WELCOME NOTE Welcome to my first newsletter of 2016. This newsletter goes through some of the most recent developments and initiatives I have been campaigning on including protecting funding for the Birmingham-based Illegal Money Lending Team who prosecute backstreet loan sharks and calling for the safeguarding of local council’s rights to ethically invest. Also in the news are the ongoing...
Today I asked the Chancellor at PMQs about the England Illegal Money Lending Team – based in Birmingham. The England Illegal Money Lending Team is national organisation which investigates, prosecutes and supports victims who have fallen into the clutches of loan sharks. The scheme has helped over 24,000 loan shark victims. It costs £3.6m to run but has got £63million of illegal debts written off...
To describe the Government’s twists and turns over the way our Police are funded as a shambles would be putting it charitably. That was the message from an emergency statement where the Police Minister was forced to apologise to the House of Commons today. Confused? You should be. It would all be comical if it wasn’t so serious. But it is serious. Very serious. It is about nothing less than the...
On Monday I was at the Birmingham launch of Living Wage Week 2015 where the new rate for the Living Wage outside of London was unveiled - rising from £7.85 per hour to £8.25 per hour. When I say "Living Wage", I mean the real one - a figure produced from independent research into what people in the UK need to get by. It's not about luxuries. It reflects the real cost of living taking into account...
Under changes introduced by the Government, thousands of people across Birmingham and West Mercia could lose their right to vote unless they individually re-register. The registers with the largest predicted drop off tend to be in urban areas with a high incidence of multiple occupancy housing, regular home movers and large numbers of historically low propensity registering voters. According to...
When the West Midland comes together, we can get results. That is the message from recent changes to the way the Government allocates funding for Policing across different parts of the country. West Midland Police has already been hit hard by government cuts of over 20% in the last five years. On top of that, however, there were real fears that our region could be hit even harder in comparison to...
I was Labour Member of Parliament for Birmingham Northfield between 1992 and 2019 and a former Shadow Transport Minister. I now chair Healthwatch in Birmingham and Solihull, and the West Midlands Board of Remembering Srebrenica. I also work as a public affairs consultant. I am an effective community advocate and stakeholder alliance builder with a passion for human rights. I am a trustee of the Balfour Project charity and of Citizens Advice Birmingham, and a former Chair of Medical Aid for Palestinians.