Westminster News

Unfortunately the MP for Stroud seems to have a long standing problem with his website it has now been out of use for the last month and shows no sign of coming back in to life. Surely it is not too much to ask that he communicates occasionally with the electorate given that Parliamentary Allowances encourage an MP to run a half decent website as I was able to do.

Had I been in Parliament now I would have signed Burt Lorely’s EDM507 ‘Cheque Payments’.

I was very pleased to read Jim Fitzpatrick MP’s EDM 403 ‘Wild Animals in Circuses. I hope that many MPs will sign this EDM and having been on the DEFRA Select Committee for 13 years I know how hard we worked on the Animal Welfare Act.

News delivered last week that the Commission for Rural Communities is to close and its Chair Dr Stuart Burgess will no longer be the Rural Advocate comes as a critical blow to rural areas and a devastating indictment of the Con/Dem government's belief that it speaks for the countryside.

At last something good to report. The Coalition has announced its intention to bring forward the referendum on electoral reform. This could be as soon as next May.

I recently received an email from the RSPCA highlighting the plight of some 40 million gamebirds that are bred every year in Britain. Of course in order to breed in cages there are inevitably large numbers of birds that are housed in cages purely for breeding purposes.

How typical that the first act of this already discredited government is to close down Vale of Berkeley College. Given that a Conservative controlled County Council has now proposed that it will ignore the recommendation of the Governors of the College to progress the idea of turning the College into a Co-operative College.

I am a supporter of the RSPCA and have recently received an email from them urging me to write to my MP and ask him not to support a badger cull. I personally am in complete agreement with the RSPCA request that there should be no badger cull;

I would like to praise Chris Williamson the MP for Derby North for tabling EDM 116 ‘Hunting Act 2004’ ‘That this House reaffirms its support for the Hunting Act 2004 ...

‘Will my hon. Friend ensure that as part of the audit we look at the cost and value of day centres? Too often nowadays it appears that local authorities, in particular, are trying to run down day centre services when those are often the only means by which people with dementia can get out of their homes. That is surely a retrograde step.’