STRENGTHENING LINKS WITH TRADE UNION MEMBERS

POLITICAL funding hit the headlines recently following allegations about the process for selecting a candidate in the previously obscure Scottish Falkirk constituency.

 David Cameron has used the Falkirk issue to denounce the trade union movement’s link to the Labour Party.  Meanwhile, Conservative MPs have been foaming at mouth in their collective condemnation.  But Labour was founded by the trade union movement so there is an obvious historic connection.  It’s a relationship the Conservatives loathe and refuse to acknowledge the positive impact trades unions have delivered for ordinary working people.

 Many of the things we take for granted today such as paid holidays, maternity rights and equal pay etc were fought for by trade unions and delivered by Labour governments.  These advances for working people are what make up our ‘civilised society’ – albeit one that the Tories seem determined to sweep away.

 Ed Miliband recently announced that Labour intends to strengthen its links with trade union members by putting them at the heart of our party, just as they were at the outset.  We do not want automatic affiliation anymore; no individual should fund the Labour Party unless they choose to do so.

 But what about funding for the Conservative Party?  Well every year vast sums are injected into Tory coffers by millionaire benefactors who coincidentally get richer whenever we have a Conservative government.  Take hedge funds.  The Chancellor, George Osborne, gave them a £145m tax cut in the budget.  Interestingly the Conservatives received £25m in funding from hedge funds.  Remarkable coincidence?  I’ll let you decide.

 So what is to be done?  One answer would be to cap political party donations.  Labour has proposed that the limit should be £5,000, but Mr Cameron has rejected this figure.  He wants the cap to be £50,000.  Maybe that is because the Tories have 250 millionaires prepared to make an annual donation of £50,000.  Compare that to the six pence per week paid by trade union members affiliated to the Labour Party.

 We are in different worlds.  That’s why Ed Miliband’s proposed reforms of Labour’s relationship with the trade unions are brave.  He is putting good politics first and is focused on engaging with real people rather than relying on the death-throes of old politics.

 We have a chance to rehabilitate our democracy by taking the big money out of politics.  The ball is now firmly in Mr Cameron’s court.  He needs to decide which side he is on.   Will he stand with the British people or the tiny minority of multimillionaires who currently bankroll the modern Conservative Party? 

 The prize is the restoration of trust in our political institutions.  Time will tell whether Mr Cameron will make the right call.

 

DRIVE OUT 'COWBOY' LETTING AGENTS, SAY MPS IN NEW REPORT

ACTION must be taken to tackle sharp practice and abuse by letting agents, says the Communities and Local Government Committee in a Report published today.

The report proposes bringing regulation for letting agents up to the level of that for estate agents. This would give the Office of Fair Trading the power to ban agents who act improperly. It would also put in place new rules to ensure the safe treatment of landlords’ and tenants’ money.

Launching the Report, Clive Betts MP, Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee, said: “Amazingly letting agents are subject to less control than estate agents. This lack of regulation is giving rise to sharp practice and abuse by some letting agents. We were told that the letting sector was the property industry’s ‘Wild West’.’Cowboy’ agents who rip off landlords and tenants have to be stopped. They need to play by new rules or get out of the sector.”

The Report also demands action to crack down on hidden and unreasonable fees and charges imposed by letting agents. Agents should be required to tell tenants about fees before they start the letting process. The Committee calls for all property listings and advertisements to list in full the fees a tenant would have to pay.

Clive Betts said: “Unreasonable fees and opaque charges are not confined to a few rogue agents. Many well-known high street agents are just as guilty. Agents must make tenants aware from the outset of the fees they intend to charge. All property listings¬–on websites, in print or in agents’ windows–must be accompanied by a full breakdown of fees”.

MATURING THE MARKET

The Committee found that, while the private rented sector has grown significantly in the past decade, the market is still relatively immature. It does not yet offer many renters what they are looking for. With the sector home to an increasing number of families, the Committee calls for barriers to longer tenancies to be removed. In return for offering longer tenancies, landlords should be able to evict tenants much more quickly when they fail to pay their rent.

Clive Betts said: “Too often, the security desired by many families is not available within the private rented sector. We heard from one father whose 10 year old daughter had already had to move home seven times in her life.

“We have to overcome the barriers to longer tenancies. Letting agents should not be chasing renewal fees. Instead they should be working to ensure the length of tenancies meets the needs of both tenants and landlords. In addition, mortgage lenders should remove conditions that limit tenancies to one year.”

Tenants and landlords are often unaware of their rights and responsibilities. The Committee calls for the legislation covering the private rented sector to be consolidated and made easier to understand. After this, there should be a publicity campaign to promote awareness of tenants’ and landlords’ rights and responsibilities.

As part of this review, the Report recommends that the Government work with groups representing tenants, landlords and agents to bring forward a standard, plain language tenancy agreement on which all agreements should be based. Included within this standard agreement should be an easy-to-read fact sheet, setting out the key rights and responsibilities of the landlord and the tenant.

Clive Betts said: “I want to see renting as an attractive alternative to owner occupation. The market has to better meet the needs of renters. Tenants and landlords need to be much better informed about their rights and responsibilities. Bad landlords should be driven out of the sector.

“The legislation governing the private rented sector has evolved over many years and often in response to specific problems at a particular point in time. Far from providing clarity, the result is a bewildering regulatory framework. It should be simplified and all parties made aware of their rights and responsibilities.”

RAISING STANDARDS

The Committee also raises concerns about the physical standard of private rented property. It calls for local authorities to be given the ability to recoup housing benefit payments when a landlord is convicted of letting property below legal standards. Similarly, tenants should be able to reclaim rent paid from their own resources if their landlord is convicted.

The Report recommends that local authorities be given more freedom and flexibility to raise standards. Centrally-imposed bureaucracy and constraints on licensing schemes and enforcement should be reduced. Councils should also have the power to require landlords to be part of a recognised accreditation scheme.

Clive Betts said: “It is unacceptable that taxpayers’ money is being used to pay housing benefit to landlords for sub-standard properties. Where this occurs and the landlord is convicted, local authorities should be able to get that money back.

“Councils should be given greater flexibility to develop approaches to licensing, accreditation, and enforcement that meet the needs of their areas. There should be heavy penalties for non-compliance.”

The Report’s other recommendations include calling on the Government:

- To end the vicious circle where, in some areas, over-inflated levels of housing benefit drive up rents, in turn increasing the housing benefit bill still further [paragraph 125].

- To promote closer working between HMRC and local authorities, to tackle evasion of capital gains and income tax [paragraph 131].

- To revisit the Committee’s report on the Financing of New Housing Supply, and set out proposals to implement the recommendations it initially rejected, with the aim of increasing supply across all tenures of housing [paragraph 150].

FIREARMS LEGISLATION IS INADEQUATE

DUNBLANE is now associated with the very best of British sport following Andy Murray’s spectacular success in winning Wimbledon this year. Sadly, this beautiful Scottish town used to be synonymous with an appalling massacre of schoolchildren by a crazed gunman in 1996.

If we had tighter guns laws, people like Thomas Hamilton and Derrick Bird would not have had access to lethal weapons. This time last year I was heavily criticised by supporters of the gun lobby for speaking out against the inadequate licensing around legally held firearms. Yet the latest facts and figures produced by the Gun Control Network show precisely why I was right to raise my concerns.

The facts continue to speak for themselves on this important issue. Like the fact that of the 43 female gun deaths in the last five years, at least half of the weapons used were legally owned.

Or the fact that in a three-month period this year, no fewer than nine people were killed following incidents involved licensed guns.

The statistics are one thing, but it’s when you start to look at the stories behind the figures that you really get to grips with the situation.

Like the real story of the husband and wife found dead in Northamptonshire in what police believed to be a murder suicide. The 77-year-old woman had four shotgun wounds to her body and her husband, a year older, a single shotgun injury to his head.

The weapon was legally held, with the man said to have been a keen pheasant shooter.

Or the 22-year-old farmer from Scotland, a licensed gun holder, killed from an injury sustained while out hunting at night.

More sinister still was the killing of a 24-year-old man from Sheffield. He died from injuries sustained following an incident involving a legally held air rifle.

The list goes on but the issue remains the same. In all of these cases, the weapons that caused the injuries were not imported by hardened criminals but legitimately owned and licensed for use.

Some of the arguments deployed by the gun lobby against tighter controls are either clutching at straws or bordering on ridiculous. Like the suggestion that it’s legal to own an axe or a hammer, and these can also be used for killing people.

What a ludicrous argument. The significant difference being items such as those are legitimately and primarily used for other purposes, whereas a gun is specifically designed to shoot at things.

The other argument that is often trotted out against restricting gun ownership is that Olympians have demonstrated great skill in winning medals for their countries.

Yet the people making these points fail to grasp that being a skilled marksmen doesn’t necessarily mean you have to take the gun home with you. I fancy I might be quite good at rock climbing, but I don’t need a cliff in my back yard to prove it.

The licensing of guns needs to be sorted out. With every Gun Control Network release there are more alarming figures and more tragic stories to go with them.

Andy Murray’s success has helped Dunblane to move on. A ban on the private storage of firearms, annual mental health checks on firearms certificate holders and a public register of individuals with access to guns would make the nation safer.

BRITISH TOURISTS AND BRITISH TAXPAYERS ARE SUBSIDISING BULLFIGHTING

IMAGINE the outcry if we were to introduce to British society an annual event where people pursue animals through the streets before torturing them and then stabbing them to death in front of jeering crowds.

It hardly sounds like something a modern society would deem acceptable.

Yet, incredibly, just a couple of borders away in Spain this goes on year after year.  And because we are told it is part of Spain’s cultural heritage, many people turn a blind eye and do accept it.

This week, some sixty bulls will be killed in this brutal and shocking way as part of the annual Pamplona Bull Run.

The event runs from 6 to 14 July and involves bulls being chased for one kilometre down cobblestone streets and being whacked with electric pods by the chasing hordes.

Stored in holding pens, they are then subjected to cruel mutilation to further disorientate them before they are exposed to the bullring.  The mutilation can include damaging the vision and cutting neck muscles to prevent the animals from raising their heads.

Matadors on horseback then antagonise and confuse the bulls, repeatedly stabbing them in the neck and back with wooden stakes during an arduous routine before a final stab in the neck with a sword for the pleasure of the cheering spectators.

The lucky ones die at this stage.  The unfortunate survivors are then repeatedly stabbed until they are paralysed, later bleeding to death behind the scenes.

It is absolutely disgraceful and horrific.

Worryingly, British people are subsidising and supporting this cruel activity.  The European ‘Common Agriculture Policy’ contributes more than £110m per year to Spanish farmers rearing fighting bulls.

That means British taxpayers are indirectly contributing around £13.5m a year.

But I’m afraid there is a far more direct subsidy for which the British public is responsible too – in the form of tourists deciding to taste the bullfighting experience for themselves.

Tour operators romanticise and glorify the Pamplona Bull Run, and it has become a recognised location for tourists including stag parties.

That despite the fact that the most recent study suggested nearly 80 per cent of people in Britain have not attended a bullfight and would not consider doing so.

Perhaps those that do are carried along by the enthusiasm of others.  Perhaps they justify it in their own minds by convincing themselves it is just part of the culture.  Or perhaps they are appalled but don’t have the courage to say so.

It isn’t acceptable and no amount of excuses can convince me that it is.

Some advocates will play the economic card, telling you that Spain’s jobs market depends upon this blood sport.  It is nonsense.  Fewer than 400 people are employed full-time by the bullfighting industry.

Compare that figure with the 13,300 bulls killed in this unimaginable way every year.

And of course there is the old chestnut about it being part of Spain’s cultural heritage.
What a ridiculous argument.  We hear it deployed in this country by the prime minister and other British blood sports apologists who want to reintroduce foxhunting.  But to the vast majority who subscribe to British decency and fair play are singularly unconvinced by these advocates of cruelty.

Blood sports cease because society moves on, takes a look at itself and says: “This is not acceptable any more”.In fact, bullfighting has been banned in Spain on several occasions, particularly in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, but subsequently reintroduced.  It has been banned in the Catalonia region since 2012, although even that common sense decision is, incredibly, under threat.

I can’t directly influence the Spanish government and nor can the British public at large.

But what we can do is play our part by joining those who object to it and refusing to contribute to its existence by attending these activities while visiting Spain.  Hopefully the rest of Europe will do the same.

For more information, visit the League Against Cruel Sports web page and video about the Pamplona Bull Run here: http://www.league.org.uk/content/764/Pamplona-Bull-Run

THE TRUTH ABOUT UKIP

UKIP don’t share decent British values – the truth is they’re even more right-wing than the Tories. In fact a vote for UKIP is a vote for higher taxes for families while the rich pay even less and deeper cuts to the public services we rely on.

Here are some facts about UKIP that Mr Farage doesn’t like to talk about.

UKIP want to cut the public services we rely on – even deeper and faster than the Tories

UKIP want to cut taxes for the wealthiest, so that millionaires pay the same rate of tax as everyone else

UKIP want to take billions out of the NHS, subsidising the better off to go private

UKIP want to abolish the right to parental leave and maternity pay

UKIP believe that man-made global warming is “unproven” and that pursuing carbon reduction targets is “lunatic”

 

 

ERIC PICKLES' TEN BIGGEST FAILURES

ERIC Pickles is in no position to lecture councils. He may cultivate a reputation as a no-nonsense straight talker, but has he actually delivered on his tough rhetoric? Just like the rest of David Cameron's Government, he makes big promises but over and over again reality lets him down.

Let's look at just ten of Eric Pickles' biggest failures.

1. Cutting costs

Eric Pickles lectures local authorities on cutting costs. But he should look closer to home. Last week his own department was fined £20,000 for having an unauthorised overdraft of £217 million.

2. Housebuilding

Eric Pickles says he will "keep Britain building" but only 24,900 houses were completed in the last quarter - the lowest number of private home completions in 23 years.

3. NewBuy

Eric Pickles' department is responsible for the flagship NewBuy scheme which was supposed to help 100,000 people onto the housing ladder. The results so far? Just 2,291 people have used the scheme.

4. Transparency

Eric Pickles said that transparency should be the default setting for public bodies but he doesn't practice what he preaches. His department has been caught out by the Information Commissioner twice for trying to hide statistics and correspondence.

5. Weekly bin collections

Eric Pickles promised to get councils to move back from fortnightly to weekly bin collections, but his policy hasn't been a success. Only one council applied for money to move back a weekly bin collection.

6. Homelessness

Eric Pickles ministers spout warm words on homelessness. But their record is terrible. Over the last 12 months the number of people registered as homeless has sharply increased.

7. Bedroom Tax

Eric Pickles has failed to stand up for local authorities who are being hit by the Bedroom Tax. David Cameron claimed that the bedroom tax was fair but the DWP impact assessment shows that it hits households with disabled people the hardest.

8. Council Tax Benefit

Eric Pickles and David Cameron handed local authorities the power to administer council tax benefit, then cut the budget by 10%, resulting in the number of households in council tax arrears to increase by 45%.

9. High Streets

Eric Pickles promised to "breathe new life into high streets" but went on to make it easier for payday lenders and betting shops to open new stores without having to apply for planning permission first.

10. Affordable Homes

Eric Pickles promised to deliver 170,000 new affordable homes but over the past 12 months the number of affordable home completions has fallen by 29%.

David Cameron and Eric Pickles' record is one of incompetence and failure. They are letting people down - more interested in pursuing headlines and playing political games than in addressing the big problems facing Britain