Stopping the Super Tanker

Written by Paul Holmes MP and published in View from the Commons on Fri 20th Nov 2009

It is often said that once the juggernaut of a Super Tanker is underway then it can take a mile or more to stop it, even when the engines are thrown into full reverse. Getting the Government to admit it is wrong and change direction is much the same!

In 2001, only a few weeks after I was first elected, workers at Chesterfield Cylinders faced losing their pension through no fault of their own and despite Government reassurances that such occupational pensions were safe. The first Minister I dealt with that autumn in 2001, categorically stated that it 'was nothing to do with the Government'. It took four years of constant argument to persuade the Government to change their mind in 2005 and accept responsibility for 90% of the lost pensions at Chesterfield Cylinders, Dema Glass and Coalite (Anglo United).

I am now locked in a similar battle over the Government's Concessionary Bus Fares scheme. An excellent scheme -except they failed to provide enough money to pay for it. Thirty Councils have had to cut services and raid reserves in order to pay for Government failure over the last two years.

When I first raised the issue, during Parliamentary Question Time in March 2008, the Minister (then Rosie Winterton), told me that "I was completely wrong".

A year (and much debate and letter writing later), I met with the 'Bus Minister' Paul Clark and his Civil Servants in March 2009. He insisted that the Government had carefully calculated how much money to give to each Council and had 'got it right'.

This month, November 2009, nearly twenty months after I first raised the issue, I got a letter from yet another Minister. Yes he said there was a problem and he was consulting on whether to give some Councils more money in 2010-2011.

A step forward -as long as the consultation actually does come up with the £1.83 Million promised to Chesterfield for next year. However the Minister did warn in his letter that it might not. Also of course no mention of paying the back the missing £3.4 Million from 2008-2010. That's 11% of CBC's budget, that's £2Million lost from Council reserves and 47 Council jobs gone. What an absolute and utter disgrace that Chesterfield has had to suffer these cuts to pay for Government failure.

The battle for next year's money continues. The battle for the last two years money has only just begun.