I am chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Nuclear Energy as well as a member of the Energy and CLimate Change Select Committee. Due to the Tsumnami in Japan as a result of the earthquake last week nuclear energy has been called into question. However, I strongly believe that if we are to keep the lights on and tackle cliamte change then nuclear energy has to be part of our national energy policy.
Below are a few interview which I have done this week:
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!
I was also delighted to be invited as a guest of and a judge for a Scottish Poetry Recital Competition at Hyndland Primary.
The variety, depth and quality of the recitals by all the young people, of all year groups, is a great credit to the pupils and all the staff in the school.
I must apologise for any inconvenience but I have been in hospital recently and had to have an operation on my eye. It came about rather suddenly and I am only getting back to work. My staff will be operating the office as usual but I apologise in advance for any delay!
I have been in the local newspapers this month concerning cuts to DLA as I tabled an amendment to the previous Government’s Welfare Reform Bill, which is due to come in to place in April this year, that enables blind people to claim the Higher Rate Mobility Component of Disability Living Allowance (DLA).
This change I managed to achieve only costs £12million to set up and then a mere £47 million pound a year to run, which is a very small amount of the welfare budget, hence why I managed to get the change through.
However, I am angry at the prospect that it may become defunct only two years after it has been implemented if the new Tory-led Government proceeds with the proposals in the current consultation on a new assessment for DLA, which proposes to remove the amendment that I successfully tabled to the Welfare Reform Act 2009.
Not only will this mean a waste of tax payers money spent on this scheme, but also that around 20,000 of the most vulnerable blind people across the UK could lose out. Of these 2,000 are in Scotland and 300 people alone in Glasgow would receive and then lose this support. This is a cold hearted and cynical approach to welfare policy and I am furious at what appears to be a very silly decision.
I am doing all I can to stop this from happening, so watch this space for more news…
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 was honoured to present the flowers to Mr and Mrs Kelly on this momentous occasion for the whole area, and I hope all residents will join with me in congratulating them and wishing the best of luck for
the future. Jack & Mary married in St John’s in the Gorbals on 29th December 1950. They have five children and celebrated with a party at Oakbridge Nursing Home, in Great Western Road, Knightswood with family, staff and residents.
You may have seen me recently in the papers regarding Energy Bills, I am a member of the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee, and I have called for a Select Committee investigation into continually rising energy prices. I have sent a letter to the Conservative Chair of the Select Committee, Tim Yeo MP, requesting an instant and extensive inquiry into the energy market and the recent price rises. I will let you know his response.
The number of Scottish households in “extreme fuel poverty”, those who spend over 10% of their income to heat their home, had risen from 3% in 2002 to 10% in 2009. Yet, only last December, the biggest energy suppliers in the UK, announced more price rises again, despite only previously cutting prices by less than 10% when wholesale energy prices had been lower and when other European countries saw their energy prices rising substantially less than in the UK. It should be noted also that for every 1% increase in energy bills that means that 40,000 more households enter into fuel poverty. People in Glasgow and the rest of Scotland have been struggling to keep warm this winter, and the big energy companies are not being responsible and definitely not helpful to hard working families.
So I want the Select Committee to look into these price rises to make sure they know we are sharpening our teeth.
I was pleased to attend a financial awareness event called ‘Money Week Showcase’ in Yoker Primary School. The pupils were working on a joint financial education project with Thirlstane Day Nursery and all year groups were working on separate projects to show what they had learned. It is of course important even for young children to understand the necessity of budgeting and managing money.
On Thursday Parliament votes on proposals to treble tuition fees for students – making them the highest of any publicuniversity system in the industrialised world. As I write this I do not know the outcome of that vote, but I will vote against the Government because their plans are not necessary, not fair, and not good for higher education. Whatever the outcome you can be sure that I and other Labour MPs will continue to campaign to oppose them.
Such high fees are not necessary. They are going up so much because the Government has chosen to cut funding for university teaching by 80% – when other public services are being cut much less. Labour would not make such cuts to Higher Education teaching grants.
The government’s decision to shift the burden of funding higher education onto students is driven by ideology and not economic necessity. The need to get the deficit down does not justify a long term change in higher education funding which will be bad for universities and not save any public money.
These high fees are not fair because graduates will now have to pay much more over a longer period with middle income earners hit hardest. Graduates will be forced to pay the whole cost of most degrees (to replace the cut in funding), instead of sharing the costs with the state. As a result, graduates will pay much more overall, and pay back for up to 30 years.
This rise in fees is also bad for Higher Education. England’s world class university system has been built on public investment and trust in the professional academic leadership of universities. If the government’s proposals go through, this will be replaced by a market in higher education in which many students will be put off university and forced to choose the cheapest course rather than the one which is best for them.
Labour believes the cost of higher education should be shared between the public and graduates. That’s why we believe in moving towards a graduate tax, where the highest earning graduates would make a fairer contribution. This is the only fair and sustainable way to fund higher education going forward.
