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Open letter in response to the government’s useless, hateful asylum accommodation policy, 8/11/23

Staffordshire Labour members strongly condemn the government’s plans to cut asylum accommodation without providing an alternative.

The latest snap announcement also affects Afghan and Ukrainian refugees who came here via legal routes at the invitation of the UK government.  

We believe this is a simplistic response motivated by political headline-grabbing rather than any desire to solve a complex problem affecting our communities. The Conservatives have trashed our immigration system. The asylum backlog is more than eleven times higher than in 2010: This is why the Conservative government started using hotels.

Staffordshire Tory MPs Gavin Williamson – sacked minister and Commons bully – and Theo Clarke – who voted to reduce local council funding – are the latest to jump on this bandwagon. They proclaim victory out of making families homeless, with social media posts laughably implying they had any influence over the latest Home Office flip-flop. This is a desperate attempt to stoke fear in the hope of accruing a few more votes as their popularity plummets.

Afghans who worked for the British Army and found their lives threatened by the Taliban were promised safety here in 2021. Over 100,000 Ukrainians fleeing Putin’s invasion in 2022 were offered sanctuary in the UK, only for broken promises to cause placements to break down. Over 5,000 families became homeless due to these failures. Now, more vulnerable people face being turned out on the streets in Winter thanks to Tory mismanagement, just as the Home Secretary tries to ban the homeless using tents in a display of mind-boggling cruelty. When people end up on the streets, it is local councils who are responsible for housing them. This announcement therefore only puts more pressure on local authorities without having a meaningful impact on the larger issues of migration and housing.

The Local Government Association highlights Westminster’s failure to provide councils with material support to deal with the collapsing immigration system and homelessness. Instead of fixing a broken system, the Tories have spent the last thirteen years farming out central government issues like this to local councils starved of cash by austerity and government incompetence.

We believe that Tory “culture wars” have no relevance to the material issues faced by voters during the cost-of-living crisis. It is local councils and communities who pay the price, left poorer and more divided, by people with no constructive ideas spewing mindless prejudice. Stafford Tory Councillors recently squandered more than £50,000 in taxpayers’ money on a doomed fight with their own government over the asylum reception centre on Beaconside. As a result, the Borough Council now has much less to spend on offsetting the pressure this development will put on local services.

Only the Labour Party can fix systems the Tories have defunded and devalued over the last thirteen years. We have seen this with the huge progress made since May by Stafford Borough Council’s now-Labour led administration. Only Labour offers long-term solutions to voters’ genuine concerns. Labour will:

• Clear the asylum backlog, eliminating the need for hotel use.
• Review the use of highly paid contractors in the asylum and housing systems.
• Neutralise the smuggling gangs with cross-border policing.
• Be honest with the public about the scale of problems, bringing humanity and competence in place of chaos, fear and dog-whistle politics.

We the undersigned say, “no more,” and “not in our name”. But most of all, we promise there is another way.

Adrian Hamlyn – Treasurer of Kingswinford & South Staffordshire Constituency Labour Party, Chair of South Staffordshire Labour Branch

Adrian Holmes – Treasurer of Stone, Great Wyrley & Penkridge CLP and Stone Labour Branch

Angela Loughran – Chair of Stafford Labour Group

Anil Singh – Chair of Kingswinford & South Staffordshire CLP

Ant Reid – Labour Cllr for Coton Ward, Chair of Stafford & Stone Co-operative Party

Barbara Sigley – Disability Officer for Stone, Great Wyrley & Penkridge CLP

Bill Lockwood – Chair of Stone Labour Branch

Bob Jones – Retired teacher and member of Stone, Great Wyrley & Penkridge CLP

Chris Fewtrell – Communications & Media Officer for Stone, Great Wyrley & Penkridge CLP

Helen Lockwood – Vice-Chair of Stone Labour Women’s Forum

Jacqueline Brown – Labour Cllr for Silverdale Ward, Advisor to the Stone Labour Women’s Forum

Janet Sivorn – Vice-Chair of Stone, Great Wyrley & Penkridge CLP

Jeff Love – Secretary of Stafford CLP

Jim Livesey – Secretary of Stone, Great Wyrley & Penkridge CLP and Stone Labour Branch

Julie Read – Chair of Stafford CLP

Kathryn Williams – Secretary of Stone, Great Wyrley & Penkridge CLP, Women & Equalities Officer for Stone Labour Branch

Nathan Evans – Vice-Chair of Stafford CLP

Richard Sidley – Member of Stone Labour Branch

Statement on River Pollution – 27/9/2023

Stone Labour Party acts on sewage pollution in the River Trent

The extent of sewage pollution in the River Trent through Stone and the wider area is an issue of massive concern to local residents and river users. It is damaging to wildlife and to the interests of many river users including anglers and the Canoe Club, which had to cancel a number of events on health grounds.

In response to this, Stone Branch have been monitoring the situation over several months and met with an environmental expert to understand the true scale and nature of the problem in Stone and surrounds. They painted an alarming picture, revealing that at the last assessment of water quality within the Trent Valley catchment of the River Trent, of which Stone forms a part, only one (2.4%) of the Trent Valley water bodies was rated ‘good’ and they all failed on chemical status.

Although agricultural run-off is a driver of poor water quality in the River Trent, sewage pollution is a major problem. Based on 2022 Environment Agency figures, 30 sites in the previous Stone Constituency area were polluted by sewage, with 672 sewage dumps for a total of 2,536 hours. Hotspots were found at Newcastle Road CSO (Combined Sewer Overflow), Stonefield Square Overflow, Pirehill STW (Sewage Treatment Works), Norton Bridge STW and Eccleshall and Sturbridge STW. Of these, the most serious sewage dumping was at Pirehill STW with 484 hours of discharge, and Eccleshall and Sturbridge STW with 497 hours of discharge. Newcastle Road CSO has a combined sewage and storm water outfall pipe and saw 100 hours of sewage dumping in 2022. This is most likely to happen during wet weather, to discharge excess water from the outfall pipe into the river.

Bob Jones, retired teacher and Labour member, highlighted an issue with a run-off pipe to the Stone Town Council, of which neither they nor Severn Trent were previously aware, and the Council were thus able to escalate this to the water company. Bob said, “I am glad I was able to bring it to the Council’s attention so they could request Severn Trent to act. We all work together for the good of the community.”

We are doing all we can to hold Severn Trent Water to account for a simply intolerable situation. In my most recent letter to Severn Trent, I asked what action has been taken to increase monitoring of the extent of sewage pollution in the River Trent within the Stone and District area, and what improvements in water quality have there been since the 2022 figures. In reply, Severn Trent outlined generic ‘pledges’ for the Trent region as a whole, including starting monitoring wider river quality and being transparent about their performance. So far, however, they have failed to provide any reassurance that the issue in Stone is being addressed, and certainly not with the urgency that is required.

As well as requiring regular updates from them on the rate of improvement in River Trent water quality locally, we are putting some serious questions to them regarding any instances of illegal sewage dumping during dry weather, which some water companies have owned up to doing. We are working with local experts to investigate for ourselves the levels of pollution at river sites in Stone. We will continue to push hard to get the answers we need and the action that Stone residents and river users demand and deserve.

Statement on Veterans’ Voices – 14/8/2023

Labour will listen to our veterans, where the Conservatives have spoken hollow words

At the end of the Second World War, Britain’s brave armed forces personnel returned home following a gruelling campaign to safeguard our freedom and prevent the evil of fascism from destroying our way of life. The 1945 election delivered a resounding Labour victory, which resulted in the Attlee Government and its transformative agenda. Labour were led by wartime Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee, who was seen as the more competent candidate to lead Britain out of the economic and infrastructural ruin it faced after the financial crises of the 1920s-30s and a six-year-long war.

Labour’s manifesto was called Let Us Face the Future. It proposed a fairer deal for working people, including public funding of health, welfare, education and infrastructure, to prevent the greed that had led to previous financial crises and ensure working people had the chance to be healthy, employed, protected from financial shocks, and more ambitious than ever before. Voters at the time identified that Labour’s policy offering – a greater emphasis on public services and working to curb inflation – would be safer than sticking with the Conservatives, who had proved dithering in response to the economic depression of the pre-war years and in their policy of appeasing Hitler, which led to the invasion of Poland that forced Britain into the war.

Soldiers, sailors and airmen lent Labour their votes in 1945, eager as they were for the chance to rebuild and be rewarded for the sacrifices they had made. Winston Churchill had been a formidable war leader and was rightfully feted for bringing the country through the conflict, yet he tended to be more popular with upper class civilians and officers than with the military rank and file. Enlisted soldiers noted that Conservative wartime leaders could be seen wearing high-ranking military uniforms despite not being in the forces and smoking in front of servicemen who hadn’t had a decent meal or cigarette in days. Labour were therefore viewed as the party to bring dignity, respect and gratitude to working class servicemen and women as they embraced their post-war freedom.

Labour in 1945 made a promise to armed forces personnel that they would be rewarded with housing, health and education on returning to the homeland. As part of the post-war transition, Labour’s commitment to public service meant that servicemen and women were supported to transition into civilian life and employment. Today’s Labour Party maintains this commitment. We believe that the government has a duty to ensure service personnel are rewarded for their sacrifices with support to return to civilian life, including access to housing, jobs, healthcare and other financial benefits where they are entitled.

The Labour Party has huge respect for the service personnel and veterans who are drawn from and make up our communities. We have been engaging around the country via our Veterans’ Voices campaign. Previous successful events have been held with our Parliamentary Candidate for Stoke Central, Gareth Snell. Veterans told Labour they have been let down by 13 years of Conservative government. The government’s current armed forces compensation scheme (for military personnel injured in service) has proved difficult for people to navigate, with 76.4% of veterans in a parliamentary survey rating their experience with the Conservative-run Office for Veterans’ Affairs as poor or very poor. There were reports of long waits, lack of engagement and even veterans being laughed at by officials when they tried to access compensation to which they are rightfully entitled. When these unacceptable abuses were revealed by the Daily Telegraph in 2022, Tory Veterans’ Affairs Minister Johnny Mercer claimed to be shocked, despite the issues arising from within his department. Mercer, who was recently criticised by a Question Time audience for lying about party political funding and shouting down other panel members, promised an urgent review of the compensation scheme in 2022, yet the issues have persisted throughout this year. Help For Heroes informed the media they are dealing with unprecedented requests for urgent support, as veterans find themselves unable to access services promised by the government. They say this has contributed to a rise in the use of mental health services and food banks. On this point, Mercer recently claimed that service personnel who use food banks are making a personal choice and are simply unable to budget. He denied that the cost of living crisis, poor housing and low wages affect service personnel as badly as they claim, and was widely criticised for being out of touch with reality, despite flaunting his own past military service. Of course, Mr Mercer spends a lot of time busy falling out with people on social media, so perhaps it is an issue of time management.

Despite a lot of talk, the Conservatives have failed to deliver on key pledges contained within the Armed Forces Covenant, which is supposed to safeguard service personnel and veterans from disadvantages associated with their sacrifice. The Covenant states that veterans should have access to mental health professionals who understand military culture. The Conservatives set a 14-day waiting time target for such services, yet Shadow Defence Minister Stephen Morgan informed us in 2021 that, in the previous year, the average waiting time was 37 days for a first appointment, rising to 70 days for treatment to actually commence. That’s 56 days that the Labour Party believes it is unacceptable for our deserving veterans to wait.

Serving military personnel and veterans report increasing dissatisfaction with housing, which the Covenant states should be affordable, of good quality and in a suitable location. Less than half of personnel answering the Armed Forces Continuous Attitude Survey 2023 were satisfied with the overall standard of accommodation. This has fallen every year that the Conservatives have been in power. Despite Johnny Mercer claiming that poverty is a personal choice and accusing his detractors of “bedwetting”, 67% of serving personnel stated they are unable to buy their own home due to increasing costs, a figure that has also risen with Conservative economic mismanagement.

The pledges of the Armed Forces Covenant are being consistently failed by the Conservatives. This is partly due to their refusal to formally incorporate the Covenant into law via the Armed Forces Act. The 2011 Act required the Defence Secretary to produce an annual report on the Covenant. Successive reports over the last few years have focused only on positive achievements – which are actually often due to business and charity involvement rather than specific Tory policy – and have not sufficiently addressed the huge gulf between promises and delivery. Despite the Conservatives’ 2019 manifesto promising to incorporate the Covenant into law, all the government has done since then is to propose a “duty” on local services to “consider” the Covenant’s principles in relation to the military personnel and veterans in their locality. This is yet another example of the Conservatives devolving statutory, central government duties on to underfunded local authorities rather than addressing them at source with effective budgeting. Making small, local services responsible for delivering the principles of the Covenant also makes it more difficult to monitor overall effectiveness, which works in the Conservatives’ favour, given how ineffective they have proved against their apparent aims.

When the Armed Forces Act was rewritten in 2021, Labour urged the government to formally enshrine the Armed Forces Covenant into law. Yet Conservative Defence Minister Ben Wallace and his predecessor Gavin Williamson voted against this proposal, which would create a set of legal rights for veterans and serving personnel. Williamson was sacked from the MOD in 2019 for leaking confidential National Security Council information. He had previously caused diplomatic incidents with China and Russia by prematurely revealing plans to deploy an aircraft carrier in the East and stating, “Russia should go away and shut up”, despite having accepted a £30,000 donation from the family of a former Putin minister. He was also criticised for continuing to support Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in Yemen, despite evidence of human rights abuses. It seems that Williamson’s time at the MOD was not spent concerning himself with the welfare of military personnel. Instead, he was busy decreasing Britain’s international standing at a time of complex and heightened military tensions across the globe.

The incoming Labour government will enshrine the Armed Forces Covenant into law and ensure that, where local authorities and NHS Trusts have a duty to administer its requisites, they are properly supported, not abandoned along with the soldiers and veterans who need their services. Labour has committed to a Veterans’ Voice Campaign, which includes veterans in policymaking and ensures their voices are heard by local MPs and ministers. Stone and Stafford Labour Party groups are currently planning a local Veterans’ Voice event, as part of our commitment to listen to people from all backgrounds as we approach the general election, and to restore the admiration, respect and dignity that led scores of servicemen and women to vote Labour in 1945, getting the country back on track after years of war and hardship. Although there has been no world war this time round, British people in and out of the forces currently hardships that have no place in the modern world. These have been brought on by 13 years of a Conservative government that puts the interests of bankers, non-doms and donors ahead of service personnel, veterans and their families. It is unacceptable that so many veterans are homeless and unacceptable that our serving military should worry about the cost of feeding their families or see homeownership as out of reach.

Winston Churchill said during the Battle of Britain, “Never was so much owed, by so many, to so few.” Under the current mutation of the Tory party, the situation is distorted. In today’s Britain, never has so much been owed, to so many, by so few. The Conservatives have eroded dignity and respect for people who serve their nation. It is a stain upon the memory of those 1945 heroes that so little has changed. Labour’s legislative commitment to the Armed Forces Covenant will introduce action and accountability, where so far there has only been self-interest and obfuscation from the MOD and Veterans’ Affairs Office.

Statement on RAAC Crisis in Schools – 6/9/2023

Stone Labour Party welcomes Staffordshire County Council’s update on the RAAC scandal but warns that cuts in funding since 2010 have left buildings across the county vulnerable

As far as we are aware, no schools in our area have been identified as containing reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC), which is hopeful news for teachers, parents and pupils alike. It has been a stressful time, as news broke over the weekend that school buildings across England may be too dangerous to use due to containing RAAC, a cheaper version of concrete that was previously used in the construction of public buildings. The dangers of RAAC were not originally known but became apparent by the 1990s.

A Schools Rebuilding Programme was in place under the Labour government from 1997 but axed almost immediately when the Conservatives took power in 2010. Since then, maintenance of public infrastructure has slowed and sputtered. Last year, capital spending in education was the lowest recorded since 2009. Conservative administrations also pushed schools to become academies run by ‘trusts’, thus allowing local authorities to wash their hands of maintenance responsibilities.

Stone Labour’s Jacqueline Brown, educational consultant and former headteacher, says, “Since 2010, increasing Academisation of schools has meant a fractured system of school governance and site management. This has further frustrated the audit of school premises.”

We welcome reassurance from Staffordshire County Council that none of their school buildings appear to be affected by RAAC. However, the Conservative-run Council maintains responsibility for only 126 out of the 404 schools within its boundaries, according to Staffordshire Live. Investigations are ongoing, with reports of a school in Swadlincote delaying opening by over a week. The response from local Conservative politicians has been underwhelming, with Cabinet Member telling Staffordshire Live that the Council will offer “advice” to those schools that have been made into academies, even though many were constructed under local Councils.

Stone Branch Chair Bill Lockwood, retired teacher, Ofsted Inspector and school governor, says, “School budgets have been squeezed in recent years, seriously limiting funds for necessary maintenance. This is unacceptable. Pupils have a right to good quality school buildings in which they can learn effectively.”

On a national scale, it emerged that experts have been warning the government about RAAC danger for years. In 2019, the Standing Committee on Structural Safety issued a warning that public buildings including schools, hospitals and military bases containing RAAC were liable to collapse without warning. Conservative election candidate Gavin Williamson was Education Secretary from 2019-21, as warnings about RAAC continued to flood in. Yet capital spending on schools remained low. Few who applied for rebuilding funds were awarded the money. In 2021, the government’s own experts warned RAAC was at the end of its lifespan and at risk of imminent collapse. Yet the Department for Education – under Williamson’s control until his sacking in September 2021 – acted slowly, if at all.

Our Campaign Coordinator offered the following statement: “It is laughable that a failed Education Secretary has the gall to stand as Stone’s MP. The Labour Party’s Breaking Down Barriers to Opportunity strategy includes increasing school funding through cutting tax exemptions, putting the needs of children ahead of the greed of a privileged few. We will be monitoring this situation carefully and pushing the government to take responsibility for years of failure.”