David Willetts

We are very lucky to have David Willetts as a local MP in Havant and we were grateful to have him canvassing today in Old Portsmouth. He then spent the whole day in various target seats around Hampshire to give us support. Issues on the doorstep were immigration and the economy and it is always useful to have a member of the shadow cabinet to answer questions.

Some of the team continued with delivering letters while others accompanied me to St Mary’s Fair which was huge and very well attended. It must have raised loads of money. We had a hot dog lunch listening to the Portsmouth City Band which is exceptional and spent money on tombolas and biscuits for the hardworking team in the office. On the way back, we stopped at the British Legion’s fete near the station, you could hear the music from our offices in Fratton.

The campaign has been going very well and I am incredibly grateful for the ever growing team of volunteers, most of which have given up a lovely Bank holiday to work on getting rid of Mr Brown.

We had Edwina down last year for a Curry with Currie where she made a brilliant speech, and she very kindly came down for a whole day to canvass with us around the city including a spell in Palmerston Road and Commercial Road. It was great being out with a celebrity who everyone recognises and I was full of admiration for her stamina. She arrived at 10am and was still running around at 6pm. I had no idea that she is a Charles Dickens enthusiast so while we canvassed, we allowed her 15 minutes in the museum. As she pointed out, it would be good for Portsmouth to have two fine women as MP’s.

It was great to have the Shadow Secretary of State for Health visiting this clinic which provides an essential walk in clinic for homeless people and unregistered patients. They do have a registered list too but one of the aims was to provide a place where homeless people can register and use the clinic as an address to start accessing other services. There are 25 homeless people on the register.

The clinic is also used by students and people whose own GP cannot see them immediately or if it is out of hours. The Guildhall Clinic is open from 8am – 8pm seven days a week so is useful for workers.

The Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sports, Jeremy Hunt, appeared early one morning to canvass with us and also to meet some of the Chinese community. He was going to be accompanied by 3 Chinese representatives but unfortunately they broke down on the A3 and were unable to arrive on time. Jeremy has married a Chinese academic and is expecting their first child in June. Jeremy went on to Chippenham and then to Birmingham to help David Cameron prepare for the final leader’s debate.

Sir George young, Leader of the House of Commons visited the Roberts Centre and as a former housing minister was really impressed by the work that they do in resettlement of families and their children’s services. What I didn’t know was that he opened April Square as the housing minister and if we had more time, I would have shown him around. After visiting the office in Cresswell Road we walked to the housing office in Guildhall Square and on to see a flat which was about to be occupied by someone recently made homeless. It is voluntary organisations like the Roberts Centre which are part of the Big Society that David Cameron talks about.

We went on to the Beneficial Foundation Café which I am a great fan of. It is very well priced and they do delicious baked potatoes. They also have a craft shop open to the public which is well stocked. The Beneficial Foundation helps people with learning difficulties to find employment and teaches them how to live independently.

The Conservative Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, Liam Fox, came today to show his support for a city which he says is ‘a centre of excellence for the defence industry’. On a private visit to BAe systems, we were shown around the building of the new aircraft carriers which are already up to the seventh deck in their construction. It was incredible to see a huge industrial ship building project in our densely populated city alongside two nearly completed Omani ships. The order book for BAe systems is full for the next 5 years and the development of the next generation of navy ships is already in the pipeline and will be available for export too which is absolutely essential if we want to maintain our own indigenous defence industry. BAe Systems is one of the British successes in terms of exports and research and employs 1000’s of people in Portsmouth both directly and indirectly so it is essential that we support them.

Dr Fox talked about what capabilities we need on the aircraft carriers and how flexible they need to be to accommodate different types of aircraft. He also spoke positively about the future of the navy and the number of ships we need to maintain our maritime commitments. As he said, ‘Nelson would be turning in his grave’ with the reduced number of ships that we have at the moment. Dr Fox has already said that the Conservative Party are committed to three navy bases so the future of Portsmouth as the home of the Royal Navy is assured under a Conservative Government.

As a great supporter of Help for Heroes I was really pleased to be invited to learn about one of their latest fundraising activities. Apparently devised after last years Army/Navy rugby match at Twickenham, several ex-services and others have decided to re-enact the Cockleshell Heroes raid in Bordeaux Harbour in June. The launch by Lord Brabourne at the Marine Museum in Eastney started with a display of all the equipment followed by the launch on the beach where they were canoeing to Stokes Bay for a barbeque with their families. The training has been extensive all through the winter and often at 4am in the morning which I suspect was very similar to what the original Cockleshell Heroes have been doing. All the canoeist have full time jobs so have to arrange the training in their spare time and are taking the 10 days for the trip out of the holiday.

This is a press release from them and you can find out more about the trip and how to donate any money at http://www.helpforheroes.org.uk/cockleshell_heroes.html

‘Having had the opportunity to visit the wounded at Headley Court Tri-service Rehabilitation Centre we were profoundly humbled to meet some extraordinary people there. And so our aim is to re-trace the route taken by these brave men of WW2 to help the brave men and women of today by raising as much money as we can in aid of Help for Heroes/RNLI. We will be canoeing 70 miles up the Gironde River from out at sea, through its famous tidal races, stopping at 3 pre-planned LUP’s to Bordeaux Harbour where we will lay a wreath for all those who have given so much, then canoe 20 miles down to the extraction point where we will then get on pushbikes to continue our route 100miles in land taking the ‘Frankton Trail’ where the few that were left escaped and evaded the Germans to reach the resistance at Ruffec.’

Jeremy Hunt came down to wave goodbye to the Lib Dems and Labour Government

Thank you to all who have written to me and I am sorry if there is a delay in responding but as you may know from a previous blog, we were recently burgled and I am now reliant on my 6 year old desktop when I finally get home and which often crashes. It also means that I haven’t always got time to blog on all our many activities.

Our campaign is very positive and it helps that we started canvassing two years ago and are now going round to some streets that we have visited 3 times. We are trying to make sure that we have visited every street but some people are out and you may not see us. Please give us a ring or email me if you do want to meet us and we will try and put it into our timetable.

It is definitely time for a change of government. We need a new refreshed team with some good ideas and we have certainly got both. You can find out more about our manifesto at www.conservatives.com. We need to win 117 seats to change this failing government and Portsmouth South is no 70 on that list so you can see that every vote is going to count.

You should have all received some leaflets about some of issues that I am campaigning on and my pledges.

In case you haven’t received one yet, here are my key campaign pledges:

1. Portsmouth First – put the interests of Portsmouth people first in any decisions in Westminster

2. One Job - being an MP is a huge responsibility and Portsmouth South deserves a full time representative fighting for your interests. I will take on no other paid employment.

3. Work Hard – to attract investment, make Portsmouth environmentally friendly with an excellent education for everyone

4. Live here – continue to have the family home in Southsea and claim only for accommodation and travel in Westminster.

My vision for Portsmouth is a city of high tech industry, a leader in ‘green’ living with an excellent education system. I believe this is achievable with strong leadership and, with the community spirit that already exists in Portsmouth, we can work together to make our city the envy of Britain.

Penny in Portsmouth North and I have signed a clean campaign pledge

This was a very good occasion for charities to hear policies directly from the candidates and both sets of candidates from Portsmouth North and South were there. Penny, my colleague in Portsmouth North, led the Conservative presentation as she has worked and been involved with charities for much of her working life in a professional capacity as well as a volunteer. I have only been a fundraiser and volunteer but it is great that both of us have different experiences which will benefit Portsmouth if we both get in.

We have a range of policies directed at charities as we know how important they are to our communities and economy. You can find a brief description on our website www.conservatives .com

Some of the policies should really help charities. Under the present government, voluntary organisations are unable to earn return on money invested in providing public services which means that they can be deterred from bidding for government contracts even if they could provide a better service than other private providers. We would allow them to establish a level playing field with the private sector by allowing them to earn a competitive return on their investment. Letting charities keep a share of any savings made would promote greater efficiency while, at the same time, increasing the amount of funding available to charities and helping them raise money to invest elsewhere.

Every voluntary sector organiser I meet seems to spend most of the time looking for sources of funding and filling out endless forms from different government departments to try and survive and provide a valuable service. We will create a one-stop funding portal for significant government grants, advertising grant schemes on a single simple website. We would also make the grants more stable (usually 3 years), more transparent and easier to manage only using formal contracts where there is a clear justification for doing so.

We will also make it easier for charities to do business with the state by making Government grants more stable, more transparent and easier to manage. We believe that the drying up of grant income, and the conversion of grants into formal contracts with strict terms and conditions, has gone too far. We will sustain grant funding by respecting the difference between grants and contracts – using contracts only where there is a clear justification for doing so. To enable smaller charities to win a fair share of government funding, we will create a one-stop funding portal for significant government grants, advertising grant schemes on a single, simple website

The current system for checking criminal records is also far too slow, bureaucratic and inefficient. It puts people off volunteering and makes it expensive and time-consuming for charities to process applications from potential volunteers. A Conservative government will improve checking procedures in order to reduce the cost to charities of hiring staff and volunteers, let them hire staff and volunteers more quickly, and make it easier for members of the public to volunteer.

We must also look at all the health and safety regulations which are making it so difficult for many charities to perform their tasks and really make sure that they are all necessary. Many people are being put off volunteering or taking people on trips because of all the forms and regulations. We must put the fun back into volunteering.

Thank you to Ian Piper from Community First for organising the debate and chairing it, and to the Salvation Army for their hospitality. There were 4300 online viewers during the debate.

First day of the election.

At last Gordon Brown has finally called the election and we are in the final stretch of the campaign.

Today I talked to Portsmouth Pensioners who were instructed to ask questions only on national policies. One of the biggest issues is that the state pension has not kept up with earnings and many pensioners are struggling. This is an issue that I hope we will address with the link back to earnings although in this recession earnings are not going up sufficiently so we must find other ways of alleviating the hardship that many pensioners are finding. Like everything else it will depend on the economy which is really frustrating. While we do start to put the economy back on track, we will ensure that our vulnerable citizens always come first and that includes pensioners. David Cameron made a powerful speech at our party conference in October about poverty and we must make sure that the 2 millions pensioners living in poverty are helped.

David Cameron this morning in his speech talked about ‘the great ignored’. People like the couple I met this evening who had both worked hard and saved all their lives. They are now in their 80’s but do not qualify for pension credit and are finding it hard to survive and are really cross that they might have to sell their house to pay for nursing care and they had wanted to leave something for their daughter. They were very pleased to speak to us and told us of their problems.

This evening we were lucky to have Theresa May MP coming down to Portsmouth to canvass with 14 members of the team and she got a fabulous reception from people on the doorstep in Milton. Some people even came out of their doors to welcome her without us knocking, and it is great to see so many people who are enthusiastic about our policies and wanting to see a change in government.

Although I have wanted to run a green campaign with as few leaflets as possible, several thousand leaflets went out today to remind people of why it is so important to vote and to let them know what I am campaigning for.

I am really looking forward to the next four weeks.