Financial competence – Conservatives lead the way

Our credible plan to deal with the mess inherited from Labour is the reason Britain has kept its triple-A credit rating and why interest rates remain low.

Getting the public finances back on a stable footing is the best way of ensuring economic stability and an absolute prerequisite for growth and the creation of jobs.

Our deficit plan is backed by the IMF, the OECD, the Governor of the Bank of England, and the major credit-rating agencies. Labour’s plan for more spending, more borrowing, and more debt, would risk a loss of confidence and soaring interest rates, hitting struggling families and businesses across the country.

It’s not just Labour who want to spend, spend, spend. The Lib Dems, as socialists in disguise, would spend your money without a second thought and on fluffy pet projects. They refuse to accept that firm financial control is essential, preferring to offer anything and everything to anyone who would give them a vote.

These are tough financial times that require sensible and pragmatic solutions to the issue of reduced funding and a growing population. The Conservative led County Council has an excellent track record in financial management.

Eurozone

No one believes that a well-funded IMF on its own is the solution to the problems of the eurozone.

Eurozone countries need to make painful adjustments to their public finances and external deficits. It is a difficult path that they have to walk, although the new Governments in the likes of Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy are walking it.

However, that is the logic of the single currency that they are all committed to.

That is why we Conservatives are opposed to British membership of the euro, why we shut down the euro preparations unit in the Treasury and why under this Government Britain will never relinquish the pound.

Truancy Sweeps improve attendance at Fenland schools

Children who attend school regularly are four times more likely to achieve five or more good GCSEs, including English and maths, than those who are persistently absent. Truancy, however it comes about, is not good for children and must be reduced.

A joint initiative has been launched by Cambridgeshire County Council and the police to improve school attendance in the Fenland area.

The truancy sweeps – which will focus on Chatteris, March and the surrounding villages – will also aim to promote child safety by emphasising the importance of making sure children are in school.

All children of compulsory school age will be stopped even if they are accompanied by parents, carers or relatives and live outside the targeted areas.

Parents or carers of truanting pupils will then be contacted by an Educational Welfare Officer and notified of the Education Welfare Service procedures. Their school will also be contacted and made aware of the absence and their attendance at school will be monitored.

The sweeps will take place in March, Chatteris and the surrounding school catchment areas, with the aim of reducing levels of unauthorised absence.

Although Cambridgeshire’s school attendance rates are in line with the national average and truancy is minimal, there is still room for improvement in Fenland.

As a joint initiative with schools and police we want to send a clear message that it is unacceptable for a child to miss school without good reason and also that truancy is not necessarily the only explanation or cause for poor school attendance.

Parents of persistent absentees or truants and are being warned they could end up in court facing fines and – in a worst case scenario – imprisonment. Children need to be in school learning, Parents have a legal duty to ensure their child or children are attending school regularly. By missing out on school children are limiting their potential and missing out on vital learning at a particularly important stage of their lives.

A14 Steering Group

On Wednesday we hosted the A14 steering group meeting. This involved a range of partners including district councils, the ports, business representatives, the County Council and most importantly the Department for Transport.

There is some excellently work going on and real involvement from our local councils and organisations. It is great to hear DfT modifying plans and approach as a result of our input.

We are well on the way to evaluating all the options against the criteria of affordability and likely hood to solve the issues of the A14. I am seeing lots of common sense and pragmatic thinking. Thankfully, this is not about new studies as this must be the most studied road in England, but about using data already collected.

By the end of June I am hoping we will have a single scheme to recommend to the minister.

At the same time we are looking into a range of funding possibilities.

Local Enterprise Partnership – meeting

On Wednesday the LEP had its regular board meeting. This time it was held in the board room of Unisurge International Ltd (Farboud Innovation Park, Formula Drive, Newmarket, CB8 0BF). Unisurge is another fine example of thriving business in our local area.

We reviewed how we are to spend a recent grant of £15m from central government for infrastructure projects. This has been quite a test as part of the deal is that the projects need to be completed within a year. We have chosen projects that have already been evaluated and have a high degree of deliverability.

We are all very excited about the Enterprise Zone at Alconbury. It has the benefit of allowing the LEP to retain business rates generated from the site for 25 years which can be used anywhere in the LEP area.

Secondly, the individual businesses benefit from paying no business rates, instead this is made up by central government. The challenge for the Enterprise Zone Steering group, of which I am a member, is to ensure that companies don’t just relocated from somewhere locally to avoid the business rates. We are working very hard with the developers and district council to ensure this does not happen. This is a very obvious trap that we are keen to avoid.

Queen’s Award for Enterprise – congratulations

It was my great pleasure today to write letters of congratulations to the eight Cambridgeshire businesses that have received a Queen’s Award for Enterprise this year. They are:

BlueGnome Ltd

Colortrac Ltd

Domino Printing Sciences Plc

Horizon Discovery Ltd

Spiral Software Ltd

The Moller Centre for Continuing Education Limited

Ubisense Group Plc (winners of two awards)

Sentec Ltd

Developing the local economy for the benefit of all is one of the County Council’s strategic priorities, and in offering my congratulations to these firms I referenced the ways in which a strong local economy helps us to achieve our wider aims for Cambridgeshire.

Since becoming Leader I have been tenacious in my drive to ensure that Cambridgeshire is open for business.

I see the Council’s role is to do what we can to support our communities and grow our local economy. I’m pleased that we have made progress with key projects such as superfast broadband and the A14, but we have a lot more to do. I also spend a fair amount of time meeting with the local business community to develop the relationship between the public and private sectors.

At a recent meeting of the Cambridge Network I described Cambridgeshire as a ‘sleeping tiger’. We have tremendous potential with cutting edge businesses and research but we need to spread this and help create the right environment for businesses to start and grow as well as providing the right conditions for manufacturers to flourish.

Hearing the great news of these award-winners shows me that this potential is being realised as well as reminding me that Cambridgeshire is in a strong position to continue its economic prosperity. Seeing businesses strive to do better strengthens my resolve that we can also be even better in the future.

Fantastic.

New Member to Join County Council Cabinet

Today I was informed by Steve Criswell, Cabinet Member for Community Infrastructure, that he had to step down to concentrate on his business and family commitments.

I fully understand Steve’s decision in these economic times to concentrate on his business and provide support for his wife who has not been well. Steve has helped shape the new direction of this council, including spearheading the £90m investment that we will be making in Highways. A legacy he should be very proud of.

Tony Orgee will move from his current Health and Well Being cabinet role to Community Infrastructure. Tony will continue this good work and deliver these much needed schemes.

I welcome Steve Tierney to the Cabinet who takes over Health and Well Being. He is a very capable Overview and Scrutiny Chairman as well as a hardworking local councillor. I have been very impressed by his drive and commitment to improve the quality of life for Cambridgeshire residents.

These changes are effective from 8pm today.

Promotion from Vice Chairman to Chairman of the Safer and Stronger Scrutiny committee goes to Richard West with a new deputy Sam Hoy. These appointments will be approved at our next full council meeting.

Congratulations to them all.

Cambridge City Elections – Kevin Francis

It is great to see able, commercially experienced businessmen standing for election.

Kevin Francis is standing in East Chesterton as the Conservative candidate. One thing all Conservatives have in common is a desire to see your public money spent wisely and Kevin is no exception.

Its about time Cambridge experienced the financial rigour that a Conservative can bring.

Fire control Center – waste of £450m of public money

The previous Labour government embarked on an outrageous spending spree. What I had not really understood was the scale of the spend and how ridiculous some of it was.

Last week I had the opportunity to look around the regional fire control Center in Waterbeach. If you need an example of Labour waste this is it. The building cost £450m and has never been used. Worse nine of these buildings have been built around the country all capable of individually controlling the nations fire and rescue service. Yes, nine times redundancy.

Talking of redundancy this has to be the most resilient building in Cambridgeshire. It has multiple electrical feeds from multiple sub stations feeding into multiple distribution boards, feeding multiple server rooms, serving multiple ……… You get my point. If the electrical feeds fail there are multiple generators, that were designed to power huge commercial ships, fed by cavernous fuel tanks. And of course huge multiple battery packs are in place if the generators fail.

With power, food, water and fuel this building can survive a lock down for seven days. The security fence is high and monitored electronically for intruders. Sixty nine cameras keep a watch over the site. These security measures were even tested by attack teams o see if entry could be achieved. How secure does a fire control Center need to be???

Inside there were rooms, a restaurant and a magnificent control room that was huge. If the control room was ever thought not to be big enough (if that could ever be possible) then it had been designed to fit a whole new floor in the ceiling space. This room was enormous. Air conditioning with individual settings for desk areas ensured comfort.

So, why is he building not used. Well, it seems that John Prescott bought these centres under a PFI agreement that means who ever takes on the building will have to pay £1.3m a year with utilities on top. As our fire service currently spend around £300k a year the sums don’t add up. And anyway it is just far too big and over specified. Even if it were to have housed the whole regions control facilities it is unlikely that it would have been filled.

One of the reasons I went to look at the building, with officers, was to see if we could use any of the space to help defray the costs as it is public money tied up in the white elephant. Sadly, the cots are just too great at tis stage although never say never. DCLG will need to continue to pick up the costs for the foreseeable future.

What a shamefully waste of public money. Unfortunately, Labour and the Lib Dems, think spending our public money freely and on pet projects is normal. Beware the socialist ideals.

Lib Dems – not making false claims again surely !!!!

What is it about the local Lib Dems that means they seem to want to falsely claim credit. I know it must be hard in opposition but this sort of falsehoods don’t fool anyone.

This is the sort of thing that children do and makes the Lib Dems look foolish and untrustworthy. Deceit in any politician is very bad so when a party seems to think this is a good electioneering stance no wonder the public lose faith.

Only last month the Lib Dems claimed to have delivered the new Cambridge station. This was an outrageous claim that even some of the Lib Dems felt uncomforable about. And then they do it again.

The recent scam is for the Lib Dems to claim “Lib Dems win £90m for roads and pavements”. This is complete fabrication. Worse the leaflet then goes on to claim that Labour don’t back  the plan.

So what is the reality? The County Council, led by my Conservative Cabinet, took the decision to invest additional sums in our roads. Why? Well, as a back bencher I spent time on the management team looking after the highways contract. I was concerned that the roads might deteriorate under the rate of funding and I know that we all value our road network. I asked for some modeling to be undertaken which confirmed additional capital spending was required. So when I became leader I was able to convince colleagues that this would be a sensible insertion into our budget for this year.

So the Lib Dems had NO influence, NO decision making and were not consulted.

I have a difference of opinion with Labour on many things but it is increasingly difficult to trust the Lib Dems on anything.