More evidence of families struggling to pay their council tax in Salford

Soaring council tax under Labour leads to bailiffs and court actions in Salford

This week I have expressed concern this week at new figures which have revealed the soaring use of court orders and bailiffs to collect council tax. Council tax bills have more than doubled across the country under Labour, while in Salford, bills have risen by 73% since 1997, when Labour came to power.

• Whitehall guidance issued by John Prescott in 2004 encourages the use of bailiffs by town halls. It even recommends that in-house town hall bailiffs remove the official council branding from their bailiff demands and in Salford, there have been a total of 7637 cases referred to such bailiffs.
• New official figures also reveal that 9,870 households in Salford are now in severe council tax difficulties and face liability orders for unpaid council tax. These liability orders allow councils to seize money from wage packets/benefits or commence bailiff proceedings.

I have personally signalled my willingness to work with Salford Council to freeze council tax bills in the City and provide additional central funding to keep bills down for the next two years.

The people of Scotland have already benefited from a council tax freeze, making bills almost £300 a year less on a comparable home north of the border but Labour Ministers have ruled out introducing such a policy in England, which would directly benefit hardworking Salford people.

Thanks to Gordon Brown doubling council tax bills, a record number of families in Salford are struggling to make ends meet. More people in Salford, Swinton and Eccles now face the threat of menacing bailiffs knocking at their door.  This is a crisis of Labour’s own making.

Council Tax on a band D property in Salford is now £1512, whereas in 1997/98 it was £874.  This is a disgrace.  The fact that Labour Ministers have blocked a council tax freeze for England shows how out of touch Gordon Brown is with the plight of hard-working families and pensioners in our area.  Labour-run Salford City Council have proposed a council tax freeze for one year, but this is an election-year gimmick, with no effective proposals in place for controlling the spiralling council tax bills that ordinary Salford families are facing.  Only a Conservative Government will work with Salford Council to help fund a council tax freeze and bring real and sustained help to low and middle income families throughout the City of Salford. Only Conservatives can deliver the change our country needs.

Remember – In Salford and Eccles  there is a clear choice between five more years of Gordon Brown and Hazel Blears or a fresh start with the Conservatives.  A vote for anyone else is a wasted vote.

Let’s give Salford, Swinton & Eccles superfast broadband – without an unfair phone tax

I have today welcomed new Conservative plans to deliver the roll out of superfast broadband at speeds of up to 100 Mbps across Salford, Swinton and Eccles by 2017.  This stands in stark contrast to the Government’s new £7 per year ‘phone tax’ on every Salford telephone line.

 Gordon Brown’s Government wants to impose a new £6 + VAT tax which will be levied on every fixed telephone line in all homes and businesses across Salford. Homes with multiple lines might pay multiple times. The tax would be levied on homes with and without broadband access.

 I have therefore indicated my support for Conservative proposals to increase competition and introduce superfast broadband across Salford and Eccles as part of a project to be rolled out across the United Kingdom. The action plan will:

• Open up BT’s ‘local loop’ monopoly to other telecommunication operators, and review unfair business rate rules.
• Investigate the use of sewers and other utility infrastructure to lay broadband cables.
• Allow telegraph poles to be fitted with fibre optic cables, rather than old fashioned copper wire.
• Ensure that all new homes are capable of receiving superfast broadband through a fibre to the home network.
• Use money currently allocated to the digital TV national switchover to help establish a universal network, and after 2012, look at using this money to ensure superfast broadband reaches rural areas.

At present, 86% of homes in the North West have a fixed telephone line, and 63% have access to some form of broadband internet access.

Salford’s homes and businesses deserve access to the latest 21^st Century technology. It’s time to end the digital divide and deliver superfast broadband to all parts of the country, including Salford. I support the opening up of the BT monopoly and increased competition, while Hazel Blears and Labour just want to hit homes with an unfair new phone tax. There is nothing that Gordon Brown won’t tax, which is why it’s time for change for the people of Salford.

More Labour waste in Salford

I was astonished to learn this week that Salford City Council could be about to spend as much as £3.25 million on revamping two roundabouts on a road leading to MediaCity.  The roundabouts, one by the M602, reported to be including resin bonded gravel, functional lighting and vandal-proof plaques as part of the project is said to be costing £1.6m, while the second phase could add up to £1.5m for new plants and crossings as well as ‘architectual lighting’ on a road leading to MediaCity.  A further possible cost is that of £400,000 to move listed dockside cranes from the docks to the roundabouts to make them a feature.

I fully support the MediaCity project.  It is one that has brought in a huge amount of investment to the City of Salford and will continue to be of economic benefit to the area in the future as the scheme is completed.  However, I have asked Conservative colleagues on the City Council to strutinise these figures as, if accurate, this is an excessive cost for something so trivial.  It would amount to a facelift of existing infrastructure rather than being of any real benefit to the people and economy of Salford.  It is vital, especially now, when both Salford people and our economy are struggling, that any further spending of taxpayers money has tangible economic benefits.

Year for CHANGE

We can’t go on like this. We need change to get the country back on its feet.  And that change must be based on the values of responsibility and aspiration.  Only the Conservatives are a realistic alternative to Gordon Brown’s Labour Government.  A vote for the Liberal Democrats is a wasted vote.  They have no chance of forming a Government.  In Salford & Eccles, a vote for anyone but the Conservatives will let in Labour’s Hazel Blears for a further 5 years.

As a nation, we can’t go on with:

• The same irresponsible economic policies that gave us the biggest boom, the biggest bust, and now threatens our recovery with higher debts, higher instability, higher taxes, higher interest rates and higher unemployment.
•  An old-fashioned left-wing class war on aspiration from a government that has seen the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. We can’t go on with the old style of politics that divides our country instead of uniting it.
• Labour’s bureaucracy, running everything from Whitehall, denying people control over their lives and undermining the professionals in our public services.
• A weak Prime Minister and a divided government.

This is no time for more of the same. And it’s the modern Conservative Party that has the plans, the ideas, the energy, the people, the unity and the leadership to bring that change.  Our plans are not timid – but the truth is they can’t be. The problems of today demand more.  They demand real change: a better NHS; an aspirational economy; a big society; a new politics.

Remember – voting anything but Conservative will mean another 5 years of Gordon Brown’s Labour candidate Hazel Blears.  The Conservatives have a four year track record of delivering change in our party.  Now we are impatient to change our country.  We are determined to make a difference.  We are all in this together, and we know that if we all pull together then this country can have great hope for the future.  So let’s face this New Year with confidence, optimism and hope.  And let’s make 2010 the year for change.

Conservatives Commit To Future Of Salford Royal Maternity Unit

On Monday 4 January, I welcomed the launch of the Conservative health manifesto, which reaffirms the Party’s commitment to the future of NHS services in Salford, including vital maternity services. David Cameron has announced that under a future Conservative Government, mothers will have a real choice over where to have their baby, with NHS funding following their choices. Conservatives will also introduce local ‘maternity networks’ to ensure that mothers can safely access the right care, in the right place, at the right time.

David Cameron has shown real commitment to the NHS here in Salford. It is clear that under these proposals, under a future Conservative Government, the maternity unit at Salford Royal Hospital could and would be kept open if the demand existed from the local community, and I firmly believe that will be the case. Labour are pressing ahead with their decision to close the Maternity and Neo-Natal Units at Salford Royal Hospital, and local residents will have a real choice when they come to vote at the election.

I’m also pleased that under the new Conservative plans for a health premium, NHS resources for the City of Salford will be significantly higher, providing that Salford City Council and our Primary Care Trust spend those resources effectively.

Salford, Swinton and Eccles’ residents left with £23,000 of debt thanks to Gordon Brown

This week I responded to the Government’s new tax and spending proposals – the so-called Pre-Budget Report – by warning of Labour plans for higher taxes and record levels of national debt included in the small print.

The Government’s proposals include:
• National Insurance hikes on workers meaning a smaller pay packet for anyone earning £20,000 or more.
• National Insurance hikes on local firms, making it more expensive to pay staff.
• Higher income tax, pushing more middle income earners into the 40 per cent higher rate.
• Inheritance tax rises by stealth, taxing people more as house prices start to rise.
• Higher stamp duty, meaning the average first time buyer will now pay £1,475 in stamp duty.
• A new telephone tax on anyone with a phone or fax line.
• Forcing councils to make more cuts to rubbish collections and pushing up council tax.

This comes as the country’s debt is forecast to reach £1,500,000,000,000 – equivalent to £23,000 for every man, woman and child in Salford. The Government will spend £64 billion a year on debt interest. This is equivalent to the amount of money raised each year from fuel duty, inheritance tax, stamp duty and council tax combined. The debt will also push up interest rates over time, meaning more expensive mortgages and credit card bills.

Every family in Salford, Swinton & Eccles is going to forced to pay out for years thanks to Gordon Brown’s mistakes. Our country faces the biggest overdraft in our peacetime history, and Labour have already started to hike taxes on Salford residents to pay for it.

The message to aspiring families from these tax changes is clear. If you want to get on in life, own your own home or leave something to your children, then the Labour Party is not for you anymore. It’s time for change – and Conservatives will work hard to sort out the mess that Labour have left.

Backing Plan To Save Langworthy Hotel

Lying Empty - The Langworthy Hotel

Under new Conservative plans, far-reaching new powers could be given to people in Salford to protect community assets from closure or demolition and take over the running of public buildings and community assets.

I, as Prospective Conservative MP for Salford & Eccles, have given my backing to the new ‘Community Right to Buy’ which would allow not-for-profit community groups across Salford to take over the running of struggling local facilities, from post offices to pubs to parks. Local landmarks like the Langworthy Hotel, threatened with demolition by Salford’s Labour Council, could be saved and reclaimed for community use under the proposals.

Under the Conservative proposals:

• Community groups, such as schools, churches or voluntary groups, will be able to bid to take over the running of publicly owned community assets, if they can manage them more efficiently and effectively than the state.
• When state-owned community asset faces closure or being sold, voluntary groups will have a right of first refusal to buy that asset for a fair price and maintain it for community use. The new rights to community ownership will cover assets owned by central government and quangos, not just town halls.
• The radical ‘Community Right to Buy’ will also allow community groups a first refusal to take over and run vital commercially-owned community assets when they shut down – for example, those post offices, pubs and shops whose continued survival is of genuine importance to the local community.

Under Labour, local neighbourhoods in Salford and across the country have lost too many essential local services and facilities. Gordon Brown’s Government has closed post offices across Salford and driven local pubs into the ground. People feel powerless to stop their communities losing access to vital services and facilities. I’m delighted that a future Conservative Government would give local residents the power to save local buildings like the Langworthy Hotel and closure-threatened Post Offices.

Selected to challenge Hazel Blears

 

With fellow Prospective Conservative MP, Cllr Iain Lindley, who is our excellent candidate in Worsley & Eccles South

I am very pleased to have been selected by Salford Conservatives to challenge Hazel Blears MP in the Salford and Eccles constituency at the next general election.

It is a great honour to be selected as the Prospective Conservative MP for Salford & Eccles. Local residents across the City of Salford have been let down badly and taken for granted by Labour. Local people deserve an MP who will work with them and listen to their concerns, and I look forward to meeting as many local people as possible over the coming months. Only the Conservatives can provide a fresh start and the change that local people in Salford, Swinton and Eccles need and deserve.

Ready for change

The BNP on Question Time – What is OUR responsibility now?

 

I have to admit that I was unsure whether the appearance of Nick Griffin, Leader of the British National Party (BNP) would be a good or bad thing.  I didn’t know whether it would show his Party up to be the racist and homophobic group that I believe they clearly are or whether the publicity and his well-managed style would carry him through.

Watching the scenes outside BBC TV Centre on Wood Lane yesterday afternoon, I was in complete sympathy with the 500-1,000 protesters in their feeling of revulsion at the thought of this man being given such an airing on one of the UK’s most prominent, mainstream political programmes.  I understood the arguments put forward by them as well as by high profile politicians such as Diane Abbott MP and Peter Hain MP who objected to his presence on the show.  However, I am also an advocate of free speech and, as long as there isn’t incitement to hatred, believe that one of our greatest assets as a free country with a free people, is that individuals can express their own views and that they should be allowed to do so.  Therefore, I looked forward, although with serious trepidation, to seeing that particular broadcast of Question Time.

By the end of the show, I was left with a strong sense of relief that the show had gone ahead and that it had been so smoothly run.  I am glad that it went ahead in the format which it did and I believe that the net result is that the BNP were shown up for what they truly are – liars and bigots with no true foundations for any of their extreme beliefs or assertions.

Throughout the programme, Griffin was clearly nervous, with nervous smiles, continuous rubbing of his hands, shaking fingers and extremely defensive body language.  He stated that he had often been misquoted in the media but when challenged was unable to give ANY concrete examples of what was said and how he was misquoted.

I was most heartened to see that members of the panel came equipped with evidence of his and his Party’s previous actions and words, including knowledge of the time when he shared a platform with David Duke, then Head of the Ku Klux Klan, with James W Von Brunn, a white supremicist who killed a security guard in an attack on Washington’s Holocaust museum earlier this year, also present at the event.  As we all now know, Griffin was given a suspended sentence in 1998 for inciting race-hate after distributing holocaust denial literature.  Still, last night he smirked during the question about the horrors of the Second World War, with Dimbleby clearly rattled by this.  He labelled gay men ‘creepy’, stated that if Churchill were alive now he would join the BNP and denied saying that Hitler ‘went a bit too far’.  WHAT a grubby little man with grubby little views!

Nick Griffin and the BNP were last night exposed for what they are – an evil, racist and homophobic Party that does not stand up to scrutiny and, I believe, have no place in a modern, free and civilised society.  But we, whether as political campaigners or as ordinary decent people, have a duty to perform in the light of the recent electoral success of such a Party.   The lesson we MUST learn is that to effectively counter such extremists is by listening and responding to the complaints and worries of the people who vote for them.  It is often said that people who vote BNP do so as a protest.  It is therefore the responsibility of those of us who are mainstream politicians to ask people exactly what their concerns are and to find some way of addressing them.  We cannot afford to ignore the genuine concerns people have on the matter of immigration and we also cannot afford to allow people to feel sidelined from our political system.  Each of us has a duty to vote.  That in itself will stop extremists like the BNP from succeeding.  However, until people actually engage and feel properly engaged in the political system there will continue to be extremist groups that flourish as a result of the gaps left.  The BNP are not remotely British, be it in attitude, outlook, approach or substance.  They are an evil, racist and homophobic Party and our responsibility is to engage ordinary people on the doorsteps, effectively address their concerns, and thereby block the attainments of such extremists as the BNP, at the Ballot Box.