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.

Labour are planning to increase both employer and employee National Insurance Contributions by one per cent from April next year – a straightforward tax on jobs that threatens to kill the recovery. Under Labour’s tax-raising plans, anyone earning over £20,000 a year will see their pay packet shrink. Labour will also increase the tax that local firms pay for hiring workers who earn £5,700 a year or more.

The Federation of Small Businesses and the Centre for Economics and Business Research have estimated that this will cost 57,000 jobs in small and medium sized enterprises alone, some of these may be in Portsmouth.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has found that twelve per cent of employers will recruit fewer staff, while eight per cent will cut jobs.

That is why George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, has announced that a Conservative government will stop the most damaging part of this jobs tax by cutting out £6 billion of wasteful government spending this year.

Our plans to cut waste are backed by Labour’s own efficiency advisers; and our plans to stop Labour’s jobs tax are backed by the leaders of all the main business organisations including the CBI and the Federation of Small Businesses, as well as almost forty top business leaders of some of Britain’s largest companies – such as Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer and Next – which, between them, employ over 500,000 people, as well as the leaders of Britain’s business organisations.

This is just one part our plans to get Britain working by boosting enterprise. We will also cut headline corporation tax rates for companies of all sizes funded by reducing complex reliefs and allowances, abolish tax on the first ten jobs created by new firms in their first year and get people off welfare and into work. And we will act now on debt to get the economy moving – we will deal with the deficit further and faster than Labour, making a start this year.

The choice at this election is clear: five more years of Labour’s debt, waste and taxes, or change with the Conservatives who will stop the jobs tax and get the economy moving again.

We are now another crime statistic in Southsea following a burglary during the night. The police have been very helpful but since it was electronic equipment that was taken, it will be very difficult to recover although I gave the serial number of my new computer to them. It is really sad that we now have to become Fort Knox in our own home and I am very disappointed that my first laptop which I had saved for has been taken after only two months of use. I am now writing on my 6 year old desk top as I can’t afford to go out and buy another one.

There have been a spate of burglaries in this area and I hope the police are able to catch these people soon before they violate other people’s lives.

I was not invited to speak at this meeting but went along as a member of the audience as I was curious to find out what our two MP’s who were speaking were going to do about the appearance of the BNP in Portsmouth and also what UAF had planned. It was well attended and we had to move to a bigger room to accommodate everyone. After hearing the speakers during which the Labour MP for Portsmouth North stated that we should not be sharing a platform with the BNP at the forthcoming debates, I was able to state that I thought that however distasteful the policies of the BNP are and ones which would bankrupt this country very quickly, we need to be able to expose them in the debates rather than running away from them.

Interestingly, the Labour MP stated that the last time that the BNP were in Portsmouth was in the 1970’s, which was when the last Labour government was in power. The person next to me in the audience stated that if the government had got the right policies in place particularly the economy, there would be no need for extremist parties in this country. When people are fearful of their jobs and future, they will look for scapegoats and protest votes. We have got the right policies to put the country back in its feet again and we need to articulate them so there will be no need to vote for fringe parties.

We were very fortunate to have Nicholas Soames MP to open our office and then attend a lunch of 70 people to explain why it is important to win Portsmouth South. It was also a good opportunity to quiz him on defence as he was a former defence minister and still interested in defence matters. He stated that our policy on the navy is very clear and has recently been articulated by Dr Liam Fox MP, Shadow defence minister, “we must also remember that we are a maritime nation dependent on the sea lanes for 92% of our trade. A time when the threat of disruption on the high seas is increasing is no time for Britain to become sea blind.”

The last Strategic Defence Review made a powerful case for naval aviation and maritime power projection and it is difficult to see what changes in the strategic environment have occurred that would change this particular element of our defence capabilities. We have repeatedly made our own position clear on the value of aircraft carriers. However, it would be wrong to restrict the scope of, or pre-empt, the Strategic Defence Review process itself which is exactly the same as the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrat Party who make no commitment to the aircraft carriers in their defence manifesto.

Another reason why it is really important to have a Conservative MP in Portsmouth South in a Conservative Government to fight for the home of the Royal Navy and its equipment.

This was a really good idea with the head of history and politics at PGS inviting all the local schools to participate in a democracy day ending with a question time debate with local parliamentary candidates. We were all invited to address the audience for exactly 4 minutes, I had timed my talk to make sure that it was less than 4 minutes but it seems the egg timer was not working properly and I was cut off early! The questions were wide and varied ranging from should the voting age be lowered to 16 to should we lock up paedophiles for longer. Sadly, many schools had to leave during the debate to catch their buses back to school so there were not many people left at the end to vote. I hope this event inspires people to get involved during the election and later in life although the questions asked were not going to show the real divisions between the parties.

The Shadow Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Lansley MP, visited QA hospital to see the new wing and find out about the issues concerning the health service in Portsmouth. We are totally committed to the National Health Service and have ring fenced the NHS budget as we believe that it is a service that everyone uses at various points in their lives and we must make sure that we have a first rate health service

The new wing and all the equipment is first rate at QA but we need to ensure that there is the budget to fund a first class service too.

I went to the Student Housing department today as student accommodation is a big issue in Portsmouth South both for students and for residents.

While I have been canvassing I have met many first year students in rented houses as there is not enough accommodation for them in halls of residences. The university has plans to build a new hall of residence at the Victoria Swimming Baths site but only for 300 students, there is a shortfall of 1,500 rooms for first year students at the present. The Student Housing department has very good measures in place to help first year students find houses before the new academic year starts when they organise 3 weekends for students with socials planned and a minibus to take them round all the available houses. They are concerned that students are not reading the contracts with landlords carefully enough before signing so if you are a student reading this, also read your tenant contract before signing or ask for help at the Student Housing Department. All this info is online at http://www.port.ac.uk/studentlife/accommodation/

For existing students Student Housing has a list of registered landlords which they publish on 18th March and they recommend that existing students do not rush out before that and commit themselves to houses before this date.

Portsmouth City council have recently set up a registration scheme for landlords and will have a list of all the landlords who fit strict criteria so it is a good place to start if you want to look into private renting check out the website at http://www.las.portsmouth.gov.uk/ or contact the council if you have a problem with your landlord.

One of the main reasons that I went to see the Student Housing Department is that we get a lot of complaints from residents in streets which are increasingly being taken over by student houses. The biggest issue is noise and parking. It is not that students have wild parties every night or play loud music, most students seem to be plugged into Ipods, but the biggest problem is that they tend to walk down the streets talking loudly and waking up residents who have to work the next day. I came across one resident who now wears earplugs every night which is really sad. Unfortunately, bars and clubs now have cheap student nights throughout the week rather than just one night and alcohol is too cheap and soft drinks too expensive. It is tough for young people to realise the effect that this is having on their neighbours and residents but it is something that we are going to have to work on if this is not going to be a huge growing problem. I know the university is trying hard but the clubs and students must act responsibly too. Students who are continually creating issues in their street with noise or anti social behaviour can be excluded from the university so residents need to complain to the student neighbour liaison officer at the Student Housing department so they can deal with the problem – 023 9282 3214.

Students also have cars, Portsmouth is flat and compact so there should be no reason to have a car, it is easy to cycle or walk and the bus service is good. A student house with 2-3 cars makes a huge difference on our crowded streets, but as students are renting private accommodation and are adults, this is a difficult situation and not easily solved unless we have residents parking everywhere and limit the permits which would be irritating for everyone. Some other university cities ban students from bringing in cars so perhaps this is something that the university could consider. The university also ought to consider putting underground car parking in the Victoria Swimming Bath site which could be used by both students and staff to help alleviate the congested parking on local streets.

Press Release

Flick Drummond visited the Beneficial Foundation to learn more about their work with people with learning difficulties and other disabilities. The Beneficial Foundation is training 55 trainees with skills for work and independent living and many of their trainees are working in the garden maintenance department and in the poly-tunnels growing plants for sale. Other trainees are working towards nationally recognised qualifications through the National Open College Network.

Flick was interested in the ‘House within our warehouse’ which enables people to learn to look after themselves. ‘This is a fabulous resource in our community’, said Flick, ‘learning basic life skills gives people the confidence to begin independent lives and I am really impressed with the rooms of a house built in the warehouse where trainees can learn how to cook and housework’. Flick also looked at the poly-tunnels where the Foundation grows plants from seeds, ‘the plants looked in excellent condition and it would be great if they could find a large retail outlet to sell them. I was also thrilled to see the craft shop as I love making my own cards and always have a craft project on the go.’

You can find the Beneficial Foundation craft shop and plants for sale next to Fratton Park in at 16 Anson Road,  Fratton Industrial Park, Portsmouth PO4 8TB