Stephen Hodgson

Archive for the ‘Loughborough’ Category

On Tuesday (8 June 2010), new Loughborough MP Nicky Morgan delivered her maiden speech in the House of Commons.

I have reproduced it here in full. (See original Hansard source).

Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con): Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to make my maiden speech during this debate, which is addressing a critical part of the new Government’s future programme. I congratulate the previous speakers, particularly those who have made their maiden speech and set the bar very high for the rest of us.

It is an honour to speak as the first female Member of Parliament for the Loughborough constituency. I pay tribute to my two immediate predecessors. One, my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Mr Dorrell), is still a Member of the House. Unsurprisingly, I have been researching previous maiden speeches and it would appear that he made his maiden speech during the Budget debate following the 1979 election. Little did he think that one of his successors, 31 years later, would be speaking as the Conservatives were preparing another emergency Budget after a change of Government.

My immediate predecessor, Andy Reed, worked tirelessly for his constituents following his election in 1997. He was respected as a man of principle and resigned as a Parliamentary Private Secretary over the Iraq war. He was a committed Christian and-I hope that he will not mind my saying this-a well known sports fanatic. Several Members on the Government Benches have already asked me whether I am going to take his place on the parliamentary rugby team. For the record, the answer is no. I hope that I will be able to serve the people in the Loughborough constituency as well as he did.

Loughborough is a wonderful mix. It sits, as my two immediate predecessors said in their maiden speeches, between Nottingham, Derby and Leicester, and that has clearly not changed. Loughborough is a town of about 50,000 people but it expands by 12,000 or so during term times thanks to our world-famous university, which is back on the map, as the football to be used at the forthcoming World cup was designed there.

Just across the M1 is the town of Shepshed, which, as I have discovered since the beginning of my candidacy six years ago, feels ignored by every tier of government. I hope that I will be able to put that right during my time as its Member of Parliament.

Finally, a number of smaller villages make up the constituency, including Hathern, Sileby, Quorn, Barrow upon Soar, Mountsorrel Castle, and some picturesque Wolds villages. The fact that I have villages in my constituency raises interesting rural issues that I hope to be able to take further forward in the House.

We have a sizeable ethnic community, and it has been my pleasure, in my six years as a candidate in the constituency, to meet and learn more about them, and to visit the Shree Ram Krishna centre, the gurdwara, the Geeta Bhawan and our two mosques.

At one time, Loughborough was renowned for its textiles and hosiery manufacturing. Now, we are known for pharmaceuticals, research and engineering, and for manufacturing bells-Taylor’s is one of the last remaining bell foundries in the country. The bells have been exported worldwide, and even hang in St Paul’s cathedral here in London.

I want to touch on the importance of supporting the manufacturing sector, as other Members have done. Much has already been said-and, I am sure, will continue to be said-about spending cuts and tax rises, but more needs to be said about supporting private sector businesses, which are the backbone of our economy. We rely on our private sector businesses to provide employment, to train apprentices, to give people skills and, of course, to supply exports.

In March in Loughborough, just before the election campaign started, we received the devastating news that AstraZeneca is to close its Charnwood site, with the loss of at least 1,200 jobs locally. I hope that I will have the opportunity in future debates to raise a number of issues relating to the closure. I am proud to be part of the taskforce, of which my predecessor Andy Reed was a vital part, that is working to fill the site and plug the gap. I hope that we will end up not with a black hole in the middle of Charnwood, but with a site that new businesses and many other industries can use, so that we can still have a full manufacturing sector in the town.

We need to support strong manufacturing businesses, particularly with regard to research and development. Although manufacturing accounts for only about 20% of our economy, it accounts for about 75% of research and development in this country. The services sector is important, but manufacturers take on apprentices and give people new skills in a way that the services sector does not necessarily do so. We need both. I am delighted to see that, in the coalition agreement, the Government mentioned the need for a more balanced economy; in fact, that was mentioned earlier today, too.

With a background as a solicitor advising companies large and small on raising finance both in the City of London and outside, I hope that I will be able to use my time in the House to ensure that we have a truly business-friendly environment in Britain. That would be good for my constituents, for Loughborough, for the east midlands, for Leicestershire and for the country. I hope that we can replace the jobs that have been lost, and can ensure a burgeoning manufacturing sector by the time that this Government leave office.

Last week’s Loughborough Echo (14 May 2010) featured a number of articles about local election results, including the election of Nicky Morgan as the new MP for the Loughborough constituency. The Echo’s article about Nicky’s election success is available to read online here: Loughborough’s new MP pledges to work hard for the community.

From the article:

TORY MP Nicky Morgan has pledged to sort out schools and jobs in Loughborough after snatching the key marginal seat in the town finishing Andy Reed’s 13-year reign.

Nicky Morgan’s victory saw the Conservatives snatch 21,971 votes: 3,744 more than Andy Reed, who has held the Loughborough seat since 1997.

…

I think a lot of people are going to want to see me prove myself and that’s understandable but I promise to work my hardest. MPs change things and I want to change things for this community.

Here are a few ways to keep in touch with Nicky Morgan – MP for Loughborough:

Nicky Morgan – official website: NickyMorgan.com
Nicky Morgan – profile on www.parliament.uk
Nicky Morgan – voting record, committee membership and expenses on TheyWorkForYou.com
Nicky Morgan – voting record on The Public Whip
Nicky Morgan – update messages on HearFromYourMP.com
Nicky Morgan – contact on WriteToThem.com

My congratulations to Councillor Jill Vincent, who was elected as the Mayor of Charnwood for the council year 2010/2011 at last week’s Full Coucil meeting of Charnwood Borough Council.

Jill will make both an excellent chairman of Full Council and a great First Citizen of Charnwood. Already at last week’s meeting Jill showed she has the skills and the respect of councillors to make a great success of her new role.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to extend my appreciation to Councillor Roy Brown, who served as mayor for the year 2009/2010. Roy has been a committed and enthusiastic mayor and he now goes on to serve as deputy mayor supporting Jill Vincent in her role during 2010/2011.

Just before 2.00am this morning Conservative candidate Nicky Morgan was elected as the next Member of Parliament for the Loughborough constituency.

The people of Loughborough voted decisively for Nicky Morgan and the Conservatives, with a 5.5 percent swing from Labour to Conservatives, giving Nicky Morgan a majority of 3,744 votes.

The full results for the Loughborough constituency are as follows:

The turnout in the Loughborough constituency was 52,838 people – 68.2 percent.

Many congratulations to Nicky.

Nicky Morgan has worked hard for people in the Loughborough constituency for the past six years and she will make a fantastic MP!

In her eve of poll video, Nicky Morgan sets out her record as the Conservative candidate for Loughborough and what she hopes to achieve if she is elected as the MP for Loughborough.

Nicky says:

“If elected to represent you, I promise to be there when you need me. To make myself easy to contact and easy to see in person. I promise to publish my expenses online and to have them audited annually.

I want to build a consensus about how we move to 11-16 school without losing the excellent schools that we already have.

I want to support the AstraZeneca workers as they look for new jobs and opportunities.

I will support Sure Start, I will work to protect our green spaces and I want to ensure that the voices of local residents are at the heart of local and national decision-making.”

Tomorrow people in Loughborough have the chance to vote for change both locally and nationally by voting for Nicky Morgan, the Conservative candidate for Lougborough. Nicky has been working hard on behalf of people in the Loughborough constituency for more than six years and she would make a fantastic MP.

With less than 24 hours until polls open, here is how the Loughborough constituency shapes up in terms of votes based on previous elections:

‘2005 notional’ translates the 2005 actual result into the new boundaries in force for the 2010 election.

‘2007 notional’ translates the relevant Charnwood Borough Council ward results from 3 May 2007 into the Loughborough consituency results.

‘2009 notional’ translates the relevant Leicestershire County Council division results from 4 June 2009 into the Loughborough constituency results.

It will be interesting to see what the final pre-election polls show tonight.

Further to my post yesterday about Loughborough Labour Party’s canvassing results showing a 2.2 percent swing to the Conservatives in Loughborough, I was contacted by a couple of readers who asked whether Labour’s polling can be trusted. The answer is quite simply no.

I base this answer on two things:

1. Door-to-door canvassing is only semi-reliable regardless of which party carries it out. Canvass results can be skewed by different parties choosing to focus efforts on particular areas or streets. The results can also be affected by the time of day the canvassers go out – canvassing the same street on a Wednesday afternoon might produce a different demographic to if the same street is polled on a Saturday morning. Even when voters do answer the door, there’s no guarantee they will have made up their minds how to vote – or that they will give accurate information about how they’re going to vote.

2. As recently as February this year we saw clear evidence that Labour’s door-to-door polling is more than a bit unreliable. During the local by-election campaign for one of the the Birsall Watermead seats on Charnwood Borough Council, a sample of Labour’s canvassing indicated that Labour would poll 30 percent of the vote with the Conservatives receiving “rather fewer” votes than Labour. In the end, the Conservatives polled 48 percent – 16 points ahead of Labour on 32 percent.

If Labour’s Birstall Watermead canvassing technique is anything to go by then Labour’s prediction of a 2.2 percent swing to the Conservatives in Loughborough could be wildly understating the Conservative position. We’ll know for sure less than 72 hours from now.

Just four weeks ago Labour candidate for Loughborough Andy Reed seemed confident that he will be elected on 6 May 2010 – perhaps even arrogant.

Four weeks later, after four weeks on the campaign trail meeting and canvassing Loughborough voters, Mr Reed’s tune is beginning to change.

Here is what Andy Reed has been saying on his blog over the last four weeks:

6 April 2010
“I predicted a year ago that as soon as there was any serious analysis of the Tories their poll lead would disappear. Most of the things I said then are still as true today.”

10 April 2010
“Tory support in the constituency has flatlined since the mid 90s.”

18 April 2010
“I always predicted here that once there was any scrutiny of the Tories their house of cards would start to crumble. And boy has it done just that.”

1 May 2010
“I will take pleasure at denying Cameron the keys to No 10.”

3 May 2010
“Usually by this stage you know what is likely to happen on Thursday. I don’t know the exact result but I have been able to tell within about 500 votes how it will look in the past. This is not the case this time. I know we are neck and neck (a few votes ahead) with the Tories with the Lib Dems back in a poor third place with the minor parties picking up a small sprinkling of support.”

Andy Reed now says that Labour and the Tories are “neck and neck” in Loughborough, presumably on the basis of polling/canvassing by his campaign team.

That means even Loughborough Labour Party expects to lose more votes to the Conservatives and is predicting a 2.2 percent swing to Nicky Morgan and the Conservatives in Loughborough.

Despite coming to the Loughborough consitutency last Friday (30 April 2010), Gordon Brown failed to really visit Loughborough – instead focusing his visit on Loughborough University. This is the second time that Gordon Brown has come to the Loughborough constituency only to bypass the town of Loughborough.

By contrast, David Cameron’s recent visits to Loughborough included a public question and answer session at Loughborough town hall (July 2008), visiting Rainbow’s Hospice (January 2010) and a public meet-and-greet in Loughborough market place (April 2010).

Loughborough University is undoubtedly a fantastic university (which of course I would say having graduated from there) and it is a key part of Loughborough and the local economy but Gordon Brown’s focus on Loughborough University to the exclusion of the town grates with many Loughborough townsfolk.

With less than a week to go until polling day, Conservative candidate Nicky Morgan remains the bookies’ odds-on favourite to be elected as the next MP for Loughborough. The bookies are so confident of a Conservative victory in Lougborough that the average odds available for Nicky Morgan to win the seat are 1/10, indicating the bookies think Nicky has more than a 90 percent chance of winning.

The current odds (1 May 2010) are as follows:

The bookies give Labour’s Andy Reed just a 14 percent chance of winning and Lib Dem Mike Willis just a 3 percent chance of winning.

Nicky Morgan has shown she has the energy, leadership and values to be a fantastic MP for Loughborough. Nicky’s team will be working hard right up until the close of polls on 6 May to help deliver change in Loughborough and in Westminster. And Conservative canvassers can go out with renewed pride this week following David Cameron’s excellent peformance in the final leaders’ debate.

Last night and this evening I attended two Loughborough constituency hustings events.

BBC Leicester Radio hosted a debate at Loughborough town hall last night (28 April 2010) which was broadcast this morning. The debate featured Conservative candidate Nicky Morgan, Labour candidate Andy Reed and Lib Dem candidate Mike Willis. UKIP candidate John Foden failed to attend (despite accepting) and BNP candidate Kevan Stafford turned down the BBC’s invitation. The event was chaired by the BBC’s Ben Jackson. The hour long event included a number of audience questions about important local issues as well as yesterday’s hot topic – the Gordon Brown ‘bigot’ gaffe. If you missed it, you can listen to Ben Jackson’s programme on BBC iPlayer.

This evening (29 April 2010) the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) hosted the final Loughborough hustings of the General Election campaign at the Holywell Park science site adjacent to the Loughborough University campus. The event was headlined ‘Who cares about science?’ and the six pre-selected audience questions all concerned science, ranging from how the government can encourage children to develop an interest in science careers to the issues of GM crops and national energy policy. Candidates in attendance were Conservative Nicky Morgan, Lib Dem Mike Willis and UKIP’s John Foden. Labour candidate Andy Reed was unable to attend and was represented by Charnwood constituency Labour candidate Eric Goodyer. The discussion was chaired by the Observer’s science editor Robin McKie. (I did some limited ‘live-tweeting’ of this evening’s event.)

Throughout the campaign in Loughborough all the candidates seem to have enjoyed the hustings. The various debates, with their different venues and subject focuses, have helped make the local candidates and national policies accessible to a range of people across the Loughborough constituency – starting with the environment-focused debate hosted by Action for a Better Charnwood (ABC) to the more open discussion at Emmanuel Church and tonight’s science-focused discussion. It’s a shame there wasn’t a debate at Loughborough University or Loughborough Students’ Union, which represent a key segment of voters in the constituency, although pleasingly this evening’s science debate did draw a number of academics and students.

This time next week the polls will have closed and no doubt there will be national media attention on the outcome of the vote in the Loughborough constituency – a key marginal which could determine which party is in power on 7 May 2010 and who occupies 10 Downing Street.

Labour candidate for Loughborough Andy Reed yesterday managed to make no fewer than four personal attacks on Conservative challenger Nicky Morgan on his website.

Here is a taster of what Andy Reed is saying:

You either vote FOR me directly or you lose me and get an out of town London career Tory MP.

If by ‘out of town’ we’re talking about people who live outside the town of Loughborough then Andy Reed is not only wrong but also hypocritical. Nicky Morgan lives on Pinfold Gate in Loughborough town centre. Andy Reed lives in the village of Quorn.

However, another small 4% swing to the Lib Dems in Loughborough allows the right wing out of town London Solicitor to become the MP for us all.

Remember Graeme. He was the candidate for the Lib Dems in 2005… He was particularly angry they [the Conservatives] chose the London Solicitor and career politician to fight this seat again.

If you don’t want a career politician from London as your local MP – you need to vote for Andy.

Andy Reed keeps describing Nicky Morgan as a ‘career politician’ – in fact, Nicky has never worked in politics before. Andy Reed has been an MP for 13 years. Who is more of a ‘career politician’?

Voters in Loughborough will see past these shallow personal attacks and lies. Indeed, it is one thing to attack a political opponent on the basis of their policies or political choices (for example how they vote on the issues and what expenses they claim) but quite another to attack a political opponent on the basis of where they come from (in Nicky’s case, she is from London).

Andy Reed’s personal attacks are desperate and shameful.

The main Loughborough constituency hustings event took place last night (25 April 2010) in Emmanuel Church. The event was hosted by Loughborough Churches Partnership. It was probably the most well-attended hustings event I’ve ever been to, which perhaps indicates just how much interest there is in this General Election and particularly in the marginal seat of Loughborough. Nicky Morgan (Conservatives), Andy Reed (Labour) and Mike Willis (Lib Dems) faced seven questions over the course of an hour and a half. The questions had been pre-selected by a committee prior to the event and covered a range of topical issues.

I ‘live-tweeted’ throughout the hustings (so please take a look at my Twitter feed if you want more details of how the debate developed) but here are what I thought were four of the highlights of the debate:

(1) The second question of the evening concerned jobs, training, apprenticeships and employment. At one point during the answer Lib Dem Mike Willis, drawing on the now famous Gordon Brown television debate moment, said ‘I agree with Nick…y’ (referring to Conservative candidate Nicky Morgan, rather than Nick Clegg whom Gordon Brown referred to).

(2) Whilst the audience were asked not to heckle at any time there was one incident – actually triggered by the chairman rather than any of the candidates.  The fifth question was about Christians feeling marginalised and protecting freedom of expression for Christians. When Andy Reed said he didn’t think Christians are marginalised the chairman used his perogative to intervene and tell Andy Reed that Christians are marginalised – this drew a heckle of ‘chairman, you’re out of line!’ from one person in the audience.

(3) In responding to the sixth question about promoting family life, Conservative Nicky Morgan launched a passionate defence of Conservative support for two-parent families and changing the tax system to not discriminate against two-parent families. Nicky then challenged Labour’s Andy Reed to disassociate himself from Labour leaflets that have been distributed in Loughborough which falsely say the Conservatives would close Sure Start children’s centres. Andy Reed refused to distance himself from the lies contained in Labour’s leaflets.

(4) The seventh and final question posed to the candidates was a variant of the “balloon question”. The candidates were asked, if they were in a hot air balloon together and they had to shed some weight to avoid crashing, which of the other candidates would they throw out of the balloon and which would they keep on board to work with. Andy Reed’s initial response was that he would jump out of the balloon! He then said that if he had to choose, he would keep Lib Dem Mike Willis in the ballon with him “because balloons need hot air”!

The event was good-humoured and enjoyable and all of the candidates showed real passion for the election.

Since the General Election was announced on 6 April 2010 there has been a significant increase in traffic to this blog driven by Google searches for ‘andy reed expenses’ and ‘andy reed mp expenses’. It seems voters in the Loughborough constituency are keen to familiarise themselves with the expenses of the former Loughborough MP – the current Labour candidate – Andy Reed – before deciding how to vote.

For those interested in a whistle-stop tour of Andy Reed’s expenses claims, the following links should prove helpful:

Analysis of Andy Reed MP’s expenses (18 June 2009)
Shameless Andy Reed should repay expenses (13 December 2009)
Andy Reed’s “Simplify” Challenge – Expenses Edition (1 January 2010)
Andy Reed told to repay £900 expenses but instead keeps digging (4 February 2010)

Andy Reed was deeply involved in the expenses scandal and he enriched himself at taxpayers’ expense. He took full advantage of the expenses system and he was even ordered to repay £900. If Mr Reed isn’t re-elected on 6 May 2010 he will no doubt then sell his taxpayer-funded Westminster second home and pocket the profit like so many other MPs have done in the past.

Loughborough needs a new MP – someone who hasn’t become part of the Westminster system and someone who hasn’t been embroiled in the expenses scandal. In short, Loughborough needs to vote for change on 6 May!

The report shows Conservative candidate Nicky Morgan meeting people in Loughborough market place.

Correction (26/04/10): This post previously stated that the report shows Labour candidate Andy Reed meeting Labour councillor Graeme Smith. I have now checked with Graeme and this is incorrect – the person Andy Reed meets in the film is in fact a Graeme Smith look-alike! (Although apparently they don’t look that similar in real life.) Apologies to Andy, Graeme and his look-alike.