World Diabetes Day 14 November 2017

1 in 10 adults across the world will have diabetes by 2040 if current trends continue. Including 313 million women. That’s why this year the theme of World Diabetes Day 2017 is Women and diabetes.

The campaign is designed to share the importance of affordable access for all women at risk for or living with diabetes to the essential diabetes medicines and technologies.

You can visit the International Diabetes Federation website (https://www.idf.org) to learn more about the challenges facing diabetics and how to raise awareness by hosting an event. Together we can help women and girls across the world get fair and free treatment, as well as the education needed to help prevent diabetes taking hold.

Diabetes in Great Britain
In Britain diabetes is an ever increasing problem, in fact since 1996 the number of diabetics has more than doubled. Luckily understanding the causes of type 2 diabetes can help prevent it ever being an issue for many people.

With a few simple steps you can limit your likelihood of getting type 2 diabetes and share that learning with your family too. Take a look here at the NHS guide to avoiding diabetes (https://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Diabetes/Pages/Avoiddiabetes.aspx).–

Fin McCaul, Clinical Lead for Long Term Conditions at NHS Bury CCG said: “Around three in five cases of diabetes can be prevented or delayed. In Bury we offer local people help as part of the Healthier You National Diabetes Prevention Programme. GPs can refer patients at risk to a 12-month intensive programme where they can get personalised help to reduce their risk of type 2 diabetes, including education on healthy eating and lifestyle, help to lose weight and bespoke physical exercise programmes, all of which together have been proven to reduce the risk of developing the disease. The free NHS Health Check for people aged 40 – 74 years helps to identify patients at risk of developing the condition and detect those living with undiagnosed diabetes.”

Jo Swinson: We must end period poverty

Talking about periods apparently is still taboo. In fact we have had to wait until this month, in 2017 for the first ad ever in the UK to show a hand pouring a test-tube of blood-coloured liquid onto a sanitary towel, in lieu of the standard sterile-blue.

 

The advert, which forms part of a new campaign called ‘Blood Normal’, attempts to get rid of the embarrassment around the ‘Aunt Flo’ after a recent survey found that nine out of ten women attempt to hide the fact they are on their period, and 56% of girls said they would rather be bullied at school than talk to their parents about periods.

For something half the population experience on a monthly basis that is ludicrous.

For the majority of us they are an inconvenience, for example feeling we have to take our entire handbag with us to the bathroom at work, the surest tell-tale sign. But for others, particularly girls who have just started menstruating, the embarrassment can be enormous resulting in lost days of schooling and a huge knock to their self-esteem. This is particularly the case for girls from low-income families who might see their parents struggling to make ends meet and feel reluctant to ask them to add sanitary products to the weekly shop.

A survey by Plan International UK found that 1 in 10 girls had been unable to afford sanitary products. The fact that no one talks about this means that it remains hidden. In a country as well-off as Britain this simply shouldn’t be happening. And it can be stopped. We can end period poverty. The truth is it, it wouldn’t even cost a lot, relatively speaking.

That is why ahead of this year’s Budget I am calling on the Government to end period poverty by making sanitary products available for free in schools.

The issue came to light when some teachers in Leeds wrote to a charity, Freedom4Girls, who send sanitary products to girls in Kenya, to ask if they would be able to send some of their donations to West Yorkshire where the teachers had noticed girls were skipping school regularly every month because they couldn’t afford sanitary products. If the girls could go to the school nurse’s office and help themselves to pads or tampons, no questions asked, this problem could be solved immediately. That is why we believe if we could simply get sanitary products into school we would be well on the way to ending period poverty.

This year’s Budget will no doubt have various giveaways for business and investors – those who have a voice – and the money to influence. It is our job to speak for those who are left behind, who feel powerless and voiceless. We are not alone in advocating for a change. Tens of thousands of people have signed petitions calling for the end of period poverty, and it is time that as a party we add our voice, and add it in numbers. Please take a moment now to add your name to our petition here.

There are brilliant charities up and down the country making sure that girls don’t go without and big companies like Bodyform doing their bit to tackle the issue. The Government should be at the forefront, recognising that access to sanitary products are a basic right. Justine Greening looks after both the Education and Equalities brief so should be well appraised of this issue. It is not too late to make a difference, with the Budget coming up on the 22nd November now is the time to crank up the pressure and make it something they can no longer ignore.

Reporting Back Greater Manchester CA Scrutiny

Last month saw the second meeting of the new Greater Manchester Combined Authority Scrutiny Committees.

A scrutiny process is established in the laws which establish the city region Mayor (Andy Burnham), and in Greater Manchester these are just now taking shape. Three Scrutiny Committees have been established, each is made up of 15 councillors from across Greater Manchester (11 Labour, 3 Conservative and 1 Lib Dem). Under the legislation the Chair has to be from a political party that is different from the elected Mayor, so that is two conservatives and one Lib Dem.

Councillor Tim Pickstone is the Liberal Democrat on the Corporate Issues and Reform Scrutiny Committee, and one of two Bury councillors on that Committee (the other being East Ward Labour Councillor Stella Smith).

The first meet was mostly training, so this second October meeting was the first meeting getting down to business. The main issues considered were:

Greater Manchester Living Wage
The Mayor was there to discuss the proposal for Greater Manchester Combined Authority to sign up to the Living Wage Foundation’s ‘real’ living wage as an Employer.

Outside of London, the Living Wage Foundation’s ‘real’ Living Wage is set at £8.45 per hour and is reviewed and changed annually. By contrast, the National Living Wage is the legal minimum payable to those over the age of 25 and is set by Government. The National Living Wage is currently £7.50 per hour.

The idea is that the Combined Authority should ‘lead by example’ and become Living Wage accredited in order to encourage other employers to adopt this standard themselves.

The Accreditation would only apply to the staff currently directly employed by the Combined Authority (which is not that many at present), and also Greater Manchester Fire (and Waste from next year). At present there are hard any directly affected staff that are not already paid the ‘real’ living wage level, but the accreditation also applies to sub-contractors, so the CA would need to work with some contractors (e.g. secturity or cleaning companies which it contracts with) so they can comply as appropriate.

For me one issue which we do need to address is the significantly lower minimum wages which are currently allowed for people under 25 (e.g. £5.60/hour for 18-20 year olds or £3.10/hour for apprentices) which will be making it very difficult for young people to access bigger items like housing.

The proposal has since been agreed by the GMCA Executive. More information on the Living Wage Foundation here.

Future Work Programme
Much of the rest of the meeting was to determine which issues the Committee is going to Scrutinise at it’s monthly meetings going forwards.

The main role of this committees is to look at some of what are called ‘cross-cutting’ themes that the Combined Authority is dealing with.

The biggest one of these is around ‘School Readiness’. This is a particular issue for Greater Manchester because we are as a region significantly behind the national average – the percentage of children age 5 achieving a Good Level of Development (GLD) in 2015 at 62.4% compared to 66% nationally. Almost two in every five children in GM do not reach a GLD this increases to one in every two children in receipt of free school meals and one in five children with Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND). This is going to be a significant agenda item for the Committee in future months.

The second issue which we need to focus on is around budget and money, and the Committee received a briefing on GMCA budgets across the different GM authorities (Fire, Police, Waste, Transport etc) and agreed a plan to provide proper scrutiny at meetings running up to the 2018-19 budgets.

The papers for the meeting are here.
More information please ask – tim@burylibdems.net

UK – Firefighters cut by 1,146

Firefighters cut by 1,346 while fire safety audits down 14% – figures published last week have revealed. The number of firefighters (FTE) fell by 1,346, from 34,395 to 33,049, in the year to March 2017 a reduction of 4%.
The number of fire and rescue support staff saw a 10% decrease, from 7,952 to 7,132

The number of fire safety audits of buildings is down by 14% compared to the previous year.

Wera Hobhouse MP, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Communities and Local Government, commented:
“These figures show fire services across the country are being cut to the bone. Firefighters do an incredible job, but are increasingly finding themselves overstretched and under-resourced. The government must reverse these cuts and give fire services the resources to keep our communities safe.

As the Grenfell Tower tragedy showed, we urgently need to invest more in fire prevention. Fire services need more staff so they can carry out vital safety checks and ensure buildings are safe.”

More information
In total 40,180 staff (FTE) were employed by Fire and Rescue Services on 31 March 2017. This was a 5% decrease compared with the previous year (42,347 in 2016).

33,049 staff (FTE) were employed as firefighters on 31 March 2017. This was a 4% decrease compared with the previous year.

7,131 (FTE) were employed fire control or support staff, a 10% decrease compared with the previous year
See figures on fire prevention and fire safety audits here

Fire safety audits are carried out by Fire And Rescue Authorities to check that premises are being properly managed regarding fire safety.

Fire and Rescue Authorities carried out 54,247 fire safety audits in 2016/17, 14% fewer than in 2015/16 (63,201)

In 2015/16 the highest proportion of fire safety audits were carried out on shop premises (20% or 10,880), followed by care homes (14% or 7,391) and licensed premises (13% or 6,867).

17,000 (32%) of fire safety audits were deemed unsatisfactory. This led to 369 enforcement notices, 527 prohibition notices, 61 alteration notices and 68 prosecutions

Reporting Back – Bury Council’s Cabinet

Last month was the regular meeting of Bury Council’s Cabinet. This is the meeting of the eight Cabinet members from the ruling Labour Group,  also attended by the two opposition Leaders on the Council – though Labour changed the rules so we couldn’t vote at the meeting earlier in the year.

Councillor Tim Pickstone reports:

The full papers for the meeting are here, the main items which may be of interest to residents included:

Business Rates Discretionary Relief
You may recall a lot of discussion earlier in the year about a review of business rateable values which meant that many businesses were facing increases in Business Rates. The Government announced a relief scheme for small businesses in the March 2017 budget, which is up to local Councils to administer.
Bury will be paying relief to smaller companies with rateable values of less than £100,000. In 2017-18 this will be 60% of any increase in rates, which will be given to people automatically without any need to apply. There are similar but smaller levels of relief in the subsequent three years.

New Neighbourhood Engagement Plan – Implementation
People may (or may not!) have noticed that the Council very quietly abolished ‘Township Forums’ earlier this year. For us this was the Prestwich Township Form which met about four times a year at the Longfield where members of the public could come along and take part in discussions about the local area.
What replaces Township Forums is still being brought into place. As we understand this uses three ways of working:
– online engagement – using a new ‘online tool’ that the Council has paid for. (I asked at the meeting how confident we were that we were going to get members of the public to use a ‘Bury Council’ online tool, rather than the ones we’re all very familiar with to talk about local issues (like Facebook). I remain to be convinced that a Council can do this, but happy to be proved wrong…)
– meetings – ONE a year at a ‘Township’ level – so there is a meeting in Prestwich in November, and meetings at a ‘Ward’ level – no details yet.
– funding for community groups which are allocated either at a public meeting (two across Bury) called ‘The Pitch’, or a small budget to be given for ward councillors to allocate (with very clear rules on what this can be used for). For our area (Holyrood Ward) the three Councillors will work together on a single scheme, and we would want to make sure there was a fair and open process that everyone can see.
Some significant changes in this area of work, and early days to see if it will be an improvement on the Township Forum process.

New Homes to be built in Radcliffe
This item was restricted from the public because of commercial information so I can’t talk about any details, but the basics are have been made public by the Council.Essentially this is the Council building Eight two-bed homes on two current unused ‘garage sites’ in Radcliffe which are owned by the Council.
The properties would be for shared ownership, where a resident buys a share of the property and pays rent on the proportion they don’t own. They can then buy further shares in the property in the future. Our view is that Council’s should play a significant role in making sure that there are homes that people can actually afford to live in. If anything, Bury has been very slow to do this, and 8 new houses is not going to solve very much on its own. We would urge the Council to be more ambitious. Perhaps a better use of its money than buying commercial property outside of Bury…..

Any questions on any of the above – please ask! tim@burylibdems.net

Ed Davey: Rise in violent crime shows May failing to back Britain’s police

Violent crime has increased by 19% in the last year, figures published today have revealed.

Knife crime was up 26% year-on-year, while overall crimes increased by 13%.

Commenting on the reported rise in violent crime, Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesperson, said:

“People’s lives are under threat because Theresa May is failing to back Britain’s police.

“These increases in violent crime are frightening and it ought to be government’s first priority to protect the public. Yet with her police cuts, Theresa May has gone soft on crime and is letting the country down.

“Theresa May was the Home Secretary for six years: she ought to understand the needs of the police. Instead, she has left them out in the cold.”

UK facing “fly-tipping epidemic” with 1 million incidents in a year

The Liberal Democrats have called on the government to act to tackle Britain’s “fly-tipping epidemic,” as figures revealed fly-tipping incidents topped a million this year for the first time since 2008.

• Local authorities in England recorded 1,002,154 cases of fly-tipping in 2016-17, up 7% on the previous year. This is equivalent to 114 every hour.

• The estimated cost to the taxpayer for clearing up fly-tipping was £58 million, up 16% on the previous year

• The number of prosecutions for fly-tipping fell by a quarter to 1,602, compared to 2,135 the previous year

Wera Hobhouse MP, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Communities and Local Government, herself a former Councillor for Norden in Rochdale. commented:

“Britain’s fly-tipping epidemic is spiralling out of control.

“Our roads and countryside are being turned into rubbish dumps, costing the taxpayer millions, but too many fly-tippers are being let off the hook.

“The government needs to do more to ensure those responsible are brought to justice.

“Cash-strapped councils need more funding so they can increase bin collections and stop charging people to get rid of large household goods.”

Reporting Back – Meeting the Mayor of Greater Manchester

Last week, Councillor Tim Pickstone met with Greater Manchester’s ‘Metro Mayor’ Andy Burnham. Two of Greater Manchester’s Lib Dem Group Leaders (Bury and Stockport) met with the Mayor as part of a six-monthly series of meetings between Lib Dem councillors across Greater Manchester.

Obviously at this first meeting we were unable to raise everything we wanted to raise, but focussed on four issues:

Greater Manchester Strategic Framework
I asked how realistic the Mayor’s aim of ‘less green belt land to be built on’ was going to be – a hugely important issue for people in many parts of Greater Manchester. The Mayor was clear that the position was ‘less’ green belt, not ‘no’ green belt, but that there would still be difficult choices and decisions that had to be made. I also asked about his previous support for increased housing in some of our town centres, particularly smaller town centres, and he said that he was keen to do this as part of a bigger plan to bring ‘life’ back into town centres where these are struggling.

Metrolink and Transport
We asked about Metrolink, and noted the current capacity issues especially on the Bury line. I raised with the Mayor the issue of early morning and late night travel – particularly an issue for people who have jobs that start very early, or finish very late (often some of the less well paid positions) and whether we could look at extending the operating hours of Metrolink or of bus routes. (Metrolink already operates in the night on the airport line.)

Andy Burnham said that there were opportunities with the potential for bus re-regulation to achieve an improved bus network for the county and that there was potential for growth, particularly given that bus usage has fallen by nearly a third in ten years.

Crime – 101 Number Delays
We asked about the significant delays that had been experienced by many people who ring the non-emergency policy number 101. Information secured through Freedom of Information requests had shown that almost a quarter of calls are ‘given up’, with average waits at the time of asking over 12 minutes. It was confirmed that action was being taken to address this.

Greater Manchester Combined Authority
With the new Mayor a lot of new systems are being put in place, with new arrangements for ‘scrutiny’ the Mayor and other bodies being set up at a Greater Manchester level. We called on the Mayor to have transparent process on how representatives of different political parties were included in this process. We also said we were keen as Liberal Democrats to play our full role in the Combined Authority where we can, for example if all-party representation to Government was needed.

If you have any questions, please get in touch.

Changes to Parliamentary Constituencies Proposed

The Boundary Commission for England has today published its revised proposals for new Parliamentary constituencies. This is part of a review to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600 and to ensure all constituencies are the same size.

Under the revised plans Bury borough is split three ways: a ‘Bury’ constituency consitsing of the town of Bury, Tottington and Ramsbottom; a Kearsley and Radcliffe seat, and a Prestwich and Middleton constituency (which includes most of Whitefield). For Bury the proposals are slightly more sensible as both Radcliffe and Whitefield avoid being ‘split down the middle’ between two constituencies. The proposals don’t change local government boundaries – so everywhere which is part of Bury Council now, stays the same.

But this could just be a complete waste of public money. Obviously the Conservatives do not have a majority in Parliament, and their DUP allies have been opposed to the changes in Northern Ireland. Vince Cable and the Liberal Democrats have called on the Government to stop wasting public money on this review if it has no intention of finishing the job.

More information and to respond the the consultation at the Boundary Commission for England consultation website.

Cable: This was a speech of a brave PM with a disloyal Cabinet

Responding to Theresa May’s conference speech last week, Liberal Democrat Leader Vince Cable commented:

“This was the speech of a brave Prime Minister struggling on, while her disloyal Cabinet colleagues openly plot against her.

“Rows over Brexit have left Theresa May only able to tinker around the edges of the great challenges the country faces, from the housing crisis to the future of the NHS.

“The conference season has shown both the Conservatives and Labour are bitterly divided, with the more moderate factions overwhelmed by their ideological extremes.

“Only the Liberal Democrats are united, offering a practical programme for government that will tackle social inequality while remaining economically literate.”