Prime Minister's Questions

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Prime Ministers Questions (PMQs) sees Cameron flounder for about the third week running while Ming does good. He goes on the dreadful situation in Palestine. Why oh why doesn’t Tony Blair roll up his sleeves and work at the Middle East situation the way he did for Northern Ireland? The political will of Blair and Bush just doesn’t seem to be there to sort this out. The people of both Palestine and Israel deserve peace. It is the people who have been completely let down by the rulers – now and before. If the USA and we have muscle – then for goodness sake use it to force the road map through to peace before more generations grow up in fear or poverty and hatred.

After PMQs I am leading on the front bench on a Statutory Instrument on the floor of the House. They are usually done in committees but this is about bringing into being detention without charge for 28 days. It’s the issue on which we defeated the government’s push for 90 days. There has been a delay until now because Dominic Grieve (a Tory) suggested that we needed a new code to cover the treatment of those being detained under this new order.

It has taken the Government all this time to come up with it. Considering the indecent rush with which they pushed to get the time without charge extended, it is a bit of a rum do.

We are all supporting the code, but I raise issues around how this is likely to affect a community (the Muslim community) which is already extremely tender from the mistaken crude associations that some people make that Muslim = terrorist. Anyway, the Minister acknowledges the points I raise – and the statute is made.

LIBERAL DEMOCRATS TAKE A STAND TO DEFEND LOCAL NHS SERVICES

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Local Lib Dems joined scores of protestors to march on Saturday 24th June against proposed cuts to local NHS services. Councillors Wayne Hoban and Carolyn Baker took a frontline role in the protest, with Councillor Hoban giving a speech at the rally to call for an immediate halt to the planned cuts to the X-ray service at St Ann’s Hospital.

Cllr Hoban comments:

“Despite Labour pumping huge amounts of money into the NHS at the national level, we are seeing the results of their chronic mismanagement of the NHS – cuts to local services. The Government says that it wants to see NHS services transferred from NHS Trusts into the local community so that they can be delivered closer to where people live and work, but in reality, the very opposite is happening.

“In seeking to reduce services at St Anne’s Hospital there is a very real threat that the most vulnerable members of the community, particularly those with mental health needs, will suffer through the proposed contraction of services. We must take a stand now to stem this tide of cuts.”

Lynne Featherstone, MP for Hornsey & Wood Green comments:

“It isn’t profligate spending that puts us over budget in Haringey. It is meeting the health needs of the people of this borough. Local people should not have to pay with cuts in frontline services and cuts in frontline staff in order to service debt created by Government for poorly centrally negotiated consultant and GP contracts. We need more control locally and less for our strings to be pulled from Whitehall.”

HARINGEY LABOUR COME UNDER HEAVY FIRE OVER STREET CLEANLINESS

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Haringey Labour’s record on street cleaning has been shown to be seriously lacking for the second year in a row, as Haringey Council’s own annual performance report shows that the Council missed its own target for local street and environment cleanliness by a greater margin than last year.

Haringey Council brings in an independent surveyor to assess its success in meeting its street cleaning targets. The survey assesses how many of the streets it examines do not meet national standards of cleanliness. The Environmental Campaigns (ENCAMS) survey “provided disappointing results with an increase to 37% in 2005/06 from 32% in 2004/05… The 2005/06 target of 30% was missed by a significant margin”.

Labour’s recent election campaign in the borough was not shy about their performance on street cleaning, claiming that, “Labour has an excellent record on improving street cleaning in Haringey. Independent surveys show that relative to the rest of London our streets are getting cleaner and cleaner”. These claims have been called into question by the Lib Dems.

Lib Dem spokesperson for the Environment Councillor Martin Newton comments:

“While Labour are blowing their own trumpets and boldly proclaiming that they have an excellent record on street cleaning, the truth is that they miss their targets year after year, and allow standards to slide.”

Haringey Police Consultative Group

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Spent whole morning and lunchtime at a conference about the future of the Police Consultative Group (PCG) in Haringey. The Met Police Authority are cutting the funding – which is terrible. Haringey’s PCG is active, useful and works really well with the local Commander and all the groupings.

There is a very dedicated group of activists involved – and it isn’t really fair that they will have funding cut to equalise funding to all PCGs across London. I remember well from my time on the PCG that there were some that local MPA link members said were obsolete, non-functioning and needed to be ended – and then others that are active and quite vibrant like Haringey.

Anyway we all say at tables and had sessions addressing a number of issues around how local people could hold the authorities, politicians and police accountable; about the different levels of engagement; about young people and so on. Reasonably useful – but not sure about whether we reached conclusions.

Even more usefully, I met a couple of guys who work with young people. And one was lobbying me basically to stop politicians paying so much attention to the kids who go off the rails but to pay more to those who are positive role models but who might just need a bit of help or funding to get on – into uni – or whatever. And to spend money on a centre for the kids who are good but just need somewhere to go – not just pay attention and money to the negative.

And actually, that evening I am involved in a crime think tank (or anti-crime more accurately), so I bring it up and get it in to the consultative papers that Lib Dems will debate and take forward.

BELEAGUERED HOME OFFICE BEHIND WITH REPORT

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The Home Office was asked by Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesperson, Lynne Featherstone MP, when it would publish its annual report but could not come up with an answer.

The report for 2004-5 was published on June 7th of last year but this term’s report has yet to have a date confirmed. Ms Featherstone is calling on the troubled department to finalise a date for publication.

Commenting Lynne Featherstone MP said:

“The Home Office must bite the bullet and announce a date for publication.

“The public has a right to know what the Home Office makes of its own performance at a time when it is the subject of much warranted criticism.

“It seems that the Home Office is delaying the publication of its annual report until it has recovered slightly from the current situation in which confidence in the department is at an all time low”

350 years of Jewish History

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Quarterly meeting with David Sloman, Chief Executive at the Whittington Hospital. Overall the Whittington has managed to balance its budget. Phew! But what awaits the good guys is a demand from the Government that they make ‘savings’ next year. David explains to me that there will be a capital investment (or at least that is the plan) – so that we will get it back another way. We have a discussion about the way health (and everything else) is being regionalised – and I talk about the need for nurses to be able to be caring as well as clinically excellent. So often they are rushed off their feet and so can’t give that extra personal care and attention. I remain convinced that the caring part of nursing is a keep part of medically effective treatment overall.

In the evening I get to go to 350 years of Jewish History. This is Mr Speaker’s reception for unsung heroes of the Jewish community and I go to have a drink etc. If Mr Speaker invites you – you go! In fact, I went last Monday to what I thought was this event. As I arrived, I shook hands with Mr Speaker – and in the reception line next to him was a Catholic priest. Which did strike me as odd – but… Then as I moved into the room, there were not very many people and there was a very quiet atmosphere. Jews gathered together are not normally quiet – I know ‘cos of family bashes. So I went back to Mr Speaker and asked him. And I had actually arrived at a celebration for the Apostles of the Sea! Mr Speaker kindly invited me to stay – but I said I would come back to the one he had actually invited me to the next week.

This time – the Chief Rabbi was there – and it wasn’t quiet! I met a little clutch of women from the Jewish Women’s League, a woman from Hornsey & Wood Green, the wife of the Chair of the Board of Jewish Deputies and a wonderful woman who sent people to far off places to do voluntary work. It is funny really. The Jewish population have managed to stay as a pretty firm culture and race – and assimilate at the same time. However, one woman told me that there is quite a lot of trouble and snobbishness about which type of synagogue or congregation that you belong too. There is no culture or race, I guess, who don’t have status levels. Great fun!

Race and asylum

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Spend day wrestling with the chapter I am writing for the next, so-called, Orange Book. They asked for blue skies thinking; I’m writing on Race and Asylum: Bridging Communities in Britain after Blair.

One part of what I talk about is the low turn-out at elections so that decisions about resource allocation aren’t supported by a majority. Now – along comes this email into my inbox about getting people engaged and helping people with no money (unlike Al Gore) to campaign. They allow small-scale, zero-budget campaigners to get on-line for free. They do not raise any revenue from this site. They are doing it for fun and because there are a lot of people out there who can make good use of this type of service. They just need to find them! So I am pleased to put a link to them on my blog: www.CampaignON.com.

Children's play equipment in Noel Park

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Summer days and local or school fetes are the order of the day at the moment. Noel Park Community Family Fun Day is one of the ones this weekend. It is a gloriously sunny day. I meander around the stalls introducing myself and learning about what is going on.

The big issue, about which many people wanted to talk to me, is Haringey Council’s failure to replace the children’s’ play equipment that they removed while building the children’s centre.

Promised now for two years that it would be replaced, local kids are facing their second summer without anything to play on. I will meet one of the organisers about it this week – and a little pressure and some help from the media will hopefully prompt them into action. That’s what happened with Campsbourne Play Centre where the Council had been messing them around – and last week I ‘opened’ the new play equipment. So – action stations!

Then it’s on to Bounds Green School where I am working on the refreshment stall, doing a walk about and then drawing the raffle. All went well – and then on to Abbeyfield open day. Abbeyfield is a home for the elderly – beautifully maintained and run. There are cakes for sale (which I buy) and lots of families visiting their loved ones.

Fortuitously on Sunday I am able to get home in time from visits to get home to watch England play Equador. Painful as always! I am in trouble for the next match as I (as a member of the Home Affairs team) sit on the Government’s Community Development group and we have to go for a two-day meeting next Friday and Saturday – and although it finishes at 1.30pm on the Saturday the chances of getting back to London in time for the 4 o’clock kick off are nil!

ID cards

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Got my new passport this morning! If you remember – I applied for a new one before my old one was due for renewal as a protest against the Government’s plans to introduce ID cards. You may or may not know that if you apply for a new passport in future, you will automatically have to have biometric information taken and be put on the National Identity Register (the new big brother database). And this is the first step to the ID card that goes with it. But if you renew your passport now, you can put off those steps for a decade – by which time they’ll have been an election or two, and – with a bit of luck! – the plans will have been stopped.

You can get more information on how you can renew your passport too (if you have one) at www.renewforfreedom.org.