I recently met with Julia Simpson, the Area Manager for West Thames at the Environment Agency to discuss flooding issues within the Wokingham constituency.
I received the enclosed briefing which sets out what the Environment Agency is doing to manage flood risks within our local area.
Today I spent the morning on the doorsteps hearing people’s views. I also spent time today in the Market Place in Wokingham on the Vote Leave stall, and launched the Vote Leave campaign in the west of Wokingham Borough at Three Mile Cross.
There was considerable interest in the referendum, with many people telling me they had made up their minds and were keen for us to leave. I met just one enthusiast to remain who wished to argue the case. There were also many undecided. Often they were sympathetic to the idea that the UK should have more control over its own taxes, spending, borders and laws but wished to be reassured about what life will be like outside the EU.
I explained I do not think our jobs are at risk. The rest of the EU has every need to carry on trading with us, just as we wish to do with them. I was also able to remind them that the UK will be a full member of the World Trade Organisation as is the EU, so both sides will be prevented by that from inflicting trade damage on each other. Most countries trade with most under countries under WTO rules quite happily. The UK will do better than that as the rest of the EU will not wish to worsen their access to our markets.
Nothing pulls the heartstrings as much as seeing a young child in danger. We see powerful images of children being put on boats and struggling on the long journey from Africa and the Middle East to northern Europe. So what is the UK doing about this tragedy of our age?
Young children need an adult to look after them and guide them. Where the child is with a parent or parents we expect the parents to take care of them as best they can, and to make judgements about the risks of travel. We all rightly blame the people traffickers, as they organise unsafe boats or car rides across the desert, and seek to profit out of the misery. The UK along with other western countries is seeking to stop any illegal and unsafe trade and prosecute the offenders. We need the help of travelling adults to identify the unsafe and illegal traffickers and intercept the trade before it kills more people. We need to remember that most unaccompanied children who undertake such a journey have usually been advised to do it by an adult in the first place, and have been paid for by an adult who did so wanting to act in the best interests of the child. All these unsafe travel modes are organised by people who profit from it and should have a duty of care towards their passengers. They clearly often do not meet health and safety standards set out by the EU and many national governments. Shouldn’t all governments along the routes set standards of safety and seek to enforce these standards?
The UK’s policy towards helping young refugees and migrants is based on three central propositions. The first is ask them to apply for asylum or entry into the UK from somewhere near their original home to avoid the dangers of the long and irregular journey using illegal carriers. The UK is providing substantial aid to assist the refugee settlements in the Middle East, and will consider applications to come to the UK from there. The second is to try to bring families together, not to split them up. It is usually better for a child to be looked after by his or her own parents, or where they are dead by grandparents or other close relatives. If an unaccompanied child in a camp has the closest relative willing to take responsibility for him or her living in the UK the UK usually wishes to assist by giving the child legal entry. Where a child is an orphan with no close family willing to look after him or her, the UK gives such a person priority in assessing asylum and settlement needs from the refugee camps.
There may well be fewer children with no adult willing to help than at first sight. Most families do love their children and wish to help bring them up. As every child may have grandparents as well as parents and may have aunts and uncles the UK wish to reconnect children to adults in their own family can be successful. UK personnel are helping in the camps to trace missing relatives who may themselves be in places of safety. Where the family has suffered a disaster from war and the parents and grandparents are all dead or unable to take responsibility, the UK is willing to help.
The government’s website invites people to assist in various ways. Those wishing to help can offer clothes, toys and books to charities helping provide. You can volunteer to offer your time to assist refugees on arrival in the UK. You can provide a room or an empty property if you own such space. You can provide a foster home for a child. The government sets out the general approach. Seeing it through to a happy conclusion for each refugee who comes requires a response from the wider community to offer accommodation, jobs, school places and the rest that refugees will need.
I attended a service at the invitation of the various Churches of the Wokingham Christian community, and joined them afterwards in the Marketplace to see their Easter play. I am grateful to all who produced it and performed in it. It was thought provoking and hard hitting.
This year in line with the messages from the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope they tackled the difficult issue of refugees and migrants. They captured well the dangers and troubles faced by migrants who travel long distances by sea in search of a better life. They appealed to our common humanity. None of us want to see people suffer. We all feel great pain when we see the plight of children trusted to the people smugglers.
The play implied criticism of Wokingham Council for not accepting more refugees. It did not consider the pressures on Wokingham housing from people already here, and the obvious shortage of affordable housing. Nor did they consider whether perhaps it is better as well as quicker to accommodate more refugees in parts of the UK with lower house prices and a surplus of homes with empty properties available.
The play also stated that no-one would trust their children to the sea unless that was safer than where they were fleeing from. The worry is that people smugglers taking children from Turkey are endangering young ones who would not be at so much risk if they were kept off the overloaded and unsafe little boats and inflatables that the traffickers use for their profit. The trade is shocking, leading to the deaths of too many people and taking money from many who have little in the first place. We need to find a way of making sure this trade does not pay.
The play was effective at getting over the shock and the scale of the dislocation of the current mass migrations, but was not able to consider the wide range of actions the UK is rightly taking to tackle the problem closer to its source. The best way of helping the migrants is to work for peace and economic reconstruction in their own countries. It is good news that there is a kind of truce in more parts of Syria, and peace talks have begun their slow and difficult way.
Helping the most able and energetic to leave a country intensifies the difficulties of the country losing its talent. These countries will need much energy and ability to rebuild as peace slowly takes hold. We need to find ways of allowing more to stay and more to be near at hand to return as soon as peace does permit.
The UK also thinks it is better to help migrants closer to the country they are fleeing. It is cheaper so we can help and feed many more. It means they are better placed to return once their own country becomes safer. It keeps them more in touch with their own culture, friends, relatives and homeland. The UK’s overseas aid programme for Middle Eastern refugees is the largest in the world after the USA.
The play asked the question who is our neighbour? In a way I agree with their answer, that all mankind is our neighbour. They cannot all become our next door neighbour. I also think we have stronger obligations to those who live with us and need our direct help, as we are bound by not just our common humanity but also by ties of fellow citizenship, and mutual obligations over the years of living under a common rule of law. Being part of the UK we all accept that the richer pay more tax and poorer receive more benefit wherever they live. We are not able to extend that system of redistribution to all the rest of the world given the numbers involved and the very different average living standards in many countries.
The UK should play a leading part in the worldwide response to the Syrian, Libyan and wider Middle Eastern and African crisis, as we are doing. We need as we have tried to do to rally more of the richer and stable countries of the world to share in the task. We also need to make sure that we do not send out a signal to people traffickers that their business model is a good one which many more people should pay to use. We need to be careful lest the answer to every trouble in a country is the exodus of that country’s brightest, most determined and best to live somewhere else.
I have received a few complaints from constituents about the proposed changes to PIP payments. I am asking the government to review its plans to ensure disabled people in need of financial support are not damaged by these changes.
I recently attended a presentation and discussion by AOA, the voice of UK airports. A senior representative of NATs and of Heathrow airport were also present, with the Aviation Minister. I have subsequently had a follow up conversation with the Minister.
They agreed that noise and air routes is an important issue which they had to discuss, though their main wish was to discuss taxation, planning and issues surrounding growth of airports and the aviation industry.
I explained that many constituents were upset by the change of air routes which NATs put through without consultation, and the failure to return to the old pattern after the experiments with different routes which they did announce and consult on.
They agreed that we have a common interest in planes flying higher for longer over residential areas, and in using modern technology to slow planes on their way to Heathrow so there is no need to stack them and fly them around over congested areas. They promised to do these things.
Where we continued to disagree was over the choice of routes for both take off and landing, with more planes channelled in a narrower space producing continuous noise for affected communities instead of some dispersion which used to apply prior to the change.I asked them to reconsider and to put things back as they were in 2014 prior to the change, and have written again to the Minister asking for action.
Some constituents wrote to me arguing against giving the power to local Councils to allow longer trading hours for bigger shops on Sundays.
By the time we got to a vote the government itself decided it would not press ahead with this proposal given the opposition to it. Instead it asked us to approve up to 12 pilots in volunteer areas where the impact on staff and shoppers could be appraised. This seemed a mild proposal, but it was still voted down.
Following lobbying by a group of MPs including myself, the government has issued a Consultation document (https://consult.education.gov.uk/) on a new fairer funding system for schools. The document draws attention to the way a school can receive 50% more than a school with a similar mix of pupils elsewhere in the country under current formulae. It states it intends to move to a system where ” we must fund pupils with the same characteristics and the same costs at the same rate, no matter where they live”.
The new system will continue to give more money to pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. It will also take account of school and local area costs. There will be transitional arrangements, so the full national funding formula will apply from 2019-20. Progress will be made in the intervening years to get closer to fair funding.
This should mean improvements in the amount of money paid for each pupil at Wokingham and West Berkshire schools, which currently receive a low level of support. I encourage Councillors, teachers and parents interested to respond positively to the Consultation and to stress the need for a formula which does live up to billing and gives Wokingham and West Berkshire schools the same funding as other comparable schools.
On Friday I visited Healthwatch in Denmark Street Wokingham at their request.
I thanked the volunteers for their interest in the services provided by the NHS and answered their questions on a range of issues.
There were individual cases over access to social care. I explained that these were matters run by the Council. Their first opportunity to sort out difficulties lies in a conversation with the Council officer handling their case. They have a right to involve their Councillor, who is elected to supervise Council policy and administration and to help residents sort out complaints and difficulties. There is also an independent appeal system where things go wrong, and a Local government Ombudsman if all else fails.
There were general concerns about our need for more GP service as the population of Wokingham grows. I explained that money follows the patients, so there will be more money for GP practises taking on additional patients. There is also capital money available from the NHS and local and national government for new premises to back new practices or practice extensions. A Councillor present reminded us that Wokingham had negotiated some money for additional health facilities in their deals with developers over new homes.
I am willing to pursue with Ministers and NHS England issues that they can influence. The immediate need is for our local CCG (local NHS management board) and the relevant section of Wokingham Borough Council to finalise their views on where GP practices can and should be expanded or added to provide services for the new housing areas being built. I will also make enquiries of them about this.
Yesterday I visited the Burghfield Sailing Club to see the latest exhibition on the Burghfield Lakes development, to respond to their consultation.
They have reduced the numbers of homes since the original scheme. They are putting in water handling to reduce flooding in the area when we get excessive rains, in addition to needing extra water handling to cater for the homes they wish to build. The development includes lakeside homes which float if water levels on the lake rise too much, and affordable homes.
If constituents do have concerns or are interested they should look at the latest plans at the Sailing Club exhibition and be aware that the company will soon be submitting an outline planning application.
I asked a number of questions about access, flood prevention and the nature of the properties. The lakeside homes do I am told meet requirements for home insurance and mortgages.