I am grateful for the opportunity to hold this debate because, over the recess, a number of studies and reports have emerged that have analysed and cast doubt on some of the central claims of the coalition Government in respect of the impact of the Budget and the differential impact that the comprehensive spending review will have on the lowest-income households. All claims about the June Budget being progressive are now being dismantled, and the theme that the pain will be shared is proving to be clearly inaccurate. The refrain has been “We’re all in this together,” and that has been explicitly stated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The claim that the measures in the June Budget are progressive has been widely echoed by Government Members, yet that is clearly not the case. In challenging that assertion and asking further questions of the Minister, I am hoping that the Government will, even at this late stage, see sense and acknowledge the dangers that are implicit in a number of their proposals…………

Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster, Conservative)

Karen Buck (Westminster North, Labour)

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his comments. I will not shy away from it: there was internal debate within the Labour party, both in the run-up to 1997 and subsequently, on what reform agenda was needed and how it would be carried forward. As can be traced through numerous speeches in Parliament and elsewhere, I was not always in agreement with the priorities of either Tony Blair or Peter Mandelson. It is historically inaccurate to claim that the welfare state was not subject to significant reform throughout the 13-year period. One of the earliest, and fairly controversial, proposals was on incapacity benefits; it was voted on in 1998. The first clash that took place after the 1997 Government were elected was over lone-parent benefits. Housing benefit was subject to a number of changes. My hon. Friend Helen Goodman, who was a Minister at the time, will confirm that I beat a path to her door to exercise my concerns about what the Labour Government were proposing on housing benefit reforms, which I felt then and feel now were wrong, but which have been picked up on and exaggerated by the Government………

Bob Russell (Colchester, Liberal Democrat)

Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston, Labour)

……..

For example, why are the housing benefit changes, if they have to come in, being introduced in two stages next year? That is difficult for tenants and landlords to plan for. Surely it would make more sense to do everything later in the year after there has been proper time to prepare. Housing benefit has long been seen as a potential candidate for simplification through the creation of some sort of housing credit within a broader tax credits and benefits system, but the complexity that is now being introduced is likely to make that less achievable in the medium term, not more. A further example of complexity that Ministers are unnecessarily and inappropriately introducing into the system is medical testing for disability living allowance, a benefit that has nothing to do with a claimant’s medical needs………….

Lorely Burt (Solihull, Liberal Democrat)

Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland, Labour)

Maria Miller (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Disabled People), Work and Pensions; Basingstoke, Conservative)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Clark. I understand this is the first time that you have chaired Westminster Hall. You have done us proud and done a great job. I congratulate Ms Buck on securing the debate. As Bob Russell said, this is not the first time that we have debated these issues in this Parliament, and I am sure it will not be the last. However, it does give me an opportunity to set out, in a more measured manner perhaps, the impact of the policies that we are talking about as a coalition Government…………….

……

Our policies in that respect will do a great deal to alleviate some of the problems faced by pensioners. With regard to disabled people, perhaps I can clarify one point for Kate Green. It will not be a medical gateway that we introduce in relation to DLA. It is an objective assessment. I just wanted to put her mind at rest on that.

Click for debate.

On the flight I reflected deeply on the politics of what happened in Lebanon and my own reaction to it. Ruth Turner, head of government relations, had been seeing members of the PLP. These were not necessarily the uber-loyalists but people it would be risky to lose, people like Peter Hain, John Denham and Karen Buck. They were mainstream PLP people with links to the left as well as the right of the party and they certainly had their finger on the party pulse.

They were more frank with her than they would have been with me. They disagreed with the position on Lebanon, but that wasn’t their real point. They thought my reaction indicated a profound loss of touch, a failure of instinct, a decoupling of me and public opinion that they thought dangerous and, more than that, out of character. I had always been known as the politician with the sure touch, the one who could express the public’s thoughts and therefore shape them, the one who would sniff the scent of public opinion and follow it with a certain intuition. They felt I had lost that ability and with it what made me who I was.

Thatcher's ideology took people out of council housing and onto the insecure 'housing ladder'; Cameron too thinks the solution lies in the private sector

Word has it (or rather the BBC News website has it) that while out and about doing his rounds Davey Cameron made an impromptu declaration today that secure tenancies for council houses would be ended.

The argument is that you shouldn’t be able to stay in a council house if you can afford to pay market rents – move somewhere else. Fair point, you might say.

I guessed why this was being raised as soon as I heard about it. Why? Because it’s not the first time. Dave was confronted by a woman rightfully complaining about the shortage of council homes, which meant she had to sleep on a blow-up bed. This is truly terrible. But really Dave, is the solution to kick families around, and accept that such a great proportion of our people will live at the behest of private-sector landlords?

We must look to the housing benefit fiasco for signs of what is to come. The ConDems have capped this in an effort to save on the cash, much as this will by accepting that the state must be small in the housing sector.

As Westminster North MP Karen Buck argues:

[Poorer families] will be forced to move to the ever-reducing number of cheaper homes in cheaper neighbourhoods.  Even those hard-nosed Victorians recognised the importance of providing affordable homes in city centres, as the estates built by Octavia Hill, Peabody and the Sutton Trust testify. No more. Now poorer people must concentrate in poor places, leaving city centres to the better off, in an exercise in social engineering that would leave that great gerrymanderer, Shirley Porter, weak with envy.

So what’s to say the government won’t use fixed tenancies to do exactly the same thing? Council tenants in Camden or Westminster could, as the housing shortage develops further, be kicked out after being told they could afford to rent privately in Dagenham. My fear is that this policy too could create social ghettoisation and, as Buck suggests, gerrymander to the Tories’ advantage as places such as central London become the preserve of the rich.

We can of course trace this problem back to Thatcher. If she hadn’t introduced the right to buy council housing and stopped funding for council building projects we wouldn’t have the shortage of homes that exists today, and fuels the argument for fixed-term tenancies. But it wasn’t just Maggie: Blair, and unfortunately Brown until very late on, followed in her footsteps and didn’t see the calamity ahead.

I’m glad that the current Labour leadership contenders (apart from David Miliband) at least say they’re not of the same mould, and would encourage council housing building projects, but I really do find it difficult to imagine them taking action on this in government. There are too many things which Blair and Brown said they’d do which never materialised.

Finally, while I know I’ve lambasted means-testing on this blog recently in the context of the freedom pass, I think this could possibly work with council housing, and could be ideologically sound as well, due to the fact that council housing isn’t a universal benefit anyway, unlike the freedom pass and under-19s’ travel. Rather than simply kicking people out of their council houses if they can afford to move on, why not have them pay a market rent, allowing the council to fund the tenancy of someone on the waiting list. Circumstances do change.

Regional variation in rents could still be an issue here, however. As I stressed earlier, we don’t want the excuse that one has no business in a council house because one can afford to live somewhere else (regardless of where that might be). One of the greatest things about London is the social mix across areas, and despite the necessity of reform, any form of it seems to threaten taking us closer to breaking this down.

I’d like to hear others views – partially as I’m uncertain on this one myself – so feel free to comment below. There is one thing I’m very clear on, though. Most of the solution is in building council housing – not kicking people out – but we can’t ignore the hundreds of thousands of people on waiting lists. Cameron, like Thatcher, is arguing that the solution to the housing problem lies in the private sector, and the shortage of council housing is simply something we must accept and deal with. It is Labour’s job to prove him wrong.

Patrica Hewitt: Collecting a 'golden goodbye'?

LOVE ‘em or hate ‘em, the Tax-Payers Alliance do seem to be onto something with their moan today about the size of ‘golden goodbye’ resettlement grants paid to MPs as they exited Westminster at the recent election.

The TPA says the cash was paid out whether MPs were ousted by the electorate or decided to step down of their own accord.

The final bill, according to their calculations, to the public for the end of service payments amount to more than £10 million.

Now when you follow up on TPA stories, there is the occasional whine from press offices in different levels of government that it sometimes fuddles up the statistics after throwing in blanket Freedom of Information requests. But their familiar green spreadsheets usually cause a stir.

And in terms of familiar names from north London, the TPA claims today:

* Sion Simon (Lab), a former Primrose Hiller now linked to being a future Mayor of Birmingham, is entitled to £32,383 resettlement  grant.

* James Purnell (Lab), a man loved by the Islington Labour Party who used to live in King’s Cross, can have the same amount: £32, 383

* Dawn Butler (Lab), beaten by Lib Dem Sarah Teather in Brent, is also listed for £32,383

* Sir Keith Hill (Lab) – him from the housing debate in Camden a few years ago – is entitled to a bit more: £54,403

But among the local names on the list that will no doubt cause the most grinding of teeth by the TPA’s biggest sympathisers are two who featured in the Dispatches guns for hire investigation:

* Former health secretary Patricia Hewitt, who lives in Camden Town, is apparently entitled to walk away with £54,403

and * Stephen Byers, who lives in Hampstead, is down on the list for £64,766.

Grrrrrrrrr says John O’Connell from the TPA:”This vast sum of money will be frustrating for taxpayers, particularly after the expenses scandal. MPs should be aware that they are entering a contract with a fixed term – if they’re voted out it’s the end of the contract, not a redundancy. Besides, most of the MPs receiving this payment stood down voluntarily.”

Of course, in the time MPs are in Parliament they are not usually honing vocational skills and it has been argued they are disadvantaged in the job market when they come out as a result. But there are benefits too: natural networking opportunities and close experience of how Britain ticks. Their next stop out of Westminster is not usually the queue at the job centre and the idea of an election representing the signing of a fixed term contract is compelling.

But just don’t mention ‘golden goodbyes’ to Karen Buck, the Labour MP over in Regent’s Park and Westminster North – who many thought would herself be collecting a resettlement grant until she summoned an almighty and frankly impressive defence of her seat in Parliament from the threat of Tory Joanne Cash. When it was suggested that the scheme should be scrapped earlier in the year, she wrote to the Independent Parliament Standards Authority asking them to apply the brakes.

“The removal of any resettlement grant for sitting members will place real pressures on those without personal resources; those middle/ late middle age and those with long service who have little prospect of returning to a career that they left for Parliament,” Ms Buck wrote.

Later, she told Jamie Welham at  the West End Extra that, after her words had been digested as greed and self-interest by national newspapers, she wished she hadn’t have bothered: “For me this is about a principle. I am not motivated by money in the slightest and I think the term ‘golden goodbye’ is ridiculous. If resettlement grants are scrapped it will put people off from entering politics, and politics will solely be for the wealthy. We don’t have a vote on it and we don’t have a say on it but we are entitled to have a view about it. I wish I had never even bothered.”

So, hands up. Who thinks removing resettlement  grants will put people off entering politics? You won’t see many raising their arms down at the TPA offices.

Stroud, the head of the Centre for Social Justice think tank – hugely influential in Cameron’s Conservative party, sometimes said to have been behind around 70 of the party’s policies – drew controversy when The Observer last Sunday claimed she had set up churches which attempted to ‘cure’ gay people by praying to drive out their ‘demons’.Stroud responded to the allegations by issuing a statement denying that she believed homosexuality was an illness.Stroud was widely expected to win the Sutton and Cheam seat from Lib Dem Paul Burstow, but despite a 1.5% swing from Lib Dem to the Tories, Burstow held on to win with a majority of 1,608.It was one of a number of unexpected defeats for high-profile Conservative A-listers closely connected to David Cameron , with Joanne Cash – a close friend of the Camerons – failing to unseat Labour’s Karen Buck in Westminster North, and Shaun Bailey losing to Labour’s Shaun Bailey in Hammersmith.

ARE there any clues developing for what’s in store in Camden in the results in neighbouring boroughs? The Labour vote has been hard as you like in Islington South, Islington North and Westminster North.

* Lib Dem Bridget Fox beaten by Emily Thornberry by 3,000 votes. She must be in tears.

* Karen Buck wins with a 2,000 majority against Joanne Cash, who was meant to be a shoo-in.

* Jeremy Corbyn, never in trouble – but a win of around 12,000 votes.

No wonder people are sniffing a big win for Frank Dobson here at the Camden count. And what about Glenda? Has Labour done the impossible? If they win this, the Lib Dems and Tories will start to worry about who will run the council after the local papers are counted.

I mean it’s not as if at ward and constituency level it makes a difference here. Wives, husbands and partners of our local candidates are hardly talked about (..apart from Chris Philp’s wedding photo that has appeared on some of his leaflets, seen that?).

That said: there’s nothing wrong with a bit of public support every now and then from their nearest and dearest and the loving husband of the week award goes to Barrie Taylor, him indoors to Karen Buck, the under threat Labour MP in Westminster North.

At an election event last week, supportive hubby Barrie turned up proud as punch in a ‘Step Outside Posh Boy’, the spoof slogan first seen in The Guardian on April 1… Let’s not condone scrapping or owt, but – Biff! Capow! Thwack! – the twinkle in Barrie’s eye suggests David Cameron (said posh boy) wouldn’t stand much chance if electoral disagreements were resolved by pub fight brawling. Everyone, let’s step back inside.

They will be slugging it out in that constituency, one of London’s most intriguing, right up to polling day.

Arriving early I had the opportunity to catch up on City Hall affairs from London Assembly Member Murad Qureshi.  Murad and I are pictured with Camden Labour activist Diana Broad and my partner Chris Underwood.

Guest speaker, Foreign Secretary David Miliband, gave us a rousing speech with his trademark stringent intellectual analysis.  David’s contention that there are three myths we need to rebut – that Labour is going backwards, that there are no great causes left and that the Tories have changed – resonated with his audience.  I certainly know from my own experience in Europe that the Tories are still the hard right nasty party and that there are more than enough great challenges, reducing poverty and improving education to name but two.  It is also nonsense to believe that Labour is doing anything other than progressing, as the Prime Minister’s support for the Robin Hood tax shows.

The event was again compered by Mathew – I’m going to tell you lots of funny stories about Joanne “Cash for Questions” - Taylor.  Mathew is gaining such a reputation for being very good at doing this sort of thing that he’s now in demand by Labour Parties across London.  A special thanks was also given to Helen Hegarty who organised the whole show as she also did last year.  Helen did a fantastic job in ensuring everything ran smoothly- no mean feat with 150 guests and a celebrity speaker.  My personal thanks to the Phoenix Palace restaurant who put on their customary excellent spread.   

Karen rounded off the evening with a call to all of us to campaign as hard as we can, or even harder if we can manage it.  We know now that Labour has a strong fighting chance and it’s up to us to make sure Labour is returned to govenment in a few months time.  Karen is one of the most respected and highly regarded MPs in London and, I suspect, in the country as a whole.

Tributes were paid to Karen during the evening, in particular from three local government colleagues, Paul Dimoldenburg, Leader of the Labour Group on Westminster Council, Jane Roberts, former Leader of Camden Council and Lambeth Councillor Florence Nosegbe.  They will,of course, be candidates on the London Borogh elections due on 6 May.

We owe it to all our Labour councillors, to Ka ren and to the Labour Party to do everything we possibly can to make sure Labour gets back into government and wins for Labour in London.  The Tories may have Lord Ashcroft’s millions.  We have something far stronger – a real belief in our policies and our government and the will to win.

It is not for me to speculate as the Daily Mail and Conservative Home have done as to why Joanne is no longer a candidate.

My London office is in the same building as the constituency office of pictured Karen Buck Labour MP for Regents Park and Kensington North (there are boundary changes and a new name for the seat). I can exclusively reveal that Karen gets on famously with her party workers, indeed it is not going too far to say that many of them love her (politically of course). Karen has an excellent close working relationship with her constituency Chair Nilavra Mukerji. I confess I do not know which school her husband Barrie went to, but I am pretty sure it wasn’t Eton.

Karen unites all strands of views in her local Labour Party and has all her Parliamentary staff working in her constituency office not the House of Commons.

Having campaigned on many occasions in her seat both with and without Karen I know that her constituents appreciate all her work and that they can bump into her on the bus or tube.

I will be supporting Karen’s next fundraiser on 24th February. Contact me if you would like details of how to support one of the hardest working MPs, and ensure she returns to Westminster at the General Election.

Now I have no idea what MPs think. In their favour I do know they are asked to deal with a large voter caseload in their constituencies, play a part in the proceedings of the House, both on the floor and in all the other deliberations and hearings, attend to their constituency organisations, give talks and speeches and specialise in various areas.

For some reason they also expect to be able to live a private life .

But I do expect them to give some sort of response to contact either from constituents or on their specialisation’s. And by that I mean even an acknowledgement would be nice.

Andy Love replied a fortnight ago, but only to say he had written to various of the people I had criticised. Karen Buck has taken action to defend debtors in a number of ways, and quite bravely in political terms. But answer to me came there none.

Alistair Darling – well he might be busy, but he has a staff that deal with such things; but no answer from him. George Osborne you might have thought ready to jump at the chance to find a stick to beat this government with – but no response to me.

My biggest disappointment is the man who I have great respect for his clarity and understanding of the financial mess; the man in Parliament who was explaining how Brown policies were heading us over the cliff edge. And doing that before it was mentioned by any but a few others. So what happened Vince Cable? Not even an ‘I’ll get back to you’.

Well, there, I’ve told on them all in the big kids playground. Next blog I start to describe its contents. And on second glance there could be a big surprise for me and for you.

And rather a good one.

If I can getaway with quoting a song that is before even my time:

The sun has got his hat on
So shout hip, hip, hooray…

Joseph Harris, Debt Control Man
Author: Control Your Debt Crisis on Your Own Terms
http://www.controlyourdebtcrisis.co.uk

We produce too much garbage, litter and packaging
I am doing my own waste audit to see how I can improve
By Kris Scheuer
(Column originally published in Town Crier Aug. 4)

Something stinks in the “state” of Toronto and it’s not just the garbage strike.
As a city hall reporter and lifelong Torontonian, here is my trash talk on garbage, litter and my top observations during the nearly six week labour unrest.
Number 1: we produce way too much waste, folks.
We deposited a total of 25,000 tonnes of waste in 26 temporary, neighbourhood garbage dumps, Geoff Rathbone, head of solid waste management told reporters on July 30.
Let’s think about that for a sec. The dumps opened June 25, some of them, such as Christie Pits, closed a mere 11 days later because they were at capacity. The amount of garbage we threw out at these dumps doesn’t even include the tonnes thrown out at seven waste transfer stations. Secondly, I am saddened and appalled at the amount of illegal dumping that occurred during the 39-day labour disruption. The strike started at midnight the morning of June 22 and that same day people were already dumping trash at Christie Pits park.
On July 14, I wrote a story about the mess on St. Clair Ave. West and I counted 198 bags of trash illegally dumped between Dufferin and Bathurst Sts. This was not an isolated problem. The city issued 328 fines and over 6,800 warnings for illegal dumping, Rathbone said back on July 15. Tickets cost offenders $305 a pop.
Third, my pet peeve of litter. The city, with taxpayer’s money, spends $20 million a year picking up litter and emptying trash cans on the street. I see discarded coffee cups and pop cans on my walk into the office, in parks, on beaches, lining street gutters.
I concede that one of the reasons people litter is because trash cans are full or they can’t find one conveniently located along their route. That should change soon. Starting last year, the city is increasing the garbage bins from 4,000 to 12,000 over the next two decades. And of course, during the strike there street bins were taped shut and those that were accessible were overflowing because they were not being emptied. Nonetheless, I cringe every time I see someone casually toss a cigarette package or pop can on the ground as if someone will magically move behind them with a bag and broom to sweep it up. Surely it’s possible for all of us to hold onto items until we reach our homes, work or an available receptacle?
Looking to the post-strike future brings me to my fourth point.
Let me say that it is not our faults alone that we produce so much waste. I think Toronto does a fairly good job of accepting a wide variety of items in the blue and green bins to divert them from landfill.
After all, we can throw diapers and animal waste in the green bin along with food scraps, paper towels and tissues. And we can toss everything from plastic retail bags and polystyrene (aka Styrofoam) to cans, bottles, yogurt tubs, cardboard, paper and frozen juice containers in the blue bin. However, there’s some manufacturer’s packaging the city currently doesn’t recycle.
I would love to see the clear plastic packaging that houses blueberries, cherry tomatoes or eggs added to the blue box and the city is working on that. Some environmentalists, including Beach resident Karen Buck, a member of  Citizens for a Safe Environment have suggested to me that we have an extended producer responsibility. This means the producer of the packaging takes 100 percent responsibility for disposing of the packaging for their products.
Some consumers are simply leaving unwanted packaging at stores so that the seller, who may put pressure on the manufacturer to produce less packaging, has to deal with disposal.
And finally, I am going to make a pledge to do my own waste audit in August of what I throw out and where I can do a better job of cutting back on my own wasteful habits. I will report back to you in September.
If you have suggestions, please email me at kscheuer@ mytowncrier.ca.

Kris Scheuer
(Originally written  January 31/07)

What if the city’s garbage trucks pulled up to our houses and found all the trash cans empty?
While this situation is unlikely to be realized at any point in the near or even distant future, at least two families are attempting to get to the point where they are throwing out zero garbage. The Town Crier has featured attempts by Beach resident Karen Buck to get her family to produce no trash. They now throw out only about five or six garbage bags in a 12-month period.
She is diligent. She tries to buy clothes that have biodegradable fibres and products that can be repaired, and to donate used products to Goodwill. She also keeps separate containers (for blue and green bins) throughout the house so nothing recyclable gets mixed in with regular trash.
Another couple, Sarah McGaughey and Kyle Glover, are attempting to throw out no more than one small shopping bag of waste every two weeks, but want to reduce this to zero waste. Click here to find out more about the Oakwood and St. Clair area couple’s process.
These families inspired me to give zero waste a try. I decided to conduct a test and report my discoveries here, but with the deadline looming I had only two days to do a trial.

My first test was when I ordered hot chocolate in the cafeteria at our offices. I asked for a mug and spoon to avoid using a plastic stir stick and paper cup, which I was not sure were recyclable. The café owner was going to measure the milk in a paper cup, but I stopped him, explaining that since the cup would then be thrown out, this would defeat the purpose. For several weeks I have been packing my own lunch rather than buying it from local eateries. The benefits are saving money, greater say over what I eat and more control over the amount of waste and packaging I use.
I have a reusable vinyl lunch bag and package my salads, stews and soups in reusable plastic containers and bring my own cutlery. During the two days of the test I brought fruit, sandwiches and granola bars for snacks.
But by day one I had messed up. I had two fruit stickers (with product codes) that came on the apple and grapefruit I took for lunch. The granola bars I brought (purchased before this test) came in a recyclable paper box, but were individually wrapped in plastic packaging that had foil on the inside.
I looked on the city’s website to see if this packaging could go in the blue box. It was not listed. I cross-referenced using a list of non-recylable products that the Town Crier got from the city when we did our series on garbage. Under the packaging heading I saw foil wrappers, so I threw out the granola wrapper.
At home, I had to throw out the large plastic packaging that the toilet paper came in.
In the future, I will try to find granola bars and toilet paper that come in recyclable packaging.
While I could live without granola if there is none available in a recyclable wrapper, I am not ready to resort to using leaves instead of toilet paper — so here’s hoping there is some environmental packaging out there!
One of my worst habits is the use of plastic bags — the clear kind you put your grocery fruit in. I use them to wrap my tupperware of soup, in case of spillage, and for pickles and orange wedges. I could not bring myself to throw these out afterwards so I washed out each one and tossed the orange peels, used tissues and paper towels into my green bin when I got home (as there are no such facilities at work).
At an evening community meeting, I had two small chocolate cookies and water in a recyclable cup.
I did not make any purchases in the two days that could not be fully recycled.
In the end, I still threw out toilet paper packaging, two fruit stickers and a granola bar wrapper. But my quest has sparked a desire to be more conscious about whether what I buy comes with a zero-waste promise.
With some careful planning and research I hope to find some alternatives, but I am skeptical of reaching a zero-waste goal.
What of toothpaste, bread and frozen peas? They all come in plastic tubing or bags. If there are no alternatives, maybe this is nature’s way of telling me to resort to the old days, when we used baking soda and water for cleaning our teeth, got bread from the bakery in paper bags and bought fresh peas still in the pod, not frozen in a bag.

A key city council plan to reduce garbage is now in the bag.
The new policy, passed Dec. 2, requires retailers and grocers to charge a nickel for each plasticbag they give out starting this summer.
Some retailers already sell alternatives to plastic bags, including reusable cloth bags,plastic grocery bins with handles, and metal and cloth shopping carts.
Beacher Karen Buck says the new policy is a good start.
“It may not be a strong enough disincentive,” she said, adding she’d like to see retailers charge 20 cents per plastic bag and offer a 10-cent rebate for every reusable bag used.
“For the past 18 years, I’ve been using reusable bags,” Buck said Dec. 8. “I’ve been subsidizing the other people using plastic bags.”
Her tipping point came in 1990.
“I was still using plastic bags for my garbage but they’d accumulate quicker than I could use them,” she said.
Now Buck and her husband, who only throw out enough garbage to fill the city’s smallest garbage bin three times a year, toss waste loosely into the bin.

Thanks again to the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust I have learned of the Bill introduced by Karen Buck M.P., (Labour for Regent’s Park and Kensington, North), a few days ago under the ten minute rule. It has gone now to second reading which is a triumph for her preparation work which has taken a year.

[Most often ten minute rule Bills are killed at birth!]

In her introductory remarks Ms Buck offers these points which are worth some thought by us all: Bailiffs (Repeals and Amendment) is the title of the Bill and it “… make requirements in respect of the use of force and forcible entry by bailiffs; to make provision for the reference to court of certain cases involving vulnerable clients; and for connected purposes.”

“… Debt and debt recovery action have become a reality for ever larger numbers… the arrival of a bailiff is, for many of those people, the ultimate trauma and humiliation… people have had heart attacks when the bailiffs have arrived. The mental and physical stress… is one of the worst things that will ever happen to them in their life.”

She points out that not all bailiffs fail to be as helpful as possible. But “… many.. are desperate and vulnerable people, and many are also victims of error. … even the actions of bailiffs who behave entirely reasonably… are disproportionate and excessive.”

“… it has become clear to me that we have got the balance wrong,… we need to review… We must certainly not, in any circumstances, think of escalating the powers available to bailiffs, and the Government should rethink their approach to regulation.” [my emphasis]

“… In my local authority alone, and in respect of just… council tax… more than 13,000 cases ended up in the hands of bailiffs over a three-year period.”

“What does it mean… It means fear and trauma for people, particularly children. I have heard of moving cases… children have refused to leave the house or have insisted on having the lights out at home because they are so frightened of a bailiff… seizing their television or computer.”

“… also means an escalation of the original debt, which simply compounds the problems that caused the financial crisis in the first place.”

“For one single parent with three children, one… disabled… (a) parking fine, about which I was making representations, had escalated from an original £60 to £700 by the time the bailiffs arrived.” [my emphasis]

In another “… two sets of bailiffs (were) chasing the same debt. Payments had been made to and acknowledged by the council, but did not then appear on the system.” [my emphasis] This lady wrote “… each party refers me to the other, the fees are ever increasing and.. threatening the removal of goods for the same amount.”

The Bill’s aims “.. are threefold. The power of forcible entry into a person’s home and the power for bailiffs even to use force against debtors are far too extreme to be given to civilian enforcement officers. The balance has been tilted too far against the householder’s right to be secure from trespass into their home. ” [my emphasis]

“… overturns a long-standing common law tradition,… in the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007… some p[owers] have not (yet) been brought into effect… such powers should be repealed.”

“… the power to enter domestic premises forcibly… for collection of criminal fines is already legal, and that too is creating appalling distress for many vulnerable households. Many… fines are levied on people on low incomes for offences such as the non-payment of TV licences, fare dodging and truancy.”

“… the issue here, too, is one of proportionality,… I also seek a statutory procedure requiring bailiffs to return cases involving vulnerable and impoverished debtors to the courts or the creditors, and powers to allow people subject to any bailiff action to apply to the courts for any bailiff warrant to be suspended… (this) is (currently) available only to people subject to county court bailiff warrants.”

“… case law, which holds that a distress warrant cannot be withdrawn once it has been issued. That directly contradicts the national standards for enforcement agents, which suggests a procedure enabling the bailiff to return cases of vulnerable fine defaulters to the court.”

“… disproportionate fines are being paid by benefit claimants and other low-income groups, intensifying the poverty that pushed many of them into debtY Finally, we need a statutory provision for bailiffs to accept ‘affordable payments’, with a definition of what that might mean in practice…”

“… I believe that they need greater protection, and above all, to be freed from the fear of the implementation of the excessively harsh powers held in reserve in the legislation.”

The Bill has six more stages; second and third reading in the Commons; first, second and third readings in the Lords; and signature by Her Majesty. It is only a pity that with this government tottering and the next election in any case but a year away the chances of it becoming law are slim.

But ‘good on yer’ Karen Black; you’re one we need back in the Commons. And keep it up Zacchaeus Trust; we need you.

Debt Control Man

Chris Grayling began by welcoming Alan Johnson to his new role as Home Secretary.

“It is five years since I last did battle with the right hon. Gentleman over top-up fees, and it is a pleasure to shadow him again,” he said.

“I wondered whether he might prove to be the shortest-lived Home Secretary in the history of this country, but following last night’s meeting of the parliamentary Labour party it appears that he might have to wait a little longer before he gets the opportunity to move into No. 10.

“Seriously, however, I look forward to debating the issues facing us all over the months ahead.”

Mr Grayling said he wanted the debate to focus on finding solutions to knife crime among young people.

“No doubt we will argue intensively over the failures of Government policy, but today’s debate is intended to be different,” he said.

“I understand from the Clerks that it is customary for an Opposition day motion to be critical of the Government and their policies, but this motion is not intended to do that.

“Rather, it is intended to stimulate a serious discussion about an issue that has been of concern to all of us—knife crime, particularly among our young people.”

He praised last week’s Home Affairs Select Committee report on the subject as “thoughtful,” but pointed out that not all teenagers are armed.

“There is no arms race going on among all children in the United Kingdom, nor are all seven-year-olds carrying knives for their elders,” he told MPs.

“There is an acute gang problem in some parts of the country, particularly in inner-city areas and most significantly in parts of London, but the vast majority of young people are decent, law-abiding citizens, getting on with their lives, taking their exams, working on a Saturday morning and having fun on a Saturday night. We must not allow a serious and important debate to create the sense that young people are a problem today.”

Mr Grayling said the reality of the situation is “stark.”

“The level of fatal stabbings is the highest on record.

“There has been a 34 per cent. increase in the number of people killed by sharp instruments such as knives in recent years.

“The number of people stabbed to death in England and Wales increased from 201 a decade ago to 270 in 2007-08, the highest figure on record. That is a serious problem. A serious knife crime—although not a homicide—is committed every hour.”

He quoted a 2008 MORI youth survey indicated that 31 per cent. of 11 to 16-year-olds in mainstream education and 61 per cent. of excluded young people had carried a weapon at some point during the preceding year.

“We have to tackle the root causes of worklessness, educational failure and family breakdown, and we have to foster a revolution in what we have dubbed our broken society,” he told MPs.

“But we also need to deliver the direct, on-the-ground support that can steer those young people caught up in the knife culture away from it.”

Alan Johnson thanked Mr Grayling for “his remarks and his welcome to me as Home Secretary.”

“I do indeed remember the last time we faced each other over the Dispatch Box,” he said, to which Labour MP Rob Marris shouted: “You won!”

“I like to think that the nation won,” Mr Johnson replied.

“The tragic cases of youngsters killed because of knife crime in London and elsewhere have shocked and saddened the nation,” he told the House.

“Reducing knife crime and crime among young people more widely is of paramount importance, not only because of the need to deal with the very small minority of young people who are persistent offenders and who cause considerable anxiety and harm to their victims, families and communities, but because addressing the issues that can lead to criminality among young people is essential for a fairer, safer society.”

Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington, was one of several London MPs to speak in the debate.

“On the question of young people’s attitude to murder, is it not perhaps so much that they think that murder is acceptable but that they believe in their gangs and their communities that anything is acceptable when it comes to enforcing respect, to territorial defence of their gang or to demonstrating how much of a man they are?” she asked.

“It is such attitudes that we have to undermine.”

“From all my experience, I think that my hon. Friend is absolutely right,” Mr Johnson said.

“Incidentally, my press office had arranged for me to meet some police on Westminster’s Churchill Gardens estate yesterday and to walk around for my first on-camera shot as Home Secretary.

“By a real coincidence, that was where I was badly assaulted when I was 15.

“I came from the rough end of Notting Hill, and thought that this was a posh area of Pimlico, but the problem was a territorial thing because we were in an area that was not our territory.

“My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) is absolutely right to say that such attitudes are ingrained in people, but sometimes they can be reinforced by the things that they see and read.

“That is why I want to repeat that the Home Affairs Committee has done us a service by mentioning the fact that people feel that they have to go to that extra level to prove how hard and tough they are, and how much harder and tougher they are than the other gang.”

Mr Johnson said the youth crime action plan launched last summer of last year is providing more support to address the underlying causes of poor behaviour.

“It places a greater focus on prevention to tackle the low-level but serious problems such as truancy or exclusion that put young people at increased risk of becoming involved in crime or antisocial behaviour.”

He also praised family intervention projects, Operation Staysafe, which preventing vulnerable young people from being drawn into criminal activity and 5,300 Safer Schools partnerships “fostering better relationships between police and young people.”

“The advertising campaign, “It Doesn’t Have to Happen”, has been designed by young people, for young people, with that precise purpose,” he said.

“Aimed at 10 to 16-year-olds, the adverts portray unflinchingly the physical effects of knife wounds and have been viewed more than 13 million times. Of those youngsters surveyed, 73 per cent. said that they were less likely to carry a knife as a result of seeing the advert.”

The Home Secretary said that through the Be Safe programme, 1 million young people will be able to attend workshops over the next five years on the dangers of knives and other weapons.

Emily Thornberry, MP for Islington South and Finsbury, commended stop and search.

“My area is one in which the action programme has been introduced because of the problems that we have had with knife crime, resulting in a number of deaths, ending, unfortunately, with Ben Kinsella’s murder last summer,” she said.

“Youngsters were afraid to go out on the street because they thought other people were carrying knives, so they carried them themselves. The introduction of random stop and search among all young people was extremely helpful in putting a cap on the carrying of knives.”

Karen Buck, MP for Regents Park and Kensington North drew attention to research that confirmed the apparent correlation between certain types of violent crime and inequality.

“It is not just a question of deprivation equalling violence; the sharp impact of inequalities in society unfortunately also has an influence on how some people behave,” she said.

Andrew Love, MP for Edmonton said he was concerned about gang activity in his constituency.

“We wanted to set up a youth facility in a school that crossed a geographical boundary, but many young people in my community—both those who did belong to gangs and those who did not—were not prepared to cross it,” he said.

“We have to understand more about gang dynamics if we are to make an impact on this problem.”

Justine Greening, MP for Putney, praised Operation Blunt 2 in London.

“In the past year, more than 2 million people have been stopped, 10,000 arrests have been made—a rate of one every 51 minutes—and 25,500 knives have been seized,” she said.

“There has been a 30 per cent. fall in serious stabbings, and 90 per cent. of those caught in possession of a knife have been charged.”

Later in the debate Diane Abbott spoke at length about how Hackney teenagers become gang members.

“It is important in such a debate first to stress that the majority of our young people are not caught up in knife crime, gun crime or gang culture,” she told the House.

“It is easy to get carried away and criminalise young people as a class, inner-city young people as a class and, even, young people of a certain skin shade as a class.

“I might shock the House to say that one might walk through Hackney and see a group of gangling boys lurking under their hoods and think that they are plotting murder and mayhem, but they might just as well be on their way to play basketball.

“They will be quite pleased that people are frightened of them, but they will be trotting behind their mother to church on a Sunday.

“The media encourage us to jump to conclusions about young people, but we should not, so I want to put on record that, although we have our issues in Hackney, the majority of our young people are not in that criminal sub-culture.

“I do not know of many young inner-city men who when shopping up the west end have not been descended on by store detectives, or who have not walked down a street and had women clutch their bags closer to their bodies because they have just assumed that such men are criminals.

“We have to beware of criminalising our young people in that way.

“None the less, as a Member for an inner-city area and as a parent, I know that knife crime and the related issues of guns and gangs are very frightening to parents and communities, not least because one can say goodbye to one’s child as they go off in the morning to school, college or their first job, and by the evening receive a phone call saying that they have been caught up in an incident—sometimes quite innocently.

“That is a frightening thing for parents in an inner-city area to live with, because when the gun, gang and knife cultures erupt, they often touch and harm young people who are simply going about their business.

“Where does the young man, swaggering around an estate with a knife up his sleeve, thinking that he can demand respect with the point of a blade or a gun, come from?

“I do not believe that he is the result of listening to music or watching video games. I do not believe that the culture produces criminal behaviour; I believe that the criminal sub-culture produces the music and the games.

“Where do such young men come from?

“They come from families, many thousands of them on estates that I represent in Hackney, where young boys are growing up not just in female-headed households—I would be the last person to say that a single parent cannot be a good parent—but in households where they have never seen men getting up and going out to work, and meeting their responsibilities as men; nor have their friends seen that.

“When they go to school, most of their teachers are women. As they grow up, their notion of manhood is a vacuum.

“I was fortunate; my family are working-class Jamaicans, but every day that God sent, my father went out to work, and on a Friday he brought home his wage packet. That was my notion, and my brother’s notion, of what being a man was all about.

“There are too many young children on estates in Hackney who do not have a notion of manhood. They do not see people—men or women—going out to work and meeting their responsibilities.

“As they grow up, their minds are filled with a notion of manhood that is informed partly by popular culture, yes, but partly also by the guys they see on the street with the big cars and the gold chains.

“They do not know that those guys will have a very short “working” life. They do not know about the downside.

“All that they see is the swagger, the big car, the gold chains, and the notion that that guy is the one whom all the girls are after.

“Into those boys’ imagination comes a notion of manhood that I do not recognise, that people in the House do not recognise, and that my father would not have recognised.

“That is the notion of manhood to which those boys aspire.”

A Labour MP has called for bailiff’s powers to be curbed dramatically.

Ms Karen Buck (Regent’s Park and Kensington North) said bailiffs should be better monitored and made more accountable, in an attempt to curb traumatic repossessions of goods during the recession.

The suggestions were made during a reading of Ms Buck’s ten minute rule bill to Parliament.

They include requiring bailiffs to return cases involving vulnerable and impoverished debtors to the courts or the creditors, and making sure bailiffs act “proportionately” when collecting criminal fines.

Ms Buck said: “Many of the criminal fines are levied on people on low incomes for offences such as the non-payment of TV licenses, fare dodging and truancy. These are indeed offences, and it is only right that if an offence is deemed to have occurred, a penalty must be applied.

“However, the issue here, too, is one of proportionality, in terms of the sums involved and the manner of the enforcement deployed.”

Ordinary people would be able to apply for a bailiff acting inappropriately to be suspended under the plans, and bailiffs would be forced to accept “affordable repayments.”

Ms Buck also slammed her own Westminster Council for making “too liberal a use of bailiffs” and said: “It has certainly not developed the comprehensive advice and debt service that the local population needs.”

She went on to criticise the “excessive harshness” of the powers for bailiffs in the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007, and called for them to be repealed, despite the fact that they have never been implemented.

The Bill was presented by ten other MPs and will be read for the second time on Friday 16th October 2009. Few ten minute rule bills ever become law.

Mee Ling Ng OBE

I have been involved with Chinese for Labour (CfL) since its inception. My longstanding friend Mee Ling Ng, then Deputy Leader of Lewisham Council asked me and I have been very happy to support events and activities since then. Street stalls in China Town are a favourite activity, preferably with the chance to have some Dim Sum before or after. I have met a number of outstanding activists, Dr. Stephen Ng, Soon Hoe Teh and Lady Katy Tse Blair who all work hard for Chinese for Labour. All were present last month fundraising for Karen Buck MP. This blog was prompted by the latest excellent Chinese for Labour newsletter,  The Orient, reaching me. Bilingual, it has a crisp design and benefits from the expertise of Chinese for Labour’s Chair Sonny Leong.

I will be out campaigning with CfL for the European elections. I am pleased to see that a celebratory event to recognise the contribution of Chinese women is being organised for the autumn. The Chinese community is significantly under-represented in public life. 300,000 people should mean at least 2 MPs and dozens of councillors. As well as fundraising for the Labour Party, Chinese for Labour needs to talent-spot and nurture young Chinese people so that more of them are selected, and then elected.

With the Olympics coming to London after Beijing we also should be working with the Chinese community for them to act as a bridge. The largest Chinese community in Britain is in London, and it is a privilege to represent them. For more information click here.

Karen Buck’s annual fundraising dinner is becoming something of an institution.  Held last Friday in the excellent Phoenix Palace Chinese restaurant in Marylebone, this year’s event lived up to its promise.  Top of the bill Alastair Campbell was witty, funny and occasionally deadly serious.  He has become one of the best speakers for this kind of event, and on this occasion donated the profit made on his books sold during the evening to Karen’s campaign.  He takes an especial interest in the constituency as his partner Fiona’s mother Audrey Millar has been activist for decades.

The final message of his speech – that we will win a fourth term but to do so have to defend our record and be much more aggressive in attacking the Tories – is well taken. Compere Mathew Taylor, who did the same job last year, gave a great performance.  If I ever need someone for that kind of thing, he’s the  person I would ask.  In addition to Karen herself, the other speakers were Paul Dimoldenberg, Leader of the Labour Group on Westminster Council, and your truly on the European elections (June 4 this year). 

My thanks to the organisers for this opportunity.  Since 150 people attended with several excellent auction and raffle prizes, the dinner will have brought in much needed campaign finance.  With boundary changes, Karen’s seat Westminster North is now marginal.  She’s a great MP, very popular and very hard working.  We need her back.

The Electoral Commission confirmed that it would be “raising that particular issue with the party” after Labour MP Karen Buck (Regents Park and Kensington North) formally asked it to investigate.

The Tory donation listing was ‘purely an administrative error’

Her intervention came after the Sunday Times reported that Rasha Said, the then student daughter of multimillionaire Wafic Said, told it she had given the money on behalf of her parents.

Ms Buck, in a letter to the Commission, said it raised “serious questions about whether Rasha Said was used as a proxy to channel money to the party in 2005″.

“I, therefore, feel that an investigation by the Electoral Commission and the police is necessary.”

It would be illegal for Mr Said, who despite having homes in the UK is barred from donating as an overseas resident, to channel cash to a political party via an eligible donor such as his daughter.

But the Conservatives said the cash had in fact been given by his wife Rosemary, who is on the electoral register, and wrongly recorded.

“In 2005, a number of donations from Rosemary were incorrectly registered with the Electoral Commission as coming from her daughter Rasha,” it said.

“This was an administrative error for which we take full responsibility. It occurred because of a misreading of the electoral roll during compliance checks.”

The table speaks for itself! Well done Team GB! Pity that when I searched on Google for Beijing Paralympics BBC it came up with the 2004 Paralympics page! Come on BBC pull your socks up – give it the coverage it deserves on the main News page and not just hidden away on the Sports pages.

These disabled athletes are an inspiration for everyone, unlike whinging Labour MPs who seem to think leaking news to BBC journalists about how unhappy they are with their leader is somehow professional; do they think it is going to win them, or their party, votes or promotion?! Well done to whoever sacked the Assistant whip Siobhain McDonagh, if she did the same while working for a company she would have deserved the same for jeopardising the shareholders investment.

Gordon, you might want to consider the future of Janet Anderson, Karen Buck, Patricia Hewitt, George Howarth, Eric Joyce, Sally Keeble, Stephen Ladyman, Martin Linton, Shona McIsaac, Margaret Moran, Tom Levitt, and Paddy Tipping, over their article for New Labour magazine Progress stating, as the BBC are quick to extract, that Labour has “no explanation yet” as to how it will “steer the economy through the troubled waters ahead”. Frankly, if these MPs think the public wants a meaningless strategy dressed up in Blairite spin from you, then they are truly out of touch; but more importantly, just like Siobhain McDonagh, they are truly naive if they can’t foresee that certain journalist, like those at the BBC, looking for an anti-Labour story will take their statements out of context and use it to damage your reputation. I for one trust a man that is honest enough to say that there are no quick fixes, keep on in there Gordon.

They are among 12 Labour MPs suggesting that voters’ faith in the Government’s economic competence has been shaken by the recent turmoil.

Gordon Brown warned over economic policy by 12 Labour MPs

The group said ministers had offered “no explanation” as to how they would navigate the economy through its present difficulties. It also points to a “malaise” in public services and questions the wisdom of Chancellor Alistair Darling’s £2.7 billion tax U-turn earlier this year.

The wake-up call for the Prime Minister comes in an article signed by, among others, former health secretary Patricia Hewitt.

In the piece for Progress magazine, the MPs said: “Labour needs to provide a convincing new narrative if left-of-centre politics are to remain the driving force in Britain. This has to be more than a series of policy initiatives. It has to set a new framework for post-credit crunch Britain.”

They said the party’s most urgent task was to “renew confidence in our economic competence”. And they described recent policies as being “defensive” when the party needed to be “bold”. “Our most urgent task is to renew confidence in our economic competence so that people know that the country will come out of the current downturn with a resilient economy and a cohesive society,” they went on.

While Labour was “rightly” rejecting Tory solutions to previous recessions, they said, Labour had “no explanation yet as to how we are going to steer the economy through the troubled waters ahead”.

“Clamour is understandably growing for measures to help families under financial pressure from rising energy prices and heavy mortgage costs. But one-off taxes and payouts, no matter how justified in their own terms, do not amount to a strategy.

“Tax is very good for raising money to pay for public services and universal benefits. It is not very good for targeting money at particular pressure points.”

Besides Ms Hewitt, the article’s signatories include former culture minister Janet Anderson, former Home Office minister George Howarth, former Transport ministers Stephen Ladyman and Karen Buck and former deputy Commons leader Paddy Tipping. Others are backbenchers Eric Joyce, Sally Keeble, Martin Linton, Shona McIsaac, Margaret Moran and Tom Levitt.