Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Q7. My constituent Aaron Moon lost his leg in Afghanistan. He then lost his disability living allowance. The Prime Minister promised to look after ex-servicemen and women. What has happened?

[The Prime Minister]

I have insisted on a specific carve-out from the new personal independence payment for limbless ex-servicemen, and they will be separately looked after through the Ministry of Defence.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Tuesday 20th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

It is very important that this country continues to take a lead in the international discussions, not only so that we can confront together the overarching threat of climate change, which is such a potent threat to everybody across the globe, but so that we can work together to compare notes on how we can green our economies, which will be the specific focus of the Rio+20 summit. I think everybody now agrees that sustainable prosperous growth in the future has to be green as well.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

T12. The president of the Liberal Democrats has said that in his opinion, the Health and Social Care Bill has gone from being “appalling” to being “pointless” over the past 12 months. Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that over the same period, the Liberal Democrats have gone from being pointless to being appalling?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The only thing that is appalling is the Christmas cracker lines that Opposition Members dutifully read out. I really hope the hon. Lady will do a little better next time.

The Government are confronting a dilemma in our health care system that every Government in every developed economy and society must face. We have an increasing and ageing population, with an increasingly large number of people with long-term chronic conditions, who spend much more time in hospital than has ever been the case. That is why it is right to give people such as doctors and nurses, who know patients best, greater authority regarding how our health care system works. That remains the key reform in the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Solicitor-General]

The hon. Gentleman paints a pretty gloomy picture—but then, he is in opposition, so I can fully understand it. The short point is that this is a rolling programme: it will be introduced incrementally. I can assure him that defence firms in his constituency and mine will come to terms with it and meet the challenges that they need to face.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

3. What recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for the Home Department on reform of the UK’s extradition arrangements.

[The Attorney-General (Mr Dominic Grieve)]

I meet the Home Secretary regularly to discuss a wide range of issues of mutual interest. I know that my right hon. Friend is giving careful consideration to the recommendations in Sir Scott Baker’s review of extradition, and will make a further statement to Parliament detailing what action the Government propose to take as soon as is practicable.

[Julie Hilling]

As the Attorney-General has told the Select Committee on Home Affairs that he is not sure that changing the test applied in UK and US extradition cases would make any difference, does he regret his previous statement that our extradition laws are “one-sided” and should be rewritten?

[The Attorney-General]

It is worth bearing in mind that part of the problem for the first three years was that the last Government decided to implement the extradition treaty on a one-sided basis, so that we extradited to the US under the terms of our treaty at a time when the US would not carry out such extraditions. I think the hon. Lady will find that one of the reasons why I made that comment was that at the time of that debate, which took place in 2006, the United States had still not ratified the treaty. There are undoubtedly differences between the way in which the test that is required is applied, but having looked at the matter carefully. I do not think that the treaty as it stands at the moment can be described as one-sided. What can be said is that, as I explained to the Home Affairs Committee, there remain serious issues with public confidence in the way in which the extradition system with the United States operates.

Points of Order

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Wednesday 29th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Further to the Prime Minister’s statement that I am sponsored by the union Unite—I am grateful that he has waited to hear this—can you advise me on how this untruth can be corrected, as I am not sponsored by Unite, and on what opportunity the Prime Minister will be given to correct the record?

[The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I believe that I was reading something from the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which is that Bolton West constituency Labour party received £1,250 from Unite in 2010 and that the hon. Lady registered a donation of £2,250 from Unite in 2010 in the register. Of course, if I have in any way got that wrong, I will come back to the House at the earliest opportunity.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

We very much hope that it will not be necessary for the Government to move to the stage of imposition. Our intention is that we should reach agreement. It is necessary that we reach agreement by the end of the year, because there is a lot of work to do to put the new schemes in place as early as possible, so that people know what their future holds and we can implement the new schemes; so yes, we will be making further announcements to the House before it rises.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

11. What steps he is taking to support the voluntary sector.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Nick Hurd)]

We are supporting the sector through this difficult time by cutting red tape, investing in transition funds for infrastructure and front-line organisations, creating significant new opportunities for the sector to deliver public services, and supporting new initiatives to encourage giving and social investment.

[Julie Hilling]

The Roots project in Westhoughton in my constituency has been praised by the Government as a beacon of the big society, but Liz Douglas, the founder, has had no wages for six months. Words are no good. When will the Minister take action to support the voluntary and community sector?

[Mr Hurd]

The hon. Lady knows that we have taken a great deal of action, not least by putting in place a £107 million transition fund to help the most vulnerable organisations. If she is talking about cuts being made locally by Bolton council, she will know that the reduction in its spending this year was only 7%. The questions that she has to ask Bolton council are: “Why were you so badly prepared for this situation?” and: “Why did you block a proposal from Conservative councillors to create a fund to support local voluntary organisations?”

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

7. What steps he has taken to ensure that reductions in funding for the Crown Prosecution Service do not adversely affect front-line services.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

9. What steps he has taken to ensure that reductions in funding for the Crown Prosecution Service do not adversely affect front-line services.

[The Solicitor-General (Mr Edward Garnier)]

The two key priorities of the Crown Prosecution Service over the spending review period are quality and efficiency. The CPS strategy is to protect front-line delivery. Savings were sought in the first instance from back-office functions. Savings made from the front line will be achieved through greater productivity and by maximising the gains from improved criminal justice system efficiency and better use of technology.

[The Solicitor-General]

No, I cannot, because the CPS deals with hundreds of thousands of cases every year. The POD system is actually in the CPS’s offices, not the Crown courts, but I take the hon. Gentleman’s point. The point of the POD system is to enable more people to have ownership of cases so that they are dealt with more efficiently.

[Julie Hilling]

Under the Labour Government the CPS made great progress in prosecuting domestic violence, thanks in large part to the domestic violence training given to prosecutors and the use of dedicated domestic violence prosecutors. Does the Solicitor-General agree that the cuts to the CPS have placed a huge pressure on prosecutors, with the result that dedicated domestic violence prosecutors are now too overloaded with other work to give domestic violence cases the attention they need and deserve?

[The Solicitor-General]

I agree that the previous Government were particularly adept in dealing with domestic violence policy, and it is an area that my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General and I have taken up with alacrity. I have appeared in the Court of Appeal to deal with unduly lenient sentences relating to violence against women, particularly sexual assaults. I broadly agree with her, but I do not accept that the system is under any strain in the prosecution of domestic violence cases. There are some really dedicated and hard-working lawyers and administrative staff in the CPS working to ensure that women are safe in their homes.

Public Disorder

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

There will be lessons to learn about the extent of riot training and the balance between it and ordinary beat-based policing, and I know that we will want to learn all those lessons in the days to come.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

The Association of Chief Police Officers undertook research that showed that where there is a well-funded youth service there is a decrease in criminality and where there are cuts in youth services there is an increase in crime. Youth work is part of a solution to this disorder, but youth workers are being made redundant across the country as we speak. Will the Prime Minister introduce a moratorium on youth service cuts?

[The Prime Minister]

We are going ahead with the Myplace youth centre programme, which is seeing vast and very well-funded youth centres built in places such as Islington and Hackney and across some of the most deprived parts of London. I do not accept the hon. Lady’s point about causation and that somehow a budget change in youth services leads inexorably to the sort of looting and rioting we saw on our streets.

Public Confidence in the Media and Police

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I shall be brief. I make a plea to put an item on the Leveson agenda. As a result of the work of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, Leveson will be looking at the ethics of journalism. There have been calls in the House today and throughout the debate over the past three weeks for greater adherence to the Press Complaints Commission code of conduct.

The commission’s code of conduct is based on the National Union of Journalists code of conduct, which was first developed in 1936. Every NUJ member has to sign the code when they become a member of the union. It is policed by the ethics council, and there is an ethics hotline to advise journalists. The code includes the principle that a journalist

“strives to ensure that information disseminated is honestly conveyed, accurate and fair”.

Journalists must obtain their material

“by honest, straightforward and open means”

and do

“nothing to intrude into anybody’s private life, grief or distress unless justified by overriding consideration of the public interest”.

There is also a conscience clause in the code of conduct, which says that

“a journalist has the right to refuse an assignment or be identified as the author of an editorial that would break the letter or spirit of the code.”

Where the NUJ is organised, that code has worked.

Some Members will remember when, back in 2006, the Daily Star tried to produce a racist front page, but the workers, backed by their union and Members on both sides of the House, refused to publish it because of the damage it would do to community relations. The code of conduct did not work at News International because the NUJ was cleared out. News International used a loophole in the law. It set up the News International staff association, which was not certified as an independent union by the Government’s certification officer, yet it was still used to argue that there was a pre-existing union agreement, so the NUJ was not recognised. As a result, the journalists were not protected by a union.

We heard the description of the working atmosphere in Wapping—the bullying, the victimisation and the pressure put on journalists to produce material by whatever means. Someone described it as the development of a culture of sewer journalism. The House was warned. In 2004, when the Government were considering the last but one employment Bill, the NUJ briefed us all and urged us to introduce a conscience clause that would enable journalists to be protected when they refused to do anything against the code. That was rejected. I moved the amendment at the time, but it was rejected. The argument made by the previous Government was that it went

“too far in constraining employers.”—[Official Report, 29 March 2004; Vol. 419, c. 1364.]

It was opposed by Members on both sides of the House.

We were warned again by the NUJ, though. It came back in 2009 to present evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. It urged the Committee to reconsider the introduction of a conscience clause that would protect journalists standing up against bullying employers who sought to introduce work or material into their work that was against the code of conduct. The Committee ignored that evidence and request, however, and made no recommendation on it. I urge the Leveson inquiry to examine the introduction of a conscience clause backed by statute to protect journalists who refuse to go into the sewer and use the methods that we have all condemned in these recent debates.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the public largely believe what they read in the newspapers and what they see on the television and internet, and that one of the most important things that can come out of this whole sorry affair is a media that now tell the truth?

[John McDonnell]

I think that we will arrive at that situation only if we enforce the code of conduct and if journalists and employers know where they stand and that, if they breach the code, journalists can stand up and be protected in law if they refuse to practise the sort of journalism we have seen recently. The Leveson inquiry should consider anti-trade union legislation, which has been used to undermine employees’ rights at places such as News International when unions have tried to protect members who have simply stood up for quality and ethical journalism.

Public Sector Funding

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) on securing the debate. I want to follow what seemed to me to be her theme—what on earth are the Government playing at? In their wholesale rush to get rid of everything that the Labour Government did, they are destroying structures that would help to deliver the big society. I shall talk specifically, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), about vinvolved—the national young volunteers service. Its aim was to get 500,000 young people into volunteering. It developed out of millennium volunteers and was directly funded by the Government. It has eight days left to be saved.

The initiative was funded by the Government and run by v, the independent charity. There were 107 vinvolved teams nationally. Its focus was on creating new volunteering opportunities, including working with community and voluntary organisations, to create more high-quality, diverse volunteer opportunities for young people; supporting local organisations that work with young volunteers; brokering 16 to 25-year-olds into volunteering opportunities; finding the right opportunities for new and existing volunteers; helping young people to set up their own voluntary projects; and championing youth-led action, with each team including a youth action team made up of young volunteers giving advice on what projects and work vinvolved teams should get involved in.

What happened? Young people were matched to opportunities that suited their interests and aspirations, and that were sensitive to their individual circumstances. That was particularly important for young people with multiple barriers to participation—for example, people leaving care, asylum seekers, refugees and people with mental health issues. The vinvolved project particularly targeted young people who would not normally be involved in volunteering and who faced great difficulties in their lives. Such young people were at risk of being socially marginalised. However, apart from the effect on the young people themselves, there is also a real cost to society when young people are no longer part of it and have additional needs, which society must then tackle.

In matching young people with appropriate and fulfilling volunteering opportunities, which in turn acted as a stepping-stone for their progression, vinvolved allowed many young people to find a new, positive direction. The project enhanced employability and provided references for young people who had problems and who may never have completed their secondary education. Those young people may have had nobody in their lives to provide a reference for them, but they got one through their volunteering opportunities. The project also supported those at risk of social exclusion, increasing their confidence, helping to overcome feelings of isolation and loneliness, and improving community relations as young people from different communities came together to work across communities and with people from different backgrounds, including with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people, and black and minority ethnic young people. I should add that the voluntary work brokered by Manchester vinvolved equates to £232,380—I like the precise figure it has produced—based on salaries at the national minimum wage.

I could speak for a great deal longer about vinvolved, but I am aware of the time. I could also speak for a long time about the wonderful young people who have been involved in the project, whom I had the honour of meeting at an awards event for Greater Manchester a few weeks ago. Those young people have overcome their disabilities and other issues, such as the need to care for relations or the fact that they have come from broken homes or experienced homelessness, and they have gone on to contribute enormously to the society they live in. Without projects such as vinvolved, such young people will not get involved in volunteering, because they need organisations to support them, bring them together and give them the chance to make a difference to their lives and the lives of people in the community.

The vinvolved initiative is the sort of project that the Government need if they are ever to deliver their big society. I agree with my hon. Friends that we already have the big society, but if we want to extend and expand it, we must have projects that support the voluntary sector and that help young people and adults into volunteering. There are only eight days left to save vinvolved, and I really hope that the Minister will act so that we can continue a project that serves the needs of young people and their communities in such a splendid way.

[Mr David Amess (in the Chair)]

I call Catherine McKinnell.

Big Society

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Like the two previous speakers, I do not want to talk about the theory of the big society. Instead, I want to talk about the reality of what is happening now. How can anyone argue with the notion of a big society—a society of stronger communities, where decisions are devolved to the most local level possible and where social action is encouraged? The problem is that the Government fundamentally do not understand that the big society already exists and they are hell-bent on destroying it.

There are already millions of people volunteering in this country. They run youth clubs and lunch clubs for the elderly. They run community centres and mentor offenders. They run churches and work with the homeless. They support battered women and provide meals on wheels. However, there is a common theme that runs through the circumstances of almost every voluntary and community group: they receive grant aid or other support from local authorities and, somewhere along the line, they are supported by paid staff. These may be people working directly in their organisation, such as in my Horwich and Westhoughton visiting services, where part-time co-ordinators recruit and train the volunteers, seek the elderly who need visiting and do the administration such as paying expenses to volunteers, thus leaving the volunteers to do what they have signed up for: visit elderly and disabled lonely people. It may be the paid person in the council for voluntary service—CVS—or the council who helps the group get funding or set up and organise itself, or it may be the paid people working in the group’s headquarters, such as at the Scouts and Guides. All of these people are essential for the voluntary sector to survive and thrive.

The Government also seem to ignore the need for professional workers to work alongside volunteers—for people to train volunteers, to mentor them, to ensure that the work undertaken is safe and appropriate, and to deliver the work alongside them. Volunteers are not, and cannot be, a substitute for them. Groups also need funding for room hire and equipment and resources, and an endless list of other things. Of course the voluntary sector fundraises, but many groups find funding hard to come by. Those rooted in poor areas, and especially those dealing with unpopular problems such as alcohol and drug misuse or offending or mental health issues, find fundraising difficult and sometimes impossible.

Volunteers and the community and voluntary sector are not free; they are not a cheap alternative to the maintained sector. They need Government support. Instead of giving support, however, the Government are destabilising the sector through cuts to direct grants and to local authority budgets. Fledgling organisations will not now get off the ground, and organisations such as Bolton Community and Voluntary Services will not be able to support them. I hope the Minister does not respond by saying that local authorities should protect the voluntary sector, because Bolton council is doing what it can to protect voluntary groups, but the Government have chosen to cut too deeply, too fast. Bolton will lose a quarter of its budget over the next four years. The Government are making the choice—the wrong choice—and leaving the local authorities to implement their cuts.

An example of Government madness is the cut to vinvolved, the national youth volunteering programme, whose funding will be cut at the end of March. This project is the big society in action, with young people being trained as volunteers to work in every sort of project we can imagine. Vinvolved provided fun, exciting and eye-opening volunteer experiences for young people. It provided one-to-one tailored, sustained support. Most of the young people engaged in the project were experiencing difficult social and economic circumstances; indeed, many were at risk of social exclusion. Volunteering enhances young people’s employability, gives them the opportunity to gain experience to put on their CVs, and allows them to get references and to develop contacts to help them find full-time work. It enables them to give back to their communities and, perhaps most importantly, gives them confidence and self-respect. What is the Government’s replacement? It is an eight-week summer programme for 16-year-olds.

I have spoken before in this House about the honour I had of presenting the volunteer of the year award for Greater Manchester to Matthew, a 21-year-old from Bolton. Matthew has multiple disabilities, had no confidence and was doing nothing. His Connexions adviser referred him to vinvolved, and he was offered a number of volunteering opportunities, which he took up. He became a dedicated and valued member of the team at StreetWise Soccer, and teaches soccer skills to a range of people several times a week. He is now taking a coaching course so that he can teach football to disabled young people. He would not be doing any of this if it were not for vinvolved.

Who is going to support young people into volunteering now? The Greater Manchester v team award was won by Bolton YMCA’s youth council. It is involved in fundraising, project planning, decorating, writing funding bids and supporting individual projects and users alike. It was said to be

“dedicated, energetic and a credit to the YMCA”.

However, without local authority funding and Government grants, the YMCA will not be able to employ the youth workers who support young people and other voluntary youth workers. They are the big society in action, but they are in jeopardy because of the Tory-led Government.

If we need further evidence, the National Council for Voluntary Youth Services has stated that three quarters of youth charities are cutting projects, and 80% of them are being cut because of the end of targeted help from the Government. The Government’s decision to front-load cuts is also creating chaos for the voluntary and community sector, leaving groups no time to find alternative funding. At present, 6% of the work force of Greater Manchester is employed in the sector. I will be very interested to see what that figure is after April.

I visited Moss Bank Park animal world last Thursday. The council is having to withdraw funding because of the £60 million in cuts it must find over two years, with £42 million to be found this year. A group of volunteers is forming who would love to take over animal world and the butterfly house, but who are in a race against time to get organised and to get funding in place. If the council had to cut only £18 million this year and £42 million next year, the group would have a better chance—but, no, the Government are going ahead, too deep and too fast.

The coalition parties want to take the state out of support for our society and want to do away with any targets. However, targets are the device that ensures that the vulnerable—such as teenage mums and homeless addicts, and young scallies hanging out on street corners who are unwelcome in the voluntary youth club—get the services they need. The state has a duty to ensure that our citizens get the support they need, and that cannot just be left to possible voluntary action.

The big society exists, but this Government are destroying it. The big society can never be a replacement for local authority services, however. The big society works best where there is a partnership between local authorities and the voluntary and community sector. Volunteers are not a replacement for paid, qualified, professional staff; they complement them. This Government must stop this destruction before it is too late.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Laing]

No. I think the point is incompetent. We debated it at great length last night, and the fact is that public inquiries are not necessary. It is necessary to have a certain amount of time for consultation, and that is provided in the Bill. We do not need long, drawn out public inquiries when political parties spend weeks and months arguing spuriously about old-fashioned boundaries and traditions, and about hills, mountains and rivers, when they are concerned only about the number of Labour voters or Conservative voters who are likely to be in a constituency. Labour Members should have the courage to face up to a fair democratic system, and that is what the Bill will introduce.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Is the hon. Lady aware that in 2005, when Greater Manchester reviewed 28 constituencies, the public inquiry took three weeks, not months—no longer than three weeks?

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hughes]

Yes it does, compared with the current system. [Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman will just calm down—he is far too overexcited most of the time.

Secondly, the system allows people to express preferences—it is positive, not negative, voting that allows them to say what they really want politically as opposed to being forced to say what they do not want politically. That is definitely progress.

There is another practical consideration, as the right hon. Member for Knowsley knows. This House does not have a majority in favour of a proportional system at the moment—I accept that. I want a proportional system. Personally, I prefer alternative vote plus, because it has the balance of a single-Member seat plus top-up. But there is not a majority for those things. This measure allows Parliament to come to a view, as put forward by the Labour party in the general election, that the British people should be given the option of moving to a better system. It is not the perfect system—there is no such thing as a perfect system—and not the best system, but it is a better system. I hope that this House and the other place will allow the great British public to decide on this. Then, if the referendum comes up with a yes vote, as I hope it will, we will have a better political system and a better democracy.

I share one of the views of the right hon. Member for Knowsley and the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram). It is a scandal and a shame that in this country, throughout the time of the Labour Government and now, 3 million or more people are not on the electoral register when they should be. I have made it clear to my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister and colleagues that there is a duty on our Government, just as there was a duty on the Labour Government that they did not discharge, to work across parties and outside parties to ensure that we get all those registered who should be registered.

[Julie Hilling]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Simon Hughes]

No, I am trying to be very quick.

I will go on arguing from these Benches that the Government need to do more to increase electoral registration. Yesterday, with my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister, I urged our party members to do more, and I hope that the Labour party and the other parties will do more as well. I hope that the Government will assist in every way—this month, before the December register comes into force—to ensure that the maximum number of people are on the electoral register. There are all sorts of ways of doing that, and the sooner we can start sharing our wisdom, the better.

I want to make one more substantial point. There is an absolutely overwhelming argument for more equally sized constituencies. The disparity between the number of voters per constituency is scandalous. I speak as somebody with Welsh, Scottish and English roots. It is no longer justifiable for Wales or Scotland to be over-represented in this place when England does not have any devolved government at all and is therefore already relatively under-represented.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julie Hilling]

I wanted to make a number of points, but with the shortage of time, I will keep my comments brief. Like many other hon. Members, I have tried to make points before, but because of the conduct and timetabling of the Bill, I have been unable to speak on my deeply held beliefs.

Let me take just one element of the Bill and try to correct some of the errant nonsense on independent inquiries. In 2005, an inquiry was held into the boundaries in Greater Manchester, because it was decided that after the application of the electoral quota, there should be 27.25 MPs rather than 28. However, because nobody could have the spare quarter of an MP, the number went down to 27 MPs, and something similar may happen in the near future. There were 384 written submissions before the decision to hold an independent inquiry. Once the inquiry was called, there were more than 600 written submissions and 190 people spoke to the inquiry. Sixteen alternative proposals were made.

I do not know of 190 political parties in Greater Manchester, so I would conclude that those submissions were from ordinary citizens. As I said, the inquiry took three weeks, not the many months that Conservative and Liberal Democrat Members would like us to believe inquiries take. Constituents individually or collectively put forward their views on how they wanted to be represented.

The Bill is deeply flawed on many levels. Not only does it reduce the number of MPs, potentially ignoring historical links, splitting wards and removing the right of people who are affected by changes to have their say, and not only is it gerrymandering of the worst kind, but it runs counter to all the Government’s grand statements on the big society, local decision making and empowering local people. The Bill shows that those are simply words, and that the Government have no intention of localising power. The Bill may be cost saving, but at what cost? It should not pass.