TOP TORY VISITS REDDITCH SCHOOL AND OPENS NEW TORY OFFICE

Andrew Mitchell MP will be visiting Redditch tomorrow (Monday) to speak to students at St Augustines High School to talk about his role in the Shadow cabinet as International Development Secretary including his recent visit to Ruwanda.

Andrew will then be opening the new Conservative offices in Grosvenor House, Prospect Hill, Redditch.

He will be joined on both visits by Karen Lumley the Tories Parliamentary Spokesman for Redditch County.

“We are deighted Andrew will be joining us” said Karen. “It is vital for us to have a presence in the town centre of Redditch in the run up to the General election and our new offices are amazing”

Time to reverse the rise of the ‘surveillance state’ says Karen
Labour’s state snooping is expensive, ineffective and intrusive

A future Conservative Government will drastically scale back the intrusive and ineffective ‘Big Brother’ state, Karen Lumley, declared this week. New policies by Conservatives are pledging to offer an alternative to Whitehall’s curtailment of civil liberties and stop taxpayers’ money being wasted on expensive and ineffective IT databases.

This comes amid growing concern about the Government’s new Independent Safeguarding Authority. This scheme could force 11 million adults to be vetted and monitored – even if they just give lifts to children as part of a school run or local football club.
Conservative proposals include:

•    Scrapping the National Identity Register, which will contain personal details of every citizen, and abolishing the Identity Cards that will accompany the database.
•    Ditching the ContactPoint database – which holds the names, dates of birth, schools and home addresses of all 11 million children in England until the age of 18, but is entirely separate from the children at risk registers.
•    Ending the permanent retention of innocent people’s DNA on the National DNA database.
•    Preventing councils from using controversial anti-terror laws to spy on local citizens; surveillance could only be used where necessary to stop a serious crime (involving a custodial sentence) and where a magistrates’ warrant has been obtained.
•    Subjecting all new laws to a new ‘privacy’ test, and beefing up the role of the privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner.

Karen said:

“The Labour Government’s approach to our personal privacy is the worst of all worlds – intrusive, ineffective and enormously expensive. Labour’s surveillance state and over-reliance on databases has exposed the public in Redditch to greater risk, not less.

Commenting on the Independent Safeguarding Authority, she added:

“The Government’s nanny-state attitude will do nothing to safeguard the children most at risk. Checks are needed on those who have jobs working with children, but vetting one in four of the population is complete nonsense.”

Risks to homes and firms – as Whitehall plans for power cuts in Worcestershire
… Small print of Government documents forecasts power cuts by 2017

Karen Lumley the Conservative Parliamentary Spokesman for Redditch this week warned that homes and businesses across Worcestershire could be facing power cuts within years. For the first time since the three-day week of the 1970s, consumers will be told to prepare for blackouts, since the supply of electricity will fail to meet demand at peak times.

Over the next few years many power stations will reach the end of their lives, or have to shut because of EU law. But the Government has failed to ensure that replacements are available in time. The small print of Whitehall documents reveal that Ministers have pencilled in power cuts of 3,000 Megawatt hours per year by 2017. This is the equivalent of 670,000 people being without electricity for a day – in other words an area the size of Worcerstershire.

In practice the blackouts are most likely to strike at peak times – in the early evening during the winter months – hitting many more people for shorter periods when the need for electricity is greatest. The expected gap of 3,000 Megawatt hours could even mean a simultaneous hour-long power cut for 16 million people simultaneously on a winter evening.

Karen said:

“I am extremely concerned that homes and businesses in Worcestershire will face blackouts because the Labour Government put its head in the sand about energy policy for a decade. Ministers have been forced to admit they expect the lights to go out for the first time since the three-day week of the 1970s.

“Conservatives will act quickly to tackle Labour’s energy crisis. We will increase generating capacity, improve energy efficiency by insulating people’s homes, adopt the latest green technology and make Britain’s energy policy a matter of national security.”