MP Praises Boys School

Brian Binley MP for Northampton South paid a visit to Northampton School for Boys last week to talk to current politics students about the work of an MP.

Brian spoke about how he became involved in politics and his role as an agent and a county councillor before being elected as the MP for Northampton South. Brian also spoke of the reasons why he was a Conservative and the importance of traditional values to him.

When students quizzed Brian there was a wide range of questions ranging from how he has voted in the Commons to the issue of lowering the voting age.

Brian also recognised during his visit the fantastic achievements of the School which recently had 12 students provisionally accepted to study at Oxford and Cambridge on completion of their A-Levels.

Brian said: “I found it useful to talk to young people about issues that matter to them. I think it is fantastic that there are young people out there who are interested in politics and we should encourage that.”

“They had clearly researched me and their questions showed a clear direction in their thinking”

“The school should take credit as they are clearly maintaining excellent standards and I was absolutely delighted to hear the news that 12 pupils had been successful in their applications to Oxford and Cambridge Universities.”

Protect our town centre- Brian Binley MP

Brian Binley MP for Northampton South has blamed the Local Authorities for pushing people and small businesses away from the town centre over the past 40 years by making the town less accessible.

The Local Authority has gradually driven people, customers and local businesses out of the town centre with an over abundance of yellow lines, high parking charges, new road layouts, allowing buildings without facilities for small local businesses and creating a night time scene which makes many people apprehensive and some even fearful of coming into town.

Brian has consistently campaigned on behalf of small business and was influential in the 2006 report by: The Commission into Small Shops in the High Street, which suggested 6 guidelines to encourage business back into the town centre. - It is clear they have not paid any attention to those guidelines.

A recent report from the British Retail Consortium also highlights the importance of the town centre to Northampton. Over 9,000 people are employed by the retail sector and the report also suggests that the town centre provides an important focal point for locals as well as a place of interest for visitors.

Brian said: “The local authorities have driven businesses away for far too long now. They have not taken into account a single recommendation from the 2006 report.”

“The town centre is vitally important to Northampton with 10% of people employed in this sector. The Local Authority needs to make sizeable changes in its approach if it wants the town to grow and prosper.”

MP offers support to counselling charity

Brian Binley MP for Northampton South visited Manna House counselling services in Northampton last week to raise the awareness of the good work which the charity does.

Manna House is run as a completely charitable organisation and was set-up in 1984. The charity supports over 2,400 people each year right across Northamptonshire, tackling a wide range of issues from bereavement, redundancy, depression and suicide to abuse.

Over the last few years Manna House has worked hard to make their services more accessible with the first satellite clinic opened in Kettering in 1995 and in 1999 a second satellite clinic in Brixworth.

Funding has always been an issue for Manna House as it is for most charities and for the past nine years the majority of the charities funding has been secured through a grant from Northamptonshire Borough Council. More recently, the County Council has also provided funds through a grant although if the charity looses the grant it faces the prospect of not being able to continue its good work.

Brian said: “I was asked to visit the Counselling service as they needed advice on the best way to secure extra funding. I was delighted that they asked me to visit.”

“Having visited the counselling service I have seen first hand the great work that they do. They have done a great job for a number of years and it would be a great shame if they could not continue with the work they are doing in the future”

MP challenges Minister on College Cuts

Brian Binley MP for Northampton South challenged Kevin Brennan Minister for Further Education, Skills, Apprenticeships and Consumer Affairs this morning (Tuesday 9th February 2010) at the Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee meeting on funding cuts for Northampton College.

Brian had previously talked with Len Closs, the Principal of the College, and was shocked to learn of the damaging reductions in Adult Learning Responsive funding which would impact heavily on the college’s budget and would sizably hit skills training for adults at the college in the coming years.

The reduction for Northampton College of 22.3% is one of the largest cuts in the FE sector in the Country and the College is struggling to come to terms with such a significant reduction to its financial allocation.

The cuts come at a difficult time for the college which is currently managing a major build programme which is due to continue well into 2012 and demands sizeable focus and extra cost in itself.

The building programme will improve the college’s capacity to welcome more adult learners, many of them from some of the most deprived communities in Northampton, but the likelihood is now that the College will struggle to find the revenue needed to meet that additional demand.

Brian pressed the Minister, Kevin Brennan, on why there has been such a cut in funding to and the Minister responded by saying “he would go back and look again at Northampton College’s allocation.”

Brian Said: “This cut is one of the highest in the Country and is nearly a quarter of the college’s current ALR funding. And that is a lot of money to find. It means a real term cash reduction of 11.5% in the current financial year and an even greater 19.3% in the following year and that is massive by anyone’s standards.”

“The college has already stated that they are struggling with the reductions so I am delighted that the Minister has agreed to look again at the ALR funding for Northampton College.”

“Len Closs, the Principal of Northampton College is a very fine Principal and a highly skilled and experienced teacher and I commend his efforts to improve our Further Education structure. However, he cannot do this on his own. Funding is needed and such a major cut would significantly harm the college’s ability to continue to maintain and improve the services it already provides.”

MP and PPC give their support to sponsored sleep out

Brian Binley MP for Northampton South and Michael Ellis Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Northampton North are supporting the sponsored sleep out taking place at St. Giles Church in Northampton this evening.

Both Brian and Michael have taken part in previous sleep outs and Michael Ellis is once again participating. A recent bout of Flu has meant that Brian is unable to take part but he will be in attendance at the start of the evening to wish the YMCA well in their efforts.

The attendance of other political parties this year highlights how well the charity has done in raising the awareness of homeless people and it appears that the Liberals are jumping on the Conservative bandwagon.

Brian Said: “the previous sleep out was an eye opener, it is certainly something I won’t forget especially after being told to get a job by a drunken Scottish man at 3am.”

“I am attending this year to pledge my continued support for this worthwhile cause and they have done a fantastic job in raising the profile.”

MP "Charmed Minister"

Brian Binley MP for Northampton South has extracted a promise from the Government to review the formula for Police funding which has resulted in Northamptonshire County Constabulary loosing £1.8 million over the last 3 years and an even greater figure in the period prior to that.

Brian who was speaking in the debate on Police funding in the House of Commons yesterday (3rd February 2010), said that the current way formula funding was calculated was not only incomprehensible but used incorrect information. The formula uses national statistics, and unbelievably, the Office for National Statistics stated that the population of Northampton would not grow between 2000-2008.

Brian continued: “Northampton is part of the government’s major housing plans and surely the Minister has been to Northampton and seen the thousands upon thousands of new housing and many of the people living in them are newcomers….Unless people in Northamptonshire are dying at an incredible rate there must have been an increase in population….. No wonder we consider these figures to be completely inaccurate.”

The Minister said he was impressed by the speech delivered by Brian claiming that “at last I can smile sweetly at the Honorable Member for Northampton South, because he has raised that issue in a way that can only charm me into responding to him in a positive way.”


Brian Said: “I am delighted that the Minister listened to the points I raised and recognised the importance of the need to change the formula funding.”

“I have been arguing for years that the current system is unfair to counties like Northamptonshire and having spoken with the Police it was clear that the County Constabulary was loosing out. I am delighted to have got some action at last.”

“Northamptonshire Police has lost £1.8 million in formula grant over the last three years. That would have paid for the equivalent of 20 extra officers on the beat every year- this is simply unacceptable.”

Brian also said that he couldn’t understand why Northumbria received an additional £36million a year in grant which had been unfairly taken from Northamptonshire and similar counties.

Brian said: “I can think of no other reason for this totally biased distribution of funds other than Northumbria has a mass of Labour seats and the imbalance is for political, not policing, reasons.”

Corruption in high places

Unemployment in Northampton increased by over 50% in 2009 over 2008, and the town also saw an increase in the number of companies going bust with 291 bankruptcy orders issued on businesses in the town in 2008.

Both the rise in unemployment and the loss of businesses in Northampton are well above the national average. And it is not over yet. The insolvency figures have yet to be released for 2009 but the projection is for a further rise on 2008 figures.

Recent Government figures show that Britain is finally coming out of recession with a minute 0.1% growth in the final quarter of 2009, yet we now learn that the Government is hedging its bets by suggesting that there might be a dip back into recession for the final quarter of this financial year. And yesterday Yvette Cooper, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, warned that unemployment could increase again by the summer.

So what has the Government done for Northampton?

It set-up The Strategic Investment Fund that pledged £750 million pounds nationwide to help businesses in recession and the latest figures show £521 million has been granted to businesses up and down the country. And how much have businesses in Northampton South received? Exactly nothing.

But it gets worst. Recent figures published in the News of The World on Sunday claim that of the £521million spent to date 96% has gone to businesses in Labour constituencies with the rest of the money allocated in Liberal Democrat constituencies. In other words not only have companies in Northampton South not received a penny in assistance but not one Conservative constituency in the country has received help.


Brian Said: “This degree of financial gerrymandering is as close to corruption as it gets. Northampton has experienced one of the highest increases in unemployment in the country and suffered well above average business bankruptcies and yet this Government doesn’t even have the decency to help the town by granting money from a national fund designed to help businesses through the recession.

As the News of The World said: “Are there really no companies in Tory held constituencies who need help?”

I say, of course there are. It’s just that this Government is playing politics with peoples livelihoods and they ought to be ashamed of themselves."

It’s time to sanction Iran

Iran’s nuclear activities and its sponsorship of international terrorism poses an ever growing threat which must be dealt with by the international community. A year after President Obama took office, his administration now talks little of a policy of rapprochement towards Iran and indeed he has decided to strengthen the US fleet in the Gulf to counter what he clearly sees as a heightened threat. However both the EU and the Americans have wasted much time pursuing a policy of appeasement which has clearly failed. If we had listened to the right people we might not have wasted that time.

Mrs Maryam Rajavi, President elect of the main opposition coalition The National Council of Resistance of Iran, announced, during a visit to the European Parliament in December 2004, that Iran was like a volcano ready to erupt. That statement was made over five years ago, and indeed the volcano has erupted. Iranians have proved they are ready for change. Perhaps we should have listened a little more to Mrs Rajavi.

The solution to the problem has in fact been spelt out by the people of Iran who have visibly shown they want internal democratic change. The question we need to ask ourselves is what the West should do to assist in that process?

Ethical issues and economic weapons should be the key factors to pointing the way forward. War is clearly not a viable option. But nor is appeasement not least because the Mullahs regime is now incapable of making the concessions required to arrive at an acceptable agreement. Indeed Iranian officials have admitted that in the current domestic situation, with an increasingly fragile regime, one step back could lead to the regimes collapse. So the policy of appeasement we have so consistently pursued has become increasingly redundant.

We should therefore look to the Third Option which has been consistently proposed by the Iranian opposition in exile as the way forward. The Third Option can be summed up very simply in two short phrases. Firstly world leaders should lift all political restrictions placed on the Iranian opposition. Secondly we should impose a more restricting regime of tougher, comprehensive, targeted, but binding sanctions onto the Mullah’s Iran.

There have long been arguments to the effect that sanctions would be disastrous for the Iranian people to say nothing of British businesses. But those arguments need to be looked at in more depth. Let’s take the case of a comprehensive oil embargo.

Firstly the Iranian people are not benefiting from the oil revenues at present, not least because Iran’s leaders are increasingly using them to support international terrorism, a clandestine nuclear weapons programme and a rigid policy of domestic repression. And who is to say how much has been lodged in Swiss bank accounts.

Secondly the regime pays 2,000,000 Rials a day, the equivalent of one month's salary for a teacher, to the paramilitary Basij forces whose prime purpose is to instil fear by beating up people in the streets. Indeed it could well be that the reduction of oil revenues could dry up the finances available for internal terrorism and would be welcomed by the millions who have demonstrated in recent months.

The potential effect of sanctions on the people of Iran should be seen in the context in which the Iranian people have been willing to take to the streets and risk losing their lives for freedom. Many of them will tell you that sanctions are a price worth paying.

In other words the thought that sanctions could lead to war is, on balance, both wrong and self deceiving. Many believe that tougher sanctions are in truth the only feasible way to eventually avoid going to war with Iran over its nuclear defiance. To stop Iran’s move towards a nuclear bomb is best dealt with by cutting off the finances that support the project. It’s that clear cut to my mind.

Many would also argue that sanctions do indeed have a proven record of success. .They would say they worked in South Africa against apartheid. They might also say that they worked in Libya and helped to convinced Libyans to abandon their nuclear programme. They even worked in Iraq and by bringing an end to Iraq’s nuclear weapons programme although this fact has been conveniently forgotten following the dodgy dossier which led to war.

Finally tougher sanctions on Iran are economically much less costly than war. They assist the Iranian people’s desire for change and they also suit our own national interest. So why the hesitation? They are economically viable, ethically right and morally sustainable. Most of all, many Iranians tell me they are the most effective way of helping them to get rid of the evil regime which now controls their county