Mark's latest Parliamentary Report

• Working for you in Parliament
• Want to help your community? Apply for a community grant
• New government programme unveiled
• Record employment across the country
• See below for further details

New government programme unveiled

New Prime Minister Gordon Brown has given details of his Government's priorities fpr action with a series of policy announcements. These have been set out in a draft programme of new laws. The main ones likely to affect Scotland include the following items:

• Child Maintenance reform
• Climate Change Bill to create a legal framework to reduce UK’s carbon emission until 2050
• an Employment Simplification Bill to reform employment law along with stricter enforcement of the National Minimum Wage
• an Energy Bill covering energy supply and target fuel poverty
• a Human Tissue & Embryos Bill
• a Pensions Bill, to bring into effect the proposals in the current Pensions White Paper
• an Unclaimed assets Bill , to invest unclaimed assets in dormant bank accounts
• measures to respond to the threat of terrorism while ensuring human rights are protected.

There will also be new laws aimed at simplifying business regulation and putting into effect reforms to the European Union.

The new Prime Minister has also announced that the Government will introduce a Constitutional Reform Bill, designed to give more power to Parliament and to hold the government to account. The changes proposed include included limiting or surrendering the powers of the Prime Minister and executive in the following areas: the power of the executive to declare war, the power to request the dissolution of Parliament, the power over recall of Parliament, the power to make key public appointments with out effective scrutiny, the power to restrict Parliamentary oversight of the intelligence services.

If you are interested in finding out more about any of these proposals, you can find further details here or contact my office on 557-0577.

I spoke in the Parliamentary debate about the government’s plans, concentrating on the issues of affordable housing, fuel poverty, climate change, and the call for a Marine Bill to protect our coasts and oceans. If you’d like to see a copy of my speech, go to the ‘In Parliament’ page or click here.

 Mark supported the campaign for a Marine Bill

Record employment across the country

Recent labour market figures show a rise in employment to its highest ever level, a fall in unemployment and a further fall in the numbers on jobseeker’s Allowance. Thanks to Labour’s measures like the New Deal and the introduction of tax credits to make work pay, we have made real progress since 1997 and now have the have the highest employment rate across the developed world including United States, Japan, Germany, France and Italy, with:

• 2.6 million more people in work – taking employment to the highest figure on record
• 900,000 fewer on benefits
• 600,000 children helped out of poverty.

Want to help your community? Apply for a community grant

As an MP I sometimes receive details about community grants available to individuals and groups. I’ve recently received information from O2 on their ‘Your Community’ grant scheme which awards sums between £100-£1,000 to both individuals and groups for projects that will improve their local area. The guidelines are broad, applying is also fast and simple. Visit www.itsyourcommunity.co.uk  and you can also call the freephone helpline 0800 902 0250 for further information

Working for you in Parliament

From time to time constituents get in touch with me regarding consumer matters such as the high cost of energy bills or the charges levied by banks. As Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Debt and Personal Finance I have been able to take up some of these issues in Parliament and the Group has held a number of important events over the last year. We’ve just held a seminar on the subject of bank charges where we learned more about the recent campaigns and developments on this issue. If you’ve had problems of this type, I’d be interested in hearing from you.

I’ve also been working with the group on the problem of fuel poverty. We’ve just produced a report making a number of recommendations. The main ones are:

Strengthened financial support for fuel poverty programmes to ensure that fuel poverty targets are met.  In regard to the Warm Front programme, with the next spending round approaching it is crucially important that this programme’s budget is maintained in order to ensure efforts to reach the 2016 target are not undermined.

•    The level of winter fuel payments to be assessed annually so that payments do not devalue over time.  Payments should take into account rising fuel costs and price rises for other essential services (such as council tax and water).

•    The DWP must seriously consider extending winter fuel payments to key vulnerable households on low incomes.

•    Government schemes aimed at tackling fuel poverty and the fuel utilities’ Energy Efficiency Commitment must operate in a better integrated manner.

•    Ofgem and the Government must address the pricing gap between direct debit and pre-payment meter customers.  More must be done to help pre-payment customers switch to cheaper suppliers.  The gap in pricing for direct debit customers and those who pay for their energy by cash or cheque should also be addressed in a fair and just way.  

•    Minimum mandatory standards must be introduced for social tariffs.  On the question of price, social tariffs should be the lowest cost tariff rate that a supplier offers.

•    Plans to install ‘smarter’ pre-pay meters must be accelerated.