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 We will also make police work better by giving local people a direct say in policing and by tackling outdated or bad working practices.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

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

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

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

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 6^th.

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.

This was the background to Nick Clegg’s keynote speech to Lib Dem Party Conference last weekend.

The full version can be downloaded from ITunes here!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4fQsPTjQpo

Elected members will be addressing potential voters and confronting Salford issues in public. The format will be very similar to the BBC’s own Question Time TV programme and the events will also provide a training experience for members of Salford Community Media Partnership who would be involved in set design; sound; film and lighting.

Tickets are free, but there is limited availability – so book early.

The themes and dates are as follows:
* Housing & the Environment – Thurs 4th March, 7–8.30pm
* Economy & Employment – Thurs 11th March, 7–8.30pm
* Education, Children & Young People – Thurs 18th March, 7–8.30pm
* National Issues (MPs) – Thurs 8th April, 7–8.30pm

To apply for tickets and submit questions for the event, please telephone Seedley and Langworthy Trust on 0161 737 9918 or email: admin@sali.org.uk

Unfortunately, Councillor Merry’s misjudgements don’t stop there. Salford Council’s 0% council tax rise will be funded by hidden increases in community charges that will hurt the pockets of families and elderly residents. To fund their commitment Salford City Council plan to increase the price of Meals on Wheels for elderly residents, increase the cost of funeral administration and bereavement services, increase library costs and increase costs for schools’ extra-curricular music lessons and for schools’ training and administration. Finally, the 0% rise excludes the precepts for the police and fire authority, which will have to increase in order to maintain services. The reality is that despite the Council’s promise not to increase your council tax, it will go up. Salford City Council has made a promise that it can’t keep!

The Salford Liberal Democrats are proposing a budget that will see no hidden increases and will minimise the impact of present economic difficulties on frontline services. We propose cutting unnecessary allowances for councillors, as well as ensuring that loss-making events like the ice-rink and proms in the park make a profit. We would also cut spending on the hugely expensive Life in Salford magazine.

Councillor Merry would have you believe that living in Salford is good value for money and that the average council tax in Salford is low compared with other English authorities. However, my Lib Dem colleagues and I have been checking his claims. According to the data on the Department for Communities and Local Government website, when you calculate the average council tax of each authority in England, Salford ranks among the highest! So which is it? I for one do not trust Councillor Merry’s statistical jiggery-pokery and I know I’m not alone!

At the end of the day it is the people of Salford that matter and, over the last few weeks, I and my fellow Lib Dems and Lib Dem Councillors have been out meeting real people on Salford and Eccles Precincts. We expected an anti-Labour response but the amount of people who have said they will not be voting Labour has still been a real shock. Last weekend, on Eccles precinct, local residents also raised concerns about the publicity that this paper has been giving Hazel Blears recently. On Salford precinct, Councillor Merry came in for a lot of stick from residents, some of whom even singled out particular Labour councillors as ‘useless’. This shows that the electorate are not just sick of Hazel Blears but also sick of the Labour council and its poor leadership. My message to anyone that wants rid of Hazel Blears and failed Labour councillors is simple: Only the Lib Dems can beat Labour in Salford.

Finally, congratulations to the person who threw the BNP leaflet in the bin (letter 11^th Feb). Well done! Where the BNP have been elected they have been proven incompetent and they spread dishonesty and create divided communities. Residents deserve hard working and honest councillors who work for all rather than for some.

The announcement comes as research shows one in eight shops across the country are now empty after the recession. The report, published by the Local Data Company (LDC), says that vacancies shot up by 24% in the second half of 2009.

Councillor Norman Owen, the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary candidate for Salford & Eccles said:

“Even before the credit crunch hit, small independent shops had more or less disappeared from Salford and Eccles.

“The Government’s skewed planning system has seen supermarket giants squeeze the life out of towns like ours and now almost every high street in Britain is an identical collection of chain stores and coffee shops.

“We need thriving high streets in both Salford & Eccles, ones with real character that allows local businesses to survive and grow.

“The financial crisis has exposed Labour and the Conservatives’ folly of being entirely dependent on the City of London. The Liberal Democrats understand that it will be small local businesses that are the key to building a healthy and balanced economy.”

Norman added:

“Thriving high streets are at the heart of local communities.

“But it has been our high streets that have borne the brunt of this recession, with boarded up shops scarring towns and villages across Britain.

“I believe that people value the wide range of goods and services available locally and want to see their high streets thrive and prosper.”