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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