Letter from Westminster and Bristol 2 November 2008

This Letter covers the three weeks from 13th October to 2nd November 2008.

In time, maybe in twenty years, we will see whether the most significant piece of legislation passed in this period is as effective as we must hope. The Climate Change Bill completed its Commons stages last Tuesday.

For the last year or so hundreds of Bristol West residents have written to me about this Bill. I've met many local Bristol groups including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and various community sustainable groups.

They were all worried that the government was promoting a Bill that was too timid to have any lasting and meaningful effect. I have supported amendments to the Bill that backed a tough emissions reduction target of 80% and to include aviation and shipping within the target. At the last minute the government backed down and accepted these amendments. In this case lobbying has done the trick. Appropriately as we voted at 10pm it was snowing in central London, the first October snow since 1934!

A piece of duff legislation under discussion in this period was the Political Parties Bill. This is the Bill that should have tightened legislation on donations to parties and expenditure on campaigns.

Negotiations between the three parties over the last year have got nowhere. Labour want to keep the fat cheques from the unions rolling in and the Tories will be able to pour resources into marginal seats. So the Lib Dems voted against the Bill as a lost opportunity to bring back public confidence in political funding. I didn't notice George Osborne during the division. Perhaps he wasn't asking another Russian billionaire for money…

The economy has continued to dominate questions to the PM and other ministers. During the monthly Innovation, Universities and Skills questions I urged the government to do more to help adults to train and study part time. Re-skilling is all the more necessary during economic change and employers often cut training costs. There was also a debate on the future funding of higher education in this period and I stressed my opposition to any increase in student fees.

It remains to be seen how the economic downturn will affect Bristol. The shake up of banking is a worry. On Harbourside we have national office

operations of both Lloyds TSB and HBOS, employing up to 5,000 people. I

have had initial meetings with executives from both companies to discuss Bristol. As the core businesses managed from the Bristol offices (corporate banking and insurance) I hope that if the merger goes ahead there will not be significant job losses. But the deal details are still uncertain.

Ironically it was in the atrium of the Bristol offices of HBOS that I attended a large reception for charitable donors. The Quartet trust (formerly Greater Bristol Foundation) was showcasing some of its projects.

During this time in Bristol I opened a new life-skills training centre on Grosvenor Rd in St Pauls. The new manager is a Somalian who has obtained British citizenship and passed through skills training himself.

This is a heart warming success story! I also spoke at the launch of a new university accommodation service. This will improve services to students and also lead to better liaison with local communities. I spoke at a conference in the Council House on homophobic bullying in schools. I attended the inauguration of a new organ at the university chapel in Stoke Bishop and was in another chapel, St Georges Brandon Hill, for Cosmos, a community opera put on by five Bristol schools including St Mary Redcliffe

and Cotham.

On the subject of schools, I am continuing to make representations on behalf of parents from many primary schools in Bristol West who are furious with the Labour run Council's review of school places. In this period I met many parents from Sefton Park school and also joined them on a march along Ashley Down Road.

Bu coincidence, some parents from Sefton Park's PTA were in Westminster this week. I had donated a tour of Parliament by me as an auction item at their annual fundraising evening. I've done this for several Bristol charities in the last three years and my tour services usually raise a three-figure sum at auction!

Back to my universities shadow minister role and the biggest news item in this period was the government's cock up over student grants. They sneaked out an announcement that more students than expected had qualified for means tested grants, costing an extra £100 million. Their response was quite surprising. Instead of saying how the extra money would be found they announced that eligibility will be cut back. Later in the day I was on BBC News Channel saying this was an extraordinary response in a time of economic downturn. You must expect more people to qualify for means tested benefits and budget accordingly, not slash the numbers that qualify.

Student finances and university costs were lively items of debate between me and my Labour opponent in the Bristol University Students' Union. The Politics Society hosted a Question Time session that also included the Conservative candidate for Bristol NW (I've yet to meet anyone who's seen the Bristol West Tory in the flesh!!) and I enjoyed the hour of debate.

Students are not easily fooled by Labour spin. I've also been speaking

to student audiences at Bath University and to the Liberal Youth conference in Guildford.

On the skills element of my portfolio I spoke at a breakfast seminar hosted by City & Guilds and the Centre Forum think tank. The topic was whether to create an adult learning bank. I joked that we were having a highly topical discussion at a time when banks were crashing about us but the idea is a good one. An account could take contributions from the individual, the state and employers. I was also at a seminar hosted by the National Skills Forum, about employment barriers to women.

Out of my portfolio I was one of three Lib Dem speakers at the national

Diwali celebrations for the Hindu community. Appropriately this festival

of lights was held under the glimmering chandeliers of the Foreign Office.

Nick Clegg got a great reception and Simon Hughes drew on 25 years experience as an inner London MP to talk about multi faith Britain.

Back to climate change and the environment. I've mentioned before my interest in deforestation, the contributor to climate chaos that was much discussed a decade ago but is out of the news now. At a meeting with the Rainforests Alliance, Greenpeace and the Parliamentary group on the central African rainforests we heard about continu8ing difficulties with logging in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The previous night I'd been to an Oxfam event at the National Theatre to see an exhibition of pictures by the celebrity photographer Rankin. He'd visited the refugee camps in eastern DRC. His aim though, was not to show familiar African victim-hood,

rather to show Africans as dignified fellow humans. You can read a bit

more here

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/oct/20/photography-congo-ranki

n-oxfam-africa

Since the exhibition, sadly, the situation in DRC has deteriorated.

Finally, a local way we can try to save the environment is through sustainable waste disposal. I was on ITV's The West this Week criticising Labour's support for a mass burn incinerator in Bristol. We should be having another step increase in our recycling rate in order to cut the waste sent to landfill. Sloppy waste disposal practices have been with us for some time. At the British Museum I visited the exhibition on Emperor Hadrian. One of the displays was about the olive trade. Olives were delivered to Rome in earthenware jars, amphorae. The Romans dumped the empty jars. Archaeologists have measured an amphorae dump at Rome to be 40 metres high, containing 24 million amphorae. For amphorae read plastic bottles and the other ephemera of modern life…let's hope future historians of our civilisation spot a change in the throw away society!