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Question 1
List six SPECIFIC things that you, not the Government, have done for Grimsby since elected.
Answer:
(i) Achievements. No achievement is due to one person. They`re team efforts by a lot of people, but I did play a major part in:
(ii) Ex gratia payments for distant water trawlermen agreed by Ann Widdecombe in 1995 on the basis of evidence provided by Dolly Hardie and a legal case argued by Humberside Law Centre.
(iii) Compensation for Icelandic trawlermen and the subsequent extension of that compensation to Faeroese Middle-Water fishermen.
(iv) Enhanced status for Grimsby College as Grimsby Institute of Further and Higher Education.
(v) Payment of £2 million plus costs of treatment for failed asylum seeker by Strategic Health Authority rather than our Primary Care Trust.
(vi) Dental Treatment Centre coming in Autumn 2005, money for NHS treatment. New contracts and recruitment of more dentists.
(vii) Seafood Institute, starting as a regional centre laying the basis for the National Seafood Centre we need.
(viii) Stopping closure of Scartho Nursery.(ix) Stopping proposals for dumping nuclear waste at Killingholme (enormously helped by Michael Brown`s threat to resign).
Question Two
Could you have fought harder for Building Schools for the Future money to come to our area`s secondary schools?
Answer
Don’t see how. Certainly the personal intervention of Shona and myself helped remedy the deficiencies of the council’s application and explain issues they had ignored. North East Lincolnshire’s case was neither put as well, nor as strong on the statistics as those of other areas, but our representations won inclusion in the next tranche of allocations promised for early in the next Parliament.
Question Three
How would you describe your relationship to North East Lincolnshire Council and the benefits/disadvantages this brings to the area?
Answer
I’m an active servant of the area and the Council in everything related to government funding, regional and local development, educational advance, attracting jobs and investment and the promotion of our area and its industries. It’s my responsibility to promote all this irrespective of whichever party controls the council, but I could wish the present council was more energetic in backing proposals for redevelopment of the docks area and the development of a higher education campus and less energetic in cutting services which sustain the people, such as libraries, advice services and Alice House, where they`ve been illiberal. On some occasions the council has played its cards too close to its chest (eg Academy status for Wintringham). This is unfortunate. We have to work together to compete with the greater lobbying power of the big cities.
Question Four
How often have you visited the Yarborough, Nunsthorpe, Grange and Willows since the last election?
AnswerToo many times to count for individual cases. I go for complaints, social and organisational occasions, and housing and educational conditions. As Grimsby’s MP I try hard to serve all our community wherever they live and whatever party they support, but as a Labour MP so my concerns and activity should be, and are, weighted towards the more deprived and the disadvantaged wherever they live.
Question Five
Do you regret opposing Shoreline`s takeover of the council`s housing stock if it will improve quality of life for residents:
Answer
Not in the least. The council had the resources to bring our housing up to the Decent Homes Standard. Instead it wasted something like £435 a house of money that should have gone to housing on one-sided propaganda, consultancies and fees, and took its eyes of the housing ball and the accumulating problems for over a year in order to give the stock away. I’m surprised that you want to keep the argument alive. Now the tenants have spoken it`s time to get behind Shoreline, to ensure that it does fulfil its promises and give it any help it needs, and to work together to ensure that it really does improve the quality of life of its tenants and give the people of North East Lincolnshire the high quality social housing they deserve.
Question Six
What have you done to give the town a future, now that the fishing industry is effectively gone?
Answer
Fishing isn`t dead. The report of the Select Committee on fishing which I chaired points the way forward. We have a huge asset in the market and Fish Dock Enterprises need support in their efforts to develop. I encouraged the establishment and development of Europarc by Yorkshire Forward and am an active exponent of the “clustering” process of gathering food industries together to stimulate each other and share training and other facilities. I`ve also encouraged the Transpennine proposals to promote the transport “bridge” across the North with Humber (and us) as the Northern Gateway to Europe as against the southern ones.
Question Seven
Why has Labour cut employment more nationally than it has in North East Lincolnshire?
Answer
We should welcome any fall in unemployment. The fact that unemployment here is down by half and youth unemployment by three quarters is a tremendous achievement. That fall isn`t as great as in the South East, but London has always had great advantages over us, particularly the self-generating growth coming from greater wealth and the dynamics of a huge metropolis.
Question Eight
Why has the poverty gap widened in Grimsby and what have you done about it?
Answer
It hasn’t. Those at the bottom of the social pyramid and the low paid have been substantially helped by the Minimum Wage, by better child benefits, by Working Family Tax Credits and the Minimum Income Guarantee for pensioners, and by the fall in unemployment. No benefit system can do more to help people than a job .
Question Nine
You have said that Iraq should not be an election issue in Grimsby. How else do you think people can hold the government to account if they did not agree with the war?
Answer
An election is a choice of government, a verdict on the overall record of the incumbent and a decision by the people on whether or not they want to replace it with an alternative government. The only one available is the Tories who supported the war. To put Iraq ahead of improving the lot of the British people would be wrong.
Question Ten
Do you think it is fair that Labour voters will go to bring back a Blair government knowing he will stand down in the next Parliament?
Answer
People in Grimsby aren`t voting for Gordon Brown or Tony Blair but (I hope) for Austin Mitchell. It certainly wouldn’t be fair to ask people to vote for a leader who immediately steps down as the Liberal and Tory leaders both did after the last election, but Tony Blair has made it clear that this is his last election as leader. That seems to me to give Labour the advantage of two strong figures who compliment each other. |
