EMA Cuts Tell Us All We Need to Know

EMA (Education Maintenance Allowances) don't apply in Scotland.

In England, it gives up to £30 a week to 16-18 year olds from low income families attending further education courses.  A Labour Policy, its about paying for kids books, travel and subsistence.  To make getting a higher qualification just a bit easier.

Today, the Coalition cut it.

The same week as they are saying its OK for students to build up £36,000 of debt for a four year degree, they pull away the step ladder for the rest.  £30 a week really matters, when your folks' can't pay.

Tells us all we need to know about the real agenda.

Cameron and Clegg both come from a highly privileged background.  Its showing...

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Some Economic Facts & Figures

The rightful hiatus over student fees has rather obscured some startling detail in last weeks report from the Coalition's very own Office of Budget Responsibility, the OBR. 

Thanks to the New Statesman for highlighting the following:

• economic growth will be higher than forecast this year (at 1.8% rather than 1.2%).  Impressive in the first 12 months after a savage recession.  Since there is an accepted lag between policy and effect, this is mostly due to Alistair Darling's fiscal stimulus
• growth next year and the year after has been revised down to 2.1% and 2.6% respectively.  Slower growth predicted as a result of Osborne economics.....
• whilst there is predicted drop in public sector job cuts from 490,000 to 330,000 this is based on a rapidly expanding private sector creating nearly £2m jobs.  Douglas Alexander has noted that in the last post recession period (1993-1996), the private sector struggled to create just 300,000 jobs
• by 2015, we are predicted to have a budget SURPLUS of £6bn.  Good housekeeping, but why on earth is there a need, therefore, to cut £7bn from university funding over the same period?  A cut that is the direct cause of the need to raise tuition fees.  I say again that its about idealogy not economics.

Britain already spends less as a percentage of its GDP on higher education than the rest of Europe (0.7% compared to 1.2% in France, 1.4% in Sweden, 0.9% in Germany) so this has to be about a deliberate policy to shift higher education funding from the state to the individual.  They are creating a market in education, along the lines of the US model.  Equal access for all will suffer as a result.

All useful facts to have at your fingertips when (a) there is no alternative or (b) its all Labour's fault are being advanced as the reason for every coalition policy......

Conspiracy theorists will say letting the LibDems cop the flack for a week is rather a good diversionary tactic from some pretty bad economic news.  Another answer to what the LibDems are for!

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Cameron is Wrong on Student Fees

In London on business tonight, which always gives a different perspective on UK politics than from just the domestic Scottish view.


Lead article by David Cameron in the Evening Standard makes the case for the Coalition’s university fee plans. “Before Protesting, Students need to get the Facts Straight”. He makes three main points; university funding can’t escape the cuts, universities need decent funding to excel and it’s all very fair because most graduates will pay less per month than now.

He is wrong in the detail as well as the principle.

Cameron states that the public “subsidy” to further education is £5bn per year and that we can’t afford it. That’s a big number but I actually though it would be more. It’s less, for example, than the £6bn corporation tax bill that Vodafone has (allegedly and legally) avoided. This is long term investment to create growth and wealth in our economy.

He argues that reform to university funding is needed to maintain a world class education system. Then gives the game away by suggesting this will come from students deciding where to “spend” their fees and so drive up standards. Market economics in further education. Kind of assumes you can afford the fees in the first place, doesn’t it David? Which I suppose feels natural if you come from your own and George Osborne’s background.

Finally he rests his case on fairness. The higher threshold will mean, he writes, that most students will repay less each month than now. Probably true, but they will go on paying for longer and the higher interest rates mean they will pay a lot more in total. Unless, of course, you are well enough off to pay the loan off early.

This is all about shifting the cost of higher education onto individual students and nothing to do with fairness.

I oppose student fees because I think they are unfair. Further education should be a right open to all and not constrained by fear of future debt. Nor should students be choosing which universities to attend based on how much they can afford to repay. Our whole society benefits from well educated graduates entering the workplace and those that go onto to earn high salaries will pay handsomely through general taxation.

In Scotland we seem to have an all party consensus on a “no fees” approach. I hope it continues.

I could – just – be persuaded down the route of a Graduate Tax. Though I see many issues with it.

Loading students with individual fees - the scale of which depends on which institution they aspire to study at - is something I will never support.

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Broken Pledges (No 1 in a series...)

Text of my letter to the Inverness Courier (which they so far have not published) asking Danny Alexander to explian why he has broken his own and his party's pledge on Student Fees

Dear Sir

With the party conference season behind us, its time to start looking at the reality of the new Government’s policies rather than listening to the sound-bites.

A promise not to raise Student Fees was a key commitment by the LibDems during the election campaign, back in May. Here in Inverness, Mr Alexander made much of that promise at the Student Hustings and challenged myself and other candidates on the issue. I made clear that I would not vote to support an increase in fees and signed the NUS Pledge. So did Danny Alexander, as reported in the Courier at the time.

What a difference six months in power makes. Now it looks like the LibDems are going to tear up their commitment and support open-ended rises in fees at universities and colleges in England to a level which will put a huge burden of debt on future graduates. How many bright school leavers from ordinary families will now think twice about going on to university, scared by the level of debt they will run up. Increasingly, will it only be kids from well off families that can afford it? What’s fair about that?

Despite the different arrangements here, Scotland is not immune from changes to university fees and funding in England. A two-thirds cut to the teaching grant paid by the Treasury to English universities, has a massive knock-on effect in Scotland, via the Barnett Formula, to the tune of as much as £400 million. It will put huge pressure on the system here, whilst higher fees will discourage Scots students from applying to English universities.

Many people who trusted the LibDems on Student Fees will want to hear from Mr Alexander how he can justify breaking such a key pledge. Perhaps the Courier could facilitate that debate?


Your Sincerely

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Why Language Matters

Language matters.  I don't agree with the way Harriet Harman talked about Danny Alexander at my party's conference this weekend.  Just as  I think Boris Johnston was wrong to bring Kosovo into the debate about the effect of the Coalition's housing policies on London.

Some language is just wrong in principle.  But often its wrong-headed because it distracts from the real issues.

In London, we should be talking about the the impact of an ideologically driven policy on thousands of families trying to  make a life for themselves in a vibrant, multi-cultural city.  The combined effect of Housing Benefit caps and cuts, combined with the development of a "social "housing sector based on near market level rents will drive the unemployed and those on low wages out of high-rent areas like central London.  We will see the same effects in any area where demand for rented housing keeps local rents high, as Housing Benefit is tied to local averages, not a single national figure.

And in the Highlands, the debate should be about the politics of the man who has designed a programme of savage cuts of a depth and speed he spoke out against during the election.  Who spoke out against the idea of raising VAT because of its impact on the poorest in our society - but who now presides over a rise to 20% from January.  Who made a lot of noise about local post offices closing, but who now sits side by side with his new political friends who have just voted to privatise the Royal Mail.

Language matters, but its what you do that counts.   

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Why Osborne is just Wrong!

In speech after speech at their Conference in Birmingham, the Tories argued that the coming programme of savage cuts in public spending is the only way. Its all Labour’s fault. A result of years and years of profligate spending . Labour’s fault for deciding to increase the deficit, and bail out the banks.  Labour's fault for cutting VAT and boosting public spending as the recession hit.

“…. because of the problem left by the previous government……” seems to be a mandatory part of every Coalition politician’s speech.

Labour politicians, not bankers, are responsible. Public sector workers and families with children across the country now need to pay the price. There is no choice. It’s the only way to keep the financial markets happy (and profitable).

What rubbish.

Yes, Labour spent money to invest in public services, like the NHS and the New Deal. But it mainly raised taxes to pay for it; the Windfall Tax on Utilities, National Insurance rises. Remember all the Tory complaints about “stealth taxes”? Tax income rose steadily on the back of economic growth.

When the global banking crisis hit in 2008, the UK had low inflation, low interest rates, low unemployment and the lowest net debt of any G7 economy.

In 2008, the Labour Government had to make the critical decisions on how to respond to the global financial crisis caused the big US and UK banks. We pumped money into the banks and the wider economy to protect jobs, support household finances and keep the small business economy working. Yes, a huge programme of public spending but it worked, avoiding a total collapse in our economy. Our approach was commended and then replicated by Governments around the world.

That’s where our huge spending deficit comes from.

Of course, we need to reduce that deficit, but we need to do it through a fair and long term programme which balances income from economic growth and taxation with reduced spending.

And for me “fairness” is making sure that financial speculators, investment bankers and tax avoiders pay their share before we start putting the burden on working class families with “too many” kids.

The lessons from history are stark. In 1925, 1931 and 1980, governments told us there was no alternative to massive cuts in public spending. The markets demanded it, to restore “confidence”. Recession, devastation for individual families and huge social unrest followed every time.

George Osborne, David Cameron and Nick Clegg are taking us down the same road again.

To quote from Ed Ball’s excellent Bloomberg speech back in August:

“For all George Osborne’s talk of ‘deficit-deniers’ – where is the real denial in British politics at the moment? We have a Chancellor who believes that he can slash public spending, raise VAT and cut benefits – he can take billions out of the economy and billions more out of people’s pockets, he can directly cut thousands of public sector jobs and private sector contracts, and none of this will have any impact on unemployment or growth. Against all the evidence, both contemporary and historical, he argues the private sector will somehow rush to fill the void left by government and consumer spending, and become the driver of jobs and growth.
 This is ‘growth-denial’ on a grand scale. It has about as much economic credibility as a Pyramid Scheme.”

Time to put the record straight. Step up Ed Milliband.

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Rural Broadband, Rural Health

I’ve posted before on the issues surrounding access to decent quality broadband services in the Highlands.


What I learned today added a whole new dimension.

I was in Inverness on business today, attending an HIE conference on Digital Healthcare and how it supports the emerging P4 strategy for service delivery – Predictive, Preventative, Personalised, Participatory.

Speakers – clinicians, academic researchers, technologists – all described what is possible in terms of delivering the P4 strategy in rural communities. The essence of which is that instead of requiring people to travel to a GP or major health centre for “treatment”, they can take responsibility for their own health by being able to access information, diagnostics, services and on-line communities. The potential benefits - in terms of quality of healthcare outcomes and cost-effective service delivery - are immense.

The Murray Community Healthcare Partnership is already piloting these ideas with the Health E-care Portal and the Dot Rural project. In Inverness, UHI and the Centre for Health Science are involved in world class research and development around the concept.

In the workshops, however, it was clear how big a barrier the rural broadband issue is. If people and communities don’t have decent internet access, they can't exploit such services. And what really surprised me was how vocal the delegates were about why this was a POLITICAL issue that the Scottish Parliament must address.

Decent broadband services in the islands and other rural areas aren’t just about on-line shopping. They are fundamental to achieving excellence in health outcomes in a cost effective way.

Labour’s Digital Britain Strategy points the way.

The Scottish Government needs to make it happen.

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With friends like this......

So, George Osborne is Danny Alexander's best new friend according to his extraordinary interview in today's Scotsman.

This is the same George Osborne who is planning to slash benefits for the most vulnerable in our society by at  least £4bn.  And that's on top of the massive cuts to other public service budgets to be announced next month plus the VAT rise in January which every ecomomic commentator agrees will hit the poorest hardest.

I challenged Danny about the VAT rise when he spoke at the recent Inverness Chamber of Commerce Lunch.  He agreed with me that the rise in VAT was a "political" rather than an economic decision.  Now in today's interview, the No 2 at the Treasury goes on the suggest that benefits cuts of even more than £4bn are being considered.  That seems to me to be all about an increasingly right wing political agenda and nothing about fairness.  Keeping your new friends happy?

The LibDems fairness agenda now seems nothing more than words on an election leaflet.  Actions speak louder than words indeed. 

If I was a LibDem I'd be choosing my friends a bit more carefully.

Judge us in five years time says Mr Alexander. 

We will.

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Time for a Change

I voted on line in the Labour Leadership election last night. It’s taken me a long time during this election process to work out who the right candidate is and who I will support.

From the start, I wanted to support a leader who could get Labour back into power. Not just someone I would vote for, but someone who could earn the trust and votes of the many left and liberal leaning friends and colleagues I meet as I work and travel up and down the country.

I also wanted to support someone who shared my political values, promoted (at least some of) the policies I believed and would allow ordinary party members to feel that it was once again worth being part of a political movement. That membership mattered.

I’ve enjoyed watching and listening to Ed Balls as he has ripped into the Coalition over schools and the economy. He speaks with real authority and knowledge on both subjects. I hope he has a key role to play in our fight pack to power.

But Ed Miliband gets my vote for Leader. The Living Wage is a key policy and it’s something I have long thought is vital to fairness in our society. His views on the need to invest in the green economy and industries of the future sit comfortably with me. He has gone further to say that Iraq was wrong than his brother and I hope he will eventually stand up and say no to Trident. I trust his instincts and commitment on Climate Change.

I first heard Ed speak at conference in Manchester in 2007. He is no Obama, but he has a powerful ability to enthuse, empathise and inspire, all qualities which will build voter support. He is, I am convinced, a team builder, who will assemble a powerful shadow cabinet with the intellect, passion and moral conviction to take on the Coalition and win the argument on the economy, the recovery and the other great issues we face. A shadow cabinet that will focus on the job of winning again, rather than faction fighting around yesterday’s issues.

All of this has to be combined with a determination to take Labour in a fresh direction – radical, democratic, more openly socialist – that will establish a new left of centre politics. A new political “common ground” around which our communities can engage and develop. We also need to re-engage not just with the public but our own membership. Ed doesn’t just recognise the need to do this, from what I have read and heard, he means it.

Ed Miliband talks powerfully about the need for change. I’m trusting him to deliver.

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Rural Fuel Prices

The Highland LibDems - and Danny Alexander in particular - after all the noise they made about reducing rural fuel prices during the election, have a lot of explaining to do.

The Herald has predicted fuel prices in the Highlands could soar to 136p per litre from January as a result of the proposed hike in VAT to 20% on top of the already planned fuel duty increases.  See here.

VAT rises always hit the poorest hardest, so what exactly is "fair" about this, Danny?

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Blairs Millions

Whatever money the British Legion gets from Tony Blairs book profits will be well used and appreciated by those that benefit from it.

I am not going to get into his motives. That's for him to deal with. But the torch shone on his financial affairs as a result reveals so much. The multi-million pound properties, the huge fees for speaking and advice to other governments, the estimated total wealth in 10s of £millions.

Criticising him for taking advantage of the opportunity to make that kind of wealth is difficult. How many of us would walk away?

But you can't operate in that world without losing touch with the world the rest of us live in.

For me, sadly, that explains a lot.

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Benefits should define Labour

An effective and enabling benefits system is for me a pillar of the kind of society I want to see.

There when you need it, supporting you and your family into work or education. Enabling you to develop to your full potential and play a part in your community whatever your personal challenges.

We need to drive cheats out of the system but above all we need to make it simpler. Recent estimates are that more than £3bn is wasted through errors and mistakes which dwarf the estimated loss of £1.5bn through deliberate fraud. Never mind the folk who don't get what they are entitled to because it's so daunting.

The Coalition seem determined to use benefit system reform as a blunt instrument to save money and drive people into low paid jobs. Incenting private companies like Experian to spy on our communities to achieve this is a shocking definition of "fairness".

But there is no point in Labour just criticising from the sidelines. We need to work out our own new ideas and reclaim the Benefit System for Labour in the same way as the NHS.

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Coalition must not be allowed to re-write economic history!

The constant repitition by LibDem and Tory ministers of their mantra that the coming savage cuts are all the result of "Labour's financial mess" risks becoming accepted wisdom if we don't start to counter it soon.  Remember how the Winter of Discontentt came to represent all the reasons Thatcher got support for so long?

Excessive public spending didn't cause the credit crisis; what caused it was a massive over indulgence in credit by the private sector, led by bankers and financiers far more interested in personal wealth and power than stable banking.  Labour - like every other government in the western world - had to pump £billions of public money into the banking system to stop it collapsing.  Now ordinary people will pay a huge price in service cuts, lost jobs and a VAT hike that always hits the poorest, whilst the City gets back to "normal".

Coalition ministers tell us there is no choice but to make savage cuts in public spending, to appease the same financial markets which got us into this mess in the first place!   But there is a choice if you want to make it.

What Cameron and Clegg are proposing is about idealogy.  They want a smaller public sector and this is their great opportunity to do it.

Labour needs to get back on the front foot and stop the re-writing of economic history that is going on.

Which of our party leadership candidates will take up the challenge?

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When Fairness Equals Savage Cuts

Every LibDem candidate across the country campaigned on “fairness” during the Election.

Every letter and leaflet promised that the LibDems were the only party who would restore economic and social fairness. Locally, Danny Alexander promised fair taxes, a fairer economy – with investment in the Highlands in green energy , broadband and affordable house building - and a fair fuel deal for rural motorists.

Labour’s warning about LibDem plans for savage cuts in public spending were dismissed as scare mongering.

Two months on and the LibDems need to answer some questions.

How is it fair to raise the income tax threshold, then take it all away again for low income families by raising VAT and slashing tax credits?

Why is it now fair for public sector workers to take the pain, instead of the bankers and financiers you lambasted in all your election literature?

What’s happened to all the promises of reducing rural fuel costs? The VAT increase next January will put rural fuel prices up not down and a pilot scheme to reduce rural fuel prices seems to have been kicked into the coalition long grass. See Peter Peacock’s latest comments here.

Why is Danny Alexander leading the charge to cut not just 25% but as much as 40% from government budgets? The Barnet Formulae will bring that home to Scotland next year. If times are already tough for Highland Council he is about to make it a whole load worse.

Labour would have had to make some tough decisions about public spending, but our approach was to get the balance right between reducing spending and raising income from economic growth as we came steadily out of recession. We would have reduced the deficit by 50% by 2014 without any of the ideologically driven pain now driven by the Tories and signed up to by the LibDems.

How is all this “Standing up for the Highlands”, Danny?

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The Real Tory Agenda

When Conservative candidate Jim Ferguson stood up at the Kingussie Hustings and told the audience that the public sector “generated no value” he was regarded as a maverick speaking only for himself.

Now we know that his thinking was straight out of Conservative Central office.

Listening to David Cameron yesterday, speaking with scarcely concealed enthusiasm about the huge programme of cuts he is planning in public spending was chilling. Not because of the scale of the deficit – the numbers he quoted were all in Alastair Darling’s last budget report– but because of what it says about how the Tories view the public sector.

To listen to Cameron speak, you would think it was public sector workers who had caused the recession, soaking up wasteful government spending in well protected jobs, whilst the private sector withered away. The reality is that its only by keeping investment going into the public sector over the last two years that we have stopped a much worse recession; indeed the slow recovery we are now seeing – lower borrowing than predicted and lower unemployment – is probably a direct result of there still being public sector workers with jobs and therefore money to spend on their homes, consumer goods, holidays, services and all the other small economic activities that are the bedrock of our small business driven economy.

How many families have got through the past two years because at least one family member had a job in the NHS, their local council, school or a care provider? Investment in new schools and hospitals doesn’t just build smart new buildings, it employs people, experienced workers as well as apprentices.

Cut a 100,00 jobs out of the public sector – with the spending power that comes with that - and you risk plunging the private sector straight back into another recession.

Labour’s approach to rebuilding the public finances was about getting the balance right between growth and spending; stimulate the economy slowly and steadily and you eventually get higher revenues from income taxes and VAT, so you need to cut spending by much less.

What Cameron’s speech yesterday told us is that the real Tory agenda is still driven by their instinctive aversion to public services. They want a smaller public sector – full stop – and this is their magnificent opportunity to deliver it on the back of financial scaremongering, blaming it all on Labour (“a big boy did it and ran away”) and a corner shopkeepers’ approach to economic planning.

All helped of course, by LibDem willingness to wield the knife as the price for power.  Danny Alexander seems to have gone very quiet all of a sudden........

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A Bridge too far, Danny?

When I said to comrades in Inverness last week that the real test of the new Coalition would come when it faced its first crisis, I didn't expect it to be upon us quite so quickly.

David Law, I think, has done the right thing but the elevation of Danny Alexander to be the new Chief Secretary to the Treasury must be a concern.

I don't know Danny personally, but I got to know him a little during the election campaign.  I liked him as a person and he is obviously a capable politician, as his election result shows.  Party politics aside, he did a good job during what must have been hugely tense and complex negotiations with the Tories to agree how they would share power.  But I worry for him now.

Senior government responsibility is much like football management. Mostly, you need to put in the learning in the lower divisions in order to to be able to lead and deal with the pressure at the top.  We now have the two most senior politicians in charge of shaping the economic destiny of this country both under 40 and with next to no real business or ministerial experience.  Whilst I don't agree with their politics, David Law had years of experience in the City behind him and the Tories' Phillip Hammond a successful business career as well as shadowing the role for a long period.  Was Vince Cable even asked, or did he not want to go there?

I notice also that none of the senior and experienced LibDems in Scotland seem to have been considered as the new Scottish Secretary.  Or were they not interested?

I wonder whether the Tories are working to a very smart strategy which is to have a coalition partner in place, willing to make cuts in return for power and who can be an expendable target for the blame when the masses get difficult.

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LibDems Sellout on Nuclear Power

There were 5 Hustings during the election campaign in this constituency. At every single one Danny Alexander proudly promoted the LibDems opposition to new nuclear power stations and attacked me and the Labour Party for our stance (for the record I am "sceptical" about them, but won't rule them out).

A mere week after the election and the new Climate Change Secretary - Alexander's LibDem colleague Chris Huhne- has completely abandoned that pledge. See the Guardians report here.

Under the Coalition Agreement with the Tories the LibDems have agreed not to vote against plans for new nuclear power stations and will leave it to the market.

New politics or or just power at any price?

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After the Election

First and foremost, I’d like to thank the 10,407 voters in Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey who trusted me – a first time candidate in the area - and the Labour Party with their vote. Its clear there is a very strong base of support in this constituency for Labour’s values and ambitions on which we can build for the future.

At least Labour voters knew what they were voting for.

I wonder how many LibDem voters are now questioning how their support for Danny Alexander has led directly to the return of a Tory Government and a coming programme of savage cuts which will devastate jobs and services in the Highlands. The Tories were a distant 4th in this constituency as they were across Scotland, but they are now about to dominate our lives, with the help of Mr Alexander and his LibDem colleagues.

Mr Alexander is now a leading light in a government whose coalition agreement spells out immediate and accelerated cuts to public spending, cuts to the Child Trust Fund and Child Tax Credits.

Mr Alexander also made much during his campaign of his party’s opposition to new nuclear power stations and the renewal of Trident. He attacked me on the hustings for my party’s position on these issues. Now he sits at the cabinet table with a party fiercely committed to both.

And in the Coalition Agreement published today there is no mention whatsoever of the Rural Fuel Duty Reduction which was such a key plank of Mr Alexander’s campaign.

In his last leaflet before Polling Day Mr Alexander claimed he “puts the Highlands first”.

We shall see how that claim stands up as he leads the Tory programme of savage cuts in Scotland.

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My Manifesto for the Highlands

Labour has now set out its plans and policies if it is elected to form the next government. Our national priorities are to re-build our economy, renew society and restore trust in our battered political system.

Here in the Highlands, my election campaign develops these ideas into five local priorities:

- protecting front line services – nurseries, community centres, day care – whilst we secure the recovery. Local jobs and services should not pay the price for bailing out the banks

- making the case for vital investments in the Highland economy; the Inverness City Bypass, better rail links south and east and high speed broadband

- radical action to build more affordable homes, to rent as well as buy

- being tough when we need to be on anti social behaviour to keep our communities safe

- action on fuel bills so we can all afford to keep warm in the winter, including home insulation schemes as well as a price regulator.

My campaign won’t be based on glitzy newsletters or high-tech media conferences. I’ll be out and about meeting as many local people as I can, on their doorsteps and in their communities. Old fashioned campaigning, but an effective way for people to judge and question me face to face and decide whether I am someone they can trust to represent them.

Most people I talk to worry about their jobs and their local services. Highland Council’s consultation on proposed areas for budget cuts is a big issue. I’ve already made clear my support for the Swimming Pool in Nairn and the six community centres in Inverness threatened with closure. We should not be pitching one community against another in this way. These are exactly the kind of front-line services we should be protecting. The cost-savings would be small compared to the damage to local communities. I’ll be fighting to save them.

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Nairn Swimming Pool

Since the start of the week, the local news has been dominated by Highland Council’s proposed programme of cuts to local services, including the Nairn Swimming Pool. There is a Facebook campaign to save the pool here.

As I have no direct connection with Nairn, I’ll avoid the easy option of signing up for the campaign as if the Nairn pool is a facility I have used and loved. I do however, fully support what local community campaigners are trying to achieve.

The Labour party is making the case at this election for protecting front-line services whilst we secure the recovery. That’s not easy, but local services, and the jobs that depend on them, should not be paying the price for the excesses of the banking system. And if a much-used local swimming pool is not a front line service, I don’t know what is!

I am hugely concerned about the consultation process currently being undertaken by Highland Council. We face difficult financial times, but asking communities to compete with each other about what services should be cut and which should be saved is not how I think things should be done.

Earlier this week I visited Hilton Community Centre, in Inverness, who are also on the list of potential closures. Should they have to argue why they should be saved rather than Nairn’s pool? Setting community against community is no way to do things. It’s an invidious process.

Elected politicians are there to make the difficult decisions, not absolve themselves through a flawed process of consultation.

Highland Council - like all Scottish council - is facing a truly difficult financial situation as a result of the tight budgets set by the Scottish Government.

The elephant in the room, however, is the unwillingness to consider raising more income by breaking out of the straight-jacket imposed by the Council Tax freeze. The combination of additional income with the savings that could be made in administrative areas, could provide a life-line for the Nairn Pool as well as Community Centres.

I will do all that I can to save Nairn Swimming Pool and Hilton Community Centre – as well as the many other vital community facilities across the constituency - as part of my campaign priority of protecting vital front line services whilst we secure the recovery.

Despite saying at the start that I had no direct connection with the town, I learned at the weekend that my wife’s great uncle, Donald Finlayson (her family are from the Ardersier/Inverness area) drowned in the River Nairn in 1896. I am trying to find out under what circumstances.

I hope it wasn’t because he was a non-swimmer!

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Labour is right on NICs

Paying down the debt you need means getting the balance right between spending, tax income and economic growth. Tax income comes from Income Tax, VAT and NICs. Raising taxes is never welcome but at least NICs share the contribution between better paid employees and businesses. It’s the fairer way. The alternative is savage cuts in public spending.

Because lets be clear; public sector “efficiency savings” are not some financial magic wand. It means real cuts in jobs and services.

It means ordinary people paying the price for the excesses of big business and the “masters of the universe” in the big banks.

These are the same business leaders who said the Minimum Wage would cost jobs. It didn’t and we are a better country for it.

I’ve had enough of fat cat business executives - who will never feel the pain of public service cuts – telling the rest of us what we need to put up with whilst they rake in their bonuses and dividends.

Increasing NICs next year, as we get back into growth, is the fair way of getting the balance right.

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Making Highland Broadband Happen

I've responded to the UK Government’s Digital Britain Consultation with detailed proposals on how Super Fast Broadband can be delivered to 100% of highland communities.

The UK Government proposes to use a 50p per month level on every landline to create a £1bn fund which will be used to leverage telecoms industry investment in superfast “Next Generation Access” broadband technology into areas where the market, left to itself, will not deliver.

Many rural areas of the Highlands lack decent broadband services and suffer badly in terms of economic, community and social development as a result. Left to itself, the telecoms market will not deliver to these communities.

There has been a lot of negative nonsense talked recently - much of it coming from the LibDems who really don't seem to understand the issue at all - about how there are no solutions to this, problem. But I think the government’s Digital Britain Strategy is a real opportunity. It will make substantial funds available to support investment in broadband infrastructure for rural communities. The question is how best to use it.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working with Peter Peacock MSP to develop our response. We’ve now put forward detailed proposal on how reliable, superfast broadband can be delivered to 100% of rural communities in the Highlands. In our proposals, we make clear that we need a regional solution to a regional problem, not the “one size fits all” solutions beloved of the big telcos. We argue that rural communities should be able to work “outside in” developing community-owned solutions which can then be joined into the national fibre network.

This approach has already been used to deliver high-quality broadband services in rural communities in the UK, such as at Alston Moor in Cumbria. Across the UK and Europe, there are now many examples of social enterprises, cooperative and community-owned schemes exploiting fibre and wireless technology to deliver high quality broadband services to rural communities. We must start to look in detail at how those models could be applied in the Highlands.

UK and European funding streams will soon be available. We need the UK and Scottish Governments to work together and with local communities to make sure they are used effectively.

This kind of investment in the future economy is what the Labour Party stands for and I’m determined to play my part in making that happen.

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Rural Fuel Prices

There is a real issue with the price of fuel – petrol and diesel - in the Highlands. The combination of distance and lack of public transport alternatives means many people in rural areas have no choice but to travel by car. In principle, I support the raising of fuel duty as one way of discouraging unnecessary car journeys but many people in rural and remote areas have little alternative but to continue to use their cars. Combined with lower average incomes, this creates an issue similar to fuel poverty for domestic heating bills.

A government committed to fairness for all needs to tackle this issue. The question is how.

Fuel prices in rural areas vary widely, from around the national average to more than 10p per litre above. Despite what the oil industry says, this variation does not seem to be about extra transport costs; it seems to be about local market practice and trading volumes (Scottish Exec Report, 2001)

Small rural garages do not have the volume, so they need to charge a higher margin per litre to cover their fixed costs. Large retailers (mainly the supermarkets like Tescos and Morrisons) exploit this to charge as high a premium as their local market will bear, hence the variation between supermarket pump prices in different part of the highlands, despite their economies of scale and ability to share costs around their national networks.

The LibDems make much of their proposals to tackle these issues through a Rural Fuel Duty Reduction which would seek to reduce pump prices in defined areas by up to 3p per litre. It would require the UK government to seek a derogation under EU law. This has indeed been done by the governments of France, Greece and Portugal but ONLY for island communities (Corsica, the Peleponese and the Azores respectively).

In practice, however, for other than clearly defined island communities, the practicalities of working out what constitutes a “remote” community for the purpose of such changes in fuel duty seem impossibly complex in most parts of the UK.

The Scottish Government does use an 8-point “urban-rural” classification system that could form the basis for this. The problem is the when you map out the areas that would be defined as the most remote/rural there is little correlation with the most extreme differences in fuel prices. For example, the borders of one "very remote" region pass within 5 miles of Fort William, where current prices are only 1.1p a litre above the UK average, and within 5 miles of Oban, where current prices are only 2.1p a litre above the average.

A fuel duty reduction could lead to unpredicted market consequences (Tesco setting up over the “border” of a rural area but which is still close to a major centre like Fort William or Inverness). It could also give rise to perceived unfairness in UK tax regime between different parts of the country (should holiday home owners in rural Cornwall, for example, also benefit from such a regime?). Without very strict regulation, there may be little actual change in pump prices at rural filing stations as reduced costs are absorbed into margin or used to cover additional administration costs

So if a Rural Fuel Duty Reduction is not the answer, what is?

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SNP Climbdown on Web Notices

The SNP Government at Holyrood has climbed down over its plans allow local councils to put public notices online instead of in newspapers in response to a strong Labour campaign.

Led by Pauline McNeil MSP and strongly supported by Highland MSP David Stewart, the move was overwhelmingly supported by MSPs, who backed a motion calling "on the Scottish Government to withdraw the Local Authority Public Information Notices (Electronic Publication) (Scotland) Order 2010.

Ease of access to statutory notices, job adverts etc. is a vital aspect of local democracy and ensuring public notices are carried in local newspapers are one of the most important ways of ensuring that. This is especially the case in the Highlands, with the well documented issues about poor internet services.

The internet is a great resource and we need to press the case for access to high-speed broadband for all across the highlands. But not everyone can or will use the web and you’d think the SNP would be aware of the issues with web access in the North. Just like the broken promises over the by-pass, the SNP Government don’t seem to care much about how their policies impact in the Highlands.

This also is great news for local newspapers like the Courier, Strathy and Nairnshire which are already facing significant challenges because of the recession and who stood to lose vital revenue under the SNP plans.

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Voodoonomics!

Fed up with yet another LibDem party political broadcast masquerading as Danny Alexander's regular "Our Man in Westminster" column in the Courier, I've sent in this letter to the editor. We'll see tomorrow if they print it!

Dear Sir

Having allowed Danny Alexander MP to use his “Our Man in Westminster” column in last Tuesday’s Courier (9 March) to put his case for Liberal Democrat tax policy, I hope you will give me the opportunity to respond through your letters column.

As always, the LibDems come up with ideas which sound great but fall apart when you look at the details. They are the ideas of a party which does not have to worry about the serious business of government and how it impacts on the lives of ordinary people.

Mr Alexander describes the LibDem’s “fair” tax proposals. The highlight of this is raising the income tax threshold to £10,000. Whilst this does indeed give back £700 a year to many people on low incomes, he makes no mention of Labour’s Working Tax Credits (WTC), which already does more than this for low income families. The LibDem’s have said they want to limit WTC because it helps families earning as much as £50,000. Shame that their new income tax threshold will benefit families earning up to £100,000!

The LibDems estimate that raising the income tax threshold to £10,000 will cost £16.5bn. They claim this can be paid for – at the same time as making “savage cuts” to public spending – through higher taxes on the well off. When you read their proposals in detail, however, it’s clear that this is made up of a ragbag mix of tax avoidance savings, new taxes on air travel and cutting various capital gains tax reliefs. Putting to one side the impact of the capital gains tax changes on our pension funds, this seems to depend an awful lot on closing the same tax loopholes which every government has struggled with. These feel like SNP promises in the making to me.

In the detail of LibDem policy, £400m is to be raised from a new “green” tax on UK domestic flights.

Now I am all for encouraging people to use trains and other forms of public transport but perhaps Mr Alexander would like to explain how this new tax will affect the price of flights from hard-pressed Inverness airport to the Islands, Edinburgh and the south-east?

Labour will continue to develop a tax regime which is fair to individuals and businesses and which uses tax credits and other reliefs to support those that really need it most.

In closing, I see that pillar of the Thatcher establishment, Norman Tebbit, has praised the LibDem tax proposals (www.libdemvoice.org on 13 Jan 2010). That says everything about which side of the political divide the LibDems now stand on, and who they may be likely to support in a hung parliament.

Yours etc.

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Hilltrack Campaign

Signed up for Sarah Boyack and Peter Peacock's campaign to bring the construction of hill tracks under better control. New intrusive mountain tracks on the Scottish uplands are damaging our landscapes. Hill walkers, ramblers and members of the public are up in arms about the problem. While farmers and crofters need to construct some tracks for their purposes mostly on lower lying land, action is urgently needed.

See http://hilltrackscampaign.org.uk/

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Merkinch Campaigning

Great morning's campaigning in Merkinch today. Our team was full of enthusiasm and we got round a load of doors. The decent weather helped as well.

Door knocking can be difficult sometimes, if people are not in the mood to talk or just want to take their latest frustrations with politicians out on the poor party member on their doorstep. But this was one of those days when the people we met and talked to reminded us all why we're Labour; the woman in dispute with her employer being backed up by her Union, the family needing some decent window insulation let down by council cuts, the pensioner who grew up in service and whose dad made sure she will always vote Labour, because we are the only party that really stands up for ordinary working people. And the 86-year old who is looking forward to going out and voting Labour again because she still thinks voting is a right to be cherished!

Days like today fire up the energy levels and make us even more determined to win the seat.

More pictures on Facebook at Mike Robb for Inverness Nairn Badenoch & Strathspey

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Broadband in the Highlands

I grabbed the opportunity to meet Stephen Timms MP on Monday, when he was in Scotland on a "research" visit in his role as Minister for Digital Britain. I caught up with him in Alloa and put the case for Broadband in the Highlands.

The Digital Economy Bill that Stephen is currently piloting through Westminster make a commitment to guarantee access to 2MB Broadband to every home in the UK. That won't do much for rural areas like the Highlands, however. Its still dependent on BT wires, so you will get a connection but if you live 15 miles up a strath the performance will be woeful. What we need is Next Generation Access - NGA - based on high speed optical fibre and wireless technology and offering speeds up to 100MB with assured service quality.

NGA could transform the rural economy.

The problem of course is that the telcos - BT, Virgin, Cable & Wireless etc - won't put the infrastructure into sparsely populated areas as there is not enough commercial return. Across the UK and northern Europe however, there are community-driven programmes springing up - based on mutual and social enterprise business models - which are finding ways to deliver NGA when government steps in with some seed funding to get the "backhaul" infrastructure installed

I think we really need to look at these models in the Highlands.

The Digital Economy Bill is proposing a 50p per month levy - just £6 per year - on every BT landline to go towards creating a £1bn fund to invest in just such infrastructure. What we need to do is make sure the Highlands get a fair share of that investment and that its directed to delivery models that make sense here. That will need communities, Highland Council, Holyrood and Westminster to work together. No mean feat!

Peter Peackock MSP has been doing great work on this, and I will support him from Westminster in due course.

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Labour IS working

‘ Jobcentres are doing well and the department extracted money from the Treasury for Labour market support during the crisis. Unlike in previous recessions people have not been shifted off the claimant count into other benefits; there has been a net flow into jobseekers allowance from lone parent and incapacity benefits.

Inflows into unemployment have been lower than in the last recession and people are leaving the register faster; 70% leave unemployment within six months, compared with 63% in the 1990s and 60% in the 1980s. Employers, having once written of the official employment service, now express more than 90% satisfaction with it.’

Not as you might have thought from a Labour Party press release but taken straight from an article by the Sunday Times Economics editor on Sunday 24th January, a paper which is not exactly a ‘friend’ of the Labour Government.

It’s always difficult to comment on unemployment numbers – to say they ‘aren’t as bad as feared’ is little comfort to those who have lots their jobs, and the many young people in particular who are finding it very difficult to get a start. But it is important to look at the position objectively – and to acknowledge that the Government’s intervention has had a beneficial effect.

We can see the impact in the Highlands where unemployment is still below the national average at under 3%, compared to over 9% under the Tories at the height of the last recession in 1992.

Keeping unemployment down, and getting the employment rate back up is not just of huge importance to the individuals and families affected, but is also crucial to reducing the Government’s borrowing. The same Sunday Times article quoted above also said:
‘ official calculations suggest lower than expected unemployment could cut public spending by a cumulative £17billion over the next five years.’

Tory emphasis on immediate deficit reduction, with a particular emphasis on the public sector would lead to higher unemployment and may not achieve the deficit reduction claimed.

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Questions to Hilary Benn

I had the opportunity to meet Hilary Benn MP - UK Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs - when he was in Edinburgh on party business last week. At a wide-ranging discussion with party activists and candidates I was able to raise with him my concerns about on-shore wind-farms. He is, of course, a strong and passionate supporter of the climate change agenda and the need to develop renewables, but my questions did give him pause for thought. He asked me to write formally to him at his department and promised to raise my concerns with Ed Milliband as well.

1 How do we ensure that construction of renewable energy schemes will get us to the point where we can stop building new gas and coal-fired power stations and reduce the use of existing non-renewable plant.

2. Does the Renewable Obligation mechanism need changed again in order to encourage more investment in large-scale offshore and small community renewable schemes, rather than on-shore wind.

3. The UK is leading the world in the development of off-shore wind and wave power technology, with major opportunities to exploit such technology around the north of Scotland. What do we need to do to make sure that this translates into long term, sustainable employment in the Highlands?

I shall publish his reply when I have it.  

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Are we getting it right on Windfarms?

Since going walking with the Dava Moor campaigners last year, I’ve tried to keep my promise to dig much deeper into the science of renewables and land-based wind-farms in particular.

I’ve often wondered when my Physics degree would come in useful. Well it certainly has now as I’ve ploughed through page after page of maths, statistics and power engineering science in the various reports authored by ”experts” on different sides of the arguments!

One of the key arguments made by those opposed to on-shore wind-farms is about variability; that wind is too unpredictable to be relied on as a steady source of energy, hence requiring major amounts of non-renewable capacity – mainly gas - to be available as “back up” for days when the wind isn’t blowing.

Its true the wind is highly variable, but I’m convinced by some very detailed work by National Grid that the UK energy network is designed to deal with such variability and will do so. There is also significant backup-generation capacity already connected into the grid, designed to deal with failure of large scale generators such as a major coal or nuclear plant. Wind-energy by itself does not seem to require substantial additional backup.

What I am far less convinced about is how far such schemes will go to actually reducing CO2 generation from non-renewable sources (the big gas and coal-fired power stations).

On shore wind farms have a relatively low “capacity credit” (the amount of non-renewable generating capacity that can, in theory, be turned off when such wind-farms are working normally). This is because their “load factor” - their actual level of energy production - is way less than their usually quoted maximum capacity, in large part due to wind variability.

The financial economics of big coal and gas-fired power stations mean that the energy companies which operate them seek to run them at close to maximum generating capacity at all times (so as to be able to sell the maximum amount of energy to pay for the huge investment needed to build them in the first place). Will the capacity credit generated by on shore wind farms be enough to offset this financial pressure? Do we need to do more to make sure that generating more electricity from renewable sources leads directly to a reduction in use of non-renewable capacity?

A second concern is whether we are getting the balance right between different forms of renewable energy generation.

Off-shore wind and wave power suffers far less from variability (compared to on-shore wind) with a much higher load factor. These schemes really can provide high-capacity renewable generation with a much higher “capacity credit”. Such developments will also have far less impact on our visual environment. At the other end of the scale, community wind-power schemes have the potential to liberate rural communities from supply constraints and energy-poverty.

Energy generators are incentivised to construct commercial scale renewables through the Renewal Obligation scheme (RO), through which they can earn significant revenues – often more than for the electricity itself - by selling the corresponding certificates (ROCS) to the energy supply companies . The energy supply companies need to have sufficient ROCS in order to show that they have met their legal obligations to supply a given percentage of their electricity from renewable sources (they get fined if they don’t). In 2010, energy companies are required to supply 10% from renewables.

This mechanism is fine in theory. However, the original scheme does not distinguish between different types of renewables, so guess what happens? Since on-shore wind farms are the least expensive to build, but still earn huge revenues from the sale of ROCS, then many energy companies can easily enter this market. Big landowners also stand to benefit from selling land to the energy generators. Are these financial factors distorting the market in favour of constructing so many land-based wind farms – with their much lower capacity credit - instead of the longer term investment needed in more beneficial off shore and community schemes?

A modified version of the Renewable Obligation scheme came into operation in 2009 and puts more emphasis on of-shore generation. Will the market work by itself or do we need to do more?

On-shore commercial wind-farm capacity is necessary and there are many areas of our countryside which are ideal for such schemes. Given the cumulative impact on our countryside, however, I think that we need to take a far more cautious approach until we are clear that the capacity credit of such schemes will actually translate into serious reductions in non-renewable generation.

Finally, this is not just about an abstract argument about the best way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, important though that is. It’s also about economics, and in particular the ability of the renewable energy industry to create jobs. The development, manufacture and operation of renewable technology can create just as many high-quality, sustainable jobs as the oil industry has done. The north of Scotland in particular has a rich potential for off-shore wave and wind power and we need to encourage the investment in infrastructure and services that will bring the technology and energy companies here, with the jobs and economic prosperity that will follow.

Ultimately, that’s why a development like the Beauly Denny Power Line is so important. Not just to provide essential additional connectivity but to send the message that the Highlands are open for investment in these crucial new technologies.

So here are three questions which government at all levels - UK, Holyrood and Highland Council – need to consider:

1. How do we ensure that construction of renewable energy schemes will get us to the point where we can stop building new gas and coal-fired power stations and reduce the use of existing non-renewable plant.

2. Does the Renewable Obligation mechanism need changed again in order to encourage more investment in large-scale offshore and small community renewable schemes, rather than on-shore wind.

3. The UK is leading the world in the development of off-shore wind and wave power technology, with major opportunities to exploit such technology around the north of Scotland. What do we need to do to make sure that this translates into long term, sustainable employment in the Highlands?

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Goodbye to the Right to Buy

I welcome the SNP's proposals to end the Right to Buy for new tennants in the social housing sector. Introduced by the Margaret Thatcher's Tory government the Right to Buy was a popular policy in its time but has led to major shortages of affordable social housing in recent years as all of the decent stock has been sold off.

Building sustainable communities means providing equitable access to affordable houses for families and individuals and its time that we removed the negative impact of the Right to Buy from the equation. Whilst the SNP deserve the credit for introducing the necessary legislation now, I am pretty sure its something Scottish Labour would also have done, were it still in power. Labour should back the SNP proposals.

What is also needed, however, is a decent level of funding for Local Authorities and Social Landlords to build more affordable homes. I hope the SNP will think again about the cuts they have proposed to Housing Action Grant and other programmes.

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Highland Broadband

Great to hear today that Highland Labour MSP Peter Peacock has secured a commitment from the Scottish Government to invest more in Broadband Services for the Highlands. See here. When added to the investment already planned by the UK Government through its Digital Britain Strategy this will go a long way to ensuring homes and small businesses across the Highlands have access to the fast, secure and reliable Internet services which are so essential to building sustainable communities. For once, equal credit to the SNP and Labour!

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