Michael Meacher MP

The Stern Report is arguably the most important wake-up call for the planet since World War II. It completely destroys Bush’s argument that tackling climate change cannot be afforded (anyway an absurd claim for the US ever to make). This, the most comprehensive and authoritative report on the subject ever produced, demonstrates that the costs of not taking action are up to 20 times greater than the costs of taking preventative action now.
But the grand Blair-Brown rhetoric over Stern needs to be matched by action on the ground. At present it isn’t.

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The Government’s statement that nuclear was can all be safely stored so we needn’t worry about it is deeply flawed for several reasons -

1 The statement said the Government is offering ” open and transparent partnerships with potential host communities, with appropriate involvement and benefit packages.” This is Whitehallspeak for We intend to bribe local authorities to take on a nuclear dump near them – we’re far from sure they’ll agree otherwise.

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Happily, my constituency paper, The Oldham Chronicle has picked up the blog: this brief piece ran yesterday.

Funny how some of the most important issues only come out by sheer chance. It’s just happened again – we only found out that 2 alleged terrorism suspects, so dangerous that they had to be subject to control orders, had escaped and have been at large for 2 months and 2 weeks respectively, because someone leaked the security breaches to the media.
Just before that came to light, there were the cases of another 2 terror suspects being heard by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC). The SIAC meets behind closed doors. Evidence in both cases had been submitted by the intelligence serivces. It was found that the evidence submitted in one case contradicted that submitted in the other – not by any formal rules of disclosure, but only because the same barrister happened to be representing both suspects.

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In the last 4 days I have spoken at Labour County Party, Trades Council and Co-Op Party meetings in Truro and Bedford. I’m going to Castle Point in Essex next week. Labour MPs are invited to address CLPs all the time and it is a good way of attracting members. But these meetings illustrated just how let down Party members feel over so many issues – particularly poverty, low wages and a lack of affordable housing in Cornwall. I was told that many local employers were actually reducing already low wages on the grounds that the government said they only needed to pay £5.35 an hour. A very good reason to raise the NMW within a very short period to at least £7 an hour.
In Bedford they were disillusioned that a lot more had not been done to tackle climate change and make sustainability the focus for all Government policies.
These meetings and their feedback are nothing short of inavaluable. I’d be very glad to know what are the specific issues in your area which you think are not getting the attention they deserve, and what ought to be done about them. Please click here to let me know what you are most concerned about.

The Companies Bill is currently going thorugh its Commons stages. I was struck by a point that Larry Elliot made in his column in yesterday’s Guardian. In particular, this part caught my eye:

“A firm can expect a visit from Revenue and Customs once every 330 years on average and to be found breaking the law once a millennium.”

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The pressure exerted on General Sir Richard Danett to pretend there was not “a piece of paper, however thin” between him and the Prime Minister will deceive nobody. Dannett saying the British military presence in southern Iraq “exacerbates the security problems” is not answered by Tony Blair responding that “we’ll withdraw completely from Iraq as the Iraqi forces are able to handle their own security.” In fact, Dannett is saying, irrespective of the state of Iraqi forces, the presence of British troops is making the security situation worse, not better, and we should therefore withdraw. When is the PM going to listen to the advice of his own Chief of General Staff?

I welcome the Corporate Manslaughter Bill which has just had its 2nd reading in the Commons. About time, since it’s been 10 years in the pipeline, but it is still seriously flawed.

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So where’s the choice at the next general election? Cameron in effect offers more of the same, but more slickly delivered. Cameron says he will protect the NHS against cuts (though he doesn’t say where the extra expenditure will come from). Cameron says he’s committed to social responsibilty and devolving power from the state. What’s the difference between Cameron and New Labour? Where’s the choice?
Britain needs a real choice, not (as with Gordon Brown) another decade of New Labour but with a different face at the top, not (as with David Cameron) the heir to Blair, apeing the same policies but with the smooth touch he presumably learnt from his PR days.

Clinton’s speech at Labour Party conference made the point that New Labour, unlike Bush in the US, had cut inequality. That is the opposite of the truth. The Guardian’s latest survey of boardroom pay – http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1886010,00.html – shows average earnings in the UK rose 3.4% last year, while the average pay of chief executives of the top FTSE 100 rose 28% – following 16% and 23% rises in previous years. What this means is that the average worker today gets about £400 a week, a worker on the National Minimum Wage gets £185 a week, while chief executives in top companies get on average £46,154 per week – 160 times more than their lowest paid workers. These colossal and growing inequalities are obscene.
We should raise the NMW from £5 to at least £7 an hour. We should tax bonuses, so called fringe benefits, share options and other tax avoiding remunerations of the super rich at the marginal rate. And we should require meetings, in all medium and large companies, where representatives of each main grade in the company, including from the boardroom, present their pay claims for the next year, and have to justify them to all other employees in the company.