One story to catch up on – last week I put down a Parliamentary motion calling for action to sort out the Northern Line problems.
ID cards
The Lib Dems have launched a new campaign against Labour’s Identity Cards plans – take a look at www.libdems.org.uk/noidcards
Catching up
Surgery all morning until lunchtime (I had moved it from Friday so I could be in Parliament to vote on Clare Short’s bill about Parliamentary approval before the country goes to war) and then off to Bounds Green School where we Haringey Liberal Democrats are playing host to party training session for the coming local elections (ie providing the tea, coffee and lunch!). I give a speech and afterwards it is back home to try and catch up on my paperwork, emails etc!
Clare Short's bill
Into Parliament so that we can vote for Clare Short’s Private Members Bill to require Parliament to approve sending our armed forces into conflicts in future. We need 100 affirmative votes for it to get beyond this stage. When Clare moves to call for the vote – sadly we fall short at 91. The Lib Dem benches are the fullest, with the Tories barely visible and even the Labour rebels seem to have found going home on Thursday preferable to being in Parliament on a Friday. Great disappointment.
I think it important that Parliament should debate and decide such important issues for our country. Of course – the legislation would have to work not to impede going to war if time was of the imperative – but we might not get in such a mess if such debate was mandatory.
Moreover, I am still shocked to find that those running the country (who until I knew them I still had the illusion that they were my elders and betters and actually knew what they were doing) hadn’t thought beyond the war. Unimaginable to me that we could go to war without an exit strategy – and all the different scenarios worked through. Naive old me!
More gesture politics from Labour
Back to the Violent Crime Reduction Bill. Last thing yesterday dozens of amendments were published for the weapons part of the bill. But first we have to finish up on Alcohol Disorder Zones. This is with an argument from the Lib Dem about an absurd bit of the proposals which gives the area proposed for a disorder zone an opportunity to put forward an action plan and sort things out first – but then says that if the Local Authority doesn’t like the way the things are going it can step in and impose the zone anyway. You can’t have a mechanism for giving people a chance to do things the right way and then not give them that period. Unless you’re a Labour Government!
So then we arrive at guns. My Lib Dem No.2 on the Committee (there are only two Lib Dems) is a gun using Scot. He has lawful possession of a number of guns and is expert on the ins and outs of firearms certificates and the like. I have some relationship with alcohol – but none with guns.
We are arguing with the Government on a number of aspects. First there is an issue with tightening up on the transport of guns. As John Thurso points out, if he had his gun locked in his boot (which is the only way you are allowed to transport guns) and he popped out from the car to buy something and his friend was left in the car, he could then be had for this ‘crime’ – and moreover he could get 5 years minimum mandatory sentence for the pleasure – under Labour’s proposals, as currently written.
Latter on I argue against minimum mandatory sentences – partly because we believe law makers should not lay down what should rightly be decided by judges as to particular circumstances of each case, but also because it is another example of Labour being ‘tough’ without thinking things through. In this case, we’d have a dog’s breakfast of some offences having a mandatory five-year minimum sentence but equivalent acts with other firearms had completely different penalties. The whole structure would become a nonsense – and the Government has promised and promised a reviews and consultations – and then nothing. Sentencing is already becoming nonsense with Charles Clarke letting prisoners go because the prisons are too full. It’s all ‘gesture’ and ‘message’ with existing laws not enforced properly and a whole pile of new laws instead.
Anyway – Labour have a right go at me – but I stick to my guns (so to speak)!
We finish around 5pm and will resume where we left off next Tuesday – just before which pagers vibrate to bring us the news that Cameron and Davis will fight it out.
Nuclear power
After the Lib Dem Home Office team meeting, where we discuss our position on the relevant bills going through Parliament, I decide I’ve too much work to do to go to Prime Ministers Questions and instead head off to my office. At 2.30pm we have the first ‘evidence’ session of the Environmental Audit Select Committee where we are looking at energy. With the Government raising the nuclear flag again – we are alert to what may be coming down the line.
CONCRETE PLANT: LIB DEMS TELL COUNCIL 'PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS'
Lib Dem councillor for Stroud Green, Laura Edge has called on Haringey Council to invest more money in fighting the appeal to turn over the rejection of a planned concrete batching factory in Cranford Way, N8.
Local Lib Dems and residents group, Green N8 are concerned that with less than a month until the appeal is due to be heard Haringey Council is doing little to strengthen its case.
Despite assurances to both Cllr Edge and Green N8 that money would be made available for further independent environmental impact assessments should the application be successfully rejected and go to appeal, the Council appears to be stalling.
At a closed meeting of members of the Executive last night (Tuesday), the Council failed to come to a decision over additional funding for further studies.
One of the three main reasons given for rejection of the application last week was noise pollution, the evidence of which came from an independent assessment that would not have been carried out if it weren’t for persistent campaigning from Cllr Edge and Green N8 in the summer.
There is now growing concern that unless the Council provides funding soon there will not be sufficient time to carry out the additional independent studies that would bolster the Council’s case for rejection.
Cllr Edge says that many people involved in the battle against the concrete factory are frustrated that despite assurances at a public meeting last month by Labour councillors, funding has not been made available. She is pressing for urgent action from the Council to prevent a costly overturn on appeal.
Cllr Edge comments:
“The Council appears to being saying one thing in public and doing another behind closed doors. It is time for it to put its money where its mouth is.
“Action needs to be taken quickly to fund extra studies which will strengthen our case in time for the appeal. I will be working closely with Green N8 and Lynne Featherstone MP to continue to press the Council for this much needed funding.”
Tackling alcohol problems: Violent Crime Reduction Bill
Five and a half hours in Committee going over the details of the Violent Crime Reduction Bill.
Today is alcohol – and we are moving through Drink Banning Orders and Alcohol Disorder Zones. Drink Banning Orders will enable the police and local authorities to stop an individual coming into a certain area because of their ‘criminal or disorderly behaviour’. The trouble, as ever, with Labour legislation is that it is overweening and undefined – that it could easily be abused. For instance – the bill uses the term ‘disorder’. This is very broad and could mean that rather than the powers to ban people being concentrated on just those cases where they are really needed to tackle persistent and serious problems arising from drunkenness, instead that the powers end up being abused to ban people for all sorts of other reasons.
My task is to argue that there needs to be more definition. An example of where this could all go horribly wrong is when one Labour member said something like – you might get someone late at night shouting as they ran down the street drunk. Well – if a single instance of high spirits is all it needs to take away someone’s freedom of movement, then we are going too far. So the challenge is to try and make the Government legislation more exact, more robust and to ensure that the powers given cannot be misused in such a way.
The Government is not minded to listen to reasonable argument – at least not really in this public session. As I understand it they use all the stuff we give them and then bring it back as their own at a latter stage. Which is fine – if a little aggravating. In fact they have already ‘listened’ in that they themselves have brought forth an amendment removing their proposal to imprison an individual who breached a Drink Banning Order. Even they realised that to end up with a 5 year prison sentence for skipping down the street drunk and shouting might be seen as a little over the top.
Later we move onto Alcohol Disorder Zones. These are areas that can be designated by a local authority and the police where there is so much trouble from drinking establishments that they have become no go areas at night. The idea is that establishments within the zone to be designated have an opportunity to put forward a voluntary action plan, and if it works the zone isn’t imposed. But if it fails, it is. An imposed zone means establishments within it will be charged for extra policing or whatever.
The points of contention – given we agree with the principle of the polluter pays – are that good landlords will be treated same as bad, that there are perverse incentives for local authorities to view this as a way of raising money, that anywhere can be designated a Disorder Zone, that designating an area will stigmatise (or even worse, glorifying it for some?) and many, many other arguments about the proposals.
The Government seem not to be interested in anything other than sloganising that ‘we serve the lawful and that this legislation is targeted on the lawless’. Well yes – statement of the bleeding obvious in terms of what everyone wants as an outcome because we all have the same problems. But slogans aren’t the same as effective action. We already have so much legislation that the Government is not using properly regarding drinking and alcohol. It is already illegal to sell drink to the drunk (they never virtually prosecute). Local Authorities can revoke licenses (they rarely do). And new powers which come into force next month give police the powers to shut down premises.
But saying we want a new law gets cheap publicity points in a way that working to use existing laws properly don’t.
Liveliest moment of the day is when Labour MP Stephen Pound exits the backbenches of the Committee to find out who has gone through (or not) in the Tory leadership election that is taking place in the Committee Room next door – very noisily. He comes back and does a little mime – indicating a pregnant stomach and then slitting of throat – it is clear that Ken Clarke has got the chop!
Anyway – leave Parliament around 11pm having had one drink in one of the bars. A Labour member of the Committee was in there and called me over to say how well he thought I was handling it considering I had been thrown in the deep end – which I thought was very kind!
DEMOCRACY WEEK: LIB DEM GAIL GOES BACK TO SCHOOL
Lib Dem education spokesperson Gail Engert joined pupils from Hornsey School for Girls as she took part in ‘take a Councillor to school’ event as part of National Local Democracy Week.
Cllr Engert attended a school council meeting where she underwent a grilling from class representatives on a range of issues from recycling to youth centre provision.
Cllr Engert, who was one of the members of Haringey Council’s Scrutiny Review on Youth Democracy, is passionate about the need to include young people and their views at every level of the Council decision making process. Amongst the recommendations put forward by the review, she particularly supports Haringey Council signing up to the ‘Hear by Rights’ advanced standards for active involvement of children and young people, the election of a Haringey member to the UK Youth Parliament, the setting up of a young people’s consultation panel and the appointment of a council officer solely responsible for developing youth democracy in partnership with young people.
She is delighted to have taken part in this event and she hopes that the pupils feel they have been given the opportunity to scrutinise the work of local councillors.
Cllr Engert comments:
“It has been a pleasure visiting the school and I am very grateful to the schools citizenship co-ordinator, Michele Lambert for organising the visit.
“I was very impressed with the quality of questioning from the representatives. It is important that young people are engaged with politics and politicians. I hope that the Council can arrange more events so young people feel that they are truly part of a democratic system.”
LIB DEMS RAISE CONCERN OVER COUNCIL'S MAILING WASTAGE
Lib Dem councillor for Stroud Green Laura Edge has called on Haringey Council to review its mailing system after residents received multiple copies of the Council’s public magazine, Haringey People.
On top of this a number of residents also received duplicate letters regarding renovations to Wood Green parking shop and the meeting about plans for a concrete batching plant in Hornsey.
Cllr Edge is concerned at the environmental and financial wastage involved in these duplications. In the worst case reported to her a resident received eleven copies of the same Haringey People within two days.
Cllr Edge (Stroud Green) comments:
“This issue has been brought to my attention by a few local residents. However I am concerned at how many duplicates of letters and magazines this group alone have received and I am sure that many more residents have encountered a similar problem.
“I have written to Haringey Council and ask them to review their delivery system to ensure tax payers money is not wasted on duplicate mailings.”
Lynne Featherstone 