Thanks to all of you for coming and to Liberal Democrats Online for inviting me to speak here tonight for what has now become – much to my surprise! – my specialist subject.

Not that long ago, I would have laughed at the idea of me being invited to hold forth on blogging – or in fact – anything to do with computers and technology.

So I have to confess – blogging wasn’t my idea originally. It was a friend of mine, who knew I liked writing. And my reply was – that part of it which is repeatable – that:

a) it would have to be between the hours of 2 and 4 in the morning – given I was already working all the hours there are, or

b) happy to do it but an equivalent task would need to go to give me the time.

Needless to say – nothing went and I did it!

For me blogging (once I got going) is therapeutic. I love writing. It lets me think about what I have done – and let’s be honest – what I want to say about what I have thought and what I have done.

And it’s my voice – without a middle-man. No newspaper reporter, no campaign manager, no one wanting their angle, their interpretation with a sound-bite quote from me.

In a typical month, I write around 12,000 words. When you think that one of the party’s typical 4-page constituency wide newspapers has only 2,000 or so words, you can see why I like the chance to talk about things at greater length than normally possible.

Of course – you need people to want to read it. And – outside of being written therapy for politicos – it is also an incredibly valuable tool for campaigning and winning.

I would say that on-line campaigning and blogging played at least as important a part in my win in Hornsey & Wood Green – where a 10,614 majority over me converted into a win by 2,395 for me – as did press coverage.

Not leafleting however – that still reaches the parts other methods cannot reach.

During the election almost as many constituents read my blog as cast postal votes this time – which gives some idea of the reach and potential of on-line campaigning

I now am in regular email contact with 6 times as many people as I was in 2001 – of course – that is not just blogging but also e-campaigning.

I believe that e-campaigning will also become common, or more appropriately – a must do part of campaigning as will blogging. Local people will expect their candidates to have websites and blogs – so they can see what they are up to.

Anyway, I started a blog now two years ago as a good way of marrying my love of writing with political communicating.

As the last five years have rolled on, more and more people seem to use the net as a common way to find out information and communication – so it is vital for a politician (that is, someone who wants to represent and listen to people) to also be present in that milieu.

I cannot tell you how many people I meet and am introduced to say to me that they read my blog.

In fact it is a bit freaky sometimes. I remember one of the two UKIP members of the London Assembly (UKIP then before they switched to Veritas, and now something else again) whenever I bumped into him would start talking to me about an issue that I was involved in. I couldn’t understand at first how he knew so much about my local activity. Of course it was the blog – but he must have studied it, learned it off by heart. It felt marginally like having a stalker – because he literally knew my every move.

However, one of the bugbears of communication is the theoretical desire of the public to be able to interact on every thing with everyone.

It’s very common to criticise politicians for ‘not getting it’ and failing to use the internet to interactively communicate with the pubic but I believe that interactivity comes with a high cost – in terms of time taken to deal with comments and messages which come back – often from the same small group of usual suspects.

So my blog doesn’t have a comments section. On the evidence I’ve seen so far for candidate blogs, particularly as elections near, this form of interactivity actually nearly always becomes just a soapbox for a small minority to shout – often mindless and repeatedly. Comments work well on some blogs – and good luck to those who have such blogs.

But there’s a particular problem with candidate blogs as polling day nears. So I’m not condemning commenting across the board, but people who want to comment on things on my blog find me pretty easily through one means or another.

More generally, it’s pretty easy to get contact with an MP if you want to, but if you don’t want, to it’s pretty easy to blame the MP for not getting in touch with you.

So – just to put my blog into perspective in terms of a campaign tool – particularly during an election. My webmaster tells me that something like 5,000 people a month – different people – look at my blog.

He told me this during the election (and actually traffic doubled from this level during the campaign) – which was scary as made me realise that I wasn’t just writing for myself!

So – I don’t see blogging as some miracle cure for the ills of politics. But it is a useful way of communicating with more people.

Journalists too pick up a huge amount of stuff from it. And some very powerful journalists and political editors are regulars. I was reasonably mortified to find that my weight lost during the election was regularly reported in the Evening Standard – a la Bridget Jones Diary.

And my opponents logged on religiously – searching for any of my words that could be used against me. It’s a dreadful business. If you keep it so bland that you say nothing – no one will read it. So I do take risks. I do say what I think.

I think one of the keys to successful blogging is the personal slant in a blog – which includes a large slice of opinion – which opinion may upset some.

But it is also a way of getting out a message when I felt the truth and justice had been missing from one or other issue.

I had the opportunity to put my version out there – which as a candidate (and we are much maligned) I found very satisfying.

But be warned – blogs have a life of their own and can get you into trouble.

For those who have heard this story before – I apologise – but…

I was at the London Assembly before becoming an MP – and I remember a lunch with media. Very nice guy sat next to a member from another party who could bore for Britain. When I wrote my blog I mentioned this – and that I could see his eyes glaze over within a few minutes.

There were only about nine of us at thisit wasn’t long before I got an email from the Head of the Assembly Press Desk saying he knew who I meant.

I thought – so what – no one reads the blog except geeks.

Wrong!

As I came up in the lift to the seventh floor of City Hall and got out – said member got in – and as the doors closed I heard the word ‘cow’ emanating from the descending lift.

So of course – I put that in the blog too – never to be forgiven. But then she failed to get re-elected to the GLA.

I have had corporations ring me to say they don’t like what I have said about them or individuals in the company and will I change things – no I won’t! And it can get pretty heavy. In this instance I was commenting on the sacking of the Chief Executive of Metronet. He had appeared in front of me when I was Chair of Transport at the GLA to answer for the tube performance. He was appalling. Admitted it was his responsibility that there were engineering overruns every Monday, etc. A couple of days later – he was sacked. Relating this in my blog – and I though being funny – I said something like so if you are appearing before me, be afraid – be very afraid: look what happened to John Weight.

Not appreciated by Metronet – and then some. But stick your ground or your blog won’t be worth writing.

This is my work – and no one – unless it turns out I’ve got my facts wrong can persuade me to remove or add anything!

So – that bit is fun.

I don
‘t see how any politician who really wants to engage with their electorate will be able to afford not to have a well-designed and well kept up to date website (if you are not going to do it well – better not to do it) and a blog.

Blogs are no good if you don’t do it with enthusiasm and do it well.

Blogs are no good if they are boring, i.e. – do not put in every detail. I got up, put on a suit and took the tube to work. When I arrived there were three messages on my phone from the council officer who I had asked to look into waste collection in Somewhere Street. At work I had six voicemail messages waiting so the light on my phone was flashing at 0.5 second intervals. Yawn.

Blogs are no good if the politician themselves doesn’t write it. Well – I don’t think it works.

It has to be of interest. It has to say something that wouldn’t be said in another medium. It’s not like a FOCUS.

And it’s no good on its own – if you are not doing all the other things you have to do as a candidate from raising media profile, to campaigns, to literature.

I don’t know what percentage of my swing was due to e-campaigning and my blog – but I do know that over the last two general elections – I have overturned a majorityLabour lead over me of 26,000.

I have no doubt that without e-campaigning and my blog – it simply couldn’t have been done!

Trying to define what being British means is a bit like our constitution. It’s unwritten – but you kind of know what’s what, almost by instinct and practise – or at least we used to.

And that’s part of the problem we face.

For the first two thirds of the 20th Century being British was – mostly – empire, Protestant and monarchy. (To any Scots, Welsh or Irish in the audience – apologies for the list that’s coming. I know it’s really an English list, but – hey – that’s part of being English too, forgetting those other nationalities).

We had a stable class system where we all jolly well knew our place. You could tell class by accent and we aspired to the Queen’s English as aired by the BBC. Highfalutin standards set by British film inspired our behaviour from a stiff upper lip, public school and Biggles, to Upstairs Downstairs, nannies, fair play, having one’s dander up and so on.

Wimbledon and cricket, leather on willow. Billy Bunter and Goodbye Mr Chips. Miners with dirty faces. Dick van Dyke’s terrible rendition of cockney – gawd bless you sir. Pearly Kings. Giving the wife the pay packet on a Friday and going down the local for a beer with your mates. Football on Saturday and fags weren’t even known to be dangerous.

A genuine belief that taking part was more important than winning. The Women’s Institute and the army of women in dreadful shapeless floral prints who make jam, have expansive bosoms, buy material at John Lewis to make their own curtains Loving eccentrics And being nice to pets.

As the Victorian English novelist Charles Kingsley put it:

What we can we will be
Honest Englishmen
Do the work that’s nearest
Though it’s dull at whiles
Helping, when we meet them,
Lame dogs over stiles.

So we hanker after that idealised past – at least the older generation do. We expected the waves of newcomers to our shores to adopt our sense of fair play and tolerance, to adhere to our rules – written or not – and above all – to understand that we are a democratic country where if we do not like what our government is doing – we protest – peacefully – and we gather the people to our view and make our point through the ballot box.

But that is a generation that is ageing. Families are more flexible. Empire and war are no longer are no-longer underpinning a common, communal heritage. It’s less about fighting the Germans (though not perhaps as much less as it should be!) and more about beating the Aussies at cricket, and rugby too! Just a shame about the football…

Even with no significant immigration over the last few decades, these social changes would have brought about a great change in what it meant to be British. But that extra ethnic mix adds a further twist.

So to the serious heart of today’s debate – tacking integration and alienation after 7/7.

The shockwaves that hit us when we learned that British lads hated us enough to blow us up indiscriminately sent us into panic mode.

We seem to be on a psychotic and urgent search for instant answers and instant solutions. The soul-searching and breast beating of what have we done wrong? And the fear – who are Muslims really loyal to? Their home and neighbours or some other calling? Only a few extremists these days doubt that Catholics can be British – revering a Pope in Rome doesn’t stop loyalty to this country. But many do harbour such doubts and fears about Muslims.

And that fear is heightened by terrorism.

But whilst issues of integration and alienation are important, we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that they will have more than a minor impact on terrorism in this or other Western countries.

Because whilst poverty, racial discrimination and alienation are all important issues for ethnic minority communities in Britain and undoubtedly segregation is growing dangerously untrammelled – it’s not from the poorest or the most marginal where the terrorists appear to have been coming from.

They’re generally rather more middle class than that.

It’s become a common story – the relatives, neighbours and colleagues of a terrorist speaking out about how normal and helpful they were, how they took part in their local community and seemed healthy and well-balanced. Because it’s not from the most marginal or most hard-pressed communities that the terrorists come.The 7/7 bombers were not making a statement about community or poverty.

So fighting terrorism, and casting and testing all policies just in that light is not enough. What is to be done?

Well part of the answer is to be firm in our values. We live in a democracy. No one group – be that Muslims, Jews, old people, people with disabilities – whatever – even if every last member of that group disagreed with the government – if that group does not form a majority of people in the land or can gather other to its views – has any right to disagree by means other than peaceful protest or political campaigning. Full stop.

Another part is to be realistic about our impact on the world. Tony Blair’s first statement after the bombings were that they had absolutely nothing to do with Iraq.

Mr Blair, that was one of the most stupid statements you have made. Iraq may not have been the direct causal link – but it sure made for a good cause to rally extremists around and recruit to the fundamentalist cause.

A third part is to welcome the debate within the Muslim community. Should more preaching in English? Why don’t more Mosques carry out more outreach work and play a part in the whole of the local communities in a way that so many local churches do for Christians and non-Christians alike?

And of the wider community – why still the reluctance of so many to face up to the racially divisive impact of police tactics like thoughtless stop and search? Why such a readiness to fund military action, whatever the bill, but still such reluctance to fund tackling poverty in our urban areas?

The good part of Britishness – at its most base level of live and let live and adherence to the laws of this basically good hearted country is under threat – and we need to find ways, soft measures not new laws, to open up and share all that is good in this land so we all enjoy the benefits of democracy.

If I was a town or a small town – I would want the government to stay a million miles away from me. I would take their money – but I would want to develop local schemes by local people.

What I have witnessed in the name of sustainable housing provision in London and proposed housing in London is a travesty of all the warm words that cascade so easily from Labour’s lips.

At the pan-London level – the Thames Gateway will deliver the Government’s housing targets at a stroke as a city the size of Leeds is plonked down but the level of planning or vision is appalling. More than that – it is absent.

There is no vision – let alone a sustainable vision – of the type of jobs, transport, development that would make this turn into the exemplar project it could be.

There is no master plan – this is no Milton Keynes. Just boroughs with a combined UDP that parcels up land for development piecemeal, with nightmares of traffic generation as the hundreds of thousands of residents make their traffic laden way into town for employment.

In my constituency, Hornsey & Wood Green, we deal with the warm words but crap reality of Mayor Livingstone’s London plan – where we are meant to support 19,000 new homes in the next 15 years.

And as for sustainable – what I see on the ground are the poorest standards of design, making high rise prisons, using the poorest quality materials and with no proper infrastructure to support the developments.

It’s like the Emperor who had no clothes. The Mayor doesn’t see, or more likely care to see, what is being done to those who are poorest and worst off.

So if I had one message – it would be about quality of design, quality of concept and quality of materials. The built environment is vital in terms of spirit and aspiration – and those most in need of being able to lift their eyes above the daily miseries are those who are worst treated.

I don’t think it matters whether it is a small town or a large metropolis – in the end it’s about human beings who are just trying to make their way home.

Can the Liberal Democrats be part of a new progressive consensus? Could be – it depends which progressive consensus? Gordon Brown’s? I don’t think so!

I think Gordon is a cowardly, cowardly, custard, who keeps his head below the parapet when the going gets tough, votes a straight New Labour ticket, takes credit for and dines out on the one and only truly progressive policy Labour have delivered – giving independence to the Bank of England (a long time Lib Dem policy) – and silently waits for Tony’s tide to go out.

For all his talk about prudence and responsibility, he pushed through the massively expensive part-privatisation of London’s Tube system – racking up huge bills for lawyers, accountants and bureaucrats, but not improving the service.

My own long held, genuine belief in a left-of-centre, progressive consensus that would consign the Tories to the dustbins of history – something I longed for and would have fought for – appears now as dust.

I don’t trust Labour any longer, and I don’t believe they are capable of true consensus. Brown’s ‘progressive consensus’ means just that – OK so long as you agree with him.

Now, I could spend a long time talking about the other parties and whether there might be common ground – but guessing where either of those treacherous buggers are going next is so easy to get wrong. And quite frankly if you want views on where Labours will go after Blair, you’d be better off asking a Labour MP.

So I want to address the question of whether the Lib Dems can tap into a larger progressive consensus – in society.

It’s another take on the question that’s been knocking around the party since May about what the thread is which could draw together our individually popular key policies.

Call it vision, narrative, theme, pitch or message – whatever – what should it be?

We face an apparently paradoxical general public view – people increasingly feeling powerless yet also highly suspicious of those collective way of asserting power and control over your own life – using the tools of democracy and government.

It’s these conflicting pulls on the party that is reflected in some of our internal debates. At least we still have internal debates.

That’s why you have those keener on big government, spending money and regulating against bad things – as the way to immediately tackle some of the issues that give rise to anxiousness and powerlessness.

And on the other hand you have the classic small government liberals, responding to the other pull.

To me, this is a false dilemma as we can be smarter about the tools of government. Government can ban, can price it or can use its powers of publicity. One example – we can outlaw high fat foods, or slap an extra tax on them or put Jamie Oliver on the telly every night telling us to eat different.

Far too much of political debate is about the first two options only.

Take the similar example of the amount of quick buck seeking third-rate diet advice out there, feeding on fears of obesity? The old big government answer would be to ban and regulate.

The modern, nimble answer is to use the prestige of the NHS to have the best-seller lists taken over by the NHS diet book and the NHS health-eating book. (It’s done elsewhere – have a look at one of the bestselling diet advice book in Australia at the moment).

Making laws and banning things has the appeal of being in your direct control – a few votes in Parliament and bish, bang, bong – issue done and dusted, next up, let’s move along. It’s quick – and sometimes effective.

But at the other end, using government as a publicity bully pulpit is more tolerant, not so much big brother as nagging nanny. And for those who know me – you will know how highly I rate nagging – particularly as it is a middle-aged woman’s life skill!

That’s where our real search for a progressive consensus should be made – an active, inventive and innovatory approach that recognises there is much government can do, but that it doesn’t always have to be via rules and regulations or indeed legislation, legislation, legislation.

Up against the big economic forces, multi-nationals and Mother Nature we need a government to work with people.

Sometimes that means tax and spend. Sometimes it means regulation. But there are alternatives – alternatives that are much more in tune with the rough and ready consensus out there in society.

Take a local example so beloved of our campaigns – graffiti is often left untouched on commercial property. Yes, we need councils with money to remove it, but we should also expect companies to take more responsibility for the state of their own property.

So what should we do about – to give one example – some of the shops along Stroud Green Road in North London where they’ve had a pretty poor record at cleaning up themselves over the last year?

Is the answer to send out inspectors dishing out tickets and fining firms who don’t clean up quick enough? Of course not … though it might distract from all the complaints about traffic wardens!

But why shouldn’t government (be it council or central) be naming and shaming such firms and putting pressure on them? Expecting companies to care more about their communities – that’s what you hear demands for in so many different ways from the public.

Government as a nimble lobbyist, and collective voice for the public, is an approach that would fit well with our beliefs in decentralisation, as that’s what’s needed for the necessary flexibility and responsiveness.

So – basically a plague for the time being on both Labour and Tory houses – and roll on a progressive consensus that is both progressive and consensual!

I arrived in the House of Commons on the back of a bit of a result in Hornsey & Wood Green – having overturned, over the last two elections, a Labour lead over the Lib Dems of 26,000.

Heroic! But now what? Having been so busy getting here – you know the form – delivering leaflets, attracting activists, raising money, campaigning – now I’ve arrived – what’s to do?

The first hurdle was simply getting to know the names of our own MPs. Fantastic that we have grown to the point where I didn’t actually know everyone! And the new crop – and there are around 20 of us between new seats and new members replacing incumbents – are a keen bunch joining our elders and betters in what is and will be a defining parliamentary term.

We grappled with the etiquette of Parliamentary processes. No one writes down what is done and what is not done. Only osmosis and observation of practise can guide the uninitiated novice. And they (the other parties) certainly let you know if they disapprove or you get it wrong. Hear! Hear! Learning the ropes and the geography are equally challenging – but those challenges have to be learnt on the hoof as the business of the Commons rolls relentlessly onwards.

The need to deal with casework, constituents, campaigning, press, and beginning our fledgling efforts at Parliamentary Questions, Early Day Motions, Oral Questions, Prime Minister’s Questions, speaking in debates, putting in for Westminster Hall debates and so on and so on – is not helped by not having an office – parliamentary or constituency. (Like most new MPs and many returning ones, I’m distinctly under-impressed by some of the arrangements for newly elected MPs. If the rest of the country can run a general election, involving thousands of candidates, millions of votes and tens of millions of pieces of paper, surely Parliament should be able to sort out its plans for a few offices a bit more quickly? It’s as if Parliament wakes up the day after the election in shock that, hey yes, there are now some new MPs to deal with rather than having prepared thoroughly in advance).

But we hurled ourselves bravely into the fray. Maiden speeches done, the business of the House has been dominated by the Queen’s Speech agenda overstuffed with Home Affairs Bills, almost all of which we disagree with to some extent – and almost all of which emphasizes the authoritarian nature of Labour. From Incitement to Religious Hatred to Identity Cards – the overwhelming pressure is Labour’s relentless push for more laws, more restriction, more control – even before 7/7.

At around the 60 day mark the joy of winning the Olympics turned to sheer horror as the bombers struck London. Just by chance I chose that day to be the first day I ever drove into Parliament (lots of boxes to transport) and as I drove in to Westminster, the day’s horrors unfolded along my journey. I saw the tubes close and people emptied out, struggling along the now crowded pavements. I saw the buses disgorge their passengers as the news was communicated to the drivers of the bus explosion. The news morbidly rolled forward on the radio from speculative power surge to unquestionable terrorist attack.

The atmosphere when I arrived at Parliament was quiet but disturbing – with groups of staff and members huddled around TV screens. A statement from the Home Secretary would be made at lunchtime. We all filed in and waited for Charles Clarke to arrive. A sombre statement – with sombre response from opposition parties. In the following days the security increased beyond measure in and around the House. And the business rolled on – with Licensing, Cross Rail, Violent Crime Reduction, Asylum and Immigration, and much else. Then two weeks further on the terrorists strike again – only this time they fail – thank goodness.

The pattern of the days began to assert itself with some logic in my brain at this point. Mondays and Tuesdays we sit until 10pm and then vote and Wednesdays and Thursdays we sit until 7pm and then vote – if there are votes. First and Second Readings of a Bill, committee stage, report stage and Third Reading all now mean something real to me. The faces, the names and even Members’ constituencies are beginning to become familiar.

As Parliament broke for the summer, my sense was that we Liberal Democrats have a crucial role to play in the coming months. It will be vital to keep cool heads and not abdicate our responsibility to scrutinise legislation rigorously – particularly in the raised temperature of our country under threat.

If the first 100 days were a roller coaster of learning and events – let us hope that the next 100 will see us through to calmer water.

The months after a general election in which the party’s crime policies – specifically, its sentencing policies – came under much attack from Labour and – especially – the Conservatives is a good time to pause and take stock.

Much as we might dislike the testosterone-fuelled macho game of “my prison population’s are bigger than yours”, it does strike a chord with the public. Fed up with crime? Blame someone, beat ’em up – oops no, we’re meant to be civilized, so just lock ’em up instead.

There seems to have been two responses to this in the party since May 5th. The first batch are easy to deal with – people say we’re soft on crime because of policy X so ditch policy X. My answer to that is simple – no. For example – should we really have to start believing that that a cold-blooded and pre-meditated killer should have the same minimum sentence as a battered wife who lashes out in a moment of desperation?

The other response is wrong too – that we should therefore spend more time campaigning on issues such opposing mandatory life sentences for murder. It’s a beguiling logic – other parties raise the issue, it’s an issue which goes down badly on the doorstep – until we explain it – when the experience of many canvassers is that it is easy to persuade people to back it. (A task that’s been made easier since the election with the Director of Public Prosecutions coming out against mandatory life sentences. I await the Tory leaflets attacking him for not understanding crime or being soft on it … !)

But that it is a political dead-end – dancing to the tune of the other parties, and spending up those valuable nanoseconds when we actually get to talk to floating voters on topics which – whatever we may think – are in substance peripheral for most voters.

They want fewer crimes – and aren’t really bothered with the niceties of sentencing problems. Because the real issue is not the detail of the policies but the overall impression some have – that the Lib Dems don’t take crime seriously. And that’s not about the details of our policies on sentencing so much as our often silence in year round campaigning about crime.

Yes, at election time we roll out the fully costed specifics – X thousand more police most times – but if the rest of the time we’re largely silent, it suggests we are soft on crime.

“Silent” may be a harsh term – but then so are the horror stories of candidates in our target seats who didn’t want crime in their leaflets in the run up to a general election because “crime’s not a big issue round here.”

If we genuinely campaign on crime issues all year round, then we build up credibility and trust with the public. And that brings insurance against the attacks for being soft on crime – they don’t sound so horrible when the voters know we’ve helped set up a neighbourhood watch, got new street lighting, had a dark and dangerous passageway redesigned and so on. Credibility based on track-records means people are more likely to give you a second-chance or the benefit of the doubt when an attack from another party comes up.

Getting that credibility also means being more imaginative about campaigning against crime. It shouldn’t simply be a matter of dusting off a few well-worn phrases about “X demands Y more police in place Z”. It’s about using all those levers we have – real power in so many councils – to help tackle the conditions in which crime thrive – to make improved street lighting as important a part of pavement politics as potholes, to serious support youth facilities.

It’s about working together with the local police. Most police are willing to listen seriously to complaints about particular areas being neglected – they are as aware as anyone of how imperfect policing based on crime statistics is, particularly given the high level of under-reporting of crimes like graffiti, vandalism and anti-social behaviour.

But it’s also about thinking more deeply of the connection between the police and the community. One of Sir Robert Peel’s nine-founding principles of policing, laid out when he created our country’s modern police force, talks of the relationship between the public and the police – … “the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen, in the interests of community welfare and existence.”

Fighting crime isn’t just something you can pay for through your taxes and can then ignore. It’s something all of society has to do. Unless we want a police state with policemen and cameras on every street corner, there will always be a role for the eyes and ears of non-policemen. And unless we have every room, phone line and open space bugged and filmed, there will always be a need for evidence seen or heard by members of the public.

More than that, engaging with and making use of the pubic doesn’t just mean policing can stop short of a police state – it also makes for better policing. Want to prioritise tackling crime hotspots? Well, you need the public to report crimes – and not just the rare violent ones but the more mundane day to day too. Want to have a police force representative of the communities it polices? Well, that’s far easier if you have consent and support for policing, so a career in policing isn’t a choice that ostracises those who take it.

And want to tackle the fear of crime? Well, you need people willing to tell you where their fears lie and what can be done to assuage them – things that bare crime statistics only hint at – that dark alleyway may not have any crime, but it may leave many scared. Fear of crime and crime itself are often only loosely connected – but just as that means fighting crime shouldn’t be solely driven by sometimes outlandish or misguided fears, it means decisions on tackling fear of crime can’t only be driven by pouring over crime statistics.

All of this means having a police force that is closely rooted in the communities it polices. One that inspires confidence that it is safe and productive to talk to and engage with.

In its own small way, my campaign to get the front counter reopened to the public at one of my constituency’s police stations shows what we should be thinking about.

Public services need to be local and rooted in communities to both reflect those communities’ needs and to gain support for the bills they run up. In policing, that means local police stations, not far-off isolated super-centres. It also means making it easy for people to report “minor” crimes, so that policing can truly reflect the range of abuses taking place. And that means – as well as having the phones answered promptly – having front counters at those local stations where people can call in.

In the case of Muswell Hill police station, it has meant the police training up volunteers from the local populace to staff a re-opened the front counter. The volunteers mean the police station has a front-counter that is open, letting the public pop in – and by making contact easier, encouraging more of it than we had before when the police station’s front to the public was a closed door on the main road. When the public do pop in – they see neighbours, from their own community, serving behind the front counter. Properly screened and trained of course – but it’s clearly a service being provided by the community for the community.

Of course, a few dye-in-the-wool Tories in the area said, “It’s outrageous. I pay my taxes – why on earth should I now have to do anything else?”

The answer is simple – “Sorry, we believe in a community where everyone works together. If you want to just to leave some money out and then hide yourself away, we’re not the party for you.”

Getting volunteers isn’t about finding a way of making the sums add up to reopen a public service, it’s about having a public service that is closely connected with the community.

You don’t just get better public services that way – you also get communities which better understand the reality of best delivering those servi
ces, and which are thereby protected against the shock-horror cheap theatrics of the lock ’em all up and throw away the key brigade.

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2005. This article first appeared in Liberator.

I made a visit to the Arbours Crisis Centre in Crouch End this week. Clientsare referred here from all over the country, nay world.

Arbours is an establishment working in the mental health sphere which doesn’tfit – doesn’t fit into categories thatwould encourage the Government, Haringey Council or any specific body to fund it. And yet it does valuable work andhas a world-wide reputation.

I was ushered into a lounge with comfy sofas, tea laid out and agolden-coloured dog. The therapists and clients came and sat and talked tome about the place. I couldn’t tell who was who to start – which iscertainly a good sign of treatment working well!

It is modelled on being a house – or as near to a normal house as ispossible. Clients and therapists live together in the house. The days arefilled with individual or group work. The clients have keys and can comeand go at will.

Arbours concentrates on relationships – and clearly has highly devoted andcommitted therapists working to bring those who have had long malfunctionswith the world we know back into it – with some success. It can only takesix clients, maximum, at a time.

Being so outside the box of traditional mental health treatment approaches,funding is a struggle. And perhaps of even more concern is the Governmentbeing unable to treat them as a one-off. So many targets and programs andinitiatives and partnerships and jargon and more jargon – but when anexcellent project stares it in the face which doesn’t fit the bureaucraticboxes, the Government is so often like a rabbit stuck in headlights, frozenin action and not knowing what to do.

It’s a bit like Red Gables. This is a fantastic family centre also inCrouch End which Labour councillors want to close. The Government isfunding 18 new child centres in the borough – but because Red Gables is inthe ‘wrong’ area and doesn’t fit the criteria precisely – rather than makeRed Gables on of the eighteen and celebrate this exemplar facility, theyplan to close it down. Local campaigners (and the Ham & High) arefighting hard to prevent this happening.

Red Gables and Arbours seem to be two facets of the same problem – they aremuch loved and successful services, but they don’t fit thecentral Labour model of what should be done where and how – and so thefunding flows elsewhere.

I don’t (yet) know enough in detail about the Arbours Crisis Centre to besure of the right way forward, but with so many problems with the provisionof mental health facilities, it seems daft to not be supporting one likethis. The original idea of “care in the community” had many good points -getting rid of those Dickensian type near jail like facilities for peoplewho need treatment not gaol. But so often, the question now is, “where isthe care?”.

The reopening – thanks to two years of campaigners’ efforts, of Canning Crescent, one of the two mental health day care centres which Haringey closed is a step in the right direction but it opened being able to support far fewer residents than before.

When Parliament comes back in the autumn – and ministers are availableagain for questioning and prodding in the chamber, I want to pursue theseissues.

Quite a few mental health care professionals have come my way since theelection to alert me to the mayhem going on in this area and my five yearson the Metropolitan Police Authority demonstrated palpably how much thepolice are left to deal with the results when our care systems fail. Iwould welcome more input on this – so if anyone reading this has a tale totell in terms of good or poor treatment in this area, please contact me.

Last week I was singled out at the Despatch Box by Tony McNulty – the government minister summing up in the Identity Cards debate – for being ‘irresponsible’, ‘wrong’ and ‘wrong’ again. So – clearly I’m doing something right!

One of the many problems with Labour’s case for ID cards is it’s based on a perfect world – one where computers get it right, where iris scanners are as accurate as something straight out of James Bond, where administrators have accurate records, where every policeman is perfectly impartial in who they choose to stop, and on and on. Well – life isn’t perfect!

The government hasn’t got much of a record when it comes to getting big projects right. Tony McNulty himself should know that only too well – having previously been the minister in charge of CrossRail – that big rail project which has been delayed even more than the trains.

The Passport Office’s big IT project was an expensive nightmare – yet they’re a key part of the ID cards plans. Even the much, much simpler plan to draw together councils’ different electoral registers into one national electronic database has precious little to show for the last five years of planning – though at least the project has done so little, it hasn’t managed to waste much money!

But above all there’s the civil liberties question. I was born free and have always believed I was innocent until proved guilty. When I walk out of my front door going about my own business – no one has any right to know anything about me as long as I do no harm.

I should not need a license to leave my house – let alone pay between one and three hundred pounds for the privilege. (Even if Labour keeps down the cost we get charged for an ID card, that will only be done by taking the money from somewhere else – we’ll still be paying for it through our taxes).

Labour’s proposals strike at the heart of everything I believe in and am passionate about in terms of civil liberties. This is the biggest shift in the relationship between State and individual in my lifetime.

And then – of course – the scheme won’t deliver any of the benefits the Government dangles as a carrot over the nation’s head – which is why the carrot keeps changing. At first it was to stop terrorism. It won’t do that. Accuracy of identity documents has not been the problem with terrorists. Credit where it’s due, thegovernment has admitted that Thursday’s tragic events would not have been halted by ID cards.

The government has tried justifying ID cards because of immigration – and it’s no surprise to me that the figures on ‘illegal’ immigrants have suddenly surfaced. That won’t work either – the Met Police’s Operation Maxim crackdown on organised immigration crime found plenty of forged ID documents in use by the criminals. But guess what … more than 9 out of every 10 is a forged ID document from another country. Changing the UK’s ID documents won’t help with that. Trying to make the rest of the world start using the UK’s ID cards would be a bit too big brother even for Blair and Clarke!

And so the Government moved on to identity fraud – which ID cards do not tackle either. The Government keeps on saying this costs the UK £1.3 billion a year. Quite possibly true – but that doesn’t mean ID cards will help. Some of this sum is estimates of excise fraud, but much of the criminal activity involves people who have (and would still have) foreign ID cards, not UK ones. Or look at the figures for credit card fraud that are in that total too. Oh but – look again, they include fraud where the card users wasn’t present, so no chance to check any I.D. documents anyway.

So as the Government’s rationale changes as each new argument is demolished, as the costs spiral and as people realise the huge range of information the Government wants to store on the ID card database – I make it over 30 different items listed in the legislation already (and that’s without the inevitable creep which will come over time) -the scheme hopefully will go down.

The alternative? Well, the Lib Dem manifesto costings for the general election pointed out how the sums could be made to add up – if we scrap ID cards – to get an extra 10,000 police officers plus 20,000 community support officers. Now that would be fighting crime seriously!

Q. What’s the difference between the House of Commons and the GLA?

A. Testosterone and Ken!

Looking for a slightly more substantive answer – there are several differences that hit you in the face from day one between Parliament and the London Assembly (GLA).

First – the seriousness with which the whole business of Parliament is taken by the media, by MPs, by the world outside, by the officers and by the doormen. Maybe that shouldn’t be the case – but it is. The world looks at the goings on of the House and takes notice in a way that just doesn’t happen at the Greater London Authority (GLA).

Secondly – and supporting the first point – are the levels of traditional practise and hierarchical deference which hang heavy in the Parliamentary corridors of power. It would seem that without nodding to the Speaker on entering or leaving the Chamber, without having to wait weeks for an office and a computer because everyone has to be serviced in order of importance (and/or order of swearing in unless you know the ‘right’ officer to skip the queue), without using the correct term of address for colleagues, without knowing when you can or can’t intervene, without rising to your feet at the end of every speech, without prayers at the start of each session, without the mace and the formality – clearly England, nay Britain, would fall! Tradition and deference are the watchword.

I preferred the GLA’s modernist approach and remember fighting against even having to stand in the chamber at City Hall every time you wished to make a speech. I liked the informality of calling Ken ‘Ken’ – and occasionally Mayor Livingstone. I liked being able simply to indicate to the chair that I wished to speak without having to look like a bobbing idiot. I liked the building better. The public spaces and the interweave of public with the members of the Assembly and the Mayor smelt of a new era.

Parliament stinks of the past. In Parliament the divide is absolute – you are a Member or you are a Stranger. It actually feels like a type of apartheid – which indeed it is.

And thus they intend to keep it. There is a point to some of the traditions. Having traditions can make the departure from them all the more significant or poignant – as with the Speaker’s beautiful gesture of coming down from his high seat to kiss Patsy Calton on the cheek when she took her oath just before her sad death.

But much of it is tradition for tradition sake – the need to hold onto the status quo and protect it against the onslaught of modernism. It’s the expression and form of holding the class system in place – albeit these days they clearly let anybody in!

I don’t have the time, patience or inclination to bother to take this on. I have my sights set on other challenges. But neither do I believe that something is more valuable, has deeper meaning or import because it is surrounded by all of this mumbo jumbo. If it needs all of this to make it seem important – then strip it away and lay bare the substance I say.

In the end the real and truly substantive difference between Parliament and the GLA is the power each institution wields. Parliament is the legislature of the nation (for the most part) whilst the GLA in the form of its directly elected Mayor has very few powers and those powers are severely restricted to very few areas of operation. That is what feels different, smells different and is different.

Ask me again in a year or so – I will probably have become part of the Establishment and will barely remember the brave new world of the GLA. The seduction will be complete!

Slouching at the Despatch Box is the name of the game!

The ‘Despatch Box’ is the box (placed on a desk) at which the Labour and Conservative frontbenches stand in Parliament when speaking. The objective appears to be to demonstrate a macho nonchalance (regardless of gender) and an ‘I am soooooooo relaxed – hey – I don’t even need to stand up straight to deliver my speech which I am pretending is off the cuff – but which is actually written out in front of me’ sort of demeanour. You can smell the testosterone.

The ace sloucher during the Home Affairs debate on the Queens’ Speech was David Davies.

I know! I know! I have only been here for two minutes and I am getting above myself even daring to comment on my elders and betters – or in the case of the two new Tory frontbench boys in short trousers – my youngers and betters. But leadership is in the air of the corridors of power around which I am now wandering – mostly lost – as the maze that is the Palace of Westminster refuses to swim into a logical geographic order in my mind.

I cast my first vote last week. There is this whole performance with the ‘ayes’ going through one lobby to vote and the ‘noes’ the other. Now – to a new girl this is very confusing even though they operate a one-way system. I am sure within a week or two, just like having to bow/nod as you enter and leave the chamber, it will be as if I had done it all my life.

However, I am mildly concerned that I will accidentally wander through the wrong lobby and so vote the wrong way. Whilst worrying, I find myself next to my new best friend Boris.Boris ‘I dare you to mess up my hair’ Johnson and I were on the first Question Time after the election – and I bonded with him (possibly unbeknown to him). Or more accurately – I was grateful that he was so funny he made me laugh and relax.

I asked Boris if the lobby I was heading for was the right one? Boris didn’t seem to know. I pointed out that he had actually been here for some time. He charmingly meandered on through and I followed him – happily finding some of my own kind in the lobby thus indicating I had gone the right way! Phew!

The leadership contests pervade the Westminster air. The Tories are at it. And Labour are at it too. The Lib Dems are a bit left out being happy with their own leader! Little enclaves and whispers – don’t you just love it?

The really interesting situation is Labour. When will Tony go? You can’t tell by looking at him (and yes – it is funny the first time you see these guys for real a few metres away). The current (and laudable) contest between Tony and Gordon as to who can do more for Africa shows their rivalry in all its glory.

I don’t think we really know yet what Gordon Brown would be like as Prime Minister. He’s had this strange (or is that convenient?) tendency to go all quiet and slip into the background when the going’s got tough on many issues. Indeed, when he briefly sticks his head over the parapet – such as to back Blair’s line on Iraq during the general election – it suddenly becomes big political news. Yet at other times, he and the Treasury are all over the details of everyone else’s department. As Prime Minister he can hardly carry on going AWOL when inconvenient big issues strike – but what would he really be like under pressure, on the spot with nowhere to hide?

See – how seductive it all is? I must not be sucked in. I must not be sucked in. I must not be …