It was of course a huge disappointment not to win and looking back now after a few weeks there are a couple of things which still upset me.  

The first of course is that our team – the hundreds of people who worked so hard to try to hold the seat – did not succeed.   As I have said many times, this was not a result of their commitment and application.   The support that I received was amazing.   23,266 people voted for me – this far exceeds the total that many of those elected MPs received.  

The Liberal Democrats were subject to a national squeeze, with the right wing press stoking fears both of another Labour government and of a coalition government.    Our immigration policy was unpopular and our opponents locally exploited that effectively.   They also employed some very questionable tactics, including highly edited use of information – cunningly spun to cast aspersions on me personally and on the Lib Dem record here in Harrogate and Knaresborough.   Try as they might to remodel their national image, locally the Tories are still a very ‘nasty’ party.

Most of all however I regret the lost opportunity to champion many important causes.   Over the past years and particularly during the election campaign many issues were brought to my attention and I was looking forward to being able work on those.   Whilst I still intend to campaign hard, I do not now have the resources, the time or the platform that I had hoped would be available to me.

On the positive side, the establishment of the coalition government has been fascinating to follow.   The Liberal Democrats not only negotiated an impressive deal but also took the arrangements through the party’s testing processes in an inclusive and democratic way.    Achieving agreement at the outset for key policies such as raising the tax threshold and ending child detention was excellent.   But far more difficult will be achieving it in practice.   The right wing of the Conservative party will fight against the progressive aims that we espouse.   Already it is clear that the right wing press is working hard to discredit Lib Dems and the policies that we stand for.    Europe, the Human Rights Act, student tuition fees, will be amongst many difficult areas to reach agreement on.

And it will also be interesting to see how campaigning develops locally.   Now that our county council, borough council and our local MP are all from the same party, we have an even more important job to do, holding them to account.   Strong opposition voices are vital in any democracy and I and my Lib Dem colleagues will continue to challenge those who are responsible for spending our taxes.

The NAS sent me some shocking statistics. Apparently 43% of children with autism were officially excluded from school between 2007 and 2008; pupils with Special Educational Needs are over eight times more likely to be permanently excluded from school than the rest of the school population.

To me, this is a tragedy. How can we expect young people with autism get a good education if nearly half of them are excluded from school at one time or another? But when 51% of our teachers have never received specialist training to help them support children with autism, it is no wonder that we are in this situation.

There is a general lack of understanding of autism, and of the distinction between disability and disobedience. Teachers need to receive thorough, specialist training so that they feel comfortable teaching children with autism, and this training needs to be part of teachers’ ongoing professional development. The Liberal Democrats will reform teacher training so that all new teachers get better quality training in identifying and responding to children with special educational needs.

The Lib Dems will also invest an extra £2.5bn in schools to cut class sizes and provide one-to-one tuition, which will make it far easier for teachers to support children with austism.

If elected, I will do everything I can to support the work of the National Autistic Society, and to help children and adults with autism and their families. I will be attending Harrogate and District NAS’ public meeting before the second leaders’ debate tomorrow night, and hope to be able to work more closely with them in the future if I’m elected!

Dear Ms Kelley

As you are aware, North Yorkshire County Council and City of York
Council are jointly tendering for a long term solution for the treatment
of residual municipal waste. 

A range of solutions have been developed by the companies tendering and
we have evaluated proposals on their merits against pre determined
evaluation criteria that balance cost with environmental and quality
considerations. We have not specified the approach or technology that is
to be used, and we can not pre-judge what the outcome of this process
will be but proposals are expected to have regard to our joint waste
strategy. 

Final tenders have been received and we are in the process of
identifying our selected partner. The final stages of this procurement
involve the development of an agreement with the selected partner to
formally confirm their status as preferred bidder and outline the
obligations on both parties leading up to formal award of the contract. 
The PFI process requires us to work closely with the Waste
Infrastructure Delivery Programme (involving representatives from both
H.M. Treasury and DEFRA) during this time to satisfy them that the
requirements for award of £65million of PFI credits are met. Until such
time as WIDP confirm their approval we will be unable to make any
further public announcements but I am hopeful that I will be able to
bring further clarification to the outcome of this process in the coming
weeks. 

As you point out, the decision to award the contract will clearly be a
Key Decision and as such will need to be formally publicised in the
Council's Forward Plan with an appropriate notice period to enable
people with an interest in the decision to ask questions and make their
views known. Any proposal for new waste treatment facilities will of
course also be subject to normal regulatory consents including detailed
planning permission and granting of a permit to operate by the
Environment Agency.

Yours sincerely

Richard Flinton
Corporate Director
Business and Environmental Services
North Yorkshire County Council

Treatment is therefore still restricted to eligible women between the age of thirty-nine and six months and forty years of age whilst younger couples who cannot afford to pay for private treatment must wait yet another three months.

So many politicians and commentators repeatedly refer to “hard working families” as the most deserving group in society.   Today the Conservatives have gone further and announced plans to give tax breaks to married couples.

Spare a thought for single people – whether unmarried, widowed or divorced.   Many of them – I suspect most of them – would far rather be in a stable, long term, relationship than remain in their single state.   Because although being single has advantages, we humans are sociable creatures who long for closeness and company.   For whatever reason however, many are not so fortunate as to have found a partner to share their lives with.

And now hard working single people are to be asked to subsidize tax breaks for married couples.    Married couples who already enjoy advantages denied to single people.

For me, this is a step too far.   Single people are already financially penalised at every turn.   They pay 75% of council tax rather than the 50% that reflects their consumption of services.   Buying food in small quantities is more expensive.    Holidays carry hefty single supplements.    Living alone is already more expensive.

So, single people, let’s send a message to David Cameron and his party.    Let’s use the ballot box to object to the discrimination against single people – vote for whatever party locally has the best chance of defeating this extraordinarily discriminatory proposal.   And if a Conservative canvasser pitches up on your doorstep, ask them why they have decided to discriminate against single people in this way.

Claire Kelley and Dr Keith Rothwell at Allerton Park

North Yorkshire County Council in partnership with the City of York are expected to announce very soon their preferred bidder to develop an energy from waste plant in the county.   (Energy from waste (EfW) is a euphemistic and less emotive term for incineration.)

Rumours abound that the proposed site will be Allerton Park near Whixley.

Clearly such a proposal is highly controversial – a knowledgeable and very effective local group, DISC, has been opposing the county’s project since Dalton Airfield was identified as a potential site.   The recent proposal by BCB for an incinerator at Tockwith provoked massive public protests and was finally refused by the County Council’s Planning Committee in December 2009.

Councils across the country have been turning away from incineration but here in North Yorkshire it seems that we my be about to embark on what is likely to become an enormous white elephant for the county.The arguments against the use of incineration by waste disposal authorities abound:

• It drives down recycling rates.   Councils have to enter an agreement with operators to provide a certain amount of waste to the incinerator and so this reduces the incentive to recycle.
• Recycling, reuse and composting saves significantly more energy than incineration and result in massively smaller volumes of greenhouse gases.
• Toxic residues – 4 tons of waste produce 1 ton of fly ash and incinerator bottom ash (IBA).   Fly ash contains highly toxic particles including both dioxins and furans – amongst the deadliest substances known to man.    The toxicity of IBA is variable.
• Some of the most toxic substances are emitted as nanoparticles – which cannot be captured.

There are even more arguments against the use of incineration in North Yorkshire:

• In this region there is already significant capacity – two incinerators on Teesside are not yet working to capacity and two more have planning consent but have not been built as there is not sufficient waste to make them viable.   Northumbria County Council has entered an agreement to send its waste to Teesside.
• Scottish and Southern Electricity has announced its proposals for a multi-fuel CHP plant at Ferrybridge, which will also use waste as fuel.
• If sufficient waste does not arise locally, it will have to brought in to the county.
• If the Allerton Park site is indeed the favoured one, there are potential difficulties with water supply – which is a vital component of the process.
• The costs to the council taxpayer could be very high – a change in the taxation of the disposal of incinerator bottom ash or penalties for insufficient quantities of waste could impose huge costs on North Yorkshire residents for many years.

All in all incineration is clearly not a good solution to the county’s waste problems.   We need to reject it quickly and fully and move without delay to find a better, less harmful, more sustainable way of dealing with our waste.

This is Shelter’s summary of the Council’s performance:

Independent experts say your area needs to build 830 homes per year. Your council planned for 122 new affordable homes to be provided in your area last year.

This was less than the number of new affordable homes needed.

Despite this, only 100 new affordable homes were delivered on average in each of the last three years, even less than the number planned and less than was needed.

These are not figures that the Conservative administration in Harrogate want people to see.    Only a couple of weeks ago the Deputy Leader of the Council arrogantly – and clearly erroneously – claimed “we are the best performing housing authority in the country”!

The fact is that whilst our Council’s housing service has performed well in some areas, there is scant political will from the current Tory administration to provide desperately needed homes for those on low and modest incomes.   The Shelter information shows that whilst the average income locally is £22,262, the income needed to buy an average home in the area is £57,065.

About a year ago I challenged our Council to apply for government funding that was on offer to build new Council homes.    I was disappointed to receive a  patronising and negative response from the Cabinet Member.

The thousands of families on the Council’s waiting list look set to remain in inadequate, unaffordable and overcrowded homes, because a complacent Council administration has made a political decision not to prioritize the provision of affordable homes.    And thousands more are unable to live in the area they call home because property prices are simply out of their reach here.

Rwanda, Sweden, South Africa, Cuba, Iceland, Netherlands, Finland, Norway, Mozambique, Angola, Argentina, Belgium, Denmark, Costa Rica, Spain, Andorra, New Zealand, Nepal, Germany, The F.Y.R. of Macedonia, Ecuador, Belarus, Uganda, Burundi, United Republic of Tanzania, Guyana, Timor-Leste, Switzerland, Austria, Mexico, Tunisia, Peru, Portugal, Afghanistan, Australia, Namibia, Trinidad and Tobago, Monaco, Viet Nam, Kyrgyzstan, Iraq, Suriname, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Lesotho, Liechtenstein ,Republic of Moldova, Croatia, Seychelles, Singapore, Estonia, Senegal, United Arab Emirates, Bolivia, Pakistan, Canada, Mauritania, Eritrea, Latvia, Uzbekistan, Ethiopia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Serbia, China, Italy, Cambodia, Philippines, Bulgaria, Malawi, Nicaragua, Luxembourg, Poland, Dominican Republic.

Answer – they all have a higher proportion of elected women representatives in their parliaments than the United Kingdom.   On International Women’s Day I am reminding myself that across the world, only in only one single parliamentary chamber are there more women than men – in the lower chamber of Rwanda.

Here in the UK, women make up a little more than half of the population, but sit in fewer than 20% of the seats in the House of Commons.     This really needs to change.

The proposed substation is large and the rent paid to the church would be substantial.   This week’s Harrogate Advertiser has illustrated it with a picture of double decker buses stacked on top of each other.   The plans are on the Council’s website and show the architect’s drawings which look quite a lot better than the buses.

The Council is taking its time over the decision – their website shows that the application was submitted in April 2009 and the target determination date was at the end of July 2009.   But there is still no firm date – would I be thought cynical if I voiced the view that it is unlikely to be resolved before the election?   No matter what the reason, this application is well outside the normal time limits applied to planning applications.

Clearly it is not an easy or straightforward decision – we need the relay station and the church needs money, and particularly because it is a listed building it should be maintained in good condition.    I think the architects have made a reasonable job of trying to design a utilitarian building sympathetically.

But I don’t think that the substation is the right solution to the funding challenge that St Wilfrid’s faces.    It’s just too big.   The impact on the listed building would be, in my view, completely unacceptable.

I await the Council’s decision with interest.

With Bill Hoult, Lib Dem Leader at NYCC on the newly surfaced 'road to nowhere'

The Yorkshire Post had an interesting – and worrying – article under this title yesterday.    In brief it referred to a farm track in Staveley that has just been resurfaced at a cost of £28,000.

It’s good to hear about road maintenance – because I think most people feel that our roads could do with a little more of it – but according to the YP the villagers in Staveley report that the road in question, Bedlam Lane,  is a dead end used by hardly anyone and they cannot understand why it should have been chosen for resurfacing.

The YP alleges that one of the few users of Bedlam Lane is an NYCC  Highways Officer who keeps horses in a field accessed by it.    If this is indeed the case, clearly an enquiry must be held.

But the article also raises very serious questions about the process followed by North Yorkshire County Council in prioritising road maintenance.   As a local councillor I always struggled to understand how they chose which pavements would be renewed.   The ones that were identified by the officers as needing work often seemed to me to be in a better state than some of those that were refused.

Last week the County Council raised its council tax by an additional 0.44% (to 2.94%) to cover the cost of extra road maintenance made necessary by the effects of the harsh winter.   Personally I think they were wrong to do so – you can bet that the 0.44% will not be taken off next year’s increase  so council taxpayers of North Yorkshire will in fact pay for that maintenance every year to come as well as this year.

By the time I get my council tax bill I want to know from the leadership at County Hall who decides which roads are to be resurfaced and what criteria they use, what the elected members’ role is in the process, and what checks are in place to ensure that individual members of staff always make arrangements based on the need of the community, not their own convenience.   Staveley’s elected County Councillor is the Deputy Leader – perhaps soon to be Leader – of the Council.   Did he know about this?   If not, should he have done?