FoE Localism Bill Meeting at the House of Commons

While we do like to do teleconferencing when possible, there are some times you have to travel to meetings and so two of us went down to the House of Commons on Thursday for a meeting on the Localism Bill. Neither of us were experts on the bill to start with, but were able to use the journey down to London to read up on it using these useful briefings.

We arrived in plenty of time so were able to sit by the Thames enjoying the sunshine and listening to the endless roar of traffic all round us and planes overhead thinking how lucky we are in Birmingham not to have this (for the moment at least).

Going into the Commons was rather like going into an airport (I haven't for a few years, but remember what it was like), although we didn't have to take our shoes off thankfully. Once you're through all the scanners they let you wander about quite freely, though, and we made our way through imposing corridors until we made it to the room where the meeting was to take place.

MP Nic Dakin was hosting the event for us and has also helped introduce some of the amendments we want to see to the bill. We were promised that other MPs would be there, but apart from Gerald Kaufman, who popped in for a while, none of the Birmingham MPs made it along. We had been hoping to speak to Jack Dromey, MP for Erdington, as he has been doing some work on the bill, but neither he nor his PA turned up as they had promised to do.

This was disappointing, but overall the meeting was very interesting and it was great to meet and hear from representatives of other groups who represent local communities and defend their rights in planning decisions all over the country. The Rights and Justice team at FoE really are committed to working on equalities and the things that matter to those whose voices are not usually heard all over the country, yet their work may not be recognised as much as the higher profile campaigners working on climate, food and energy issues.

Detailed notes of the meeting were taken and will be sent round to all attendees soon and can be passed on to MPs and other interested parties, so I'll just make a few comments on what interested me in the course of the discussion.

You would have thought that if a bill is going to give more power to local people to make decisions, that should be good. Unfortunately, with this government things are never that simple as there are many things in it which could be very damaging to local democracy, communities' quality of life and the environment, especially when considered along with the measures announced by the chancellor in the budget, which seem to be a green light for development at any cost.

At the moment, we have some very good guidance on planning decisions in Regional Spatial Strategies, Local Development Frameworks and other pieces of legislation, but the danger is that all this could be thrown out and replaced with much looser guidelines. Originally they were proposing that a neighbourhood plan could be drawn up by a group of as little as 3 people, but this has now been increased to 20. There is still a lack of any guarantee of a right to be heard or any scrutiny over the work of neighbourhood forums/parish councils who will come up with the plans in terms of sustainability, equality or human rights legislation.

There is a lot of dissatisfaction with the current approach to consultation, so we do need to look at what is a better way and draw one up using our experience. This would include ways of protecting the rights of everyone to an oral hearing, looking at the way these things are publicised, ensuring that people can feel that they will make a difference and then see that difference. Sustainable development must be protected and there must be a clear definition of what this is that will be clear to everyone.

You can read more about the localism bill here and if you are concerned about what it will do after reading this, please contact your MP to express your worries, either in writing or by going along to one of their surgeries, which you can look up here. If you want to get involved in the work we do on planning, please get in touch.

Joe Peacock

Fix the Food Chain: Lobbying MPs to support us

The next few weeks provide an exciting yet critical time for our Fix the Food Chain Campaign. The second reading of the sustainable livestock bill is on 12^th November and as this date draws ever closer, we hope to have persuaded enough of our local MPs to help us make a difference to worldwide farming.

Friends of the earth have been campaigning for this for over a year now – see these reports of local and national action:

http://www.birminghamfoe.org.uk/local-shops-news/join-the-moovement

http://www.birminghamfoe.org.uk/local-shops-news/food-chain

http://www.foe.co.uk/what_we_do/join_moovement_24437.html

It is a very exciting yet challenging time, as we lobby our MPs to get one key message through – that we will not stand for unfair, unethical and unsustainable farming. We have this one opportunity to make a huge difference to the farming methods used, not only for the good of the Earth, but for the good of native people, who currently cannot fight against huge corporations that take their land. With irresponsible capitalism comes the wrong mentality: huge corporations care not for the damage they cause to the world, but for the quickest and cheapest way to make more money.

By getting MPs to support this Bill, we can make a huge difference not only to the global ecosystem, through the cutting of greenhouse gases and reductions in deforestation, but also to the native people who rely on this land for their livelihoods, as they have for generations and who want to see an end to the poisoning of their water and soil. By promoting locally grown feed and sustainable agricultural jobs in this country, we can show the benefits of this system and these huge corporations, as well as political leaders, will see that things need to change. Although this is just a beginning, it will show that people are prepared to take a stand and make food an environmental issue, and Friends of the Earth are there at the forefront of this action.

As November 12^th gets closer, it is imperative that we act to influence and lobby our MPs to attend the second reading of the Sustainable Livestock Bill, and to successfully use our resources to ensure MPs understand that there is not only a need for change, but a desire for change.

To find out what more you can do, contact campaigns@birminghamfoe.org.uk or just speak to your MP urgently to put the case in your own words.

Sam James

Conference reflections - big society

On the opening evening of our national conference this year, we had two speakers; Ken Livingstone who provided us with few surprises and a fairly safe speech for that audience and Phillip Blond, who is the architect of David Cameron's big society idea and one of the most provocative speakers you could wish to hear.

Now provocative doesn't necessarily mean good and a lot of the time people were just tearing their hair out at the stuff he was coming out with, such as re-legalising hunting as a way of ensuring conservation of the countryside and the fact that Tories have always been caring with the rights of those working the land very well looked after through history (sorry don't remember the exact details, but it was dismissed by some knowledgeable friends, anyway). I should watch it again to remind myself as the links to both talks and the Q&A session are available here.

However, some of the things he was saying were actually quite sensible - about talking to people about the areas around them and ensuring they feel they can have an effect on those things they care about. The trouble is that he didn't seemed to have a clue that this is what FoE is all about anyway and thought that we were just another environmental campaigns organisation who only ever talk about climate change in the big scary international sense and don't talk to people about local environmental justice.

The other problem I had with what he was saying was that in all the talk of rolling back the state and creating local control, he also acknowledged the need to get away from the big business model, but there was nothing to suggest how this could be achieved unless by state regulation. It's all very well talking about mutuals and cooperatives, with local suppliers helping each other, but when they're constantly faced with poorly regulated, incredibly wealthy multinational companies as competition, it is very hard for them to succeed.

This can be seen with the demise of local shops and smaller businesses all over the country and especially the terrible state of the farming industry being dictated to by supermarkets. A really important test of whether the green measures we take will lead to a better, fairer society will be whether there is a proper Green New Deal with sustainable local jobs created, or whether big business will steamroller in and take all the profits, while employing people on short-term contracts and then discarding them as soon as possible.

If the Big Society just means cutting the state, putting millions of people out of work and expecting business or volunteers to take over all of this socially valuable work that is currently done by public servants, it will not create any kind of just or sustainable society. If, however, it is done as a reshaping of the way we value control over business practices to ensure justice and freedom from exploitation, with curbs on the power of corporations and a move to more cooperative and mutually beneficial models of business, that is something many of us would sign up to.

Birmingham Friends of the Earth has always done the volunteering part of the big society, because we recognise the value you get from interacting with people and making a difference to your surroundings. What we want from government is support in that for all third sector organisations who do amazing work around the country, not funding cuts and also a recognition that the real power is financial not political. That means the first priority to creating a just society where people will want to take part is to use state power to create those business conditions that favour local small-scale enterprise and to ensure that the most polluting, unsustainable industries do not leave all of us to pick up the bill in future generations.

Joe Peacock