Surrey CF

In 1904 a very forward looking Shoreditch Council (now part of the London Borough of Hackney) erected public baths and washhouses at Haggerston as they had identified a need for public health facilities for the poor of the area. It made a great contribution to the health and welfare of local residents and was hailed as an example of what forward thinking local authorities should be doing.

In 2000, despite local protests, Haggerston Pool was closed by the Labour Council due to the financial pressure from a diktat by John Prescott. Despite there being a real need for a swimming pool in the area, local people were powerless to prevent this misguided move. To pacify local campaigners the Labour Mayor of Hackney (under whose leadership the pool was closed) made vague promises four years ago that he would look into it. Four years on, that pool is still not open and is unlikely to open before the Olympics – which is an added shame given that Hackney is one of the five Olympic Boroughs.

What brought about this massive fall in the power of local authorities to meet the aspirations of its residents? Simple – a lack of people power and centralisation.

The arguments for centralising decision making always sound seductive. For example, the Government has set ludicrous compulsory targets for local authorities for housebuilding in order to rectify its poor record. These onerous targets have created resentment in rural areas by threatening valued green land, and in the cities has resulted in the proliferation of one and two bedroomed flats – the cheapest way to meet the Government’s targets.

The insulting arrogance of the Government is that they have resorted to compulsion because they believe they are the only ones that care! Any Councillor will be more than familiar with the impact of this Government’s housing shortage but are denied the power to meet their local need. A Conservative Government will give them that power so that the developments will be far more in tune with the environment and be more likely to have community consent.

But just decentralising power to the local authorities is not enough. With poor turnouts and party machines making some local authorities one-party states, what power do communities have when they find themselves up against an unresponsive Council?

Using the measures outlined in the innovative Control Shift green paper – which will be the basis of a Conservative Government’s empowerment programme – local residents will have the right to hold a referendum on local issues whether or not the Council approve.

So, the choice for people who value their community is simple: more diktats, targets and powerlessness under Labour, or reborn local communities that can make a positive difference to the areas they live in… and perhaps a few more swimming pools too.

The simple but effective idea of harnessing the power of mass collaboration has informed many of our plans for government. You can see that in our pledge to publish government data and spending online, so that tech-savvy citizens can mash up the data in useful ways to help make public services more transparent. And you can see that in our proposal to offer a prize for building an innovative government website.

But we don’t have to wait for the election to be given a chance to apply these principles.

Tomorrow is Budget day. Yes, it’s that time of year when the nation plays a giant game of hide and seek with the plans for our economy. Usually, it’s a case of hundreds of civil servants doing the hiding – and a handful of party researchers and journalists doing the seeking. This year, an election year, will be no different. It’s time to level the playing field.

So in the spirit of mass collaboration, we are going to crowdsource our response to the Budget and we need your help in doing just that. We will be publishing it online in an easy-to-read format (not like the enormous PDF documents so beloved of the Treasury) as soon as possible after its release, so if you check back tomorrow afternoon you will be able to start getting past the flashy headlines to dig through the small print.

Sadly, this will all too likely be a brazenly electioneering Budget with most of the painful elements hidden away far from sight so it is more important than ever for us to harness the talent, expertise and savvy of the Great British Public to shed some light on the 2010 Budget.

UPDATE – the site is now live at http://www.yourbudgetresponse.com

The natural and cultural assets of Arfon have not translated into economic success. Ten years of state control and public sector growth in Wales have stifled the voluntary sector and weakened the local economy.

It may have been a Conservative government that delivered the Welsh Language Act, the Welsh Language Board and S4C, Dinorwig Power Station, Ysbyty Gwynedd (Hospital) and more. But over the last decade Arfon has been forgotten by London and ignored by Cardiff.

So now the local PPC is leading a campaign “Adeiladu Arfon” (“building Arfon”). Tapping into a heritage of innovation and hard work, a green shoot has appeared in the voluntary sector: the Arfon Job Club.

How better to demonstrate that there is hope, than by doing something with nothing? No money. No public sector grant. Just a little goodwill, energy and vision.

The Arfon Job Club then, on one level, is about leadership. People are responding to this: One volunteer is Tilly. Now retired, she can share her skills in small business entrepreneurship.

On a personal level, the Job Club is about building confidence. This is a natural ‘human’ complement to the Job Centre Plus. One member, articulate and enthusiastic about his photography, was challenged to consider teaching. He had never considered it but the affirmation of discovering new potential produced a visible lift in his demeanour.

Finally, the club has drawn in and is mobilising the business community. The Deiniol Shopping Centre offered an office in their own management suite, and the local Subway is providing coffee and cookies.

Change is coming to Arfon. But from within, not the state. We have a saying: “Gwneud dim Dweud”, meaning “Doing not Talking”. Opening a Job Club is one way to show that we understand the problem and have an effective solution. It is saying loud and clear – Arfon is not forgotten.

If you’re reading this, the chances are that you – like an average of 12m others in the UK – will also log in to Facebook today. But will you use it connect with your political interests, as well as your friends? Given that it hadn’t hit the UK at the time of the last general election, it will be interesting to see how Facebook plays out in the next one.

Having a Facebook page and updating it regularly is the bread and butter of what political groups and representatives can do, but there’s also room to think outside of the box. There’s also the Facebook Connect feature, for example, that enables users to log in to third party websites using their Facebook account. There have been some fun and practical uses of it so far, though few in the political realm.

This weekend, we launched a campaign using Facebook Connect which we believe is one of the most innovative uses of the tool yet seen in the UK. Built in just a few days in response to the growing concern about the control Charlie Whelan’s Unite union (the union behind the BA strikes) has on Gordon Brown’s Labour Party, the campaign utilises Facebook Connect to raise awareness of the issue beyond Westminster. This campaign makes it easy for people to spread the word out to their non-political friends, thereby bringing a new wave of pressure to bear on this unhealthy meshing of interests.

Once users have connected to the Cash-Gordon campaign, they can start accruing “action points” for reading briefings about the issue, getting their friends involved, donating, or even for directly asking Charlie Whelan a question. Unlike face-to-face traditional campaigning, a lot of online advocacy is hard to measure and often goes unrecognised – action points provide a way of both measuring and incentivising those efforts.

In the brave new world of online politics it’s important to keep innovating in this way. If you have any ideas on how else we could be using the internet, please let us know in the comment thread.

Driving in my constituency, I keep seeing men working on a glaring – and frustrating – example of the government’s willingness to waste large sums of public money.

Britain’s public deficit has passed the levels in Greece and drawn fire from the European Commission. There are also lots of worthy road improvements sorely needed. Yet a bridge has just been constructed across the A2 linking up a bridleway a few miles Southeast of Canterbury, which is almost unused. The structure, built by the Highways Agency, has cost the taxpayer £1.3 million.

Very few people want this bridge. In fact, local residents have protested to me that it is a visual intrusion. At both ends, the approaches have been permanently (and expensively) scarred by tarmac paths. And the robust steel frame dominates the skyline, in an area of outstanding natural beauty.

Why was it built? I wrote to the minister concerned, Lord Adonis, now Secretary of State to ask why they wanted to waste money on this. The scheme was originally passed a decade ago, when Canterbury Council was run by a Lib Lab administration. Lord Adonis informed me that the death of a pedestrian at the site made it urgent. The fatality occurred eleven years ago. It was a very sad event but the pedestrian was walking along the road in the fog, not crossing it, so a bridge would have made no difference.

Britain urgently needs to bring government borrowing under control. Let’s start by saying ‘No more bridges to nowhere.’

There’s a very simple choice at this election: five more years of Gordon Brown, or change with the Conservatives. But if the British people do vote for change, I can tell you now that it won’t come easily.

Real change is always hard because there will always be people and organisations with vested interests in preserving the status quo – even if that’s not in the national interest. We need to take these vested interests on, and I gave a speech earlier today setting out how the Conservatives will do just that.

Taking on vested interests has been at the heart of so many of the great moments of progress in this country – whether it’s abolishing slavery in the face of commercial interests, or more recently Margaret Thatcher taking on those who controlled council housing and the nationalised industries.

So we know that taking on vested interests can bring real, positive change. But that change can only come about if you have the strength to see it through. Sadly, we haven’t seen that strength from Gordon Brown.

Just look at what’s going on with the British Airways strike. Thousands of jobs and the future of one of Britain’s greatest companies is at threat, yet we have a Prime Minister who won’t come out in support of those who would cross the picket line because the Unite union is bankrolling the Labour Party.

The next Conservative Government will be different. You can see that in how we led the way in dealing with MPs’ expenses. You can see it in our pledge to publish all government spending online. And you could see it this morning in my call for a levy on banks to pay back taxpayers for the support they gave them.

Since becoming leader of the Conservative Party I’ve rolled up my sleeves and argued for what is right, not what is convenient. It’s time we had a Prime Minister that did the same.

British energy policy is out-of-date. It was designed almost thirty years ago for a world very different to today.

Securing our energy supplies presents a growing threat and five more years of Gordon Brown would only make an already precarious situation worse. We need change and in this Green Paper we set out plans for the biggest overhaul of British energy policy in a generation.

That is why we launched our energy policy paper, Rebuilding Security, today. It is a comprehensive programme for the long-overdue reform of British energy policy. In it we set out plans to create security guarantees for electricity and for gas – ensuring that the lights stay on and our homes stay warm.

We will also take decisive action to promote nuclear and renewable power, through streamlined planning, a floor price for carbon and improved infrastructure. Finally we will make Britain more energy efficient, through our Green Deal and a new ‘energy internet’, that puts consumers in control of their energy usage.

These policies will deliver secure, sustainable and affordable energy for the years ahead, while boosting investment and creating jobs. Ours is a plan to turn a threat into an opportunity, demonstrating the energy leadership and values needed to get Britain back on track.

Read the new policy document here.

On Monday at our Jobs Summit we announced the next stage of the Conservative initiative to encourage companies to provide pre-employment training: Service Academies.

These Academies are aimed at the long-term unemployed and young people who are finding it difficult to get a foothold in the jobs market.

This announcement focused on the Hospitality and Leisure sector because this is the area of the economy where growth is projected – when we have finally pulled our way out of this long recession – and where there are lots of jobs at all levels, including at the entry level.

The initiative was strongly supported by eleven of the top names in the sector, such as Intercontinental Hotels Group (the biggest hotels group in the world by rooms), Whitbread, Starbucks, Gala Coral, Pizza Express and Travelodge. Perhaps most interesting was the reason for this strong support. More than anything else, it reflected the excitement of companies at the prospect of a programme which does not have the heavy hand of Government compressing it.

The Service Academy approach ensures that the training content, materials, structure and means of delivery will all be designed and determined by the businesses involved. The Academy will offer the longer-term unemployed a two week course, followed by a four-week work placement. The course will earn participants a certificate which companies across the sector will recognise as an industry standard for work readiness. The top firms involved will aim to offer 20% of participants’ full-time jobs themselves, but other certificated participants will enjoy a head start when looking for jobs right across the sector.

We decided to start with the service industries for another reason. While we are now a predominantly service economy, surveys like the GMI-Amholt Nation Brands Survey suggest that this country is no better than average when it comes to service culture and attitudes – even though our companies have systems second to none. So this represents a golden opportunity to spread the soft skills and attitudes necessary for us to become service world-beaters. Just in time for the Olympics.

David Cameron has firmly put the family at the heart of this General Election campaign. As a working mum with three school aged children, I know first-hand some of the real pressures facing families in Britain today and as Shadow Minister for the Family I believe that the policies of the Conservative Party will help ensure support for families is there, when they need it.

Sure Start Children’s Centres have our full commitment because they set out the foundations for family support in every community. Now the Centres are built, Labour thinks the job is done – they are wrong. The National Audit Office, Audit Commission and OFSTED have all criticised this Government’s failure to develop Sure Start in a way that supports the poorest and most vulnerable families in our communities. Our plans and vision for Sure Start will change that.

We will strengthen Sure Start for every family. Putting in place an extra 4,200 Sure Start Health Visitors – a new universal health visitor service, working through Sure Start to give every family access to the professional support they need in those critical early years. We know from research that trained health visitors are also the most effective way to reach families who are the poorest and most in need in our communities. The changes we plan will address the concerns raised about Sure Start and strengthen it for the future.

But I want to go further; we need people with the best understanding of family life working in our communities; organisations with a proven expertise in supporting families, particularly through tough times. Organisations like Action for Children, 4Children and Barnardos have that expertise and I want them involved in providing more, effective Sure Start services.

It is unforgivable that Labour has used the tactics of creating fear and anxiety amongst families and Sure Start staff as part of their political campaigning, by saying the Conservatives will close down Sure Start. We have clear policies and a clear vision for Sure Start. We know that with our policies Sure Start can work even harder to support our communities helping Britain to be the most family friendly country in Europe.

The choice people make in the forthcoming General Election will shape the country for decades to come.

In a speech this morning I spoke about one thing in this election that hasn’t received anything like the attention it deserves: the way in which the Labour Party has changed.

The Labour Party that will go into this election in 2010 bears only the most superficial resemblance to the Labour Party that swept to power in 1997. You can see that Labour has changed for the worse in almost every area – the issues it speaks about, the candidates it fields, and the backing it receives.

Under Gordon Brown, Labour has retreated into its traditional comfort zones, even going back to many of the failed dogmas of the 1970s and 1980s.

The big unions, led by Unite, have now got a stranglehold over Labour. They are effectively controlling the selection process for prospective MPs, and they are also providing the money that oils the whole machine.

The end result is that the Labour Party today is bankrolled by the big unions, indebted to their goodwill, and dependent on their largesse for survival.

In the end, all elections are a choice between the arguments of tomorrow and an attachment to yesterday. In this election, it is Labour who are looking back in anger – and the Conservatives who believe in a future built on change, optimism and hope.