an old man. Major Crombie said, “We can’t have this fellow in; he can’t read and could not even do the 11-plus”. My father said, “Never mind; that proves that he is a refugee from the London County Council, so you’ve got to have him”. Crombie looked at a list and said, “What did you say your name was? James? We have 25 boys here—one for every letter of the alphabet except J. We’ll take him”. So I got in.

We had an amazing roll call every morning. It began with Adybaya, Baptista, Chinchialla and Dukszta, and ended gloriously with Xyrus, Yballa and Zabialski. I used to think that if I could get through life and remember the entire roll call, I would know that Alzheimer’s had not yet reached me. After I had my stroke, I said this to my physician, who said, “No, old boy. You may remember all the other 25, but your trouble is when you cannot remember who the J was”. So far, so good—but not for long, I am sure.

This was a remarkable gathering. We had some really fine brains in the class, but we were all under the control of a former Coldstream Guard padre called the Reverend Wynn, who was one of the great men of my life. He decided that he would have no nonsense with us at all. He was going to have a morning service or gathering. When we said, “Father, we have 17 nationalities and eight religions here, so we cannot possibly have a religious gathering in the morning”, he said, “Of course you can. It does not matter which god you have—you are going to celebrate the glory of this world. Bring your god with you, whoever he is, and we will all celebrate the glory of the world together”. And we did. We could not have any readings from the Bible, the Koran or anything else. He formed a committee of us to find suitable prose or a poem every day which would celebrate something of beauty in the world.

There were to be no hymns sung, so he decided—very unwisely, as it turned out—that we could all, in rotation, sing our national anthems, to which we could write our own words of a non-jingoistic nature. The honour went first to the three British boys. We decided to use “Pomp and Circumstance” and rewrite the words to, “Land of cut the call-up, how do we dodge this nonsense?”. That did not get us any merit points. The situation completely fell to pieces when the two German Jewish refugee boys at the school decided to write their own version of “Deutschland Über Alles” and got their little bit of revenge on Germany in the process. They decided to devote the words to the most obscene account of Hermann Göring having sexual congress with a lady kangaroo, which ultimately proved fatal to him because it would not stop jumping. After that, the Reverend Wynn decided that there should be no more of that.

This extraordinary gathering of boys with huge talent had one great skill that united us. We had a lot of Eastern bloc boys among us with a huge capability at chess. We had one of the strongest chess teams that you could ever put into the field—even at the age of 11 or 12. After we got into the quarter finals of the London schools knock-out competition with a team of 12 year-olds in 1947, we asked the Reverend Wynn to issue a challenge invitation to Eton and Winchester. I do not know whether there are any Wykehamists or Etonians in this assembly, but if there are, I have to say, “Oh, what a bunch of wimps you were—you would not take the challenge”. I hope that you have that to your eternal shame, gentlemen.

The gathering continued very successfully and nearly everyone in the class got into one of the better public schools. We had a wonderful time together. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, is no longer present, because this is probably the antidote to his comments about multiculturalism. Oh, here he is. This is probably the noble Lord’s nightmare of multiculturalism gone wrong, but it was in fact brilliant. Of the 17 nations from which we came, about half had been trying to exterminate the other half during the previous five or six years, yet everyone got on so well together because we were completely without the preconceptions instilled by too much political correctness and preconditioning as to what we ought to think of each other and how we ought to react. We were the biggest bunch of mutual support people ever gathered together in one place. Today I cannot see what the problem is with the interracial problems of immigration. We did it fine. We were young, we just got on well with each other, and that was a natural instinct. If we stop dictating to and preconditioning people, it works very well.”

I am not convinced that, despite all the fine words in the Coalition Agreement, the Conservative Coalition is serious about enterprise and entrepreneurship.

So I have tabled some Parliamentary Questions to prod them into exposing their thinking about where they stand.  The questions are as follows:

“To ask Her Majesty’s Government:

1. What entrepreneurship and enterprise projects they have (a) fully and (b) partially funded; and what plans they have to fund such projects in each of the next five years.
2. What proportion of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills budget was spent on promoting enterprise and entrepreneurship in the UK in each of the last five years.
3. Whether there are plans to increase or decrease the proportion of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills annual expenditure which is allocated to promoting and developing enterprise and entrepreneurship.
4. What plans they have to develop the Work for Yourself Programme as set out the Coalition Agreement and how much funding the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills plans to allocate to develop the Work for Yourself Programme in each of the next five years.”

Victoria Coren’s column in today’s Observer shows why she should be the new Shadow Minister for invective.

First, she sums up Nick Clegg:

“A couple of weeks ago, Nick Clegg told the Lib Dem conference: “We haven’t changed our liberal values.”

We know what everyone in the hall was thinking. They were thinking: “Oh hurry up and finish, so I can get drunk and have a disappointing affair with a lobbyist.”

But what was Nick Clegg thinking? At last year’s conference, he promised to scrap tuition fees. It turns out that by “scrap” he meant “the opposite of scrap”.

We knew it was a Humpty Dumpty election. On all sides, the words meant just what they chose them to mean, neither more nor less. That was standard campaign trickery, but it continues now! By “we haven’t changed our liberal values”, Nick Clegg means “we have changed our liberal values.”"

And then moves on to Vince Cable:

“Vince Cable told the same conference that he was “shining a harsh light into the murky world of corporate behaviour”, describing City financiers as “spivs and gamblers”. May I say, on behalf of spivs and gamblers, that I found this deeply offensive. Nevertheless, it promised a stern new approach to those who punted away the money we used to spend on child benefit and healthcare.

But the words are meaningless. Cable has only one hand on the swivelling spotlight while the other signs agreements to axe everything he promised to protect, because the money was vomited into the banking system and it seems impossible to recoup it from there. We’re not even being protected against this happening again. All the talk is of cuts, none of it is about regulation. So what’s the point of the light? To help the spivs see better, as they extract fivers from our wallets? You might just as well give a child strawberry ice cream for every meal, while promising to keep a close eye on its terrible diet.”

Then it’s David Cameron’s turn:

“David Cameron even makes patriotic, tearjerking speeches to “stir a spirit of national unity and resolve”, as if this were a giant episode of Children in Need. Give up your pocket money for Bankers in Need. BIN, I think, is a handy acronym. Come on, families! Join in, jobless! Wheel this way, disabled folk! Let’s all gather together and throw our money towards the BIN!

It’s an old chestnut, but always worth another roasting: remember to keep being insulted by how glibly they demand our sacrifices without paying us the respect of speaking frankly. They dissembled before the election and they’re dissembling now. When they say good morning, they mean it’s midnight. When they say: “I’ve made you a cup of tea”, they mean: “I’ve just weed in your coffee.”"

And finally she leaves us with a metaphor I will find hard to forget:

“Some people hoped the Lib Dems would act as balance in the new government – if not obstructing controversial policy, at least speaking honestly about it. But is it any wonder Nick Clegg wasn’t doing that at their conference? Chillingly, he and his speech had to be vetted by David Cameron.

I assume that’s “vetted” in the traditional sense of vet, ie to have a gloved hand up his backside.”

And the cartoon from Peter Riddell is pretty good too:

The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, has issued an important reminder about specialist policing in an article in today’s Sunday Telegraph.  In it he highlights the valuable work of the Central e-Crime Unit based in the Metropolitan Police, saying:

“Four criminals obtained the personal financial details of hundreds of people, allowing them to identify up to £8 million they could steal. They siphoned off £750,000 from 64 victims before police arrested them.