Category Archives: Blog

Airsoft update

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First off – several people have asked who my staff talked to in the airsoft community who said they’d be willing to go along with the ends of airsoft guns being painted – e.g. dayglow orange. It was the people at www.saveairsoft.org

Second – I take the point that guns operating above 1 joule aren’t automatically lethal – and there’s clearly a lot of debate about the merits of 1 joule safety limit versus other limits. I’m listening carefully to these views and also passing them on to my colleague John Thurso who’s leading for the Lib Dems on this issue.

Detention without trial for 90 days?

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Our Shadow Home Secretary is really unwell – to the point that he cannot leave his house in Winchester. So I go forth for the Liberal Democrats on the terrorism issue today. I start with an interview for BBC 24 followed by a ‘package’. (That is a pre-recorded interview that they will use later in news programmes about the terror proposals and the 90 day sticking point). Then I go and do the meeting with Home Secretary Charles Clarke. Love the new Home Office building. Lots and lots of media outside. Such are these moments.

Clarke runs through the amendments they will table (or his assistant does the detail more accurately). They are small beer. Welcome – but not the meat of the disagreement between the Government and the rest of us struggling with the need to balance protection of our citizens with our civil liberties. He doesn’t wish to revise the bit on ‘glorification’ or redefine ”terrorism’ – nor does he want to put the number of days on the table.

But what he does say is that the Government is likely to table an amendment tonight at close of business which will be somewhere between 28 and 90 days.

Spend the next few hours coping with media bid after media bid. Basically our position is that we will use Lib Dem votes in whatever way brings the number of days extension as near to the original 14 as possible. Clarke appears willing to pluck a number out of the air based on no criteria or logic or evidence that I could get out of him. Later I hear that T Blair is warning us all that 90 days is a must and if anything happens it will be our fault.

Sabre rattling is so easy when we are all so frightened of terrorist attack. That’s why we have to stand firm and keep cool heads to analyse what is best to deal with terrorists. I don’t believe that the police argument really holds up. There is existing legislation barely utilised – and in one case not even enacted – which would deal with some of the issues and allow police the extended time they crave.

Anyway – at 2.30pm, just to top it all, it is Home Office questions in Parliament and I have to man the front bench and actually have Question 6 on the Order Paper. This is about the DNA national database. I have discovered that there are 3.3 million samples of DNA on the database – and 32% of all black males in the UK are in it compared with only 8% of white males. I ask the minister to investigate what lies beneath these figures – and ask him if he agrees that there is concern that there is racial profiling going on. Not much of an answer in terms of my request – to be pursued.

Do a couple more interviews and then dash off for younger daughter’s reports night having made sure that another of the Home Affairs team can cover the media for the evening.

Busy weekend

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Apart from the usual deluge of paperwork and emails to work through on Saturday – I went off to help petition passers by in front of Hornsey Town Hall to sign against the plans for a concrete factory in Hornsey. They go to appeal in December. Very jolly – with lots and lots of support from local people incandescent about a dust producing, traffic polluting, noise making industry being dumped in the middle of a really highly residential area. The fight goes on.

It’s also a LibDem campaigning weekend – so a whole bunch of LibDem activists turn up to not only support the petition, but also deliver our leaflets across the constituency and part of Tottenham too.

I then scoot off to St Andrew’s Church to view the plans they have on display for renovations with the lottery funding they have, most wonderfully and at their third attempt, succeeded in getting. The old hall won’t know itself when the works are finished and I am totally glad that I managed to get there to see the ‘before’. The ‘after’ will mean so much more when I see it there. I meet a devoted team who have really slogged through the whole process of bidding for lottery money (not an easy process) and – because of their determination – have now been rewarded. It will be great for the local community because it will offer meeting room and hall facilities, staging facilities and they hope to run a proper lunch club.

In the evening I go to my daughter’s school for their firework display. I know Ally Pally probably has the best display – but a mother’s duty…

Sunday – have spent day writing speech for evening and sorting out the piles of paper that never diminish. I think Harry Potter must replenish them with a flourish of his wand. I only mention Potter because the excitement is mounting in my household over the fourth film. Live streaming from Leicester Square ensures youngest glued to computer to watch red carpet arrivals of the stars. I confess to being a Potter fan too.

After a campaign team meeting to review and cajole for the forthcoming council elections in which we hope and plan to win control of Haringey Council, I go to a North London Jewish group to give a speech and take questions on police, crime and disorder. Very lively lot! Over an hour of questions – and very vocal. I quite enjoyed myself.

Come home around 10.30pm to loads of messages which turn out to be all about the fact that I will have to front for the Lib Dems at the meeting with Charles Clarke in the morning over the Government’s anti-terrorism plans.

Airsoft update

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Thanks for all the feedback about my earlier blog entry on airsoft. I’m following up the various points people made (and don’t worry, I’m not wanting all the guns to be painted pink!) – and will cover this further in my blog in a few days time.

Dodgy questionnaire

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At the end of last week, Charles Clarke urged all MPs to consult with their constituents over the Government’s plans to introduce detention without trial for up to 90 days. Background – the Government knows it won’t get these plans through Parliament and is looking for a compromise. The request to MPs to consult their constituents sounds suspiciously to me like a ploy to set us up for Labour to claim – on whatever spurious grounds – ‘oh look, the public wants this so you must now change your minds and vote for it’.

Suspicions confirmed by the absurd email he’s sent out to people asking them to take part in a survey on Labour’s website. You can see it at http://www.labour.org.uk/yourviewsonfightingterrorism with those lovely unbiased questions like “Do you think police should have the time and opportunity to complete their investigations into suspected terrorists?” Well, everyone will think ‘yes’ to that one, but somehow I think Labour will claim saying yes to that means you support 90 days detention without trial.

I don’t know why – but the word trust and Labour just don’t sit naturally together!

Problems at the Whittington

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Surgery all morning meeting residents who wanted to raise issues – with a pause for a live radio interview right in the middle of it. Our Shadow Home Secretary Mark Oaten was otherwise engaged – so I had to just take it there and then. ASBOs – need I say more. I will. There has been something like an 86% increase this year – and still it doesn’t (according to the radio presenter) stop or deter anti-social behaviour. Shock! Horror! Of course it doesn’t. Banning people from doing anything rarely works in any real or sustained way. Tougher would be to really tackle those youngsters as with Acceptable Behaviour Contracts (pioneered in Liberal Democrat run Islington with the Met) where parents, the young person, teachers, police, local authority, social workers, or whoever is necessary sit down and work out an agreed program – and come back to it – week after week after week. Sustained interest and effective mentoring works – but it is truly tough liberalism.

Then the presenter meanders into the territory of whether policy should support marriage and the nuclear family (probably following on from the Tory leadership debate last night). I say that’s a difficult one! The world has changed – and I don’t know that you can change it back even if the ‘wholeness’ of a two-parent family unit were proven to be ideal. So I opt for the important thing – which is loving and caring for your children whatever the surrounding construct.

Afterwards surgery I make a home visit to an elederly lady who wants to talk to me about people not listening to old people and trying to get rid of them. Her son is there when I arrive – and I sit down and have about an hour’s chat with her. She highlights the recent treatment of herself at the Whittington – and cites the dismissive way in which old people can be treated and worse. I totally agree. I have some terrible tales from the Whittington – and I have been there and met with the Chair and the issues I raise have been batted away on the whole by generally suggesting that the complainant is a difficult person etc.

I will regale you with one tale from my own experience to exemplify what my constituent and I are on about. My daughter was admitted to the Whittington overnight a while back. From A & E she was put in the womens’ geriatric ward as the only place with space. She told me this tale. During the night an old lady in a bed not far away was calling for the nurse for quite a while. The nurse kept walking past and not responding to the woman. Eventually, my daughter got up and went over to the woman to see what was wrong. She wanted to go to the toilet. My daughter went and found a nurse and told her that the old lady in the bed needed to go to the loo. The nurse basically said that the woman was a nuisance, always wanting something and she would just have to wait. The old woman wet herself in the end.

It is a terrible tale – but I have other similar ones. When I have presented them to the Whittington – as I say – they are batted away one way or the other. We are currently waiting for an apology for the way another of my constituents was treated and have been told one will be forthcoming. We will see on that one. I appreciate that nurses do a great job under incredible strain and stress. Nursing care – not the clinical medical side – but the caring, motherly side of nursing – is what is needed as well as the clinical and medical excellence. How to make time for nurses to give that care alongside the tablets is where I want to head. It can only be (or I hope that the reason is) that nurses have no time for any real degree of that side of nursing anymore. And my constituent old lady was voicing just that need, particularly from an older person’s perspective of being treated so poorly. I will continue to work on this issue.

Then back to my constituency office to meet with a foster care expert who is concerned over the gap in the care that is given to those leaving foster care. Government is meant to be funding people to do this job. But the system isn’t working as it should – another one to pursue.

Then last job of the day is my quarterly meeting with the Labour Leader of Haringey Council, Charles Adje. We run through an agenda of local issues and council business and whilst there are no major issues on the table, it is a useful regular meeting – as we are all working for Haringey’s benefit – whatever our political persuasion and whatever our different roles.

Labour's terrorism plans

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The Terror Bill marched on through the Committee Stage in Parliament today – but without the fever of the previous day when the Government nearly suffered a defeat – a close encounter which made Charles Clarke back down on the 90 days detention plans.

Today’s most serious debating issue was around the definition of ‘terrorism’. This is at the heart of the difficulty we are all having with the proposals. We all know what we mean by ‘terrorist’ in terms of suicide bombers in London. But when you try and legislate – particularly around vaguer legal concepts like ‘glorification of terrorism’ or ‘incitement to terrorism’ – then you are into real trouble.

To encapsulate – we (our nation) may well believe (and does I hope) that Robert Mugabe is an evil bastard oppressing his people and worse. We might incline to praising and encouraging those who stand up against Mugabe and fight this oppression and evil dictator. If we did so – we would be guilty of both of the above charges. Clearly ludicrous. And yet – as brilliant argument upon argument rained down on the Government’s front bench – they seemed incapable of dealing with the need to find a new definition.

A proposed amendment by a Labour member put forward a reasonable amendment that would have gone a long way to deal with the problems – but even when it’s as plain as the nose on their face this Labour government does not budge until it faces defeat on the floor of the House. So we will see what they come back with next week in terms of movement on the key issues – including their promised revision to the 90 days detention proposal.

I rush back to Haringey after the close of play to our Liberal Democrat AGM where I rally our troops to get out there to win the Haringey Council elections looming in May. There is a good turnout and much enthusiasm for the road ahead. A few new faces volunteer and stand for various positions – which is encouraging as the old hands need to be out there pounding the pavements not administrating. At the end they presented me with a montage of photos from the night we won our first ward and got our first three Lib Dem councillors (all women) on Haringey Council right through to now. Being female, what struck me most was my changing hairstyles, lengths and colours over the intervening years!

Then rushed home to catch the Cameron-Davis Question Time. I thought Cameron was exposed as almost completely style over substance – and that Davis did far better in terms of demonstrating that he was the seasoned hand, the one who could handle the pressure etc. So – I guess – as Lib Dems we are in a win-win position!

Blunkett's demise

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As I drove in today listening to the radio, the news started to roll across one of the two big stories of the day – from Blunkett may resign – to – hasn’t turned up to Pensions Select Committee – to – coming out of Downing Street – to had handed in his resignation.

I don’t think there was any way out for him really. I was talking to Menzies Campbell (Lib Dem deputy leader) later in the day who was saying (in jest) that it was my fault for asking the question and that other Ministers should be afraid.

I asked him whether he thought it would have made any difference if Blunkett had chosen, instead of attacking me for daring to ask a question about whether his judgement being so publicly called into question meant he was still able to do his job as a minister, to instead say something like ‘the Honourable Lady is right. I have had so many personal disasters in recent times that I have done things, albeit unwittingly, that have resulted in my making errors of judgement – but I apologise to the House and am putting all in order as the job I have to do is the single most important thing on this nation’s agenda and on mine …’ Menzies said he thought that contrition went a long way in the House. But contrition so isn’t David Blunkett. His position worsened between Monday’s questions and today – and the inevitable conclusion was reached.

It is extraordinary that a man so brilliant in a work situation (whether you love or hate his policies) could be so floored by personal relationships – but that’s just the truth of how life is.

Prime Minister’s Questions followed quickly on – and Tony B decided on a strange defence of his actions vis a vis Blunkett. He said that Blunkett had broken the Ministerial Code – but that he shouldn’t go. He said that it wasn’t a sacking offence. This shouldn’t be anything to do with what Blair or any other Prime Minister thinks is ‘serious’ or not. So I would suggest that the decision is taken out of the Prime Minister’s hands – and that there is an independent panel to decide about such matters. You simply cannot have a Ministerial Code that is broken and have a Prime Minister saying basically – well it doesn’t matter.

On the run and wounded Blair looked weak as he wanly defended himself against accusations of being a lame duck as power and influence and friends in the Cabinet drained away. The colour drained away too from his face. Nasty business today.

And it got worse as we spent the rest of the day debating the Terror Bill where the Government was forced into retreat on its proposals for extending detention for 90 days without charge. Having come within one vote of defeat on an earlier amendment – Charles Clarke (who is no fool) backed down and conceded talks –  thus avoiding a vote against the proposals. We’ll see what happens. Only other thing to report is dashing out into pouring rain to meet with the lobby for Trade Justice. There was a Hornsey & Wood Green delegation and I am so glad I was able to get out and talk to them (the votes and getting out the chamber was not easy).