Stephen Hodgson

Archive for March, 2010

Today is Budget day and a key milestone before the General Election.

Yesterday Conservative Party chairman Eric Pickles announced that he wants the public to help wade through the detail of the Budget in a “crowdsourcing” initiative – a ‘many hands make light work’ approach via the Internet.

Eric Pickles writes:

Tomorrow we have what will hopefully be this Government’s last ever Budget. We all know what Labour’s Budgets are like by now – they’ll go for the headlines with a giveaway of glittering goodies, whilst stashing away all the nasty stuff into the small print.

Wading through all this small print ourselves is a huge job. This year we’ve decided to do something a bit different – we’re going to crowdsource our response to the Budget. Once the Budget’s out, we’ll publish it in a simple format as soon as possible so you can have a good dig into it. The Treasury has hundreds of civil servants working on all this and there’s no way we can match their resources – so it’s important for as many of you as possible to lend a hand in analysing the detail.

All you have to do is log on to Conservatives.com tomorrow afternoon, have a look, and start picking out anything that might be misleading or hidden away. Together, we can make sure we hold this Government to account over its economic incompetence.

As someone who works in both politics and in tax, Budget day is always an event for me and this initiative will make today even more interesting than usual, as well as speeding up the process of spotting the small print and hidden tax rises.

At the risk of writing one too many posts about the role of union Unite in the Loughborough Labour Party’s campaigning, I was today passed a copy of a letter distributed to Unite members in Loughborough urging them to support the Labour Party under the campaign banner “UNITE4LABOUR”. There’s even a website at www.unite4labour.org. This is the union, remember, which is trying to ruin British Airways at the same time as disrupting thousands of people’s Easter holiday plans.

You can see a copy of the original Unite letter here.

The letter is partisan and contains exaggerations or, more bluntly, lies.

The letter says:

[Conservative donor Lord Ashcroft] is now estimated to owe you and all UK taxpayers a staggering £127 million!

A strange claim – for surely if Lord Ashcroft really owes this money the tax authorities or the police are involved? But they’re not. Unite is, of course, attacking Lord Ashcroft for his “non dom” tax status which means he doesn’t pay UK tax on overseas income. Of course Unite forgot to mention the non doms that fund the Labour Party, such as Lord Paul, Lakshmi Mittal, Sir Ronald Cohen, Sir Christopher Ondaatje, Sir Gulam Noon, Mahmoud Khayami and Dr David Potter. Labour has received far more money from non doms than the Conservatives but there’s no mention of that by Unite.

The letter continues:

The Conservatives have begun to unravel… The opinion polls reflect this. Their lead has more than halved from around 15 points last year to 5 now.

The Conservative poll lead in March 2009 was around 10 to 12 points. The Conservative poll lead today, in March 2010, is somewhere between 7 and 13 points (depending on which poll you believe). So at most the Conservative lead in the polls has declined by 5 points in the last year, not the 10 points claimed by Unite. At best, the Conservative lead is the same now (or slightly better) than it was this time last year.

The letter goes on:

Even the International Monetary Fund, previous no friend of Labour governments, supports Labour’s approach and says now is not the time to cut.

In fact, the IMF has repeatedly warned that individual countries must manage their deficits according to their circumstances. The UK has one of the worst government overspends in the world – worse than Greece this year. The IMF hasn’t given any specific endorsement of the Labour government’s approach.

Unite membership fees are being used to fund Labour Party propaganda, despite the fact that a recent poll indicated that two thirds of Unite members will not vote for Labour in the General Election. A share of Unite membership fees is also paid directly to the Labour Party through the union’s ‘political fund’. Unite members who are fed up of their union fees being spent on propping up this tired and failing Labour government should complete the Political Fund Exemption Notice available from Unite’s website.

Unite is involved in Labour’s Loughborough election campaign and I have no doubt the union expects something in return from Labour candidates for its support, should those Labour candidates be elected. No one wants a return to the crippling strikes of the 1970s – yet that seems to be the direction that Labour and its union backers are trying to take us in.

Earlier this week I wrote about the big role that the Unite union is playing campaigning for Labour in marginal constituencies like Loughborough. Unite is behind the British Airways strikes that started today and the Conservatives have now launched a national campaign highlighting Gordon Brown’s inaction on the BA strikes and Labour’s financial dependence on the Unite union.

Cash-Gordon.com is an Internet campaign to encourage people to spread the word about Unite’s close links with the Labour Party and the role of Unite’s political director Charlie Whelan in both organising the strikes and organising the Labour Party.

The Cash-Gordon.com campaign background is described as follows:

One of the great untold stories of British politics is how Unite has taken advantage of Labour’s near bankruptcy and the departure of Tony Blair to gain an unprecedented grip on the party.

This campaign uses Facebook Connect to empower you to spread the word to your friends. You will earn action points as you go along, so you can track your progress. See the big number above to see how many we have all earned together, and the table below to see your current ranking.

Unite is Britain’s biggest trade union, and is currently the organising highly damaging strikes at British Airways.

Under the political direction of Charlie Whelan, Unite is using its financial and organisation muscle to drive government policy and build a Labour Party very different to the one that appealed to Middle England and won three general elections. Instead, with Gordon Brown as leader, there has been a reversal of much-needed public service reforms, a return to industrial militancy and a regression into atavistic class war rhetoric.

…

Strikes and other forms of industrial action are on the increase yet senior Cabinet ministers seem reluctant to act. Unite is preparing to cripple British Airways, but it took several days for any minister to speak out. It was only after Lord Adonis, one of the few remaining Blairites in government, condemned Unite that other ministers, including Gordon Brown, made criticisms of the proposed strike. The fact remains that Labour is still propped up by the strikers’ money.

…

The facts about Unite’s increasing domination should be in the public domain. The British people are entitled to know what kind of government they will get if they vote Labour. That’s why we’ve launched this Facebook campaign – so that together we can make sure people know the truth.

This in an innovative and necessary campaign and it’s important that people appreciate the close links between Unite and Labour candidates in marginal constituencies like Loughborough.

The union behind the British Airways Easter strike, Unite, has been revealed to be actively involved in campaigning for Labour in marginal constituencies like Loughborough. The Telegraph reports that a leaked memo written last month by Unite’s political director and former spin doctor Charlie Whelan reveals Unite’s role in marginal constituencies:

In the leaked memo Mr Whelan confirms: “We’ve been in touch for the last year or so with Unite members in the key parliamentary marginals. We’ve asked them their voting intentions and what issues matters to them.

“That has led to a dialogue to firm up Labour support.”

…

George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, told the Daily Telegraph that Mr Brown should immediately stop taking money from Unite.

He said: “This is a test of Gordon Brown and he is ducking that test. You cannot on the one hand condemn the [British Airways] strike while at the same time accepting money from the union orchestrating it.

“The Unite union is becoming a party within a party. It is selecting candidates and running the campaign in the marginal seats.

“Its political director has open pass to Downing Street and, as this email shows, he is directing Labour’s campaign and boasting about it.”

In separate news today, Conservative shadow cabinet minister Michael Gove gave a speech setting out how dependent the Labour Party is on the Unite union.

Michael Gove said:

There can be few more powerful forces of conservatism opposed to the flexibility, freedom and choice of the post-bureaucratic age than the Whelanist Tendency now in control of the Labour party.

Labour’s re-unionisation has put them in bed with the past at a time when it is crucial that this country wakes up to the future.

…the last thing we need is a political system where genuine participation in democracy is out-muscled by union power.

This election will decide the future of this country and Labour represents a move backwards, not forwards.

Unite has given the Labour Party £11m since 2007. In the six years prior to that, Unite’s constituent unions, Amicus and the TGWU, gave £15m to the Labour Party. The Labour Party has received absolutely vast sums of money from these unions and there can be no doubt the unions have increasing influence over Labour Party policy and, according to latest leaked memo, over Labour Party campaign strategy in marginal constituencies like Loughborough.

Voting for Labour is now intrinsically linked with support for the big public sector unions like Unite. It’s difficult to believe that just weeks before the election Unite plans to disrupt the Easter holiday plans of thousands of people with the British Airways strike.

I wonder whether voters will be willing to support Labour knowing of the party’s increasingly close links with (and financial dependence on) unions keen to organise militant strike action, especially when the UK economy has only just barely got out of recession. Loughborough’s Labour MP, Andy Reed, is, of course, a union-man himself – a member and former delegate of public sector union UNISON – so the role of unions in the Loughborough campaign is already established.

The BBC reports that the EU’s European Commission is now warning about the size of the UK’s budget deficit:

The government’s plans for reducing the budget deficit are not ambitious enough – according to a European Commission report to be published on Wednesday.

The report warns that the UK is not on course to cut its deficit in line with EU rules by a deadline of 2015.

Those rules say deficits must be below 3% of GDP, but the UK’s is expected to hit £178bn – 12.6% of GDP – this year.

In a separate article the BBC says the Conservatives are poised to reveal what cuts they will make if elected:

The Conservatives are preparing to outline spending cuts they would make in this financial year if they are elected, the BBC has been told.

BBC political editor Nick Robinson said the party was waiting for next week’s Budget before unveiling more details.

Earlier shadow chancellor George Osborne called the PM “dishonest” over the need for urgent spending cuts.

…

Mr Osborne added: “I think the central point we have to understand here is that the debt is holding back the British recovery, and unless we get confidence into the British recovery – and that comes from dealing with our debts – then we will not be creating the jobs that we all want to see.”

The UK national debt and the annual overspend (the deficit) are at record levels – dangerous levels. The UK is edging closer to losing its AAA rating on government debt. The unsustainable public debt is now risking a double-dip recession and holding back the recovery of the UK economy. The UK was the last major economy to leave recession at the end of last year. If the current government approach of spend, spend, spend continues we will probably see the Bank of England printing more money, inflation shooting up (it’s already now at 3.5 – 3.7 percent – well above the government’s target of 2.0 percent) and ever higher interest rates.

Public sector union UNISON recently produced a scare-video saying that if spending cuts are made then 999 calls will go unanswered and bins will go uncollected. The truth is that the government routinely wastes money and it is quite feasible to cut spending and secure the recovery without affecting the quality or level of frontline services. The TaxPayers’ Alliance have produced a rebuttal of the UNISON scare-video:

It will be interesting to see what next week’s budget brings and I look forward to seeing George Osborne set out some of his plans for if the Conservatives win the General Election and he becomes the next chancellor.

Leicester Mercury education correspondent Ian Wishart has blogged about the recent news that Leicestershire County Council’s bid to improve schools in Loughborough, Barrow and Quorn has fallen through.

Ian’s analysis is a useful summary of what happened and where it leaves the county council’s plans to change the education system across Leicestershire – and in Loughborough, Barrow and Quorn.

Ian sums up the rather bleak position:

You only have to look at the new school buildings in the city of Leicester, which was in the first phase of the government’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) money, to see the transformation that can take place. I have walked around all of the four so far and they are quite amazing places.

Leicestershire is already practically the lowest-funded per-pupil education authority in the country. Now there will be no real investment in school buildings for the foreseeable future either.

The government says Leicestershire could resubmit its bid at a later date. But let’s be honest – this was all-or-nothing. While even the Conservatives haven’t (yet) said categorically they will shelve the BSF scheme, the post-general election financial landscape will be very different, whoever gets in.

The entire post is well worth reading.

Following the launch of the Conservatives iPhone app, I’ve made some changes to this blog that mean it’s now much easier to read on the iPhone, iPod Touch, Blackberry and Android devices. Users of these mobile devices should notice the changes straight away.

The Google Maps UK ‘Street View’ feature was extended yesterday. The feature, which allows users to step into a road and see surround images throughout the road, now covers, according to Google, 95 percent of UK homes. Whilst Nottingham has been on Street View since the UK launch of the service in 2009, Loughborough, Leicester and Leicestershire have only just been added.

View Larger Map

I think it’s a good thing: it makes it easier to find places and it allows visitors and tourists to familiarise themselves with a place. Councillors, such as those on the planning committee, may also find the tool useful for exploring an unfamiliar area of the borough. Some people have privacy concerns but Google’s cameras can only enter public spaces and Google uses automatic face-blurring and car number plate-blurring to protect the privacy of people that have been photographed in the process.

The Telegraph has a few more details.

Things have moved quickly since Monday (8 March 2010) when the government’s Partnerships For Schools quango announced it had decided not to progress Leicestershire County Council’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) bid. A successful bid would have unlocked £80m of government investment for schools in Loughborough, Barrow and Quorn and enabled the county council to both reorganise schools, moving to a ‘through’ school basis (11-16 or 11-18), and to invest in new buildings and equipment. It was bitterly disappointing to find out that the county council’s bid had not succeeded.

Here’s how events have played out since Monday:

Monday 8 March 2010

Partnerships For Schools confirmed Leicestershire’s bid had not progressed. The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) issued a press release naming the successful BSF bids.

Loughborough MP Andy Reed asked the Secretary of State Ed Balls about the county’s BSF bid in Parliament. Ed Balls used the question as an opportunity to attack the Conservatives instead of as an opportunity to offer any real assistance (much as Harriet Harman misused Andy Reed’s question about AstraZeneca in the same way just last week).

Andy Reed wrote on his website:

I will now ask for an urgent meeting with County Council officials to see what they plan to do next. I don’t want them to walk away from BSF and the £80m that could be available. I don’t want them to try and come up with a cheap version of reorganisation. They should continue to work up a proper widely supported BSF Bid which will not split the town again.

I am happy to help them rebuild the trust they have lost amongst so many parents and staff as the future of our children’s education is at stake.

Prospective Conservative MP for Loughborough Nicky Morgan said Andy Reed had tried to “derail” the county’s bid:

This is a lost opportunity for our students, both present and future. It is also a huge blow to plans for a new Area Special School. Yet again the Labour Government has ignored Leicestershire’s schools and pupils and shown it is not interested, despite its rhetoric, in making a difference to children’s lives in our local area. They were aided by Loughborough’s Labour MP who seemed to forget that he represents residents from across the constituency, including on the West of Loughborough and outside the town. Everyone I spoke to wanted to make the change to 11-16 education – even Option C campaigners. But Mr Reed worked to derail Leicestershire’s bid and then blame the County Council. I absolutely understand why staff, governors and students at Limehurst and Garendon did not want their schools to close. But it is an MP’s (and prospective MP’s) duty to stand back from individual situations and work out what is best for the whole community. Mr Reed failed to do that and, as a consequence, has let down several generations of students.

I spoke to the Conservative Shadow Minister for Schools on Friday. He assured me that a Conservative Government would scrap the surplus places rule almost immediately, which takes care of one problem Option C campaigners were facing. If elected I pledge to work with all interested bodies to see how we get over this and continue the move to 11-16 schools. It is also worth noting that a Conservative Government will allow parents and other groups to set up their own schools. We may need to explore this locally to structure the education we all want.

Tuesday 9 March 2010

The Leicester Mercury reported on the BSF bid not succeeding:

Leader of the county council David Parsons said he was “deeply disappointed”.

He said: “I will do all I can to ensure the one-through-school model for Loughborough, which many parents have spoken to me about, is delivered.

“However, I’m also aware of the views wishing to retain education provision on the Limehurst site.

“What neither the county council nor the Government can ignore is the big problem of surplus school places in Loughborough – currently 700. It is clear that something has to be done.”

The Mercury reported that local One Through School campaigner Simon Ghent is very disappointed – and blames Loughborough MP Andy Reed for negatively affecting the county’s bid:

Simon Ghent, a parent who has been campaigning for the changes as part of the One Through School group, said he was “absolutely appalled”.

He blamed MP Andy Reed and county councillor Jewel Miah who had both said Limehurst should remain open, even though the council said this would be least likely to get funding.

Mr Ghent said: “They spoke in favour of plans they knew their own Government wouldn’t accept.

“We’re stuffed now. What we are left with is how to implement the one-through-school system with next to no money.

“I’m not only gutted personally but I’m also very annoyed that we’ve been campaigning hard for three years and now have nothing to give future generations.”

But Labour borough and county councillor Jewel Miah told the Mercury that the bid failing is “good news” for Limehurst High School:

Labour county councillor Jewel Miah, who was fighting against the plans to close Limehurst, said: “It’s devastating for Leicestershire that the bid has failed but for people campaigning for Limehurst it’s good news.”

Wednesday 10 March 2010

The leader of the Labour group at County Hall, Max Hunt, called for Leicestershire County Council’s Lead Member for the Children and Young People’s Service, Councillor Ivan Ould, to resign over the BSF bid.

The Mercury reported:

Labour has called for Leicestershire’s education chief to resign following the county’s failure to get cash to rebuild schools.

Councillor Max Hunt, leader of the Labour group at County Hall, said Councillor Ivan Ould should take responsibility for “the worst day the county’s education department has ever had”.

Coun Ould said he had no intention of resigning.

The Mercury continues:

Labour councillors and MP Andy Reed were criticised by Conservative councillors for not backing County Hall’s bid – in particular by opposing the closure of Limehurst High School, Loughborough, which some believe affected the bid.

Coun Ould said the Government had indicated it was looking favourably on Leicestershire’s bid – particularly as the county council had been encouraged to submit its plans earlier than expected.

The Leader of the Opposition at County Hall, Lib Dem Councillor Simon Galton, was also reported to be concerned:

Simon Galton, leader of the Liberal Democrat group, said he was not calling for Coun Ould’s resignation but there needed to be “a public apology” for the situation.

The Mercury sums up the present situation:

At a meeting of the county council’s cabinet yesterday, education bosses said they would now review the situation in Loughborough to consider what to do next.

It could mean officials will submit another bid or proceed with reorganisation, despite no money for new buildings.

Andy Reed wrote on his website:

I am very disappointed that Cllr David Parsons [the Leader of Leicestershire County Council] has taken every opportunity to try to spin his way out of their failure by blaming everybody else without taking any responsibility themselves. (sic)

He knows full well that their bid was not recommended by the independent body set up to look at bids – Partnership for Schools to Ministers. Ministers agree the recommendations made to them by P4Schools – they had no sight of the bids until they were given the list of 6 successful authorities deemed ready to deliver and a follow up list of a further 3 authorities nearly ready to deliver. So at best it is misleading to suggest Ministers and national politicians had any say over the final shortlist. They deliberately keep themselves out of the process until the very end. I call on him to withdraw these remarks so that local people can have trust in what they say about listening this time round (sic)

We still need consensus and partnership. Until he withdraws these misleading statement we cannot move forward (sic)

Andy Reed also went on, in a separate post, to directly attack local campaign group One Through School (OTS):

As soon as the plans were announced opposition groups were set up and Parents (sic) were organising. This is democracy in action. I attended meetings packed with angry parents demanding changes to the plans.

At this stage you would have thought County Hall would have shown some contrition and made serious attempts to find a solution. Instead they kept hiding behind the ‘criteria’ and Partnership for Schools technicalities.

Parents, schools and governors wanted more choices to consult on. The idea of opponents having to create their own Option C emerged as it became clear County Hall weren’t willing to listen or help.

I called a meeting of Heads and included the OTS campaign. Details of an Option C emerged and were agreed. It was far from a a detailed worked up option – but we did not have the resources of County Hall. Rightly we felt it was there (sic) job to do the detailed workings!

OTS suddenly dropped out a week later without telling anybody and then started attacking supporters of option C. This was the low point.

Friday 12 March 2010

Page 7 of tomorrow’s Loughborough Echo (12 March 2010) features a round-up of the BSF bid under the headline ‘£80m schools bid ends in failure’.

Summary

The news that the bid has failed is really disappointing for Loughborough, Barrow and Quorn. Clearly the next steps will be quite different to the current bid – we’re only weeks away from a General Election and whichever party forms the next government is going to have to work hard to reduce the national debt and that will include cutting budgets and reforming how departments work. Michael Gove, the Conservative education spokesman, has very different ideas about how education should work in England to present Labour Secretary of State Ed Balls.

Locally it’s frustrating and confusing to see the different messages coming from local Labour politicians.

On Monday MP Andy Reed wanted to talk to County Hall, he wanted an “urgent meeting” and he wanted to help the county council “rebuild trust”. By Wednesday he was “disappointed” with the county council, said he wouldn’t engage unless the Leader withdraws certain remarks and used his website to directly attack the One Through School campaign group!

On Tuesday Labour county councillor Jewel Miah said the bid failing was “good news”. On Wednesday the Labour group leader at county hall, Max Hunt, said the news was so bad that the Conservative Lead Member should resign!

What on earth are we to make of all this to-and-froing by local Labour politicians? The most obvious answer: they are trying to play politics with an £80m bid to improve education in Loughborough, Barrow and Quorn for many generations. Unfortunately the bid has now failed. I hope the county council will find a way round this set-back for moving to a through-school system in the Loughborough area and improving educational facilities but I know it won’t be easy.

Prospective Conservative MP Nicky Morgan appeared on the BBC East Midlands Politics Show yesterday (7 March 2010) to talk about the announced closure of the AstraZeneca Charnwood facility in Loughborough.

Locally various organisations and politicians are working hard to try to mitigate the effects of the closure and to help those directly affected. Let’s hope the AstraZeneca issue moves further up the national government agenda soon.

Loughborough MP Andy Reed has today put a press release on his website saying he “fears” a “dirty tricks campaign” in the Loughborough election. Apparently Mr Reed is upset that he didn’t register the domain name ‘www.andyreed.org.uk’ and that it was instead registered, perfectly legitimately, by a Conservative supporter. The domain name currently doesn’t appear to lead to any website but Mr Reed fears it could one day be part of a “dirty tricks campaign”!

It’s interesting that Andy Reed should talk about “dirty tricks” being played on the Internet because, as avid readers of this blog will recall, Andy Reed supporter and local Labour borough and county councillor Jewel Miah first engaged in Internet dirty tricks back in December 2009. At that time, Jewel Miah was caught editing the Andy Reed Wikipedia article in contravention of Wikipedia’s policies in order to try to cover-up Andy Reed’s voting record and his expenses claims.

Surely now is the time for Andy Reed to publicly condemn the actions of Jewel Miah in vandalising a Wikipedia article and trying to stifle the free availability of information on the Internet. Andy Reed must distance himself from these “dirty tricks” if he is so opposed to them. I trust that Mr Reed will also require assurances from Mr Miah that there will be no further acts of Internet “dirty tricks” by Labour supporters… otherwise where would that leave Mr Reed and his “fears”? Perhaps people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones?

Bookmaker Ladbrokes recently shortened the odds of Nicky Morgan, prospective Conservative MP for Loughborough, being elected at the General Election.

Here’s how the odds have moved in recent months:

November 2009

Nicky Morgan 1/6
Andy Reed 7/2

February 2010

Nicky Morgan 1/8
Andy Reed 4/1

March 2010

Nicky Morgan 1/10
Andy Reed 5/1

I’ll continue to keep an eye on what the bookies think the outcome of the General Election will be in Loughborough in the run up to polling day.

The local AstraZeneca action group convened by Charnwood Borough Council met for the first time yesterday. The action group includes representatives from Charnwood Borough Council, Leicestershire County Council, Loughborough Town Centre Partnership, Loughborough University, Loughborough Chamber of Trade and Commerce, Leicestershire Chamber of Commerce, Prospect Leicestershire and AstraZeneca.

Following the meeting the group issued a joint statement.

Joint Statement from the AstraZeneca Action Group

All parties were grateful for the opportunity to meet today at this early stage. We had a very constructive discussion. The meeting today has been an important step in the process of exploring future options for the Charnwood site and how best to support all those who are affected.

It is still early days and there is much to be done over the next 18 months but it is important that we put plans in place as a matter of urgency to help deal with the situation.

At the meeting today it was agreed that EMDA will establish a task force including AstraZeneca. The priority will be to put support in place to help the people affected to find new jobs or set up their own businesses. The other important aspects will be finding new uses for the site and creating new employment opportunities in the local economy.

One of the early actions will be to carry out an economic impact assessment which will help the task force decide where to focus its efforts.

We have agreed to meet again within the next month.

This is a positive first step and it’s pleasing to see how quickly local organisations have been able to get together to try to mitigate the effects of the AstraZeneca Charnwood closure.

Charnwood Borough Council has covened an action group which will meet for the first time this Friday to discuss the consequences of the decision to close the AstraZeneca Charnwood facilitiy in Loughborough and to agree ways to support the staff and plan for the future use of the AstraZeneca site. Local organisations involved in the action group include Leicestershire County Council, Loughborough Town Centre Partnership, Loughborough University, Loughborough Chamber of Trade and Commerce, Leicestershire Chamber of Commerce and Prospect Leicestershire. AstraZeneca has also been invited to join the action group.

The Leader of Charnwood Borough Council, Councillor Mike Preston, has said:

We are moving as quickly as we can to see what we can do in terms of reducing the impact of that blow as much as possible.

It is early days but I think it is important everyone works together to address this now.

Prospective Conservative MP for Loughborough Nicky Morgan has said:

This will be a huge shock for staff and their families and very difficult news to take on board. The company must do all it can to support them and to ensure staff are given the option of working for the company elsewhere in the UK and overseas, if they want to pursue that option.

It has always been important to Loughborough to have such a large company based locally and to lose the site now is extremely bad news for our town and local area. I hope to be discussing this matter with the company as soon as practicable.

Meanwhile Loughborough MP Andy Reed raised the issue in the House of Commons this afternoon:

Mr. Andy Reed (Loughborough) (Lab/Co-op): AstraZeneca in my constituency has decided to relocate its research and development facilities to Cheshire, which will cause 1,200 jobs to be lost to the local economy in 2011. Overall, pharmaceuticals are strong in the United Kingdom, and the Office for Life Sciences has ensured that many such jobs remain in the UK. However, that is no consolation to the 1,200 people who will have to relocate from my constituency, so will my right hon. and learned Friend assure me that the Government will give every assistance to the taskforce that we will set up this week to address the situation and ensure that there is economic and development help for the constituency of Loughborough and the people who will be affected?

Ms Harman: I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. We do not believe in standing by, letting people fend for themselves, letting recession take it course, or that unemployment is a price worth paying. We have an active interventionist policy to support industry, including in the regions, which would suffer if the regional development agencies were abolished, as proposed by the Conservatives.

Unfortunately people in Loughborough can take little assurance from Harriet Harman’s reply in the Commons. Instead of giving a serious answer to a serious question and offering an actual government commitment to help people in Loughborough, Ms Harman instead used the question as an opportunity to make partisan political comments about the Conservatives.

People in Loughborough want to know how the Labour government will help, not what Ms Harman thinks of Conservative Party policy on the economy. Perhaps Ms Harman doesn’t appreciate that there are 1,200 jobs at stake, 1,200 families directly affected and an entire town, borough and county that will feel the effects of the closure of AstraZeneca’s Loughborough site.

Loughborough MP Andy Reed should be furious that Harriet Harman used his question as a cheap opportunity to attack the Conservatives.

Hopefully the meeting of the action group this Friday will produce positive ideas and plans to help those directly affected by the closure of the AstraZeneca facility and to mitigate the effects of the closure on the local economy.

There has been a lot of bleating in the last few days by Labour politicians about the role of Conservative Party Deputy Chairman Lord Ashcroft in financing the Conservative campaign since he revealed that he is a ‘non dom’ (someone who doesn’t pay UK tax on overseas earnings because of overseas heritage). Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, has even said that the idea of a non dom donating money to British politics is ‘unpatriotic‘. All this despite the Labour Party being far more reliant on non dom donors than the Conservative Party. Labour’s high-rolling non dom donors include Lord Paul, Lakshmi Mittal, Sir Ronald Cohen, Sir Christopher Ondaatje, Sir Gulam Noon, Mahmoud Khayami and Dr David Potter. Since 2001 Labour have received £10m of donations from wealthy non doms. In the same period, the Conservatives have received £5m from Lord Ashcroft.

Between 2001 and 2008 wealthy Labour non dom Lord Paul claimed £281,000 in Lords expenses. During that time Lord Ashcroft didn’t claim a penny in Lords expenses (regardless of the fact he attended the Lords).

Labour politicians would have the public believe that Lord Ashcroft has untold power and influence over the Conservative Party, especially in marginal seats like Loughborough. Loughborough MP Andy Reed has repeatedly said that Lord Ashcroft has a big influence in Loughborough (in fact, he said it again just yesterday). Last year Andy Reed even accused one local Conservative prospective MP – Ross Grant in Leicester South – of ‘laundering’ money on behalf of Lord Ashcroft!

The truth of campaign funding in Loughborough was revealed in an article in Saturday’s Independent (27 February 2010, published online in part).

The Independent revealed that just 18 percent of money spent by the Conservatives in marginal seats is funded by Lord Ashcroft, with the other 82 percent being money raised locally.

The Independent print edition even lists local party spending for the years 2007 and 2008 (combined) across the 55 most marginal seats in the country. The Independent’s findings in relation to Loughborough are as follows:

Loughborough Conservatives Total Income: £45,676
of which donations from Lord Ashcroft: £11,778

Loughborough Labour Total Income: £51,430

Loughborough MP Andy Reed also claims the Parliamentary ‘Communications Allowance’ expense. He has claimed an average of £9,348 of the £10,000 annual allowance producing and distributing his annual report. The cost of the local Conservative candidate’s annual report has to come out of general donations. That puts like-for-like spending for the time period examined by the Independent at:

Loughborough Conservatives: £45,676

Loughborough Labour: £60,778 – £70,126*

* A range is given because the Communications Allowance was not introduced until the 2007/2008 financial year

Labour politicians can complain all they like about Lord Ashcroft’s money but the Labour Party receives more non dom money than the Conservative Party and, in Loughborough, the local Labour Party has, on a like-for-like basis, outspent the local Conservative Party by as much as 53 percent. This must make Labour’s repeated local election defeats in Leicestershire even more frustrating and bitter.

David Cameron has said that if the Conservatives are elected they will change the law so that all politicians sitting in the House of Commons and the House of Lords must pay full UK tax. Gordon Brown hasn’t made any similar promise. The Conservatives have also pledged to scrap the ‘Communications Allowance’ which allows sitting MPs to produce and distribute literature at taxpayers’ expense.