Mike Robb to tackle 'Tory cheerleader' Danny Alexander

MP Danny Alexander has been “a cheerleader for Tory policies” which have damaged the Highlands, says the man selected to oppose him in next year's General Election.

Highland businessman Mike Robb has been selected as the Scottish Labour Party candidate for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey.  Mr Robb finished runner-up to Mr. Alexander at the 2010 election.

Mr Robb, whose wife Gwen is an NHS nurse, runs his own UK-wide IT consultancy with an office in Inverness. He has a degree in physics from Edinburgh University and he and Gwen, who live in Muir of Ord, have two adult sons.

After being unanimously selected again as candidate at a Labour Party meeting in Inverness, Mr Robb said:  "Being in second place last time puts us in the driving seat as the leading challenger to replace Danny Alexander, who has led the charge in driving up the cost of living, hitting families with a VAT hike and the Bedroom Tax while doing nothing about rocketing fuel and energy bills.

"If you feel let down by Mr Alexander, then I'm the alternative if you want him out of office.

"I've spoken to many people who voted for him -- but didn't realise he would be such a cheerleader for Tory policies that have been so damaging for young people, ordinary pensioners and the poorest in our community."

“We’ll be campaigning hard over the next 12 months to beat the LibDems, elect a Labour MP and give the Highlands its very own Portillo Moment.”

Mr Robb said that providing jobs for young people was his number one priority.  "It's tragic that so many youngsters are leaving school or college with no real employment prospects", he stressed.

"We also need a welfare system that's there when required -- helping people to make their lives work instead of stigmatising them.  Scrapping the Bedroom Tax will be a good start"

David Stewart, local Labour MP from 1997 to 2005, said he was delighted that Mike Robb has agreed to stand again. "He has enthused our membership as the fight begins to give the area a Labour voice again."

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Resolution to #Scotlab13

The Contemporary Resolution submitted by Skye Lochaber and Badenoch CLP has been accepted  by the Conference Arrangements Commitee and will be debated as part of a composite at Conference in Eden Court this afternoon.   John Erskine has been asked to move it.  

This conference believes that the Bedroom Tax is morally wrong, socially unfair and makes no economic sense.


100,000 tenants in Scotland will be hit by the bedroom tax, 40,000 face rent arrears and thousands could be made homeless. It asks the disabled, single parents, carers, the terminally ill and parents with more than one foster child to pay the price for the mistakes of the banking system, whilst millionaires work out how to spend their tax cut.

Figures released in March revealed that 27% of children in Inverness Central are living in poverty. This figure is already a disgrace and the introduction of the welfare reform bill and its Bedroom tax will only see this figure increase. Across the Highlands an estimated £1.5m will be cut from local incomes. Labour supports sensible welfare reform but the bedroom tax is economic madness. In the Highland Council area, there are just 340 single bedroom homes in social ownership, whilst some 3,400 households will be expected to find smaller houses or pay more in rent. All the Bedroom Tax will achieve is making some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society even poorer. The inevitable rent arrears will lead to more pressure on local authority budgets, not less.

In response to this savage and unfair cut to the incomes of so many working people, this conference resolves that the Scottish Labour Party should:

• call on the Scottish government to use its devolved powers to fund the shortfall in housing benefit and rental incomes that will arise from this misplaced policy

• work with Councils and Housing Associations across Scotland to ensure that Scottish tenants are not forced into debt and arrears by this unfair policy

• work with the UK Party to ensure that our manifesto for 2015 proposes a fair benefit system that protects the vulnerable in our society and includes a commitment to repeal the Bedroom Tax legislation

• commit that the 2016 Scottish Labour manifesto will reiterate the Party’s commitment to social justice and will use all devolved powers to create a fairer society that puts the needs of our most vulnerable people to the fore.

Conference notes that the Liberal Democrats are complicit in supporting this awful policy. The SNP wring their hands but will not use their existing powers at Holyrood to make a difference for Scottish people. Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, holds the purse strings and is one of the chief architects. The voters of Inverness and the Highlands won’t forget who helped implement these cuts. Without the Liberal Democrats, none of these welfare reforms could happen.

The Scottish Labour Party needs to make clear whose side it is on.

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Scottish Labour Conference Speech

I spoke in the Local Government debate at conference in Dundee last weekend.  Here's what I said.

Conference.

We have talked a lot about trust in the last few days.

The council elections in May are an opportunity to re-build some of that trust with our voters.

People need to know that Labour is on their side in tough times.

Because the other parties aren’t.

The LibDems can’t stand up for local services whist they are imposing their Coalition Cuts.

And the SNP only want to win council seats as stepping stones to independence.

Labour must be the party that will make local government work.

Local government that sees protecting local jobs and getting our kids back to work as a priority.

We must be the party that will lead a four year campaign to ensure every teenager who wants to work in the Highlands has an apprenticeship or training programme leading to a real job, when they leave school or college.

Labour needs to deliver joined up services. Joined up services work for communities, get used and cost less to deliver.

Let me tell you about the woman and her son I met door-knocking in a wee village five miles north of Inverness last weekend. She is her son’s full time carer – he has severe learning challenges.

She had been pleased to hear that Highland council had ring-fenced the funds for the day centre he attends in Inverness.

Then she found out that a separate budget for the community bus had been cut, so she and her son can’t get to Inverness to use the service.

Small cuts can have a big impact.

Working out how to deal with the SNP’s cuts to council budgets will not be easy.

We need to listen hard to local communities and work out how to use limited budgets effectively.
We need to be bold and see the big picture.

A big part of that will be to get smart about buying.

The public sector in Scotland spends £9bn buying in goods and services. We need to start to using that power when we go out to tender.

We must build in community benefit clauses that keep jobs local and create apprenticeships and training opportunities for our young people.

And we need to send out a clear message to contractors.

If you want to provide goods and services to our councils, then you’ll pay your workers a Living Wage!

Joined up public transport matters. It’s key to both a strong economy and sustainable communities in rural areas like the Highlands.

And for all their talk, the SNP are showing by their actions that they care nothing for rural Scotland.
Ferry charges to the islands up and freight subsidies down.

The £50m promised to upgrade Sleeper Services to London diverted to other projects.

And we know we won’t see the regulation needed to make rural bus service run in the interests of their passengers whilst Brain Souter holds the SNP’s purse strings.

We need to be the party that delivers effective regulation to join up public transport across the Highlands. And maybe its time to think about ownership models that work in the interest of our communities, not bus and train operators.

But above all, Labour must be the party that will bring democracy home.

Whether it’s about community schools or local fire services, wind-farms or new supermarkets, local views should count. We need to be the party that listens.

We need to be the party that people trust to be on their side in tough times.

We need to be Labour.

Thank you, conference.

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New Ideas for Scottish Labour....

In my last post, I argued that Scottish Labour needed to start developing policies which would fit with a distinctive Scottish agenda, but which also needed to reflect economic and social needs in different parts of the country. Here’s a first example of what I mean.

Like many Labour politicians, I’ve long argued the need for link “green“ investments to the creation of real jobs and other economic infrastructure. This wont just happen, it needs government policy, planning and pump-priming. The Highlands are at the centre of developments in off-shore wind and wave power but how do we ensure that benefits don’t just go to the developers, manufacturers elsewhere or specific communities – welcome though that would be locally - but are shared across the whole area?

The Crown Estate Commission (CEC) owns the rights to developments on the seabed for up to 12 miles offshore. In recent years, the CEC has used that right to levy charges on businesses operating offshore, first on major fishing companies and now on the offshore wind and wave developers, most of whom are operating on sea-beds off the Highland coastline. The potential revenues are growing rapidly as the scale of offshore development ramps up.

At present, all that money goes to the UK Treasury.

Highland Council, HIE and others have long argued that a slice of this revenue should be earmarked for economic and social development in the Highlands and Islands, in the same way as the Shetland Oil Fund was used back in the 1970s.

The LibDems used to support just such a policy but seem to have abandoned it now. No doubt vetoed by Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander as part of the same deal which saw the LibDems sell out on Student Fees, VAT and the Cuts. The SNP want all the CEC’s powers and revenues transferred to Scottish Control. There’s a strong case for that, but there need to be assurances about how such powers will be used to benefit specific regions and not just fund favoured projects elsewhere.

We promised a Scottish Crown Estate Commissioner in our 2011 Scottish Manifesto. Should Scottish Labour seize the initiative and make the case for a Highlands Renewables Fund - kick-started from a share of CEC Revenues – which could be used to benefit the region socially and economically?

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Where Next for Scottish Labour?



Team Labour in Culloden

 There are a lot of things you can say about last week’s election results in Scotland.

The SNP played a blinder and picked up support from a swathe of Scottish voters that crossed class, geography and traditional party allegiances. The LibDems were punished for joining so enthusiastically with the Tories, breaking promises on cuts, VAT and Student Fees in exchange for a share of power.

Scottish Labour mainly kept its share of the vote (we actually increased it in Inverness & Nairn), but lost seat after seat to the SNP as voters turned to Alex Salmond and his well respected team in even bigger numbers.

I’m not going to fall into the easy trap of blogging away about what Labour got wrong and why. I’ll leave that to others if they want to. I want to talk about what Labour needs to do about it.

There are four things I think Scottish Labour needs to do.

• we need to elect a leader with ideas based on modern Labour values but who can appeal to a broad range of voters. A leader who can enthuse the party faithful but who ordinary people can relate to when they perform in Holyrood, on TV or in a community meeting. A leader who can build a team around him or her whose collective ability, vision and values will generate trust and confidence in Labour again

• if we are serious about devolution, we need a Scottish Labour Party which is firmly part of the UK Labour movement but which can think, develop policy and campaign independently and in directions which reflect the specific social and political environment of Scotland. A federal approach if you like. And that applies across the country as well. What works for Glasgow or Edinburgh might need a different approach in the Highlands or North East. Scottish Labour needs to stop controlling and start devolving
• above all we need to talk a lot more about our political values in ways that appeal to wider cross-sections of supporters. When we talk about fairness, equal opportunity and social justice, we need to do it in ways which make sense to the lives of people in Craigmillar and Culloden as well as in Clydebank. When we get asked “what will you do for me” we need to be able to answer that with policies and ideas which the majority of Scots relate to and trust
• finally, we need a professional team at John Smith House(Labour HQ in Scotland for those outside the bubble) who can plan and run campaigns effectively and drive a media agenda whilst engaging with (that means listening) and enthusing party activists across the country.

None of the above will be easy. But the sooner we start looking forward and talking positively about what we need to do, the sooner we will return to being a political party that people in Scotland trust to stand up for them again.

For myself, I’m looking forward to helping make that happen.

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