PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATES IN CORNWALL

Here’s a list of prospective parliamentary candidates I am aware of so far for the six new Cornwall seats.

CAMBORNE AND REDRUTH
Conservative George Eustice, Labour Jude Robinson, Liberal Democrat Julia Goldsworthy MP, Mebyon Kernow Loveday Jenkin, UKIP Derek Elliot

The previous Conservative candidate for Camborne and Redruth, John Woodward, resigned 15 October 2008. Read about it here .

The Times of 25 September 2009 has an article, PR consultants who are working to become your Tory MP, which includes a reference to George Eustice.

NORTH CORNWALL
Conservative Sian Flynn, Liberal Democrat Dan Rogerson MP, Mebyon Kernow Joanie Willett, UKIP Ivor Masters

ST AUSTELL AND NEWQUAY
Conservative Caroline Righton, Labour Lee Jameson, Liberal Democrat Stephen Gilbert, Mebyon Kernow Dick Cole, UKIP Clive Medway

ST IVES AND ISLES OF SCILLY
Conservative Derek Thomas, Labour Philippa Latimer, Liberal Democrat Andrew George MP, Mebyon Kernow Simon Reed, UKIP Mick Faulkner

The MK candidate was Richard Clark but he had to leave the area for work reasons. The Green candidate was Tracy Stanton but she stepped down in November 2009 because of a change in personal circumstances.

SOUTHEAST CORNWALL
Conservative Sheryll Murray, Labour Bill Stevens, Liberal Democrat Karen Gillard, Mebyon Kernow Glenn Renshaw, UKIP Stephanie McWilliam

TRURO AND FALMOUTH
Conservative Sarah Newton, Green Lindsay Southcombe, Labour Charlotte Mackenzie, Liberal Chris Tankard, Liberal Democrat Terrye Teverson, Mebyon Kernow Loic Rich, UKIP Glen Corcoran

The previous MK candidate, Conan Jenkin, resigned because of increasing work and family commitments. Read the MK announcement here. The web has several writings by Loic Rich, just google his name.

Two current Liberal Democrat MPs, Colin Breed for South East Cornwall and Matthew Taylor for Truro and St Austell, are not standing again. The five Cornwall seats have been rejigged into six. There are three newly created seats: St Austell and Newquay; Truro and Falmouth; and Camborne, Redruth, and Hayle.

The parties have websites and details of the candidates are largely available. For example, see here for Derek Thomas and here for Philippa Latimer.

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Original post 11 May 2008.

Related post

Unitary and EU elections in Cornwall

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N. CORNWALL TORIES SHOW US THE FUTURE: UPDATED

UPDATE 20 September 2009

I congratulated the Tories in North Cornwall on their open selection of parliamentary candidates a couple of years ago — the original post is below.

Now read this in today’s Bedfordshire on Sunday.

Nothing’s simple, is it? In 2007 I thought open selections were an expansive democratic idea. I still do. It would be reasonable to exclude members of other parties from the open selection meetings, if practical, though I don’t think that would solve this Tory dispute. Is this a one-off or a harbinger?

ORIGINAL POST 3 July 2007

Conservatives in the North Cornwall constituency have chosen an “open primary” meeting as the way to select their prospective parliamentary candidate. See here.

Three candidates have been selected by the usual party method and from these the parliamentary candidate will be chosen. As I understand it, any voter, whatever their own politics, in North Cornwall can pre-register with the North Cornwall Conservatives and then go to the meeting on 9 July and vote for their preferred Conservative candidate.

This open primary method potentially involves a wider public than just Tory party members and participation, or the possibility of it, may well encourage them to vote in a general election for the Conservative. Of course, people who do not support the Conservatives can presumably attend the meeting and vote for the candidate they think most likely to lose in a general election or the candidate nearest to their own non-Tory views. However, all the candidates are pre-selected by the party so there is a safety net for the party.

This open primary meeting, common in America, is a bold step by the Conservatives. They are pushing the frontiers of democracy forward and making the routine, closed methods of selection by other parties (and other Conservative parties) look old-hat and unacceptably exclusionary. It will be interesting to see how this works out and how many people who are not members attend but I, an enemy of Conservatism, admire their radicalism here and wish them well with their open primary meeting. They are, I hope, showing us the future of selection meetings.

At this point I should also say I think Gordon Brown’s reaching out to those outside the Labour party is a welcome inclusionary step. Democracy is growing up.

TORIES EYE BENEFITS AND WAGES IN CORNWALL

The Conservatives are looking at plans to localise benefits: local councils would be given the power to set the benefit levels in their areas and the present uniform payments throughout Britain would be abandoned. The story is in today’s Observer, Tories plan to let benefit levels be set by local councils.

Many people in Cornwall gain from national standards in wages and benefits. The levels of wages for people in the public services here, like nurses and teachers, are set by national standards and comparisons not local ones. For example, Cornwall local wages are not used as comparators to decide what to pay a teacher here. Benefit levels are also set nationally and do not, with exceptions for rent for example, refer to local living costs. The Tory localising ideas would have a marked effect on the rates of benefits paid to people in Cornwall where average wages and the general cost of living are lower than in, for example, London and the south of England. Benefit levels in Cornwall would be stifled — fall or be frozen or increase at a lower rate than elsewhere, the last probably being the more likely — to align them with the different living costs here.

Would it just be benefits a Conservative government would localise? I pointed out in this post that the national minimum wage might be a target for Tory cuts: localisation would be a way for a Conservative government to stifle it, to freeze it or hold back its present progressive increases, in places like Cornwall. Once the localisation of benefits is established, the Tories might indeed come to see localism as a rational way of reducing costs and acknowledging varying local circumstances in other spheres, especially in public service pay: for example, localising nurses’ pay — in Cornwall lower levels than in London and the south of England because comparator pay and living costs are lower — is a way of tackling the costs of the NHS.

Local variations in benefits and public sector pay (and the minimum wage) might seem reasonable. After all, local living costs do vary and market pay varies. However, the Tory ideas appear not to be about topping up mandatory national payments in areas of high living costs. In practice councils of all parties would most likely seize the localising of payments as an opportunity to cut back costs and perhaps reduce or stabilise council tax. David Cameron has said a Conservative government would wish to give councils a general power of competence: it will thus be difficult to prevent the essentially arbitrary stifling of benefits or pay, a stifling with only a tenuous link to local living costs. We shall also have a contentious post code lottery, especially noticeable outside Cornwall in large urban areas where neighbours will have different levels of benefit payment and, although doing the same job, different pay. Indeed, we might have differences within Cornwall as local living costs, especially housing costs, vary within the county. I discussed these issues two years ago in this post.

Cornishing benefits, public sector pay, and the minimum wage carries large disadvantages for many people in Cornwall. There are questions to ask the Conservative parliamentary candidates and unitary councillors. Localisers in other parties have some difficult questions too.

WORK FOR PEANUTS IN CORNWALL

A while ago I doubted the Tory Party conversion to social democracy.

Then there was a story in the Sunday Mirror last October claiming that “David Cameron would allow minimum wage to die out” (Sunday Mirror 5 October 2008).

Now the other day in the House of Commons a group of eleven Conservative MPs introduced a bill, which won’t get far, to make the mandatory national minimum wage voluntary: adult workers would be able to freely choose to work for less than its current £5.73 an hour (Hansard 10 February 2009 columns 1258-1260: the Employment Opportunities bill). The philosophy behind this was “freedom, flexibility, and opportunity” but I think in practice it will be about working for peanuts.

The argument seems to be that voluntarising the minimum wage would help struggling small firms by enabling them reduce their wage bill and thus keep jobs that otherwise might have to go or even create new jobs and thus help people presently out of work into work by letting them take jobs which firms could afford if they pay less than £5.73 an hour. It is a plausible argument but basically I think this is a reformulation of the original Tory argument that the minimum wage destroys jobs at the bottom and the way to save them is to pay poverty wages. I believe if working for less than the minimum wage is made permissible, it will encourage a rush to the bottom in pay and more and more workers will be asked to choose, a job on inadequate pay or no job? Working for less than the minimum wage will cease to be a voluntary choice for vast numbers in the low-paid jobs. Many wages in Cornwall would be among those reduced to peanuts.

This is not a pay cut in jobs with reasonable pay which I can see in present dire circumstances might be sensible in some firms; it is a pay cut at the very bottom.

Additionally, a cut in low wages will increase the call upon top-up tax credits thus shifting costs from employer to taxpayers generally – assuming the Tories would keep tax credits.

It is instructive to note the position here before the introduction of the minimum wage. Speaking in the House of Commons second reading debate in 1997 on the bill to introduce the minimum wage, Candy Atherton, then an MP for Cornwall, said that in Penryn, Cornwall jobcentre she had seen jobs advertised for care workers at £2.20 an hour; kitchen porters at £2 an hour; and a skilled car mechanic at £1.80 an hour to work “40 hours, weekends and nights” (Hansard 16 December 1997 columns 211-212). She explicitly challenged the idea that low pay brings jobs.

In fact very few jobs have been lost because of the minimum wage which is at a very modest level and is increased annually generally with judiciousness but over time above general price and pay increases. The national minimum wage has increased the real wages of the low paid without damaging employment. For both these points see this study, On the impact of the British national minimum wage on pay and employment, December 2006, by David Metcalf.

Britain’s minimum wage: what impact on pay and jobs is a summary.

The Conservatives voted against the minimum wage when it was introduced by the Labour government. The October story and the Tory sally on 10 February raise the serious question of whether a Conservative government would abolish the mandatory minimum wage or voluntarise it or let it wither and die. The Tory leadership should be open with us about this and the Tory parliamentary candidates in Cornwall should say out loud where they stand.

I think we should keep the mandatory minimum wage and keep on increasing it in normal economic circumstances. If we reach a point where jobs disappear in numbers, we should deal with that scenario then. In the meantime we should take the low paid out of tax. People on the minimum wage pay tax which effectively reduces the wage rate by around £1 an hour. I would like to see the low paid taken out of tax altogether and it is extremely disappointing that after twelve years of a Labour government, with many fat years and millions paid in bonuses to the well paid, working people start paying tax when they reach pay of £116 a week, with no ten percent rate now.

These are not normal economic circumstances. The recession and rising unemployment mean that whether the minimum wage should be frozen at its present level or raised is a difficult question – and wholly separate from the Tory bill. The Low Paid Commission will report in May and its arguments will be engaging.

Look for a moment at the measure of the downturn in Cornwall and the fast disappearance of jobs, the circumstances in which some Tories want to hobble the minimum wage. In January 2009 there were 8989 unemployed people in Cornwall – that is, people claiming job seeker allowance (JSA), the standard measure which probably underestimates unemployment (Table 16 at Claimant count by unitary and local authority). That is a very substantial rise over 2007/08 (see Table 12).

The JSA is not generous. A single person, over twenty five and with no dependent children, gets £60.50 a week on JSA. Rent and mortgage payments are additional but £60.50 is pitifully inadequate for a decent life.

All right, in normal circumstances most people are on JSA for only a few months until they find a job. But these are not normal economic circumstances, are they?

This is the pro-Cornish agenda, recognising the people of Cornwall and their needs. The minimum wage should remain mandatory and be increased if feasible in these circumstances; the Tories are wrong. Unemployment benefits should be increased now: the low level of the JSA which in boom circumstances might have been defended as a temporary payment and a spur to work, an argument I am unhappy with anyway, is not valid now. People will be unemployed for longer than in the recent past and debts and deprivation will pile up and their ownership of their houses is imperilled.

Meanwhile Cornish nationalism studies its navel.
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Notes

The national minimum wage began in 1999 at £3.60 an hour. About 1.2 million workers were covered by it. There are now about 2 million workers covered by it.

The TUC estimates that 1.5 million workers are currently paid below the minimum wage though not all these will be instances of noncompliance with the law.

The second reading of the minimum wage bill was on 16 December 1997, the third reading on 9 March 1998. Conservatives voted against the bill on both occasions.

The February 2009 JSA claimant figure for Cornwall is 10 220 (added 19 March 2009).

This post, Shameful failure, also discusses inter alia the minimum wage.

UPDATE
Chope’s Employment Opportunities bill was denied a second reading on 16 June 2009 (Hansard column 1106) and is down for second reading on 16 October 2009, along with a host of other bills. Early day motion (EDM) 1461 of 11 May 2009 opposed the bill.

LABOUR HELPS 130 000 IN COLD CORNWALL

The current cold weather is a good time to recall that the Labour government has done much to help pensioners pay the accompanying high fuel bills, notably with the winter fuel payment introduced by Labour in 1997.

Every household with a person or couple over sixty gets £250 as a winter fuel payment. People of eighty and over get more. Of course, this doesn’t pay the whole fuel bill but it certainly helps; and of course some are more in need than others. Cornwall is far from being the coldest place in Britain in winter but about 131 000 winter fuel payments are made in Cornwall and Scillies (Hansard 27 November 2007, columns 333W-334W). Those payments are for the year 2006/07 and the number will have increased by now – I think my headline figure is an understatement. More needs to be done about the price of fuel and how to make it affordable to those on low incomes, but the fuel payment is a capital practical policy.

The Conservatives have refused to guarantee its continuance should they form a government: Hansard 4 June 2008 column 841. Let me repeat that: the Conservatives have not guaranteed to keep the winter fuel payment.

The elderly in Cornwall have much to thank Labour for. Free bus travel and shorter waiting times in the NHS, state spending on pensioners up 50 percent in real terms since 1997 (Hansard 4 June 2008 column 844), effectively a single pension of £124 a week and £189 a week for a couple (standard minimum guarantee of pension credit), a promise to restore the link between earnings and pensions.

There is still much to do. A scandalously large amount goes unclaimed in benefits and it is urgent to simplify the system and get more necessary money to people who rightfully are entitled to it. The delay in linking pensions and earnings is disappointingly far off: 2012 at the earliest under present government plans. We need a national, rational, and coherent energy policy that minimises gigantic leaps in domestic fuel prices.

Labour has made many mistakes and has not always understood the impact on the poor and vulnerable of their policies such as the abolition of 10p tax rate. Too often poor men’s reasons have not been heard. Its response to its own culpability and to that of the well-heeled for the present economic recession is seriously inadequate. Jerusalem is not yet. Perhaps we never reach Jerusalem. But look what Labour has done that is good. Read the first four paragraphs again. People in Cornwall are being helped, their lives are made better, they and their needs are recognised, not theoretically, not generally, but in minute particulars that count and in that everyday world in which most of us live.

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The original paragraph immediately around the the Arnold and Blake quotations are rewarding reading and I have linked immediately below to accessible online books.

Jerusalem is not yet: Matthew Arnold A French Eton original page 112-113 in the online book

Minute particulars: William Blake Jerusalem original page 55: 60-63 in the prophetic book online (this is not the poem)

Poor men’s reasons are not heard: Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) Gnomologia (Proverb 3897)

HOW MUCH DO THE TORIES COST PENSIONERS ?

In 1980 the Thatcher government broke the link between the state retirement pension and earnings and since then the pension has been uprated by the rate of inflation. Overall earnings generally run ahead of inflation and, although the Labour government has redistributed millions of pounds to targeted pensioners, the state pension is now worth less than if it had remained linked to earnings.

How much less?

A parliamentary answer says about £43 a week less.

The average state pension is now £97 and week and had it remained linked to earnings would be £140 a week. The current pension is 44 percent less than it would have been. The details are at Hansard for 16 June 2008 column 742W.

Cornwall has a disproportionate number of pensioners many of whom – but not all of course – have only or are primarily dependent upon a state pension.

Labour aims to restore the link in the next parliament and by 2012 if possible. I am unsure whether the Conservatives, the current favourites to form the next government, have signed up to this. It would be a handbrake turn for them.

Nor do I know why Labour in Cornwall isn’t shouting all this from the rooftops.

BEWILDERED IN THE MAZE OF SCHOOLS

As we glide effortlessly into the unitary set up, let me recall the present political disposition of Cornwall.

In 2005 there were elections for the eighty two county council seats and a general election for the five seats; in 2007 there were elections for the six district councils, elections for the whole council in five of the districts and for a third in Penwith. The results of these give us the present party make-up of Cornwall.

Overall nearly 800 000 votes were cast in the three sets of elections. Here they are in percentages:

General election 2005
Liberal Democrats 44.4, Conservatives 31.8, Labour 15.9, UKIP 5, MK 1.4, Greens 0.7, all others 0.9

County council elections 2005
Liberal Democrats 39.2, Conservatives 24.1, Independents 19.5, Labour 10.5, MK 3.2, Greens 1.3, UKIP 1.1, all others 1.1

District elections 2007
Liberal Democrats 36.1, Conservatives 30.7, Independents 20.0, MK 3.9, Labour 3.5, UKIP 2.5, Greens 0.7, all others 2.6.

There are caveats.

These figures do not compare the same seats over time but different seats. The aim is to give a general county snapshot using the latest figures available in the three sets.

In the county and district elections some seats had more than one councillor elected and so people had more than one vote. The percentages are based on totals of votes not ballot papers. The “others” include unlabelled candidates, Liberals (a separate party from Liberal Democrats), two BNP candidates, and Veritas. Uncontested seats are excluded.

The votes cast for a party depend in part on how many candidates stand for that party though how many candidates a party puts up reflects its organisational and membership health and its estimate of its chances.

The parties perform differently in the seats and these overall figures, which represent general averages of real votes, do not reveal those differences. A couple of very popular candidates do wonders for a small party’s total vote and percentage and make it difficult to assess that party’s general standing with the electorate. These considerations suggest that in local elections at any rate some people do not vote only for a party.

The general election throws up very different results so here are the two local government sets in percentages of votes cast, county 2005 and districts 2007, more than half a million votes:

Liberal Democrats 37.9, Conservatives 26.9, Independents 19.7, Labour 7.5, MK 3.5, UKIP 1.7, Greens 1.1, Others 1.7.

Finally, these figures are about people’s choices. Seats won are a different matter, about power.

The next elections are in spring 2009 for the unitary council.

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Bewildered in the maze of schools: Alexander Pope (1688-1744) An essay on criticism

FORMULA UNFAIRNESS

People in Scotland are getting for free a range of public services that people in England are charged for. In England prescription charges are presently £6.85 an item and only off-peak buses are free for people over sixty. In Scotland there are free eye check ups, free dental check ups, and the arrangements for free bus travel for the elderly are more generous. Tuition fees are paid by students at university in England but Scottish students at university in Scotland do not pay them (though there is in Scotland a one-off flatrate graduate fee of about £2300 payable on graduation). In Scotland there are generally shorter NHS waiting list times and smaller school classes; some drugs are available on the NHS that are not available in England; the arrangements for personal and nursing care are more generous.

The Scottish government has just started a six month pilot of free school meals in some areas for pupils aged five to eight and hopes to extend it all over Scotland. It has also announced that prescription charges will be abolished for everyone within the lifetime of the present Scottish parliament and aims to abolish the university graduate fee.

I don’t live in Scotland and it is up to people there and their government to decide what happens in Scotland.

However, these improvements are possible because the Barnett formula gives a much higher percapita amount of UK identifiable government spending on public services in Scotland than in England. The formula, leading to the higher spending in Scotland and the free or more generous services, is increasingly seen as unfair to England. For 2005/06 the percapita public spending in England (including Cornwall) was £6762 and in Scotland £8265 (and in Northern Ireland £9088, and Wales £7666). This formula is unfair and untenable. It should be scrapped and a new arrangement made for spending UK taxes in the four constituent countries.

For Labour, with a majority of the Scotland seats in the UK parliament and dependent on Scotland for its UK majority, this is an issue they will not tackle; nor will they tackle the related issue of MPs for Scotland constituencies voting for England-only issues in the House of Commons. The Conservatives sometimes rumble about Barnett unfairness but seem undecided whether to commit to tackle it. It is noticeable that the Liberal Democrat MPs for Cornwall complain about what they see as unfair public spending in Cornwall, point to the UK government, but do not mention the Barnett formula.

Slowly people in England are realising the unfairness of the present formula and the present House of Commons voting arrangements and eventually parties will not be able to ignore them.

The Times on 11 October 2007 quoted figures from the Centre for Economic Business Research that showed state spending by the constituent UK countries as a proportion of economic activity was lowest in England and significantly higher in the other three countries.

An earlier post on the Barnett formula is here.