Gordon's last Queens Speech

Wednesday 18th November saw the eighth Queens Speech since I was first elected and doubtless the last Gordon Brown will ever write for the Queen! The next 5 days were given over to debate on different aspects of what the Government had and had not promised to do before Gordon is finally forced to face the electorate in a few months time.

In the debate on the 24th I raised the issue of Nuclear Power and the way that the Government does not allow the cost of disposing of and safeguarding nuclear waste for thousands of years, to be calculated, when working out the merits of nuclear versus clean renewable energy sources. The cost of digging a hole to store high level nuclear waste would alone cost £18 Billion -but the taxpayer not the nuclear industry will foot the bill. Then there are the security costs to keep terrorists and the general public away from that radioactive waste for hundreds and thousands of years into the future.

On the 25th I raised the issue of the Governments illegal retention of the DNA of one million innocent people. I also raised the short sighted Government cuts in Probation Service funding which mean job losses in Derbyshire Probation Service over the next few months. Yet the Intensive Alternatives to Custody scheme that Derbyshire is pioneering costs only a fifth of the price of locking someone up and has a much better success rate in preventing the criminal from reoffending.

On the 26th I challenged the Government -yet again -over its disastrous Council Housing policies. Or that is its anti Council Housing policies which prevented all but 4,000 being built in the last 12 years. Meanwhile the waiting list has soared from 1 million in 1997 when Tony and Gordon came to power, to nearly 2 million today.

Normal Parliamentary business went on too though. At Health Questions on Tuesday 24th I challenged the Minister over the gross under funding of Mental Health Services. On the afternoon of Monday 23rd I spent 3 hours in the Education Select Committee trying to hammer out a report on the Government's controversial Home Education proposals. On the morning of the 25th the Select Committee spent 3 hours visiting a Children's Centre in a deprived area of London. Where they told us that a core problem was the lack of decent affordable Council Housing. Now where have I heard that before?