John Hemming's Web Log

This is from Table 241 from DCLG. Social Housing is important. For example families with disabled children cannot get adaptations to private rented property. Average number of completed properties. period private registered social landlord council 1980-1997 (Conservative) 159,495 21,953 24,415 1998-2010 (Labour) 161,068 24,800 487 2011-2013 (Coalition) 108,473 30,243 2,563 On average the coalition built over 5 times the number of council houses compared to Labour and over 5,000 more social houses in total per year. Year RSL LA Total 1980 21480 88530 110010 1981 19700 68330 88030 1982 13740 40090 53830 1983 16820 39170 55990 1984 17290 37570 54860 1985 13650 30420 44070 1986 13160 25380 38540 1987 13150 21830 34980 1988 13490 21450 34940 1989 14600 19320 339...

One of the threads of the General Election debate both in Yardley and nationally is what is happening to the more vulnerable people in society. All the vaguely rational parties (and I include part of the Labour Party in this) accept that we need to get government finances under control. The government has income (from taxes and levies etc) and spends money on services (the NHS, police etc). As it stands when the expenditure exceeds the income we have a deficit that needs to be borrowed each year. The government sells fixed term bonds which pay interest each year and then after a number of years the government pays back the capital. Each year also the government has to reborrow some money to pay of the bonds that mature in each year. If the government has a surplus (after paying interest) it can reduce the amount of debt by issuing less debt than it pays off. The government has been benefiting from being able to reissue debt at a lower interest rate.  This has reduced the ...

I had hoped that there would be a video recording of the Hustings at South Yardley Library, but sadly although there were people who said they wanted to do it. It did not happen. However, there was a video recording of the short presentation of the four candidates who went to the Birmingham Mail Twitter Hustings. I have extracted those comments for the four candidates. Jess Phillips Teval Stephens Grant Bishop Me Current Odds

The thing that most irritates me about Labour's leaflets is the rubbish about subsistence. As I made clear on this blog earlier I stopped claiming subsistence in April 2009 - as my contribution to reducing the deficit. However, the local Labour MPs did not stop claiming subsistence. Furthermore Jess Phillips has not been obvious in her absence from the annual council dinner. So we are paying for her dinner, we are paying for Roger Godsiff and Liam Byrne's dinner, but I am paying for my dinner myself. Her second main attack is on me being a successful businessman. For some reason she believes that 67,000 is an ordinary wage that keeps people in touch. I think Eamonn Flynn understands this issue better with his Dave Nellist style approach. A 67,000 income is not an ordinary income. Jess Phillips, in any event, declares three jobs from which she earns money, the Sandwell Job, The Job as Longbridge Councillor and the Job with Jack Dromey. She has not yet explained what...

This story in today's Birmingham Mail is proof that there is a justiciable right under ECHR Article 14 for Discretionary Housing Payments. I have said for some time that the law would require this. It is good to have the confirmation.

It is crucial that the government stick by the commitment given during the debate earlier this year. I will work to ensure this happens.

Another of Labour's misleading comments about tax relates to the government and tax cuts for the rich. It is true that the government cut the top rate of tax to 45% from 50%. It is worth noting, however, that it was only at 50% for one month of the Labour Government from 1997-2010. However, if you want to look at how fair policies are then you need to take into account more than just income tax. Unusually this government has done "distributional analyses" for policies.  There is a distributional analysis that relates to the 2015 budget.  That can be found: here This chart from it looks at the effects from June 2010 through to March 2015 by expenditure decile. I prefer the expenditure analysis to look at the spending power of households which in many ways is a better indication of economic power than the formal income. You should note from this that the top 10% (the richer households) are paying a lot more in terms of tax than those lower down the expenditur...

Labour seem to be concentrating on issues relating to parliamentary expenses from 2005-2010. I am not really surprised that they are trying to mislead constituents about what happened. At the moment Jess Phillips is avoiding questions as to what she is alleging. It remains that an inquiry was done into those expenses for all MPs. I copy the response letter from the enquiry below: The whole list for all MPs is here

I have been working with Mike Thornton on the issue of ensuring that the government's commitment to firefighters in terms of their pension (in the case of natural unfitness) is adhered to. He has put a statement on his website (see above for link) which confirms that we continue to press for a letter of comfort for firefighters.

Labour have just started delivering a dishonest newspaper in the Yardley Constituency. There are a number of false and misleading items in that newspaper, but one is so spectacularly false that it warrants an immediate response. The claim is that "while people here are forced to foodbanks". I made an expenses claim for subsistance or food.  They then say "Why were you paying for his dinner." The facts are easy to find.  Firstly there are two foodbanks that serve people living in Yardley.  The only one actually in Yardley is in Stechford and opened on Friday February 28th 2014.   The other one is in Sparkhill and was I believe created some time in 2011. It is slightly more complicated finding out what I have claimed for dinner.   The new rules came in at the start of the 2010 financial year (just before the new parliament). There is a link from which the aggregated expenditure can be identified here: http://www.parliamentary-standards.org.uk/Annualised...

So many people take photographs of the parade these days that I don't take a lot of my own and concentrate on playing the guitar instead. Here is the Tipperary County Association's end of parade rendition of "a long way to tipperary".

Today's e-conference is about Parents Want a Say.  That is about the issues of policy on term time absence at the request of parents and the new rules. If someone wants to watch the e-conference it will be on Youtube.   When the conference starts (or re-starts) the link will appear on my twitter feed.  Others may copy it elsewhere.  If you wish to watch then simply click on that link. http://www.twitter.com/johnhemmingmp I am likely to stop and re-start the conference one or more times (depending in part on how hot the central processor on my laptop gets). If you wish to ask questions then you need to have skype working on your computer. Someone will act as chair's aide.   This person will handle requests to ask questions.   I will update this blog post with the skype account name of the person dealing with this.  If you want to ask a question you will need to send a skype text message to the chair's aide.  At the right time the chair's...

This is an interesting article that looks at the question as to what extent Greece was inherently a financial disaster waiting to happen. It summarises as: " Greece never had the productive structure to be as rich as it was: its income was inflated by borrowings that weren’t used to upgrade its productive capacity." There is a difficulty with macroeconomic theories that ignore the nature of the economy and the extent to which it is shored up by unsustainable public spending. Once you take out that which is unsustainable you then see that which left is far less substantial.  Another useful extract is: " Until 2014, the country did not pay, in net terms, a single euro in interest: it borrowed enough from official sources at subsidized rates to pay 100% of its interest bill and then some.  " It is, however, only a question as to how big the problem has become by the time that the nature of the new clothes of the emperor has been finally determined  What...

There was a debate in Parliament yesterday which was interesting because Labour admitted that the Labour government was planning to bring in a flat rate housing benefit payment in the Social Housing Sector.  In Labour's current Phraseology "Labour planned a Bedroom Tax for Social Housing". The full debate is here: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmhansrd/cm150303/debtext/150303-0003.htm More importantly, however, I asked a question of the Shadow Minister: John Hemming:  I am aware of the proposal to transfer housing benefit money to local authorities with a view to building more properties. Let me ask this: what pays the rent of the people who are already in tenanted accommodation while the new properties are being built with that money? Helen Goodman:  That, of course, is the great conundrum.  [... where she does not answer this question ...] The Shadow minister did not answer this.   If Labour bring in such a policy it will only wo...

John Hemming  (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD):  I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. It contains an entry for JHC, which stands for John Hemming & Co., a company I founded in 1983. It currently employs about 260 staff and has a turnover of £20 million. I have declared in the register an income of around £180,000 from that company. I attend a meeting once a month and chair the board meeting. I am a full-time Member of Parliament. I spend five full days during the week and two half days at the weekend on political business. Oddly enough, the motion is so badly drafted that it would not affect me, because the £180,000 I receive is from a partnership, and the motion does not refer to partnerships. Obviously, there is a lot of confusion about equity interest and payment per hour. I spend under four hours a month on the work set out in my declaration of interests. What do I do? Well, today I met the Latvian Justice Minister, who is concern...

Firstly on Labour's proposals for another NHS reorganisation. Secondly on whether there is a role for buying in services.

It appears that the Greeks have decided that they are unwilling to compromise and the rest of the Eurogroup have decided that they won't throw good money after bad. There then comes the technical question of how to establish an economy based upon the "new drachma".  When changes are planned to financial software such as benefits and taxation quite a long period of planning is needed before the systems are in place to cope with this.  It is really not practical to establish the software and systems for a completely new currency overnight.  That would imply the greek government trying to cope with making payments in a situation where those banks holding a lot of greek debt are unable to operate. I am not quite sure how this actually works. It does seem, however, that after today the ball is in the Greek government court.  They can come back to the EuroGroup suggesting that they agree to something akin to the deal. However, the timescale to avoid chaos is this wee...

Some of you may be aware that Central England Co-op have sadly resigned as agents of the branch which is situated at The Poolway. The last day of service will be in January 2016. The Post Office maintain that they are committed to continue a Post Office service in the vicinity and are currently advertising the business opportunity on their website. They have already been approached by existing retailers in the Poolway Shopping Precinct, who may be suitable new operators. Your Liberal Democrat team will work to ensure that you do not lose your Post Office service as we have successfully done so recently with the Post Office at the Wheatsheaf in Sheldon. We will keep you updated with regards to any further developments with regards to this matter.  

Having not had hustings in 2010, the candidates (or at least the Lib Dem, Labour and Conservative) candidates have arranged a hustings event between 2 and 4 pm at South Yardley Library on 21st March 2015. The Respect and UKIP candidates have been told of the event, but neither have confirmed attendance.

It is not that easy to predict what will happen with Greece. The arguments of the Greek government are absurd. They cannot revisit the Second World War when the country agreed a settlement many years ago. The argument about profits on Greek bonds is a nonsense given the amount that has already been written off. Now we have, "if we go it falls apart". If they renege on their contractual commitments "if falls apart".  Which is why the other EU countries won't just let them off their treaty obligations. My personal view is that the elected representatives for Syriza are not going to compromise enough and will push it to the limits.  That is likely to lead to Greece being in default and short of cash.  In the end this is actually enough to drive them out of the EU.  They are unlikely to agree to enforce any ECJ judgments in respect of paying debt.  Hence I think they are on the way out of the EU itself - not just the Eurozone. The fact that they have star...