Moving location of Blog

This will be the last post on this site. To follow the conversation, go to www.letstalkmitchamandmorden.wordpress.com Thank you for following my blog on this site - and I hope that you will continue on the new site.

Stand up for autism

I have been contacted by a number of families regarding the NAS campaign which I am delighted to pledge my support to.

Despite one in every 100 people living with autistic spectrum conditions (ASC), there is still a great lack of understanding and awareness of these conditions. This is not just a problem in mainstream society, but as a National Audit Office report showed last year, in the very agencies that are supposed to provide support to people with autism and Aspergers. Indeed, this report highlighted that the very people who are expected to diagnose ASC have very low awareness of the spectrum and need additional guidance and training in order to treat people with autism more effectively.

Liberal Democrats recognise that our health and social care infrastructure is insufficiently geared to support people with developmental conditions such as ASC at present. All too often the costs of treating someone are shunted from one organisation to the other on the basis of budgetary considerations rather than what is in the best interests of the person living with autism.

This is one of the reasons why Liberal Democrats propose the integration of health and social care. We will require, by law, that Local Health Boards and Social Services Authorities develop and commission joint services and to establish joint budgets. By bringing health and social care together into one board or local authority, with one administrative hierarchy rather than several, we can provide better support to people living with ASC.

Answering the Climate Question

A number of people have written to me about the issue of climate change. Our manifesto has a green thread running through it - with green policies identified in each chapter. In fact this has been the case for some years now.

Below I set out some answers to the Climate Questions I’ve been asked.

Liberal Democrats would set a new UK target for greenhouse emissions of an over 40% reduction by 2020 with no offsets and a 100% reduction by 2050 with only 10% offsets. To achieve this target we will:

• Meet the EU 15% renewable energy target and meet our own target for a 30% energy efficiency saving, relative to 1990 levels, and make sure 40% of UK electricity comes from renewable sources - all by 2020.
• Introduce a UK emissions Performance Standard to ensure that new coal-fired power generation plants use full carbon capture and storage technology (CCS), with a CCS regime phased in for all industrial emissions from 2020.
• Implement the largest expansion of the rail network since the Victorian Era and undo many of the cuts made by Beeching. And to the question - how will we pay for this - it will be paid for by redirecting money from the major roads budget.
• Invest £140m in a bus scrappage scheme to replace old polluting buses with new low carbon ones.
• Begin a ten-year programme of home insulation and make sure every new home is fully energy efficient by improving building regulations.

We will protect the poor from the impacts of climate change and help developing countries curb their emissions. We will do this by:

• Providing finance for adaptation in developing countries - I saw an example of these sorts of projects when I met Oxfam recently.

Looking at how we tackle international climate change we will:

• Ensure any new international agreements are based on the best scientific evidence concerning climate change.
• Ensure that greenhouse gas emissions peak no later than 2015.
• Commit industrial countries to reduce their emissions by 40% over 1990 levels by 2020.
• Phase out fossil fuel and industrial greenhouse gas emissions by 2050
• Argue for an international target of zero net deforestation by 2020
• Support a new system of payments to developing countries to enable them to reduce deforestation
• Adopt a new law making it illegal to import or process timber produced illegally.

Colliers Wood RA

Thank you to the Colliers Wood Residents Association for organising the hustings on Tuesday this week. It was well attended and we had some interesting questions. I went with Liz Barker, one of our candidates for the local election. It was billed as an opportunity for the RA to meet candidates for the local election, so the focus of questions was on issues directly affecting the Colliers Wood ward.

I would like to see us making more of our local heritage here in Mitcham and Morden. Peter Hardy, our candidate in Lavender Fields ward, has raised it as a personal concern of his too, and Liz made the point in her introductory address at the meeting this week.

I feel strongly that we must do more to invest in our heritage. I will be campaigning for resources to be made available and for local plans and policies to put protecting our heritage at their heart.

Nursing Counts Campaign

Thank you to everyone who has been in touch with me about this campaign. I am pleased to support it.

Liberal Democrats believe that when it comes to improving NHS services it is important that we listen to those who work on the front line. Low staff morale is a big problem in today’s NHS because many people feel they have not been listened to. We believe that professionals like nurses, are best placed to know the day-to-day needs of patients and the hour by hour demands on staff.

We will give power back to nurses by giving them control over budgets and greater responsibility for running their own wards and units. Ward sisters and charge nurses are vital to hospital nursing and ensuring high quality patient care. Lead nurses should have responsibility for ensuring that wards are clean, patients are being fed and looked after and that staffing levels and equipment is up to scratch.

We will also give every NHS staff members that chance to vote on whether their hospital trust should become a wholly owned employee trust. NHS staff members would be trustees of their hospital and its assets for future generations. As co-owners, they would have greater control over the services they provide and shape the hospital’s future.

As part of our plans to radically decentralise the NHS, we are proposing elected health boards. Under this system it would no longer be appropriate to retain Strategic Health Authorities in their current form. This would mean that responsibility for planning tertiary services such as specialist medical units which cannot be provided in every area would move to a new light touch regional body made up of representation from local health boards. This board would also be responsible for staff training, education and workforce planning.

The NHS is one of this country’s greatest achievements, but it has become far too focussed on treating diseases rather than preventing them. While our nation’s health should be improving, alcohol, smoking, obesity, bad diets and lack of exercise means that for many it is getting worse. The long term costs of us failing to tackle this public health issue would be enormous. We will encourage the NHS to work with local communities to help tackle the public health problems and provide facilities and services to help people improve their health.

We also want to expand access to programmes of screening for cancer and other chronic illnesses. We will ensure that public health spending isn’t cut in the years to come by making savings elsewhere in the NHS and recycling the money to this vital element of care.

Three out of every five people aged over 60 in England have a long term condition. We believe that in a fair society, people suffering from long-term conditions should know that they can rely on the NHS. Whilst the NHS has received high investment over recent years, we believe that too much has been consumed by bureaucracy at the expense of frontline services. To ensure that frontline funding is maintained in the current tough economic climate, we will cut waste on quangos, bureaucrats and top-level pay and re-invest every penny to protect services that are under pressure. These include mental health provision, cancer, maternity services and dementia care.

Travel operators must not cash in on stranded passengers

A friend of mine came over from Canada two weeks ago. Having spent some time taking a colleague round the sights of London and beyond, he then spent time with his parents on the east coast, and his stop off to me was for a quick meal, the night before his return to Toronto. Had his plane left before noon, he would be back at his office desk by now, but his flight was scheduled for three hours after the closure of Heathrow last Thursday. He is at least fortunate that he has somewhere to stay and today he is seeing if he can work from his company’s London office until the problem passes. I understand that current estimates suggest that a change in the weather is not expected until Friday - so it looks like he has another week in the UK. But for many people, things are more difficult. I heard last night that another friend is stuck in Crete and there are people around the world who are unable to get home and facing considerable, unplanned costs.

British Embassies in every country must act as a point of contact and information for those travelers who are stuck. Ministers need to talk to train and ferry companies to find out whether extra services can be put on to bring people home. Further, when services resume, train and ferry operators and airlines must behave responsibly and not use this as an opportunity to cash in on travelers desperate to get home.

I agree with Nick

The leaders’ debate has certainly shaken things up a bit. Nick Clegg was put ahead on the night and since then, polling has shown our campaign gaining momentum. The soundbite of the night must be ‘I agree with Nick’.

I met a gentleman over the weekend as I was out door knocking and he told me, he had always thought he only had a choice between Tory or Labour - since the debate, he’s seen that there is another option. Out in Mitcham town centre on Saturday, people were coming up to me and saying they were shifting their vote - I’ve had people wave across the street calling out that they are for us. Whilst campaigning in Surrey on Sunday, Nick Clegg said, “The opportunity is immense. A growing number of people are starting to hope, starting to believe a little door has opened.” He added, “The old parties, when they feel things aren’t going their way, they start lashing out.”

It is clear that both Labour and Conservative entered the election on the basis that they were the only game in town - I think that speaks volumes about how they view the voter and how they see themselves in British politics. For 65 years, they have been passing the keys of No 10 back and forth and it suggests an arrogance in both camps, that they think that this should just continue. This election is about more of the same with Labour and Conservative - or real change with the Liberal Democrats.