Norman Lamb has begun a campaign to get a fair deal for mental health services in the NHS.

The Liberal Democrat health minister said:

“People suffering from mental ill health have been let down by the NHS for decades. One in four of us who suffer from a mental illness in our lifetime, but there is an institutional bias against mental health, and it always been that way. Just £1 out of every £9 is spent on treating mental illnesses.

Liberal Democrats are changing that. We’re introducing waiting standards so that patients will have a right to treatment within a defined period of time. People with mental health conditions should have the same rights as someone waiting for an operation.

Next year we start with the first ever waiting standards for psychological therapies for people with conditions such as anxiety and depression and for ‘early intervention in psychosis’.

We just announced £150 million over 5 years for treating young people who suffer from eating disorders – with the aim of introducing a waiting time standard in 2016. It will mean fewer young people end up in hospital because of a failure to get help early enough.”

If you would like to show your support for Norman’s campaign to end the stigma which exists around mental health, then please click here.

Figures published last week by the Department for Education have revealed that attainment levels for primary schools are rising in every subject. In addition, the figures show that disadvantaged pupils are continuing to close the gap on their classmates.

Results taken from more than half a million 11 year olds (at Key Stage 2) show that the percentage of pupils achieving the expected level (level 4) in reading, writing and maths has risen by 3 percentage points to 79% while the proportion achieving the more challenging level 4b is also up – from 63% to 67%. The findings also show that since 2013, 22,000 pupils have improved their reading, writing and maths attainment levels.

Also despite a tougher new threshold, the figure’s show that the number of primaries judged to be below standard has remained stable.

Commenting on the figures, Liberal Democrat schools minister David Laws stated:

“I am pleased to see that primaries have responded to the challenge of a higher floor standard – we have raised the bar and schools have raised their game.

“It is also encouraging to see the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers continue to narrow and parents, teachers and pupils deserve to be congratulated for their efforts.

“But we know there is more to do and there are still too many areas with simply unacceptable levels of attainment for disadvantaged pupils.

“We are committed to helping schools do more and have increased the pupil premium they receive per pupil to £1,300 so they have the resources they need.”

Merry Christmas to everyone who helps, supports and is a member of the Lib Dem team here in Bury. We hope you have a very Happy Christmas and the very best for 2015. We’re taking a break from emails and texts for a couple of weeks, and we’re back in the office on 5 January 2015.

Michael Powell and Ellie Hudspith Bury Campaign Organisers

The local Liberal Democrats have been campaigning for more defibrillators to be made accessible to the public. This is because statistics show that your chances of surviving many types of heart attack increase from 0% to 40% with early CPR and early defibrillation.

In a formal question to Bury Council, Holyrood councilor Tim Pickstone discorvered that the council did not keep records of publicly accessible defibrillators in Bury.

There are no publicly accessible defibrillators registered with the ambulance service in the Prestwich area, where Tim is a councilor. Until this year Bury Council was the only council in Great Manchester which did not have defibrillators in its sport centres.

Councilor Pickstone has written to the council asking them to include the longfield in a scheme and has also written to Prestwich Tesco and Bowker Vale Sainsburys.

If you are involved in a community organisation or sports group in Prestwich that would be interested in working with use to raise money or grants for a defibrillator please get in touch.

It was announced yesterday by Liberal Democrat Business Secretary Vince Cable that the Liberal Democrats have delivered on their promise to start up two million apprenticeships during this Parliament. This good news has also been echoed locally, with 6,490 apprentices being created in Bury.

To mark the occasion, Vince met Paige McConville from Oxford, who had become the two millionth apprentice. Paige who is 16 started her Advanced Apprenticeship in Engineering Manufacture with high-tech engineering firm FMB Oxford in August.

Paige took Vince on a tour around FMB Oxford, explaining how she was gaining key skills during her apprenticeship which will allow her to pursue a career as an engineer.

The Liberal Democrats have prioritised the creation of jobs and apprenticeships in this Government as part of the belief that all young people should be able to get on in life and apprenticeships are one way of helping to achieve that.

Commenting on the good news, Vince Cable said:

“Reaching the 2 millionth apprenticeship is testament to this Government’s commitment to apprenticeships. Paige and her employer are a shining example of how apprenticeships give young people the chance to start a career and give businesses the talent to grow.

“This isn’t just about numbers. From space engineering, to TV production, to legal services, apprenticeships are the ticket to a great job and a route employers trust to access the skills they need.”

Nick Clegg has unveiled plans to see abandoned buildings across the North of England brought back to life in a renewed effort to tackle a chronic problem where vast sites have become empty and unused for long periods of time, making areas of several major Northern cities look blighted.

Nick wants to help match-make entrepreneurs and community groups with local authorities and land-owners to find temporary uses for vacant buildings and land which would otherwise simply go to waste.

The North has nearly twice as many hectares of previously developed vacant land and buildings than the South, leading to calls from the Liberal Democrats for major renovation projects to take place in some Northern cities.

The vacant buildings could provide invaluable space for a wide range of local people to set up a business, open a shop or put on an event. This process can help to quickly transform empty and derelict buildings into hubs used for business start-ups or community and art centres. It can have a knock on effect and revitalise city centres drawing in talent and investment from far and wide.

On a visit to Berlin to a project called Betahaus, Nick saw how collaborative working space in the heart of the creative district has been set up using derelict land and property.

“Leaving useful land in the North to languish is not only bad for business, it can hamper the success of an area in so many ways. Which is why I want to see empty buildings brought back to life and back in business.

“We need to understand what stands in the way of some of the most incredible space in the country being used, and make things more flexible so that we can fill these buildings with artists, start-ups, and other entrepreneurs to restore the buildings’ purpose and appeal.

“Through my Northern Futures initiative, I’m championing innovative ideas from people in the North to build a stronger economy and fairer society.”

To help unlock this potential, Nick will form a working group immediately – comprised of local government, businesses and charities – to investigate how more vacant buildings and land across the North can be brought back into temporary use. The group will explore sites with potential across Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool and Newcastle.

Liberal Democrat Schools Minister David Laws has stated that more than 2,000 struggling schools could be turned around if effective support was in place.

At an interview at CentreForum, David said the standards in education had been threatened by the Conservatives’ determination to monitor all schools directly from Whitehall. He went on to say that the Conservatives had refused to introduce proper oversight for academies and free schools, relying only on the Department for Education.

According to David this led to large numbers of schools being left with no proper support to improve and as a result, several problems went unnoticed. He added that if all academy chains and local authorities were performing to their best, there would be 2,000 fewer schools requiring improvement, or in special measures.

“Here lies an inherent contradiction in the drive for autonomy – it has led to even more meddling from the centre.

“But this provides a limited capacity for scrutiny which inevitably drives attention towards only the very weakest schools.

“Regional Schools Commissioners are a response to this limited capacity and limited ability to micromanage from the centre. But they still cover absurdly large areas.

“As a consequence of not putting enough focus on a middle tier of accountability, we are allowing too many underperforming schools, weak local authorities and mediocre academy chains to deliver poor education for too long.

“Top down oversight, led by officials often hundreds of miles away, is allowing schools to slip through the net and contributing directly to lower standards.

“Many chains and local authorities across the country are doing a good job in driving up school performance.

“But others are lagging behind, with significantly higher levels of underperforming schools.

“If all local authorities and chains were performing at the level reached by many of the better middle tier bodies across the country, we would today have over 2,000 fewer ‘requires improvement and inadequate’ schools.”

The difference in pay between men and women has fallen to a record low amount, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has announced according to their latest figures.

The gender pay gap in April stood at 9.4% which was down from 10% the previous year. This figure was at 17.4% in 1997 when ONS began it’s records.

When commenting on the figures, the Liberal Democrat minister for equalities Jo Swinson said, “It’s good news to see a significant reduction in the pay gap over the last year. We should value the contribution of women and men in the workplace equally, so our vision has to be eliminating the pay gap completely.

“The Government will continue to tackle the causes of gender pay inequality. Shared Parental Leave will help to tackle the unequal split of caring responsibilities, and we are promoting pay transparency by making free analysis software available to employers.”

The Liberal Democrats have been leading the campaign on the issue of the gender pay gap. The party’s manifesto states a commitment to introduce a legal requirement which would see companies which employ more than 250 people having to publish the average pay of their male and female workers.

At the last full meeting of Bury Council I asked a question of Bury’s representatives to Transport for Greater Manchester about their plans for ‘Real-Time’ bus information at bus stops.

People might be familiar with the signs that we now have on Metrolink Platorms which show (after many years of them being unused) show what time the next trams are coming. People might also have seen the same thing at bus stops in other towns in this country, and also abroad.

The answer seems to be that Greater Manchester has NO plans for real-time bus information displays at bus stops. It does have plans for a ‘smart phone’ app which would enable people to look on their phone when the next buses were coming to their stop. This is great, but obviously no use at all for people who do not have smart phones, which is probably includes quite a few people who use buses.

What people have found in other places is that bus stop information increases people’s confidence in the bus system, and is one of the ways that people can be encouraged to use public transport more.

So why not Greater Manchester? We invested the computer here, surely we can manage some automated signs on key bus stops (I don’t think anyone is suggesting every single bus stop, but at important/busy stops this could be very useful.)

The answer we were given is: “I take your point but we’ve got many thousands of bus stops in Greater Manchester so for example we might be able to have them in somewhere like Bournemouth but Greater Manchester is just too big.”

We asked friends from around the country and here are just some of the places – big and small – that already have real-time bus information at their bus stops.

Birmingham
Sheffield
Leeds
Edinburgh
Norwich
Southampton
Maidenhead
London (all over, not just central London)
Milton Keynes
Reading
Guildford
Reigate
Redhill
Woking
Nottingham
Bedford
Bristol
Oxford
Brighton
Halifax
Huddersfield
Cambridge
Huntingdon
Maidstone
Cardiff
Gwynnedd
York
Abbots Langley
Aberdeen
Horsham
Crawley
Worthing
Chelmsford
Guildford
Poole
Hull
Newhaven
Aylesbury
Peterborough
Eastleigh
Sandwell
Colchester
Harrogate

Greater Manchester needs to do better!

Tim Pickstone- Holyrood Councillor

There will be a by-election in Bramhall South ward in Stockport tomorrow.

The election is seen as being very important not only in terms of Stockport council but also regarding Liberal Democrat MP Mark Hunter’s chances in Cheadle Hulme next May.

General door knocking will take place all day and any help would be much appreciated.

Anyone who’s interested in helping out should contact Claire Halliwell on 0161 486 1045 for further details.