The Webb log

Gas price hikes

2008-07-30T16:19:00.002+01:00

Centrica have just announced a thumping great 35% gas price rise - with more 'in the pipeline'. The rising cost of fuel for households on modest or fixed incomes is becoming a national scandal. With pensions and other benefits tied to the RPI which is currently under 5%, rises of this sort in the cost of key commodities will guarantee falling living standards for some of the most vulnerable people in society.

And what is the Government's response? The winter fuel payment will rise for most pensioners by £50 this winter - but average fuel bills are set to rise by £200. The Government has also done a deal with the fuel companies to spend more on 'social tariffs' - but in many cases the poorest customers are paying the highest prices, especially those on pre-payment meters. The Government's answer is that people should shop around for the best price, but you try doing that if you are on a pre-payment meter, are in payment arrears and don't have access to the internet.

Once upon a time the Government was going to 'abolish' fuel poverty. Now it looks like about a quarter of UK households could be living in fuel poverty within a year or two. This is totally unacceptable, especially when you think how much the fuel companies have made in 'windfall' profits in recent years, notably through being issued with free 'permits to pollute' through the European emissions trading scheme.

The priorities have got to be getting bills down for the most vulnerable households and also making serious inroads on energy efficienc - otherwise people are paying a fortune for hot air that literally goes out through poorly insultated doors, walls, windows and lofts.

Instead of navel-gazing about the direction of the Labour party it is time the Government got serious about one of the most pressing domestic issues of the day.

Plumbing new depths

2008-07-12T12:00:00.002+01:00

The Labour Government is not famous for its belief in democractic accountability. But in its plans for regional select committees it has plumbed new depths of cynicism.

The back story is that at the moment each region has a 'regional assembly' - a body comprising mainly councillors from the region (and others with a 'stake') - which has had an important role in things like coming up with a 'spatial strategy' for the region - including small issues like how many houses should be built in each area. The Government has decided that regional assemblies will be abolished. Their role in supporting regional business etc. will transfer to a quango - the regional development agencies - and other regional decisions will be taken in Whitehall. Democratic scrutiny would then pass to MPs from the region, by means of regional select committees.

Leaving aside the fact that the Government thinks having one minister for each region (bet you can't name the 'Minister for the South West'??) is more democratic than a regional body made up of elected councillors, the extraordinary thing is the proposed make-up of the regional select committees. You would assume that the membership of the committees would be MPs from the region, pro rata to the political make-up of the region. But no.

The South West committee will have 10 MPs, of which 6 will be Labour, 3 Tory and 1 Lib Dem. Given that Labour are the third party in the South West in terms of number of MPs, that is pretty extraordinary. Worse still, because quite a number of the SW Labour MPs are already ministers (eg Dawn Primarolo, Ben Bradshaw) or PPSs, they may even have to get Labour MPs in from outside the region to make up the numbers!

Given that every MP from Cornwall is a Lib Dem, and that there are plenty of Lib Dems through the rest of the West, having one Lib Dem to represent the whole area against 6 Labour MPs - who will inevitably have an urban bias - is a scandal.

The only compensation is that by the time these bodies have been set up, it won't be long until an election, after which we can hopefully put in place a more rational and decentalised approach to regional decision-making.

10p all over again

2008-07-10T16:02:00.002+01:00

One of the bizarre features of the row over the abolition of the 10p tax rate was Gordon Brown's initial refusal to admit that anyone at all would be worse off! It was certainly true that there were other budget measures (eg changes to tax credits and winter fuel payments) which meant that the effects of the 10p rate change were mitigated for some people, but it was never remotely true that no-one would be worse off.

Amazingly, we seem to be having a repeat of the same phenomenon over the changes to Vehicle Excise Duty due to come in in 2009. Initially the Treasury seemed to be making out that the losers were modest in number, but now in an unintentionally informative written answer they have admitted that 45% of the drivers on our roads are going to be out of pocket, and not just those who drive 'gas-guzzlers'.

There is a perfectly valid debate to be had about tax reform, and sometimes generally desirable changes do create losers, but the Prime Minister does not foster rational debate when he introduces changes which can leave millions out of pocket but pretends that no-one is going to be any worse off!

Life Insurance Troubles – Are you affected?

2008-06-26T11:35:00.002+01:00

This week I joined Vince Cable and other MPs at a briefing held by Which? in Westminster. I heard from customers of Norwich Union and Prudential who hold ‘With Profits’ policies like endowment mortgages, savings plans and pensions – there are 6 million of them altogether – are you one of them? Local resident Andrew Edgington has been taking a leading role in the campaign on this issue, and he writes:

"The big insurers hold billions of pounds in ‘inherited estates’ within their With Profits funds. They want to transfer these funds away from ordinary policyholders and pass them to shareholders, under something called ‘reattribution’. It’s a complicated process and the Financial Services Authority has the job of regulating it to protect customers. But last week the FSA came under some very heavy criticism from the Treasury Select Committee who have said they have been seriously deficient and that their arrangements are ‘barmy’. In particular they have failed to stop the companies using policyholders’ money for unacceptable things like meeting the costs of their own mis-selling.

All Northavon residents who hold with-profits policies with Norwich Union or the Pru should find out more about this. I believe their plans are unfair and people could lose out badly if they are allowed to get away with it"

Policyholders should go to the following link; or contact Which? to find out more. I have been watching developments and will continue to take a keen interest in what happens, so please write to me about it if I can help.

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/norwich-union-policyholder-reattribution?hl=en

http://www.which.co.uk/reports_and_campaigns/money/campaigns/pensions/With-profits/Orphan_assets_camp_559_105940.jsp

When the left hand doesn't know...

2008-06-26T08:13:00.003+01:00

This time last year the news programmes were full of stories of terrible flooding problems across England. A Government-sponsored report out this week said that the scale of the flooding was such that they 2007 Summer floods were "the most expensive floods in the world" that year. Several people lost their lives, tens of thousands lost their homes and - a year on - nearly 5,000 householders are still not back home.

This week the Government published the 'Pitt Review' into the floods which contained 92 recommendations. One of them was a strong presumption against building in flood risk areas. Sir Michael Pitt said this should be "absolutely exceptional" and only in housing shortgage areas.

Yet the same Government has handed down a central target to build 3 million new houses by 2026 which for many local authorities can mean only one thing - you've guessed it - sites in flood risk areas. In our area the Council is consulting on putting thousands of houses in the North Yate and Chipping Sodbury area, which are both areas identified as being at significant flood risk according to the Environment Agency. When I challenged the Secretary of State about this in the House of Commons yesterday he simply said that it was up to the Councils and that they had the power to say no to applications. But what they don't have is the power to say no to another Government minister who is forcing them to find sites for thousands more houses.

You would almost think they didn't talk to each other.

At the cutting edge?

2008-06-19T09:21:00.003+01:00

I'm going to be part of an experiment!

Next week we start the standing committee discussion on the Climate Change Bill. This is the bit where about 20 MPs spend a few weeks doing detailed line-by-line scrutiny of the legislation, tabling detailed amendments etc., all in an upstairs committee room out of the glare of publicity.

What is going to be different is that on a 'pilot' basis we are going to be allowed to have laptops in front of us! There will be temporary power supplies put in, and instead of having sheafs of notes we can simply refer to our screens. The Hansard reporters will be part of the process, so instead of passing them copies of our speaking notes after we have spoken (which is the usual practice) we will be able to e-mail them across the room!

There was some discussion of internet access, and we'll all be checking out whether we can access the nearest Starbucks WiFi hotspot, or perhaps use our phones as bluetooth modems.

Although the traditionalists will be turning in their graves - and we've already been warned not to use our laptops for 'other purposes' during the committee - there is a chance that this could improve the scrutiny. Just imagine that the Minister makes a statement and you can quickly surf the net and find a statistic that disproves his argument - mind you, if it works, the Government will probably find a reason to ban it...

Stop the Drop

2008-06-17T19:10:00.003+01:00

Attended a worthwhile reception at Parliament this evening in support of the CPRE 'stop the drop' campaign against litter and flytipping. As the Lib Dem environment spokesperson I spend a lot of my time debating the big global environmental issues like climate change and energy policy, yet when we undertake surveys locally probably the biggest environmental issue that gets raised is litter. Locally the perception is that the Council seems to have cut back on litter picking and this has not gone un-noticed.

The campaign is calling for tougher enforcement action when people are caught fly-tipping or littering, as well as incentive schemes to reduce littering such as bottle deposit schemes. More than 20 countries and a dozen US states have such schemes. Bill Bryson, CPRE president, who spoke at the Reception, said that in Iowa the introduction of such a scheme had more than halved bottle waste. He warned that we were in danger of ending up with a countryside that was '..beautiful from the ankle up'. In reply the Minister was reluctant to commit to a deposit scheme, even though a DEFRA report from a few years back said it would work and many other countries use them successfully. I can feel a campaign coming on....

Ten Green Bloggers...

2008-06-02T21:26:00.004+01:00

This evening at Westminster I hosted a meeting of 'ten green bloggers' which may start a movement which may change the future of our country.

The idea of the meeting was to bring together people who care about the environment - supporters of all political parties or of none - to think how we can use the power of the internet to mobilise people to get effective action on climate change.

Our particular focus was on getting the Government's climate change bill amended so that the target for cuts in CO2 emissions by 2050 was not the current rather modest 60% but a bolder 80% - the least that most people think is needed to avoid catastrophic climate change.

We spent the evening brainstorming and have come up with lots of ideas which we will now whittle down into some practical campaigning actions. One idea is to launch a 'canvass your MP' site where people can get their own back on politicians who knock on their door - we plan to get people to go and meet their own MP at their surgery and press for effective action on climate change. We will record on the site the responses that people are getting and identify which MPs are on board, which are sympathetic and which are hostile. We will put real power back in the hands of the people, and seek to ensure that MPs know how passionately people care about the environment.

Watch this space!

UPDATE - you can read what some of the bloggers had to say here and here;

Glimmer of hope on the buses?

2008-05-27T12:07:00.002+01:00

This morning I had a meeting with the Managing Director of First Bus in Bristol, Justin Davies. I have had dozens of angry e-mails about the company's plans to cut bus services from South Gloucestershire, especially the 'express' services that go down the M32. (The consultation document mysteriously failed to mention the extra half an hour that this would add to peoples' journeys). To add insult to injury, the Transport minister has just announced millions of pounds for 'showcase bus corridors' into Bristol, including one down the M32!

I had a constructive conversation with Mr. Davies this morning, and I get the impression that they are actually going to change their plans as a result of the negative feedback (what? - a consultation process that actually changes things - whatever next??).

For the longer term, I hope that the bus company will work more closely with local councils in future before announcing plans of this sort. Personally, I think public transport should be run as a public service rather than for private profit, but given the world we are living in I think at the very least it should be a partnership between the company and the councils.

Darling to the rescue - but will it work??

2008-05-13T15:57:00.003+01:00

A few minutes ago the Chancellor made a statement to the House of Commons setting out how the Government would dig itself out of the mess created by the Prime Minister when he abolished the 10p tax rate.

The doubling of the 10p rate created around 5.3 million losers, and their average loss was around £120 per year. To compensate for the 'average' loss, the Chancellor has therefore announced that the personal tax allowance for 2008/09 will rise by £600. Since the basic rate is now 20%, this will save most people 20% of £600 or £120. Gains won't only go to people who lost through the 10p rate, but also to basic rate taxpayers. To avoid higher rate taxpayers gaining, he is cutting the starting point for higher rate tax by £600. Because it will take a while to legislate and then issue new tax tables, people will get a £60 boost to their pay in September and then an extra £10 per month for the rest of the year.

Key points are:

- the cost of this is £2.7 billion, which the Government is simply going to have to borrow;
- although there will be 'average' compensation, 1.1 million families will still end up out of pocket, though not by as much as they would have done;
- there are no promises for next year - it is one thing to find the money for a one-off bail-out, but that is a very different matter to finding £2.7 billion year after year; the Treasury will be very busy between now and the Autumn identifying low-profile 'stealth taxes' they can use next year to make up the shortfall so that the allowance changes can be made permanent.

In terms of straight arithmetic, the announcement takes most of the sting out of the issue, and Frank Field has even apologised in the House this afternoon for being 'personal' in his campaigning. But I have my doubts that the electorate will want to praise the Government for coming up with a rescue package to largely undue the damage that they caused in the first place and which they pretended for a long period did not exist at all...

Why you shouldn't believe what you read in the papers.....

2008-05-03T13:45:00.004+01:00

This weekend the Department of Work and Pensions have announced that they are going to spend the next year trawling through the National Insurance computer to find women who might be missing out on part of their state pension entitlement - the part that relates to time at home with children.

I have some interest in this topic as I have been badgering the department about the issue for over a year. At first they were resistant, but they have been willing to look at case studies for me, and have now accepted that there is an issue here and they are going to do something about it.

On the face of it, you would assume that this was a good news story.

Now read how the Daily Telegraph wrote the story here.

Apparently this is scandalous news management and burying bad news.

In fact, I know that the DWP wanted to put out the story earlier than this but were prevented from doing so by rules which block announcements during the election period. Furthermore, what they are doing is likely to result in women pensioners getting tens of millions of pounds that they should have been getting all along. Given that this problem largely arises from dodgy record keeping in the 1980s, it's a bit rough to blame the current government - who are actually the ones trying to sort out the mess.

So, what appears in the Telegraph as a shame-faced Government hiding bad news, is actually a Government putting right a historic wrong when many previous governments failed to do so.

I'm not slow to criticise the Government when I think they have got something wrong, but on this one they are doing the decent thing and it must be pretty galling to be slagged off for it!

UPDATE: To see the story written straight - this is how Moneybox have reported it;

10p tax rate - fixed??

2008-04-28T19:10:00.002+01:00

Tonight we will vote on the Government's plans to scrap the 10p starting rate of income tax. But the parliamentary excitement seems to have drained away now that the 'Labour rebels' have been persuaded to behave themselves after being promised concessions by the Government.

The truth is however that the proposed 'compensation' package is full of holes, as will become apparent when we get to see the details in the Autumn.

The first problem is that the Government really doesn't want to spend a lot of money compensating losers. As a result, there has been talk of giving 'average' compensation, which means if you are one of the ones worst hit then you will still be out of pocket.

Second is the question of where the money comes from to pay for the compensation? Suppose, for example, that the Winter Fuel Payment goes up to help the 60-64 year-olds who lose out and who don't get the 'pensioner' (Ie over 65) tax allowance. The Government probably can't just pay this to the losers in this group, so it will have to pay it to everyone. This is hundreds of millions of pounds over and above the cost of simply compensating the losers. Assuming the Government didn't just have the cash 'lying around' presumably ultimately some other tax will eventually have to go up to find this money - thereby creating more losers!

Third is the issue of 'take-up'. Whilst take-up of the Winter Fuel Payment is pretty good (though less so among men aged 60-64) take-up of some of the tax credits is pretty poor. So putting extra cash via a complex system of tax credits may not get to many of the poorest losers.

Four is the idea of using the minimum wage. To provide full compensation for all losers would involve employers having to increase wage rates for significant numbers of workers - and to make up their loss will they put up prices (creating losers among their customers) or perhaps hold down other wage increases (creating losers among other workers).

In short, this is a bad policy creating a wide diversity of losers. Trying to compensate over 5 million people in a wide diversity of circumstances is likely to be very expensive, very complex, and involve spending money on people who didn't lose in the first place. Far better simply to scrap the ill-judged policy.

But for now the rebels are happy - they don't have to vote against their Government three days before key local elections. Whether they will be happy when they see how this problem is going to be 'solved' is another matter....

Testing, testing

2008-04-24T17:25:00.004+01:00

With my environment hat on I've been given a Honda Civic Hybrid to test drive, which has been an interesting experience so far. It's the first time I've ever driven a brand new car, and it's also the first time I've ever driven an automatic, so it's a bit hard not to be distracted by all of that.

But as regards the 'hybrid' bit, the idea is that it has both a petrol engine and a battery, so that when it is more economical (eg in stop-start urban settings) to do so it automatically switches over to the battery. I had (perhaps rather naively) imagined that you had to plug it in at night, but it turn out that the battery charges up as you go along, so you don't really notice it. It also does clever things like automatically cutting out the engine if you are idling, again without you really noticing.

I've heard some people say that if you look at the whole lifecycle of the product, including manufacture, likely limited operating life, and disposal, then it may not be quite as green as it seems, but it certainly scores well on the 'gee whizz' front!

Queuing up to hear me???

2008-04-23T11:41:00.003+01:00

Last night I took part in a Friends of the Earth / Stop Climate Chaos rally at the Friends' Meeting House at Euston, along with Secretary of State Hilary Benn, Tory spokesman Peter Ainsworth and FoE boss Tony Juniper. I was slightly startled on arriving at the venue last night to find the queue snaking down the Euston Road! I can't recall ever speaking at an event where people were queuing up to hear me before - though I suspect that the presence of the Secretary of State may have had something to do with it!

The event itself was very worthwhile. Tony Juniper set out the key concerns of FoE about the Climate Change Bill. Hilary Benn said the Bill was itself a triumph for 'people power' and was the first of its kind anywhere in the world. Peter Ainsworth ran through the changes that the Tories and Lib Dems had managed to achieve together on the Bill in the House of Lords. I then set out the Lib Dem position, where we want to beef up the Bill considerably, including trying again to get the CO2 cut target up to 80%.

I've spoken at a few of these events now, and unless you listen very carefully you could be forgiven for thinking that we all basically agree. But the reality is that whilst the environment spokespeople of the parties can say 'green things' to 'green groups', none of it has any credibility unless their party takes these things to its heart. I pointed out that whilst the Tory environment spokesman is, I am sure, sincere, the rest of his party is much more flaky on things like nuclear power and anything to do with economic development (eg airport expansion). Likewise, DEFRA may do its best, but it is a tiny department whose green agenda gets trampled on by the Ministry of Transport (cf Heathrow expansion), BERR (cf new coal-fired power stations), DCLG (eg housing insulation standards) and most of all the Treasury (cf the lack of a truly 'green' tax agenda). Only if environmentalism runs through the heart of a party - as it does with the Lib Dems - can you be confident that what the environment spokesman tells environmentalists is actually what the party would do in Government.

Being ripped off

2008-04-17T16:35:00.003+01:00

A very worthwhile report by the Office of Fair Trading has found that the public sector has been repeatedly ripped off by construction companies competing for (or rather 'failing to compete' for) big contracts for new schools and hospitals. It turns out - surprise surprise - that the companies have been getting together and agreeing that some would put in 'cover bids' - ie implausibly large bids - to make others look more attractive and also to allow others to inflate their bids and still get the contract. After the event the people who put in the cover bids got cash payouts. Sounds like good old fashioned corruption to me.

One of the companies named by the OFT is Carillion who are one of the two shortlisted bidders for the new North Bristol 'super-hospital' at Southmead. So can we now be confident that they got on the shortlist through a fair competitive process? I'll be asking the OFT to have a look at this one. I don't agree with PFI financing of hospitals in any case, but if we are going to get ripped off then it compounds the problem.

It also occurs to me that this is actually not a huge surprise. Adam Smith famously wrote over 200 years ago:

""People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices".

Not often Steve Webb quotes Adam Smith, but on this occasion he was spot on - shame no-one appears to have learned the lesson.

UPDATE: Carillion HQ have been in touch (!) to say that the company that the OFT criticised was Carillion JM (formerly known as Mowlem) who they bought in 2006; they say that there has been no suggestion of misdemeanours since the company was under Carillion control; I'm happy to acknowledge this; however, I remain of the view that the whole process is so secretive and there are so few people who can bid for a contract like this, it is asking for collusion, so I will still ask the OFT if there are any grounds for concern.

Result!

2008-04-04T12:34:00.004+01:00

Some of my time is spent dealing with the great issues of the day - human rights, climate change, global terrorism - but occasionally you get a 'result' on something a bit closer to home!

In my local area there are three main league football teams who are followed by local residents - Bristol City, Bristol Rovers and Yeovil Town. In the past the custom of BBC Radio Bristol has been to cover the away matches of each of these teams for fans who could not travel to the matches. Where two of the teams were away together the station was able to split between its Bristol and Somerset frequencies and cover both matches.

However, in early February Radio Bristol created a storm by covering only a Yeovil away game and not the Bristol Rovers away game which happened at the same time, presumably as a cost-saving measure. I subsequently received several angry e-mails and letters from fans and took the issue up with the Director-General of the BBC.

I am pleased to say that he has now responded by saying that "...BBC Radio Bristol has now confirmed that it will provide live coverage of the away games of all three teams in the region, until the end of the current football season". I am sure that this result will be well received by fans of all three clubs in the area!

What constitutional reform?

2008-03-25T17:00:00.002Z

The Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, today made a statement to MPs about constitutional reform. Normally a relatively dry topic, the statement had been spiced up a bit by rumours of changes to the voting system, of possibly making it compulsory to vote (something I oppose) and finally getting round to reform of the House of Lords.

But what did we get instead?

A draft Bill which had nothing to say about any of those issues, but found time to cover the appointment of Bishops and the rules about which flags can be flown where and when!

This risks being a huge missed opportunity.

People sometimes say that constitutional reform is dry technical stuff of no interest to anyone except anoraks. But actually, I believe that a lot of the cynicism about politics has its roots in the fact that so many voters in so many parts of the country are effectively disenfranchised by the first-past-the-post voting system. Many MPs can get away with paying little or not attention to their constituents because they have a 'job for life' through a 'safe seat' - something you don't get in the same way in 'fair voting systems'.

To give one example.

Today in Parliament we are debating whether there should be an inquiry into the war on Iraq. When the issue was voted on, every Lib Dem MP voted against the war. But back then there were only 53 Lib Dem MPs, because the first-past-the-post system converted a vote share of just under 20% into less than 10% of the MPs. Suppose we had had a proportional voting system with twice as many Lib Dem MPs, and fewer MPs of the parties who supported the war? The Government's majority could have been almost wiped out and we might not have gone to war. That's how important getting this issue right could be.

For as long as one party can get a working majority in Parliament with not much more than a third of the votes cast (which is the current situation) we will never have representative democracy in this country. Until that issue is addressed, the contents of today's draft Bill will seem like trivia. Even the section that proposes Parliamentary approval before going to war will be of no consequence unless and until Parliament itself is elected in a way that is truly representative of the British people.

Final Thoughts on the Budget

2008-03-18T21:29:00.002Z

As I write it is around 9.30pm and the four days of Budget debate are drawing to a close. I took part yesterday when the theme was the Environment. Although the Budget was labelled as 'green', it turns out that the total increase in 'green taxes' by 2010 was less than £2 billion - or 'rounding error' in the Treasury's scale of things. My colleague Vince Cable contrasted the 'apocalyptic' language of the Budget speech regarding climate change with the 'timidity and deferral' that characterised most of the measures.

One of the less thrilling features of the way we deal with the Budget is that at 10pm we vote on a series of 'Budget resolutions'. There are dozens and dozens of these but in practice we will end up voting on perhaps 5 or 6 - the rest will go through 'on the nod'. But with each vote or 'division' lasting 15 minutes, it means we will not be through until around 11.30pm. The first few votes are reasonably sociable, with chance to catch up with colleagues and those of other parties (when you are in the same lobby), but after an hour or so of waiting around, the novelty does tend to wear off.

First thoughts on the Budget

2008-03-12T14:06:00.002Z

We've just had Alistair Darling's first Budget which was notable mainly for the lack of anything new. The main 'announcements' - bigger winter fuel payments, a slightly tougher line with the energy companies, slightly higher tax on new 'gas guzzlers' - had all been trailed in the press. When Gordon Brown used to spring rabbits from a hat at the end of his budget speeches they were generally a surprise - not that this was a good way to make government policy! - but today's speech was largely a repeat of stuff we had heard before and a few things we'd read in the papers.

In terms of my environment brief, although there was a lot of 'green talk', the actual changes didn't amount to a great deal. For example, the Chancellor announced £25m for a 'green homes' initiative. But as someone pointed out, that works out at around £1 per household in the land, which isn't going to get us very far.

My biggest worry is that the attempt to use 'green' language to dress up a Budget that was mainly about filling the holes in the Government's finances risks undermining the case for 'green taxation' altogether. Only if green taxes are revenue neutral overall - ie higher green taxes are offset by lower income and other taxes - will the public really buy in to the whole idea.

What we do all day...

2008-03-04T13:05:00.002Z

One of the questions that MPs are frequently asked is what they do all day (!), given that we are patently not all sitting in the House of Commons all day long. My activities today give some clue to that.

The day started with a breakfast meeting to discuss 'smart meters'. These are the devices that will eventually be fitted to all our homes that will give us as consumers much more information about the electricity and gas that we consume, and which also have the potential to facilitate the selling of power that we generate in the home back to the National Grid. In principle these look like a very good thing, but replacing approaching 50 million meters will cost around £5 billion, so there are big issues about who pays and how the technology is 'rolled out'. The meeting was a very useful event with MPs and peers from all parties and industry experts and consumer bodies.

After this I returned to my office to check on the overnight e-mails before attending a meeting of the Lib Dem 'Shadow Cabinet' where we discuss our strategy in Parliament. I had to leave that meeting earlier to go on to the morning sitting of the 'Standing Committee' on the Energy Bill. This is the process which involves line-by-line scrutiny of new legislation, together with consideration of amendments that we and the other opposition parties table. Simply being in committee will occupy about five and a half hours today, to say nothing of the hours spent getting briefed on what are often very technical issues and drafting potential amendments to the legislation. In addition to this morning's session, the three hour afternoon session will take place whilst debate is going on in the House of Commons on other issues - which is part of the answer to the question - 'where are you and what do you do all day'.

At the end of most days I am in my office signing and amending letters that have been drafted for me to constituents and others, and likewise dealing with a huge volume of e-mails. At the moment we routinely finish after 10pm, and I walk back to my flat, catch up on the football results and head for bed!

Public meeting re 5000 houses for Yate

2008-03-03T09:04:00.002Z

I was going to blog about our public meeting on Friday night (29th Feb) about new houses at Yate, but I see I've been beaten to it by the Gazette and by Cllr Paul Hulbert.

Says it all really!

Late night Nationalisation

2008-02-19T23:01:00.002Z

It's just turned 11pm and we're still going strong, busy nationalising Northern Rock.

It's pretty scandalous really that the House of Commons has just one day (albeit finishing at midnight) to consider a complete Act of Parliament, dealing with tens of billions of pounds of liabilities, and then the House of Lords has one day, and then that's more or less it. Whilst we agree in principle that Nationalisation is probably the 'least worst' option - and indeed had the Government listened to Vince Cable we could have saved months of uncertainty - that still doesn't mean every dot and comma of the legislation is right. Laws made in haste are sometimes the worst of all, and I can't say that much in the way of effective scrutiny has gone on - especially the nearer we get to midnight.

PMQs could be interesting tomorrow - you might imagine that David Cameron will go on Northern Rock and/or reinforce his call to sack the Chancellor? But actually Gordon Brown has some quite strong counter-arguments about the total lack of a coherent Conservative response to the whole Northern Rock fiasco. I predict therefore a series of each man asking the other questions - so pretty much business as usual, but the rest of us being probably slightly more tetchy than usual having not got to bed until the early hours!

Composting

2008-02-13T09:29:00.002Z

Last night I attended a very impressive public meeting in Pucklechurch on plans for a new 'in-vessel' (ie enclosed) composter between Westerleigh and Pucklechurch. The plan is to process 30,000 tonnes a year of 'green waste' from South Gloucestershire. The problem is that the proposed site is in the middle of a particularly important stretch of Green Belt.

For anyone who wants to know more about in-vesssel composters (and I never thought I would find myself writing that sentence) my Lib Dem colleague councillor Claire Young has recently started her own blog and you read more here.

We saw a particularly impressive presentation by parish councillor Martin Smith who had produced some artist's impressions of what the actual scheme would look like. A building described in the application as being like a 'Dutch Barn', turned out to be a great big metal construction, and the size and scale of the thing was comparable to an Airbus A380. Only goes to show you shouldn't believe everything you read in planning applications.

New climate change campaign launched

2008-02-08T13:50:00.000Z

Working with Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, we have just launched a new campaign to get the Government to toughen up its climate change targets. At the moment, the Climate Change Bill proposes a statutory target of 60% cut in CO2 emissions by 2050. But most people - environment campaigners, scientists and even the Prime Minister - now seem to accept that 80% is probably the minimum needed to avoid some pretty catastrophic climate change. The Lib Dems are going to try to amend the Climate Change Bill to have an 80% target, but we will only succeed if we can get other parties to vote with us. At the moment Labour and the Tories are saying we should leave it alone and wait until a committee of the great and the good (the Climate Change Commission) come back and tell us what the figure should be.

We say we can't afford to waste time and we need tough targets now.

If you agree, please join our Facebook group which allows you to register your own support and also to report back on whether your own MP is willing to back 80%.

A bizarre debate!

2008-01-22T12:57:00.000Z

I took part in a very strange debate this morning about the key issue of how many houses are going to be built in the South West in the next 20 years and where they should be built. The figures and plans are in a document called the 'draft regional spatial stratgegy for the South West', on which an 'independent' panel has now produced a report to the Secretary of State. For South Gloucestershire the plan means an extra 30,000 plus houses (or roughly 'four Bradley Stokes'), an increase of about a third on the already large increase proposed by the Regional Assembly. Out of the blue, an extra 5,000 houses was announced for North Yate.

A lot of MPs turned up to speak and I spoke about the implications of the Yate plans for the local roads, health services and environment. I pointed out that Yate town council was refused permission to speak to the Panel and that this 5,000 number appeared to have been plucked from nowhere.

The Housing Minister, Yvette Cooper, replied that she wasn't really allowed to say anything and that initially her ministerial brief for the debate was entirely blank on the subject! Apparently the reason is that the Secretary of State is acting in a "quasi-judicial" capacity - ie it is a bit like an MP trying to tell a judge to find someone guilty or innocent! She did however promise a 13 week consultation period - but only after the Minister has made up her mind!

Incredibly, the only elected people who have had any regional say in this whole process - the Regional Assembly - are being abolished. We do have a "regional minister for the South West" (prize if you can name him...) but he didn't turn up. We have been promised "regional select committees" which could do some of this scrutiny work, but they haven't been created yet.

It is astonishing that key strategic decisions (as well as very local ones, apparently) are being made in this way with virtually no democratic scrutiny. This one will run and run.