Archive for April, 2010

The Liberal Democrats are the only party which will cut crime

Monday, April 26th, 2010

People’s lives are being ruined by crime and they don’t feel safe in their own homes or theirvneighbourhood. Yet too many criminals are getting away without being caught or punished – and those who are caught are sent to prison and come out, unreformed, ready to commit more crimes. There’s an endless cycle that makes us all less safe. Governments are always talking tough but nothing seems to change.
Liberal Democrats are the only party which will cut crime because we will focus on what works. That means catching more criminals and making them pay for what they have done. It means making prison work to put them back on the straight and narrow, and involving communities in the fight against crime and anti-social behaviour. It means improving crime prevention and crime detection, which we know work to cut crime.
We will put 3,000 more police on the streets and we will make all police work better. We will give victims and local communities a major say in punishing offenders, and make sure there’s fair payback for neighbourhoods that suffer from crime. We will make prisoners work and pay into a Victims’ Compensation Fund.

KEY POLICIES
1. Catching criminals with 3,000 more police on the beat.
Everyone knows the way to cut crime is to catch people who commit crime – and we need more police out on the streets to do it. By scrapping pointless ID cards, we will pay for 3,000 more police, and cut bureaucracy so they’re out fighting crime not filling in forms. We will stop posturing on
penalties and concentrate on catching criminals. We will also make police work better by giving local people a direct say in policing and by tackling outdated or bad working practices.

2. Crack down on gun and knife crime.
We will make hospitals share information with the police so they know where gun and knife crime is happening. The police can then target these “hot spots” for stop and search to find these illegal weapons and destroy them. In Cardiff, where this model has been piloted, this practice has reduced violent crime by 40%.

3. Make prisoners work to pay compensation to victims.
It is only fair that criminals pay for the damage they cause. We will make prisoners work and contribute from their prison wages to a compensation fund for victims. At the moment, prisons are just colleges of crime. Making prisoners work (as well as educating and training them) will give them the skills they need to ‘go straight’ when they are released.

4. Justice in your neighbourhood.
We will give people a direct say in how petty criminals and those who engage in anti-social behaviour are punished in their area by setting up Neighbourhood Justice Panels, like the one run by Liberal Democrats in Somerset where
95% of offenders have been turned away from further crimes.
LABOUR
Labour promised to be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime, but they failed on both. Over a decade of posturing without action has not made people any safer. Only 1 in 100 crimes result in a conviction in court. The prison population has sky-rocketed but re-offending rates remain out of control. There is a violent crime every fifteen seconds in England and Wales and gun and knife crime has soared. Despite all this, police numbers are dropping and the Government instead intends to waste billions on the pointless ID cards scheme. By failing on crime, Labour has failed the people they promised to protect.

CONSERVATIVES
The Conservatives can’t be trusted to make you safe. Though they talk about change, they will just carry on with Labour’s failed policies. They will say anything. Some days they say they’ll hug a hoodie, other days they say they will lock them all up. They have promised to spend billions of pounds of your money on prisons that don’t make you safe because they don’t turn people away from crime. And chances are they will cut police numbers like the last time they were in government, when what we desperately need is more officers on the beat. You can’t believe a word they say about crime. Under the last Conservative government, crime doubled. A vote for the Tories is a vote for more crime.

KILLER FACTS
1. Only one in a hundred crimes results in a conviction in court.

2. 92% of young men serving a first short prison sentence re-offend within two years.

3. John Major promised 5,000 more police but the number of officers on our streets fell by more than 500.

4. Labour spends 8 times more on locking children and young people up than it does on projects to stop them getting involved in crime in the first place.

5. The Cardiff Model, where hospitals and police share anonymised data, reduced violent crime by 40% in its first five years of operation.

BASIC FACTS
1. There are 143,770 police officers across 43 police forces in England and Wales.

2. The police recorded 4.7 million crimes in 2008/09, but the British Crime Survey registered 10.7 million.

3. There were 651 murders in England and Wales in 2008/09.

4. There are around 83,000 people in prison.

5. In 1993, the prison population was 44,500

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Race Equality and Opportunity for all under the Liberal Democrats

Sunday, April 25th, 2010

Britain can be incredibly unfair if you are from an ethnic minority community. You are more likely to be poor, out of work, and live in deprived areas of the country. Mismanagement of the immigration system has stoked up fear and persecution. Young black and Asian men in particular are far more likely to be stopped by the police, even
when they have done nothing wrong.

Liberal Democrats will build a fair, united society which has opportunities for everyone, no matter their background, faith or race. We believe Britain is stronger as a diverse, multi-ethnic and multi-faith society, and will never pander to anti-immigrant sentiment. We have taken on the BNP and won in towns and cities across Britain. We’ll ensure everyone is protected from violence, discrimination and harassment, and that people from ethnic minorities get fairly treated by the police. We’ll make the immigration system firm and fair to restore confidence without pandering to hatred. We’ll fight terrorism by prosecuting terrorists not persecuting innocent people or communities.

KEY POLICIES
Our core policies to make Britain fair will make a huge difference to improving lives for people from ethnic communities.

We will cut taxes and make work pay by ensuring no-one pays income tax on the
first £10,000 they earn.

We will introduce a pupil premium, putting an average extra £2,500 into the
education of all children on free school meals.

We will renovate empty homes that so often blight inner city communities.

We will put thousands more police on the streets to keep people safe.

In addition to our commitment to fairness for all we make the following commitments to
deal with specific issues that primarily or disproportionately affect BAME communities.

1. Get innocent people off the DNA database.
Britain has the largest DNA database in the world, with details of a million innocent people’s genetic profile.
Black people are hugely over-represented because they’re so much more likely to be stopped by the police. We will remove all the innocent DNA from the database, and only store DNA from people who’ve actually committed a crime.

2. Create a fair but firm immigration system to restore confidence.
We will create a fair immigration system that works and promotes integration. We’ll make sure visa applications, especially for relatives, are dealt with fairly and continue Britain’s proud tradition of granting safe refuge to people fleeing oppression. And we’ll allow some law-abiding people here without the proper paperwork to earn their citizenship so we can target deportation efforts on criminals and people-traffickers.

3. Anonymous job application forms to end race discrimination.
It’s too easy for people from ethnic minorities to be cut out of the job application process right at the start
because their background is clear from the name on their CV or application form. Names should be blanked out so this discrimination can’t happen.

4. Scrap Control Orders.
It’s vital to convict terrorists rather than putting entire communities under suspicion. We will scrap Control Orders and replace them with measures designed to secure convictions of terror suspects. We also support efforts to
make it easier to charge suspects genuinely suspected of terrorism through a temporary lowering of the ‘threshold test’, the use of the post-charge questioning and intercept evidence.

LABOUR
Labour has failed to bring fairness to the ethnic minority communities they claim to
represent. They have taken ethnic minority voters for granted. Our society remains riddled
with prejudice and inequality and their shocking handling of the immigration system has
fostered the rise of the BNP. They have failed the very people they promised to help.

CONSERVATIVES
The Conservatives cannot be trusted to make Britain fair for people from ethnic minorities.
David Cameron says the party cares about racial equality, but their priorities are all wrong:
their top policy is still cutting taxes for millionaires. They want to relax rules for police stop
and search no matter how it affects ethnic minority communities. They would put a cap on
immigration that would mean even British people’s relatives wanting to visit could be
turned away if they apply at the wrong time of year. Britain would be even more divided
under the Conservatives.

KILLER FACTS
1. Someone with an ethnic minority name will apply for twice as many jobs as
someone without one before they are hired.

2. 75% of people on the DNA Database are young, black men. A million innocent
people are on the database

3. BAME people are twice as likely to be poor than their white counterparts.

4. Only 2% of MPs are non-white.

BASIC FACTS
1. 8% of the UK population is non-white.

2. The fastest growing ethnic minority group in the UK today is mixed race.

3. There are just 15 ethnic minority MPs.
If Parliament reflected the ethnic balance of Britain, there would be 66.

4. 4% of all police officers in the UK are minority ethnic

5. Nearly 40% of all medical and dental staff in the NHS are from ethnic minorities

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Local disabled people still “Polls Apart” when it comes to voting

Monday, April 19th, 2010

Voting is a right that many of us probably take for granted – but for thousands of disabled people that is not the case and they are denied the opportunity to make their voices heard at the ballot box.

Disabled people still face discrimination when it comes to voting because of a number of different access barriers.  These can include polling stations without ramps for wheelchair users or voting information which is not available in alternative formats such as Braille.

That’s why local Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Candidate Norman Owen will be supporting disability charity Scope’s Polls Apart campaign in the run-up to the General Election.

Polls Apart is a campaign to ensure that disabled people have the same access to voting as everyone else.

Norman Owen, is calling on Salford City Council to ensure that all local polling stations are fully accessible to disabled people. This could include changes such as installing temporary ramps or ensuring that polling station staff have disability equality training.

Norman said:

“In a modern democracy it is simply not acceptable that so many disabled people are still denied the opportunity to exercise their democratic right to vote.

“I hope as many people as possible will take part in this survey to raise awareness about this issue. Disabled people must be treated equally and fairly when it comes to voting.”

To learn more about the Polls Apart campaign and also download a copy of the survey go to www.pollsapart.org.uk

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Our 6 point timetable for scrapping tuition fees

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

Liberal Democrats are the only party which believes university education should be free and everyone who has the ability should be able to go to university and not be put off by the cost.

Our 6 point timetable for scrapping tuition fees:

Year Action
1 Scrap fees for final year full-time students
2 Begin regulating part-time fees
3 Part time fees become regulated and fee loans become available to part time students
4 Expand free tuition to all full-time students apart from first year undergraduates
5 Expand free tuition to all part-time students apart from first year undergraduates
6 Scrap tuition fees for all first degree students

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Our manifesto – in video!

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

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Salford Advertiser Leader’s column 1st April 2010

Thursday, April 1st, 2010

I was very pleased, a few weeks ago, to appear on the BBC’s Politics Show alongside Hazel Blears and Mathew Sephton. I believe it was clear from the interview that Hazel has nothing new to say and as for Mathew Sephton, a cardboard cut-out would have been more animated and a more convincing parliamentary candidate! Unfortunately, something that didn’t come across well in the interview was the Liberal Democrat position on tuition fees. Allow me to be quite clear; it remains Lib Dem policy to abolish tuition fees but it must be done in a financially responsible way. In a six year plan, we will phase out tuition fees for full and part-time students taking their first degrees. This is an important policy. We have a significant student population in Salford and many young people in our city that are being disenfranchised by Labour policies. Being able to get a degree should be a matter of ability, not bank balance and an individual child’s aspirations should not be limited by their parents’ social or financial situation, only by their own commitment and willingness to strive.

This coming May we have the opportunity to change the politics of this country for the better by getting rid of corruption and creating fairness and balance. At a local level we have the chance to put things right in the way our city is run so that the council functions for the benefit of the people that are really important: local residents. I would like to take this opportunity to thank people for their brilliant support during this last year and I make a promise that, with your continued support, the Lib Dems will be back with even more councillors after May 6th.

One change that needs to take place in the new municipal year is to clean up the streets of this city by enforcing existing litter laws with more vigour. When the Lib Dems have more of a say in running this city, we also aim to end the ongoing saga over road repairs and will seek better value from our Highways budget.

Labour has been in power in Salford since 1974 and is a party that is looking tired; it has run out of political legs. I was looking over old Lib Dem leaflets from our 2001 campaign and I’m sorry to say that the same complaints from 9 years ago are still yet to be resolved. Can we afford to give Labour another decade of power in the hopes they will eventually get around to sorting out our problems?

I have recently picked up casework within the new constituency of Salford & Eccles. The area concerned is around Manchester Road, Clifton, where a bus stop was to be moved to a position that residents did not want. After intervention by the Liberal Democrats, a successful result was achieved and the bus stop will remain at its current site. I’d like to thank the residents who attended the PACT meeting at Clifton Cricket Club for their warm welcome. It was a privilege to be able to help and I was delighted to be able to deliver that right result for them; something which I feel the ward councillors could and should have taken care of themselves!

TV appearances and media interviews aside, opposition to Hazel Blears is prominent across Salford & Eccles. I will be making every effort to defeat her. Voters will not be hoodwinked by carefully staged photo-calls with the Home Secretary and Business Secretary. Labour and Hazel Blears can stand on their track record – what have they done for you lately?

As a long-standing councillor, the empowerment of communities is close to my heart and is a key Lib-Dem policy. It is time to allow local people the chance to manage their own communities. That’s why Salford needs a fresh start from Labour and Hazel Blears. We urgently need fair and transparent local and national politics.

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