From the category archives:
Some residents will have heard that we won some money from the last (Labour) government to pull together a plan designed to step up the way local residents influence the way services are delivered locally. For those interested in tracking progress, I’ve posted the action plan below
Together at Shard End
An action plan for community cohesion
May 2010
{ 0 comments }
An argument I have rehearsed before is that the State and Society are not alternatives – they are partners. And if you want a fair society, you need a strong state. That doesn’t mean government can’t do more to support, nurture and build the strength of civic society. It must do much more. But pull away the state, and building strong communities gets much harder. Everything I have learned in Hodge Hill over the last six years has taught me that.
This week I penned a short piece in the Guardian on this question – marking the important publication of a Young Foundation report I commissioned on just how government can do more to build civic strength. You can get hold of it here. This is a challenge for political parties – hence the creation of Local Action Network, something Will Straw and others have written about this week.
{ 0 comments }
Below, the text of my remarks to today’s Scottish Economy Seminar, hosted by the Secretary of State for Scotland in Edinburgh.
{ 0 comments }
It was a great privilige to help launch Labour’s fight – and message – in Warwick today. Briefing the press together with the PM afterwards (below), my argument was simple. Only Labour is going invest in the jobs of the future with support digital technology and for low-carbon technology at firms like Jaguar Land Rover, and high speed rail which will revolutionise our regional economy. And only Labour is going to protect those public services especially schools and 16-19 training, that will giving everyone in our region a crack at getting those high skilled, better paying opportunities. The fight is on.
{ 0 comments }
Scores of people from across the constituency joined me tonight at the Blue Cross Church in Hodge Hill, for the first of my three community summits on the big issues for the election campaign.
Tonight’s debate was on public services – and some very, very clear themes emerged. First, contrary to the Tory plan to cut police officers, our residents wanted police protected with equipped with more powers, especially to tackle anti-social behaviour and drugs. We talked a lot about alcohol pricing too. The majority clearly want minimum pricing of alcohol in super-markets. But a substantial minority just backed tougher action against supermarkets selling drink to minors.
Second, people liked the idea of investment in schools, but wanted to see more discipline in the class room and backed the idea of getting more youngsters involved in community service. One excellent question was how people – especially retired folk – could volunteer to share their skills and mentor young people. A lot of residents backed my campaign for more school places. And some wanted to know how parents who had lived in an area for a long time could get preferential access for their kids at local schools (this from both Asian and white residents).
Third, we had a lot of issues about protection of services for the elderly (shades of today’s social care debate) and the need for more action on litter, illegal parking and the like.
Finally, we talked a lot about immigration and human rights – as we always do. They’ll be more on this from me in the weeks to come. And indeed my third community summit will take the issue on, head on. Last night, I was in Oldham with Phil Woolas, the Immigration Minister, to speak at his fundraiser. I’ll be hoping to persuade him to come down and join me.
Look out for the invite to my next summit – on jobs – landing on door-mats over the next 2-3 weeks. And if you can’t make it, keep the surveys coming. Literally hundreds are pouring back into my Hodge Hill HQ.
{ 0 comments }
So Alistair Darling launched the pre-Budget report today. Helping prepare the report has consumed almost all my time here at the Treasury over the last few months. Its argument is simple. This is a very careful balance; but if we make the right decisions now, we can lock in the recovery – with extra help getting young people into jobs – and then methodically take action to halve the deficit over the next four years, while protecting spending on frontline public services like Surestarts, schools, hospitals and police teams.
The report sets out upfront, in black and white, the difficult decisions we need to make on tax. And we show a fair way forward. Indeed half of our tax rises will be paid by the top 3% of so of earners. We also set out (on page 108-113) the difficult decisions we’re going to have to take on spending; indeed some £25 billion of efficiencies and cuts to lower priority programmes will be needed.
Now the Tories I hear, say pay down the debt faster. Well, to pay down the deficit by half in three years – rather than four- would mean finding £26 billion of cuts, or tax rises in 2012/13; that’s 5.5p on VAT (something Tories always raise). And what does it mean for average families? Here’s the Treasury’s breakdown.
Direct tax and benefit measures announced at PBR mean that in 2010-11:
* Households will be on average £20 a year better off
* 11 million households are better off; 1.7 million households are worse off
* Households with children will be, on average £50 a year better off
PBR and previously announced direct tax and benefit measures coming into effect in 2010-11 mean that in 2010-11, compared to 2009-10:
* Excluding the top decile, households will be on average £70 a year better off
* Across all households, 16.5 million households are better off; 1.4 million households are worse off
{ 0 comments }
So, we launched our command paper today, on re-organising government to protect the frontline. The basic message is simple; its a plan for driving public service standards up, and national debt down. Our starting point is higher standards. We want to give people guaranteed rights to high quality public services – like the right to see a cancer specialist in a fortnight, if you’re suspected of having cancer. Or the right to a good neighbourhood police team. Or one to one tuition for your child if he or she is falling behind at school.
With strong rights in place, we can free up the frontline of doctors, nurses, police and teachers to innovate – which means we can cut back on overhead costs at the centre; cutting the costs of the senior civil service by 20%; cutting £500 million from quangos; halving the consultancy budget; moving 10% of civil service jobs out of London. These sorts of changes can save us an additional £3billion on top of the £9 billion per annum we’re already targetting, over the next 3-4 years. The link to the document is here. Some of the coverage in the Times is here.
{ 0 comments }
I suspect some with be writing a bit about ‘Smarter Government’ this week. Before the main document is published, here are a couple of speeches that set the context.
First, my speech to the Institute of Government last month. It has a simple message; we should optimistic about the prospects for public services in the years to come. Yes spending growth will be slower; but we have built a store-house of strength in the last decade; a country of stronger citizens; a stronger frontline and a stronger civic society. Drawing on these strengths we can radically change the shape of state for the years to come.
Second, my speech on local public services and civic society, delivered in Birmingham on November 19th. It sets outs an argument for how our public services and community action must come together in a new coalition to change our country for the better in the century ahead. (above, two professors who have helped extensively with the thinking, Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt visit my Commons office)
{ 0 comments }
For some-one who has spent most of my life working in the technology field it was a vast, huge, gigantic privilige to chair this week’s seminar on Smarter Government with Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the PM at No 10. We announced that Ordnance Survey mapping and boundary information will be made freely available from next year – and you’ll see some of the new conclusions we’ve reached about how technology can transform the way government delivers in a few weeks. The No 10 story is here.
{ 0 comments }
Liam is the MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill, and Labour's Shadow Chief Secretary. Find out more...
