Reflection & Anticipation

As we approach the Christmas period, it's worthwhile reflecting on the year that has passed and what we can anticipate in 2010.

For me personally, 2009 brought a year of change as I started a senior post at the Financial Services Authority, having successfully concluded my work for the Shadow Cabinet in June. This drove home the reality of the financial crisis, in terms of helping to reform our system of national financial regulation whilst fending off the excessive regulatory zeal of the EU. Work that is very much in progress…

For many individuals and families the wider economy will obviously determine whether this period is a time for rest or worry. As we will be publishing our draft Manifesto in the New Year period, it will be interesting to see how we can combine a message of urgency with one of hope. After the New Year I'll be publishing an article on Conservative Home which should cast an original perspective on the 'Cuts versus Growth' debate that is currently dominating the wider political environment.

Obviously the big event of 2010 will be the General Election. Whether Gordon chooses to go in March or May, one thing is certain – the country needs a change of government and every Conservative must be prepared to do his/ her best. My aim is to get in some good sleep over the next week or so, in the anticipation that there won’t be much on offer later in the year…!

However these issues can wait. I'd like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Follow-up to South Staffs

Having made several trips to the South Staffordshire district over the past fortnight, I thought it would be sensible to provide some follow-up on the various issues that I’ve discussed with local residents, businesses and Cllrs.

1 - On the i54 development and the location of the main access junction, I recently spoke with Steve Holland who is Head of Asset Management for Advantage West Midlands (AWM). Steve explained that the i54 scheme had received outline planning permission for the 235,000m² site and AWM were now applying to develop the first phase of the project (15,000m²). Although the estimated £20 million cost of the M54 access junction scheme was unlikely to be met by central government given the current pressures on the Dept for Transport’s budget, AWM was able to secure additional funding from DfT to match its own spending towards the Wobaston Rd and Vine Island upgrades.

We discussed the option of securing funding through the EU Regional Development Funds (RDF) or the European Investment Bank (EIB) – Steve mentioned that AWM were exploring the former, but that the EIB were seeking a higher rate of return than the scheme could currently offer. He also expected the first tenants to sign-up in the near future – as market forces dictated the scale of return on the initial investment, this should in turn influence the availability of funding for the transport component of the project. Steve kindly agreed to agree to continue our dialogue and I’ll also be consulting some colleagues who are currently involved in similar infrastructure projects.

2 - On local farming and agriculture, I spoke with Clare Greener in the NFU’s West Midlands office (find out more here). Clare is the regional policy officer and we discussed the state of the agricultural industry across South Staffs and the West Mids. She explained that the NFU would soon be surveying its membership on priorities for the next CAP control period, which would begin in 2014. The NFU was focusing on three main areas: improving markets for local farmers; maintaining some form of direct support through the SFP regime; and improving the effectiveness of the Rural Development Fund (which is administered in the West Mids by Advantage West Midlands).

On the issue of a fair market price, the NFU had been calling for a Supermarket Ombudsman for the past four years, and Lord Mandelson was due to make a decision on this issue. Regarding the improvement of farm marketing and management, the NFU was working on this agenda through its network of Rural Hubs in the West Mids (including one in Staffordshire) and Clare also pointed to the work of English Farming & Food Partnerships, which serves famers in a consulting capacity (find out more here). It certainly seemed from our conversation that the system of support needed to be simplified and made more efficient from the farmer's perspective.

I also managed to speak with Andrew Porteous who until recently served as the NFU’s Chairman of the Wolverhampton & Stourbridge branch, and whose family had ran Leyfields dairy farm for the last forty years. Andrew explained that there were 12-13 local dairy producers left in the South Staffs district, reflecting the wider decline in the UK dairy industry in the face of downward pressures on price per litre. The silver lining on the cloud was the entry of new firms such as Robert Wiseman Dairies from Scotland and Nom yoghurt manufacturers based in Telford, which offered local dairy farmers a way of exiting unprofitable contracts with existing milk purchasers.

3 - On contested development, I’ve spoken with the offices of Dominic Grieve MP (Shadow Sec of State for Justice) and Bob Neill MP (Shadow Local Government Minister), regarding the trend in gypsy developments in South Staffs and the surrounding areas. There are two concerns here – the use of privacy clauses to cover ‘minority’ groups under the existing Human Rights Act and the lack of local authority discretion over planning applications. On the former, the Conservatives will replace the Human Rights Act with a Bill of Rights that will iron out this inconsistency. On planning policy, the Conservatives will provide more flexibility to local authorities, to ensure that they are not second-guessed by the planning inspectorate or appeals process – I provided policy advice for the Conservatives Green Paper on local government, which can be accessed here. I’ll be speaking further with both MPs, regarding how our general approach would engage with the specific circumstances in the South Staffordshire district.

4 - On the rural economy and local transport, I’m arranging to speak to Nick Herbert MP (Shadow Sec of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) and Stephen Hammond MP (Shadow Transport Minister) in the New Year, to discuss the relevance of Conservative policy for the South Staffordshire district. I worked on our police reform policy alongside Nick’s team, in his previous role as Shadow Sec of State for Justice. Nick is also the Chair of the Conservative Rural Action, which campaigns for our broader rural policy (find out more here). I’ve also supported our Transport team - the Conservatives thinking on local transport policy can be accessed here. Tobias Ellwood MP (Shadow Tourism Minister, whom I worked alongside in Rwanda) will be forwarding some guidance on our policy towards rural tourism, which is so important to the South Staffs local economy.

Cheslyn Hay, Great Wyrley

Yesterday I followed up last weekend’s visit to the South Staffordshire district with a trip to Cheslyn Hay and Great Wyrley, which lie to the north of the district approx two miles outside Cannock. These settlements are former mining villages, whose residents now mainly travel to Cannock, Wolverhampton or Birmingham for work. As I walked around each village and spoke to local people and businesses, familiar themes came up in conversation.

The availability of local public transport was a frequent concern – on Sundays local residents can only rely on an hourly bus to Cannock or Wolverhampton and similar frustration was voiced with the rail service available at Landywood station. Care for the elderly was another worry – one lady expressing her anger with the Government for refusing her unemployment benefit, despite the fact she left her job to become a full-time carer for her mother (now deceased).

I ended my visit with trips to The Colliers Arms and The Talbot in Cheslyn Hay. Both pubs lie at either end of the local High St and have been around in one form or another since the late 19th/ early 20th centuries. At the Colliers Arms, I spoke with a single mother who missed the post-office that had closed in Cheslyn Hay two years ago, leaving the closest office a mile-and-half away in Great Wyrley. Another man expressed concern over the lack of facilities for young people, mentioning the overlap between under-age drinking and anti-social behaviour. He mentioned that his son was a member of two local golf clubs which offered excellent facilities for a combined average fee of £2 per day, and asked why more couldn’t be done locally.

Moving onto the Talbot, I introduced myself to a mixed group of regulars and explained my interest in their local area. One of the men was rather the worse for drink and challenged me over the issue of social care for the elderly. Before I had the chance to respond, he walked over and bundled me out of the door, exclaiming that if I couldn’t promise anything what was the point of talking! Undeterred I walked back in inside and spoke to one of his friends. He explained the man’s father was being forced to sell his house in order to pay for social care.

Somehow the group relaxed towards me and an animated discussion began. Anti-social behaviour and facilities for the young, pensions and care for the elderly, local transport, welfare dependency, lack of trust in politicians. The landlord who had moved up to South Staffs to get away from the stress of London, the lady who was concerned that politicians had forgotten how to listen. The young labourer forced to travel all over the country looking for construction work, the retired grandmother who had lived in the village for the past forty years and was worried for her grandchildren’s prospects. The man who had earlier manhandled me even offered to buy me a drink, continually expressing worry over his dad’s situation.

Eventually as the time came to leave, we shook hands and parted company. As I travelled back from Cannock back to Wolverhampton, I felt both saddened and angry. These people should have formed the primary focus for an incoming Labour Government and yet seemed to have been bypassed over the last decade. The scale of challenge for a would-be Conservative Government couldn’t be more stark, in the midst of the most severe recession this country has encountered – on the one hand we need to win back the trust of local communities in places like Cheslyn Hay and Great Wyrley, on other we need to show how we can help improve the quality of their lives.

Certainly enough to think about on the train back to London.

Remembering Derrida

Away from South Staffordshire, last night I attended the annual Christmas party organised by the in-laws to one of my closest friends.

This is always great fun, with a mix across generations and geography – some older friends living up the road, other younger ones travelling in usually from work. I arrived just after the carol-singing and recognised familiar faces from previous year’s festivities. Conversations were resumed where they had left off, ranging from politics to film-making, British comedy to painting and babies to grandparents. However this time something unexpected came up.

After finishing reading a bedtime story to my friend’s two children, I made my way into the kitchen where I was introduced to a demure-looking lady. She explained her professional background lay in literary theory, with an acute interest in continental philosophy. Asked whether she followed the work of the late Jacques Derrida, she responded positively and explained that she had met the professor when he had last visited the UK – he had kissed her on both cheeks and she had nearly fainted!

Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher/ literary theorist whose work on deconstruction provoked fascination and ridicule alike. Born in 1930, he passed away in 2004. Our paths had crossed earlier in 1992, when I was a doctoral student at Cambridge. I was in the habit of attending fringe seminars and was sitting in a philosophy class when his name cropped up, only to be dismissed by the lecturer. Later in the term, the controversy flared higher when the University authorities awarded Derrida an honorary doctorate, despite vehement opposition from members of the University’s own philosophy faculty and others (see letter here). A series of lectures was organised in Cambridge to cast illumination on Derrida’s work, culminating in Derrida himself coming over to present a seminar and open lecture prior to receiving his doctorate.

When the dates of his talks came up, I made sure I was early in the queue. It wouldn't be appropriate here to try and describe his presentation from beginning to end – for an introduction to his work, try to get hold of copy of a book by Christopher Norris titled “Derrida” and originally published by Fontana (see here). Needless to say, for both those who were either enthralled or enraged by his work, he demonstrated an acute sense of intellectual curiosity, accuracy and wit. Afterwards I asked him to sign a leaflet advertising the seminar, which also featured a poem written by Paul de Man concerning the Holocaust. Seeing his face contort with anxiety, I immediately felt foolish – it must have bordered on the sacrilegious for him to deface such a text with an ‘autograph’. Nevertheless he obliged, and I was left with a rather foolish memento of an extraordinary occasion.

Reflecting on his life and the dispute around his work, I’m saddened that such a clever and kind person attracted such energetic attempts to isolate and disown him. Regardless, I’m glad to have had that conversation at last night’s Christmas party and for my memory and curiosity to be re-awakened.

Bus to Perton

Last weekend walking from Tettenhall, I stopped to ask directions for Codsall from a man waiting at a bus-stop. He pointed out that there wasn’t a direct bus but it would be fairly easy to get there via Perton. The availability of local public transport is a significant issue in South Staffordshire for those without recourse to a private car and most journeys between the villages require a trip into and back out of Wolverhampton.

Mike and I chatted as we waited for the Perton bus. He explained that he used to work for the council, serving as a school caretaker and then helping to keep the street-scene clean. Mike said that he was concerned about the rising incidence of anti-social behaviour in Perton, combined with under-age drinking, and mentioned that he had been recently mugged in the lane which connected Tettenhall to Perton – he’d been knocked of his bike, which had then been stolen.

Our bus arrived and took us to the Perton estate, which was built on the site of a former RAF station over the 70s and 80s and has a population of approx 12,000. I couldn’t help but be struck by the uniform style of housing – Mike had joked that Perton residents themselves sometimes got disorientated while driving through the estate. We eventually arrived at the shopping centre in Anders Square which marked the middle of the estate and which also was home to an interdenominational church.

Outside the Sainsbury’s store stood two gentlemen collecting donations on behalf of the Albrighton Rotary Club. I donated my spare change and chatted to one of them about the estate's history. Apparently the origins of the square’s name lay in the second world war, when the Dutch national army were housed on the base in preparation for D-Day. Today, one cannot help but feel that the layout provides an all too-ready opportunity for young people to gather in the absence of alternative recreational opportunities, hence Mike’s comments on anti-social behaviour. The square is largely hidden from the road and access is obtained through several disconnected approaches.

In terms of tackling anti-social behaviour, Labour’s introduction of local Crime & Disorder Partnerships (CRDPs) was meant to stimulate dialogue across the various agencies which together could help to reduce the incidence of such behaviour. However, all too often these partnerships have ended up serving as little more than talking-shops, with few benchmarks set for co-ordinated action. Reflecting on the Perton estate, one can understand the importance of using the urban planning process to ‘design’ out crime and disorder in the first place.

Local democracy

During the course of last weekend, I spoke to various Councillors in South Staffordshire.

Having stood myself as a council candidate in London, it’s always interesting to speak to local representatives around the country and understand how they approach their role. Most of the Councillors I spoke to held a combination of roles at the Parish, District and County council levels. This gave them a strong understanding of how specific issues intersected with the spectrum of decision-making structures across the county and district.

A good example centres on the local priority of securing affordable housing. South Staffs has been delegated a target of building approx 3,500 homes in the regional spatial strategy, of which the District Council has already completed around half its quota. Of the remainder, the Council has adopted a twofold strategy: firstly, allocating housing build across the villages that span South Staffs District, in a way that the incremental addition of new homes creates least pressure on existing communities and services; and secondly insisting that for developments greater than 5 homes, at least 30% should be composed of affordable housing.

The role of local Cllrs in this process has been to guage the potential impact that such development could have on their respective localities and to survey local feeling on these issues, whether through the medium of local area forums or ad-hoc community meetings.

The Cllrs themselves come from various backgrounds, some trained in the private sector as engineers, others from the public sector, having worked in the police service. Either way, the common bond they share is a concept of local stewardship, providing care and leadership for the area in which they have lived and worked, often for many years.

Local Cllrs often get a hard press, which makes it important to highlight those places where local government is working well. South Staffordshire District Council has been consistently marked highly in assessments by the Audit Commission and has received awards relating to its development of innovative practice. All of which supports the case that provided responsibility is matched with accountability, there is an imperative in delegating more service and funding flexibilities to local levels of government.

i54 Development

On Sunday afternoon I met up with several local Cllrs in South Staffs, to discuss the forward priorities and pressures facing the area. One of them kindly drove me to the i54 site, in order that I could see this development for myself.

The i54 development covers approx 220 acres on the boundary of South Staffs and Wolverhampton (the site was a former sewage treatment works) and will eventually host a technology-based business park. The development is on the northern side of Wobaston Rd, with the M54 motorway running across the northern section of the site.

There are several aims underlying this project: to deliver major employment opportunities (an estimated 6,000 jobs); maximise job creation potential in key industries; and contribute to the diversification and growth of the regional economy. With the University of Wolverhampton and General Electric Aviation rumoured to be amongst the prospective tenants, the development will clearly present significant economic opportunities for South Staffs.

However… there’s a hitch. The local Cllrs explained that Advantage West Midlands (RDA), which was originally down to support the project to the tune of approx £65 million, had hit a budgetary brick-wall. This meant that the original motorway access junction to the M54 had now been shelved, with the main access junction now being moved to Wobaston Rd. This will clearly have a major impact on local traffic congestion, feeding back to places such as Bilbrook and probably undermining the net benefits for localities in South Staffs.

The reason why this issue struck a chord with me lay in a former life. When I was working at the Treasury, I helped to develop a major policy which created a framework of Regional Funding Allocations across the English regions (more background here). The aim was to encourage central government departments focused on transport, housing and economic development issues to delegate more influence over these funding decisions to local & regional bodies. In turn these bodies would be expected to pool their resources, so that these could be optimally allocated across the respective areas over time, thereby maximising overall net benefits. In ordinary language, this policy would support co-ordinated investment across housing, transport and economic development, so that funding/ project delivery gaps did not emerge and the net benefits of investment were not diluted.

The policy was piloted for the 2004 Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), but only partly operationalised for the 2007 CSR. The i54 situation highlights the gap between strategy and delivery. If AWM cannot afford to connect the site to the M54, simply moving the access junction to the other side does not represent a sustainable solution. Creating more congestion will create costs for residents and businesses alike, thereby reducing the net benefits of the development. Instead, the regional funding model should operate by pulling in sufficient investment to complete the original scheme (sourced either from the regional housing or economic development budgets), so that the full benefits can be captured. As returns accrue back through the respective tax take from the tenants, the monies could then be returned back to the original funding source.

I think I’ll be contacting AWM over the next few days, asking for more details around this situation…

Cannock Chase

Before visiting South Staffs, I spent last Saturday morning and afternoon helping out with Aidan Burley’s campaign in Cannock Chase.

Aidan has clearly built up a great deal of momentum since his selection in mid-2008. We met up at Rugeley Town station and then onto a local estate to deliver his final piece of literature before the Christmas break. Rugeley certainly has more hills than Brent – I spent most of my time huffing and puffing up driveways. Personal thought – must remember where I left my gym membership card…

We took a break at the local campaign centre, which doubles up as a garden store in-between serving lunch to Conservative activists. Ian Collard is Aidan’s capable agent and fought the seat (at short notice) in 2005 – he clearly knows the turf and the people. We met up with several other members of the Cannock Chase Conservatives, including a County Cllr who had been on the sharp end of Lib Dem dirty tricks (see article here). Given that the ‘offender’ in question was a District Cllr, this probably wouldn’t be the last we would hear on this subject…

After lunch, a trip to another Rugeley estate to finish off deliveries and then we ended the day at the Conservative Club in the centre of Cannock. Met up with the Association Chairman Pat Corfield, a cheery bloke, and tucked into some mince pies and rolls courtesy of Aidan’s mysterious supplier.

All in all, a great day. Aidan has got the bit between his teeth here and has built up a highly impressive campaign. The good burghers of Cannock Chase would do themselves a big favour by ‘Backing Burley’ on polling day.

Looking to the next European elections, there can only be one slogan in town – “Cannock, twinned with Innsbruck”… as Ian Collard will surely agree!

The Barman/ Fireman

Last weekend I spent an afternoon in Codsall, starting with a pub lunch at the Crown in the heart of the village. The Crown is a community-orientated pub that serves regulars across Codsall, Oxley, Perton and Tettenhall – it offers a great range of beers and a mouth-watering menu.

As I settled into my burger and chips (putting aside thoughts of the gym), I fell into conversation with a guy standing near my table, who I found out was waiting to start his afternoon shift as a barman. ‘Paul’ as I’ll call him (not his real name, to respect his privacy) lived in Tettenhall and worked at the Crown on a part-time basis.

We talked about the job market for local young people and Paul explained that he was waiting to hear back from the local fire service. He had submitted an application in November 2008, was accepted for initial training, but had been told in the meantime that cutbacks in public sector expenditure would delay his start-date. He was still waiting for the service to confirm that he might be able to start training in January 2010.

Paul explained that his girlfriend had recently been made redundant (her boss needed to create a vacancy for his own niece) and that he was noticing that even experienced pub managers were now applying for ordinary bar-staff positions. Most of his peer group were either travelling to work in Wolverhampton or Birmingham.

I listened to his story with a heavy heart. Reading today’s papers (see article here) only reinforces this feeling. I’ve outlined my thoughts on youth unemployment in another post (see article here). For now, I can only hope that the next time I visit the Crown, Paul will have better news to share with me.

Farmer Johnston

I met up with John Johnston on his farm last Sunday morning. Although I have a tenuous connection to the agricultural industry (my family own some farmland in the Punjab region of India!), I thought it would be sensible to hear from someone like John to understand the situation around farming and the rural economy in South Staffs.

Wrottesley Lodge Farm lies off the Holyhead Rd outside the village of Codsall and once formed part of the Wrottesley estate. Lord Wrottesley (No. 5) sold the great majority of his Staffordshire estates in the 1960s, moving to South Africa. The Johnston family came to the area in 1947 and acquired additional land formerly part of the Wrottesley Estate.

John took over the running of the farm from his parents and lives with his wife on the estate. The farm is a classic arable set-up, growing wheat, barley and oil-seed rape crops, with potatoes forming a stable ‘cash cow’. John also dabbles in livestock, with beef cattle and lamb fattening assuming the bulk of his interests. He used to grow sugar beet until the local sugar refining factories closed up.

We chatted for over an hour-and-half and I’ve tried to summarise our main points of discussion. We talked about the operation of the Single Farm Payment at length. John explained that most farmers would rather receive a fair economic price for their produce than rely upon the SFP subsidy, but this jarred with the current state of markets. Even when running at 92% operating capacity, John faces a skewed market. On one side, large supermarket chains bidding down the price of potatoes, on the other local farms struggling to organise co-operative arrangements with like-minded producers – a few concentrated buyers versus many fragmented sellers.

The current SFP regime will come to an end in 2012 – John was certain that farmers would continue to rely upon its successor, despite the backdrop of rising world demand for food. I was rather surprised that the National Farmers Union wasn’t playing a more active role in helping farmers in terms of marketing – it appears that the NFU will point to advice but stop short of helping farmers to organise themselves into sufficiently stable co-operative arrangements. As for the Labour Government – Margaret Beckett, the previous Sec of State at DEFRA, responded to this situation by declaring that ‘we can import all our food’.

We discussed the problem of Bovine TB, spread by badgers when they came into contact with animal feedstock and water sources. John explained that the farming industry had been long calling for a badger cull as the most effective way of halting the spread of the disease. The problem was that the Labour Government refused to act, probably for fear of startling its own political support base. Although trial vaccinations were underway, it didn’t seem that this would be as effective as a targeted cull.

We concluded our chat by discussing the situation around the younger generation and farming. Jim explained that while over 90% of his generation followed their parents into the industry, nowadays only 60% of farmers’ sons/ daughters made this transition. Interestingly, he cited the Conservatives policy on inheritance tax as a way of encouraging the younger generation to maintain stewardship of family farms.

We concluded our chat with a cheery handshake and I then walked over to the village of Codsall, enjoying the crisp morning atmosphere. In Codsall I spoke to several young adults about their job prospects, but that’s the subject of another post.

South Staffordshire

Last weekend I visited the South Staffordshire constituency. For once it wasn’t raining and I managed to explore many aspects of this fascinating area.

I’ll be posting several articles on this subject, ranging from my discussions with local farmers on the prospects facing their industry, to chats with young adults trying to secure a job in the middle of the recession and comment on local business initiatives such as the i54 business park.

Two main issues struck me while I toured around the area. The first centred on the balance across the rural/ urban relationship (South Staffs wraps around the western edge of Wolverhampton) and the second concerned the trend in demographics (South Staffs will have the highest proportion of over 80 yr-olds across the country by 2020).

The local Conservative Cllrs that I spoke to were highly focused on these issues. The South Staffs District Council, in partnership with organisations such as the now Conservative-run County Council, has been developing innovative programmes to enhance the quality of life for local residents – through this blog I hope to explore the potential that some of these projects may have for the wider problems we face across the country.

If anyone is considering visiting the area, I can recommend the Mount Hotel located in Tettenhall Wood on the outskirts of Wolverhampton. The staff did a great job in balancing service for overnight guests like me, while running several wedding and Christmas party functions over the weekend. My only gripe concerned the efficiency of the cleaner – she disposed of my research papers which I had carelessly left scattered on the floor! I’m not sure what she’d make of my office desk…

Welcome to my blog!

I hope to use this site to stimulate discussion on subjects around politics, the economy and local community.

I'm originally from the West Midlands and now work in London. I'm a member of the Conservative Party and on their list of approved Parliamentary candidates.

Hope you enjoy the site and look forward to hearing from you

regards,
Gurmaj