David Lepper

Labour Party | Brighton Pavilion

Westminster diary for Co-operative News

Westminster Diary - Co-operative News

A major media myth about Parliament in the last year is that backbench MPs have not been allowed to dicuss Iraq.

In fact, I doubt that any issue has been discussed more than Iraq – in debates, in Ministerial and Prime Minister's Questions and in Select Committees. The Liaison Committee, on which I serve, grilled the Prime Minsister for two and half hours on Iraq in January.

But there have been only two votes to gauge Parliamentary opinion. In November on UN Security Council Resolution 1441, 32 of us Labour MPs voted against the government to back the call for a second UN resolution and a House of Commons vote before any military action. Then on February 26th 122 of us backed Chris Smith's amendment saying that the case for military action was not yet proved.

Among Labour/Co-opereative MPs opinion is divided, but as the February debate showed, there is cross party support for the 4 conditions for British military involvement set out in a recent Early Day Motion - (a) clear evidence that Iraq poses an imminent threat to peace, (b) a substantive motion in the Commons authorising military action, (c) an express resolution of the UN Security Council authorising military action and (d) that all other policy options have been exhausted.

By the time you read this the situation is sure to have changed - but at the moment the governmnet still has to convince the public that Iraq is a threat and war is the only option, let alone convince many of us in Parliament who, like me, backed our military action in Kosovo and Afganistant.

While Iraq has understandably dominated, the other business of Parliament goes on.

I have spent much of my time since January on the Committee dealing with the Local Government Bill. Our cross-party recommendation by 19 votes to 2 to repeal the homophobic Section 28 would probably have attracted far more attention at any other time. We now have to see how the Lords will react to that.

The same Bill will protect the pension rights of local authority staff when councils contract out services and give local councils like mine further tools to deal with housing problems by allowing them to vary the council tax discount for empty private properties and second homes.

Of special interest to the co-operative movement should be the Part 4 of the Bill to allow the setting up of Business Improvement Districts.

The BIDs idea comes from the US. In New York's BIDs, empty commercial properties have been filled, graffiti has been dealt with effectively and 40,000 new jobs have been created over five years. In Washington, there has been a 28 per cent. drop in serious crime, thefts from cars are down by 71.6 per cent. and pick-pocketing is down by 50 per cent.

The town centre management movement in the UK has grown in the last ten years bringing together local councils, the business community and residents to combat urban “crime and grime”, make urban centres attractive places in which to live and work and reverse the trend to out of town shopping.

But a problem has been sustainable funding for these schemes.In 1999 Lord Rogers Urban Task Force recommended action. Since then the cross-party Town Centre Management Group which I chair and the Association of Town Centre Manageement has been lobbying government.

This Bill allows local councils and their business communities to get-together to agree 5-year improvement projects funded by a levy paid by all the businesses in the area following a vote of those businesses.Despite understandable scepticism about the willingness of business rate payers to pay more, 80 plus areas expressed an interest in becoming pilot BIDs and from them over 20 pilot schemes are now being prepared, ready to get off the ground as soon as the legislation is through Parliament.

I am chairing the steering group for the pilot projects which brings together the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the Countryside Agency, English Partnerships, local governmnet and the private sector.It is especially good see that in at least one area – Plymouth- it's the Co-op which is taking a leading role among local businesses.