I was doing an hour’s political discussion on LBC last week, something I quite often do, but this was a special on the Coalition’s first 100 days, with Tory blogger Ian Dale standing in for Petrie Hosken as presenter.

So with a Tory and Lib Dem politico and a Tory referee it felt a bit one-sided. Then Lib Dem MP Bob Russell came on the phone and it was four against one. Ian said Labour would have cut much the same as the Tories. The Tory said it was Labour’s fault we were in debt not the banks. Bob Russell said Labour had done nothing in 13 years. The Lib Dem panellist said Labour was to blame for the VAT rise (I’m not joking).

I won’t bore you with my rebuttal, this is kid’s stuff really, but I thought sitting there, these people are worried, scared even and they are looking around for someone to blame for their decisions. And they should be worried. The Coalition has embarked on the biggest social change programme since 1945, but unlike then they are removing the services, structures and support that binds our society together and in particular aids those who are vulnerable by reason of poverty, infirmity or age.

Of course the big decisions are taken nationally – the budget in June, the spending review in October – but they have specifically local effect, different in Hammersmith than elsewhere. And we have the double whammy of a cutting council that wants to go harder and faster at winding down services, under the guise of tackling ‘debt’.

HOUSING

Cameron’s off-the-cuff remark that from now on anyone moving into a council or housing association home does so at the whim of the state, which at any time can order them to leave and find accommodation elsewhere is an extraordinary thing for a Conservative to say. This is far-right politics, the same ideology that thinks the NHS creates dependency. Everything must be paid for at the market rate. If pursued it will mean the end of social housing within a decade. Of course we know all about that it Hammersmith where they want to achieve the same aims a little quicker by demolishing whole estates and exporting the tenants.

The same effect, the export of the poor – which means pensioners and low-paid workers as well as those on benefits – will be achieved more subtly by the cap on Housing Benefit.  Shelter estimates the average loss to a family in a three-bed flat in Hammersmith will be £47 a week. That means arrears and eviction or moving out of London, away from family, jobs and schools.

Next March the Decent Homes programme ends. 13,000 council homes in the borough will have been brought up to modern standard with £200 million of central funding. Then the residents will have to decide who owns and manages their homes in the future. Transfer to an outside body, including one owned or run by the residents themselves, could mean the council could pay off its housing debt – which is double the £133 million figure it has be using to frighten and confuse residents with recently – and privatise the biggest chunk of its services. It would tick all those Thatcherite boxes. But they plan to re-nationalise the housing stock under council control without giving any choice to residents. Why? Because then they can carry on with the demolition and deportation policies. If you don’t own it, you can’t knock it down.

CHILDREN AND SCHOOLS

Hammersmith has been particularly badly hit by the cancellation of the Building Schools for the Future budget. 13 schools here have lost all their funding, including Phoenix, William Morris and Sacred Heart, but also special schools and the pupil referral unit. That means a loss of £200 million just in the borough, but kids going out of borough will hear the same bad news.

But this isn’t about saving money, it’s about special treatment. Private companies are honing in on H&F, just as developers do, with the aim of setting up selective schools alongside existing primaries. They can attract pupils using generous Government grants. The one going into the Wormholt Tenants’ Hall by the A40 has been gifted £850,000 by the council and is bidding for £8 million from the government. It is evicting the Tenants and Residents’ Association in the process and closing a couple of roads, but who’s counting?

Meanwhile another firm is touting for kids around Shepherds Bush as the TES reported recently HERE. Old pupils of Peterborough school in Fulham, like myself, are puzzled by this demand for new schools everywhere when it was closed only two years ago to be sold to a private French school. Especially since the council is now supporting a massive new school just up the road on a tiny site www.saveparsonsgreem.com

Playgrounds haven’t fared any better – year two of Labour’s programme of renewing play equipment across the country was cancelled two weeks ago. 10 brand new playgrounds did get built across the borough, but 12 more locations will lose out, including Brook Green and Wormholt Park, the latter in a terrible state and already hit by the loss of money from the health centre development.

And the sell offs continue –after youth clubs come football pitches. The pitches in South Africa Road, incredibly popular but run down to the point of being a health risk, will not be refurbished by the council, they will be sold to a commercial company that is likely to charge premium rate to the users. Cue BBC managers taking over from White City residents for matches.

HEALTH

White City, the most deprived part of the borough, has been shabbily treated by the Tories. Phoenix High has lost £25 million and the White City heath centre in Bloemfontein Road is still a cleared site three years after it should have opened. Its future must now be in doubt, especially with the Tory plan to shut down local health services and give the money to GPs. In reality, since GPs don’t have the time or experience to manage multi-million budgets, this will mean private companies being created to run the health service no doubt at extortionate cost.

ASSET STRIPPING

Most of our most historic and well-loved buildings are to be auctioned off for a song.  Fulham Town Hall, Palingswick House, the Irish Cultural Centre, Sands End Community Centre, Shepherds Bush Village Hall  Nick Clegg, standing in for Cameron, came to the Village Hall this week for a photo op with the kids at the Children’s Centre, but got more than he expected. HERE. Groups are forming to fight the sales and a single petition has been launched HERE.

What has really incensed the users of these buildings is the cynical reasons given for disposal. They were planned long before the Election, but kept quiet for obvious reasons, just like the library closures. They are said to be necessary to cut debt. But almost all councils have debt, managed at low interest rates from a gold-plated lender over decades, specifically to allow them to provide public services. H&F’s is no different to any other council – this is just opportunistic, latching on to media –fed concerns about the national deficit. But once these assets are gone that’s it. Because landmark buildings are not empty vessels as the council claims, they are what allows the community and voluntary movement locally to exist and thrive.

LIBRARIES

Baron’s Court, Sands End, the Mobile Library and even Hammersmith Central Library are all under threat, despite spirited campaigns to keep them going. But as Melanie Whitlock, Chairman of the Hammersmith Society has said, are these buildings, some of which have served us for 100 years, the council’s to sell?

VOLUNTARY SECTOR

As a voluntary group in H&F if you haven’t lost your home you’ve probably lost your grant – for some it’s both. The Carer’s Centre closed last month, with nothing to replace it –shocking given the needs of both adult and young carers in the borough.

Particularly badly hit is the advice sector. The Law Centre loses all its funding as does Threshold Housing Advice on Shepherds Bush Green which will probably have to close after 32 years. Shepherds Bush Advice Centre is to go too and even those like Fulham Legal Advice Centre that keep some money may not survive. So the borough will be an advice desert. This suits the council. They have a grudge against Threshold and the Law Centre for successfully showing up their bad housing record. The advice agencies support poorer people at critical times of their lives and, with expert advice, the rest of the voluntary sector as well. By destroying it the process of exporting the poor and running down services becomes that much easier.

JOBS
Privatisation, merger and cuts is the mantra for services locally. But what does that mean in practice if you live and work in the borough. Recently, I helped West London Citizens with their campaign to get employers in Hammersmith to pay the London Living Wage, £7.85 an hour. The council blanked the event, not surprising perhaps when the effect of privatising services means many more low-paid staff, cleaners especially, are on the minimum wage.

Services are being merged with other councils, sometimes miles away. This ignores the basic principle of local government that it is locally accountable. And a wholly unsubstantiated figure of £55 million has been set for cuts over the next three years.

DEVELOPMENT

Unacceptable development is perhaps the most obvious problem in Hammersmith today – but what’s it got to do with cuts. Simply that the planning process has been corrupted by the desire to find some financial benefit for the council.

To give four of dozens of examples, just because I have been dealing with then this week.

• West Ken is the council’s flagship gentrification – and gerrymandering – project. 760 good quality affordable homes will come down to be replaced by what? The architect’s nicknames for the two roads to be built across the site of the demolished homes are Sloane Street and Marylebone High Street. In other words in place of council homes will be Knightsbridge and Belgravia.
• The developer of Hammersmith Town Hall has been told to provide luxury offices for senior council staff and a footbridge across the A4, which will wipe out a good chunk of Furnival Gardens in the process. In return for this he will be allowed to build luxury one-bed flats up to 14 storeys high alongside. How does this help either the conservation areas of Ravenscourt or families on the council’s waiting list? We lose the Quakers’ Meeting Hall, homes for the visually impaired and the cinema, but we get another supermarket.
• 70 expensive houses and apartments are to be crammed into the council’s former depot site in Stowe Road. Under Labour, the fact that this was council land would have allowed us to subsidise affordable homes to rent and buy on the site, but becuase the council now wants market value, we are left with overdevelopment and propoerties out of the reach of local families.
• Another overdevelopment at Sulgrave Gardens, this time by a housing association trying to build some affordable homes but taking light and paly space to do so. Not their fault. They were made to shift to this site from their preferred location near Shepherds Bush Market. But that is another area the council wants to overdevelop, so the housing association were refused planning consent ands starved out.

WEAK AND CORRUPT GOVERNMENT

Four characteristic, none admirable, characterise the Coalition and its local surrogates. A casualness with the truth that goes far beyond even the discredited practices of modern politics.

Cameron’s broken promise to social tenants that they would keep secure tenancies. Or his promise on VAT. Or Child Benefit. Or Winter Fuel Allowance. The excuse that the legacy was worse than expected, when the deficit was £20 billion lower. Cutting aid targets after promising to protect them. Selling off the countryside after promising to be the greenest government ever. Throwing the NHS into turmoil after promising no more reorganisations.

Secondly, amateurism. Clegg preaching social equality to parents whose centre his Coalition partners are about to close. Free schools that exist only as a business idea and a leaflet. H&F has just volunteered to privatise its Childcare services – the most sensitive statutory service it runs. But there is no plan or idea how it will work. This is putting lives at risk.

Thirdly, arrogance. An unwillingness to consult or take time to hear other views. Whether it is the library closures, the building sales or seizing control of council housing from the tenants, H&F’s consultations are shams.

And fourthly, spin.The one budget that isn’t being cut is H&F News, the poisonous text holding the whole corrupt edifice together. This week the army of press officers was employed to say they were increasing spending when their own figures showed they were cutting it. And it’s your money that pays for the lot.

Andy

I was given two insights this week into why the Coalition’s honeymoon may have come to a premature end after 100 days.

Nick Clegg came to my constituency to preach the virtues of social mobility, but chose as his platform a Project for deprived children  which his Coalition partners are evicting and whose grant they are taking away.

Meanwhile Inside Housing juxtaposed David Cameron’s quote to them on 30 April that the Tories had ‘no policy to change the current or future security of tenure of tenants in social housing’ with his recent statement that he intended to do just that.

The common thread is dishonesty.  Not spin, not hypocrisy, just duplicity, saying something you want people to think is true, perhaps even (Mr Clegg) wish were true, but isn’t.

Clegg’s cock up was reported as exactly that – a gaffe.  He should have chosen another Children’s Centre to get his pics for the evening news.  But I asked him in a private interview after he had made pizzas with the kids for the cameras, whether he supported the Shepherds Bush Families Project and wanted it to stay open.  He wouldn’t answer.

Cameron, Inside Housing reported, was responding after ‘then housing minister John Healey and Hammersmith MP Andy Slaughter had claimed that the Tories were considering removing security of tenure for future tenants’.

But this month, answering a question from an council tenant stuck in overcrowded housing, he stated ‘there is a question mark over whether, in the future, should we be asking when you are given a council home, is it for a fixed period?’

U-turns are not usually that quick or unexplained, but they may become the signature of the Coalition (Lib Dem economic policy, anyone?). On 1 April Cameron more famously said ‘our plans don’t involve an increase in VAT’.  Now they are looking at cutting universal benefits like Child Benefit and the Winter Fuel Allowance, something they flatly denied in the Election campaign.

Cameron was still not being straight on housing policy after the Election. His first newspaper interview, for The Daily Telegraph on May 22^nd, included this gem of probing journalism

“Mr Cameron resisted the temptation to bat away questions about how he did not do enough to win the election outright. ‘I thought we had a good chance of winning the election outright,’ he said. ‘I thought there was a chance of falling short.’”

So who does Cameron blame for robbing the country of his uncompromised leadership?

“He was still angry over ‘appalling’ Labour lies that he blamed for preventing celebrated candidates such as Shaun Bailey winning in marginal seats. ‘They were telling people in Hammersmith they were going to have their council house taken away by the Tories.’”

We did. They are. He said so last week.

In Hammersmith & Fulham, a testing ground for extreme Tory policies, they announced this and more last year. Had their plans been more widely known by the eight million people who live in affordable social housing and the millions more who aspire to it, Labour may have held on to more seats.

Where residents did know about it – in Hammersmith, Westminster North and Eltham for example – we held seats against the trend. But despite John Healey’s best efforts, Cameron’s denials were enough to stop the story taking off.

Leaving aside the unseemliness of a Prime Minister using his first major interview to blame the Hammersmith Labour Party for his woes, even were it true, it is understandable why he might be looking for somewhere to shift the blame.

It was Cameron’s strategy to put his A-listers into key marginals, the majority of whom bombed, earning him the fury of many influential Tories. As Opposition Leader he went into the Election with an enviable level of Tory strength and Labour weakness. So his failure to win a majority has understandably left him on the defensive.

So there is the Cameron dichotomy: self-confidence to the point of brazenness in his conduct in office, but knowing that the country has not given him a mandate and forced therefore to fall back of the only skill he has ever practised – public relations. The art of saying what is convenient rather than what is true.

The Tories are planning irreversible changes to the welfare state, including the destruction of social housing. But as the cuts move off the Treasury page and into communities, the disconnect between what Cameron says and what our constituents experience will make his frontman act more difficult to sustain. He has already shown he, like Clegg, is gaffe-prone and he has enemies at both ends of the Coalition. Making it up as you go along may not be enough for a full term.

Andy

Politics and protest return to Hammersmith

Tonight sees the first response by residents in Hammersmith & Fulham to the unprecedented cuts in local services announced in the three weeks since the budget.

Over 100 voluntary and community groups are threatened with closure because they are losing their income, premises or both.  Many are meeting outside Hammersmith Town Hall in King Street at 6.15pm today (Thursday) before sending deputations to the Council’s Cabinet at 7pm,  The BBC and local media will be attending.   Come along and show your support – and watch yourself later on BBC London news.

Since I was elected as MP for Hammersmith in May I have spent a lot of time getting to know the 60,000 new constituents in Hammersmith and Fulham, attending nearly 100 events, and holding weekly surgeries and door-knocking sessions.

I thought it was important to hear what constituents were saying before expressing my own opinions and to give the Coalition Government and new Council the chance to set out their policies.

Sadly, it is already all too clear that both intend to cut public services to a degree that goes far beyond what is necessary to tackle the budget deficit, and in a way that may  cause a further slump, irreparably damage the welfare state and make the poorest pay for the bankers’ recklessness.

To cover these issues: what is happening locally and how Whitehall and Town Hall decisions impact on local life, I wrote an eNewsletter to constituents over the past five years.  In addition it lets people know what I do week to week in Hammersmith and at Westminster.

If you live in Shepherds Bush, the old part of the constituency, I hope you found them useful and will want to continue subscribing.  If you are south of the Goldhawk Road and didn’t get them, please try them for a few weeks – and let me know how they could improve.

I don’t pretend they are impartial but they are written by me – unlike many MPs’ practice – and they provide an alternative view to H&FNews aka Pravda, the Tory Party newspaper produced with your council tax and currently costing at least £750,000 a year.

The Right’s agenda

I am not even going to try and cover the attacks on public and voluntary services in detail today, but I will explain them over the coming weeks.  This is a summary of the announcements so far that will have most impact on residents here.

•    The fire sale of nine major public buildings will throw scores of local groups onto the streets and deprive us of historic and unique sites for good.  This morning I was at Shepherds Bush Village Hall with some of the 44 groups that are based there; over 1,000 people use it in a typical week.  Palingswick House, the imposing stately home in King Street, houses 21 voluntary organisations.   The Irish Cultural Centre has an international reputation and is an excellent resource in the centre of Hammersmith.
•    Voluntary groups currently funded by the Council will lose on average just under 20% of their grants.  For small organisations with low overheads even this can mean closure, but some have been told they will not get a penny from October.  The decisions have not been made on merit but are targeted against groups who occupy buildings the council wishes to sell – like Shepherds Bush Families Project and the Refugee Forum – or  give help to people battling the council like the Law Centre or Threshold housing advice.  Cuts are also being targeted at the poorest parts of the borough, which happens to mean most of my constituency.
•    The carers’ centre in Hammersmith Road, which has provided support to adult and young carers since we set it up in 1998 will close at the end of this month and its premises will be sold.  No alternative service will be provided in the foreseeable future.  The centre passed their assessment, so the council then made scurrilous personal allegations against their chair, which they have since had to withdraw.
•    Michael Gove’s botched announcements on the cuts to school building programmes were at least clear on what happens to children in Hammersmith – every one of 20 schools for secondary age children living in my constituency loses every penny of its improvement funds.  This adds up to £210m for the ones in Hammersmith & Fulham alone.  Sir William Atkinson, head of Phoenix High told the Standard: ‘It is devastating news.  These are buildings with concrete that is beginning to crumble, iron-pipe work which has been fractured with lots of leaks and flat roofs which are constantly leaking’
•    George Osborne’s cuts to welfare benefits and tax rises will hit the disabled (Disability Living Allowance), families (tax credits and Child Benefit) and pensioners (VAT).  But the most dramatic effects in Hammersmith will be felt by those families receiving Housing Benefit.  Contrary to the planted scare stories in the press about people living in luxury houses and refusing to work, the typical recipient of HB is a working family on a low income unable to afford the full rent in areas like west London where private rents are very high even for poor quality cramped flats.  The council tell me that over 750 families will be affected by the cap on weekly payments – only one of six cuts announced in the Budget.  The cumulative effect of the changes to HB will force thousands of low-income families to move out of London to poorer areas, away from schools, friends, communities, and of course the jobs the Government wants them to move to take up!

I will put the full list of premises, groups and schools affected on my website.  You can see what I’ve been saying on these issues in Parliament HERE

What are the Liberals up to?

Selling their birthright for a mess of potage.

Until election day they were signed up to our strategy of cutting the deficit over time without destroying public services or risking another recession.  For the sake of office and its trapping they now espouse the exact opposite.  It is a piece of opportunism without parallel in my political lifetime and a cause of dismay to many of their local activists here who thought they were in a progressive left of centre party.

The Labour alternative

Labour will elect its new Leader on 25 September.  I’m backing Ed Miliband because I think he combines the intellect and stamina you need for the gruelling jobs of both Opposition Leader and Prime Minister with a freshness and personal charm that the electorate both directly and through the prism of the media will find attractive.

Hammersmith Labour Party has had its biggest ever influx of members since the election, many of them ex-Lib Dems or people completely new to politics.  All will get a vote in the leadership election and a chance to have a say in our policies as they develop.  Please let me know if you would like to join, or just be a supporter and be informed of activities locally as we defend our community against unprecedented attacks.  Despite the difficulties we face, on the back of one of the best election results anywhere in the country, morale has not been as high for a decade.

Andy

1. Raising VAT to 20% will add £425 a year to average family spending.  The increase in tax allowances is worth £170 – unless you are in the poorest three million households when you get nothing but still pay the VAT hike.  Cameron said on 1 April ’Our plans don’t involve an increase in VAT’.  Clegg said on 8 April ‘Our plans do not require a rise in VAT.’
2. Public sector pay freeze.  Low paid workers in the NHS, schools and other public services will see their pay cut by at least 6% over the next two years, as pay is frozen and inflation rises by 3% a year.  ‘Protecting’ the lowest paid means little more than a 1% increase for those on less than 21k – a real terms cut of 4%.
3. Households on more than 40k will lose their tax credits.  Exactly the middle income families the Tories denied they would attack a few weeks ago.
4. Child benefit will be frozen for three years – a cut of up to 10% on one of the most vital methods of supporting families and children.
5. Disabled people on Disability Living Allowance will face humiliating tests with the aim of cutting their benefits
6. Last but not least for Hammersmith – Housing Benefit will be capped at £400 a week for a four-bedroomed house.  That means an end to families in housing need living in West London.

As an attack of low and middle income families this budget goes beyond what Thatcher and Major did in the last Tory Government.  The only surprise is the cowardly and greedy way the Liberals have backed them.

I was away yesterday but followed the news of the Gaza flotilla with increasing horror, while being inundated with texts and emails from constituents outraged by Israel’s actions.  Most agreed, as I do, with the Turkish Government that Israel is behaving like a bandit country and its actions amount to piracy.  I have signed up to the Early Day Motion that will be tabled when the Commons meets tomorrow (Wednesday).

That this House is appalled by the loss of life associated with Israel’s attack on the flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza; notes that the attack took place in international waters; endorses the call of the United Nations Secretary General for a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation conforming to international standards; recognises that Israel’s blockade has destroyed the economy of Gaza, deepens poverty, inflicts widespread suffering and which, by imposing collective punishment on the people of Gaza, is itself contrary to international law; therefore calls on the international community to require Israel to end its blockade and to redouble international efforts to secure a lasting settlement with a secure and independent state of Palestine alongside a secure and independent Israel.

But I think we must go further and push for sanctions as set out in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign letter I handed in to Downing Street two weeks ago.  I will try and raise this at Prime Ministers’ Questions tomorrow, and have urged David Miliband to put in for an Urgent Question to force the government to make a statement on the issue if they fail to do so voluntarily.

I want to thank everyone who voted to re-elect me as MP for Hammersmith, and to assure everyone, regardless of whether I was your first choice, that you will have tireless and professional service from me.

I will work with residents and community groups in Shepherds Bush, Hammersmith and Fulham to make sure your voices are heard. And my weekly surgeries around the constituency and casework team at Greyhound Road will deal quickly and efficiently with the issues constituents raise.

Please use the details below to get in touch if I can help you or your family.

How to get in touch with Andy

telephone: 020 7610 1950

post: 28 Greyhound Road, London, W6 8NX

email: andy@andyslaughter.com

website: www.andyslaughter.com

My surgeries are held every Monday morning at ONE of the following locations. Please contact my office to request an appointment

Irish Cultural Centre
Black’s Road, Hammersmith, W6 9DT

Constituency Office
28 Greyhound Road, Fulham, W6 8NX

Shepherds Bush Advice Centre
338 Uxbridge Road, Shepherds Bush, W12 7LL

Curious council election results in H&F.  In Shepherds Bush we had some of the biggest swings to Labour in London.  Majorities in single figures are now nudging 1,000 votes.  I was delighted to see Iain Coleman, former MP for Hammersmith & Fulham, elected as a councillor for Shepherds Bush Green with a huge majority.  South of the Goldhawk Road, the swings were not enough to take seats off the Tories, save for one well-deserved exception which saw Daryl Brown capture North End.

My campaign manager, Stephen Burke, has written his analysis of why we won Hammersmith on the Progress website HERE.  I would be interested in what others thought about this.  We did have one of the best results for Labour on the night, but I suspect that is just a cumulative effect of our strengths and the Tories weaknesses locally.  They thought money was a substitute for hard work and that PR could paper over a candidate who didn’t measure up.  Now they claim it was our campaign that was unfair, in particular our revelations about Tory housing policy.  Fine by me, failing to learn the lessons and blaming someone else will mean they make the same mistakes again. And as for the housing issue, the first thing the Tory council leader did on re-election was to promise to go ahead with the destruction of West Ken and White City Estates.

I have nominated Ed Miliband for leader of the Labour Party. I think he and David are the outstanding candidates from a very good field.  The mental and physical capacity required to be Prime Minister today is immense and few can or would want to do the job.  But in addition you must be both a natural performer on the media and relate to everyone you meet – certainly not requirements a generation ago.  Ed has all these characteristics and I think would be an excellent leader and future PM.

I went to Hamburg the week after the election for the Europa Cup final.  It was a fantastic day with the whole city taken over by Fulham and Atletico Madrid fans who mixed happily and peacefully.  The result was very disappointing but it was still the best Fulham season in my lifetime, perhaps ever (and I’m a fourth generation fan).  The whole borough can be proud of Roy Hodgson and the team.  I believe Chelsea did quite well at something too.