The news that Surrey Heath has the highest level of road accidents for children in Surrey comes with the announcement that Runnymede and Chertsey MP Philip Hammond is cutting the Government grant for speed cameras.

“There is now every chance that more children will be injured on our roads,” says Labour County Councillor Victor Agarwal.

As well as this Health Minister Andrew Lansley has just announced that NHS Direct will be cut. This service deals with 1400 inquiries every day. It is estimated that the saving to the NHS from NHS amounts to £162m every year due to people not having to use accident and emergency services or consult their doctor.

As well as this Lansley is withdrawing support services for people seeking to quit smoking in Surrey. The service that operates through pharmacies was responsible for helping 4.106 people stop smoking last year. Because of the proven link between smoking and a whole range of diseases these cuts again represent an increased cost to the NHS. Eileen Streets of the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation says: “It is vital will stem the tide of new smokers who are becoming addicted every year, particularly young people and children.”

Judging by the bewildered response to the thrusting of responsibility for delivery of a whole complex range of health services from Drs. Surgeries, Labour believe that we in Surrey are likely to see a decline in the overall standard of health care offered by our NHS. People need to be reminded that the Con/Lib Government had no mandate for changes to the NHS on this scale.

Labour members of the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) have today written to the authority’s chief executive Catharine Crawford to reject a 2.6 per cent increase in their annual allowances, arguing it’s “the only appropriate thing to do in the current economic climate”.

Joanne McCartney, Jennette Arnold and John Biggs – all London Assembly members – took the decision in light of the two-year pay freeze announced for public sector workers. The scheduled rise was due to go ahead this year as it was agreed before the pay-freeze was announced in the April budget.

Last month Boris Johnson refused to criticise Conservative members of the London Fire & Emergency Planning Authority LFEPA when they voted to award themselves a 25 per cent pay rise and voted down a proposal from Labour members to forego the increase.

LFEPA Chair Brian Coleman saw his allowance go up £900 to £26,833 just days after George Osborne’s budget, which the chancellor insisted showed “we’re all in it together”. When asked about the apparent hypocrisy of his Tory colleagues, Boris Johnson praised Brian Coleman for finding savings at LFEPA. Coleman, who was appointed by Boris Johnson in 2008, earns over £100k a year for his various local government roles.

In a letter to the MPA’s chief executive today, Labour’s policing spokesperson Joanne McCartney wrote: I am writing to you on behalf of the Labour MPA members to let you know that we would like to forego the allowance rise; we feel that this is the only appropriate thing to do in the current economic climate.

Joanne McCartney said: “People are struggling and are set to struggle a lot more under the government’s plans to cut services, raise prices and freeze wages. Politicians should not be immune from this and should show restraint when, unlike most people, they are in a position to take a decision on changes to their pay.”

I have proposed a global reconstruction corps to offer civilian help – engineers, doctors, builders – to build homes, rebuild the schools, staff the hospitals and get agriculture and industry moving again. We have set up a British corps – and a global volunteer corps is more important and imperative than ever. To make it effective on the ground in Pakistan we need of course an agreement with all Pakistani parties that they will use and work with a Reconstruction Corps.

But we do have to ask ourselves one big question: If we cannot be moved to do more when 20 million people are stranded, some under water, all homeless, then when will be do more? If we cannot the answer the summons of a global ethic that, no matter how distant we are all neighbors – if we cannot see that when we see people dying on our TV screens – when will we as a global community rise to our shared humanity? In words we have heard before, if not now, when? and where and how?

Read the full article.

“If we examine what they are saying the result is rather scary,” Mr Rowlands adds.

Runnymede and Chertsy – Philip Hammond MP. Transport Minister
Millionaire City businessman Hammond has withdrawn the Government grant for speed cameras. With severe cuts in local government spending many councils will be unable to pay for them in their area. Only petrol heads and Jeremy Clarkson are likely to benefit as dangerous speeding goes unchecked putting us all at risk.

Hammond is about to announce cuts in the Government’s support for rail travel meaning that fares are likely to rise by more than 8 percent.

Epsom and Ewell – Chris Grayling MP. Welfare Minister
Chris Grayling has just announced a regime of spying on people in receipt of benefits. On the other hand conspicuously absent is any attempt by the Con/Lib Government to trace serial tax avoiders. The Future Jobs Fund designed to assist the growing number of young people here out of work into training has been cut. So has a planned extension of a scheme to get every young person between 18 and 24 out of work for more than six months into training.

Guildford- Ann Milton MP – Secretary of State for Public Health
In an effort to live up to milk snatcher Thatcher Ann Milton announced moves to cut free milk to children’s nurseries. Fortunately conscious of the public relations consequences of “milk snatching” at the last minute the Government changed its mind.

Surrey Heath – Michael Gove MP- Education Minister
Moving hundreds of state schools from local authority control to academies based on similar moves in Sweden, the US and Canada was to have been the highlight of the Con/Lib Government’s policies. Unfortunately Gove’s Bill rushed through Parliament, which denies communities any say in what happens to their schools has gone down like a lead balloon. Schools and Colleges in Surrey about to begin building programmes through Labour’s Schools for the Future programme will continue to use decaying buildings. Gove’s cuts in the children’s playground scheme will see schemes often partially funded through community projects whither and die.

South West Surrey – Jeremy Hunt MP – Culture Minister
The Film Council that has brought millions of pounds into the country through the promotion of films like “Bright Star” and Bend it Like Beckham has been closed by Hunt. His statements about the future of the BBC usually contain an implicit threat to its future.

Mole Valley – Sir Paul Beresford MP
Sir Paul has just been appointed to the influential Parliamentary Committee determining MP’s expenses. But according to The Daily Telegraph Sir Paul continues to work as a dentist and uses his surgery waiting room as his constituency office.

Labour’s Day in Woking Saturday 11th September
Labour members and supporters from Surrey’s 11 constituencies will attend a meeting to consider all these cuts and those in the forthcoming Spending Review working people now face. This will take place at 2pm at Owen House.

RT Hon Ed Balls MP will speak at 5pm as part of his campaign for leadership of Labour.

Opening hours are from 8am to 8pm, 7 days week. The surgery is open for new patient registrations now.

Halfpenny Steps Health Centre,
427-429 Harrow Road,
London, W10 4RE.

Tel: 020 7286 6009

Queen’s Park Councillor Paul Dimoldenberg, Leader of the Labour Group, said: “This is a fantastic new local health facility which will provide and even better local service to residents seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. The PCT is to be congratulated on extending local health services in Queen’s Park and Harrow Road wards as this is an area where there is a large child population and where life expectancy is lower than in more affluent parts of Westminster.”

“This new health centre is a direct result of Labour’s huge investment in improving health facilities in Westminster. This new health centre would not have existed had the Conservatives been running the Government a few years ago and similar new health centres are much less likely now that the new Conservatives and Liberal Democrat Coalition is cutting public services. When people ask where public money has been invested you only have travel up and down the Harrow Road and see this new Health Centre, together with the new Health facilities at The Stowe and the new Westminster Academy, to see Labour’s real and lasting achievements.”

These latest cuts are the result of the Council’s financial bungling which led to a £20 million hole in the Council’s budget following a shortfall in the planned income from car parking.

Councillor Paul Dimoldenberg, Leader of the Labour Group, said: “Every week brings more news of job losses, price increases and service cuts at Westminster Council. These six jobs are from some of the lowest paid Council staff and it is typical of Westminster’s heartless approach that the most vulnerable staff are targeted for the sack.”

“Yourmedway approached Mr Craggs for a comment and was told that a full statement detailing the reasons behind his resignation would be released later this afternoon.

However, we are led to believe that Mr Craggs was told he must choose between serving as a special constable, a position he has held for 17 years, and a Medway councillor.”

Mr Craggs narrowly won the River ward by-election on Thursday, August 12, after polling 617 votes. The Labour candidate, John James, came a close second with 544 votes.

Medway Council’s Returning Officer Neil Davies said another by-election would be held within 35 days.

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Calling for a membership drive, John Prescott, who is campaigning to be elected Treasurer of the Party, told the Scottish Parliament’s annual Festival of Politics:

“We want a strong treasurer who’s involved in the membership drive, putting a proper financial account into the party, and is an active political person in making that accountable to the constituencies. You can go on if you like and just have somebody doing what’s always been the way. Well, we cannot continue to finance a political party in that way.

“We have to do what I said when I was elected as deputy leader. The politics of organisation are equally as important as the politics of ideas. We forgot about the organisation bit,” the Press Association reports.

Whilst it may be helpful for Lord Prescott’s bid to be Treasurer, there is a problem with his narrative of falling membership and near bankruptcy.

28,000 new members have joined Labour since the election, and increased income from donations and tight controls on spending by politicians meant that Labour emerged from the election with more money than before Gordon Brown went to the country.

NEC member Ann Black told Labour Matters: “As the accounts will show, the loans from 2005 are still being repaid according to schedule, but at least we have not increased the debt.

“Looking forward, the surge in membership is bringing in substantial sums over budget, so there are some reasons to be cheerful.”

Paul Blomfield MP congratulates A-level students and attacks Government cuts in university places.

Paul Blomfield, Labour MP for Sheffield Central, has congratulated A-level students for achieving record exam results. He also criticised the Tory-Lib Dem government for cutting 10,000 extra university places this year and for failing to respond to the unprecedented demand for university places.

Paul Blomfield MP said: “I would like to congratulate all A-level students who got their results today. The record results show that young people are working harder than ever to go to university.

“However, the unprecedented demand for university places means not everyone will get onto their course. So the Tory-Lib Dem government’s decision to cut 10,000 extra university places, just at the moment when they are needed most, is madness. They have completely failed to respond to the demand.

“Last year the Labour Government responded to the extra demand for university places by funding 10,000 extra places and we planned to do the same this year. For Nick Clegg, our Acting Prime Minister, to talk about increasing social mobility whilst at the same time preventing 10,000 young people from going onto higher education shames him and the Lib Dem-Tory government.”

Only because of The Audit Commission’s thorough investigation of Surrey’s Children’s Department did we discover that it ranked as one of the fourth worst in its care of vulnerable children in the country. Despite this Surrey only managed to drag its standard of care up to “adequate” for one of the wealthiest Counties in England.

Despite this Tim Hall the councillor in charge of change and efficiency for the Surrey County Executive attempts to blame Labour for Surrey’s long list of identified failures highlighted by the Audit Commission. It appears from his comment that Councillor Hall welcomes Surrey Council taxpayers having no objective analysis of how their money is being spent.

The change will mean that Surrey will employ private auditors who will no doubt temper their appraisal of Surrey’s performance with an eye on being re-employed by the County. They will lack the authority for their reports enjoyed by The Audit Commission.

Outside of Surrey grave doubts arise as to who is going to report objectively on Surrey’s Hospital Trusts and Primary Care Trusts prior to their closure.

The real suspicion is that Eric Pickles the Communities Minister is more concerned with vengeance against the Audit Commission for uncovering the votes for homes in Westminster corruption of Lady Shirley Porter shortly after it was established in 1984.