Friday 6 March 2015

LABOUR’S BETTER PLAN FOR OLDER PEOPLE

THE Tory plan is failing older people.  Pensioners’ living standards have been hit hard by the Tories and their Lib Dem collaborators.  

This government’s refusal to act against rip-off energy bills, their decision to slash social care funding and their changes to pension rules have diminished living standards for pensioners.

Typical energy bills have risen by £300 a year since David Cameron became Prime Minister.  Nearly one in ten older households now face fuel poverty and delayed action to ban rip-off pension fees has left savers worse off.  Cuts to elderly care have sent more older people to A&E with unnecessary hospital admissions, making it harder for them to get the care they need at home.

With all the damage the Tories have already inflicted on us, they still want to go even further by cutting public spending to a level not seen since the 1930s before there was an NHS.

Older people who I have spoken to say they are tired of being let down by the Tories.  Labour knows the importance of ensuring those who have worked all their lives can retire with dignity.  That’s why Labour’s plan for pensioners and older people is essential.

Labour will protect the ‘triple lock’ that ensures pensioners’ incomes keep pace with the cost of living.  Although Ed Balls has said he will restrict Winter Fuel Payments from the richest five per cent of pensioners to help pay down the deficit, Labour will guarantee that there will be no further changes to Winter Fuel Payments.  Furthermore, we are guaranteeing that universal free TV licenses and bus passes for pensioners will be protected by a Labour government.

We will help pensioners struggling with energy bills by capping gas and electricity prices until 2017. We’ll also offer free efficiency improvements to at least 200,000 households at risk of fuel poverty.

We’ll give people freedom over how to spend their pension savings, but ensure they are protected from rip-offs.  This will be achieved by introducing a cap on fees and charges for new pension products that allow people to draw-down on their savings so they get the same protection when they take their money out as when they put it in.

And we will improve social care to keep people safe and healthy at home.  We’ll end the scandalous culture of 15 minute care slots for some of the most vulnerable older people by bringing in 5,000 new homecare workers.


Older people can’t afford five more years under the Tories.  Labour has a better plan to protect pensioners’ incomes, safeguard savings, keep homes warm and invest in our NHS with more doctors and nurses so they have time to care.

Monday 2 March 2015

BADGER TRUST CALLS ON NFU TO STOP MISLEADING THE PUBLIC OVER THE IMPACT OF BADGER CULLING

Ahead of a meeting with the Environment Secretary Liz Truss on the 3 March, the Badger Trust has called on the National Farmers’ Union to stop misleading the public by making claims over the impact of badger culling on TB rates in cattle in the Gloucestershire and Somerset cull zones, which have no scientific foundation and are not supported by Government data from the pilot badger culls.

At the NFU Annual Conference in Birmingham on Tuesday 24 February, the NFU President Meurig Raymond stated: “I want to stress that in the two pilot areas in Somerset and Gloucestershire we are already seeing that TB incidence on farms has declined. Not just by a small amount either, in the Somerset Pilot area TB incidence on farms has decreased from 34% to 11% compared with two years’ ago”.

He then went on to say: “just two days’ ago, one of our Gloucestershire members was given the fantastic news that his farm is now clear of TB for the first time in 11 years. He is very clear that the only thing that’s changed on his farm is that we are now doing something to control the disease in wildlife”.

When making these statements the NFU President at no point confirmed that it was far more likely these reductions in TB (which have also been seen outside of the cull zones) were due to tighter testing, movement and biosecurity controls forced on the UK farming sector by the European Commission in 2012. He also made no mention of the fact that DEFRA have not released any data on the pilot culls to support any claims about the impact of badger culling on TB rates in cattle.

In responding to the claims by the NFU, the CEO of the Badger Trust said:

“Nigel Gibbens, the DEFRA Chief Veterinary Officer, recently stated that: 'the fall in TB outbreaks in cattle herds, cannot be attributed either to the pilot culls or in Wales to their badger vaccination programme. It is to do with continued strengthening of the cattle measures.'

“Meurig Raymond seems to have forgotten these important facts when it comes to his NFU conference speech.

“The Badger Trust would never make any claims about the impact of badger vaccination without scientific evidence to back it up and we expect the NFU to do the same, when it comes to making claims about the impact of badger culling.

“We must deal in facts not fiction when it comes to assessing the impact of the badger culls on lowering bovine TB. When it comes to real facts the case against the badger cull policy is damning.

“Approximately £15 million has been spent killing 2476 badgers to date (£6058 a badger). None of these culled badgers were tested for TB, but data from a Government-led scientific trial and results from badgers tested by DEFRA in 2013 for the European Food Safety Authority, indicate a disease rate no higher than 15%.

“Many of these badgers were shot by poorly trained marksmen with no effective monitoring and took up to 10 to 15 minutes to die a long painful death by multiple gunshot wounds.

“This is despite the fact that the DEFRA Chief Scientist Ian Boyd confirmed at an NFU TB conference in November 2014, that the transmission rate of TB from badgers to cattle is less than 6%. The key route of infection is cattle to cattle transfer.”

It's clear that the Badger Trust's observations are based on scientific fact whereas the NFU's position is based on myth and supposition.

The NFU would do well to focus on improving poor and inadequate husbandry rather than its unjustifiable default position, which is always to blame everyone and everything else.  The fact that the demonisation of the badger population flies in the face of the evidence doesn't faze them, they just bluster on and on regardless.

It's the same with the fox population being used as an excuse for poor husbandry at lambing time. All the evidence shows foxes do not kill lambs, but still they are blamed for lamb mortality.

It's time governments stopped paying so much attention to the views of the NFU.  Not only is a lot of their policy prospectus spurious nonsense, the vast majority of farmers are not even members.