Paul Flynn - Read My Day

Tory answer to NHS waiting list problem

You have got to give it to the Tories. They have solved the tricky problem of NHS waiting lists that have long been a headache to Governments.

Waiting lists are not an efficient way to measure the quality of the service, but they have a great effect on public perception. Many patients have been driven to unwisely impoverish themselves by going private rather than demanding better NHS treatment for urgent treatment.

In today's debate on the NHS bill, no Tory had the generosity to admit that Labour has cut the waiting lists down to a level that is insignificant. Those present steadfastly refused to say whether this bill will increase waiting times.

But they have a plan. It's confirmed on Page 59 of the Commons Library note on the bill 'The Department of Health no longer publish waiting times date (the final publication was March 2010).

What the eye does not see the heart will not grieve over. It's step one in the Tory-led Government's denial of information initiative.

The Third Way

Why a third All-Party group on drugs?

There are two existing groups and I am one of the vice-chairs of both of them. Nevertheless with enthusiasm I offer to act in the same rule for the new group that convened for the first time tonight.

It is the only group with 'Reform' in its title. It's lead by Labour Baroness Molly Meacher and Lib Dem MP Julien Huppert. The group decided to seek 'evidence-based solutions'. That's a great change after 40 years of evidence-free, prejudice-rich solutions that do not work.

Progress is now possible.

Euro surrender

A cunning point was made by David Miliband in a rare backbench speech tonight.

He told bewildered Tories that the Tory LibDem bill would hand power over to Europe.  The Tories are not too keen on that. The argument is subtle. The bill will lead to a host of disputes that will be settled by the European Court of Human Rights. The Tories are still fuming over the Court's decision on prisoners' votes.

 

 

Hail Gordon Brown

 

At least this is one scrap of heart-warming news.

This week I will be giving evidence in Brussels at an Inquiry into the revolving door for top politicians.

Regular readers will know that I have raged against the corrupting influence of future job prospects for those who hold high office. Ministers, Generals, top Civil Servants pick up lucrative retirement jobs, often in areas where they once made key decisions. Were they influenced in office by the possibility of a retirement hacienda in Spain?

My Select Committee expressed worry about the situation here. Now there is concern about the future jobs taken by European Commissioners. Luckily for me there is one glorious exception to the money grabbing.

Gordon Brown is donating his post-PM earnings to charity and campaigning on issues he's always held dear including health, education and employment.

The previous PMs all cleaned up their earning. To his credit Tony Blair gave the earning from his autobiography  o charity. Maggie Thatcher's made a mint out of the tobacco industry and John Major is a big earner in the US equity market.

GORDON Brown has raked in more than £250,000 since standing down as PM – but the cash will go to charity. He has made nearly £180,000 from speaking and lecturing engagements and a further £78,000 for his book on the world economic crisis. It has all gone to the Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown, set up to manage his charity and community work.

Gordon earned £71,544 as Distinguished Global Leader in Residence at New York University. He got £62,181 for a speech in Lagos, Nigeria, and £37,047 for a two-and-a-half hour talk in New Delhi, India. Harvard university paid him nearly £30,000 for accommodation and travel costs for his role as a Visiting Fellow while his book, Beyond the Crash, earned him a £78,289 advance.

With luck, my visit to Brussels might convince some that not all politicians are in for the money.

 

Mean Government

The cuts have hardly started yet, but the loathing of the public is already rising.

No libraries have closed, no forests sold, no child denied an education chance, no surgery privatised, but the dread of the mean cuts looms over every family of average or low income. The lack of any empathy from a cabinet of millionaires will become more marked. Their confidence is slipping. The wrong sort of snow caused the economy to dip here, they claim, while a great deal more snow in the US improved their economy.

Tomorrow they will dust down their failed policy of health commissioning. Last time a voluntary scheme for 15% of the NHS flopped. Now they are foolishly trying a compulsory scheme for 80%. It cannot work.

It will end in tears.

 

 

Secret Rip-off

 

Why do so few people care about this mega-scandal?

Three years I argued in European Forum in Rome that the Galileo Project was a useless extravagance. I was howled at by French MPs. I raised some questions too in the Commons on this insanity.

It’s pure European nationalism, especially French nationalism. Europe did not want to be outdone by the US. 'Anything they can do, we can better and cheaper' was the line. No we cannot.

Galileo has wildly over-run its budget. It was supposed to produce a rival to US Global Navigation System by 2010. There is no need for such a system. The US and China are developing superior ones.

The European Commission has now admitted that the Galileo satellite project will need an extra €1.9 billion from taxpayers. This is even higher than estimates from October, which put the budget shortfall at €1.5 billion to €1.7 billion. The Commission has also now raised its projection of Galileo’s annual operation costs to €800 million. For what? A clanky system that no one wants.

A leaked Wikileaks cable revealed that Berry Smutny, CEO of the German satellite firm OHB Technology involved in the project, described Galileo to US officials as “stupid”, “doomed to failure”, a “waste of EU taxpayers' money” and driven by French military interests. Mr Smutny also told US officials that, in his opinion, the final cost for the project’s deployment will balloon to around €10 billion. Mr. Smutny was sacked as a result of the leaks.

In October, Open Europe research calculated that the total cost of Galileo, from start to completion, and then running it over a 20 year period, would hit €22.2 billion, a figure which needs to be revised upwards again. Under the Commission’s original estimates a decade ago, this cost would have been €7.7 billion, of which only €2.6 billion was to be paid by taxpayers but private investors have pulled out, citing a lack of commercial prospects. The UK 's contribution towards the cost of completing and running the project had already risen from £385 million, under the original estimates, to £2.95 billion, under October’s revised figures.

This is one area where even the Government seems to have had enough. It ranks with the building of Pyramids as an investment decision that produced nothing of practical value.

 

Ryder memento

 

I was amused by this painting that now hangs in the office of the Leader of Newport Council. It was presented to the present leader by Terry Matthews the owner of the Celtic manor where the Ryder Cup was held four months ago.

There was a fierce protracted row between Terry and the Council. He wanted the demolition of a ruined fire damage farmhouse that was ruining the view from his new Clubhouse. The Council refused on the grounds that the farmhouse has antiquity value. A deal was struck for the demolition of most of the house. 

The painting remains a reminder of a bitter battle that was a prelude to a wonderful event.

 

Government blunder - again

 

Government hammered again by Select Committee.

 

The Public Administration Committee has responded with anger at the Government's failure to respond to their call to re-introduce a Grand Strategy. A member of the committee Paul Flynn said, 

"It's incredible the Government do not recognise that the disastrous absence of strategic intelligence or consideration of UK's national interests when the decision was taken to invade Helmand.  We are still paying the consequences in blood and treasure.

The new report published today says:

" Getting National Strategy wrong has real and sometimes dire consequences. At the  time of the Helmand incursion in 2006 only two British soldiers had been killed in battle in Afghanistan. The total is now 349 – almost all as a consequence of the Helmand decision. 

 Yet the Government has failed to respond to evidence given to us that that decision was taken in the absence of a coherent strategy at the politico-military level and without any grand strategic sense of our national interest. The Government has yet to produce evidence of the extent to which the doubling of aid to fragile and conflict states will reduce threats to 

the UK'.

 

Committee Chairman, Bernard Jenkin MP said:

“The central contention of our first Report is that Government has lost the capacity to think strategically. We argued that the Government needs to reclaim the art of creating “national strategy” which should encompass all areas of Government activity and not focus just on national security. 

“Getting strategy right matters. Failure to anticipate threats or seize our opportunities puts at risk our future prosperity, and safety”. 

 

 

 

 

 

Coarse politics Tories.

 

They have not thought it through.

Right-wing Tories, left-wing Tories, mad Tories, sensible Tories are all throbbing with anger. They are wrong. This week in Strasbourg the new Tory delegates queued up to harangue the Council of Europe on a deadly insult to 'UK's national interests'. They have become unhinged by the Daily Mail and Cameron's feigned anger which he claims has turned his stomach.

It's a decision of European Court of Human Rights. That worthy body has the high ambition of improving the standards of justice throughout our vast continent. Most of the objections to their decisions come from Russia and other former communist states. They object to decisions that they say are in conflict with their national interests and traditions. They have some odd traditions that must be challenged.

For centuries they have persecuted minorities, jailed opposition politicians and killed the occasional journalist. That was. and tragically still is, sometimes still their way of doing business. When cases of foul injustices are revealed by the Court of Human Rights, these countries plead  their 'national interests.'  Advanced European nations have resisted these excuses and backed for the Court's humanitarian decisions. Now the Tories are playing the same game for a unworthy cause.

The Mail and the Tories want to be beastly to prisoners. They can do that by denying them some of the  privileges they enjoy now. But there is no demand to take mobile phones, drugs, televisions, gyms or alcohol from our jails.  No, they want to deny prisoners the chance to vote. Huh? The line is that you can a lax regime where nothing is denied except the a ballot paper. Is this really one of the great causes of our epoch? 

The risks are great. By challenging judgements,  that we have agreed to obey, we are risking not only vast compensation to prisoners but a collapse in obedience to the rule of law on serious issues in oppressive states. The wise political move is for the UK to take a hit on this for the sake for improving justice throughout Europe.

The Court of Human Rights is a great institution that can curb the excesses of unjust Governments. Their success depends on respect for the independence of their rulings. If Cameron plays the national card  on this piddling issue he will close the door that leads to justice for those mistreated in  increasing numbers in gulags across our continent.

It's the wrong cause Cameron.

Strange bedfellows

The Tories are in trouble with weird European allies. The resignation of their leader in the EU was expressed in alarming allegations. It's a bit hairy in the Council of Europe. At a dinner for the Uk Tories and their wild-eyed  friends the Russian delegates proposed a toast to 'Greater Russia.' The Czechs shivered, 'Does that mean us?'

 

Words not bombs

 

The cuts in the BBC World Service are mean and stupid. In July last year I gave the Foreign Secretary some golden advice. He was not appreciative.

 Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab): Now that Hezbollah, the Taliban and Iran are all expanding their broadcast services, would it not be inconceivable to cut the meagre grant in aid to the BBC World Service, which could lead to the cancellation of a new Urdu service in Pakistan? Is not the World Service independent, authoritative, trusted, respected and a far better way of winning hearts and minds than bombs and bullets?

Mr Hague: I agree with much of the last part of the hon. Gentleman's question. I would not say that the grant is meagre-£229 million of taxpayers' money. I do not know what he calls meagre, but it is a little more than meagre. It is important that the BBC World Service is able to maintain a presence around the world. I often think of its crucial role in our soft power, which is what the hon. Gentleman is talking about. That is not to say, however, that that grant can never be varied or that the service can never make efficiencies. There will, of course, be great pressure across the whole of the public sector for that to happen.

This morning I spoke to three members of the Macedonian Parliament. Their country is small with a population of 2 million. Another country Greece claims its name. They all expressed regret that the most trusted source of international news in their other tongue will close down.  

These cuts are cheese paring by politicians who cheerfully spend £4 billion a year on the futile Afghan war and £100s of millions on palatial embassies including a generous flow of champagne at their receptions.

The World Service greatly serves our mission to spread our principles and values throughout the world. It was PM Thatchers foolish decision not to expand the radio service into a world television one before CNN did. It could have been done for £14 million,  the cost of the cleaning of the Victoria Tower of the House of Lords. I did mention it to her at the time. She refused pump priming money and insisting that the service should be self funding. 

 

This cut is madness.

 

Curb press freedom

Total number of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan = 350

 

Too little or too much freedom for journalists?

One of parliament's undiscovered treasures, Ian Liddell Granger MP challenged conventional wisdom in the Council of Europe today.

Journalists in Hungary are being denied their freedoms dearly wrested from the communists in 1990. Denial of rights is now coming from their neo-fascist Government. The raving right-wingers have passed a law which allows the Government to 'edit' the news. Even more worrying is that six journalists were murdered last year in Europe. One was on the Turkish relief boat to Gaza. The others were killed to ensure their silence.

Ian Liddell Granger bravely said that press freedom is sometimes abused in the United Kingdom. The steeling on the disc on which all MPs expenses were listed was a criminal act he said. So was the hacking of phones by the Murdoch press et al.  Never one to play to the gallery Ian is splendidly independent.

I wonder if Europe is ready for him?

 Think again Cameron

The case for a re-think on Newport's Passport Office jobs grows stronger

NEWPORT was named a 'vulnerable' city which will be badly affected by government spending cuts.

 

The research group Centre for Cities said while cities like nearby Bristol are bouncing back from the recession, five cities including Newport were not..

Alexandra Jones, chief executive of the Centre for Cities, said: "During 2011, the UK cities most dependent on the public sector, and which have seen slower economic growth over the last decade, will find it more difficult to rebalance towards the private sector. These cities will need realistic plans of action to ride out the spending cuts and create jobs - but they will also need additional financial support from central government.’’

There is a breathing space of two months for the Government to reconsider its devastating assault on Newport jobs. I will have a slot to raise the issue in parliament  again next Wednesday.

I hope the Government is listening.

Carry on 'spying'

One intriguing story has gone quiet.

In December it grabbed the headlines. Lib Dem Mike Hancock said Katia Zatuliveter, 25, had nothing to hide, he backed her 100%, and would appeal.

The she faced deportation proceedings after she was taken into custody on the orders of MI5, the Sunday Times claims. A security source is said to have told the Sunday Times that Ms Zatuliveter's presence was not "conducive to national security", and the intention was to "show her the door".

A parade of security 'experts' told daytime viewers of the blood-curdling consequences if Katia was allowed to roam free among the secrets of the Defence Committee and the Council of Europe. What secrets? There are none. All the affairs of the bodies that Mike Hancock serves are in the public domain.

Are we safe in our beds. If the 'experts' were right, 'no' because Katia is free. Such is the danger and urgency of the case she will not be called on to give evidence in her defence until October. This is the first date that the MI5 man has free in his diary. He is fully occupied chasing other hares. The full story would make a good book. 

A farce of course.

 

Shock. Huhne delivers?



 

What a surprise.

I have been hard on Chris Huhne* (see below) because of his apparent about-turn on nuclear power. His actions have surpassed his words.

The Labour government agreed to provide insurance to the nuclear power industry at the tax payers' expense. I had an adjournment debate to drag Labour minister Mike O'Brian over the coals for this obvious nuclear subsidy. He defended it with a manic irrational rant.

Chris Huhne has now said. “One of the things the coalition agreed with some passion in the current circumstances of fiscal restraint was that there will be no public subsidy for nuclear power.” This was precisely my point. Dare I raise one small cheer for Chris Huhne? The rear of the pantomime horse is not delivering only the things that rear ends always deliver.

There may be a problem. The head of the American Company that secured the sumptuous £13 billion contract to clear up the nuclear mess at Sellafield had other ideas. In answer to a question from nuclear specialist David Lowry he said that he would not have accepted the contract if he was liable to £1 billion liability for a nuclear accident. Chris Huhne may have difficulties in changing the deal.

The taxpayers have shelled out £billions in nuclear subsidies for 50 years and should not be saddled with additional vast commitments, especially when there are clean better value alternatives.

Good luck to Chris Huhne.

 

From Hansard- 16th December 2010.

Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab) rose—

Mr Speaker: With reference to Harlow, England or both?

Paul Flynn:In order to inform myself of the effects of the green deal on Harlow, I researched a website this morning, which states:

“The nuclear industry’s key skill over the past half-century has not been generating electricity, but extracting lashings of taxpayers’ money.”

That was on the website of someone called Chris Huhne. Does this person have any connection with the Secretary of State? Has he sold his principles for a Red Box?

Chris Huhne: The hon. Gentleman should be very aware that the coalition Government are committed to no public subsidy for the nuclear industry for some very good reasons, one of which is in the quotation that he so gracefully supplies to the House.

 

 

 

Emergency! Barristers needed

 

Where are the sharp tongue barristers with their forensic barbs? Why did we not have a Michael Mansfield or a Bob Marshall Andrews cross-examining Tony Blair on the Iraq war?

The powder puff questions put to him at the Chilcot Inquiry were incompetent and obsequious. It proves once again that Prime Ministers can get away with murder.

Next Labour

Last night was a thrilling evening at Banbury Labour Party. It’s very gratifying when an audience laughs a lot at my jokes. Even better when they ask penetrating questions.

This is Next Labour. Many young couples fed up with the Tory-LibDem Junta. Experienced, matured people who have been stirred back into political activism by the horror of the prospects ahead. Last night was the first of a series of dinners with guest speakers. The next one will star Neil Kinnock.

Many years ago I regularly spoke at the Stroud Labour Party. It was a hand-up for a seat that we had little chance of winning. The miracle happened in 1997. If Stroud did it, why not Banbury?

Eat your heart out, Tony Baldry.

 

Tabloid Fear

If Andrew Coulson was trying to bury bad news yesterday, he flopped.

Almost all the tabloids ignored the story. Understandable. They do not want to provoke punishment for their own sins. The broadcast media and the broad sheets used Coulson to eclipse Blair.

The tabloid self—protective censorship is a taste of how news would be distorted if Murdoch spreads his power. Be warned, for FOX's sake.