Planning gains?

Any planning policy and system is ripe for criticism. Those who are stopped from doing something call it ‘unnecessary bureaucracy’; those who lose a battle to oppose a particular development call it a ‘useless bureaucracy’.

The reality is that a planning policy and system is there to try to provide a framework within which competing national, local and community interests are balanced. This inevitably means that someone will be disappointed by whatever decision is reached about a particular proposal.

Let’s take a simple example. A colleague has long-stated that the most difficult decision any councillors have to take is where to site a bus-stop. Everyone wants a bus-stop in their road, but no-one wants one outside their house. If no location in that road is agreed, every resident will complain that they are being ignored by public transport. So, someone will inevitably be upset when the decision is made to put the bus-stop in front of their home.

In the run-up to the last general election, the Conservatives made much of their opposition to what they described as a “top-down planning policy being imposed on local communities” and promised to ‘abolish regional planning and give power about stopping developments to local people’.

In truth, what the Conservative-led government is doing is to replace one national framework with another. The all-party Select Committee that I chair – after a detailed investigation - was very critical of parts of the government’s proposals. Recently, various groups, like the National Trust and the Campaign to Protect Rural England, have weighed in to the debate, being especially critical of the declaration that: “At the heart of the planning system is a presumption in favour of sustainable development, which should be seen as a golden thread running through both plan making and decision taking.”

Correctly, I think, they see this as a charter for developers to build on the green-field – not Green Belt – land that surrounds most towns and villages. This concern is enhanced because it will be combined with financial inducements to councils to get more homes built through the New Homes Bonus. There is no shortage of brown-field land with planning permission for new housing, but developers want to build on green-field sites.

Concerns have increased this week when it became public that the new planning rules were actually drafted by a four-strong panel, in which three of the members had direct involvement in property development. The revelation that the Conservative Party has received £3.3m in the past three years from property firms who could benefit from the Government’s planning reforms doesn’t assist its case.

DO YOU HAVE THE X FACTOR?

Our television screens, newspapers and magazines are full of stories about so-called ‘celebrities’.

Now, I have to admit that I haven’t the faintest idea who most of these people are or why we’re meant to celebrate them. However, I’ve agreed to help find people with some real X factor.

Let’s make it easy – these potential stars don’t have to be able to sing, dance, juggle, or tell jokes. But, they do need to be male and between 18 and 30 years old. Is that you or someone you know? Someone who wants to be special?

I’ll explain.

• On average, 65 people a day in the UK are diagnosed with a blood cancer – that’s one person every 23 minutes.
• There are nearly 1,600 people in the UK now in need of a bone marrow transplant.  This is usually their last chance of survival.
• Only 3 in 10 patients will find a matching donor within their families.
• There is a shortage of young male donors on the bone marrow register. Men aged 18-30 account for 80% of donations, but make up just 19% of the register.
• Right now, a matching donor can only be found for half the people in desperate need of a lifesaving transplant.

So, I’ve joined a number of other MPs who are aiming to recruit 10,000 more young men to the Anthony Nolan Register this year. Why young men? Because they have (on average) bigger bones and therefore produce more stem cells and because there is an improved prognosis for the patient if their donor is young.

Does becoming a donor make you special, a star, a celebrity? Certainly, those people who receive a transplant think you’re a star, and so do their families. And, most donors talk about how special it is to have saved someone’s life; and they’re right to be proud of what they’ve done.

Most donations are made at an out-patient clinic. It’s very similar to giving blood. You can find out more at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN2nEft7iAU.

So, to show you’ve got the real x factor, sign up at www.mp.anthonynolan.org and enter code PNW2.

Struggling for growth

Following the global banking collapse, with its impact on the UK’s finances and the consequent credit crunch, it was always clear that the UK’s economy would have to be built around a growth strategy.

Whereas the UK economy was growing healthily until the middle of last year, the Conservative-led coalition’s focus on debt reduction rather than growth has seen a significant slowdown in the UK economy to just 0.2% growth in the last year. The latest economic reports from the USA, together with troubled economies in the Euro-zone, simply compound the problems. Although manufacturing exports have shown a small increase, they cannot make up for a lack of demand in the UK economy.

Now we learn that the government’s flagship policy to promote growth and job creation in our region is set to cost more in administration and red tape than it has given in support for new businesses.

In his first Budget last June, the Chancellor George Osborne announced that a £1 billion 'national insurance holiday' to help new business starts-ups would help 400,000 new firms in the UK – equivalent to around 45,000 businesses in our region.

But since the scheme was launched last September only 645 firms in Yorkshire and Humberside have benefitted – just 1.5% of the number promised by the government. The position isn’t any different nationally, with just 5137 firms benefitting. With an average benefit per business of £2,000, that means around £10.3 million has been paid to businesses – less than the £12 million the Treasury says the scheme will cost to administer.

To put it bluntly, this keynote scheme – which the Government was relying on to promote new businesses and economic growth – has simply flopped.

Our region has been hit hard over the last year by stealth tax rises and spending cuts that go too far and too fast. The government has also abolished our regional development agency, and the resources being made available to local enterprise boards are pitiful by comparison.

Of course any help for businesses in our area should be welcomed. But this scheme has been a huge disappointment. It comes at a time when any national and economic recovery has been choked off by the government’s own economic policies.

The Chancellor, George Osborne, seems increasingly complacent and out of touch about the state of the economy. This is only compounded by the revelation that he’s paying more than £1000 a night for his holiday accommodation in the USA.

We urgently need a plan for jobs and growth to get the economy moving - which would get the deficit down for the long term - and to get the banks lending to small businesses again.

Another new lottery – for your pension!

This coalition government obviously loves lotteries.

It is busily pressing ahead with its NHS reforms, which will introduce local lotteries for all health services. They’re not even postcode lotteries, where everyone in the same area has the same entitlement to treatment. These are GP lotteries – so, if you and your neighbour have a different GP, you shouldn’t expect the same service standards. Now that the government has removed national targets for treatment, we can already see waiting-times for consultation and treatment starting to rise.

And, now, the government is planning a new lottery for pensions. This is a special lottery, because particular groups of people have been chosen to be losers!

Are you a woman born between 6 December 1953 and 5 October 1954? Or, was your grandmother, mother, sister or aunt born between those dates? If so, the coalition government has decided that you will have to wait an extra 18 months before being entitled to your state pension.

There are more than 300,000 women in this position, and an unlucky 33,000 will have to wait an extra 2 years. They are set to lose around £10,000 in lost state pension, with less than 7 years to attempt to accommodate the change.

Unsurprisingly, MPs have been inundated with messages from women affected by the plans. But, despite thousands of people signing a petition, a mass lobby of Parliament, thousands of emails, and a series of questions to the Prime Minister, the Government have not delivered on their promise to produce plans for ‘transitional arrangements’ to ease the burden for those most affected. 

Time is running out. The women hit by these changes are the back-bone of our families.  They are the mums who took time off work to bring up children, the daughters who are helping their parents as they get older, and the grans who are providing childcare for their daughters’ children to help them balance work and family life.  Those women most affected deserve certainty and fairness as they approach retirement.

If you are concerned, write to the Prime Minister now.

Time for change

Over the last month, the media – and Parliament - has been dominated by the stories about criminal and unethical behaviour by the News of the World over the last decade.

It has involved telephone- and computer-hacking, unlawful payments to police officers and blagging confidential information. Neither the stories nor the information are new. Much of the evidence has been around over the last eight years. But, the issue only sparked into international life when it was revealed that Millie Dowler’s phone had been hacked, almost certainly after she had been murdered.

The renewed investigations have already claimed the jobs of senior police officers, media bosses, journalists and David Cameron’s press spokesman. But, I think the whole story has a long way to run as the Metropolitan Police now seem finally to be getting to grips with an investigation. But, who knows how much evidence has already been consigned to shredders and whose silence has been bought?

It is difficult to believe that it is only News International journalists who were involved. The Information Commissioner’s 2006 investigation What Price Privacy Now? reported that 58 journalists from the Daily Mail had paid a firm of private investigators, specialising in blagging- and hacking-, in 952 transactions. Surely they weren’t doing that just to ask them to find their lost car keys?

Public faith in the media has been shaken to the core. It is time for a change. But, already, the media is campaigning against any shake-up, arguing that there wouldn’t be any problems if the police just investigated allegations of wrong-doing properly.

I’m sorry, but that won’t do. Neither is it simply a choice is not between (failed) self-regulation and state regulation, which is not the hallmark of a democratic society. But, we do need to find the best balance between regulation externally imposed by the law and that imposed by the media industry itself.

We must give ordinary citizens proper redress for defamatory statements, an apology and correction, enforced by a regulator. We do need to decide how far the law should constrain the publication of facts about people’s private lives. We do need to find a way in which ordinary people normally have a right to put their side of the case before they are improperly castigated.

Further, as an international society, we need to find ways of addressing these issues in the internet world, where a lie can be published and have travelled several times round the world before the victim is aware and, however untruthful or malicious, finds it virtually impossible to redress.

It won’t be easy, but it has to be done.