I and Labour’s Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls launched Labour’s Plan for Growth today.
This is a really worrying time for families; struggling with higher food prices and gas bills and worried about their jobs and their children’s futures.
That’s why Labour has set out a clear five-point plan for jobs, to help struggling families and support small businesses.
But the Tory-led Government refuses to listen to people’s concerns. Help us make them understand how tough things are for families, pensioners and businesses. Join our campaign at Labour.org.uk/plan and take action now.
Labour’s five-point plan for jobs and growth:
1. 100,000 jobs for young people
2. Bring forward investment projects like new school buildings
3. Temporarily reverse the VAT rise – a £450 boost for families with children
4. Cut VAT on home improvements to 5% for a year
5. A tax break for every small fi rm which takes on extra workers
Today I called on local retailers to support the ‘No ID, No Sale!’ campaign which seeks to ensure that only adults can buy alcohol, tobacco and other age-restricted goods. I was speaking at Dykes Road Post Office (Dyke Road, Glasgow G13), where I was joined by Bhubinder Burmy and CitizenCard’s Marketing Manager Nigel Catlow.
More than two million CitizenCards have been issued across the UK since the scheme was launched by then Home Office Minister George Howarth in February 1999. The new government has continued the previous government’s policy of supporting the police’s endorsement of CitizenCards and other cards bearing the PASS hologram.
I and the Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls and the rest of the Scottish Labour party launched our campaign to reverse the rise in VAT today.
I am calling on the Chancellor George Osborne to reverse the government’s VAT rise on fuel.
The hike in VAT to 20 per cent in January has added nearly 3p to the price of a litre of petrol and will raise £700m for the Treasury, according to figures from the independent House of Commons Library.
The Labour Party says the VAT rise should be reversed immediately on petrol using the £800m extra the government is now getting from the bank levy, compared to what it was expecting in the last Budget.
You may remember these two posters, one by the Tories from 2008…
…and the Lib Dems campaign below launched only last year weeks before the election here in Scotland their VAT campaign… They seemed to know who was to blame for VAT rises then!
Some of you may be aware that I have been a long supporter of the Education Maintenance Allowances (EMA) and the Save EMA campaign, ever since I realised it could be under threat in Scotland when the SNP administration at Holyrood decided to cut the EMA budget by 20 per cent and axe the £10 and £20 payments.
I asked the Prime Minister in PMQs back in October following the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) why he broke his promise at a Cameron Direct event in January last year before the election to the Save EMA campaign that he supported the Education Maintenance Allowances.
I also secured an Adjournment Debate that week on the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), the week it was abolished in the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR). There are over 600,000 teenagers on EMA in England alone who will see this allowance withdrawn and 80% of those will be the poorest teenagers in our country from families with household income below £20,810.
Now, although I am a Scottish MP I still fi ght for young people’s rights as a UK MP, and Scotland is where EMA was fi rst attacked by the “Tartan-Tories” – the SNP. Last year they cut the EMA budget by 20% and axed the £10 and £20 payments. You could say I saw the writing on the wall and didn’t want EMA to suffer the same fate in England as it had in Scotland.
This is a scheme close to my heart because it is based on providing a platform to poor families, which means that economic barriers will no longer stand in their way to getting an education and getting on in life.
I have spoken on this subject before, when I secured an adjournment debate in the previous parliament on 2nd February this year and if you want a good example of the difference between the previous government and the new one today then it will be this policy. For example, the last time I spoke on this issue the then Minster, Iain Wright MP, committed the then Labour government to maintaining EMA in its current form up to 2011 and beyond.
Many of the young people who contacted me following that debate, sending me their support and thanks, will now feel disappointed by politics after having their fears and hopes raised and then crushed in a matter of months by this Tory-led Government.
But I hope they can continue their fight as I will continue my support!
I have had a few constituents write to me regarding the Robin Hood Tax campaign; just so everyone knows this is a campaign I fully support.
The campaign for a Robin Hood Tax on financial transactions has been gathering steam over the last two weeks as support for the measure is growing. Three hundred and fifty economists and over 120,000 members of facebook have all signed up. I attended the campaign’s Parliamentary launch around in February, I believe it was a Wednesday, and I wasn’t able to sign Early Day Motion 913 in support of the campaign at the time due to my PPS responsibilities, but I have gone one better and put them up on the website.
For those unaware of this campaign let me explain. The proposals would see on average a 0.05% tax on speculative transactions that could raise hundreds of billions of pounds each year. The money could be spent on a multitude of worthy causes such as tackling poverty, both here and abroad, and dealing with Climate Change. As we move out of the global recession we need to ensure that global banking agreements and policies secure our future. This scheme, which could benefit millions of the poorest in our society and across the world, will only be possible if we look for an international agreement and if we are not afraid to challenge big businesses and banks to do their bit for society.
This won’t be good news for the Tory peer Lord Griffiths, whose friends at Goldman Sachs attempted to sabotage the campaign with a mass computerised vote on the campaigns website. Griffiths, who is International Advisor to Goldman Sachs, has consistently supported banker bonuses and will undoubtedly be leading the Tories against the tax. As my Labour colleague, Steve Pound MP, put it that week at PMQs, “I think we know all know who speaks for the Sheriff of Nottingham!”
The campaign is still growing in support and you can join in at the Robin Hood Tax website. Please watch the video below, featuring one of the campaign’s most high profile supporters, Bill Nighy, as he acts out the part of a banker:
On Saturday I joined thousands of people all over Scotland and hundreds of millions of people across the world in switching off my lights in a demonstration of support for people and wildlife threatened by the dangers of man made climate change.
I support the WWF’s Earth Hour and followed Piccadilly Circus, the London Eye and even the Las Vegas strip, by turning off my lights from 8.30pm to 9.30pm last Saturday (27th March) to save energy and highlight the issue of global warming.
I support vigorously the campaign to help fight climate change; I have tabled EDM 524 to force my fellow parliamentary colleagues to show that they recognise man made climate change, and I also sit on the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee raising environmental issue when necessary.
I have signed up to the NSPCC’s new campaign to ensure protecting children is a political priority: I Stand for Children. It is a priority of this government to ensure that all children, no matter what their background might be, receive the care that they need to make the best possible start in life.
The NSPCC’s campaign is calling on MPs and candidates to commit to a range of child protection measures including:
Continued funding of helpline services for children and for adults concerned about the safety or welfare of a child
Making the internet safer for children
Tackling domestic violence from a child’s point of view
Ensuring that vital child protection reforms are fully implemented and resourced, following the death of Baby Peter and other child deaths since
Provision of resources for vital therapeutic services for children who have experienced abuse
Strengthening the role of the children’s commissioner in England to act as a genuinely independent voice for children.
The charity’s Diana Sutton, head of the public affairs and campaigns unit at the NSPCC, said: “We need to make sure that the next elected Government keeps child protection high on its list of priorities. By signing up to our campaign, candidates in this next general election can help. The public can play their role by letting the politicians know what they want done.”
Glad to hear my colleague @CarolineFlintMP is following my calls for Ofgem to be reformed to have more powers in the energy marketabout 3 weeks agofrom web
