Monthly Report for March 2009

Below is a summary of my work in Parliament and in Southampton for the month of March 2009. Click here to read previous reports.

If you'd like to know more about any of the work I've been doing, or if you think there is another issue you think I should be acting on, you can always contact my office.

Work In Parliament

Recycling

This month I presented a 10 minute rule bill in Parliament which would require certain mass produced products (e.g. bottles, cardboard boxes etc) to contain a minimum level of recycled content.  The point of this Bill is to address a rather perverse situation that has arisen in the UK, whereby we have drastically improved the amount of material we recycle, but we have not drastically increased the amount of recycled material used in manufacturing new products.  The result is that much of our recycled materials are exported to other countries because there is an insufficient market for such products in the UK.  A ‘renewable content obligation’ (the title of my bill) would create a guaranteed British market for recycled products, and would be in step with our wider goals of protecting growing British industries and safeguarding our environment and natural resources.  You can view my full speech and an article making the case for this issue on my website.

 Council Tax

You can also now read on my website a summary of some relatively detailed proposals I recently laid before the government regarding how to make Council Tax fairer.  The main points of my proposal were:

  1. automatically exempting anyone eligible for council tax benefit from paying council tax at all, which would exempt about half of all pensioners
  2. abolishing council tax bands and replacing them with a capital-value based points system, which could be adjusted regionally to avoid the current problem whereby banding effectively operates as a ‘flat tax’ in some parts of the country
  3. a revaluation of properties based on a 10% reduction of council tax ‘take’ overall, meaning almost all properties post-revaluation would pay either the same or less
  4. funding the 10% reduction in council tax take through giving authorities the power to set local environmental levies, for example on the amount of packaging used in take-aways
  5. awarding part of the central government grant after the local council tax rate for the year has been set, to reduce the problem of gearing

This is only a very quick summary of my main proposals and the logic behind them- for the full article go here.

PMBRedundancy Pay

I was one of the Labour MPs in the House last Friday in support of Lindsay’s Hoyle’s Private Members Bill on Redundancy Pay.

School stimulus

£2 million of spending on school refurbishments in Southampton has been brought forward to this financial year as part of the government’s economic stimulus package.  Most of this money will go directly to head teachers to spend as they see fit on refurbishment projects, which will also provide support to the local building trade.  Southampton City Council was also given the opportunity to bring forward some of the schools funding that goes directly to them.  Our Council brought forward 8.8% of the funding on offer, as opposed to an average of 35% brought forward by other authorities in England.

More information.

Other engagements

This month I also met to discuss flooding & costal erosion with representatives of the Environment Agency; did a Q&A in Parliament with visiting pupils from Tanners Brook; and had continued meetings on supporting a national roll out of smart energy meters.

 

Work In Southampton

geothermalCabinet in Southampton

As readers may be aware, the Cabinet met for the first time in Southampton late last month.  After the main cabinet meeting with community and business leaders, my office was involved in arranging individual visits by cabinet ministers to business and community projects across Southampton Test.  We arranged for the Chancellor to meet with workers at the Millbrook Technology Campus; for Liam Byrne to see the excellent social enterprise work done by Jamie’s Computer Club; Phil Woolas seeing the work done with young people by the Wheatsheaf Trust; and other visits (I would always have liked to have arranged even more ministerial visits, however there were some unavoidable clashes which meant not everywhere could be catered for).

On the day itself I was tasked with showing Southampton’s geothermal power plant to Ed Miliband (Energy Secretary) and Hazel Blears (Communities Secretary).  The goal was to demonstrate how local district energy schemes can work in practice and be commercially successful.  I believe we will need more schemes like the Southampton District Energy scheme to be developed across Britain over the coming years if we are to meet our targets for reducing our carbon emissions and increasing energy efficiency (local energy schemes like the geothermal plant lose far less energy in transfer than big centralised power stations, because the energy does not have to travel as far).  With that in mind, the plant managers used the Cabinet visit to unveil their real-time carbon counter, which shows it has saved a total of over 112,000 tonnes of carbon since it opened in 1986.

energyworkshopEnergy Saving Workshop

Earlier this month I organised Southampton’s first ‘Energy Saving Workshop.’  Constituents were given the opportunity to get free and confidential help from specialist advisors on how to reduce their energy bills.  The workshop including representatives from the Energy Savings Trust, Warm Front, the City Council, local housing associations and other groups.

As readers may remember from previous reports, I have pointed out that while there is now a very significant amount of help available for reducing your energy bills, this help is spread across many different organisations, which can make it difficult to know who to talk to.  So this workshop was, much like my Energy Saving Handbook published earlier this year, an attempt to bring all of that help together in one place to make it easier for constituents to get the help they were entitled to.

Over the day advisors spoke to over 100 constituents.  In general feedback from the day was very positive, although people did ask if we could have publicised it more widely.  My office also received a call about a week after the workshop from one gentleman who has now received a new boiler, been put on a social tariff and is receiving regular energy checks now all thanks to the help we were able to point him towards, which is excellent news.  Based on the success of this workshop I will look to organise more such workshops in the autumn of this year in other parts of the constituency.

hmoHMO Roundtable

This Monday I held a ministerial roundtable forum on Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs) in Southampton.  The forum was attended by Iain Wright MP, (DCLG Minister with responsibility for housing, planning, regeneration and homelessness) as well as representatives from Highfield Residents Association, the City Council, Southampton University, and the University Students Union.

The roundtable covered a lot of issues, including

  1. work done by the university and students to ensure the student and non-student population were well integrated,
  2. possible changes to the Use Classes Order to bring HMO conversion into planning law,
  3. and why the City Council has recently taken the decision not to proceed with it’s original plan to apply for additional powers from the government for stronger licensing powers for HMO landlords.

Other engagements

This month I also helped publicise the new policing pledge for Southampton, met with representatives of the SCRATCH charity regarding banking problems faced by small businesses; attended the Highfield Scouts Centennial anniversary fair; was briefed by the Chief Superintendent based at the Central Police Station; and attended a Unison-Labour Link conference.  All in all a very busy month!

 

Alan Whitehead MP