I look forward to a clean campaign, fought on the local issues which we all care about. I also want to echo Digby Jones’s comments of this week, as he urged us all to put the people of Stratford on Avon first. Digby is (as so often) right: more at this time than ever before, it is for us politicians to earn the trust of the people we will represent, not to impose a central party will on them.

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One of my closest friends was in school with Michael Gove. He remarked to me a few years back ‘he is not the man I knew’. I’ve only met Gove once myself, and he seemed nice enough. I am of course reassured that, in his plans to sell of British schools to the French (among others) he will (in his own words) “make sure that extremist organisations, or people who have a dark agenda, are prevented…” from running them. Therefore, we can be confident that Hogwarts will not, after all, be in the hands of Voldemort.

However, he has been speaking to Hollywood actress Goldie Hawn’s charity, which emphasises social and emotional progress over academic testing and the use of simple breathing exercises to boost learning power.

His plans are estimated to cost £1.8 billion.

Crucially, he is claiming that this will all boost the chances of pupils from poorer backgrounds reaching top universities.

Michael Gove, I beg to differ. Experimental schools have never proven to be effective in helping those from deprived backgrounds. Where they have worked, they have worked for the rich, who can afford to compensate later for any deficiencies. Moreover, they tend to face much stronger resistance in deprived communities: after all, if you live in a ‘bad’ area, you are most likely to want the same kind of education for your children as those in ‘good’ areas are getting, not some experimental model imported from France, Sweden or the USA.

Just as importantly, in a time of massive national deficit, this is not the moment to be spending £1.8 billion on an educational experiment which may or may not work. Remembering that experiments, generally, don’t.

I have absolutely no doubt that Michael Gove is a good man, who desires good for the people of this country. But his innate goodness is not enough to make a bad idea into a good one. Naturally, in the run up to a general election, Gove will be trying to show that he is full of radical ideas, even though the polls suggest we are now heading for a hung parliament in which he will never be allowed to put them into practice. (Or, possibly, unkindly, because he will never have to put them into practice). Nonetheless, he must be careful what he wishes for. There is no idea so bad that it does not run a chance of being acted upon in the right (wrong) circumstances.

So, why do I think this is a bad idea? Simply, because the problem of education in deprived areas is exactly not a failing of the education system itself. We know that British education works, because it produces people like Stephen Hawking, Tim Berners Lee, Paddy Ashdown, Reeta Chakrabarti, J K Rowling, and, indeed, Gove himself. Trinity College Cambridge (I have been told a number of times by people who went there) has more Nobel prize winners than the whole of France. True, Oxford and Cambridge pick up more students from the independent sector, but the independent sector operates (or did at least until the advent of the revised A-level system) the same educational approach and the same curriculum as state funded education. From this we can conclude that it is not the system which is the problem.

I lived for a number of years in deprived communities, and was a school governor both in a very well run comprehensive school in a wealthy area, and a nursery school in a deprived area. There are many reasons why children from deprived areas have much poorer life chances than those from wealthy areas. These reasons span political divides. Right-wingers would say that clever people move to wealthy areas and have clever children who collectively do well at school, giving those schools a good reputation which attract more clever children. It would be hard to deny this. Left-wingers would argue that structural injustice in society takes the people least able to make the most of their opportunities, and deprives them of even those opportunities. Again, it is very hard to build a credible case against this view. But, since both views have some truth, it is foolishness to support one while ignoring the other.

In Britain, we have one of the world’s better educational systems. It is uniquely suited to our culture, and it produces world-leading results in some. If we want it to be better, then we should work to improve it, not to tear it up by the roots and replace it with culturally alien models which are not even proven on their home ground.

Seriously, what education needs from politicians is that they support it and invest in it. Not that they interfere with it.

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In tonight’s vote the Commons opted for a national referendum on the Alternative Vote as a replacement for our current first past the post system. The referendum would cost an estimated £80m, but, because the Government has delayed so long (almost 13 years, in fact), it is unlikely that the bill will be passed before the General Election, and therefore even less likely that any referendum will take place.

More seriously, Alternative Vote is not a true proportional system — up to 49 per cent of the votes would still be discarded, meaning that a government can still be elected with an absolute majority on around 30 per cent of the total national vote.

This paragraph is going to be short and mercifully simple. But if you lack the Liberal Democrat passion for discussing complex voting systems, please feel free to skip to the next paragraph.

So: in first past the post, you put down one X on the ballot paper, and, late that night, the candidate with the most Xs wins. The candidate may have gained not much more than 1/3rd of the total vote, and, often, only three quarters of the voters will have voted. As trust in politics declines, the numbers voting shrinks, and so our elected leaders have less and less of a mandate. The alternative vote system gives you a 1-2-3 etc choice of your favourite, second favourite, and so on. When the votes are counted, the least successful candidate is eliminated, and their second choices are distributed among the remaining candidates. This carries on, until one candidate has more than 50 per cent of the vote, and they are the winner. All the remaining votes are discarded. Although this is marginally more successful at giving people an MP they are happy with, it does not mean at all that the government is elected based on the votes cast across Britain. There’s a variation, AV plus, which I won’t go into, which is a much more proportional system. Truly proportional voting comes with the Single Transferable Vote, which is hideous to work out on paper, but which computers can do as easily as AV, AV plus, or even first past the post. And, these days, even the government has computers.

So where does that leave us? The one thing that the Alternative Vote Labour has pushed for tonight will give us is a system where it is much harder for a Conservative government ever to be elected. Gordon Brown may be counting on getting the support of Lib-Dems because of his fig-leaf gesture towards a proportional system, but, in truth, this is tinkering with the electoral system in order to change the result of future elections.

If Labour had done this, as it originally promised, when it first came to power, then we might have avoided much of the collapse of trust in politicians of the last ten years. Even Alternative Vote reduces the number of ’safe’ seats which play no real role in an election. And it is in the safe seats that we have seen the greatest abuse of expenses. But this death-bed conversion smacks of nothing more than desperation. And it is a desperation which will surely further undermine the residual confidence the electorate has in government.

Quite simply, it is the wrong answer, too late.

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South Warwickshire Environmental Association is a local group which — among other things — is strongly opposing new sand and gravel quarries around the A46 at Broom and Dunnington. Essentially, Mexican company Cemex gained planning approval about 25 years ago for a long neglected quarry at Marsh Farm, on the condition that they reinstated the land after works were complete. Although this reinstatement has never taken place, they are now looking for permission to quarry a short distance away. In all, there are six sand and gravel sites earmarked for these kinds of works in Bidford, Salford Priors and Harvington, among others. If you are not local, you need to understand that these are rural villages of extraordinary charm and beauty.

I’m not going to go into the ins and outs of the local campaign. You can follow the news at the Stratford Herald, or on the association’s website; if you are local, I do urge you to support it. But my concern right now is our antiquated UK planning system which, in my experience, penalises the honest and serves the well-lawyered, well-funded, and the simply brutal.

First off, planning decisions which have a disproportionate effect at a very local level are made at a distance. Broom’s planning decisions are not made by Broom Parish Council, nor even by Stratford District Council. They are made by the planning committee of Warwickshire County Council. In most cases, it means those making the decisions have neither local knowledge nor connection. True, both the Parish and District Councils can play an advisory role but, as we have seen in this particular instance, things can go wrong with this process, leaving local people no avenue to voice their concerns.

Second, there is no linkage between fulfilment of previous conditions and the granting of new approval. How can Cemex possibly be allowed to dig a new quarry when they didn’t finish (or even start) the reinstatement of the old land? Simply, because there is nothing to make them. If they were selling a product to the public — for example, a car, or computer software — and failed to comply with previous conditions placed on them, then the Office of Fair Trading, the courts, or even the European Union would impose punitive fines and ban them from further sales. If they were a private citizen who — for example — failed to abide by a Noise Abatement Order, then they would be given an Anti Social Behaviour Order, and if they failed to comply with that, would face a fine or prison. If they were a motorist, they would eventually lose their driving license. No such linkage is applied in planning law.

Third, all the money is on the side of those who make money. I remember vividly attending a planning appeal at another local authority, where the planning committee had turned down a proposal for a new housing development, and the speculative builders had immediately insisted on appealing. The council brought its own employed solicitor, who looked tired and worn down. The builders brought a smart QC — a silk, in fact — from London. Once the decision was overturned, as it inevitably was, since the council did not have resources to invest in defending it, the QC then demanded that all the costs of the appeal be met by the council. The request was granted. This was (to me) an extraordinary example of a quasi-judicial process thwarting the will of the electorate’s elected members. I subsequently learned that this was in fact quite common. It means that we, the electorate, are funding the means for our wishes to be ignored.

This is all exacerbated by the kind of quarrying targets that we find in the minerals core strategy. And, of course, we have seen the kind of flouting of local process that happened with the proposed imposition of the Long Marston Eco-Town.

What should be done?

At the moment, planning law is both confused and confusing. It is unsurprising that so many appeals by prospective builders and quarriers are upheld, since they are able to invest much more time in delving through the law to find grounds to overturn a decision. Elected councillors are not legal experts, nor should they required to be. Rather, their duty is to exercise their judgment on behalf of the entire community. To balance the needs of economy with the needs of local people to live quiet lives, unhindered and unimpeded by money-making ventures, is a political decision, not a legal one. If the councillors get it wrong, the electors are free to tell them so at the ballot box.

We do not need further amendments to planning law, but, rather a new simple, definitive system designed to make planning decisions easy to make, and restrictions easy to enforce — with penalties which are greater than the profits a company might make by flouting them. If you go to the government’s Planning Portal, and type the term ‘quarry’ into their search, you find 694 separate results. True, a number of these are news items, but every news item is included because it partially sets a precedent.

We also need to dramatically alter the balance of risk and reward in favour of the citizen, against materials extractors and speculative builders. In general, for most types of business in Great Britain, the balance is about right. Companies need to be able to bring new products to market and sell them, both to satisfy the consumer and in order to turn a profit which puts money into the economy. But for planning, that balance is heavily skewed. This is particularly an issue because the results of poor planning decisions are with us for decades or even centuries. I’m told that it will take 25 years before the Marsh Farm land would be back to normal if reinstatement started today. Very few businesses in the modern world will survive 25 years, leaving residents with nowhere to turn if reinstatements are not made.

Finally, we need to reassess what we really want to do with the landscape of Britain. On current strategies, we are perpetually increasing the number of houses, quarries and industrial plants. Do we really need to do so? Perhaps — but we ought to have the debate. Do we really need to continue to do so on green-field sites, while large swathes of urban areas are left to become wasteland? I think not. But it is naturally much more profitable to build on green-field sites than to work with all the pitfalls of building on former factories. Everybody knows this: you will not find a politician, planner or bureaucrat anywhere who wants to build on green-field as a preference to brown-field. But our planning system gives little true support to this view.

While we know what we should do, our system aids those who wish do to what we wish they wouldn’t. And this must change.

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Child victim of Haiti earthquake 2010, image courtesy WorldVision

The impact of an earthquake of magnitude seven is almost impossible to imagine.

Two years ago I went with World Vision, one of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) partners, to Armenia, scene of the devastating 1988 earthquake. Even after twenty years, and hundreds of millions of pounds of international aid, Armenia, previously one of the wealthiest Soviet states, is still in poverty, with much of the infrastructure unreliable, unsafe (to Western eyes), or incomplete. The landscape was littered with derelict factories and abandoned buildings. People I talked to told me that they had simply abandoned the last twenty years, and their hopes were that their children would one day be able to live the kinds of lives they had lived before the quake.

Haiti was, by contrast, already one of the poorest states in the world before the earthquake struck. It has for long been one of the least able to organise even ordinary levels of nutrition, housing and sanitation.

Clearly, everyone must make their own mind up about what they want to do, and each is in a different position financially. However, I want to put my weight behind the call to donate to the Haiti Earthquake Appeal. All the monies through DEC will be handled by well known, well trusted charities, including Oxfam, tearfund, actionaid, WorldVision, the British Red Cross, CAFOD and Christian Aid. It’s simple to donate online, or by phone to 0370 60 60 900, or by cheque payable to DEC HAITI EARTHQUAKE and sent it to DEC HAITI EARTHQUAKE, PO BOX 999, LONDON, EC3A 3AA.

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The Tory-backed Policy Exchange think-tank has today called for the BBC to be dismantled, with BBC Worldwide privatised, the BBC Trust scrapped, and sport and popular entertainment dumped to create opportunities for commercial channels, according to a preview to the report “Changing the Channel” covered by the BBC website and the Guardian.

It’s difficult to pin down exactly what the Policy Exchange is saying because, although they have given away copies to the BBC and to the Guardian, they have yet to publish their own report on their own website.

But, based on what we know now, this is the old right-wing (Policy Exchange actually calls itself ‘centre-right’, but you don’t need to read very far before you realise that ‘centre’ is a euphemism) animosity to the BBC. While the Labour party has long decried the ‘Tory Press’, Conservatives get equally frustrated with the ‘liberal BBC’. Of course, at the moment they are able to build on popular opposition to large salaries, such as the one Jonathan Ross is giving up, but the truth is, they want to take away from the BBC many of the things we most love about it.

Following the Policy Exchange’s prescription, we would lose sport and popular entertainment. So, no more Eastenders, no more Doctor Who, no more football, athletics, Wimbledon, the Olympics, and definitely no return for the cricket. Based on current schedules, the new look BBC might be something like this on a Saturday evening:

7pm – nothing – replaces ‘So you think you can dance’
7.45 – National Lottery draw, probably extended edition
9pm – nothing – replaces “Casualty”
10pm – nothing – replaces “Live at the Apollo”
10.45pm – News – extended edition
11.00 pm – nothing – replaces football

Of course, they wouldn’t really leave all those nothings in. But what would they fill them up with? Not re-runs of old classics, as that would be popular entertainment. Certainly not cutting edge wildlife shows — they cost as much as popular entertainment to make. Ditto Horizon, Panorama, Shakespeare productions, Grand Opera, Jane Austen. Policy Exchange’s prescription would be about taking the money away from the BBC which currently goes on those shows.

There is, of course, a channel which already does what the BBC would be like if Policy Exchange had its way: it’s BBC News 24. The same news, over and over again, all day and night long. It doesn’t cost much to make. But, equally, it doesn’t have many people watching it for long.

If you take away the things that people like on the BBC, you will not assuage their opposition (if there is any) to the license fee. You will increase it. They will be paying the same amount of money (Policy Exchange wants to beef up Channel 4), but getting nothing they like.

How long before the BBC is abolished?

On that basis, not long at all.

But have a care. Policy Exchange is publishing a new report every three or four days. They are setting out the programme for a Tory government — the things that David Cameron dare not put in his manifesto. Britain after Cameron might well be a place with marginally less debt, if he can somehow get his sums right. But it will be a joyless, grey place, where only sure-fire hits are played on commercial TV (in other words, US shows six months after they were shown on Sky), and where home-grown television has as much interest and creative flair as a 1970s Czechoslovakian cartoon.

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Up to 2600 Stratford on Avon pensioners entitled to Cold Weather Payments¹ are missing out, according to Lib Dem analysis of government figures. Cold Weather Payments of £25 a week are paid to people on low incomes who received a qualifying benefit, such as Pension Credit. Nationally this goes unclaimed by as many as 1.7 million pensioners.²

There are three crucial issues here, and the government ought to account for all three.

First, since official figures suggest that half of all eligible pensioners are not claiming Pension Credit, and hence winter fuel payments, it follows that there is something seriously wrong with the system for claiming. If 10 percent, or even 20 percent, did not claim, then you might be able to put it down to the ordinary experience with this kind of scheme. It is very hard to persuade 90 percent of people to do anything. Generally, if you hit 80 percent, you will probably accept that the remaining 20 percent are hard to reach in some way, or simply don’t want to take up the payment for some reason. But fifty percent? People I have talked to tell me that the system is very complex, far more so than needed. Is this the reason that only half have claimed? Possibly. But see the next point.

Second, there is a very serious issue that the government has no recent figures, and even the 2007-08 figures are national estimates. In a time when government agencies regularly use ACORN classifications, breaking society down into more than 300 socio-cultural groups, and where the Office for National Statistics is able to provide useful detail down to a few streets or a local area (Output Areas and Super Output Areas), it is astonishing that the government only has the most general figures for such a significant problem. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that they have no real understanding of why half the eligible people are not claiming.

Third, in this time of extreme temperatures, lives are at risk as people on already meagre incomes are forced to stump up the extra cash for heating. A lot of people I have talked to in the constituency have experienced winter heating problems — lack of fuel oil, electricity failures in the freezing conditions, and more. People on low pensions in such circumstances have to spend even more money for temporary solutions. It is the government’s moral duty to do all it can to ensure that winter fuel payments are made — even to the point of offering them retrospectively for older people who register now or in the next few weeks.

1. People can get Cold Weather Payments worth £25 when temperatures are below zero Celsius for seven days when they claim a qualifying benefit, including Pension Credit
2. Department for Work and Pensions figures for 2007-08 (most recent available) show that between 1.1m and 1.7m pensioners eligible for Pension Credit do not claim it, which also means that they do not receive the Cold Weather Payments.

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Stratford on Avon’s Tory MP John Maples today announced he is stepping down. His delay in doing so, which he explains in a letter to the Conservative Home website, means that the Tory selection will now be under their by-election rules, with a centrally imposed shortlist.

John Maples has served the community of Stratford on Avon for thirteen years, and deserves the thanks of opponents and supporters alike. I believe he has chosen the right time to retire. Liberal Democrats have taken seat after seat from the Tories in this constituency over the last two years, culminating in a dramatic by-election win in supposedly safe Tory Alveston in November.

With Warwickshire Tories now deeply unpopular in Stratford following the fire consultation debacle, it is our intention to press on and take this vacated seat at the General Election.

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If you’re visiting this site looking for my email address so that you can send me a two-sentence pledge to sign up to, you’re wasting your time. Like many sitting MPs, it’s my policy not to respond to them.

Why is this?

First, I don’t want to encourage the approach to politics which says that everything is really very simple, and if only MPs would realise that it all boils down to a simple pledge, the world will be a better place.
Second, I know from experience that many — even the majority — of these pledge campaigns are very carefully worded so that no sensible person could disagree with them, and then used to support something which is really very, very different. It’s like the (now banned) adverts which say things like “9 out of 10 mothers said it was the same or better than product x”, when the actual survey showed that one of the 10 mothers they asked liked it, one didn’t like it, and the other eight couldn’t tell the difference either way.

Does this mean I’m not interested in your campaign? No — I am interested. Send me your literature, and I’ll read it. In some cases — Help for Heroes, Jubilee Debt, Anti-slavery international, for example — I will actively back your campaign. But, if I’m not convinced enough to sign up to your mailing list and get your newsletter, then I won’t sign your pledge.

I’ve had some really good stuff sent to me. My old boss from West Midlands Arts, Sally Luton (it’s now Arts Council West Midlands) wrote to me to tell me about all the art in Stratford on Avon. Fair enough. The police have written to me to tell me about what police really need. The Federation of Small Businesses have sent me useful information.

If you want to persuade me, inform me. I won’t necessarily agree with everything you tell me, but you’ll have my ear, and I won’t forget it.

The very worst kind of pledge campaigns are the ones which are essentially a veiled threat: 75% of people believe this, sign up to our pledge and we’ll publish it. If you don’t sign up to our pledge, then we’ll publish that, and 75% of people won’t vote for you. Some of them really are as blunt as that. Others are slightly more sophisticated, and, in so being, even more ridiculous. I had one today, for example, from the Albion Alliance. I had to read it twice to check that it wasn’t from a football team. The Albion Alliance offered me two very stark choices, and demanded that I sign up to one or the other, because they were ‘mutually exclusive’. It’s true they were mutually exclusive, in the same way that fascism and communism were mutually exclusive. But there was lots of territory in between where reasonable people live. What made it worse was that they had the gall to demand a simple ‘yes/no answer’ without what they termed ‘obfuscation’. Interestingly, they didn’t actually include their pledge in the email, so I had to go to their website to check it out. I saw that the few candidates who had bothered to reply were treated very shabbily — failure to sign up to the exact words of their pledge resulted in an accusation of ‘obfuscation’.

Needless to say, I will not be replying to the Albion Campaign. However, if you are from the Albion Campaign and are reading this, my message to you would be: if you want an honest answer, then ask an honest question, and if you want a sensible answer, then ask a sensible question.

Finally, though, if you as a private citizen — or as an honest representative of a pressure group — want to email me with ordinary questions, I will certainly reply personally. Just don’t ask me to sign up to a particular form of words which you’ve already drafted. I will give you my own words, and then you can be certain that I really do mean what I say.

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Now that the General Election is on the horizon, people are getting increasingly interested in what the parties stand for. Both David Cameron and Gordon Brown have tried to suggest that they are very, very close to the Liberal Democrats. Nick Clegg has pointed out that this is entirely not the case — indeed, the Liberal Democrats are not for sale.

If you’re interested and you want to wade through all the policies, you can make your own mind up. Here’s a link to last summer’s policy guide. Actually, the guide is not very long, and is in (for politicians) relatively clear and unambiguous English.

Policy has not changed very much since then, except for the introduction of the pledge on a ‘mansion tax’ for homes worth £2million or more, which, currently, benefit disproportionately from the highest council tax band being band H. Lib-Dems are still committed to abolishing council tax altogether, so this is an interim measure only.

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