What Sheryll should do next

South East Cornwall MP Sheryll Murray has come fourth in the annual ballot for Private Members Bills in the House of Commons. This is the chance for a backbench MP to put forward legislation.

All the attention will focus on the person who came top of the poll - James Wharton - and the his proposal of an EU referendum bill. But the number four position offers a real chance for Sheryll to propose a change in the law that would really benefit Cornwall.

She won't be short of ideas, but here is something that would do a huge amount for Cornwall and the people here. A bill to require change of use planning permission when someone wants to turn a permanently lived in residence to become a second home would, at a stroke, help thousands of families in Cornwall who cannot afford to own their home.

In far too much of Cornwall, houses that come onto the market are bought by people from up the line who want to use them as second homes. This deprives local families of the chance to buy them and the part-time residence means that local shops and businesses are deprived of trade, putting their future in jeopardy. It wouldn't affect houses already used as second homes, nor would it permanently prevent such change of use. What it would do would be to allow local authorities to judge whether another second home is in the best interests of the long term viability of a particular community.

Cornwall Council recently voted overwhelmingly to ask for this change in the law. It's not a party political thing. But it is a change that would have huge benefits for Cornwall.

So come on Sheryll, why not go for it?n


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An open letter to Sheryll Murray MP

Dear Sheryll

Are you a secret supporter of Devonwall?

I always assumed you weren't on the basis that the idea is an anathema to Cornish history and culture and about as popular around here as a cream tea with the jam on top.

But then, this afternoon, you used your twitter account to post the following:

"I thought Lib Dems believed in fairness for all yet they don't now appear to agree with equal representation for all voters. Disappointing!"

Obviously you were referring to Nick Clegg's decision to order Lib Dem MPs to vote against the new parliamentary constituencies after Tory backbenchers scuppered Lords reform.

But you see Sheryll, you can't have the new boundaries and the 'equal representation for all voters' without having a cross border seat that takes in parts of Devon and parts of Cornwall.

The Boundary Commission were given very strict limits for their work. No seat could be more than 5% bigger or smaller than the average and that meant that Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly couldn't have an exact number of constituencies. There would have to be one that crossed the border.

Most of us understood that. We argued that the rules needed to be looser. The Boundary Commission could still sort out some of the most glaring inconsistencies and even things up a lot, but they could also respect natural communities. You obviously felt that the Commission needed to be micro-managed and the result was Devonwall.

I've tried getting the answer out of you via a conversation on twitter, but you have three times refused to answer my question. So, do you support Devonwall?

Yours

Alex


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Tory MP and cabinet members break ranks over waste fiasco

The Cornwall Council spin machine was out in full force at today's cabinet meeting with claims being made that Cory are now collecting more than 99% of waste and recycling*. The trouble is that no one really believes these statistics any more and, even if they are true, it still means that around 5,000 bags a week are being left on Cornwall's kerbs.

As it was not a formal matter on the agenda, Tory council leader Alec Robertson said there would be no debate but his own colleague, Independent Neil Burden insisted in relating the catalogue of failures in his patch. "If 99% is being collected then the other 1% must all be in my division," he said.

And it's not just Neil who is causing problems on this issue. Conservative Cabinet Member Armand Toms has joined SE Cornwall MP Sheryll Murray in holding a public meeting to discuss the fiasco.

So no debate today and it appears that the famously 'open and transparent' council won't be releasing any monitoring data on the new contract and the number of missed collections. Stats on the percentage of waste sent to landfill and so on will be released on a monthly basis as before. But nothing on the failure of Cory to actually pick up the rubbish in the first place.

At the same time, the claim was being made that everyone in Cornwall, except a few places in the former Carrick, have had their new recycling equipment. At this, even Indie Housing boss Mark Kaczmarek was shaking his head in disbelief. Clearly there are problems in Kerrier too.

To his credit, Julian German repeated his apology for missed collections and the call centre problems. He also said that the council were looking at the contract penalties they can impose on Cory. We'll expect a lot more detail on these.

No one believed the council when it claimed that there was no real problem. Now it is claiming that there was a problem but it is all sorted and no one believes this either. With so many Tories and Independent cabinet members breaking ranks, isn't it time Cornwall Council finally started telling the truth about the waste fiasco?

*A word on the 99% figure. It's crap. A couple of weeks ago the claim was made that only 1.5% of collections had been missed. That was based on the number of people who successfully got through to the call centre to log a complaint. But only 4000 out of 22000 calls a day were getting through and even then, many thousands of homes have disappeared from the council's postcode database and so can't be logged. Some spin wizard in the fourth floor bunker flipped this number to claim that 98.5% of collections were being made. Now that number has risen to 99% but it's still as flimsy as it was before.

UPDATE - I appear to have caused some consternation in the comments with an aside pointing out that whilst Cllr Steve Double is Cabinet member in charge of the waste fiasco, his wife Anne is office manager for Sheryll Murray MP who is organising a meeting to highlight the failures in her patch. My apologies for any offence caused.

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New Conservative NI policy - Sheryll Murray doesn't agree

Today the Conservatives announced their new policy pledging to reverse the planned 1p rise in National Insurance contributions from both employers and workers. See here for my previous post on this subject.

This time we got his ideas about how this would be paid for.

The big idea is that the Tories in government would seek to renogotiate contracts with companies to try to get a better deal for the taxpayer. The argument is that many contracts were signed when interest rates were much higher and there was a booming economy which allowed companies to charge more (and the government to pay more) than is possible now.

The trouble is that Cornwall Conservatives, particularly SE Cornwall candidate Sheryll Murray, have been shrilly opposed to such a move in Cornwall.

A month ago, there was an Any Questions style debate at County Hall featuring representatives from the different groups on the Council. Sheryll Murray was in the front row and was very vocal in her opposition to (almost) anything that Lib Dem Robin Teverson said. She was particularly opposed to the idea put forward by Robin that Cornwall Council ought to seek to negotiate with SITA over the waste contract given the change in circumstances noted above and the refusal of planning permission fot he St Dennis incinerator.

'Oh no', shouted Ms Murray. 'You can't possibly consider negotiating over a deal that has already been signed. That's a ridculous idea that will never work.' (I paraphrase slightly, but that was the intent of her shrieks.)

Well the chickens have now come home to roost as her Shadow Chancellor is proposing exactly the same course of action to pay the NI bill. I presume that she will be mentioning her opposition to this 'ridiculous' policy in her election leaflets... but I won't hold my breath.