Labour would protect commuters from rocketing rail fares

Labour today called on the Government to ban train operating companies from raising rail fares above strict limits.

The measure, which Labour would implement now urgently if it was in government, is part of a package being designed to prevent commuters and other hard-pressed passengers being exploited so that fairness and simplicity are restored to rail fares.

Under Labour’s plan, no fare could rise next week by more than 1% above inflation. However, because of decisions taken by this Tory-led government, a number of the most popular routes will see fares soar by as much as 9% in the New Year.

Although ministers claimed they were limiting fare increases to an average of 1% above inflation, the reality is that they have quietly reversed decisions by the last Labour government to enforce such limits.

By giving train companies the ‘flexibility’ to add up to 5% to some fares, on top of the inflation-plus-1% increase already announced by George Osborne, it is possible that some ticket prices will increase by up to 11 per cent.

The cap on average fare rises has been set even higher at 3% above inflation in future years, meaning passengers may face fare rises of as much as 13% in 2013 and 2014.

David Cameron’s decision to side with the powerful private train operator lobby against commuter and passengers shows he is desperately out of touch with the spiraling cost-of-living crisis facing so many hard-working families.

The National Audit Office this month warned that the increases in rail fares were likely to lead simply to higher profits for private train companies – with no benefit to the Exchequer.

The urgent action Labour is proposing to help passengers now follows a warning from Ed Miliband in September that he would set tough new tests for train companies wishing to retain or apply for franchise – in the same way that he has signaled his determination to tackle predatory practices by banks and energy companies.

Thousands of delayed hospital discharges keep families apart over Christmas

David Cameron has presided over a dramatic 16 per cent increase in delayed hospital discharges over the last 16 months, new figures reveal.

Department of Health figures for November published today show there are now more than 64,000 days of delayed discharges every month – up from 55,000 in August 2010 (the month from which new figures have been collected).

The monthly cost of these delays was £16.7m in November, and the total bill has now reached £255m since August last year – or £550,000 per day.

Liz Kendall MP, Labour’s Shadow Minister for Care and Older People, said: “At this time of year many families will be particularly upset and worried that their loved ones are stranded in hospital for the festive season. These delayed discharges aren’t just affecting older people and their families – they are costing millions of pounds, money hard pressed taxpayers can ill afford to waste.

“Yet despite all the evidence of the growing care crisis for older people, the Tory-led Government refuses to listen. They are cutting frontline NHS services and have slashed budgets for older people’s social care by £1.3bn in real terms. And at a time when NHS and social care services should be working together in the interests of patients, they have instead been thrown into chaos by the Government’s reckless Health Bill.

Double payment of GPs in Cameron’s new NHS bureaucracy

Questions mount about cost of Cameron’s wasteful re-organisation.

Labour have today published stark new figures revealing yet further evidence of the full cost of the Government’s dangerous NHS re-organisation.

The new NHS bureaucracy created by David Cameron’s Health Bill is paying GPs twice.

As GPs take on new roles as part of NHS commissioning boards, they are paid to attend board meetings and a further payment for locums to cover surgeries. New figures also suggest that GPs will be paid additional sums to attend meetings regardless of whether locum cover is required.

Freedom of Information responses received by Labour from 54 Primary Care Trusts across England show that hourly rates range from £48 per hour in County Durham to £115 per hour in Hertfordshire. In Wiltshire GPs are paid £26,000 per year to cover their commissioning duties, and in Coventry the chairs of the new clinical commissioning board are paid £35,000 each.

Andy Burnham MP, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, said: “When the NHS needs every penny it can get, patients will be appalled to hear that David Cameron is paying GPs twice.

“The Government are putting GPs in a difficult situation with their plans. It makes no sense at all to take GPs away from patient care to become part-time accountants. Patients and taxpayers lose hands down as the NHS foots the bill twice.

Growing care crisis as charges for elderly home care top £7,000 a year

A new survey of care provided by local councils, published today by Labour, reveals shocking increases and wide disparities in charges for services for vulnerable elderly and disabled people.

Councils are increasing charges for:
* home care: the average hourly charge is now £13.49, a rise of 6% since 2009/10

* meals on wheels: the average charge is now £3.44 per meal, a rise of 13%

* transport: for example to day centres: the average charge for a journey is now £2.32, a rise of 33%

These increases mean the average yearly cost for an older or disabled person who pays for 10 hours of home care a week is now £7,015 a year.

Older or disabled people who also get meals on wheels every day now pay an average of £8,271 a year.

With transport charges to go to a day centre three times a week an older or disabled person now pays £8,633 per year.

There are huge differences in the price people pay for care, depending on where they live. This ranges from free home care in Tower Hamlets to care costing £20.34 per hour in Cheshire East. This means an older or disabled person in Cheshire East receiving 10 hours of care per week could be liable for charges up to £10,577 per year when they would receive free home care in Tower Hamlets.

Ed Miliband’s New Year message: “optimism can defeat despair”

A New Year Message from Labour Party Leader Ed Miliband:

Britain starts 2012 in the most difficult of moments. Economic gloom, rising unemployment, falling living standards.

What I have heard, going round the country in the last year, are the same concerns everywhere: young people struggling to find work, families feeling their living standards squeezed, parents fearful about what kind of future lies ahead for their children.

Take our young people. Some have applied for hundreds of jobs without success. When they are just starting out in life, they should feel a sense of hope. Instead, they feel desperate.

Yet just when the challenges facing our country are greatest for a generation, many people feel politics cannot answer their problems. Some believe things would be the same whoever was in charge. And others fear the Government is in the grip of forces so powerful that nothing can be done.

It suits the current Conservative-led government to go along with this idea. Having failed in their promise to make Britain a safe haven, they now say that there is no alternative to rising joblessness and years of falling living standards for working people. It is a counsel of despair.

When so many are sceptical about politics the easy route for politicians is to join in and accept the cynicism. To say simply that in hard times nothing can be done. But that’s not why I came into politics and it’s not what the Labour party stands for.

My party’s mission in 2012 is to show politics can make a difference. To demonstrate that optimism can defeat despair. That politics can rise to meet the challenges Britain faces even when the challenges are so great.

Tory hypocrisy on Boxing Day rail shutdown

Labour today accused the Government of total hypocrisy for failing to ensure a Boxing Day rail service.

In opposition the Conservatives routinely complained about the lack of trains running on one of the busiest travel days of the year.

But the Conservative-led Government have taken no action to get a rail service on Boxing Day.

John Woodcock MP, Labour’s Shadow Transport Minister, said: “This is total hypocrisy from the Tories. Year after year in opposition, the Tories attacked the Boxing Day rail shutdown. But in Government they have done nothing to encourage rail operators to run a Boxing Day service – and this Boxing Day, most trains are not running.

“This is typical of the Conservative Party’s opportunism – making promises they never had any intention of keeping.

“Transport Secretary Justine Greening should tell us what she plans to do to ensure that Boxing Day services do run in future, or else admit that her party was simply chasing headlines in opposition by raising this issue, and had no real intention of doing anything about it.”

Labour’s Feltham and Heston victory is a verdict on this Government’s failing economic plan

Ed Miliband MP, Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party, said in Feltham and Heston this morning:

“Thank you to the people of Feltham and Heston.

“You have again put your trust in Labour and we are determined to repay that trust. Seema Malhotra will work every day to show that they made the right choice and will repay the trust you put in her.

“By-elections are not general elections but they do offer a verdict.

“This one offers a verdict on this Government’s failing economic plan. It is your verdict – the verdict of the people of Feltham and Heston; it is a verdict of the young person looking for work; the family seeing their living standards squeezed; the business under pressure.

“It is a verdict which also says there must be a better way forward.

“This is not just a swing from the Tories to Labour. It is a swing away from Tory ideas to Labour ideas. Labour ideas that put young people back to work. Labour ideas that gets growth going in the economy. Labour ideas that even in tough times, there can be hope.

“The Prime Minister made a big boast of coming here. But this morning the Conservatives are writing off not just the result, they are writing off the people of Feltham and Heston. They are saying that the people of Feltham and Heston are just ‘traditional Labour’.

“If we are to do right by our young people we must take opportunity seriously”

In a speech to the Reading the Riots Conference, Ed Miliband MP, Leader of the Labour Party, said today:

It is a privilege to be here today and I want to congratulate the LSE and The Guardian for their work on understanding the causes of the riots.

I talked in my Party Conference speech about how we needed a different set of values by which our country should be run.

Since then, I have been talking about what that means for our economy both today and in the future.

Today, I want to say how I think this argument speaks to the issue of our society and the riots.

My argument is this:

If we are to prevent the riots re-occurring, we must understand the causes and act on them.

In your study, half of those who rioted said they would do it again.

And the vast majority – fully 80% – said they thought it probably would happen again.

We owe it to the victims of these terrible events, often the poorest and most vulnerable in our society, to make sure that doesn’t happen.

But that is not the only thing we must do.

The riots have also been a window on deeper issues facing our country.

Indeed, every place I went to in the aftermath of the riots, people would say “why did it take a riot for anyone to come and listen to us?”

My big fear was that politics, then media would arrive in a flurry and then move on.

I believe there is still a real danger that that is going to happen.

Labour launches Doughty Report on backing small business

Chuka Umunna MP, Labour’s Shadow Business Secretary, will today launch a Labour policy review document calling for intervention to channel private investment funds and public contracts towards small businesses.

Speaking in Birmingham at the start of an open question and answer session with around 100 entrepreneurs, Labour’s Shadow Business Secretary will outline the recommendations from Nigel Doughty’s small business taskforce contained in a report entitled: ‘Fulfilling the promise of British enterprise’.

These are recommendations from Nigel Doughty’s Small Business Taskforce for the Policy Review and will be considered as part of Labour’s policy-making process.

Chuka Umunna MP will say: “Building an economy that works for the 99 per cent means learning the lessons of the banking crisis.

“The Government’s isolation abroad is matched only by the extent to which it is out of touch with the needs of the real economy at home. The Prime Minister postures in Europe about protecting the City but delivers nothing; and he does nothing to help investment-starved small businesses.

“Nigel Doughty’s Report sets out steps we should be looking at that could take us towards long term change in the relationship between the world of finance and the real economy.”

Cameron has been hamstrung by the divisions in his own party

Ed Miliband MP, Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition, writing in yesterday’s Evening Standard, said:

This is the most important European summit for a generation and its outcome is looking increasingly worrying for the UK.

We have warned consistently that an isolated David Cameron has been on the sidelines of Europe for months, out of touch abroad in the same way as he is out of touch at home.

He has been hamstrung by the divisions in his own party, imprisoned by the Eurosceptics and his failure to confront his party over the last five years.

There are simple lessons to learn from the Prime Minister’s failure last night. If you get out of the deal-making room as he has done over the last year, you end up losing influence. Having no allies is a sign of weakness, not of strength.

There are serious questions to answer.

We need an assurance that Mr Cameron has not allowed a deal to emerge that means 25 of the 27 will rewrite the rules of the European economy without the UK in the room.

Will the signatories to the new treaty be able to impose economic barriers to those in the EU but outside the new treaty?

Will this new treaty be run by the EU institutions, and be enforceable in EU courts?

Will the UK have a seat at the table when vital economic decisions are taken?