The Northern Line

EDITION 1 - REGIONAL CONFERENCE SPECIAL

Welcome to the Northern Line - Labour North's new email service for members bringing you all the news from Labour this week, together with some facts to fight with!

Take a long hard look at the Tories:

David Cameron and the Tories have thought they could just coast into office by saying what people want to hear and repeating slogans about change.
But Northerners are smarter and rightly more sceptical than that.
They are seeing plans to scale back SureStart, child tax credits and Child Trust Funds for ordinary families whilst maintaining a commitment to give a £200,000 tax break to the 3,000 richest estates in the country, with 40% of those benefiting living in London and the South East.
Voters are looking beyond the airbrushed images and the expensive posters and they are seeing wibbly-wobbliness as soon as the Tories are put under pressure.

George Osborne - Chancer not Chancellor'

He can't tell you what his marriage tax breaks would actually look like
Won't tell you who would pay the new extra taxes to fund them
Can't tell you how he would raise £400m from tax credits without cuts for families on £31k
Won't tell you how much he'd cut this year
Can't tell you what he would do to help businesses invest in growth
Can't tell you how he would cut the deficit faster than Labour's tough four year plan
Can't tell you how he would really fund his planned inheritance tax cut
Won't tell you it means giving £200,000 to the 3,000 wealthiest estates.

Conservative NHS plans could see Quarter of a million evening and weekend GP appointments cut in the North.

Just as Labour plans to to improve GP access by abolishing GP practice boundaries, the Tories are planning to let GPs cut their opening hours which could see 282,750 less appointments available for patients in the North East and Cumbria.
Before 2008, just 5-7% of patients were offered an appointment in the evening, and just 1-2% were offered an appointment at the weekend.
Since the GP contract was reformed in 2008, now over 83% of GPs in the region offer bookable appointments in the evenings or weekends.

A future fair for all in the North:

Warmer Homes, Greener Homes

This week we launched our plan to upgrade the British housing stock to cut energy bills, reduce carbon emissions and increase energy security.
The Warm Homes, Greener Homes' strategy will ensure every home in Britain, where practical, is fitted with loft and cavity wall insulation by 2015. Up to 7 million British households will benefit from eco-upgrades by 2020. And we will introduce new pay as you save' green finance to make energy efficiency pay from day one.
Energy efficiency pays. Installing some technologies, such as solid wall insulation, could see energy bills cut by £380 a year (average between 2013 and 2020). It will also help create up to 65,000 jobs in the green home industry.
Labour will introduce energy efficiency standards in rented homes to keep bills down for tenants.
Behind the photo opportunities and rhetoric, David Cameron has failed to demonstrate either leadership or substance on climate change and low carbon energy. He has flip-flopped on nuclear power, His party is at heart fundamentally sceptical about climate change and although he claims that Tory policy is supportive of renewable energy, Tories routinely oppose wind power development

Fairness for people who play by the rules

We are stepping up the fight against crime and anti-social behaviour. The Tories refuse to protect frontline policing; and they would make it harder for the Police to use DNA to catch dangerous criminals.
Crime is down by 8% in the region since 2005; there are 386 more Police in the region than in 2001 supported by 799 PCSOs; and neighbourhood policing teams are in every area of the country, committed to spending 80 per cent of their time on the beat.
But more needs to be done to give power to communities to fight back against Anti-Social Behaviour. We will speed up the process for applying for ASBOs, and take tougher action on people that breach their ASBO. We will also consider how to give victims of antisocial behaviour a means of redress if they are not getting the support they expect from the police or local authority.
David Cameron talks Britain down by deliberately misleading the public about crime figures, even though his party has been censured by the Statistics Authority for doing this. The Conservatives have refused to rule out immediate, deep, and wide cuts to the police budget. They have campaigned against the use of CCTV, and they would make it harder for the Police to use DNA evidence to convict the most dangerous criminals.