Stephen Hodgson

Archive for January, 2010

Next Thursday (4 February 2010) government auditor Sir Thomas Legg’s report into MPs’ expenses will finally be published. The report will at last reveal how much individual MPs have overclaimed in expenses and how much they have been asked to repay.

Back in October 2009 as part of his investigation Sir Thomas sent letters to all MPs (known as “Legg letters”) either indicating that an MP’s expenses were all in order or indicating that Sir Thomas believed they should repay overclaimed amounts (or asking MPs for more information on certain expenses). Many MPs chose to reveal their Legg letters to the public – either to show that they had done nothing wrong or to show that they had decided to make amends or simply in the interests of openness with the public and press. At that time I reported that Loughborough MP Andy Reed refused to reveal his “Legg letter” to the public – in fact, when I asked Andy Reed on Twitter when he would be revealing his Legg letter he threw a tantrum and blocked my Twitter account!

As I reported in December, Andy Reed insists that all of his expenses claims were “within the rules”. This time next week we will know whether, in Sir Thomas’s opinion, Mr Reed’s expenses claims really were entirely within the rules.

I will blog about Sir Thomas’s report on the day it is published.

A report released today by the government’s National Equality Panel (NEP) finds that differences between income and life opportunities are as great today as they were 50 years ago. Put simply, social mobility – the ability of individuals and families to improve their lives through hard work and aspiration – has rapidly declined under Labour.

The National Equality Panel’s report was commissioned by government equalities minister Harriet Harman and the Government will no doubt use the report to try to justify greater redistribution of wealth or other forms of government intervention that the present Government so loves.

In a free economy and a free society some people will always be relatively better off than others and that inequality in itself is not inherently a bad thing but Labour’s policies have devastated social mobility in this country – the most obvious evidence being the huge growth in welfare dependency over the last 13 years. The present welfare and tax system pays people to be poor. Those who try to earn a living and improve their situation find themselves taxed heavily if they earn as little as £6,000 a year.

We cannot go on like this with government policies that discourage hard work and aspiration. We need a change of government – a Conservative government – one that recognises the importance of promoting social mobility, encouraging aspiration and tackling the barriers in the education, welfare and tax systems that keep people poor.

On Monday (25 January 2010) Loughborough MP Andy Reed brought up the issue of Loughborough schools reorganisation and Building Schools for the Future (BSF) in Parliament in a question to the Minister of State for Schools and Learners Vernon Coaker:

Mr. Andy Reed: My hon. Friend will know that, in Leicestershire, the county council proposes to close two out of three secondary schools. Does he agree that closing an outstanding secondary school would be a big mistake, and that, in trying to ensure that it is possible to deliver in a town the size of Loughborough, greater collaboration – not necessarily the removal of heads – and the sharing of best practice by schools is the best way to deliver education for 11 to 14-year-olds?

Mr. Coaker: As my hon. Friend knows, school organisation and the commissioning of school places is a matter for the local authority. It is a matter of great concern to hear that in Loughborough one of the proposals is the closure of an outstanding school. That would require detailed attention. He will need to work, as he is no doubt doing, with the local authority and the local community to see what can be done about it.

Clearly Parliament wasn’t the right forum to discuss a decision that will be taken locally. It is unfair of Mr Reed to expect the minister to (i) be at once familiar with local issues in any given part of the country, (ii) express views on proposals the minister hasn’t researched or been briefed about and (iii) be drawn into intervening in the decision of local people.

A more effective way to act on schools reorganisation in Loughborough is to respond to the county council’s online consultation.

Loughborough MP Andy Reed has launched a new section on his website called “Why We’re Backing Andy!” which displays “tributes” paid to Mr Reed by his constituents. It’s quite nauseating. “Tributes” are more usually associated with paying respects after someone has died but the word “tribute” can also refer to a tax imposed by a king on his subjects, or in this case by an MP on his constituents!

So far the website features “tributes” from six of the 72,000 people in the Loughborough constituency. One of these “tributes” is by Labour councillor Jewel Miah so we should probably discount that one. That leaves five “tributes”, although there are surely more to come – as Andy Reed’s “tributes” page says “Day after day tributes pour into Andy’s office”!

What makes this self-deluded ego trip more sickening is that it’s being funded by taxpayers. Andy Reed has historically charged the design and running costs of his website, which he uses as a party political campaigning tool, to taxpayers through his parliamentary expenses.

Keep those tributes pouring in – it’s your taxes paying to display them!

In a letter to the Leicester Mercury, the Labour candidate in the Birstall Watermead by election, Hayley Winrow, shares the results of recent Labour polling in the ward:

…I and my team had spoken to over 1,000 voters in Birstall already.

I’m pleased to say that nearly 300 of them told us they wanted to vote Labour.

Rather fewer would commit to the Tories and even fewer for the Lib-Dems.

It is difficult to believe this polling is accurate and, if it is accurate, the implications are worrying.

If we assume “rather fewer” means a third fewer votes and “even fewer” means a third fewer again then the numbers released by Hayley indicate the following result on 18 February:

BNP : 36 percent
Labour : 30 percent
Conservatives : 20 percent
Lib Dems : 14 percent

As I reported on Friday, the Lib Dem nomination for this by election is invalid so the election is actually a three-way contest between the Conservatives, Labour and the BNP. The outcome of the election may therefore be determined by the decision of Lib Dem voters in the area to transfer their votes to other parties.

However, door-to-door polling by political parties is at best only semi-reliable and it is possible that so far Labour have focused their door-knocking efforts in mainly Labour-voting streets, rather than a full cross-section of Birstall Watermead, which would skew the results.

In the May 2007 local elections, the Conservatives polled 47 percent of the vote in Birstall Watermead so it is difficult to imagine the Conservative vote share dropping to less than 30 percent now, especially when the Conservative Party’s national poll rating is hovering around 40 percent.

If Labour really is now polling strongly across Birstall Watermead it certainly begs the question why Labour failed to field a single candidate in this two-seat ward back in 2007.

In any case, the possibility of a BNP councillor being elected in Birstall Watermead should certainly motivate Conservative voters to come out and vote on 18 February and I wish Conservative candidate Iain Bentley the best of luck.

For this year’s General Election a number of local authorities have announced that they will count the votes on the day after polling night, rather than immediately after close of polls at 10.00pm. Reasons cited for this break with the traditional election night count are the difficulty verifying postal votes and making sure counting staff are awake and alert by having a count during daytime hours.

Last week the Electoral Commission published an up-to-date list of the timing of the count for different constituencies. The Electoral Commission list confirms that the constituencies of Loughborough and Charnwood have yet to decide whether to hold the count on polling night or on the day after the election.

The current announced position for constituencies in Leicestershire is as follows:

Bosworth – polling day
Charnwood – undecided
Harborough – day after polling day
Leicester East – undecided
Leicester South – undecided
Leicester West – undecided
Loughborough – undecided
North West Leicestershire – day after polling day
Rutland and Melton – undecided
South Leicestershire (formerly Blaby) – undecided

I think it will be a terrible shame if we break with the traditional count on the night of the poll. In an age of ever-faster information it makes no sense to delay counts to the day after polling day and I feel most people would prefer be able to wake up on the Friday after the election and actually know who is in government that day. Holding counts on the night of the poll also removes an opportunity for electoral fraud which is created if ballot boxes have to be kept in town halls overnight.

Ultimately the decision on the timing of General Election counts rests with individual local authorities/returning officers around the country but in the House of Commons there has been some concern expressed about postponing counts. Last week the House of Commons Speaker John Bercow said:

“For my own part, I am a passionate believer in instant, not slow motion, democracy. It seems to me that it is in the interests of the House and the country that the count should take place on the night, and there are two overwhelmingly compelling reasons why: first, I believe that there could be a threat to the security of the ballot if the count is delayed; and, secondly, it seems to me that on the day the election takes place, it should be possible for the count also to take place so that we get the result speedily.

“Frankly, it should not be beyond the wit and sagacity of humankind—or indeed of local authorities—to ensure that that happens. I politely suggest to the House that what is required is not a passive acceptance of the particular views of individual local authority chief executives, but rather an assertion of leadership nationally and politically, at a local level, to achieve what I sense the House is uniting in wishing to see.”

I hope common sense will prevail in Loughborough and Charnwood constituencies and that we’ll see votes counted as soon as polls close. We managed it in 2005 and since that time Charnwood Borough Council has invested in simple electronic counting machines which can verify bundles of votes in a matter of minutes and seconds. Bosworth, along with hundreds of other constituencies in other parts of the country, has already announced it will count votes on the Thursday evening and I see no reason why Loughborough and Charnwood should be any different.

Nominations for candidates for the Birstall Watermead by election closed today and the returning officer has published the statement of persons nominated. The candidates are:

• * Iain Bentley – Conservatives
• * John Oatley – British National Party
• * Hayley Winrow – Labour

This was previously a Conservative seat following a two-way fight between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats at the borough elections in May 2007 and no other parties stood in Birstall Watermead last time round. The by election was triggered after the Conservative borough councillor for Birstall Watermead, Rick Astill, decided to stand down because of increased work and family commitments.

It was initially thought by some that Labour wouldn’t field a candidate in this by election but they have defied the critics by putting Hayley Winrow on the ballot paper. I first came across Hayley via Twitter many months ago when we had a discussion about MPs’ expenses. Hayley remains a prolific tweeter with the name Haylz_Lou.

The ballot paper therefore contains a couple of surprises:- (i) Labour have fielded a candidate and (ii) the Lib Dems don’t have a candidate because of a technicality. According to the statement of persons nominated the intended Lib Dem candidate George Collingswood has an invalid nomination because one of his ten nomination signatures is not someone registered to vote in Birstall Watermead.

This by election is already interesting and nominations only closed a few hours ago!

On Tuesday evening (19 January) I attended the public meeting of the recently-formed Shepshed Against Incinerator Group – or “SAIG”. The group’s purpose is self-explanatory – it is a campaign against plans by Biffa to construct an incinerator on the edge of Shepshed. The proposal is currently being considered by Leicestershire County Council.

SAIG was formed by local resident Carol Weller. The campaign has a website and a Facebook group.

Tuesday evening’s meeting was well-attended – I counted at least 40 members of the public plus five borough and county councillors. Most of the hour and a half was taken up with a presentation by Keith Kondakor – a member of Friends of the Earth (FOE) from Nuneaton – who told the meeting about the science and environmental issues concerning incinerators as well as touching on the political process and the strategy the campaign should adopt to successfully stop an incinerator being built in Shepshed.

Whilst SAIG and FOE representative Keith Kondakor are clearly well-intentioned, the meeting didn’t go particularly well, which was evidenced early on by the number of people who left mid-way through Mr Kondakor’s presentation. Audience members complained that Mr Kondakor was spending too long talking about details of science and health effects of incinerators rather than speaking about the particular plans for Shepshed and how residents can campaign effectively.

I found Mr Kondakor’s presentation quite interesting and he clearly knows a lot about incinerators and about the planning process for incinerators but things went downhill when Mr Kondakor starting talking about local councillors. The five borough and county councillors present had all introduced themselves at the start of the meeting but this didn’t stop Mr Kondakor describing councillors as “like children” and “stupid”. Not the best campaign tactic I’ve come across.

Sadly, it got worse. Mr Kondakor went on to say that Biffa is offering “bribes” to councillors and “lucrative jobs” to county council waste department staff to make sure the incinerator gets the go-ahead. I thought this was not only patently wrong but also potentially slanderous and dangerous. The SAIG campaign should probably consider distancing itself from these sorts of comments otherwise its reputation could be damaged. I can only assume Mr Kondakor, despite his previous campaigning experience, didn’t realise that alleging at a public meeting that councillors are being offered bribes is such a serious matter that councillors at the meeting are required to report the allegations to their council’s monitoring officer (the officer in charge of monitoring professional and ethical standards, conflicts of interest etc), which I have done.

All that aside, there is clearly a lot of interest from Shepshed and west Loughborough residents in the incinerator site and there are a lot of people who will put a lot of effort into campaigning against the proposed incinerator. The challenge now is for SAIG and concerned residents to stick to rational, cool-headed discussions and campaign tactics.

The next public meeting about the Shepshed incinerator has been organised by Shepshed Town Council to take place on 8 March 2010 at Shepshed High School – no doubt fuller details will be available in due course in the local press and on SAIG’s website.

Update (22/01/10): Keith Kondakor of Friends of the Earth writes in response to this blog post:

Dear Stephen,

As you should know the meeting in Loughborough was not arranged by the Shepshed group but by a fellow councillor. If the Shepshed group had arranged it then a location in Shepshed would have been used.

I have no evidence of Biffa doing anything illegal or improper. In response to questions I told the public of what has happened in other places where communities are “bribed” by gifts from large waste firms. Local Charities are given minibus, sports clubs are given grants and miners welfare clubs are refitted. I even have a photo of a local councillor handing over the keys of a minibus that is being presented to a local community group. The gifts are not illegal and are not presented to those who take the decisions.

Waste PFIs also creates new highly paid post at the council and many councils go on to form free-standing waste partnerships, waste board or even arm-length waste companies. The top waste officers at other councils have significant job upgrades when they manage a PFI project with around £10,000 higher salary. Senior waste officers who work on PFI projects are very marketable. Some move round authorities and get better packaged and some retire to become waste consultants.

I am more than happy for you to alert the public that waste firms may offer substantial gifts to community groups but I did not say BIFFA currently doing this here.

The lucrative posts comment was in response to  a question about why the staff are pushing ahead with the PFI. The council puts staff in lucrative posts to manage the PFI process and these posts would not exist if the PFI was scrapped. This is nothing to do with which firm gets the PFI contract.

I would welcome you adjusting your website so that it reflects the debate on the evening. I really hoped the campaign would put party politics aside and was glad that what party people belonged to was not an issue at the meeting.

Keith agreed that I could publish his e-mail to me in full by way of clarification.

In response to Keith’s comments:

* I was led to understand the meeting on Tuesday evening was a formative meeting of Shepshed Against Incinerator Group (SAIG).

* Keith’s comments on the evening came across to me as suggesting Biffa were or would imminently be offering “bribes” (the term Keith used) to councillors in Charnwood and Leicestershire – both cash and “in kind”.

* I welcome Keith’s clarification regarding “lucrative jobs” and the interaction of the incinerator proposals with the PFI contract.

* I don’t think the Shepshed incinerator has become a party political issue – if it has, I’m certaintly not currently aware of where the parties stand on it.

The long overdue Loughborough Eastern Gateway project, which will see new homes and roads constructed in east of the town and improvements to Loughborough railway station such as better pedestrian access and, hopefully, platform lengthening, could now start as early as April this year.

Loughborough MP Andy Reed accurately points out that the project was delayed in large part by drawn out negotiations between Charnwood Borough Council and Network Rail (the government rail quango which owns a lot of the land on the project site).

What Andy Reed rather less accurately says is:

I [Andy Reed] have been working on this project for 15 years!

Very curious I thought. I’ve been on the Charnwood Borough Council committee overseeing the project for two and a half years (the Community and Partnerships Scrutiny Committee) and not once has Andy Reed’s name come up, nor has he ever attended a meeting of the committee or, to my knowledge, sent a representative. Speaking to another councillor last night, who has been on Charnwood Borough Council since 2003, it seems there was no sign of Mr Reed’s involvement in the project at that time either. Mr Reed’s “15 years” of involvement must have been very much “background work” or “deep cover”. Perhaps he was involved in top secret negotiations with Network Rail?

I’d love to know what Mr Reed’s involvement with this project has been – other than trying to take credit for it!

The Conservatives draft manifesto on education was launched yesterday.

The key planks of the draft manifesto are:

• * Better teachers and tougher discipline
• * A rigorous curriculum and exam system
• * Giving every parent access to a good school

The part of the draft education manifesto that grabbed the media’s attention was David Cameron’s promise to make teaching “brazenly elitist” by raising entry standards into the teaching profession and making it easier for people with experience in other jobs to move into teaching later.

As with the launch of the Conservatives draft health manifesto just a couple of weeks ago, the education manifesto is now part of an online consultation process which culminates in a live webcast with David Cameron this Friday. The online consultation for the health manifesto was hugely successful – with over 40,000 votes on which questions David Cameron should answer.

Download the draft education manifesto
Pose a question for David Cameron and vote on other people’s questions

I am grateful to Simon Ghent of OneThroughSchool (OTS) for his response to my blog post last week about Leicestershire County Council’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) bid.

Simon writes:

For clarification

The OTS team welcomes the consultation by LCC. We welcome the opportunity to bid for reform and the chance to get £80 million of BSF funding which we consider will deliver real benefits to our children’s education.

We also recognise that a credible third option would be required by those wishing to save Limehurst and Garendon School. We have already made representation regarding retaining Garendon although we need to do more research on the legal implications of our preferred choice in this regard.

We do not believe retaining Burleigh is in anyones interest and nor is the creation (using option b) of a super school in the interests of educational achievement in Loughborough. OTS also realises the passion and the genuine concern of parents in the Limehurst area.

Although we do not want the bid to be derailed we are happy to be work with all stakeholders who can take advantage of OTS’s three years of expertise and knowledge in campaigning for reform. We believe that a credible third option can be made however time is very short and coordinated action is required quickly. Lastly we do not believe such a important issue should be hijacked by partisan groups or political parties and we continue to take a dim view of anyone trying to make political gain from this issue.

The situation currently is largely due to the BSF framework and the county council should not be blamed for complying with this however we hope that any credible plan proposed is listened to and the will of parents is recognised.

Simon makes the point that “we [OTS] do not believe such a important issue should be hijacked by partisan groups or political parties and we continue to take a dim view of anyone trying to make political gain from this issue”.

This is fair point and there is an in-built cross-party aspect to BSF – it’s a national Labour government programme with a bid being proposed by a Conservative county council.

Unfortunately I believe Loughborough MP Andy Reed has already tried to make BSF and Loughborough schools reorganisation a party political issue. In the middle of 2009, Mr Reed was boasting about BSF being a Labour scheme, he also claimed that he had used his position as a Labour MP to convince the Government to “bring forward” BSF in Leicestershire. Then in late 2009 Mr Reed (incorrectly) claimed that the Conservative county council had failed in its BSF bid (in fact, no bid had been prepared at that stage) – something that Mr Reed seemed to strangely delight in.

When Mr Reed writes about BSF in press releases and on his website he talks about the “Labour government” and the “Tory county council”. When I write about BSF I talk about the “government” and the “county council”.

Prospective Conservative MP for Loughborough Nicky Morgan has written about BSF:

As one of several politicians here in Loughborough faced with a imminent General Election, it’s tempting to jump on bandwagons and reduce everything to election soundbites. I won’t do it.

* My first priority is for us to get the funding needed for change.

* My second priority has to be to look at the whole picture for Loughborough, Quorn & Barrow. Each proposal relates to the others. Remove one part of the jigsaw, and it will fall apart.

* My third priority is to ensure each change which is proposed can be properly justified and genuinely accounted for. Nothing must simply be a matter of ‘adminstrative convenience’. The public must question the Country Council Officers thoroughly. I will be doing that.

Nicky is meeting Leicestershire County Council’s Director of Education later this week to discuss the proposed reorganisation of schools in Loughborough. Level heads must prevail on this issue.

Loughborough Conservatives were in Dishley and Hathern this weekend going door-to-door to hear people’s views about the state of the country, the current government and the upcoming General Election.

We received a very warm reception from the people we spoke to and it was particularly pleasing to find that now we have entered the year of a guaranteed election people are keen to talk about politics and express their opinions. Many people we spoke to feel badly let down by Labour on a range of issues but believe the Conservatives offer a positive change. Some people we spoke to who said they had previously voted Labour told us “never again” and said they know only a Conservative government can fix the current economic mess such as record youth unemployment.

Most pleasing of all the majority of people we spoke to said they will be voting for prospective Conservative MP for Loughborough Nicky Morgan at the General Election.

Leicestershire County Council is pushing ahead with its bid for £80m of government funding through the “Building Schools for the Future” (“BSF”) programme which will shake up education in Loughborough. The county council’s consultation options both include closing Burleigh Community College, Garendon High School and Limehurst High School. Whilst it is understandable that many pupils, parents and teachers at the schools proposed for closure will be apprehensive about major changes, the county council’s bid must be looked at as a unique opportunity to modernise and improve education in Loughborough.

Leicestershire teachers that I have spoken to about the county’s education system seem to agree that the current three-school system, which is alien to many parts of the country, is not optimal for children’s education and that it creates unnecessary costs – money that could otherwise be spent on better education resources with a direct benefit for pupils.

Attempts by campaigners (including Loughborough’s current MP) to slow down or derail the County Council’s BSF bid because of a personal preference for particular schools present a real risk to the vital £80m of funding the County Council needs in order to reform and improve education in Loughborough. This is not an opportunity that will come again.

Page 4 of tomorrow’s Loughborough Echo (15 January 2010) has a good summary of the recent events surrounding the BSF bid along with commentary from the affected schools and other interested parties. I think it’s useful to look at where different schools stand on the bid proposals:

• * De Lisle Catholic Science College – welcomes the proposals
• * Garendon High School – “shocked” by the proposals
• * Burleigh Community College – sees a fantastic opportunity
• * Limehurst High School – “extremely concerned”
• * Humphrey Perkins Community College – embraces the proposals
• * Rawlins Community College – welcomes the proposals
• * Woodbrook Vale High School – welcomes the “considerable opportunity”
• * Loughborough University – “pleased be involved”

It is pleasing to see so many schools recognising and welcoming the BSF proposals. Leicestershire County Council is undertaking a consultation with the option of submitting an online response, as well as holding a series of public meetings (meeting details on the consultation link).

The “OneThroughSchool” campaign is supporting the County Council’s bid.

I personally wish the bid every success.

The Leicester Mercury reports:

People could be eating meat from poorly-rated slaughterhouses without knowing it because inspectors do not release their reports.

Some abattoirs in Leicestershire are in the medium-to-high-risk band for environmental hygiene – the category which rates the potential for contaminated food.

Yet the restaurants and shops they supply have no idea of the state of their hygiene and animal welfare standards – good or bad – because the quango in charge, the Meat Hygiene Service (MHS), does not publish the reports.

But what really grabbed my attention in this article is the quote from Loughborough MP Andy Reed:

Loughborough Labour MP Andy Reed said: “We live in an information society and if something can be released under the Freedom of Information Act, I see no reason why it shouldn’t be published routinely.”

This seems to mark a dramatic shift in Mr Reed’s views from 2007 when he didn’t even once vote in favour of disclosure of MPs’ expenses under the Freedom of Information Act. Surely nothing to do with Andy Reed’s own expenses claims!

Further to my blog post at the weekend about the upcoming Loughborough Conservatives Hollywood Night, the event now has its own promotional video!