Here’s my latest Muswell Flyer article on high street parking charges. Please sign the petition for 30 mins free parking here.

One of the best things about my constituency is the large number of independent retailers that line the high streets. We have unique bookshops, bakeries and antique shops, to name but a few. It sets us apart from other high streets, which have become dominated by chain stores.

In these tough times, however, many of these valued independent retailers have been struggling and need a little extra help. In September last year, a local business owner contacted me, reporting that independent businesses in Muswell Hill had suffered months of poor trade after the parking prices were increased from £1.40 to £3.

In my view, we should be doing as much as possible to encourage people to use these shops. That’s why I wrote to Labour-run Haringey Council, telling them how frustrated I was with their parking charges, which are having a detrimental effect on many shops and businesses. I asked them to reconsider the charges asap.

These charges will naturally put people off, and I expect many people feel forced to go to a big shopping centre or supermarket to shop, where they can park for free, or at a cheaper rate.

Disappointingly, in their response to my concerns, the Council confirmed that a decision had been made to make no further changes to the charge of £3 per hour.

This response did not, however, deter the local business owners and campaigners. Traders in Muswell Hill put together a petition for lower parking charges, which attracted a whopping 5,200 signatures. My Haringey Liberal Democrat colleagues also started a campaign for up to 30 minutes free parking on our high streets – so people aren’t put off from popping in to these unique stores.

Due to the overwhelming support for these campaigns, the traders were able to bring their petition to a full meeting of Haringey Council in November. In response the Labour administration sanctioned two days of free parking at Christmas.

Whilst this was welcome – I do not believe it goes far enough. These shops and retailers need help all year round – not just for two days over the Christmas period. Parking charges need to be lowered permanently, and 30 minutes free parking would also be a most welcome encouragement for people to drop in to local retailers.

I believe the Council are being really short sighted here – if these shops struggle and have to close, not only will the community lose a local service, but the Council will also lose a substantial amount of money in business rents and rates. But I’m afraid this is typical of the Labour administration – who are simply more interested in a quick buck on parking fares than preserving our community assets.

The President of the British Council of Shopping Centres (BCSC) has said he supports the Liberal Democrat campaign. The BCSC has worked closely with Mary Portas, contributed to her report for Government and has identified lower parking charges as a critical issue in the future for town centres and their fight for survival.

I am glad, therefore, that the campaigns for cheaper and free parking still have momentum, and I will be lending my full support to them!

Please sign the petition for 30 mins free parking here.

A short blog to say have just come back from a quick visit to France where I met with members of the French Government and civil society about the forthcoming G8 summit, the 57th UN Commision on the Status of Women (CSW) and the post 2015 Millennium Development Goals. To see a quick take on some of these issues see this, watch the records.

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/w6Eno_3O_Y4?rel=0

Yesterday and today I have been in Paris discussing issues on development and violence against women and girls – in my capacity as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development and UK ministerial champion for tackling violence against women and girls overseas.

I  met with counterparts in the French Government and civil society colleagues to discuss international development priorities, the British Presidency of the G8 and how the UK and France can continue to work closely on tackling poverty in 2013.

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/w6Eno_3O_Y4?rel=0

Yesterday and today Britain’s development budget and programmes came under heavy attack from the Daily Mail and the Spectator. No surprise there.

The breathless diatribes espoused by journalist Jonathan Foreman include the wild accusation that the only beneficiaries of British aid are the coffers of ‘African dictators’ and the consciences of the Western middle class.

What Foreman fails to point out are the undeniable, verifiable life-changing results of Britain’s development programmes.

British aid vaccinates a baby against killer diseases every two seconds and saves a mother’s life every two hours. It is providing food, medicine and blankets for families in Syria and fed 3.5m starving people during the Horn of Africa food crisis. Over the last two years British aid has supported more than five million children to go to primary school.

It’s hard to make statistics resonate as they should. So please read the last paragraph again and think of yourself and your own family.

How many women do you know who had absolutely no medical care during and after their pregnancy? How many young children do you know who simply do not go to school either because there isn’t one to attend or because their families can’t afford to send them? Could you live on less than £1 a day?

Yes, we have serious troubles here at home. Working families are under strain. Today’s graduates face an incredibly hard time getting jobs. The Coalition has had to cut budgets.

But one of my proudest moments in government was to hear the Prime Minister say we will not balance the books on the backs of the world’s poorest.

The Coalition is sticking to its promises to the world’s poorest people because we believe development is both the right thing and the smart thing to do, creating a safer, more prosperous world for everyone. Because aid is no longer ‘giving to the poor’ but about supporting the capacity of the recipient country to stand on its own two feet – a win-win outcome for them and for us.

Far from shovelling money out the door, we scrutinise every pound we spend on aid to make sure it is effective. The Coalition set up an independent watchdog to monitor and review our programmes, and my colleague the DFID Secretary has further tightened rules on departmental spending, announced the end of financial aid to India and acted swiftly on misuse of British money in Uganda. She and I have made clear to the EU and other agencies that they must focus support on the poorest countries.

It is right to help the poorest and most vulnerable when we can and I am proud that our party, with our strong tradition of internationalism, gets this. We will never apologise for striving to improve the lives of those less fortunate – at home and abroad.

When I came into post in the Home Office – Theresa May called me into her office and said that David Cameron wanted to appoint me as Minister for tackling Violence Against Women Overseas and policy coherence across Whitehall for this agenda – which I was very pleased to accept.

Right now there is a lot of publicity, quite rightly and thank goodness, on the dreadful multiple rape of a young medical student in Delhi – who has sadly now died. Six of her attackers have been charged with murder. Let us hope that the high profile nature of this case brings change: change in laws yes – but even more importantly change in attitude and change in action taken

I paste below part of a speech I made to Liberal Democrat conference when I returned from India.

On my first visit as Ministerial Champion, I visited India.

Now in India, women occupy four of the most senior political positions – Head of State, President of the Congressional Coalition, Head of the Opposition party and Speaker of the Lok Sabha.

But from my visit it became clear that despite this political representation, India, like many other countries across the globe can still be a very unsafe place for women.

On one of the days, I went to the village of Patna, in the northern state of Bihar – where reported incidents of domestic violence are highest in all of India.

In this region, two thirds of all women have suffered violence at the hands of their husbands.

And some of the stories I heard – of rape, of beatings, of kidnap and imprisonment – were truly harrowing.

Now I met with Ministers and civil groups trying to change this, and I commend both their efforts and their intentions.

But India proves that women in power doesn’t always mean empowered women.

And legislation alone will not solve these problems.

For women to feel truly safe when they walk home from work late at night, what has to change is attitudes.

There must be social change, cultural change.

And this must be achieved through the education of men and boys, as well as through new laws that move away from the dangerously outdated notions of a woman’s “modesty” and “virtue”and towards a judicial system that says sexual crime, domestic violence, and the abuse of women in all its forms is nothing less than an affront to their human rights.

But I do not preach to these countries blind to our own failures, conference.

Because we in Britain must admit that we have not solved the issue of violence against women.

And that we have our own outdated cultural norms to overcome.

Our country still has unacceptable levels of domestic violence, terrible conviction rates for rape, and a serious problem with human trafficking.

It is simply not acceptable that in a modern democracy like ours, an average of two women a week are murdered by their partners or ex-partners.

But neither is it acceptable for our law-makers, no matter how-well intentioned, to talk about rape in a way that seems both casual and callous.

As a nation, and as a Government, we must be clear that we understand that rape and sexual violence is about power, not about sex.

That what a woman wears, or does, or says, will never be justification for violence against her.

And that abuse in the home, by someone you know, is no less traumatising than abuse by a stranger.