The choice on home repossessions

Ever more clearly, the differences between Labour's active intervention to minimise the impact of the recession and the Conservatives' do-nothing approach that caused such damage last time they were in power, are coming to light.

Home repossessions in 2009 were almost half the level they were in 1991 at the depth of the Conservative recession. And this despite last year's global recession being the deepest since the great depression. How dumb do the so-called experts who forecast similar repossession levels now look?

And this chart, which shows the numbers of repossessions for each year from 1990, as provided by the Council of Mortgage Lenders, shows not just the difference between 1991 and 2009, but the clearly better Labour record from 1997 onwards, compared to the Conservatives:


Does this figure mean anything? I suspect it means quite a lot to the 70,000 people still in their homes because of Labour management of our economy who would probably be out of them if the Conservatives had been in charge, replicating the do-nothing, care-nothing approach they took last time they were in power.

Losing your family's home is as traumatic as long-term unemployment. Anyone who has moved home knows how stressful it is when we make the choice to do so - to have it forced upon you, often through no fault of your own is even worse. So yes, I think half the number of repossessions matters - it matters a lot.

It's one reason why my campaign team and I are out on doorsteps every single day of every week calling on residents asking for your support - because there is so much at stake, and such a sharp distinction between Labour intervention and do-nothing David Cameron.

It's a truism to say that elections are about choices - but it's no less true because of it.

Dover House shops do better with Labour

Putney's Conservative MP is at it again!

In a recent report she's written: "I've worked with the Dover House shops on their local business concerns such as business rates..."

I'm glad she has, but do you think she told those businesses that if she gets her way they'll pay more in business rates? You see, she's campaigning against the current revaluation of business rates. But 81% of this parade will see LOWER RATES if the revaluation goes ahead.

The table above - which comes from Wandsworth's Conservative council's database of all borough businesses - shows every business in the Upper Richmond Road shop parade she's talking about. The ones in blue - four shops - will see their rates rise slightly under the revaluation. Seventeen will see their rates fall with savings of up to £3,500.

Isn't it a distinctly strange outlook for an area's MP to be campaigning to make life harder for local people? Yet that's exactly what Putney's Conservative MP is up to. I can guarantee this: I'm standing as MP to do the opposite - stand up for Putney and reduce business rates on the majority of shops in the Dover House parade.


Note: I've hidden the exact numerical amounts of rates each business will pay because that's commercial information they're entitled to keep confidential.

Our unemployment has fallen the most in London

From bangers to boilers

Well, maybe not boilers as antiquated as this one, but following the success last year of the government's car scrappage scheme, focus is turning to replacing old, fuel-inefficient, polluting and in some cases dangerous boilers.

Each inefficient boiler adds over £200 to household bills and one tonne of carbon to the atmosphere. Household carbon emissions dwarf some of the polluters some in the environmental lobby obsess about, like aircraft. 90% of these household emissions come from boilers.

Those modernising and upgrading their boiler through this Labour initiative will get £400 towards the cost of the new one. Money is available for up to 125,000 households to change initially - but with the car scrappage scheme, demand was so high that we extended it back in October.

In the pre-budget statement at the end of last year the government also announced that anyone who's gone to the trouble of generating their own energy - through solar panels, principally - and who channel surplus energy back into the national grid will from April get on average £900, which, with Labour, will be tax-free.

We're serious about tackling both our environmental and energy challenges; and saving you money in the process. Something which, during this cold spell, I suspect looks particularly appealing to many right now!

Unemployment falls in Putney: it'd be up under the Tories

The number of people claiming Jobseekers Allowance in Putney fell last month - not by much, but a local as well as national indication that this global recession is doing markedly less damage to jobs than the Conservative recessions of the 1980s and 1990s.

Those two Tory recessions were characterised by exactly the same indifference and lack of action as the Conservatives have said would have been their policy this time round too, had they had the chance.

Any of us would be crazy not to be at least a little concerned about the current levels of government borrowing but the spending has been for a clear purpose. First to shore up the banking system which was the source of this global disaster - because if banks had been allowed to go to the wall they'd have sucked down tens of thousands more businesses (employers) with them.

And second to make sure that anyone who does lose their job, or is struggling to find one, has a meaningful chance to get back into the employment market or at least to keep their skills and contacts competitive through training, internships and other opportunities.

Has it worked? Well I challenge any sceptic simply to explain how it is that during the Tory recessions - which in themselves were less severe than this one, unemployment skyrocketed and kept rising long after the UK had begun growing again.

Today, at the depth of the global recession, unemployment in Putney is BELOW what it was when Labour was first elected a decade ago - and that was in a period of significant economic growth. It is dramatically below what it was during the Tory recessions. And it's from a much lower base because of the huge effort - in contrast to the Tory years - Labour has invested in getting long-term, systemic unemployment levels right down. That's why we're starting from a much lower base than we did in the Tory recessions.

Who says politicians are the same? Under the Tories, we'd almost certainly have unemployment above 3 million by now - and rising rapidly. With Labour, Putney's working.

Lies and the lying liars who tell them

That's the title of a book written by US Senator Al Franken on the way some politicians tend to behave when campaigning.

I mention it because at the weekend I came across a Conservative leaflet that has been put about in West Hill ward. Just consider the key claims it contains:

The Tory MP is campaigning to cut the "rising number of burglaries across, Putney, Roehampton & Southfields"

I thought we'd comprehensively debunked this blatant lie only a few days ago - burglaries are down on every single measure in every single Putney council ward - but no, the Conservatives press ahead with the lie presumably in the hope that they can scaremonger their way to victory.

The Tories then claim that Putney now has "fewer arresting officers in Wandsworth than 1997". Again, official figures show the opposite. Today we have 617 Police officers (that's excluding Community Safety Officers) in Wandsworth according to the Conservative-run Metropolitan Police Authority. In 1997 we had 596. 617 is more than 596. So again, the Conservatives are lying.

And the lies don't stop there. Despite getting their fingers burnt when they falsely claimed that business rates in Roehampton were on the rise - when the fact is that the vast majority of Roehampton businesses are about to get their rates cut, they've done exactly the same thing in West Hill.

I count 33 West Hill businesses that are having their rates cut - and that includes EVERY business in the four main West Hill ward shopping parades: Beaumont Road, Montfort Place, Wimbledon Park Road and Inner Park Road. Only 9 face increases. The source of my figures? Conservative-run Wandsworth Council. 33 down, 9 up. So another Conservative lie.

Here's the thing: a confident, outgoing and self-assured party that believes it has the facts on its side wouldn't have any need to misdirect, mislead, scaremonger or - yes - lie. Political parties only employ these tactics when they're behind, losing, on the wrong side of the facts or simply not smart enough to tell the truth.

The biggest compliment the Conservatives can pay to my campaign - and the loudest message they send to you, the voters, is when they lie. Because it shows they've nothing positive - nothing honest to say to Putney, Roehampton and Southfields.

Britain's not broken. The Conservative Party is.

Why the Tories want to cut Inheritance Tax

This story from today's Mirror, says it all, doesn't it? For all the Tory talk about learning from their dreadful mistakes in the 1980s and 1990s, about being a party that's now interested in ordinary people, and about restoring trust in politics among a cynical public - can you get a more cynical, elitist, selfish and greedy policy than the Tories' Inheritance Tax plan?

The only reason the Conservatives back this cut has nothing to do with making tax fairer - it's because the 4% of estates that would benefit from this tax cut just so happen to include those of David Cameron, George Osborne, Boris Johnson, William Hague and EIGHTEEN members of Cameron's shadow cabinet.

The remaining 96% of us will be paying for the Tories' tax holidays - in fact any average family with children, earning more than just over £16,000 a year, will end up paying more than £1,000 a year extra in tax under the Tories because of their plans to withdraw tax credits.

So if you think taxes should be levied on the poor to benefit the richest 4% vote Conservative.

If you don't, vote Labour.

Equitable Life: resolution in sight?

A few days ago the government made two important announcements about compensating the victims of the year 2000 collapse of life insurance company Equitable Life (EL).

The collapse of Equitable Life caused considerable hardship for a number of Putney residents. In some ways it was a forerunner of some of the financial institutions that ran into problems in the recession: when their over-exposure in the market meant that their liabilities massively exceeded their assets and they were unable to continue trading.

The first announcement was that the ex gratia payments scheme the government is organising for those who've experienced losses will be extended to cover those who took out policies after 1991.

That date is significant because it is the date the Penrose Enquiry that investigated the collapse found to be the time when a failure of regulation could have begun misleading investors as to the financial security of EL.

The second announcement is that the Government has asked Sir John Chadwick, the expert who the government has asked to design the ex gratia payment scheme, to report by the Spring. This is significant, because when the Parliamentary Ombudsman investigated the debacle, she came up with a scheme that, while potentially more generous to those who could prove their hardship and that this was the result of the failure to regulate, would have taken nearly three years to administer. Crucially, the government's ex gracia payments will place less burden on individual policyholders and therefore enable them to get some recompense sooner.

The Government has always had to balance the demands of those who have lost money in this collapse with the wider interest of taxpayers who, were 100% compensation to be paid would be exposed to a liability of up to £1.5billion when it was principally the failure and mismanagement of a private business that generated these staggering losses.

That's why it's taking far longer than anyone - particularly those who have been hardest-hit by the Equitable Life disaster - would like to sort out. The Government does not hold the information needed to implement a payment scheme and so has asked Equitable Life to make available their detailed policyholder data ? some two million records.

Of course, any payments that do not fully compensate Equitable Life policy holders is not going to be viewed entirely favourably by them. That's why there have been court cases as well as the two inquiries by Sir John Penrose and the Parliamentary Ombudsman. But no government, Conservative or Labour, was ever likely to pay 100% compensation. As far as I know, the Conservatives haven't actually announced what they would do to help policyholders. It's time they stopped being disingenuous and, if they disagree with our proposed solution, tell everyone what they would do differently.

While we wait for the opposition to say something concrete, there is a moral obligation for government to act, and I'm glad we are taking the action needed to get the best resolution for policyholders and taxpayers alike. It won't please everyone, but this is such a calamity that it was never going to.

Click here to read the parliamentary statement Liam Byrne MP, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, made to the House of Commons on 20th October.

More Putney businesses pay less from rate revaluation

My team and I have been sifting through all the Business Rates data following our discovery that Putney's Conservative MP misled people about the changes in her Roehampton newsletter.

The reality is even more disturbing - suggesting that she's presenting the wrong figures across the entire constituency.

Excluding phone masts, advertising hoardings and car parking spaces* which are liable for business rates but not businesses themselves 1,021 Putney, Roehampton and Southfields businesses are going to have their business rates cut; 899 are going to see them increased as a result of the revaluation.

The majority of Putney businesses will pay less after revaluation.

Doesn't sit easily with the Conservative scare-stories does it?

It's also the case that the vast majority of both falls and rises are small. 208 of the increases, and 287 of the decreases are of 5% or less.

There are some big winners and losers here in Putney - as anywhere else - and I'm not going to repeat Miss Greening's mistake of over-claiming or mispresenting the facts. Some businesses are facing large increases in business rates through revaluation, and no doubt for them, this will make life much more difficult. But more are facing business rate reductions - of up to 67% here in Putney, and for them, that's clearly welcome. The issue is simply whether it's fairer to use old, out of date information as the basis for business rates or new, up-to-date records that take account of where things have got better and worse.

Business rates need to be reviewed because that is the fairest way of levying taxes. It's never going to be popular - not because it's unfair but simply because none of us enjoying paying tax, especially if we end up paying more as a result of a revaluation.

Piling taxes on the most struggling parts of Putney, Roehampton and Southfields isn't fair and it isn't right. That's what Miss Greening is campaigning for - that's what the Conservatives stand for.

*For those of you who want to know the complete data set including phone masts, parking spaces and hoardings, it's 1,035 increases, 1,152 decreases - still more winners than losers.

Greening campaign would push up Roehampton business rates

Businesses in Roehampton are struggling, but as anyone who knows Roehampton can testify, Roehampton was struggling long before the recession: and it's struggling precisely because it has been abandoned by its Conservative Council, Conservative Councillors and Conservative MP.

I've been campaigning on the decline of Roehampton Village for years - in the good times as well as the bad. I wrote more than two years ago about these problems when the banking disaster was unforeseen and the Tories were pushing for even greater deregulation of the banks. Where was the Conservative concern then?

At that time Threshers, two flower shops and three pubs had closed in the space of a year. The Conservatives' so-called regeneration plans for Danebury Avenue ignore Roehampton Village. In fact, the massive superstore they want to build - larger than Sainsbury's in Putney - will drive even more small local businesses out of business.

The Conservatives could have made Roehampton an enterprise zone whenever they wanted. They haven't.

They could have included Roehampton village in their regeneration plans. They didn't.

They could have made Roehampton a centre for start-up businesses. They won't.

They could have supported local businesses so that those that start-up don't close within a few months. They haven't.

Too often there has been an imaginary barrier created dividing Roehampton Village from the Alton estate. The Conservatives bear a large share of the responsibility for that divide by treating Danebury Avenue's shops differently to the village's. The reality is that they're in it together, for both national reasons and the disinterest of the Conservatives who represent Roehampton and run the council.

The only way to revive Roehampton is by supporting businesses throughout the whole of the area. The very worst thing that could happen to Roehampton right now is for the Conservatives to wallop more business rates on its shops and stores. Which is exactly what Justine Greening is campaigning for in trying to reverse the revaluation of business rates. Yet again, Putney loses out because its current MP would rather play politics and attack the Government, instead of do the right thing by local businesses.

Greening misleads voters on Roehampton business rates

Putney's Conservative MP recently had a newspaper in Roehampton delivered claiming that the area was badly affected by "large rises in the business rates tax". If you don't live in Roehampton, you probably got a variant of this story as it's a generic story the Conservatives have put in all their newsletters with just the odd road name changed to make them look like they're in touch with your area.

Unfortunately, they aren't.

You see, the claim that Roehampton has experienced large rises in business rates just isn't true - as Miss Greening could have found out for herself by just getting in touch with her own council's Director of Finance (as my campaign team did). So, either she deliberately published claims she knew to be false - or alternatively she's ignorant about an issue she's supposed to understand given her role as Shadow Minister for London. Which is it?

Here are three examples of how businesses in Danebury Avenue - the heart of Roehampton, are affected by the changes in National Non-Domestic Rates.

Roehampton Domestic Store, 47 Danebury Avenue:



Danebury Convenience Store, 53-57 Danebury Avenue:



The Right Plaice Fish & Chip Shop, 59 Danebury Avenue:



Justine Greening is shadow minister for London. Yet she doesn't even seem to know - or worse, perhaps does know and has deliberately misled people - about the impact of business rate revaluation on the most depressed part of her constituency.

Unfortunately, she has form in the misreporting of local facts and figures. Only a few weeks ago I had to point out how she was falsely claiming burglaries in Putney were up when, in fact, burglary rates have declined significantly locally.

Talking down Putney is bad enough. Not knowing what's happening in your own patch is inexcusable. And deliberately misleading voters because the facts don't fit your political point is an example of the tired and discredited politics we need to get rid of in this country.

Britain: second in world for innovation and entrepreneurship

Despite the continual talking down of Britain by the Conservatives and Putney Tory MP Justine Greening in particular, a new report by the free-market Legatum Institute finds that, surprise surprise, the UK is remarkably strong and robust.

Overall Britain comes twelth (out of 104) in the rankings which analyse a range of the factors that make countries competitive and successful: that's ahead of Germany, France, Italy and Japan to name but a few; and of our major competitors only just behind the US. And here's what they say about key aspects of our country:

Economic Fundamentals: "British inflation and unemployment rates are better than the global average, indicating a fairly stable economy...Foreign direct investment stands at 7% of GDP, showing the British economy to be an attractive investment opportunity to foreign investors.

So much for Conservative claims that we are, as a nation, over-extended, our (excellent) credit rating at risk and on the brink of being shunned by international investors.

Entrepreneurship and innovation: "Barriers to entry, in terms of number of procedures required to start a business, are very low in the UK. This is reflected in the fourth highest number of new businesses registering in the country in 2007...ICT goods account for a high percentage of total exports, ranking the country 12th, internationally, and 34% of exported manufactured goods are high-tech exports. The country devotes 2.3% of its GDP on R&D expenditure, placing it in the top 10 on both variables. The UK receives the third highest amount of royalties, reflecting successful capitalisation on the country?s intellectual property.

Social capital: "...Instances of charitable giving also ranked second highest, internationally. Over a quarter of respondents had volunteered time to an organisation the previous month, and 59% had helped a stranger, ranking the country in the top 30 on both variables."

Education: "British workers benefit from high levels of tertiary schooling, boosting labour productivity"

Health: "High life expectancy, low infant mortality, and a strong health infrastructure characterise the health care system in the UK"

Personal Freedom: "British society is characterised by a high degree of personal freedom and perceived tolerance of minority groups"

It's incredibly easy to forget in the drip-drip world of sensationalist tabloid news just what a fantastic country the United Kingdom is, especially when we have HM Official Opposition doing everything in their power to destroy our reputation at home and abroad and threatening to take us down an economic path not a single G20 country is heading.

This report hasn't been compiled by Labour, the trade unions or by Government, but by a global investment firm: hardly a firm likely to sugar-coat its findings because it's politically sympathetic to the Labour Party. But don't take my word for it: download the full report here.

Hat-tip to blogger Don Pasinski for drawing this story to wider attention.

George Osborne: wrong on recession; wrong on recovery

Do you really want to reward the bankers?

Several of the newspapers have begun to analyse who might make it into parliament after the next election - the parliamentary candidates in the most promising seats for their respective parties.

What they've found is that the more Conservative MPs who are elected at the general election the more bankers, city financiers and hedge fund managers - in other words the people responsible for the irresponsibility, greed and catastrophic misjudgement that tipped the world into recession a year ago. - will end up there.

Hardly the result anyone concerned about putting in place proper, tough regulation of our financial institutions would want, is it?

Boris Johnson thought he was being oh-so-funny when he, tongue-in-cheek referred to the City of London as a lepper colony at Conservative Conference. I wouldn't go quite that far because the City is going to have to bear as much responsibility in getting us out of recession as it had in getting us into it. But it's one think to make reparations for the damage they've inflicted on our country - and another altogether to be handed the keys to the Treasury.

Parliament will survive without yet more bankers. My question is whether the country will recover adequately with yet more of them in there? That's something only you can prevent.

Putney unemployment drops

Despite national unemployment figures showing a rise again - albeit a lower than expected one (as I reported here) - here in Putney in September the number of people claiming Jobseekers Allowance fell slightly.

This is certainly not the end of our economic problems - far from it - but what this may well show is that twelve years of Labour Government has weatherproofed Putney far better than was the case before then.

Unemployment here today, at the depth of this global recession is 30% lower than it was when we were elected to replace the Conservatives in 1997 - at the height of what the Tories themselves called a "golden age". That is something to be pleased about, even though our unemployment rate at just 3.5% is still 3.5% too high.

And should the Conservatives seek to dismiss my statistics, they ought to know that I am quoting from exactly the same research document Putney's Tory MP used to criticise the rise in unemployment of a few months ago - a publicly available House of Commons Library Research Paper available here.

Youth unemployment falls

Although unemployment increased again in the three months to August (figures out today show), unemployment amongst the young actually fell.

Don't get me wrong: levels of unemployment among young people are far, far too high - but what this fact shows, I hope, is that when I write about how committed Labour is to tackling this problem it's not just hyperbole: it's action that produces results.

I've written about the ways we've come up with to keep young people economically active throughout the recession, in stark contrast to the way the Conservatives chose to behave when they were last in government.

Any young person claiming benefit for six months is guaranteed a work or training placement and internships are being massively increased. That enables anyone who wants to get known within the sector they hope to gain paid employment from in due course to make contacts and get vital experience that will make them far more attractive prospects to potential employers.

Because these figures only go up to the end of August they don't include Labour's September Guarantee either - whereby every single 16 and 17 year old is guaranteed a place at Sixth Form, Further Education College or a Modern Apprenticeship. They don't, of course, have to accept such a place but for the first time ever a British Government has made enough places available.

Remember, even at the depth of this recession today, unemployment is 30% LOWER in Putney than it was when Labour was elected in 1997 - and that was during a period of economic growth. While rising unemployment concerns us all this 30% difference between Labour and the Conservatives as a massive change for the better - and it's because of the long-term improvement in our economic foundations Labour has laid this past decade.

What the experts say about the Tories' policies (part 2)

Will Hutton is Director of the Work Foundation, the leading research body on employment issues in the UK. A former editor of the Observer, he is also a successful author on economics and visiting professor at Bristol University.

On Sunday he wrote in The Observer about the Conservatives' economic plans.


David Cameron declared in his closing speech at the Conservative party conference: "Here is the big argument in British politics today. Labour say that to solve the country's problems we need more government. Don't they see? It is more government that got us into this mess." Not only his audience, but much of the media applauded this apparently killer point.

Except it is wrong. It wasn't the government that got us into this mess ? if what you mean by mess is an ugly recession, an unbalanced economy, profound uncertainty over recovery, grossly indebted consumers, disadvantaged communities hit hard again and a budget deficit of £175bn. What got us into this mess above all was the 30-year rise of Big Finance before which governments unfurled the white flag. Bankers used their power to bend the rules at home and abroad, to lend ever more riskily and supported by less capital, until, finally, a vastly overextended banking system backed by very little capital collapsed. The result is today's economic calamity.

There were many culprits in this story, but the damage stemmed from an obsession to keep government small and markets big. Thus, mergers that created banks that were too big to fail went ahead and their daffy mathematical models went unchallenged. We need to reform our financial system from top to bottom, but neither shadow chancellor George Osborne nor shadow business secretary Ken Clarke began to address this question. Their twin attack was on the state - Osborne's because it was borrowing too much, Clarke's because it was regulating too much.

But as a shadow minister quietly observed to me outside the conference centre, the Tories have a problem. The public now knows that markets fail. Without the injections of capital, liquidity and guarantees for both sides of the banks' balance sheets worth some £1.3 trillion, Britain would now be in the middle of a depression more shocking than the 1930s. To argue that government is the problem just a year after an event like that is intellectually bewildering. The charge against Brown is not that he did too much, but that he did too little. What was he doing allowing bankers to write the Financial Services Authority's constitution so that it did not "discourage the launch of new financial products" and avoided "erecting regulatory barriers" and "damaging the UK's competitiveness"?

The truth is that, as finance has proved, markets need governments. Entrepreneur James Dyson gave a passionate speech at the conference deploring the fact that Britain made so little and Tory shadow economic and business ministers echoed his complaint, talking enthusiastically about the need for Britain to make more, an argument he made eloquently in the Observer in February. Except the only new idea advanced to help, apart from vague talk about science, was the establishment of city technical colleges, a good concept but one alone that is unlikely to spearhead a "making things" revival. The problem for both the Tory and Labour parties is how, given debt-strapped public and private sectors, Britain is going to grow in the 2010s.

Some of what needs to be done is very congenial to Tory ears - low taxes to stimulate entrepreneurship, more competition and encouragement of small firms. But some of what is necessary they would describe as "statist" - creating a financial system capable of serving every firm from infancy to maturity, funding research, creating a network of institutions to disseminate technological opportunities into firms, proactively using public buying power to drive up standards, deploying regulation to open up markets, not to mention building the hard infrastructure. But what can't happen, as some businessmen despairingly confided to me after hearing more shadow ministerial hymns to small business and free markets, is to have a bonfire of controls and imagine the job is done.

The reason the budget deficit is so large is not because the government deliberately drove it up, as Cameron and Osborne argue. The main reason is that there has been a collapse of tax revenues because of the permanent loss of output caused by Big Finance and because, during 2009, the government deliberately decided on a time-limited boost to the economy. It is true that there is a structural deficit of around 6% of GDP which must be brought down eventually through some judicious mix of tax increases, a freeze on public sector pay and public expenditure restraint. But after credit crunches, governments have to be the spender of last resort because with the private sector on its knees, overall demand will otherwise shrink.

I suspect the shadow chancellor privately recognises this, refusing to reveal more detail until he actually has to make a budget next year - if he wins. He may be preparing to stay his hand as a deficit cutter if the economy looks grim. Yet the hysterical anti-government rhetoric does not allow him to admit that fiscal policy works as an economic stimulus and may be necessary if recovery falters.

But his appeal was to the Tory backwoodsmen and women who still love the good, old-time religion, along with the conservative media. It is a political and economic mistake, as both the politically marginalised American and Australian conservatives can testify. Cameron was at his most persuasive when he embraced the "Red Tory" agenda - reshaping the state to attack poverty and re-empower the working class. He even succeeded in winning a standing ovation when he declared that he wanted to lower the 96p marginal tax rate on a single working mother with two kids on £150 a week as her benefits are withdrawn so rapidly.

Here again, it is too simple just to say that government is the problem. The reason why there is so much desperate poverty in towns round the country as disparate as Bognor Regis or Bradford - and why generation after generation depends on benefit - is that there is so little local opportunity. One council leader I met dared openly to say the unsayable - there was no initiative on benefit nor incentive to work that could break the cycle of welfare dependency because there was no local worthwhile work. He had begun to think the best solution would be to move people to towns where there was opportunity. Irreversible de-industrialisation meant his community was sunk.

Yet this kind of solution requires government - government to build homes where there is work, government to help people move and government to do its level best to ensure that economic opportunity is spread fairly around the country. The Tory civic voluntarism of Cameron's speech cannot deal with structural problems on this scale. Red Tories are coming up with some interesting ideas for how to restructure government - I like Red Tory Phillip Blond's proposal to create employee partnerships within the public sector on the John Lewis model. The state may work better and more responsively to citizen concerns. But it won't be smaller.

I went to Manchester convinced that a Tory government was a shoo-in. I left thinking that while Cameron's party is plainly changing there is still a long way to go. Democracies aren't dumb. Too many of David Cameron's party - and some of his own ideas - are still locked in the 1980s. The state is not the enemy. Deployed correctly it is our friend. A few Red Tories have got this message. Cameron's regression will set him back, perhaps even costing him an overall majority in 2010. Labour still has a winning argument to make.


You can read more from Will Hutton here.

The choice on Tax Credits

What the experts say about the Tories' policies (part 1)

Professor David Blanchflower was the one member of the Bank of England monetary policy committee (MPC) that foresaw the crisis in the financial industry. He is now Professor of Economics at the prestigious Dartmouth College in the US.

On Saturday he wrote this article for The Guardian on the impact Conservative plans would have on bringing Britain out of recession. You don't have to take Labour's word for it - just listen to the experts.


We are in the midst of the worst recession most people alive have ever experienced, or will probably ever experience. It is already worse than the 1980s and it isn't over yet. The only comparison is to the 1930s (my parents, now in their 80s, can remember how bad it was). The monetary and fiscal authorities have so far managed to prevent a recession turning into a depression - but it still could, especially if David Cameron and George Osborne have their way.

Some people seem to think it is all over and have called an end to the recession. Far from it, normality is a long way off. It will take a very long time for output, employment and unemployment to return to pre-recession levels. As Mervyn King said at a press conference recently: "It's about levels, stupid."

The evidence is that financial crises are especially harmful and have especially long-lasting effects. Hence any recovery is likely to be slow and anaemic at best.

The simple lesson when you are deep in recession is that a serious policy error is to reverse stimulus too early, which then sends the economy crashing into a depression. This is what happened in the United States in the 30s. Monetary and fiscal policy were tightened before recovery was firmly established, which drove the country back into a deep recession at the end of 1937.

And this week into the current economic crisis stepped the Tories with their ill thought-out plans for (a lack of) recovery. Cut public spending here, freeze public sector wages there, reduce the benefits of the poor, raise the pension age, and so on. It was hard to see any group that stood to benefit from their proposals.

Lesson one in a deep recession is you don't cut public spending until you are into the boom phase. Keynes taught us that. The consequence of cutting too soon is to drive the economy into a depression. That means rapidly rising unemployment, social disorder, rising poverty, falling living standards and even soup kitchens. The Tory economic proposals have the potential to push the British economy into a death spiral of decline that would be almost impossible to reverse for a generation.

The debate at such times is not about big government versus small government. It isn't about moving this service from public to private sector because the private sector can do it better. The debate here is about maintaining levels of aggregate demand. In a deep recession the choice is: the government does it or nobody does it; it is public spending v no spending. You don't worry about paying off debt when you are at war: you have other priorities. Win the war first.

To cap it all, the leader of the opposition, in his speech to the Tory conference, amazingly discussed what he called option one - the possibility that the UK should default on its debt. Mr Cameron, you shouldn't even be raising such possibilities. It's exactly what markets want to hear from a potential leader - you have actually even considered defaulting on our debt? Unbelievable. Better to have said nothing honestly.

There was one bit of his speech I thought sounded like quite a good plan, which he dismissed. That was what he called his option two: "We could encourage inflation, which would wipe out the value of the debt, making it easier to pay off." Sounds like a good idea to me, and probably to you.

Moderate inflation would help all the people in negative equity; rising asset prices would certainly help, and are one of the stated purposes of quantitative easing. A few years of inflation, around 5% or so, would be a really good idea. Keep interest rates low for the foreseeable future, keep the stimulus going.

One possibility is to keep the Bank of England's inflation CPI (consumer price) target at 2% until there is any possibility of hitting it and then simply raise the target. Or perhaps replace the CPI with an index that includes house prices, which would have the same effect of allowing monetary policy to remain loose. We don't need the central bank to reverse policy too soon either. We need to create some inflation for a while.

Cameron concluded his speech arguing for his third option ? "for me the only option". He went on: "We must pay down this deficit. The longer we leave it, the worse it will be for all of us." Actually, wrong: the longer we leave it, in a recession, the better it will be for all of us. I personally would vote for option two and certainly would never even consider discussing option one.

You can read this article, and others by Professor Blanchflower here.

Labour: a new economy for all

Still want to stake our country's future on him?

Car scrappage scheme continuing

We've just announced at our Conference that we're going to extend the car scrappage scheme, where you can trade an old, polluting car in and get at least £2,000 on a newer, less polluting, more fuel efficient model.

When we first announced the scheme, the government set aside £300 million to fund it: expecting that to be enough to last until February next year. But the initiative has proved so popular that £227 million has been spent. So we've added another £100 million to the pot to guarantee that all who want to participate in the scheme can do so.

I've written before about the massive impact this Labour initiative has had: the car industry itself said that it's been responsible for growing our car market over the summer. Had the Conservatives been in power, they've said they wouldn't have tried the scheme: and without it the car industry would have shrunk. So with Labour we've kept the car industry going; kept car workers in jobss and improved the environment by getting thousands of more polluting cars off the roads. With the Tories, more unemployment.

The global verdict on investing to end the recession

The Pittsburgh G20 Summit of the twenty largest global economies ended yesterday. One of the big issues on the table was whether the world should continue what has become known as a "global stimulus" - government spending public money when the private sector is struggling -to bring the recession to a quicker end; or to follow the path the Conservatives say they want to take: immediate, savage cuts.

Well, the table below shows how the world's biggest economies split on this issue. On the left are the countries that think Labour's leadership is the right way to go, and on the right those who decided that the Conservatives know best on this issue. Really close split, wasn't it?

"So what?" you may ask. Well, I suppose it's possible that the Conservatives - alone - are right and everyone else, from left of centre governments like the US, Brazil, India, Japan, China and Australia; to right of centre governments like France, Germany, Italy and Canada; is wrong.

But it's not very likely, is it? If the Conservatives have got this - monumentally the biggest issue of the 21st century so far - completely, utterly, devastatingly wrong, how can they be trusted to get right the other big issues our government will need to address in the next five years?

Why we need Labour's September Guarantee

The chart above shows - in quite shocking terms - how the global recession has particulary damaged employment opportunities for 16-18 year olds in the UK.

The knowledge that this was how this particular recession was playing out was one of the reasons why Labour made the September Guarantee that I wrote about a few weeks ago.

In summary, we've guaranteed a place in Sixth Form, college or training/modern apprenticeships for every single 16 year-old school leaver for the coming two years. That's 55,000 more places - and it's the first time in our history that any government has guaranteed further education to every single 16 year old.

The entire basis of the political divide between Labour and the Conservatives on the recession is whether we should take the sort of action like the September Guarantee, or instead just shrug our shoulders and, to quote former Tory Chancellor Norman Lamont, just accept that this youth desolation is "a price well worth paying."

It isn't. It never was. It never will be. And it's beyond me how anyone in politics can think it could be.

Why won't the Tories promise to freeze parking permit costs?

Wandsworth Conservatives like to talk a lot about the toll the global recession is taking in Wandsworth and I don't seek for one minute to diminish the seriousness of the economic problems the Labour government is tackling.

But there's a rhetoric-reality gap between how concerned the Conservatives say they are about Wandsworth residents struggling to make ends meet, and what they actually do to help.

Last November, for example, just as the world was sinking into recession the Conservatives increased parking permit charges not by inflation; not by a few points above inflation but by an eye-watering 27%.

Local residents were, understandably, pretty cross about this inflation-busting Tory stealth tax and some of them petitioned the Conservatives to freeze parking permit costs for the next two years to go some way to making up for this massive increase. That's hardly unreasonable given that even across a three year period, inflation isn't going to come close to the 30% increase the Tories imposed last year. In other words the council will still be massively in profit from such a modest agreement.

But if you're a Conservative elected representative in Wandsworth you evidently feel differently, because on Thursday the Tories are going to say "no way" to this perfectly reasonable suggestion.

The only thing they're willing to promise is that there won't be any further rises later on this year! I should think not, given that the charges only came into effect at the very end of 2008. But what about come the end of 2009? I leave that to the Conservative Council's Director of Finance. In his report on the petition he says:

"It is not possible to give assurances about permit charges beyond then."

In other words: expect more stealth tax increases from the Tories to add to our financial challenges during this difficult time come December.

You can read the paper for yourself here.

The Tory scrapheap

Tory VAT bombshell

Car scrappage: boosting Britain's car industry

Tories' secret VAT plan

None of us enjoy paying tax. But in this country there has been a long-settled consensus that if taxes need to be levied they should at least be set fairly, so that those with more wealth pay a larger share.

Tax is one of the big issues that divide the two main parties. Conservatives - not just here but around the globe - they have a big preference for flat taxes that take the same percentage from all regardless of their wealth or ability to pay.

They're also for Value Added (or sales) taxes that again apply to all at the same rate irrespective of their income. And they tend to oppose taxes that result in people paying a greater share the wealthier you are.

A look back through history bears this out. It was a Conservative Government in 1973 that introduced VAT to the UK, it was a Conservative Government in 1979 that increased VAT from 8% to 15%; and it was a Conservative Government in 1991 that raised it to 17.5% and levied it on fuel for the first time, driving tens of thousands into fuel poverty.

And we now learn from the Sunday Telegraph that the Conservatives are considering raising VAT to 20% if they win the next election. We have on record already their opposition to the 50p Income Tax rate for the top 1%; their opposition to Labour's 2.5% VAT rate cut this year that has boosted our retail sector, and their one gilt-edged tax pledge: to abolish Inheritance Tax for estates worth £2million.

Conservative want to cut tax at the top end and raise it at the lowest end- but which will put the biggest hole in the smallest wallets. That's the Conservative tax policy.

This is a parody of fairness. It's immoral and saddles the least wealthy with an unfair tax burden. When those of us on the progressive side of the fence point out that the Conservatives haven't changed this is exactly the sort of thing we mean.

David Cameron believes in the same things the Conservatives have always stood for: cutting tax on the richest and so-called "trickle-down" Thatcherism - he just does it with a "call me Dave" grin on his face.

And he'll have the backing of Justine Greening if you vote for either of them.

As we emerge from the global recession, Britain will need to pay down our public debt. The Conservatives pretend this will be so much more difficult than it is precisely so they can lay the ground for the "inevitability" of a 20% tax rate.

It isn't inevitable. It's plain wrong. And it's typically Conservative.

Business confidence soars

The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) is reporting that business confidence has shown a stark rebound in recent weeks: more evidence, perhaps, that the worst of the recession is behind us.

Last time the BCC polled its members in the first quarter of this year, confidence was at -38. Today, it stands at + 2, as the BBC's Hugh Pym confirms in the screen capture from News 24 above. That boost in confidence is built on growth in both the manufacturing and service sectors.

You can read more on the BBC News website here.

Car scrappage success

The Labour Government's car scrappage scheme is having a real impact on helping our hard-pressed motor industry.

Although new car registrations continued to fall in June compared to June 2008, the rate of decline was much lower than it was in May. Over 176,000 cars were sold last month.

The government's scrappage scheme provides grants of up to £2,000 to trade in a car that's over 10 years old, which can be used towards a new car. The scheme not only helps the car industry - it also helps the environment because older cars are far less energy efficient and far more polluting.

Around 30,000 cars have been traded-in using the scheme so far. The most popular new cars being bought are Hyundai and Toyota.

The success of the Labour car scrappage scheme comes after ongoing evidence that the government's VAT cut - which was fiercely opposed by the Conservatives - has helped our retail sector. The Conservatives continue to claim that Government should not be intervening to mitigate the recession - despite all the evidence that measures like the scrappage scheme and the VAT rate cut work.

I'm certain that as the year rolls on and the worst of the recession is put behind us, it will become apparent to all just how wrong the Conservatives have been when it comes to tackling the recession. Not only are we now seeing evidence that Labour's intervention is working, but we have the evidence of the two Tory recessions of the 1980s and 1990s. As we know, during both recessions the Conservatives refused to step in and help those affected and families and communities up and down the country were devastated as a result.

The Conservatives need to admit they've made a massive mistake: spending now means a quicker return to stability and growth. That's what everyone, no matter who we support, wants. But only Labour has got right how to achieve that.

Mr Ten Per Cent

Yesterday the Conservatives finally admitted just how much they want to cut from our public services. Senior Conservative MP Andrew Lansley - the only member of the Conservative shadow cabinet who has been guaranteed a job in a Tory Government - has let the cat out of the bag, and revealed that they plan to make spending cuts of 10 per cent across the majority of government departments.

He is now on record as saying:

"We are going to increase the resources for the NHS, we are going to increase resources for international development aid. We are going to increase resources for schools. But that does mean over three years after 2011 a 10 per cent reduction in the departmental expenditure limits for other departments."

Andrew Lansley, BBC Today Programme, 10 June 2009

Locally, this could mean:

• Even less affordable housing being built for those wishing to rent;
• Cuts to the transport budget which threaten plans for a lift at Putney station;
• Cuts to the police budget, which will reduce the number of police patrolling our streets;
• An end to funding for the expansion of popular local schools
• Less Government grant to the council resulting in more cuts to services and increases in local charges

Justine Greening, Putney's "Miss 10 Per Cent", now needs to come clean with the people of Putney and explain where her party?s cuts of 10 per cent will fall.

The choice on keeping your home

David Cameron's "Age of Austerity"

The Budget in summary

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Inheritance Tax cut: Tories for it before they were against it...before they were for it again

Yesterday wasn't just Mother's Day; it was also the day the Tories' economic credibility disintegrated.

The one and only tax policy the Tories had plucked up the courage to announce was their cut in Inheritance Tax for the very richest 4% of people.

I wrote about it here just a couple of days ago.

Then, on Sunday morning, Shadow Business Secretary Ken Clarke announced that this one tax policy was "no longer a priority".

He added: "I don't think we are going around any longer saying this is something we are going to do the moment we take power."



Then, on Sunday evening, he was told to issue a statement saying, in effect: "err, yes it is, and I didn't really mean what I said earlier." And just to underline that, a Conservative Pary spokesman added: "People should be clear that the promise we made on inheritance tax is a promise we will keep. It will be in the manifesto."

In other words, they support the policy except when they oppose it, but actually they still support it. Thanks for the clarification.

When they're having a bad day, what more could a Conservative want than for Boris Johnson to leap into the mess?

Here he comes, criticising his own party for refusing to reverse the 45% income tax rate Labour will be introducing next year on those earning more than £150,000; something he absurdly called a "deterent on enterprise". Ken Clarke told us exactly what he thought of Boris's view on that: "plain wrong" is how he put it.



Former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once famously said: "You turn if you want to. The Lady's not for turning." A quality the Conservative shadow cabinet has evidently not inherited.

Every time the spotlight falls on a Tory policy it crumbles into dust. Mrs Thatcher had a soundbite for that too: "Weak. Weak. Weak."

I couldn't agree more.

How wrong can you be?

Conservatives claim they want to help ordinary families - yet their first priority is to give 3,000 millionaires each a tax cut worth £200,000 on average. That's what cutting Inheritance Tax for estates worth up to £2million does. It?s a policy that does nothing for 96 per cent of families in this country.

If they meant what they said about helping ordinary families then they'd drop their tax cuts for the wealthiest estates and instead they would support the £145 tax cut that Labour are giving to basic rate taxpayers; and the £5 a week the average household is saving from the VAT cut.

More evidence of the do-nothing Tories

On Sunday the Wandsworth Guardian website was headlined by the stinging criticism on local Conservative policies by a business leader, criticising the damage their do-nothing stance towards business was having.

Peter Pledger, Chief Executive of South London Business, which represents thousands of businesses across our area, compared the lack of interest in helping businesses claim grants and other related help in Wandsworth with the more engaged leadership of nearby councils.

Councils like Wandsworth should be stepping-in to help by making sure businesses claim every penny of Small Business Relief (SBR) and that they are aware of the Government's new access to credit schemes. These enable small and medium sized businesses struggling with cashflow because banks have been cutting back on credit to get help to keep themselves solvent udint the downturn.

The Guardian report also exposes one of the issues Labour councillors in Wandsworth have been concerned about - the Tory Council's reluctance to pay its debts promptly. Wandsworth is notorious for waiting until the last possible moment to pay its bills: a policy that earns the Council huge interest savings but which can be the last straw for businesses with cashflow difficulties.

The Conservative response to the latest stinging criticism from business of their do-nothing approach can only be characterised as pathetic. The best the councillor responsible for business could do was to come up with the statistic that over £1million of business rate relief (something businesses are entitled to anyway) had been claimed by over 1,900 Wandsworth businesses; a sum that amounts to less than £600 on average!

The Conservative do-nothing approach locally is exactly what they would repeat nationally if given the chance. You don't have to take my word for it when I highlight the Tory do-nothing policies George Osborne and Justine Greening keep arguing for: you just need to take a look at what Wandsworth Tories are already doing.

Or rather, what they're not doing.