Westminster Hall debate on tall buildings and planning policy

Battersea's Labour MP Martin Linton initiated a Westminster Hall debate yesterday on planning for tall buildings. Battersea is as badly under threat from overdevelopment plans as Putney is: the Ram Brewery in Wandsworth, Clapham Junction and Battersea Power Station are all in Martin's patch.

Westminster Hall debates are a chance for MPs to flag up issues that can't be fitted into formal House of Commons time, but a Minister is obliged to attend, to take note and to respond in exactly the same way as they are with the Commons.

You can watch Martin's Westminster Hall debate by clicking here.

Unfortunately the powers that be don't split the various debates that happen into their own streams, so you need to scroll about 1 hour 45 minutes in to get to Martin's discussion. It's about 25 minutes in total. Even if you can't watch the whole debate, do take a few minutes to listen to Martin's speech given the local relevance.

You can also read here an article Martin wrote for the e-politix website about this debate.

The Hains

Former Cabinet member Peter Hain has a long association with Putney: he was Labour's General Election candidate for Putney in 1983 and 1987. But Peter's parents, Adelaine (Ad) and Walter have an even longer association.

They have been stalwart members of Putney Labour Party since the 1970s; they supported Peter as his political career took off; they've seen their grandchildren grow up and go to school here; and if you're a resident of Fawe Park Road, Skelgill Road or Brandlehow Road, the reason you get the Putney Paper through your door is because they've delivered it.

Ad and Walter have now decided they've earned a long-overdue retirement, and are moving to the constituency in Wales; Neath, near Swansea, that Peter Hain represents to be closer to their son.

I was therefore honoured and delighted last night to be able, along with Putney Labour Party Chairman Peter Carpenter, to present them with a big bouquet of flowers and a long service award for all their help and support during the time I've been parliamentary candidate and very much longer than that.

Nick Raynsford visits Putney

I had great pleasure in welcoming Nick Raynsford, the Labour MP for Greenwich, to Putney earlier tonight. Some of you who have lived in this area for quite a while may remember Nick as MP for neighbouring Fulham from 1986 - he won the seat in a by-election from the Conservatives. He has also served as Housing Minister and Minister for London, and before that was a councillor for Fulham's Sands End area.

Nick had just come straight from the parliamentary vote on the Ghurkas - where he had voted against the Government's misguided and unfair rules to stop them gaining UK citizenship. I was the first to congratulate him on that vote: I would have voted as he did had I been Putney's Member of Parliament because when the Government gets it wrong, my duty is to stand up and say so.

He spoke to and took questions from a packed meeting of Putney Labour members and supporters, talking in particular about the importance of mixed and integrated communities.

He now lives in what has been called the Millennium Village - the area around the O2 Arena in Greenwich - which is a classic example of how to properly plan communities. Those who own their homes, housing association tenants and shared ownership occupants live side by side and you can't tell which is which.



What a completely different approach to the Conservative Wandsworth way, which is to force more and more people in need of housing into fewer and fewer homes which the Tories try as far as possible to keep separate from everyone else. An example of this is the Whitelands Park debacle - where the Conservatives are responsible for sparking unnecessary and unpleasant battles between key workers and the rest of the residents over parking - something I've written about but which was played out at last night's West Hill ward report-back meeting.

European Elections: Thursday 4th June

March crime: the first recessionary causes?

The March crime figures have just come out and they show a slight rise across Putney, Roehampton and Southfields fuelled in no small part by an across-the-board increase in incidents of robbery.

The other property crime categories: burglary and theft/handling are less clear cut: both saw increases in three of the six wards but declines or no change in three others.

I flag this up time and again, but crime deteriorated in Thamesfield - Putney town centre - again. The fact that town centres all over the place attract crime is a concern but what often isn't appreciated is that town centre crime - pickpocketing, stealing from shops and general street crimes - drives other crimes.

That can be seen in these figures. Why else would Thamesfield have twice the rate of burglaries than any other ward in Putney? Yes, it's generally more affluent than some parts of our constituency but not more so than others - large parts of West Putney for instance which include the leafy avenues behind Putney Hill.

One reason surely is that if you're likely to rob a shop, or steal from a passer-by, you're also likely to have the capacity to burgle a house. And if that type of criminal is attracted to an area, it is little wonder that crimes of similar association increase.

That's yet another reason why much more resource - Police and Council - needs to be directed to Thamesfield. Given that police numbers are now back above the levels they were in 1993, there is no excuse for this not to happen.

For those of you new to the table above, green figures represent numbers that have either fallen or stayed the same since last month; red those that have risen.

Last month's crime stats report is here.

Dangerous Dogs Guide

The Government has published new guidance to help Police and councils like Wandsworth enforce Dangerous Dogs laws.

Written in association with the police, the RSPCA and local authorities, the guidance sets out the current law and provides advice on how the legislation can be used effectively to improve enforcement.

The guidance:

• Provides an outline of the law on dangerous dogs, including an explanation of 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act and the 1871 Dogs Act;
• Sets out best practice for the main enforcement authorities: the police and local authorities;
• Provides guidance on identifying pit bull terrier-type dogs; and
• Provides examples of existing local initiatives - including Wandsworth's

This booklet - which you can download here - is really helpful because the answer to a problem isn't always to rush out new legislation when we haven't yet done all we can to enforce existing laws. That's why when Putney Conservatives called for a new dog license that would cost all dog owners up to £400 I said no and the plans were swiftly dropped.

Last year I met with the then-Minister responsible for laws governing dangerous dogs because of the incidents of dog attacks that took place in Roehampton and West Putney. Dogs play an important role in our communities so it's vital that people feel safe when they see dogs out and about with their owners.

Visit the government's web pages on dog control here.

Government right on clean coal

If both electricity generating company E-On and the green lobby are cheering a Government announcement, it suggests that we might have got it right.

That's what's happened over the announcement that the Kingsnorth power station in Kent will only be upgraded as and when it is capable of carbon reclamation, something I argued for here a few weeks ago.

The argument now moves on to what minimum proportion of carbon should be extracted from the coal before burning; because the risk is that it will be too low - and the less that is extracted the harder it will be to reach our carbon targets.

The UK was - thanks to Labour - the first country in the world to set legally binding carbon emissions targets and now we are first at making the building of new coal-powered stations conditional upon their ability to extract carbon and, in our case, bury it deep under the North Sea.

But our long-term energy situation remains critical. We have to reduce dependence on Russian Gas and Saudi Oil. And just as we cannot meet our energy needs just by renewable energy, we can't do it just by clean coal power-plants either. We need a basket of energy sources: clean coal, renewable and nuclear - all three of which will enable the UK to meet the targets we have set ourselves on climate change by 2020.

Hazle-well what a lot of potholes...

Although they don't come close to the danger of the pothole in Princes Way I reported yesterday, Hazlewell Road in West Putney is in a shocking state of neglect.

There were five separate potholes just in that part between Genoa Avenue and Gwendolen Avenue - and it's even more extraordinary that Conservative councillors are ignorant of this as two of them live just a couple of streets away!













Again, there is no excuse for the Conservatives allowing our streets to decay to this extent: no wonder people think they need four-wheel drive cars in central London if our roads are beginning to resemble dirt tracks. I've said it before but keeping our streets maintained is one of the basic competences of any local council, but in Tory Wandsworth's case it's a basic incompetence.

The Conservatives have tested the theory to destruction that patching our roads intermittently - patches that last sometimes just a few weeks - is any substitute for a proper road resurfacing programme, which every other borough I'm familiar with has. Other boroughs like Westminster have low council tax but their streets aren't in the state Putney's are. So there really is no excuse other than they can't be bothered - and that's just not good enough.

How dangerous is this?

I've been critical of the Conservative Council's abysmal failure to maintain Putney's roads - a problem caused by their decision to cut the highways budget by one third last year. But this pothole in Princes Way goes beyond just carelessness - it is negligence.

The reason I'm singling this pothole out is because it's right over the drain sump or catchbasin - so it's not just a crater in the road, it's a three or four foot drop. This part of Princes Way is within fifty metres of Southmead School, it's right by the 39 and 493 bus stop and its within a few feet of the Ackroydon shops in Montfort Place; one of the busiest parts of a densely-populated area.

The point is that if a child, old person or anyone else for that matter were to mis-step they would easily break their ankle - or worse due to this crater.

I raised my concerns about the state of Princes Way back in November last year. The Council didn't reply until 27 January (though the letter's dated 13 January, so why it took two weeks to get from Wandsworth to Putney I don't know) and this is what they said then:



I reported this specific problem to the Council back on 9th March. I failed to get a reply. I reported it again on Tuesday, 21 April - still no reply. Yesterday I took the photo above.

I think we've all given the council quite a lot of slack because of the extra problems the snow in January caused. But we're three months on and any organised council would have been able to deal with their road maintenance backlog by now. That this council thinks such a major hazard can be ignored is a real concern.

And that happens just to be the worst of the council's neglect of Princes Way: these are all potholes in the stretch between Castlecombe Drive and Augustus Road.

Roehampton: reskilling South West London

I wrote recently about how Putney is weathering the tough economic climate in respect of unemployment.

One of the ways to keep unemployment down is to make sure that local people have the skills to compete in the local job market.

And that's why a piece of local news that got lost this past week was significant. It was the announcement of a dreadfully-named programme called The Economic Challenge Investment Fund (ECIF), of which Roehampton University has won a £250,000 slice.

Roehampton's winning bid - which they will match-fund, creating a £500,000 scheme - will create a new suite of facilities to help local people re-train for job areas where there are particular skills gaps at present. There will also be opportunities for those in work to improve their technical and professional skills and personal development.

Almost 2,000 local people will benefit from this new scheme and it will help keep Putney and the rest of South West London one of the most employed, and least unemployed parts of the UK. For more about Roehampton's winning bid click here.

100 days of "No"

US politics is conducted very differently than in the UK. For one thing, political advertising is banned over here, whereas over there ad firms are probably weathering the recession better than most because of the near $1 billion spent in last year's election campaign, principally on what they call ad-buys.

I just wanted to post a short example of a US ad that's just been produced by President Obama's Democratic Party - because all too easily could it reflect how the Conservatives are behaving over here.

It highlights how, 100 days into President Obama's term of office, the Republican opposition - and remember George Bush's Republicans are the sister party of UK Conservatives - have behaved: no ideas, no consistency, no grasp of the problems being faced. Just 100 days of saying "no" to everything. You don't need to recognise the faces - just as most people can't recognise the Tory shadow cabinet: just know that they represent the leadership of the opposition over there.

I know it's perhaps a quaint and outdated idea, but I believe politicians should set out their ideas openly and honestly - and that shouldn't change whether they're in power or opposition. Evidently George Bush's Republicans, and their sister party the Conservatives, think differently.

Keeping unemployment at bay

Putney is fortunate to have one of the lowest levels of unemployment in London. In March, although unemployment increased locally, there were just six London constituencies (out of 74) with unemployment lower than ours - and all bar two of those areas adjoin Putney.

Professor Tony Travers, one of the most authoritative experts on the London economy, writing in yesterday's Evening Standard, said this:

"Overshadowed by the Budget, yesterday brought good news for London. New unemployment figures suggested the extraordinary resilience of the capital's economy. Against all earlier predictions, London's economy is resisting the recession better than the rest of the country. Employment in the capital has not fallen, while unemployment is increasing less quickly here than elsewhere."

I'm not going to minimise or brush over the fact that unemployment locally is up, and that's a personal nightmare for the 1,518 claimants we have in our constituency.

But Putney is in a far better position today than it was a decade ago - and that can be seen quite clearly in the graph above, which compares Putney's unemployment rate with the national average going back to December 1997. Because nationally, while unemployment is back to the levels it was when Labour came to power (the orange line being higher at the March 2009 end of the graph than the December 1997 end), in Putney we are doing far better than a decade ago (the blue line being lower than at the 1997 end).

Making sure unemployment doesn't return to the high and seemingly immovable levels of the 1980s and 1990s is a key priority for Labour MPs and members and a major dividing line we have with the Conservatives, who famously said "unemployment is a price worth paying".

I really don't understand how anyone in public office can think that way. And it's why Labour is making sure under-25s don't spend more than a year on the dole queue as an absolute maximum.

Wandsworth Guardian report on Tileman House

It's official: VAT cut is working

Last year, faced with a world-wide financial crisis that led to the economic downturn, the Government looked at the best way to help people and businesses and stimulate the economy.

As well as a £145 cut to income tax for basic rate taxpayers, a £60 payment for pensioners, increases in tax credits, pensions and benefits and £3bn of capital investment brought forward the Labour Government cut VAT by 2.5%

At the time, the Conservatives claimed that the VAT cut was a waste of money (despite being backed by Tory frontbencher Ken Clarke MP) and said that £5 a week to the average family didn't mean anything.

Labour chose to cut VAT because we wanted to put money in peoples' pockets quickly and shore up spending in the High Street. Other types of tax cuts couldn't be introduced for six months.

• But £12.4billion is being put back into the economy throughout this year as a result of the VAT cut;
• It provides help for everyone, regardless of income, including the one third of people, like pensioners and students, who don?t benefit from income tax cuts;
• It is worth £275 on average to households ? over £20 a month;
• On expensive items, the VAT change makes a big difference. Toyota would have to charge £254 extra for every Toyota Auris and Nissan an extra £306 for each Qashqui (their cheapest models)
• It is implemented for a temporary period of 13 months until the beginning of 2010, so is consistent with achieving medium-term fiscal sustainability. Temporary, timely and targeted boosts have a greater impact on the economy.

But it's not just Labour who says we got this right - independent experts say the VAT cut was the right thing to do, and that the Tories, once again, have got it wrong:

The Centre for Economics and Business Research said:

"The figures are clear; the VAT cut is working. The CEBR estimates that retail sales for the year are likely to be £8-9bn higher that they would have been without the cut."
Source: BBC

The Institute for Fiscal Studies said:

"This policy change is likely to be a reasonably effective economic stimulant. Those dismissing it as a failure ignore the likelihood that things would have been even worse without it."
Source: IFS website
The Guardian

And Goldman Sachs said:

"The latest release appears to confirm that the robust December (retail) data was no fluke. With clothing and footwear (+10.8% yoy) making the biggest contribution, it appears that the VAT cut was instrumental in driving this strength."
Goldman Sachs - UK Economics Analyst, Issue No 09/02 Feb 27, 2009

The Conservatives were wrong about the need for a financial stimulus. They were wrong to prefer to do nothing while people struggled with an unprecedented global recession. And they got it wrong on the VAT tax cut.

They can't be trusted to be put in charge of our economy when they have such a track record of getting it wrong.

No-one earning more than £100k pays more tax

Unsurprisingly, virtually all of the newspapers - and especially the Conservative-supporting ones - led their budget coverage with the announcement of the 50p tax rate.

The coverage and analysis is hyperbolic and in places hysterical. We are led to believe this is the beginning of class war, a cynical move to motivate Labour's core vote; the start of a mass exodus from Britain; taxing people until the pips squeak etc.

Perhaps I can put out some facts and then we can look at those histrionics again.

• First, no-one earning less than £100,000 a year pays any new direct tax as a result of the 2009 Budget.
• Second, the 50p tax rate applies to those earning £150,000 a year or more - put another way, 1% of the population.
• Third, the average UK wage is around £23,600. In Putney, the average is higher because costs and incomes are higher in the capital, but it's still below £40,000.
• And fourth, during much of the Thatcher government the top rate of tax was 45p in the pound kicking in at income levels far, far lower than £150,000.

So a class war? Only if one class represents 99% of us and the other the top-earning 1%. A populist appeal to Labour's core vote? Again, only if Labour's core vote is 99% of the country (if only!).

Just because someone is rich doesn't mean they should be taxed for the sake of it. No one can reasonably argue that a 50% tax rate does that. What it does do is make clear that in unprecedented global economic times, during which governments around the world have had to invest staggering amounts to stabilise the banking industry, to help those hit hardest by the recession and to bring it to an end as quickly and painlessly as possible we need to be serious about paying back that debt once the problems are behind us.

A 50p tax rate says that we think it is fair and equitable that the very richest help proportionally more than the less affluent.

I very much welcome the Chancellor's comment that once this international crisis is over and the books on their way to balance again the 50p rate could be axed. And so it should be. Taxes should only exist to pay for what we need: they serve a purpose, not a principle.

That said, our fundamental British values should underpin tax policy. I think the quintessential British value of fair play says that the richest - who proportionately have paid less than the poorest for decades - should contribute more to help out when times are tough. And why, with Labour, those on modest or middle incomes - the vast majority of Putney, Roehampton and Southfields residents - won't pay more income tax.

Budget help for Putney

I'm not one of those who believes we should talk down our country, or that the economic outlook is catastrophically bad - for that you need to go and listen to the Conservatives.

It's far too early to talk about green shoots of recovery especially if you're someone who has lost their job, had your hours cut back, are struggling to get finance for your business or to keep paying your rent or mortgage.

That's why, in the Budget, the Government focussed on action to support employment, to help savers and families with children, to support pensioners and to help people manage their finances, including:

• A guaranteed job, training or work placement for all 18-24 year olds who aare unemployed for 12 months to ensure no young people are left behind due to long-term unemployment;
• An additional payment alongside this year?s Winter Fuel Payment, worth £100 for households with someone aged over 80 and £50 for households with someone aged over 60;
• An increase in the annual investment limit for Individual Saving Accounts (ISAs) to £10,200, up to £5,100 of which can be saved in cash. These higher limits will be available to people aged 50 and over from 6 October 2009 and available to all from 6 April 2010, directly benefiting over five million people who currently use their full ISA allowance;
• An increase to the child element of the Child Tax Credit of an additional £20 a year above inflation from April 2010, providing valuable support to families with children;
• An increase in the level of statutory redundancy pay, making the weekly rate £380.

These are all really important measures, especially the one on keeping young people off the scrapheap, because one of the big legacies we're dealing with today is the dependency culture the Conservatives created in the 1980s and 1990s when they destroyed jobs and threw people onto long-term benefits with no hope or expectation that they would ever get off them.

Today, times are unmistakeably tough but we're saying that we're not giving up on young people finding work - and nor are we going to allow young people to give up on themselves.

Electric cars

Although air transport is often - incorrectly - cited as one of the major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, road traffic is a massively bigger contributor to climate change.

That's why the Labour Government has today announced a new scheme to encourage us all to trade in old (that is, more than 10 year-old) cars in exchange for a grant of between £2,000 and £5,000 which can be spent on a brand new electric vehicle.

Labour's car grant scheme, which is a variation of a massively successful German programme that has helped get tens of thousands of gas-guzzling, inefficient and high-polluting cars off that country's roads, will help us in our fight to cut our carbon emissions. 19% of the UK's domestic Carbon emissions are from cars - a figure second only to the agriculture industry.

And it will provide a much-needed boost for car manufacturers, struggling in the global recession.

It's coupled with a £20 million investment in electric car charging points around the country.

Electric cars can work best in urban environments like London, where congestion and speed limits mean cars can't race around, and where we have the infrastructure to provide car charging points. As well as on-street charging points, I'd like every petrol garage in London offering such points by the end of next year.

For more information on the Government's plan for cutting carbon - including Labour's Climate Change Act which made the UK the first country in the world to set legally binding emissions targets, click here

And more detail about Labour's grants for electric cars can be found here.

Labour homeowner help

New support to help homeowners keep their homes if they fall on difficult times is now available following the Budget.

Labour's Homeowners Mortgage Support (HMS) will enable eligible borrowers who suffer a temporary loss of income to cut their mortgage interest payments for up to two years whilst getting their finances sorted out.

This new support builds on a range of measures Labour has already put in place to ensure that repossession is always a last resort. It's the first time anything of this kind has been offered to help struggling homeowners in difficult times

During the last recession in the early 1990s the then Conservative Government offered no help whatsoever as 250,000 families? homes were repossessed: and today that's exactly what the latest generation of do-nothing Tories propose as well: walking on by as thousands and thousands of people lose their home.

Most of Britain's major lenders:

• Lloyds Bank Group (which includes Halifax and Bank of Scotland)
• Bradford and Bingley
• Northern Rock
• Royal Bank of Scotland (which includes NatWest and Ulster Bank)

to name but a few are all participating. And these lenders:

• Barclays (including First Plus)
• HSBC
• Nationwide
• Santander (including Abbey and Alliance and Leicester)

are offering independent but broadly similar homeowner help too.

Since the autumn, Labour has put in place a range of measures to give more protection to households at risk of repossession. This includes a new pre-court action protocol for all the main high street lenders, quicker and more extensive support to home owners who have lost their job, a scheme to enable the most vulnerable home owners to stay in their homes, and a major extension of free debt and legal advice.

And each month more than 2,800 people who are at risk of losing their home benefit from free, immediate legal advice and representation in Court, thanks to another Labour scheme run by the Legal Services Commission. Duty advisers are available on days when repossession cases are heard and are available to anyone, regardless of their income, who has a hearing listed on that day. Almost 34,000 people across England and Wales used this service last year.

More information on Homeowners Mortgage Support can be found at www.direct.gov.uk/hms.

All postal votes to be checked

As a result of pressure from my campaign, every single postal vote cast in Wandsworth in this June's european elections will be properly checked to stamp out voter fraud.

I want Putney residents to be absolutely sure that their vote is counted and that every vote is cast fairly and honestly.

The Council was planning to verify only one in five of the postal votes cast in Wandsworth. But as the result of a letter to the Council's Chief Executive, who's also responsible for overseeing the conduct of elections locally, this year every single postal vote will be checked to make sure it has been cast by the person it was issued to and not somebody else.

A few years ago Labour changed the law to allow any voter to vote by post without needing to give a reason why. I backed that change because I believe the right to vote should be exercised by as many people as possible and because it was the only improvement to the electoral process that substantially increased voter participation. There are now over 6,000 postal voters in Putney alone.

But in response to the - fortunately very few - cases of electoral fraud (none in our area, I'm pleased to add), last year the Government tightened the law on postal voting making it much more difficult to cast a postal vote fraudulently. We did so by requiring everyone who wants a postal vote to provide not only their signature but also their date of birth on the application form - and they have to do the same when they return their postal vote.

Those forms are separated from the votes at the town hall, and then checked against the original applications to make sure both the signature and the date of birth match. Although it's a time consuming process, I think it's absolutely right that every postal vote is checked - not one in ten, one in five or one in two. Every single one.

So I'm delighted that my campaign has persuaded the council to change its mind on this, because without having confidence that - whoever we vote for - the person who wins has done so because they won the most votes fairly and squarely, there can be no confidence in the rest of our democratic process. And that's true regardless of whether we're choosing EuroMPs, London Mayors, Councillors or Members of Parliament.

A plan for Putney

Earlier this week the Labour Government set out several ideas to help councils like Wandsworth make life easier for town centres. Here are just a few of the policies:

• Special planning permission waivers called Local Development Orders allow the council to implement more flexible planning policies more quickly


• We want to get empty premises back in use - for however short or long a period as possible, But landlords need to know that there is a proper legal basis for such temporary uses, so the government has created "fast-track" specimen legal documents that landlords can use for temporary occupiers.


• For landlords still not happy about leasing to unknown short-term tenants, we're also giving them the option of leasing to the council - as an intermediary - who in turn can grant their own temporary lease to a local group for community uses.


• And the Government's 'Real Help for Business now' plan offers free business health checks, skills training, and a £20billion working capital scheme. 70% of all properties will now be exempted from empty property rates and businesses can also defer 60% of next year?s rate increase and transitional relief increase to the following two years.


• Town centre planning rules already give council the power to refuse a new development that might harm the high street. Local planning and licensing powers can also limit a particular type of shop in a town to prevent too much of the same business or unwanted nightlife. For me this has been local Conservatives' biggest failing: they've had the power to safeguard our town centre from overdevelopment and clone shops and they've chosen not to. They must now right this wrong.
  
• Finally. local business can agree with councils to establish Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) using ring fenced business rates to improve the business environment of the town centre. 71 BIDs have been established since 2004.

Now I admit that each of these schemes isn't the most exciting-sounding idea: but boring policy is often good policy that works. We just need the local leadership to see that Putney doesn't have to be this grotty, congested, polluted and run-down place but could be a vibrant shopping hub like Kingston, Fulham Broadway or Barnes.

Why we're Labour

Labour MP Nick Palmer represents Broxtowe in Nottinghamshire, and today wrote an article for the Political Betting website explaining why he - and so many others around the country - remain passionate about getting Labour re-elected at the next General Election.

Although I don't agree with every single point he makes below, I thought this was an excellent piece and so I'm reproducing it. If you're a Labour supporter I hope it inspires you; and if you're not, well, I hope the way he sets out the case gives you some pause for thought:


What do we expect of governments? We expect that they give us protection at time of crisis (military, economic or social) and pursue a coherent long-term agenda to make the country better.

First, then, is the Government offering protection at time of crisis? We certainly have an economic crisis on our hands, and I?d contend that it?s being dealt with more competently and with more attention to protection of the vulnerable than people originally expected when it first blew up.

We?ve seen predictions here that companies would fall like ninepins, unemployment would head straight for four million, the FTSE would plunge to 2500, the recession would last for years, mass repossessions would devastate the housing market, full recovery could take a generation. All those predictions are starting to look exaggerated.

Can we be sure? No. But it?s noticeable that the main Conservative critique has not been ?Why are you doing X and not Y?? but ?You shouldn?t have got us here in the first place?. And as for that, I wouldn?t try to maintain the claim that we?re uniquely well-placed to withstand the crisis, but it?s also obviously not true that it?s peculiar to us. Internationally, we?re all very much in the same boat.

That brings us to the second aspect: internationalism. Labour has usually been an internationalist party (with atavistic exceptions such as our anti-EEC stance in 1983, which I supported at the time and was wrong to support), and it comes naturally to a Labour government to seek international agreements without obsessing about national sovereignty: global problems need global solutions.

Gordon Brown has surprised his critics on this: after an apparently frustrating series of visits to the US, the EU and developing countries, he was able to get the G20 agreement which even the harshest critics struggled to call a flop. We are actively keen on international financial regulation, to an extent that makes the nationalist and City-linked wings of the Tories queasy. A Brown-led Labour government is clearly going to pursue this agenda, making life harder for tax havens (which many Tories half-think should be left alone as healthy competition) and limiting the wild speculation which triggered the current crisis. If we had an inward-looking government, preoccupied with tinkering with the domestic levers and arguing peevishly with the EU, we would be part of the global problem and not the solution.

Third, we are midway through five projects that are central to most Labour supporters? hearts:

? reducing both absolute and relative child poverty
? increasing overseas aid to the UN target of 0.7% of GDP
? tackling climate change seriously
? making the education system competitive with the private sector
? making the NHS genuinely comparable to best European practice

All have made considerable headway under this government. The Child Poverty Action Group acknowledges the rapid progress until the current crisis on poverty; third world charities are enthusiastic about the progress on overseas aid (including the quiet delinking from trade conditions like the Pergau-arms linkage that disgraced the Tory government), we are the first country in the world to impose binding carbon reduction targets on ourselves, and although there?s no shortage of Daily Mail readers who?ll claim that we have a Third World school and hospital system, you won?t find many head teachers or consultants who don?t acknowledge the progress. There?s a reasonable argument about whether the extra money could have been used even more effectively, but there isn?t one state school or medical facility in my area which hasn?t improved very noticeably.

Would a Tory government abandon all these efforts? No ? they?re obviously desirable (pace the fringe of climate change sceptics), and any conceivable government would think them a jolly good thing to pursue. But they are Labour priorities and they don?t seem to be the Tory priorities. Mr Cameron hastens to reassure us that he?d work towards the aid target, that he wants the best for the NHS (albeit without specific targets), and so on, but what was it that really got the Conservative backbenches restless? The suggestion by Ken Clarke that reducing inheritance tax for estates worth £2 million might not be a top priority.

I want a government that sees the five objectives above as the central long-term priorities, not a government harried by its backbenchers into being preoccupied with reducing Inheritance Tax, reshaping the group within which Conservative Euro-MPs affiliate at Stasbourg and other things that seem to me at best peripheral and at worst undesirable. It may well be that the Tories will in due course unveil a more compelling agenda, and I absolutely accept that there are plenty of decent Tories who want the best for Britain. As a party, though, they are so far relying very heavily on the ?time for change? argument, and if Mr Cameron has any particular priorities of his own, he?s kept them under wraps so far.

But what about freedom ? the libertarian-Conservative/David Davis agenda? Well, leaving aside the puzzling worry about CCTV (if I go into a public place I may be observed by real humans, never mind just cameras), I do think that all governments tend to lean on the side of authority, and it?s an ever-present danger that needs to be watched whoever is in power.

But the strongest defence against an encroaching state is legally-entrenched powers for the individual, and Labour has introduced two of them, the Freedom of Information Act and the Human Rights Act. Both have repeatedly been a nuisance to ministers, but despite wriggling on specific issues, there?s been no move to water down either of them. What would the freedom-loving Conservatives do with the Human Rights Act? Abolish it, and replace it by a British Rights Act which would say?er?what? We don?t know, as it?s seemingly not a priority for them to tell us.

Finally, what about specific things that go wrong? The McBride/Draper disgrace, the various resigning Ministers over the years, the slowness to tighten MPs? allowances? Sure. I?m not arguing that the Government is perfect. But party loyalty comes down to a shared sense of priorities.

I want a government that is internationalist, handles the current crisis competently, and sets poverty (at home and abroad) and public services as its priorities. I?m horrified when a Labour MP or party official does something disgraceful, but at root I think the party is the same noble cause that I joined 38 years ago. I?m proud to be part of it, and I?ll work to get it re-elected with the same energy and enthusiasm that I had in 1997.

Dr Nick Palmer MP

Volunteering

The Prime Minister's announcement that everyone by the age of 19 will be asked to volunteer for at least 50 hours of community service if Labour is re-elected is a move I strongly support.

Back in the 2006 council elections one of the features of the manifesto I wrote as Labour Leader in Wandsworth featured a plan to set up a volunteer scheme for students and sixth formers which I called WandCorps.



In return for their help on projects they are particularly interested in: environmental work like keeping Beverley Brook and the River Wandle free of rubbish; helping with care support in sheltered housing or residential homes; assisting in schools teaching computer skills or helping with Games, and so on. In return, the participants would gain experience and be able to add to their CV.

At the time, the Conservatives were very critical of the idea, even though the borough would have got out of the scheme far more than it invested. But community service is clearly an idea whose time has come - it's all part of Labour's commitment to making full-time education compulsory until 18; another achievement that I suspect future generations will recognise as very significant in the development of our country.

I think we need to instil a sense of communitarianism - the idea that we're not just in it for ourselves - in the citizens of tomorrow; and if we can link that into additional accreditation so that the students themselves benefit.

More on the website upgrade

I wrote a couple of days ago about some of the work we've been doing to this website over the Easter break; and I'm now able to talk about a few more of the features that should help you get more from the site - or get around what's always been here a little more easily.

First, a huge number of you get in touch with me through my surveys but until now these haven't been as easy to access as they should be. That's why we set up the new Your Say drop down menu which I talked about a couple of days ago. But there's now also a surveys page where my main surveys - and an archive of some of the older ones - are housed.



The second change is the Where do I vote? pages - just in time for the European Elections in June! These pages - which you can access from the campaign centre drop-down menu - have been up for a while but weren't brought up to date during an earlier upgrade so were formatted a little oddly and weren't the easiest way to get this information.

There's now a much more user-friendly front page to this section where you can search by street (or many blocks of flats) and a clickable map:



When you've found your road or can see where it is on the map, just click and you'll be taken to a page like this one, which shows on a googlemap where your voting place is and lists all the areas that vote there:



On the subject of googlemaps, one of the last remaining works in progress is an integration of the constituency page with the blog archives about the local area. Because there are now so many pins in the constituency map, it's taking a while to load, and the number of pins also make finding a story you want harder.

We're going to keep the main map, but we're going to introduce ward-by-ward maps embedded in the blog archive, which reduces the number of pins, cleans the page up and just looks smarter. Here's what the East Putney page looks like, for instance:



As I say: this is a work in progress but we hope to have these pages sorted across in a few weeks.

Happy Easter

May I take this opportunity to wish you and your family a Happy and peaceful Easter.

Some Easter website upgrades

Over the Easter holidays we're improving the website. There are four main changes:

First, we've added a photo gallery - you can access it from the "Stuart" drop-down menu:



In due course, the addition of the photo gallery will enable us to make major changes to the front page.

Second, if you click on the Issues menu you'll now get a page showing all the issue blogs on the site - previously, while the dropdown buttons worked, the issues button didn't go anywhere. Hopefully this is a clearer means of finding out what I think on the issues that matter to you:



Third, we've made some big changes to the campaign centre options. Similar to the issues page, the campaign front page contains a lot more tools, laid out in a clearer way:



And we've split the campaign centre into two: the campaign centre itself now focuses more tightly on ways for you to get involved in the campaign. But there's now also a separate "Your say" menu button from which you can more easily get to my current surveys and petitions:



Bear with us, because we're still making changes and some things may not all link up yet - we'll add an update on these upgrades after the Easter break.

We keep looking for ways to provide a more useful, engaging and responsive website for Putney, Roehampton and Southfields residents. If you have ideas for features you'd like to see, please get in touch.

Local NHS public meeting

A sorry excuse for leadership

If anyone was wondering why there remain so many doubts about the Conservatives' fitness for office, this report from yesterday's Evening Standard should help explain why.

The Tories have been unbelievably shy about making policy pronouncements despite the fact that we are barely a year to away from a general election. So you would think that the few policies they have had the courage to publish must have been carefully thought through, were based on a guiding Conservative principle and would be articulated through strong leadership.

Fat chance.

First Kenneth Clarke tells us that the Tories won't really cut Inheritance Tax for the richest 8% of estates in the country even though the rest of his party tells us they will.

Then the Tories tell the public sector that they'll tear up three-year pay deals despite these arrangements working, holding down pay-inflation and affording frontline public servants like police officers and nurses the security of knowing what their income will be. But the moment a voice is raised in objection, this policy is junked by George Osborne.

But not even the (literal) red-meat policy designed to rally the hard-core Conservative vote is safe. The moment a Tory MP pledges a repeal of the ban on fox-hunting, David Cameron denies it.

This paucity of leadership at a national level is reflected here in Putney, too. The absence of local leadership has been evident on a range of issues - from the overdevelopment threat the Tories have failed to prevent; the closure of West Hill Library and Wandsworth Museum; the failure to build affordable homes that has caused massive housing problems; the neglect of Putney town centre...the list goes on.

Whatever we thought of Mrs Thatcher, no one ever accused her of indecision or a lack of strong leadership. The party of the Iron Lady is now the party of jellyfish. They lack the courage of their convictions; they turn to blancmange at the first hint of opposition and they're too scared of public opinion to tell us what they really think.

That makes them unfit - still - for government.

Here's what about Rotherham...and Putney, Matthew

Since the successful G20 summit last week, Conservatives - both MPs and commentators - have been struggling to come up with a vaguely credible response. One that David Cameron, and former Tory MP and now Times columnist Matthew Parris have been floating is to, through gritted teeth, concede that the Prime Minister succeeded in achieving results for the world, but somehow not for our own country.

Mr Parris, in an article on Saturday called The world is saved. But what about Rotherham - and presumably he didn't pick Rotherham because it's the hometown of Putney's Conservative MP - attempted to make this case.

This is either a really dumb, or a really obtuse line of argument. There is no-one credible who does not recognise:

1) that this is a global recession and
2) that its origin was the US not the UK

That being so, anyone who tries to then claim that sorting out the problem the world is in will somehow not benefit our own economy is ridiculous. The Conservatives want you to believe that Gordon Brown's international leadership is responsible for making our own economic difficulties worse.

To me, that's a strange argument to attempt when at the same time the Conservative response to the recession is to stand aloof, do nothing to shore-up our economy, keep people in jobs and their homes while at the same time cutting taxes, as Labour has done in a big way only this week.

I send out hundreds and hundreds of surveys to local people every month and recently I've added a question about whether Putney, Roehampton and Southfields prefer Labour's intervention or the Conservatives' argument that we should avoid spending in order to keep future public debt lower.

I have to say that - overwhelmingly - people are telling me that they prefer the government not to walk by on the other side when British people are in trouble. And these surveys are from a representative sample of Putney voters: it's not just Labour voters who are telling me this. The Conservatives have got it catastrophically wrong on this issue - and this issue is THE issue people will be voting on at the next General Election.

If you want to learn more about why the G20 Summit was a success there's a 1-sided A4 briefing here.

4.5 million more Mums and Dads to benefit from new flexible working rights

From today an extra 4.5 million parents of children aged 16 and under will be able to request flexible working from their employer. This is in addition to the six million parents and carers who already have this right.

Children don't stop needing time with their parents when they reach their sixth birthday. This is why Labour has changed the law to extend flexible working rights to parents of older children. New research shows half of working parents (51 per cent) say their relationship with their child would improve if they could work flexibly. Working parents often struggle trying to balance the needs of work and family ? by extending this right Labour is offering more help to often hard pressed working families

95% of all current requests for flexible working from parents and carers are now accepted, as employers increasingly recognise the benefits to them as well as their employees.

22 million people £440 better off - from today

Today, 6th April, is the day most of the tax changes introduced in last year's Labour Budget and Autumn Statement kick in.

The headline figure is the increase in personal tax allowance which benefits every single basic-rate Income Tax payer (22 million of us), which instantly has put £440 back in our pockets.

But there are other major increases too: pensions go up £4.55 and the minimum income guarantee for pensioners rises to more than £124 a week.

For families the changes are significant too. As well as introducing a new grant of £190 for expectant mothers to help them eat more healthily during their pregnancy, Child Benefit has already risen to £20 a week for the first child. Child Benefit has almost doubled since Labour was elected. And Child Tax Credits now benefit families by £2,235 a year.

The table above - which if you click on it enlarges - shows just how many of us benefit from these changes.

The Conservatives derided these changes - along with the £5 a week VAT cut - as not providing the slightest bit of help for our country. I don't see how anyone can begin to argue that £440 back in people's pockets means nothing; but then I don't really understand how the Conservatives opposed giving basic rate taxpayers £440 back while calling for Inheritance Tax cuts for just the richest 8% of families.

If you don't think there's a difference between Labour and Conservative politicians, then do look again at the stark contrast between what Labour is delivering and what the Tories would take away.

Out and about on the Lennox estate and Woking Close

I've spent the past week talking to residents of the Lennox estate and Woking Close, with the help of a large - and growing - campaign team of volunteers.

These are two estates at the top of Priory Lane by Upper Richmond Road, right on the edge of Barnes Common and East Sheen.

A huge range of issues were raised including the visibility of the Roehampton Safer Neighbourhood Police team; problems with public transport and traffic congestion in the area; homelessness and unacceptable overcrowding caused by the council selling off half the affordable rented homes locally without replacing hardly any of them; and the usual, valid complaints about the poor quality of estate cleaning by the Conservative Council's bargain-basement contractor.

Curiously enough, the moment word got round that I was about to spend a week talking to people in the area the Conservatives showed up - a coincidence no doubt. If my visiting an area is what it takes to get the Tories to take an interest in it too all well and good - it's the residents that will hopefully benefit. But yet again we see the stark contrast between my local leadership and the Conservatives following along behind.

Over 4,000 different visitors in March

stuartking.net was visited from 4,114 different sources in March - the first time we have broken through the 4,000 barrier since my stand against the impact of the 10p tax rate abolition drew national attention last year.

Those 4,114 unique visitors made 7,362 visitsand looked at 20,782 pages.

Some of the most popular links this past month were my formal objection to the Tileman House planning application; the plans by Thames Water to build a Tideway Tunnel across London; work commencing on making Southfields tube a 2012 Olympic station and the Putney Paper archive.

More and more of you are signing up to my fortnightly e-news bulletin which, among other things, highlights the stories I've been writing about on this site and is a handy way of keeping in touch.

BREAKING NEWS: TILEMAN PLANS WITHDRAWN

Residents: 3 - Overdevelopers: 0

The developer of the controversial and unpopular Tileman House site has withdrawn his planning application for the site.

This is great news - provided that the developers have withdrawn it because they have heard the local voices about their plans. But if they are hoping the objectors will fade away or be worn down by drawing out this application they won't succeed.

So that's:

• Putney Place - plans rejected
• Ram Brewery - plans called in by our Labour Government
• Tileman House - plans withdrawn

Let those who believe local action doesn't make a difference see that it can.

Tory rent rises, Labour rent reductions

Primary school success

Many Putney residents will have seen that one of our local primary schools, Our Lady of Victories in Clarendon Drive, came fourth in the entire country in the just-published league tables of 11-year olds' Standard Aptitute Test scores.

And another less-heralded but arguably more impressive achievement was that of the Alton School in Roehampton, where the average SAT score more than doubled from just 40% in 2007 to 87% in 2008.

Beyond that local success, however, from the coverage these results generated in the media, you'd think we had an illiterate, innumerate and generally failing school population.

Let's be clear from the outset: one single child leaving primary school not having mastered reading, writing and arithmetic is one child too many - and 25% shows how far we still have to go in creating the education system our children deserve.

But here's the thing. In 1997 when Labour was elected, just 53% of pupils were leaving primary school with sufficient mastery of the key subjects. Today it's 73%. And because statistics are meaningless let me convert that difference into a real number: 120,000 more pupils left primary school last year having attained or surpassed the required level for 11 years olds than did so in 1997.

The other key figure from yesterday's figures is that the gap between kids who qualify for free school meals (a key indicator of deprivation), and those who do not, narrowed again. In 1997 those who did not qualify for free school meals did 26% better in English than those who did. Today, that gap is 19% - again, still too high but on the right track.

The Conservatives have come out with plans to force any child who doesn't reach the required SAT score at 11 to repeat that year at primary school rather than progress to secondary level with their mates. Aside from being cruel and stigmatising, I genuinely prefer Labour's approach of targeting extra resources towards pupils struggling to achieve while they're still at primary through schemes like Every Child's A Reader.

Building our childrens' confidence in learning up seems to me to be a far better way than holding them back in the hope they can be shamed into learning the skills they need to progress to secondary school. My aspiration is that in due course many other Putney, Roehampton and Southfields primary schools will be challenging Our Lady of Victories for a top spot in the school league tables.

Whitelands parking perversity

I've written before about the crazy decision by Wandsworth Conservatives to give permission for over 100 homes on the Whitelands Park development off Sutherland Grove without a single parking space for their residents. The point was also made in a Wandsworth Guardian story almost exactly a year ago.

But now the Conservatives are about to create a whole lot more trouble for residents of Whitelands Park because they're planning to introduce a controlled parking zone in Sutherland Grove, Combemartin Road and Skeena Hill, the nearest "free parking" streets in the area.

So in a few weeks time, residents of Whitelands Park will be denied a parking space in their own development and will be banned from parking in the street closest to their home. And to add insult to injury, the Conservatives have rounded things off by refusing to even consult Whitelands residents on the parking scheme that will directly affect them.

The homes denied parking spaces on Whitelands are mainly for key workers: people like nurses, police officers, ambulance medics, firefighters, teachers and council workers, all of whom do a fantastic job keeping London a world class capital. What's common among most of these professions is a need for shift work: leaving or returning home in the early morning when trains aren't running and bus services barely functioning. In short, many of those the Conservatives are denying parking spaces to are the people who actually need and depend on a car.

Whitelands Park is a 20 minute walk from Southfields tube. The only bus routes close by are the 39, 493 and 170; none of these modes of public transport operate 24-hour services. This area is classified as having poor public transport accessibility at the best of times.

The Conservatives have messed up gravely over Whitelands Park - to the extent that they have since changed their policy in this area so that these errors will not be repeated in future developments in the borough. But instead of seeking to mitigate their mistake the Tories seem hell-bent on making it worse. Fairness dictates that they must let Whitelands Park have its say on this parking zone; and if the Conservatives want to press ahead with it the least they should do is provide some facility for Whitelands residents to park somewhere near to their homes.

I hardly think this is unreasonable. The Conservatives do. Worrying, isn't it?

Cutting Council rents

I've received dozens of complaints from Council tenants these past few weeks upset about the huge rent increase the Conservatives have brought in.

Despite it's low tax image, Wandsworth in fact has the second highest council rents in London and year after year increases them by inflation-busting amounts. In fact it's increasing charges for communal heating systems by a shocking 15.6% this year.

I find it perverse that the Conservatives are cranking up rents for council tenants - many of whom are on fixed and low incomes - while at the same time demanding more help from Government.

That's why I hoped Wandsworth would leap at the news that our Labour government is providing funds to halve the rent increases being proposed nationwide. The average rent increase in England this year is 6.2% - with Labour the increase will be reduced to 3.1%.

But Wandsworth Conservatives don't seem to want to pass this money onto tenants. When I wrote to the council in February to check that they would be taking the money and cutting rents for local residents the best I could get was a "we're waiting for more information."

What an incredibly underwhelming response, that will be of very little comfort to hard-pressed council tenants. The facts are these:

Each autumn, after consultation, the Government publishes formal guideline rents so that Local Authorities know where they stand on Government subsidy on the housing funding system. Authorities are then free to make their own decisions on the actual rent level to set in their particular circumstances. Many authorities choose to set actual rents below the guideline figure. Wandsworth is never among them.

Last year, the Government was pressed to give authorities greater financial certainty and responded by giving guidance for two years rather than one ? which authorities appeared to welcome. However, since recent major changes in the economic situation, the Government has agreed to reconsider the 2 year deal. And this is the result.

I want Wandsworth Conservatives to stop squeezing Council tenants until the pips squeek. It's time to pass on Labour's rent cut.

Free cancer prescriptions from today

As well as the introduction of free swimming for over-60s and under-16s which begins today, I want to flag up three extra Labour health initiatives that take effect today too.

The abolition of prescription charges for cancer patients

...available to anyone who is undergoing treatment for cancer, the effects of cancer, or the effects of cancer treatment. This should benefit up to 150,000 patients already diagnosed with cancer.

Free NHS Health Checks for everyone in England aged between 40-74

This is part of a national programme to identify people?s risk to heart disease, stroke, kidney disease and diabetes. The preventative checks programme will be fully implemented by 2012/13. It is up to local NHS trusts like Wandsworth's to decide how the checks will be delivered; but they're likely to include GP surgeries, health centres and pharmacies so that as many people benefit as possible.

All NHS trusts offer MRSA screening

This will allow the NHS to reduce the chances of patients getting an MRSA infection, or passing MRSA onto another patient.

Today is April Fools Day, but just as swimming is now free for under 16s and over 60s, these are three practical measures that are no joke: they'll make a real difference to hundreds of thousands of people the length and breadth of the country.