Water, Water

The national media is carrying stories about water shortages and the potential for drought restrictions in the South-East, whereas the local media is reporting that reservoirs serving our area are full to bursting.

Coincidentally, water is the subject of a number of debates in Parliament this week.

It is only four years ago that we suffered some devastating floods. I was reminded of the rhyme from my childhood: ‘Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.’  A recent NAO report shows that the increased government expenditure on flood defences since then has protected 182,000 homes.

In 2007, the Labour government negotiated an agreement with the insurance industry. In return for the government increasing funding in flood defences, there was a guarantee of universal flood insurance coverage for homes in affected areas. This agreement expires in 2013. Unfortunately, the coalition government has chosen to cut flood protection investment by 27% this year and in each of the next 3 years. Many projects in our area have been cancelled.

The Association of British Insurers (ABI) has now warned that 200,000 high-risk homes will not be able to get flood insurance once the agreement runs out, unless there is a sustainable alternative scheme in place. However, the government has said it has no intention of doing this. I see big problems ahead.

Meanwhile, the government is rushing forward with new legislation, mainly to cut £50 off the high water bills in the south-west, which arise from the last Conservative government’s botched privatization. Elsewhere, water bills will rise an average 5.7% from April. In the Severn-Trent area, 340,000 households spend more than 5% on their water bill, and in the Yorkshire Water area, more than 190,000 households.

A WaterSure tariff was introduced in 1999. It applies to households with three or more children living at home under the age of 19 or where someone in the household has a medical condition which necessitates high water use. But only one-third of eligible households make use of it.

The government should be using its data to ensure everyone eligible is on the lowest tariff. Meanwhile, if you are eligible, why not apply now?

Stay clear of sharks

The last government took concerted action to deal with loan sharks – unlicensed money-lenders, operating outside the law. They provide loans on bad terms, at exorbitant interest rates, and illegally harass people if they get behind with their payments. For the last five years, enforcement teams in every region have been cracking down on these illegal activities.

However, in their place, we’ve now seen the rise of the lawful loan sharks. It’s sometimes called payday lending. In 2006, the payday loans industry was worth about £350,000 a year. By last year, that had dramatically increased to more than £2bn.

Daytime TV is now flooded with adverts, tempting vulnerable people to see how easy it is to take a loan, which they can repay on their next pay-day at interest rates in excess of 2000%.

Clearly, increasing unemployment, falling wages and benefit cuts are taking their toll on ordinary families. However unrealistically optimistic, people are falling into the trap of believing that they can have one of these loans just once, repay it and move on.

The reality is different. Nearly half the people taking out payday loans are doing it to pay off another debt – usually at a vastly lower interest rate. The Debt Advice Foundation reports that more than 40% of people who go to them for help have financial problems because of payday loans, or similar debt with high interest rates. The Citizens Advice Bureau reports that they have seen a four-fold increase the number of people seen with payday loan problems in just two years.

Last October, I called on the government to take urgent action to cap interest rates on loans. Bluntly, the whole business is just obscene. But, I’m sorry to say, the government has refused to act. I shall keep up the pressure.

However, there is some movement. Last week, the Office of Fair Trading announced that it will carry out spot-checks of 50 major lenders and that it would look into concerns that people are being given loans without the proper checks being carried out. In particular, it will investigate whether firms are targeting people unsuitable for credit and are rolling over loans so that the charges escalate and they become unaffordable.

I have some simple advice for people who might be tempted by a payday loan:

‘’Don’t do it. Don’t even think of doing it. If you’re struggling with debt, go to your local CAB now before you do anything else.’” 

Gone to Sheffield

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t believe that any family should be better off on benefits than in going to work. That is one reason why Labour introduced Working Families Tax Credit – to give additional support to families on low wages. Together with increases in Child Benefit, it was one of the major reasons why child poverty dropped dramatically under the last government.

In cash terms, relatively few families are better off on benefits than from working. The biggest group are those living in private tenancies in very high rent areas – mainly inner-London. Despite all the government’s claims to the contrary, market rents have continued to rise far in excess of inflation.

But, instead of tackling unjustifiable rent increases, the government has decided to address the issue through a benefit cap. What they have forgotten – but what is shown in their own statistics – is that a high proportion of those affected are not permanently in receipt of benefits, but are families in short-term jobs, who go in and out of benefit.

All this makes the government’s decision to cut Working Families Tax Credit look ridiculous. Official figures show that nationally 212,000 households, containing 470,000 children, could lose the £3,870-a-year credit as a result. Thousands of working families in our area will be hard hit.

But, the cuts in WFTC are not the only ones being implemented over this next 12 months. I think most families have not realized the scale of the impact on them.

Last week, there was a major debate and a series of votes on some of these other cuts. They included cutting the housing benefit of families who are deemed to have a spare room – so grandparents are effectively penalized for having a bedroom where their grandchildren can stay with them, and cuts to employment support allowances – where those who are unable to work because of their treatment for cancer are going to be badly hit.

Now it has been revealed that Liberal Democrat Children’s Minister is totally opposed to these cuts. But, in what was a three-line whip – that is, every MP is told to be present to vote – she was absent. We now learn that David Cameron gave her special permission to visit Sheffield on that day, so that she could avoid the vote. Of course, voting against the government in line with her beliefs would have required her resignation. She chose a Ministerial salary instead.

Spin or Whoppers?

Over the last decade, the media have become obsessed with ‘spin’. It’s rare to pick up a newspaper without some reference to it. We have satirical programmes about it. But, I’m not sure there is any more of it today than when Bernard Ingham span for Margaret Thatcher, although it’s probably more professionally done nowadays.

We shouldn’t be surprised by ‘spin’, for it is simply ‘putting the best gloss on your story’. Surely nobody expects that anyone, whose reputation is in the public arena, would deliberately go out to ‘put the worst gloss’ on what they want to say?

But there is a big difference between ‘spin’ and ‘telling whoppers’. I only wish our media became more obsessed with the latter than the former. In that way, they would do a public service by properly holding public representatives to account.

My Barnsley colleague, Michael Dugher, has just published a long list of  ‘Whoppers’ that David Cameron has told at Prime Ministers’ Questions over the last 12 months. Of course, we all occasionally make mistakes. Last week, my friend David Blunkett got something wrong in an interview on Radio 4; but, discovering his mistake, he was back on the radio within 30 minutes to apologise and to correct his error. But, to the best of my knowledge, David Cameron hasn’t once set about correcting one of his ‘whoppers’. He does us all a dis-service.

And these things are not unimportant, because our Prime Ministers’s statements are publicised throughout the world and, if left uncorrected, give a clearly wrong impression of what is happening. Judge for yourself, with these examples of what Mr Cameron said at PMQs on January 25th and what the facts actually are:

David Cameron: “Hospital waiting times are down”

Fact: The number of patients not being treated within 18 weeks has soared by 43% since Mr Cameron became PM

David Cameron: “Disabled children will not have their benefits cut.”

Fact: Department for Work and Pensions’ assessment on the new universal credit showing that the rate paid to disabled children will fall from £53.84 to £26.75 a week.

David Cameron: “There are more people in work today than there were at the time of the last election”

Fact: The Office for National Statistics says there are now 26,000 fewer people in work than at the last election.

I’d prefer more spin and fewer whoppers.

Health concerns

A damning report by MPs on the Health Select Committee left David Cameron clutching at straws at Prime Ministers’ Questions last week, in his desperate bid to shore-up collapsing support for his Health Bill.  

The all-party Committee, which includes senior Conservative MPs, said the Bill was ‘a dangerous distraction’ to the NHS, which is trying to keep a grip on patient care as it is being required to make £20bn in efficiency savings. There is so much which is good about the NHS, but inevitably the chaos caused by the Health Bill will start to take its toll.

This week, the British Medical Journal, Health Service Journal and Nursing Times unanimously condemned the Government’s shakeup as a 'damaging … unholy mess'.

The latest data on waiting times showed that, nationally, 42% more patients were forced to wait longer than 18 weeks for their treatment, since 2010.Locally, the number of people waiting 18 weeks or more has shot up by 84% in Sheffield and a massive 135% in Derbyshire. These increases follow year-on-year decreases in waiting-times which followed the significant investment in new buildings and equipment and increases in doctors and nurses made by the last government.

 
If the Prime Minister succeeds in allowing hospitals to fill 49% of hospital beds with private patients, this is certain to get worse.

For the last 12 months, my colleague John Healey MP (Wentworth, Rotherham) has been asking Andrew Lansley, the Secretary of State for Health, to publish a report prepared for the government on the risks it was taking with its top-down NHS re-organisation proposals costing £2bn. Lansley has consistently refused to release the report, but now the Information Commissioner has instructed him to make it public. He must do that now, whilst Parliament is still debating his proposals.

The Prime Minister is pushing the NHS to the brink by re-organising at this time of financial stress. It’s time he listened to patients, staff and the independent experts. He should drop this Bill and put our NHS first.

Clock watching

Over the last few years, our seasons seem to have gone all awry. I had some begonias still flowering in December, yet spring bulbs are bursting into flower already.

Although seasonal temperatures have been confusing, daylight hours have remained unchanged. Currently, we set our clocks to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) in winter, and GMT+1 in summer. Of course, we don’t enjoy putting our clocks forward, but we love the extra hour when we put them back.

I’m backing a campaign called Lighter Later. It has the support of MPs from all parties and from a huge group of organizations – from sport to road safety associations, and from tourism to pensioners’ groups.

Basically, Lighter Later is asking the government to objectively investigate the benefits of moving Britain’s clocks forward one hour throughout the year. So, instead of the current arrangements, we would have GMT+1 in winter and GMT+2 in summer. This would mean that more people are up and about in daylight hours than is the case now.

An extra hour of light is more valuable in the evenings than in the mornings – not least because most people sleep through the first hour of sunlight for much of the year.

There has been lots of research about the impact of various ways of setting our clocks during the year. Moving the clocks forward throughout the year is estimated, among other things, to:

• Save 80 lives each year and prevent hundreds of serious injuries by making the roads safer – also saving the NHS about £138m each year
• Create an extra 60-80,000 jobs in leisure and tourism
• Cut nearly 500,000 tons of CO” pollution
• Lower our electricity bills
• Reduce crime and the fear of crime

Lighter Later is campaigning for a three-year trial in which the clocks in Great Britain shift forward by one hour throughout the year. You can find out more information at http://www.lighterlater.org. Tell me what you think. 

All fuelled up

When global fuel prices rise, our gas and electricity bills go up like a rocket; when they come down, our bills fall like a feather. Last week’s headline grabbing ‘British Gas cuts prices by 5%’ hid the reality that BG wasn’t cutting gas prices at all, just electricity prices. And, that cut only applied to some customers; for many, there was no cut at all.

The cost of a typical dual fuel bill is now £1,345 – a 48% increase since 2007; in plain English, that’s £9 a week. Standard tariffs rose by £175 between June and November last year alone.

The number of households in debt to their electricity supplier has increased by more than 25% to 850,000. The number of gas customers in the red has also risen by 20% to more than 700,000. Many families will be in debt on both accounts.

Yet, the ‘big six’ energy companies are enjoying record profits. This is because, between 2007 and 2011, they have more than doubled the gap between wholesale (what they buy at) and retail (what they sell at) prices. And, the executives and directors of the energy companies have enjoyed massive pay hikes at our expense.

Before the General Election, David Cameron said that claims that the Tories would cut the winter fuel allowance were “lies” and that if the Conservatives won the election they would “protect” it.

But, as energy bills have rocketed, the Conservative-led government has cut Winter Fuel Payments, cut the Warm Front programme – insulating homes – by 70%, and is replacing the social tariffs with the poorly designed Warm Home Discount, which will leave millions without support this winter.

It’s time to stand up against the powerful vested interests in the energy industry. We need:

• an investigation into the mis-selling of energy, and compensation for consumers who have been ripped off
• simple tariffs – people should automatically be on the cheapest applicable tariff
• transparency on trading data – full openness about what they pay and what they charge
• reform of the energy market – it’s clear there is no real competition
• to use the soaring profits to help families and businesses with rising energy bills now.

Changing Tack

The economic prospects are bleak, and redundancies, unemployment and short-time working are all likely to increase. The government has no growth strategy, but is inflicting a series of stealth taxes.

Small firms need help to survive and to grow. Whilst confidence in the economic prospects remains low, they will be nervous and reluctant to invest more. Yet they could make an important contribution to the immediate jobs’ crisis and provide the potential to build sustainable economic growth.

New figures, slipped out by the Treasury last week, reveal that, in its first year of operation, the government’s flagship national insurance holiday for new businesses has supported just 2.5 per cent of the businesses promised help by the Chancellor in his first Budget. The scheme, which has a budget of almost £1 billion, is also set to cost more in administration and red tape than it has so far given in support for new businesses.

In his first Budget George Osborne said his policy would benefit 400,000 businesses but the Treasury’s own figures show that just over 10,000 firms received support from the scheme between September 2010 and November 2011. Just £6 million was paid out to small firms to support 12,400 jobs in the period for which figures are available, but the Treasury estimates that the administration costs of the scheme will be double that at around £12 million.

This is ridiculous. A scheme which ends up supporting just one in forty businesses of those promised help is clearly not working.

The government should now use the hundreds of millions of pounds of unspent money allocated to the scheme to extend the tax break to all existing small firms, with fewer than 10 employees, who take on extra workers. The national insurance tax break would apply for a year for each additional employee taken on.

This could be one component of a serious economic growth strategy to benefit us all.

Planning Change

I’ve been chairing an all-party investigation into the Government’s proposals to change the national and local planning policy frameworks. We’ve taken a lot of oral and written evidence and there has been a lot of comment in the media, with organizations ranging from the National Trust (NT) to the Confederation for British Industry (CBI) all determined to make their views known.

We’ve now published our report and recommendations. Because it’s all-party and because our conclusions were unanimously agreed, I hope it’s very powerful and influential.

In particular, we agreed that sustainable development requires consideration of environmental and social issues as well as the economic ones that the government wanted. And we said that the presumption that any planning application should be agreed unless it could be proved that ‘the adverse effects significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits’ was just unacceptable, and ran counter to the very notion of sustainable development.

The committee was convinced that the priority for development must be ‘brownfield  first’ – brownfield basically means sites where there has previously been development.

And we said that shop and office developments need to be concentrated on existing town and district centres, not on new greenfield or out-of-centre sites.

I was particularly pleased that the committee agreed that existing sportsfields needed protection. There are rare occasions when it would be appropriate to develop on a sportsfield, but we said a like-for-like replacement must be provided.

We also agreed that new planning legislation must unambiguously confirm the supremacy of Local Plans. This means local planning decisions have to be consistent with the Local Plan. It is unacceptable that so many councils have yet to develop and adopt a new Local Plan. If they are serious about localism, this will be their chance to prove it.

Of course, you might be tempted to think this has got nothing to do with me. Well, it has. Because, if it means that

• new development is concentrated on brownfield sites in Darnall and not on greenfield sites around Eckington and Mosborough
• new shops and offices are concentrated in existing shopping centres and not on out-of-town greenfield sites
• our existing sportsfields are protected

it will be much better for all of our communities.

Badger threat

As I predicted more than a year ago, this Government is determined to cull badgers.

Bovine TB is a terrible disease, endemic to cattle in the UK.  Around 25,000 cattle were slaughtered for TB control in England in 2010 with a total cost to the taxpayer of £87 million in testing and compensation for farmers. There were 2025 herd breakdowns in England in 2010.

I have consistently opposed a badger cull on 4 grounds: scientific, effectiveness, humaneness and cost. My view is supported by scientists and conservation groups, including Lord Krebs who is the leading expert in the field.

The government has now announced a trial cull in two areas. Their proposals are ineffective and will not tackle the problem of bovine TB. Their preferred option of ‘free shooting’ is not supported by the science, and may increase the problem by spreading TB.

Even on its own estimates, an extensive badger cull will only save £29 million over 10 years, out of an expected cost to the taxpayer of £1 billion.

Why is this important locally? Well, we have a good badger population spread around the area. Although many – perhaps most – local residents have never seen them, a number of local groups and individuals have been quietly ensuring that their habitat is protected. They are very concerned about these proposals and the potential impact on local wildlife.

I agree with them. I have already made my protest to the government and will continue to do so, as I believe the proposals are just wrong-headed and irresponsible. I hope that no landowner in the area will apply for a licence but, if you hear differently, please let me know.

This Conservative-led government is also committed to lift the ban on fox-hunting. What’s it got against our wildlife?